Murder on Safari (21 page)

“You mustn’t let it get you down,” Vachell said.

“I believe you know already who the murderer

is.”

“If I knew that, he’d be under arrest right

now.”

Chris laughed apologetically in the darkness. “I wasn’t trying to pump you. It’s only that I

wondered — I do wish you’d get it over with, and 213

put an end to this suspense.”

“I have a hunch we’re close to the payoff,”

Vachell said. “If things work out the way I’ve figured that they should, that is. It’s so darned fantastic I can hardly swallow it myself, so maybe my theories won’t jell. I’m hoping they won’t, too, and that’s bad.”

“I knew you had a theory,“Chris said. “It’s got something to do with those elephants we flew

over, the ones that got scared.”

“They’re easy. Trouble is, this theory has loose ends.”

“Such as?”

“Several things. The position of the body, those screwy walnuts, and the fact that some guy helped himself to — well, to a lot of junk out of my tent this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” Chris repeated. “What sort

of junk?”

“A couple of pork pies, a bag of ripe tomatoes, and a signed picture of Stanley Baldwin.”

“Oh,” Chris said.

They walked along the river bank without

speaking. To their right the white sand gleamed softly in the starlight, and a silver lustre shone on the crests of the gurgling torrent. Trees were dark formless shapes, and the grass a dim expanse of pale petrified sea. From a thicket close at hand a dove cooed persistently into the darkness: “Ku ku, ku-u-ku ku; ku ku, k-u-ku ku.” The notes

were sweet and warm, but a little sickly.

214

“Well, I guess we should be getting back,”

Vachell said. They halted close to the thicket. The dove in the branches gurgled once and then was silent, and a rustle from the undergrowth proclaimed the startled movement of a small animal.

“Dik-dik,” Chris said. “It had better be careful, Konyek said there was a leopard down at the

hippo pool last night.”

“Listen, Chris,” Vachell said. “I want to ask a favour. It’s a hell of a big one, and there won’t be any kick if you turn it down. This time factor is getting on top of me, and I have to find Englebrecht.

Will you lend me your plane tomorrow for

the search?”

“I offered to take you up,” Chris said.

“Thanks,” Vachell hesitated .“That isn’t exactly what I asked. It’s kind of hard to explain. I’m asking for the loan of the machine on the driveyourself plan. I had a pilot’s licence up to a couple

of years ago, and I promise I won’t bust up the machine.”

” Why don’t you want me to fly her?” Chris

asked. Her voice was hurt and cold.

“I’m like Greta Garbo,” Vachell said. “I want to be alone. That’s not polite, but it’s this way — on police work we’re supposed to play a lone hand, especially in a murder case. You understand that.

If you don’t want to loan the plane on those conditions, okay; but you’ll be helping the investigation a whole lot if you let me take her up.”

“There’s something behind this,” Chris said

215

slowly. “If you’re only going to look for Luke’s camp, it can’t matter if there’s someone with you in the plane.”

“It’s a matter of principle, I guess.”

“You didn’t talk about principles when you

asked me to measure the distance to the elephants this morning. Something’s happened since then.”

Chris stared up at him, trying to read the expression on his face in the starlight.

“It’s up to you,” she said.

Chris straightened her shoulders and turned to look at the river. “You don’t trust me,” she said.

“You don’t suspect me do you?” She jerked her head round to look at him again, incredulity in her voice. Then she laughed, but without amusement.

“I see. I’m in the running for the prize you’re going to give to one of us before we get away from here — a pair of handcuffs and a length of rope.

Well, you’re a policeman, and this is a murder case, and I suppose we’ve all got to do what you order us to, whether we like it or not. I don’t, but that won’t do me any good.”

“Say, you’ve got me all wrong,” Vachell

protested. “I’m not trying to put over any strongarm official stuff. If you don’t want to loan me the plane, that’s okay. I can find Englebrecht on foot.

It takes longer, that’s all, now the cars get bogged if they go a mile out of camp.”

