Murder on Safari (15 page)

He took the shell out of the vice and emptied the nitro-cellulose powder out of it on to a sheet of paper on the table. Then he repeated the whole operation on a .470 cartridge taken straight out of a new box, and free from scratches. The bullet was’

harder to extract, but he got it out, and emptied the black powder into a second heap. He

examined the two heaps on the table. The first was 148

considerably smaller, perhaps two-thirds as large as the second. A weighing operation, of course, would be needed to establish proof. But Vachell needed no scales to convince him that part of the powder from the five cartridges in his belt had been removed.

The next step was to put the bullets back. This was not so easy. The neck of the copper case had gripped the bullet so tightly that it had contracted when the lead was removed, and now its diameter seemed to be smaller that that of the bullet’s base.

This was the same problem, Vachell thought,

that the murderer had faced. He rummaged about the bench for inspiration, and came upon a thin steel bar with one end into the cartridge-case, rammed it down as far as it would go, and tapped gently on the other end with a hammer. When he withdrew it the neck of the shell was so wide that he slipped the bullet in easily. He clamped the rim of the copper case tightly on to the base of the lead with the pliers, and in half a minute the cartridge was reassembled.

He swivelled the handle of the vice, released the cartridge, and examined it with his lens. That was the trick, all right. Along the rim of the neck was a series of scratches, made by the pliers, exactly similar to those of the doctored cartridges. And on the base of the shell, where the vice had gripped it, were two faint dents Ч twins of those he had

examined a few minutes before in his tent.

Only one more discovery was needed to clinch

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the proof. There were three pairs of pliers in the tool-case. He examined their gripping surfaces with great care under the magnifier. On one of the pliers he detected a faint, almost invisible trace of glittering metallic powder. He wrapped the pliers carefully in a piece of paper and slipped them into his pocket . There was no doubt in his mind that an expert in the Government laboratories at

Marula would be able to identify these few

metallic specks as traces of cupro-nickel, such as that in which the lead of bullets is encased.

It was a neat trick, he reflected. A misfire was crude: it led inevitably to an examination of rifle and ammunition. In this case the powder exploded and the bullet left the barrel, but it lacked the punch which made it deadly. If the man who fired such doctored bullets were killed by a charging animal, no one would be likely to suspect the real reason. They’d put it down as an ordinary miss.

Vachell himself had done so, until Chris spotted the scratches. If it hadn’t been for her he’d still have been worrying over his bad shooting. He

knew now that he had hit the buffalo in the spot at which he aimed, but that the bullet had lacked the strength to do more than inflict a small cut in the bull’s thick hide. That was the one bright spot in the whole affair.

He added the pliers to a collection of potential exhibits that was beginning to accumulate in the wooden box containing his detective’s outfit. So far the collection comprised the bullet with which 150

de Mare had shot the lion, the Player’s cigarettestub picked up outside Lady Baradale’s tent after

he had been attacked, and two walnuts. To it he added the three remaining .470 cartridges with scratches on their shells, and the empty shell from the bullet he had fired that morning. He was

locking up the box when Japhet arrived with

another contribution - the bullet cut out of the wounded buffalo’s stomach. It was a soft-nosed bullet, and had flattened out into a twisted

mushroom-shaped slug of lead. This made it hard for Vachell to identify the bore with certainty, but the base had retained its shape, and he felt reasonably convinced that the bullet belonged to a .470

rifle. Rutley he remembered, had been using

Englebrecht’s rifle — a .470 like his own. He wrapped it up and packed it with the other potential exhibits. An expert would soon make sure.

It was ten o’clock, and Vachell was reminded of breakfast. He shouted to Kimotho to bring a meal at once, moved his table and chair into the veranda formed by an extension of the tent’s fly, and sat down with his notebook open in front of him.

Although it was still early, the day was hot. The sun blazed down fiercely from a deep and cloudless sky, and sharp, hard pools of shadow lay on

the grey-green grass below the tents and the

yellow-trunked acacias. All activity seemed to have been suspended until the shadows started to lengthen again.

