Death in Zanzibar (7 page)

The Italian marquis — or was it marchese? — and Sir Ambrose someone (oil) were giving Mrs Gordon their full attention, and Amalfi was being charming to both of them, as well as to Mrs Bingham and Miss Bates and a couple of openly admiring waiters. Even Larry Dowling was finding it difficult to keep his eyes from straying and his attention on what his table companion was saying.

Mr Dowling was sitting two tables away with the dark-skinned man whom Dany had seen at the hotel, and who was talking earnestly and with much gesticulation. His voice came clearly to Dany's ears: ‘You do not understand! You are not Arab. It is the iniquity of it! The flagrant injustice! Why should a suffering minority be exploited for the benefit of cru-el and blood-sucking imperialists of a dying pow-ah, who mercilessly snatch their profits from the very mouths of the starving poo-er? Now I, as an Arab
____
'

So people really
did
talk like that! And, presumably, others listened. Mr Dowling was certainly listening, though perhaps not quite as earnestly as he should. But then he hoped to write a feature, whatever that was, on the elections in Zanzibar, and
____
. With a sudden sense of acute alarm Dany remembered something far more important. He wanted to interview Tyson! She would have to warn her step-father, and she would have to keep out of sight. It would be disastrous if this Larry Dowling, who wrote for the newspapers, were to find out that she was Tyson Frost's step-daughter, masquerading as the secretary of a visiting American publisher in order to escape giving evidence at an inquest on murder. It would make an excellent front page story for the newspapers, and Dany shuddered at the thought. Supposing — just supposing — someone were to recognize her? The man whom he was talking to
____

Once again panic snatched at Dany. Even if the Arab was not the man she had passed in the mist near Mr Honeywood's house, he was certainly the man who had stood almost at her elbow in the hall of the Airlane, and if he should recognize her, and ask questions, she might be stopped at Nairobi and sent back.

What were the penalties for travelling on a false passport? Why hadn't she thought of that before? Lash Holden had made some flippant reference to it, but she had not stopped to think. She should have thought …

Mr Dowling's companion was talking again, even more audibly, but on a more topical subject. ‘I feel always sick — most sick — in these aeroplanes. It is my stomach. Everything, I take it. It is no good. The height — I do not know. Yes, we do not move, but still I am feeling bad always. But worse over the sea. I am most bad over the sea. For if the engines fail over the sea, what will happen then? We will all drown! It is terrible!'

He's not airsick, thought Dany. He's only frightened! Well, so am I …

Larry Dowling caught her eye and grinned, and unaccountably some of the panic left her. He might be a reporter, and dangerous to know, but he was a dependable sort of person, and she had a sudden, strong conviction that Aunt Harriet would have approved of him. Which was odd …

She became aware that passengers for Nairobi were being requested to return to their aircraft, and rising hurriedly she snatched up her coat and bag and hastened out in the wake of her fellow passengers.

Lashmer J. Holden Jnr had not moved, and he did not stir as she squeezed past him to regain her seat. He was, in technical parlance, out for the count; and Dany, vaguely recognizing the fact, was conscious of feeling lost and friendless and very much alone. Until this moment she had felt herself to be a mere member of the crew with Lash in charge and steering the ship, and provided she did what she was told he would bring her safely into port. Now she was not so sure. Viewed dispassionately in the bright Mediterranean sunlight, Lashmer Holden looked a good deal younger. His hair was dishevelled and he looked pallid and unshaven and she studied him with a critical and disapproving eye, and then — her maternal instincts getting the better of her — leant over and loosened his tie, which had worked round somewhere in the neighbourhood of his right ear, and drew down the blind so that his face was shielded from the sun.

The two red-faced gentlemen of unmistakably Colonial appearance who occupied the seats immediately behind her began to snore in gentle and rhythmic chorus, and she wished she were able to follow their example and fall asleep again herself, in order to avoid having to think. But she was by now far too anxious and far too wide awake; and in any case there was that letter to be written. The letter that she must post in Nairobi, explaining herself to the police.

