Welcome to the first Saturday Marginalia. Every Saturday this month you'll get three things: riddles to help you unmask our fourteen literary guests, one small fact from the Inspector's file, and something extra to keep.
Who's who:
Our victim's first name has an English twin. His surname is a provincial Victorian town, translated. Its most famous resident spent his life on a book that would explain everything, never finished it, married a much younger woman who thought he was wiser than he was, and tried to control her from beyond the grave.
Our second wife's full first name is Emmarentia. Say the first half aloud. Her maiden name is Rautenbach; her literary twin's was not so different. That twin was a farmer's daughter who married a dull country doctor, read too many novels, ran up debts she couldn't pay, and ended it all with a jar from the pharmacist's shelf.
The first wife is only a shadow in our story, and so was hers. Her initial is on every pillowcase, and the head housekeeper keeps her memory like a shrine. Her story begins with a dream of going back to a house.
From the file:
Eduard's lawyer in Stellenbosch has sent the Inspector a copy of the will. Most of it is what you'd expect. But three months ago Eduard added a clause. If Rentia remarries after his death, she keeps the house. Unless the man she marries is one Dewald Greyling of Dorp Street. In that case, she gets nothing at all.
The Inspector's note: So he knew. How long had he known?
Floorplan:
Keep this. You'll want it.
The front door opens onto the entrance hall, with the staircase rising on the right.
To the left of the hall: the drawing room, with French doors onto the stoep. Behind it, the dining room.
Straight ahead, a long passage runs to the back of the house.
On the left of the passage: the library. One door, onto the passage. Windows onto the vineyard. The gallery and ladder are at the far end.
Directly across the passage from the library door: the kitchen. A second kitchen door leads to the yard. The dog's lead hangs on a hook beside it.
Past the kitchen, at the end of the passage: the linen room, with the boot room and back door opposite.
Outside: the washing line behind the linen room, with a white oleander against the wall beside it; and a path through the vines to the dam and boathouse, about four hundred metres away, where a big pink oleander leans over the water. From the jetty you can see the whole top vineyard.
Notice how close the kitchen is to the library door. Bettie Fortuin certainly does.
PS: When Olive Schreiner published The Story of an African Farm in 1883, she did it under the name Ralph Iron, because a novel about the Karoo by a young woman from the Eastern Cape was not something London publishers were expected to take seriously. It became a bestseller. The author of the novel behind our victim did exactly the same thing, to escape the presumption that a woman’s fiction would be lesser and partly to keep her private life out of the discussion.