Murder on Safari (11 page)

“For God’s sake hold your tongue,” Lord

Baradale snapped. De Mare, for once nonplussed, made a despairing face at Chris, who — unable to think of any better strategy — slipped out of her seat and switched on the radio. The caressing voice of a crooner started “It looks like rain in Cherry Blossom Lane.”

Cara lit a Balkan Sobranie cigarette with a shaky hand, keeping her eyes on Catchpole’s face. “You would say a thing like that,” she said in a tense, uneven voice. “It takes a rotten little mind like yours to think of a thing like that. What about you, anyway? Do you imagine that I’ve ever for a moment thought that you wanted to marry me for any reason except to get a slice of Lucy’s money?”

Catchpole bowed at her slightly across the table.

Vachell could see by a white pinched look around his nostrils that he was controlling himself with an effort.

“In that case you are now doubly desirable, my 105

sweet, since this morning’s sad event.”

Cam pushed her unruly dark hair back from her forehead with one hand and gazed at her fiance with hatred and contempt. “Thank you.” She

spoke slowly, and with a visible effort. “You think that Luke stole Lucy’s jewels and I shot her for her money. Your feelings do you credit.” She

stood up, swayed slightly, and steadied herself against the table. “I can’t stand this any more.”

she said, almost in a whisper. She turned abruptly and walked unsteadily out of the tent.

There was a moment’s silence after her departure.

Lord Baradale broke it, speaking calmly and

quietly, but with a deadly sting in his tone.

“If I were a younger man, Gordon,” he

remarked, “I should punch your face into a bloody jelly, and even that would give me inadequate satisfaction.”

Catchpole’s face was as white as ice, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “I’m sorry,”

he said in a quavering voice. “I’ll apologize to Cara. I’m so utterly worn out that I simply don’t know what I’m saying. If only I had nerves of steel, like Danny! You don’t know what it’s like to feel things as I do! How can any of us here be normal? His voice rose several keys and a look of something close to panic came into his eyes.

“There’s a murderer in the camp, isn’t there — in it, or outside it; somewhere out there in the dark or here in this tent — someone who’s ruthless enough to kill to get what he wants! Someone all 106

of us know—”

“Don’t be a bloody fool, Gordon,” Lord

Baradale broke in. “You’re tight.” In the

background the radio started to play “All God’s chillun got rhythm” loudly. Sweat made Catchpole’s skin glisten, and his eyes glanced wildly

from face to face like those of a rat caught in a trap. His sudden naked terror sent an uncomfortable shiver down the backs of the others seated

round the table.

“How do we know he’s got all that he wants?”

Catchpole went on, his voice almost out of control.

“How do we know he won’t do it again — tonight, perhaps, out there in the darkness? How do we know, I say?”

107

FR1;CHAPTER

ELEVEN

“Sparks certainly start to fly around when these old English families let their hair down,” Vachell remarked. “Lord Baradale sure would like to beat the daylights out of Sir Gordon.” He sat with de Mare and Chris in the messtent over a second brew of coffee. Lord Baradale and Catchpole had departed, and the others were feeling at once spent and restless after the strain of the day. The air was stuffy, and the distant rumble of thunder came to their ears.

“Gordon deserves it,” de Mare said. “This

whole damned safari is getting me down. They’re all alike, though. If I didn’t need the money so badly, I’d chuck up white hunting tomorrow.”

“We’re all in the same boat,” Chris said. “We’re all a lot of parasites, after all, and parasites can’t expect their hosts not to be tiresome at times.

Think what ticks must go through.”

” It’s a funny thing about the rich,” de Mare mused. “We all pretend to despise them, and the 108

only way we can escape from them is to become one of them ourselves. Englebrecht’s the only member of this outfit who’s got the right idea… .

What is it, Japhet?”

The gun-bearer stood at attention in the tent opening, his thickskinned black face immobile and his body rigid. He had come to make his

evening report. It was a habit he had carried over from a period of his life when, as a police askari, he had accompanied district officers on their tours. De Mare nodded and he recited in a chant: “News of the camp, bwana. I have counted here 8 Europeans, 36 black men, 18 motor-cars, 10

tents for Europeans, 9 tents for black men, 24

cases of petrol, two tents full of stores, one aeroplane, 16 guns, 26 bags of maize flour, 17 bags of

rice, and 18 aides.”

