Death in Zanzibar (23 page)

‘Miss Bates!' implored Dany, kneeling beside her and endeavouring to turn her over. ‘Miss Bates, are you hurt?'

The foolish question echoed hollowly along the silent verandahs as Millicent Bates's head lolled back from Dany's supporting arm. The breeze had set the lantern swaying, and the fretted lozenges of light shifted and swung and gave an illusion of movement to Millicent's wide, staring eyes. But there was no movement in the dead weight of her slack, heavy body. No movement anywhere except for the swinging, soundless lozenges of light and the flutter of a crumpled piece of paper that stirred in the breeze, flapping like a large pale-coloured moth on the matting.

She's hurt, thought Dany stupidly. Badly hurt … or she's knocked the wind out of herself. No … no it can't be just that … Concussion. Miss Bates had fallen and stunned herself. Those shallow steps with their low, decorative, ridiculously inadequate balustrades
____
She must have been coming down them in the dark to see if Gussie were settled in for the night, and slipped and fallen.

Of all the silly things to do, thought Dany frantically. In the
dark!

The paper fluttered again with a small sound that made her start violently, and she snatched at it, and thrusting it into her pocket, laid Millicent's inert weight back on to the matting, and stood up: trembling but no longer frightened. She must fetch help at once — Gussie Bingham. Tyson
____

She ran to Gussie's door and hammered on it, and receiving no answer tried the handle and found that Gussie too had taken the precaution of locking herself in that night. Dany beat on the door and called her by name, and the silent courtyard picked up the sound and echoed it along the lines of arches: ‘Mrs Bingham —!
Mrs Bingham … Mrs Bingham…
'

A door opened on the adjoining verandah, framing Tyson in a bright square of light.

‘What in the name of Beelzebub is the meaning of this infernal din?' roared Tyson, adding his quota to it. ‘Who's there? What's up?'

‘It's Miss Bates,' called Dany. ‘Tyson,
do
come! She's fallen off the staircase, and I think she's concussed herself or — or something. And I can't lift her. She's too heavy.'

The door beside her was thrown open and Gussie Bingham was there, wrapped in a violet silk kimono patterned with wistaria, and with her curling pins inadequately concealed by a turban of lilac tulle.

‘Miss Kitchell! Did you want me? What on earth is the matter? Why, Tyson
____
!'

Tyson charged past her, clad in nothing but a scanty loin cloth of some gaily patterned cotton material, and switching on lights as he went.

Other lights flooded the top-floor verandahs and other heads appeared, peering downwards: Nigel's, Eduardo's, Larry Dowling's …

Lorraine ran along the verandah, her little bare feet thrust into absurd feathered mules whose high heels clicked as she ran, and her diaphanous nightgown barely concealed by an equally diaphanous négligée.

But there was nothing that anyone could do. Millicent Bates was dead. She had fallen from somewhere near the top of the staircase on to the stone floor of the verandah, and broken her neck.

14

‘I've always said those stairs were dangerous,' shuddered Lorraine, white-faced and shivering. ‘Those silly little edges. They aren't rails at all! But I still don't see how she could have done it, even in the dark. You'd think anyone would be
extra
careful in the dark, wouldn't you?'

‘I suppose she must have felt faint,' said Tyson. ‘In fact that was probably what she was coming down for. To get some aspirin or something off Gussie. Gussie's got their medicine chest in her room.'

‘But wouldn't you think she'd have had the sense to just sit down if she felt faint? Really, people are
too
stupid!'

It was obvious from Lorraine's tone that, horrified as she was, she considered Millicent Bates to have been guilty of thoroughly inconsiderate behaviour, and now that the first shock of discovery was over, her emotions leant more to anger than grief.

It was over an hour since Dany had aroused the sleeping household, and they were all in the drawing-room waiting for the arrival of the doctor, an ambulance and the police. All except Gussie — who had succumbed to a fit of hysterics and was now in bed having been given two sedatives and a hot-water bottle — and Nigel Ponting, who had driven in to the town to fetch the doctor and inform the police.