Dany stood up cautiously and removed her attaché case from the rack above her head, noting, with a renewed sense of surprise, the label that proclaimed it to be the property of Miss Ada Kitchell. But with the writing paper in front of her and a Biro in her hand, she found that it was not going to be as easy as she had thought.

Looking back over the last twenty-four hours she wondered if she had temporarily taken leave of her senses. Or had Lash Holden's alcoholic exuberance exerted a hypnotic influence over her? She had been frightened and confused, and stubbornly determined that nothing should cheat her out of this long-looked-forward-to visit to Zanzibar. And in that state of mind she had been only too ready to grasp at the preposterous line of escape that he had offered. But now that she had plenty of time for thought, the folly of her behaviour was becoming increasingly clear.

She had done precisely what someone had hoped that she would do. Panicked and behaved in a foolish and suspicious manner, and allowed herself to be used as a red-herring to confuse the trail of a murderer. She was an ‘Accessory After the Fact'; and that, too, was a punishable offence. If she had kept her head and rung up the police at once, even though it meant postponing this visit or perhaps sacrificing it altogether, then it would have been the police who would have found that gun — and without her fingerprints on it. And if she had given them what little information she could, it might have helped them to get on the track of the real criminal at once, instead of wasting time trying to trace her.

She had, thought Dany with bleak honesty, been selfish and cowardly and deplorably gullible. She had obstructed justice and played a murderer's game for him, and she wondered how long it would take the police to find out that Mr Honeywood's visitor had been a Miss Dany Ashton if she did not write and tell them so herself? Perhaps they would never find out. Perhaps, after all, it would be better to say nothing at all — having let things get this far. Could she get a jail sentence for having used someone else's passport, in addition to one for having obstructed justice? Yet she had only wanted to see Zanzibar. Zanzibar and
Kivulimi …

Lorraine had sent her some photographs of
Kivulimi
two years ago. They had arrived on a cold, wet, depressing afternoon in November, and brought a breath of magic into Aunt Harriet's stolidly unromantic house.
‘There are jacarandas in the garden,'
Lorraine had written,
‘and mangoes and frangi-pani and flamboyants, and any amount of orange trees, and they smell heavenly and keep the place nice and cool. I suppose that's where it gets its name from. “Kivulimi” means “The House of Shade”.'

Dany put away the writing paper and pen and returned the attaché case to the rack. It was all too difficult, and she would wait until she could make a clean breast of it to Lorraine and Tyson. Lorraine would think it was all thrilling, and Tyson would probably be furious. But they would take charge of the whole problem, and know what to do.

She sat down again, feeling cold and forlorn and more than a little ashamed of herself. If only Lash would wake up! But Mr Holden did not look as though he intended to wake up for anything short of the Last Trump, and Dany found herself regarding him with increasing hostility.

It was, she decided suddenly, all Lash's fault. If it had not been for him — him and that ridiculous stuffed cat! ‘Asbestos' indeed!

A fragrant breath of
Diorissimo
competed triumphantly with the smell of cigarette smoke, antiseptics and upholstery, and Dany became aware that Mr Holden's pleasant profile was silhouetted against a background of lime-green linen.

Amalfi Gordon was standing beside him in the aisle, looking down at his unconscious form with a faint frown and an expression that was a curious mixture of speculation, doubt and annoyance. In the shadow of the drawn blind, and with the light behind her, she looked blonder and lovelier than ever, and it was impossible to believe that she must be a good deal nearer forty than thirty, and had been at school with one's own mother.

She lifted a pair of long, gilt-tipped lashes that were undoubtedly genuine, and glanced at Dany with the unseeing and entirely uninterested look that some women bestow on servants, and the majority of beautiful women accord to their plain or unattractive sisters.

It was a look that aroused a sudden sharp antagonism in Dany, and perhaps it showed in her face, for Mrs Gordon's sea-green eyes lost their abstraction and became startlingly observant. She looked Dany up and down, noting her youth and missing no detail of her dress or appearance, and the frown on her white brow deepened. She said without troubling to lower her voice:

‘You must be Lash's — Mr Holden's — secretary. I thought he was bringing Ada.'

‘She couldn't come,' said Dany shortly, disturbed to find that she was blushing hotly.