De Mare frowned and glanced up at the askari, standing in the opening as solidly as a chunk of basalt rock.

“How many guns?” he asked

“Sixteen, including three for birds. That is two fewer than before. Bwana Luke took three away, but this new bwana brought two more.”

“One is missing, then?”

“One belonging to bwana Lordi. Douglas, the

gun-bearer who looks after bwana Lordi, does not know where it has gone. There are three guns

belonging to bwana Lordi. Douglas cleaned them all two days ago, but he did not touch them today since the bwana did not use any of them. To109

night, when he went to make the tally, one was gone from bwana Lordi’s tent.”

“Just a moment.” Vachell said. “Who keeps the cleaning materials belonging to all of the guns in camp?”

“The gun-bearers do,” de Mare replied. “Japhet here looks after mine. Englebrecht has his own boy. The Baradales share a bearer called Douglas.

Catchpole has one called Suya, and Cara has a fellow named Harrison. Chris looks after her own weapons.”

“Could one of the Europeans clean his own gun without the bearers knowing?”

De Mare shook his head. “He’d have to ask the bearers for the materials,” he said, “unless of course he’d kept a pull-through or a ramrod and some oil concealed somewhere on purpose.”

Vachell spoke direct to Japhet. “Which guns

were used today?”

“One of bwana Danny’s one of bwana Luke’s

that he gave to the European who looks after the cars, and one of the small bwana who walks like a baboon,” Japhet replied promptly. “I do not know about that of the memsahib of the bird. Those of the memsahib who has died, of the young

memsahib and of her father, bwana Lordi, were all clean.”

“Did any European call for cleaning materials from the bearers?”

Japhet shook his head. “No, bwana. Only this

memsahib” — he pointed at Chris with his chin —

no

“sent her boy for a tin of gun-oil.”

“My Revelation suitcase jammed,” Chris

explained. “You know, the part that slides. I sent for some 3-in-l to oil it,”

“This missing gun may be important,” Vachell

said. “I’m going to search the camp right now. If some one used a gun to-day, and then found he couldn’t clean it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to conceal the gun.”

A thorough search through native quarters, the white folk’s tents, the cars, the lorries, and even the bush and trees around the camp yielded

nothing. Lord Baradale himself could give no

help. He couldn’t remember, he said, when he

had last seen the rifle, and he seemed indifferent as to whether or not it was found. He was silent and preoccupied, and answered only in grunts and mumbles.

It was nearly eleven o’clock before the fruitless search ended, and Vachell and de Mare joined

Chris Davis at the table under the acacia. The rain had cleared off for the time being and the clouds had retreated, leaving the sky to the vast and silent company of stars. The veldt beyond the river

seemed to stretch forever until it was swallowed by a dark and invisible horizon.

Vachell poured himself a stiff Scotch, squirted a little soda into it, and listened to the noises of the night. Crickets trilled shrilly from the surrounding grass and a chorus of innumerable frogs croaked hoarsely and persistently from the river. Their ill

throaty clamour seemed to surge like waves

through the air.

“Those frogs make too much damned noise,” de

Mare remarked suddenly. He drew a deep breath, tipped back his head, and shouted, with the full strength of his lungs, two words that neither of his companions understood. The frogs’ chorus ceased as abruptly as the music of a radio orchestra when the set is switched off. There was a silence in which it seemed that every frog was listening for a repetition of the sound.

“What on earth … ?” Chris, startled, asked.

De Mare’s spare, bird-like features relaxed into a smile. “It’s a native legend in these parts,” he said. “Up here they believe that if you shout “Silence, frogs,” in their own language, they’ll stop croaking. Only it’s no good shouting in a foreign tongue. These must be Timburu frogs, so I addressed them in Timburu. You see, it works.”

The Frogs, indeed, remained temporarily

hushed, as if startled into silence.

“I’ll have to wait until the frogs learn basic English,” Vachell said. “Right now I need another lesson in animal customs. When your trackers hit the trail of a herd of game, how close can they estimate the age of the spoor?”