Sometimes, on an African noon, Vachell had the 151

feeling that the sun had stunned the vegetation with some form of physical force. But this daze of quiescence had not fallen on the camp itself. It seemed like a whirlpool of activity in a sea of quiet. The voices of natives wounded sharply

against an even background of droning cicadas. In the boys’ quarters people were walking to and fro continuously, gathering in little knots to talk in low tones, and quickly dispersing again, as logs being carried down a river will catch against some obstruction, form a restless island, and part again before the insistent pressure of flowing water.

The camp was disturbed and upset. Vachell

could feel it in the air. Natives were always uneasy when a dead body was in their midst. Perhaps they feared that a curse had decended on the camp, that the gods were angry. They might even suspect

that witchcraft was at work. If this was so things would get difficult. Luckily there wasn’t anywhere close by where deserters could seek refuge.

Malabeya was too far Ч he hoped. For all that, he had heard of natives doing crazier things than foot-slogging for a hundred miles to run away from witchcraft.

Kimotho arrived with a handful of knives,

forks, and plates, and started to lay the table. He, too, seemed upset; he was unusually silent as he padded back and forth on his bare feet. He wore a blue shirt and a pair of shorts; usually he was meticulously careful to put on his white kanzu and red tarboosh when he served a meal.

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Some advice that Armitage, the Police Commissioner, had given Vachell when he took up his new job as Superintendent a year ago came to his mind.

“Never neglect native gossip, my boy,” Armitage had said. “It’s astonishin’ how these wogs get hold of information. Things get a bit garbled, of

course, but often enough it’s bazaar gossip that puts us on the right track.” He decided to test this theory on Kimotho.

“Listen,” he said. “I want news from the tents of the black men. What are they saythg about the death of bwana Catchpole?”

“They say it is a very bad affair.”

“They say the truth. What else?”

Kimotho adjusted the angle of a knife and fork and removed the top of a marmalade jar without answering. His face remained impassive, but

Vachell sensed, without knowing how he could

tell, a faint feeling of embarrassment on the native’s part.

“Tell me,” he urged.

“Their words are not good. They are only

ignorant savages — particularly the cook. Now he is giving me rice, but he refuses onions, and he keeps all the meat for himself. He says that it is finished, but I — “

“Leave the meat Kimotho, and speak sense.

You know what I wish to hear.”

“Yes, bwana. The boys say many things, and

they tell many lies. They say that if bwana Danny had been here, this other white man — he who the 153

boys call the bwanawho-walkslike-a baboon Ч

they say he would not have died. They say bwana Danny knows very well how to shoot.”

Vachell continued to stare out into the sunlight, apparently absorbed in the behaviour of two plumcoloured waxbills who were hopping anxiously

about near the tent wondering how close they

dared approach in search of crumbs. Two muscles in his jaw, below the high cheekbones, twitched a little at Kimotho’s remark. His lean, tight-drawn face was sunburnt, but below the bronze it was pale, and his eyes looked larger than normal in their deep sockets. Strips of plaster ran down one cheek from eye to jaw.

“Go on, Kimotho,” he said.

“They also say,” Kimotho continued, reassured that he was not venturing too far on to dangerous ground, “that bwana Danny would not have gone so close to a buffalo that had been wounded in the stomach. Buffaloes are very bad, and when they are wounded they are completely bad. The boys think this is a bad camp, and would like to go home.”

“We go home tomorrow or the day after, if rain does not spoil the road. Do the boys know who killed the memsahib?”

Kimotho shook his head. “No. What sort of

eggs do you want? I will tell the cook.”

“Listen, Kimotho. When I ask what is being

said by the boys I want to know. It is your job to tell me. What do they say killed her?”

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There was no doubt about Kimotho’s embarrassment now. He fiddled with the butter-dish and

avoided his employer’s eyes. He had a hunted

look. “I do not know,” he said.

“You tell a lie. What sort of behaviour is this?