They had carried Millicent's body into Dany's room because it happened to be the nearest, and left it on Dany's bed, where it lay alone, clad in sternly utilitarian pyjamas and an elderly woollen dressing-gown, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling.

Lash had been awakened by the car being backed out of the garage and the flick of headlights across the wall of his room, and seeing the house ablaze with lights, he had put on a dressing-gown and come across to make inquiries.

Amalfi, who had slept through the initial uproar and had been aroused by Gussie's shrieks, had joined the horrified house-party just as Tyson and Larry Dowling were carrying Millicent's limp body into Dany's room. She had behaved with admirable calm, and it was she who had succeeded in putting a stop to Gussie's hysterics by the simple expedient of picking up the jug of drinking water that stood on Dany's bedside table, and flinging the contents in Mrs Bingham's scarlet, screaming face.

Amalfi was now sitting on the sofa, wearing a most becoming confection of peach-coloured satin and lace and looking as poised and sleek and
soignée
as though this was some normal social occasion. She was talking to Lash and sipping black coffee that Lorraine had made in a Cona, but if her composure was genuine, she appeared to be the only one in the room to possess it.

Lash was not even making a pretence of listening to her. He was looking troubled and out of temper, and was apparently more interested in the pattern of the carpet than in anything else, though he occasionally lifted his gaze from it to direct a look of active irritation at Tyson Frost, who was prowling restlessly about the room, looking like some strayed beachcomber from the South Pacific.

Lash, glancing at him and wishing he would stay still, decided that although hair on the chest might be the hallmark of a he-man, too much of it merely suggested that Darwin had been dead right when he attributed the origin of the human species to the ape. There was little to choose between Tyson's torso and a door-mat, and his caged-lion prowl was beginning to get on Lash's nerves. If only the man would sit still for five minutes
____
! And if only Amalfi would stop talking for ten. His gaze shifted briefly to Dany, and he frowned.

Dany was the only one in the room who was fully dressed, and Lash, noting the fact, and the time, was unreasonably disturbed. Two a.m. And they had all gone off to their several rooms shortly before half past eleven. Yet Dany alone had obviously not been in bed, for she was not only wearing the dress she had worn earlier that evening, but she was still wearing stockings. Which made it seem unlikely that she had merely hurriedly pulled on the dress in preference to coming down in a bathrobe as the others had done. He noticed that she was surreptitiously studying Larry Dowling, and his frown became a scowl.

Dany herself, sitting huddled in the depths of a big armchair and feeling cold and very tired, was wondering how Larry had managed to get back into the house and up to his room in time to change into the pyjamas and dressing-gown he now wore, when she had seen him on the terrace below her window, wearing a dinner jacket, only a short time before she had heard Millicent fall. Or had the interval been longer than she had imagined? How long had she stood near the window looking out into the moonlight after he had left the terrace? Surely not more than ten minutes. Yet Larry certainly had the appearance of one who has been awakened out of a sound sleep, for his hair was rumpled and he yawned at intervals. But despite the yawns there was nothing sleepy about those quiet, observant eyes, and Dany did not believe that he felt in the least drowsy.

Eduardo di Chiago, darkly handsome in scarlet silk pyjamas and a spectacular monogrammed and coroneted dressing-gown, was gallantly assisting Lorraine with the coffee. But he too was noticeably distrait and apt to jump when spoken to, and, like Lash, was obviously finding his host's relentless pacing an acute nervous irritant.

Lorraine, noticing it, said appealingly: ‘Tyson darling,
do
sit down! You're making us all nervous. Why don't we all go back to bed?'

‘Speaking for myself,' said Tyson, ‘because I should have to get up again the minute the doctor and the police arrive. However, there's no reason why the rest of you should stay around. The only people they're likely to want to see are myself and Miss — er — Miss
____
'

‘Kitchell,' supplied Lash with something of a snap.

Tyson turned to scowl at him and said: ‘At least there's nothing to stop
you
getting back to bed, so don't let us keep you up. You weren't even here when it happened, and I don't know what the hell you're doing over here anyway.'

