Murder on Safari (2 page)

He left in an Arab dhow and came back in a

private aeroplane chartered by one of the Vanderbilts, so no one liked to intervene.

An interesting guy, Vachell reflected. In the meantime, there were Lady Baradale’s stolen

jewels. Some one, clearly, had to investigate. He 9

picked the telephone receiver

asked for the Commissioner of

off its cradle and CHAPTER

TWO

That afternoon de Mare took Vachell on a riflebuying expedition. The Superintendent had

learned to shoot in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; sporting guns, however were new to him.

He had wandered over North America from the

Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, working on all sorts of jobs, but hunting big game had never been one of them.

“You’ll want two rifles,” de Mare told him.

“One heavy and one light. Every one has their own ideas, of course. I’d recommend a doublebarrelled .450 or .470, in case you do meet

anything large. I don’t believe in medium bores for big game myself; bullet weight’s more important than velocity when you’re trying to stop a

rhino at fifteen yards. But with any luck you won’t need to use it. There are half a dozen high velocity medium-bore rifles for smaller game to choose from, all good. Come along and try them out.”

They spent the next hour in a cellar underneath 11

picked the telephone receiver

asked for the Commissioner of

off its cradle and CHAPTER

TWO

That afternoon de Mare took Vachell on a riflebuying expedition. The Superintendent had

learned to shoot in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; sporting guns, however were new to him.

He had wandered over North America from the

Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, working on all sorts of jobs, but hunting big game had never been one of them.

“You’ll want two rifles,” de Mare told him.

“One heavy and one light. Every one has their own ideas, of course. I’d recommend a doublebarrelled .450 or .470, in case you do meet

anything large. I don’t believe in medium bores for big game myself; bullet weight’s more important than velocity when you’re trying to stop a

rhino at fifteen yards. But with any luck you won’t need to use it. There are half a dozen high velocity medium-bore rifles for smaller game to choose from, all good. Come along and try them out.”

They spent the next hour in a cellar underneath 11

a gunsmith’s shop, talking about muzzle velocity and bullet weight and foot-seconds with a Mr

Capstick, and testing rifles on a miniature range.

Vachell settled on a doublebarrelled .470 Rigby for the heavy rifle and a .275 Magnum Holland and Holland for the light.

They looked beautiful, he thought, as Capstick wiped them over and laid them gently in their feltlined cases — blue-black and shining, with dark,

smooth stocks, models of precision and efficiency.

Capstick charged them to Lady Baradale without demur, and added ammunition, cleaning materials, sight-protectors, and slings.

“How about a cartridge-belt?” he went on.

“With one of these, there’s no risk of getting your ammunition and trying to load your .470 with your .275 ammunition when an elephant’s coming for you bald-headed at twenty yards. You ought to have one of these, Mr de Mare.’

“More frills,” de Mare said. “I’m not going to go about looking like a Texas Ranger or something out of the films. I use a clip to reload my magazine and keep my heavy ammunition in a separate

pocket. It’s quicker, simpler, and just as effective.”

Capstick looked a little dashed and laid a wide leather cartridge belt on the counter. On each side of the buckle was a row of slots to hold the

cartridges.

“Takes two sizes, large and small bore, you

see,” he went on “Solids one side and soft-nosed 12

on the other, so that you can’t get them mixed.”

Vachell, growing reckless, decided that Lady

Baradale would have one.

“Guess I’d better look the part even if I don’t know how to act it” he remarked. “When do I use soft-nosed bullets, and when the solids?”

“Solids for elephant, rhino, and buffalo,” de Mare said. “Soft-nosed for lion and everything else Ч anything thin-skinned, in fact. You must have a solid to penetrate the hide of an elephant or rhino.”

“Where do you stand on the buffalo issue, Mr

de Mare?” Capstick asked earnestly, wiping his glasses.

“Solids,” de Mare answered decisively. “If you shoot straight you can find a vital organ, and if you don’t an expanding bullet won’t bring him down anyway Ч only annoy him. And if he comes, he

needs a solid as much as a rhino does.”