Speak.”

Kimotho, to Vachell’s surprise, flashed a row of white teeth in a broad grin, and laughed. “All right. You have asked; it is your affair. The black men say: who is this white man who came here

with bwana Danny? Is it true that he is a police bwana, as he says, or does he only pretend? We have seen many police bwanas; they do not behave as he does. They wear very smart clothes and take askaris everywhere to salute them when they

speak. This white man’s clothes are not at all smart, and he has no askaris. Before he came, everything here was very good. There was much meat, and no trouble. Then he came, and

immediately afterwards the white woman was

shot; and now the bwanawhowalkslike-ababoon

has been killed by a buffalo. Is it not

strange, that these things should happen when the new white man comes? Why did they not occur

before? Perhaps it is this white man who killed the memsahib. These are the words that are being

spoken, bwana. You asked me, and I have told the truth.”

The recital brought a grin to Vachell’s face, and at the end he threw back his chin and laughed.

“So I killed the memsahib,” he said. “All right, 155

Kimotho. What reason do they say I have?”

“They say that perhaps you wish to buy bwana

Lordi’s daughter and that her mother refused, so you killed the old woman. And that when the

bwanawho-walkslike-ababoon objected too,

because he wished to buy her for himself, you took him close to the wounded buffalo so that it would kill him. They say also that you are a fool to wish to buy bwana Lordi’s daughter, because she is very thin and will not bear many children.”

“They know everything,” Vachell remarked.

“They see more than God. What do you think?”

“I do not think that you killed the memsahib,”

Kimotho said seriously. “I have told these

ignorant savages that you are a very big police bwana, and that when you wish to kill a person you do not do it yourself, but you give the person to the Government and they do it for you with a rope. Do you want your eggs boiled, fried, or scrambled?”

“Scrambled. But wait. Have you heard — “

“It would be best if I fetched your breakfast,”

Kimotho interrupted. “That cook is so bad that if I do not tell him now he will say that there are no more eggs.”

Kimotho strode off to the kitchen, which

consisted of the customary three large stones placed in a shallow hole in a roughly built grass hut, while Vachell made jottings in his notebook over another cigarette. When the eggs and bacon arrived he found that he was ravenously hungry.

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Kimotho watched him eat approvingly, and

remarked:

“That buffalo hit you very hard. The skin

should belong to you.”

“You want it, I suppose,” Vachell said.

” Not all of it, bwana. I wish to have a pair of buffalo-hide sandals, like those that Konyek

wears. They are very good for safari.”

Vatchell took a large mouthful of egg and

grunted non-committally. Even here, he thought, even on safari, the problem of keeping up with the Joneses overshadows almost everything else.

“There is another matter,” Kimotho went on.

“It concerns Geydi, bwana Lordi’s boy — that Somali. He is not a good man. I have heard

strange things about him.”

“What things?”

“Some men of the Timburu tribe have been

near the camp. The trackers, who know this country, say that the Timburu cattle are far away —

perhaps ten days’ journey from here — where they always go for grazing at this time of year. But they have seen Timburu warriors close to the camp.”

“What has that to do with Geydi?”

“Bwana Danny sent two trackers, two

Wabenda, to look for elephant. They searched all day, and it was night before they returned. As they were approaching camp, they heard voices in the dark. They crept up to see what had occurred, and they found Geydi talking to three Timburu men, young men with spears and shields and

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warriors head-dress. These Wabenda could not understand what was being said, for the words were in Somali, but presently Geydi gave them some money and they went away. Geydi did not

know that the trackers had seen him.”

Vachell frowned, and buttered some toast. This sounded like the Timburu poachers, the gang that was wanted for the murder of a Game Department scout. Probably Geydi was doing some illegal

poaching deal with them — buying rhino horn, perhaps, to smuggle with the Baradales’ kit down to the coast. If he got the facts, he might be able to use them to put the screws on Geydi. He had an idea that the supercilious Somali knew more than he’d say.

“When did this happen?” he asked.