‘Neither do I,' said Lash morosely. But he made no attempt to move, and once again he looked at Dany. A long, thoughtful and faintly uneasy look.

Amalfi, observing it, turned to follow the direction of his gaze, and her eyes narrowed while her charming, curving mouth was suddenly less charming as the red lips tightened into a line that was almost hard. She had not looked at Dany directly during the last hour, but she looked now.

Dany was sitting in a huddled and childish attitude that should have been ungraceful, but was not, for it revealed the fact that her figure was slim and her legs were long and lovely. She had done something, too, to her hair. Brushed it back and got rid of those distressing curls — and discarded her spectacles. Without them she looked absurdly young. Young enough to make Amalfi disquietingly conscious of her own age, and a crease furrowed her white forehead. She turned back sharply to look at Lash, but Lash was studying the carpet again and appeared to be immersed in his own thoughts which, judging from his expression, were not pleasant.

Eduardo too had looked at Dany: and from Dany to Amalfi Gordon. And his dark eyes were all at once intensely alert and curiously wary. He said abruptly, as though replying to Tyson's question:

‘Then I think I go to my bed. You are right. No one will wish to ask me questions, and I feel that it may be I intrude. This Miss Bates — she has been known to you for many years, perhaps?
Allora
— it is very sad for you. I feel for you so much. You excuse me, Lorraine?'

He kissed her hand, and then Amalfi's — though with less than his usual lover-like gallantry — and having conveyed his sympathy to Tyson in an eloquent look, returned to his own room. But no one else appeared to feel called upon to follow his example; not even Larry Dowling, who could certainly not have considered himself an old friend of the family: and they were all still there when at long last Nigel returned with the doctor and an Indian Chief Inspector of Police.

The proceedings after that had been mercifully brief. The doctor's verdict had confirmed their own, and it was only too easy to see how the accident had occurred.

Miss Bates, descending the staircase in the dark, had either felt faint or misjudged a step and stumbled, and falling over the edge of the balustrade on to the verandah below had broken her neck. It was as simple, and as shocking, as that.

Tyson had done most of the talking and shown them where the body had lain, and Dany had not been called upon to say very much. The doctor had seen Gussie and prescribed rest and, if necessary, another sedative, and he and the Inspector, having assisted in carrying Millicent's body to the waiting ambulance, had expressed their sympathy and left.

The moon was down and in the east the sky was already beginning to grow pale with the first far-away hint of dawn when Dany climbed in under her mosquito-net at last. Her sheets were crumpled and her pillow still bore the impression of Millicent Bates' head. But no one had thought to suggest that she sleep anywhere else, and she was too tired to care very much that she must sleep where Millicent's dead body had lain. Too tired to care very much about anything …

She slept so soundly that she did not hear the gentle tap of the house-servant who attempted to bring her a tea tray at eight o'clock, or, an hour later, Lorraine's voice outside her locked door, inquiring if she were awake yet. And it was, finally, Lash who awakened her.

He banged on her bedroom door and went on banging with increasing loudness until she opened it, and when he saw her there, drowsy and bewildered, he said with inexplicable fervour: ‘Thank God for that!'

‘For what?' asked Dany, blinking at him. ‘Is anything the matter?'

‘Apparently not,' said Lash, who was looking oddly white and strained. ‘But when you didn't come down, and Lorraine said your door was locked and she could get no answer out of you, I thought maybe I'd better come up and make sure.'

‘Of what?' inquired Dany, puzzled.

‘That you were really only asleep. I guess that lousy business last night was an accident all right, but all the same
____
'

‘Miss Bates
____
!'
gasped Dany, recollection hitting her like a blow in the face. ‘I — I'd forgotten. She — Oh, Lash! Oh
poor
Miss Bates. Poor Mrs Bingham … Is she all right?'

‘Mrs Bingham? I guess so. She seems to have recovered enough to eat a fairly hearty breakfast, judging from the tray that went up. How about you? Are you thinking of coming down any time?'

‘Of course. Is it late?'

‘Just after ten.'

‘Ten! Good heavens!'