“Ah, well, so long as you can take the neck or brain, that’s all right,” Capstick said. “If you’re taking the heart there’s an advantage in a good mushroom. A bit in front and you splinter the shoulder, a bit behind and he won’t go far. Gives you more margin.”

“This is an old controversy,” de Mare explained to Vachell. “Buffalo are midway between thickskinned and thin-skinned classes of game. So the

hunter’s world is split into two camps as regards the right type of ammunition to use. If you take my advice you’ll use solids, but even more will you 13

avoid buffalo. They’re tricky beasts to hunt.”

On the counter was a small pudding-basin full of irregular-shaped scraps of twisted metal.

Capstick took out a handful and spread them on his palm.

“You know how bullets look when they’ve done

their job,” he said. “These have all been recovered from dead animals. Here’s a solid; you see, it’s kept its shape almost intact. Solids will go through a bone without splintering it, and sometimes you can hardly see the hole where they pierced the skin. Now, here’s a soft-nosed bullet. See how the lead has splayed out into the shape of a

mushroom, and split the cupro-nickel coating into phalanges? This will tear a great hole in the soft tissues and splinter a bone to bits.”

“It’s the shock that kills more than the injury,”

de Mare put in, “unless, of course, you get him straight off, plumb in a vital spot. After the first hit an animal’s power to experience shock is

diminished. Remember that if you ever get into a tight corner Ч it’s the first shot that counts. Take your time, and don’t rush it. That’s one reason why a heavy rifle kills more surely than a light one. The bigger the charge in the cartridge, the higher the striking energy of the bullet in footpounds, and the greater the shock. These small

bores have all the velocity you can want and a trajectory so flat they’ll only drop about seven inches in three hundred yards, but they haven’t the same powers of shock. They break up too

14

quickly after impact, too. Give me bullet weight Ч and remember, it’s the first shot that counts.”

They said good-bye to Capstick and walked

through the crowded streets, lined with two rows of angle-parked cars, towards the offices of Simba Ltd, the leading safari outfitters of Chania. The firm had equipped the Baradale safari, and de Mare was one of their hunters.

“I guess there’s a lot of angles to this hunting racket the ordinary guy doesn’t know about,”

Vachell said. “I shall feel as dumb as hell when I get up there, not knowing the ABC of the game.

I’d be grateful if you’d give me a few wrinkles.”

“It’s just common sense,” de Mare said. “You

can’t lay down a lot of rules, because each case is different. It’s all experience. You develop a sort of instinct about how animals are going to behave.

Watch the wind: that’s the first rule, of course. It sounds simple but it isn’t Ч like keeping your head down in golf.”

“And just about as vital, I guess, in this game.”

“Exactly. Winds have a way of getting puffy

and temperamental after about eleven o’clock.

That’s why most successful hunting is done in the early mornings. I always carry a little sack of wood ash myself, and test the wind every few minutes, especially if I’m after elephant. They can get your wind up to about eight hundred yards, though

they can’t see more than about thirty. And always get as close as you can Ч never take a shot you aren’t certain of. All the work is done before you 15

press the trigger.”

“I shall stick to jewel hunting, if I can.”

“Yes, I don’t suppose you’ll need to worry

much about game, unless you want to go after

some of the smaller stuff. You can never be

certain, though. Never forget to watch the wind and try to pass downwind of any patch of bush that looks as though it might conceal a rhino. If you ever have to use the heavy rifle, keep your left barrel in reserve as long as you can, reloading the right after the shot. And another thing — look out for the man behind you. These inexperienced

safari people are often more dangerous than a wounded buffalo. There are some wild shots in this party. Old Baradale’s all right — a first class shot as a matter of fact — but young Catchpole and the girl are awful.”

The name of Simba Ltd was well known in

London and New York as well as in East Africa, but its offices were unpretentious. They consisted mainly of a large warehouse with a corrugated iron roof, crammed with the relics of every kind of animal. Long shelves round the wall were piled high with a twisted mass of horns. Stiff untanned lion and leopard skins lay in rolls on the bare board floor, and dried rhino and saelephant feet littered every odd corner. The peculiar musty smell of semi-treated animal trophies permeated everything.