“That depends on a dozen factors,” de Mare

answered. “Time of day, time of year, amount of cloud, rain, and so on.”

“Well, take an instance. Suppose there was a

herd of buffalo feeding today in those hills in back 112

of the camp. If you took your trackers out there tomorrow morning and asked them what time the buffaloes had been around, could they give you an answer that would hit the time right on the nose?”

“They couldn’t specify the exact hour,” de

Mare answered, “but they could get pretty close to it. Suppose they said the buff had been feeding at a certain spot at noon, for instance. You could reckon that the herd had been there sometime

between ten and two.”

“Thanks. Will you loan me your best tracker for an hour tomorrow morning, first thing?”

“Surely. What’s the idea?”

“I want to find out if buffaloes can prove an alibi,” Vachell said.

He wished his companions good night, and

strolled over the starlit grass to his tent. Chris, he thought, looked tired out. There was something, over and above Lady Baradale’s death, weighing on her mind. Perhaps she was worried about

Danny de Mare. Hunters couldn’t afford to have their clients murdered on safari. They were like ships’ captains; responsibility for everyone’s safety was theirs, and if anything went wrong they took the rap, whoever was really to blame. He had an idea that Chris cared a good deal for de Mare Ч

more than she’d ever admit. He’s in luck, Vachell said to himself, if that’s so; she’s the sort of girl who’d stick to a guy to hell and gone, and then all the way back.

Vachell was tired, and his camp-bed looked

113

snug and inviting. But the day wasn’t over for him. He took out his notebook, sat on the edge of the bed, and drew up a schedule of times and

places covering the movements of every one he had questioned that day. Then, with some care, he sketched a map of the camp and its surroundings which he studied for as long as it took him to smoke a cigarette.

Meditation didn’t seem to get him any farther.

He closed the notebook with a snap, dug into the pocket of his grey flannel slacks for his pocketbook, and extracted from it a fine chain with a key dangling from one end. It was the key of Lady Baradale’s safe, taken from her dead body at the post-mortem examination that afternoon.

He made his way through the darkness, the key in one hand and a flashlight in the other, to Lady Baradale’s tent. The bundles of letters that he had seen in the safe the evening before, he decided, would bear investigation

114

FR1;CHAPTER

TWELVE

It was past midnight, and the camp was shadowy and asleep. The ashes of a wood fire glowed faintly near the big acacia, and by it two forms lay

huddled in blankets, inert as logs — guards who were supposed to protect the slumbering occupants of the tents. The frog chorus had dwindled to an occasional burst of croaks. The piercing howl of a hyena twice penetrated the stillness. The sound came from beyond the hippo pool, probably from the lion’s carcase, Vachell thought, where those grey and graceless scavengers would be

crunching the bones of their betters, gobbling the remnants of the vultures’ feast. He wondered

whether the lion’s mate would stay on to work their joint hunting-grounds alone. As if in answer to his thought, he heard the familiar grunt, hollow and chesty, twice repeated. She was hunting down by the hippo pool, probably; there was a track there where the buck came down to drink.

It wasn’t possible to lock a canvas flap, and 115

Vachell had only to untie the strings and lift it up to enter Lady Baradale’s tent. His nostrils

twitched as an indefinable feminine smell, some compound of perfume and powder, tickled his

nose. He pressed the switch on the electric light bulb over the dressingtable, but it didn’t work.

Rutley must have disconnected it, he thought.

He explored the tent with the flashlight’s beam.

Nothing had been moved. A piece of cretonne

stretched across one corner still bulged with hanging dresses, and a book lay by the bedside as if it had just been put down. Beside the bed stood an oblong box covered with coarse calico which had been tacked over the wooden sides and lid.

The words “Made in Japan,” stencilled on the

calico, appeared upside down on one side of the box. A bunch of wilted wild-flowers rested in a jam-jar on the top.

Catchpole was right, Vachell thought suddenly, there was something very frightening about

Africa’s utter indifference to the hopes and fears and little dignities of mankind. Only in Africa could a couple of gin cases covered with cheap Japanese calico, resting unattended in a tent, do duty as the coffin of a titled millionairess.