Murder on Safari (18 page)

By the time the operation was over, an afternoon thunderstorm had appeared suddenly overhead.

It was real rain, there was no doubt about

that: the lurid, violet clouds looked solid and heavy as steel. The heat was intense, and the wind that usually blew from the south-west had dropped, leaving a stagnant stillness in the air.

Chris pushed the Plymouth as hard as she

dared, but they struck some rocky broken country, and they had not gone more than halfway

home before the storm swooped down like a giant angry hawk, with a scream of wind to herald its approach. It came down on to the windshield in a great grey cloud, beating a savage tatoo on the roof and blotting out everything ahead. Chris stopped the car, and she and Konyek struggled with the canvas side-curtains. A fierce wind snatched them out of their hands several times, but finally they were clamped to the body, and the travellers

waited inside their ark-like cabin for the storm to abate.

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Thirty minutes later the rain had slackened

sufficiently to allow the car to proceed. It went at a walking pace, slithering wildly over slippery grass and treacherous patches of mud. Twice it careered sideways into a thicket, and nearly overturned.

They stopped to put on chains, and that

helped a little; but when they came to the next gulley they saw a racing torrent of dark-brown water tearing wildly down the eroded channel.

Konyek got out to investigate, and reported water up to his knees. Chris turned the car, and churned a way slowly and dangerously along the gulley’s bank, looking for a place to cross. Then the back wheels sank abruptly into a patch of soft earth, churned two deep pits, and the car subsided gently on to the back axle. Unquestionably, they were stuck.

Chris and Konyek surveyed the situation in a

cold, grey drizzle, and pronounced it hopeless.

There was nothing to be done but to leave the car and return to rescue it when the ground had dried and the gulley subsided. The tracker removed one of the eland’s haunches from the back of the car and hoisted it on to his shoulder. Chris checked the fastenings of the side-curtains, hoping they were hyena-proof, stripped the sight-protectors from the heavy rifle, and led the way, stumbling over slippery grass tussocks, through a steady downpour and towards their distant goal.

It was six o’clock before, wet and weary, they sighted the feathery grey columns of smoke rising 183

from the campfires. The sky was clear again and the sun’s last rays were slanting across a clean and golden world. Newly washed canvas gleamed as

white as daisies in a May meadow, and the acacias’

boles glowed like marigolds in the sun. Their blossom’s perfume seemed twice as strong. The grass

was fresh and sparkling, and the birds sang with renewed enthusiasm. It was hard to believe,

coming back to such a scene of peace and beauty, that the stain of murder lay over the camp.

Boys were busy setting things to rights after the storm, putting out the chairs that had been hastily collected under cover. There was no sign of

Vachell, and Cara was not in her tent. Chris, soaked to the skin, finally located Paula in the veranda of her tent. She was sitting at a table varnishing her nails. Her heartshaped face was as carefully made up as ever, but Chris thought that underneath it she looked tired and sallow. Cara Baradale, she said, was feeling better, and had gone for a short stroll along the riverbed.

“This storm will ditch our chances of getting back to Malabeya tomorrow,” Chris remarked.

“We should never get the lorries through, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this didn’t bring the river up.”

“The rain sure did come down.” Paula said. “I never saw it so bad before. Mr Vachell sent two of the trucks out this noon, and they aren’t back yet.

I guess they must’ve stuck, because about an hour ago he hollered for George and they both went off 184

in another truck with some rope and a whole gang of boys.”

“Couldn’t get back over the drift, I expect. I wonder where they went,” Chris said.

“I dunno. Listen, Mrs Davis, may I ask you

something? I guess you know what’s going on

round here better than I do. I’ve seen you talking with the dick. He’s been snooping around asking a lot of screwy questions to-day, and picking on Geroge all the time. They don’t really think

George did it, Mrs Davis, do they? They’re crazy if they do. He’s on the level, honest he is.”

Chris borrowed a nail file, sat down on a petrolcase, and started to trim her nails. “I don’t know

who Mr Vachell suspects,” she said. “But so long as Rutley had nothing to do with it, he’ll be all right.”