Vachell shook hands with a preoccupiedlooking man in a dust-coat who was supervising

16

the packing of some greater kudu horns destined for Czechoslovakia. He thought with horror of the many blameless walls that had been made hideous with the severed heads of dead animals dispatched to Europe and America from this warehouse in

Marula.

“The boss said something about you this morning,” the man said. “My name’s Brett. You’re new to Chania, aren’t you? Done a lot of hunting in Tanganyika and Rhodesia, I understand?”

“Well, a bit,” Vachell said modestly.

“Knowing the country is nine-tenths of the

game, I always say. However, you’ve got a boss who knows what’s what in Mr de Mare.” Brett led the way to an office which had been made by partitioning off a corner of the warehouse, pushed a

roll of leopard skins off a desk, and pulled down a fat ledger.

“Here’s the Baradale safari,” he went on. “It’s slap-up, believe me. Fourteen Chev lorries, all light buff with a red stripe and the Baradale crest on the side. Two Ford V 8 saloons and two

Plymouth box-bodies, for running about. And all the doings — a big electric fridge, light off the car batteries, pull-and-let-goes, an outfit for the mechanic fellow that’s like a young machine shop, and a twelve-valve radio. You won’t exactly be roughing it up there.”

Vachell looked over Brett’s shoulder at a long list of provisions and equipment ranging from sugar castors and fruit-juice extractors, through 17

grocery delicacies such as Cornice pears preserved in creme de menthe and chicken breasts in aspic, to a screen for projecting movies and a taxidermist’s outfit.

“Yes, it looks like we shall make out somehow,”

he said. “I don’t have to order the meals, do I?”

“Not if Juma knows it,” Brett replied. “He’s

the best safari cook we’ve got. He’s been out with the Duke of Windsor, one ordinary duke, three earls, four maharajahs, and six American

millionaires. The maharajahs were the worst — all those curries. We had a lot of hot-stuffs flown out special from Karachi that time. But Juma took it all in his stride. He’ll do the meals, but you have to go through the stores with him every other day to see everything’s okay, and send in a weekly return to us.”

<(

‘And the liquor?”

“You’re in charge of that too. It’s kept locked up, and you issue it every evening. That’s one thing you must look out for — never let the drink run low. Nothing gives safari people chilblains on the temper so much as running out of their

favourite liquor. They all have their fancies, you know. Take this chap Catchpole; we’ve had a lot of trouble getting hold of some French drink he set his mind on, Amer Picon, it’s called. And we’ve got a special order to send fresh mint packed in ice every time a lorry goes up to Malabeya, to make mint juleps, I understand.”

“There shouldn’t be any risk of a liquor shortis

age on this safari,” Vachell remarked. He noticed on the books an indent for two cases of claret, two of Pouilly, four of gin, four of whisky, ten of champagne, and assorted bottles of curacao, liqueur brandy, Contreau, and van der Hum.

Brett closed the ledger with a snap. “It’s my job to see there isn’t” he said. “People laugh at these modern slap-up safaris, but you and I get our living out of them. These rich blokes want their luxuries, and they’re ready to pay handsome for them.

Well, so long as their money’s good, let ‘em.

That’s what I say.”

“Sure,” Vachell said.

“Don’t you go running away with the idea that hunting’s the important part of these safaris,”

Brett went on. He was scribbling something on a pad. “It isn’t. The commissariat is the part that counts. Give your clients a full belly and they won’t mind how many lions they miss, but let the cook run out of tea or butter and if they get an eleven-foot black-maned beauty they’ll grouse like the devil because it isn’t a world’s record. I know.”

He tore a piece of paper off the pad and handed it to Vachell. “You can take over Englebrecht’s tent and camp-bed; they belong to us. And you can keep his gun-bearer, too, but you’ll need to take your own personal boy. If you give this chit to one of the clerks at the store he’ll fix you up with bedding. You’ll excuse me if I rush. I’ve got a safari due in a few minutes with a live elephant calf and two lion cubs that I’ve got to ship to 19

Honolulu.”

Bret zigzagged away through packing-cases and discarded horns towards a yard where native

carpenters were busy making crates. Vachell