Chapter 6 Summary

Smith, it is told, had a child by his black servant girl. His wife, on hearing the news, and fearing the repercussions of his actions, conspires with her husband to kill the girl. They drown her in a river, then cut off and bury her head so that the body cannot be identified, before finally weighing the body down and then disposing of it in the river. The girl's father, not believing the Smiths' story that she had run away, sees to it that the police are called. Over the course of a few days, they discover blood on a hummock of grass, then the girl's head is unearthed and then at last her body, which reveals that she had been pregnant.

Pieter, sitting in his office, receives a call from his mother asking about the incident at the store. He tells her...