“It isn’t only the questions,” Paula said. She had forgotten all about her nails, and kept her eyes anxiously on Chris’s face, as if hoping to see signs of reassurance there. “That cop suspects George, I know he does. He thinks George shot her, and

then cracked the cop on the head last night and took some letters. Well, he didn’t. I saw him when he came into camp yesterday morning. I asked

him where Lady Baradale was and he said: “The old sourpuss wanted to hike back, so I’m going to take an hour’s vacation.” I asked him what for, and he said to shoot a buck. George is crazy for hunting, see, and they never give him a chance.

Well, Mr Englebrecht had lent him a gun, so he 185

took it and went out like he said, and when he came back he told me about this buffalo. Only he said for me not to tell, as he was afraid there’d be trouble if Mr de Mare got to hear about it. And then, of course, it turned out that Lady Baradale got shot that morning… . But he didn’t do it, Mrs Davis, you know that. He’s got an awful

quick temper, but he wouldn’t ever kill a person, not like that — not in cold blood.”

It sounded to Chris a bit as though Paula were whistling in the dark. Aloud she said:

“I wouldn’t worry, then. He can’t get into

trouble if he had nothing to do with it. They’ll find the murderer eventually, of course.”

Paula looked at Chris for a moment in silence.

She seemed to be debating something in her mind.

“Mrs Davis,” she said finally, uncertainty in her tones. “If a fellow was suspected of a murder, you’d say he’d be right to tell everything he knew, wouldn’t you?”

“He’d be a fool if he didn’t.”

“That’s what I say. But suppose, if he told

something, it would get him in trouble over something else, see — some other thing, not the

murder, but something that he’d done and didn’t want the police to know? See what I mean?”

Chris puzzled this out in silence for a little.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Well, it all depends, I suppose.” She put down the nail-file and stared steadily at Paula. Her wet clothes were sticking to her everywhere and her hands were stiff and cold.

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“Why, does Rutley think he knows who did it?”

Paula bit her lip nervously. “Listen, Mrs

Davis,” she said. “Don’t you repeat this to

anyone. George would flay me if he knew I’d

talked this way… . But I’m scared. You see, he thinks he knows Ч that is, he doesn’t know,

hasn’t any proof of anything, but he says he knows who did it. I don’t know how he found out. Well, suppose this person gets to know George is wise, that puts George on the spot, see? Murderers

don’t go around in kid gloves, do they? See what I mean?”

“Perfectly,” Chris said. “Well, why doesn’t he confide in Mr Vachell?”

“He says Mr Vachell wouldn’t believe him, that he’d think it was a gag George thought up to kind of, well, to drag a red herring across the trail. And then, there’s other reasons. …”

“Do you know whom he suspects?”

Paula shook her head. “He won’t say. He’s too darned cagey. I wish he’d talk with the cop.

Maybe they’d let him out if he told what he

knows. … It doesn’t do to fool around with

murder cases. You can be too smart, and the first thing you know you’ve been framed and take the rap, or the guy who did it lays for you and knocks you off… . Gee, you look frozen, Mrs Davis. You shouldn’t be sitting here in those wet clothes. I’m sorry, I oughtn’t to have talked this way. You won’t repeat what I’ve said. will you?”

“No, I won’t,” Chris said. “I’m not going to

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interfere.” She rose stiffly and shivered. She stood for a moment looking down at Paula. The girl

seemed frightened and forlorn, and a long way from home. She looked out of place in these crude surroundings; with her loosely cut red linen trousers, high-heeled white sandals, and striped, closefitting jersey, all so clearly designed for Pacific

beaches rather than for the African veldt.

“You’re in love with Rutley, aren’t you?” Chris asked abruptly.

“Sure. We’re going to be married.”

“He’ll be all right,” Chris said slowly. “He’ll be safe enough — so long as he keeps his suspicions to himself.”

“Then you don’t think he ought to tell the

dick?” Paula said. “You think he shouldn’t talk?”

Chris did not answer at once. She stared down at the girl intently, her face white and curiously set in the fading twilight. Something that Paula saw there seemed to scare her. She shrank back a little in her chair and knocked over a bottle of nail varnish with a nervous movement of the hand.