‘Oh?' It was obvious, and in the circumstances fortunate, that Mrs Gordon was not in the least interested in Lash's secretaries, for she made no further inquiries. But something in Dany's gaze had evidently annoyed her, for she looked down again at the sleeping Lash, and then lightly, but very deliberately, stretched out one slender white hand and smoothed back an errant lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead.

It was a sweetly possessive gesture that spoke volumes — and was intended to. And having made her point, Mrs Gordon smiled charmingly and went on down the aisle to the ladies' room.

Dany subsided, feeling shaken and unreasonably angry, and unnerved by the narrowness of her escape. What if Mrs Gordon had asked her name, and she had said ‘Kitchell'? What would have happened then?
But you aren't Ada Kitchell. I know her.
How would she have answered that? Two redheaded secretaries, both with the same name, would have been difficult to explain away. Unless they were sisters
____
? If Mrs Gordon questioned her again she would have to be Ada's sister. Lash should have remembered that Mrs Gordon had met his ex-secretary, and warned her of it.

She turned to look at him again, and apprehension gave place to that entirely illogical anger. She reached out and pushed the lock of hair over his forehead again. That, thought Dany, will show her!

The stewardess dispensed tea, and the two Colonial gentlemen in the seat behind woke up and embarked upon a long and dogmatic discussion of the race problems in Kenya. The thin Arab whom Dany had first seen in the hall of the Airlane — or possibly in Market-Lydon? — passed down the aisle, and one of the men behind her lowered his voice and said: ‘See who that was? Salim Abeid — the chap they call “Jembe”.'

‘Believe you're right. Wonder what he's been doing over in London?'

‘Being made much of by our messy little Pro-Reds and Pink Intellectuals, I suppose. Can't think why we allow that type of chap to go there. They're never up to any good, and they never get any good — the Reds see to that! Swoop down on 'em like vultures the minute they land, and cherish 'em and fill 'em up with spleen, and educate 'em in subversion.'

‘I've always heard,' said the other voice, ‘that he's an able feller. They say he's getting quite a following in Zanzibar.'

‘So I believe. Which is Zanzibar's bad luck! That place has always seemed to me a sort of peaceful oasis in a brawling desert of politicians and power-grabbers. But Jembe and his ilk are out to change all that if they can. Ever noticed how for all their bellowings about “Peace and Brotherly Love” the average Red is eaten up from nose to tail with envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness? Their gods and their gospel are hate and destruction, and Jembe is typical of the breed. At the moment his target is the British, because that is a sitting duck these days. But he's a Coast Arab, and if ever he should manage to get us out he'll turn his followers on the Indian community next; or the Parsees — and then the Omani Arabs — and so on. There must always be an enemy to kick, so that he can keep hate alive and profit by it. If Zanzibar is a little Eden, then Jembe is the serpent in it! Did I ever tell you…?'

The speaker lowered his voice again as the subject of his remarks passed again on his way back to his seat, and thereafter made no further mention of Zanzibar or of the man he had referred to as ‘Jembe'.

The daylight faded, and Dany drew up the blind and found that they were still flying over the sea. She wished that she had something to read. Or someone to talk to. Anything to soothe her jangled nerves and keep her from thinking of Mr Honeywood — and of murder. The couple behind her, having exhausted politics and settled the fate of Kenya, had advanced — loudly — to the unnerving subject of air disasters. A painfully audible anecdote about a settler who, while flying his family in to Nairobi for a week-end, made a forced landing in waterless country where they all died of thirst before help could reach them, was succeeded by another concerning a convivial gentleman called ‘Blotto' Coots who ‘pancaked' in the sea off Mombasa and was devoured by sharks, and a third relating to one ‘Toots' Parbury-Basset who crashed into the crater of an extinct volcano, killing herself, two friends and her African houseboy in the process …

‘Must have got caught in a down-draught: or else her engine cut out,' trumpeted the narrator light-heartedly. ‘We didn't find 'em till the next day. Nasty mess. Bits all over the shop — no idea who was who. Did you hear about that airliner that broke up over the Mediterranean last Tuesday? Come to think of it, must have been just about where we are now. Forty-eight people on board and
____
'