“I think he should keep silent,” Chris said. Her voice was low and quiet, but a cold note of menace underlay the words. “That is, if he wants to stay safe.”

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Darkness was closing in swiftly on the crimson afterglow of sunset when Rutley and Vachell got back to camp. They climbed out of the lorry, cold and stiff, their legs caked with mud up to the knees, and walked across to the table of drinks under the acacia.

“Those trucks were stuck good and proper,”

Rutley remarked. “I thought we’d never get the blasted things out. We wouldn’t have, either, if it hadn’t been for that patent jack. Prospects don’t look too bright for his lordship and Mr de Mare, do they? What’ll we do with Ч well, Sir Gordon’s body, if they get stuck?”

“Bury it,” Vachell said. “But I guess they’ll make it. A light car has more chance than a heavy truck.”

Rutley drained his glass and put it down. “I

need a hot bath,” he said. He seemed to have

forgotten his anger against the detective since they had worked together over the mud-bound trucks.

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“See here, Mr Vachell. You talked this morning about some letters you say I wrote to Lady

Baradale, that gave me some sort of a motive for Ч well turning nasty, you might say. I don’t deny how things were between us. She made me do it, and that’s a fact. Well, I couldn’t refuse. You know how these things are. If I’d kicked up rough I’d have lost my job, and it was a good job, I’ll say that.”

“Nice work, if you can get it,” Vachell said.

“You think it was lousy,” Rutley went on.

“Well, you can think what you like, but I’ve got to make a living, haven’t I? I only took the job temporary, until I could get back into the movies, or something. This gigolo business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you can take it from me. I was going to get out as soon as I could get something better. Well, what I’m trying to tell you is, you don’t want to run away with the idea that I had any reason to Ч well, to do her in, to call a spade a spade. She was crazy about me, and I always treated her right, I swear I did. It was a bit awkward at times. She wouldn’t leave me alone. I don’t deny I’d have been glad if she’d cooled off a bit, but that doesn’t mean I had anything against her. We was on the best of terms, so help me, and that’s the truth, Mr Vachell.”

“Sure,” Vachell said. “Just a couple of carefree love-birds, billing and cooing.”

Rutley looked at the detective’s bland face with suspicion. “If you think I’m mixed up in this busi-190

ness you’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “I haven’t got a motive, you can see that for yourself.

I’m worse off now than I was before. Well, that was what I wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to get a wrong impression.”

“Thanks a lot,” Vachell said drily. “I’ll try to avoid that.”

Rutley strode back to his tent through the

gathering dusk, leaving Vachell to sip his whisky and stare reflectively at the river. It was running strongly, with a deep sound that almost

approached a roar. Little fringes of froth had accumulated on the edges of pools where the

current was churning with a new activity. The sun’s afterglow was reflected in the thick muddy water, so that the stream looked like a channel of dark, venous blood.

As he watched the water, half unseeing, a

slender figure rounded the bend, walking slowly up the riverbed. Vachell scrambled down the bank and strolled along to meet Cara Baradale. In the fading light her eyes seemed like holes in a chalkwhite mask. Her long thin legs, bare below a pair

of shorts, looked as brittle as twigs. She said “Good evening” gravely, and leant against a rock.

“Good evening, Miss Baradale,” Vachell said.

“Well, we failed to locate him.”

“Locate who?” Her voice was husky and tired,

and trembled a little as she spoke.

“Why don’t you tell me where he’s camped?”

Vachell said. “It would save time, but nothing 191

else. We’ll find him anyway, whether you tell or not. If he isn’t guilty, he hasn’t anything to fear.”

Cara moved restlessly against the stone and said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you got a cigarette?”

He gave her one, lit it, and took another for himself. They smoked in silence for a little, watching the night creep down the hills and the day fade out of the sky. A dozen different sounds blended into the evening symphony: preliminary croaks from frogs, the distant bark of baboons, the throaty call of francolins, the squawk of guineafowl.

A dozen nameless, pungent scents came to

them. scents of herbs and trees and of the wet earth.

“Listen, Miss Baradale,” Vachell said at last.

i, J.Ti.J.oo J^aJaviaiv,