“Oh, take the plane, if you want her.” Chris

turned and started to walk back towards the camp.

“For God’s sake don’t crack her up, that’s all. I 216

shouldn’t have got annoyed. I thought that you Ч

well, it doesn’t matter. I know you’re only doing your job.”

“That’s swell of you, Chris,” Vachell said. “You know, you’re a swell person. And look: don’t talk to any one about this. Keep it under your hat.”

“All right,” Chris said. “Let’s get back to

camp.”

When they had retraced their steps along the

river for a few paces, Chris halted abruptly and stood like a startled antelope, her head slightly cocked to one side. Vachell stopped beside her and held his breath. The dove in the thicket behind them gurgled again and flew off with a flapping of wings. A faint rustle came from the thicket, and the sharp snap of a breaking twig. Then the frogs and the whispering water regained their monopoly of the noises of the night.

“There’s the dik-dik- again,” Vachell said.

There was a question in his voice.

“No.” Chris spoke in a low tone, just above a whisper. “It was too heavy.”

Vachell reached out and gripped her arm. It was cold and trembling slightly. They stood for a full minute as motionless as two cranes fishing by the edge of a stream, but they heard no more.

“Some sort of a buck?” Vachell queried.

“A buck wouldn’t have stood there close to us while we talked.”

“Well then Ч what?”

“It might have been a man,” Chris said.

217

FR1;FR2;CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

They found the camp in darkness, save for the log fires that always smouldered through the night, and glimmers of light shining through the scattered trunks and branches from the natives’ quarters.

Vachell said good night to Chris and walked

quickly over to his own section of the camp,

beyond the acacia. Two out of three tents were lit: his own and de Mare’s. He slipped quietly round the back and flashed his torch into the third tent, at the end of the row. It was Rutley’s but the bed was empty.

De Mare was sitting at a table in his tent

veranda, smoking a pipe and making entries in several ledgers that were open in front of him. He looked up when Vachell appeared and nodded.

“The poor devil’s to be buried at seven,” he

said. “You’d better be there.”

“Sure,” Vachell said. “I’m checking on every

one in camp. Where’s Rutley?”

“Holding Paula’s hand over in her tent, I should 218

think. I haven’t seen him. I’ve been here for the last half hour, checking the stores. The cook’s been complaining of thefts, as well as of his meat famine. I’m going out first thing tomorrow to replenish the pot.”

Rutley was sitting over a blazing camp fire

behind Paula’s tent, a whisky bottle by his side and a glass in his hand. Paula sat cross-legged at his feet, staring at the crackling logs. Conversation stopped abruptly when Vachell appeared out of the darkness and stepped into the orbit of the fire’s glow.

“Have you been out hunting buffaloes again?”

he inquired.

“What are you talking about?” Rutley

demanded.

“Where have you been for the last half hour?”

“Sitting here, talking to Paula. Why, has

anything happened?”

“He’s been here all the time,” Paula said

defiantly. “Is anything wrong?”

“And how about you?” Vachell added. “Have

you been right here, outside this tent, all evening?”

“Sure I have — except when I went over to fix a sleeping draught for Miss Baradale, just a little while back. She’s been awful sick, but I guess she’s sleeping now.”

“What’s the idea?” Rutley said truculently.

“Have we got to send a rocket up every time we move five yards in this camp?”

219

“Curiosity is an occupational disease,” Vachell said, “in the Police.”

There was no doubt that Cara Baradale was

asleep. Her young face, in its frame of dark

rumpled hair, looked white and haggard in the beam ofVachelFs torch; but the light did not wake her. The cars and lorries were all in place in the line, with the exception of the two temporarily abandoned Plymouths that had stuck in the mud.

Kimotho reported that all the gun-bearers and trackers and the cook were gathered round a fire, listening to a fascinating account by Geydi of an experience in London, when he was an honoured guest in the palace of a white chief so staggeringly rich that he owned more wives than there were goats in Chania, wives who were kept busy night and day serving food to a countless company of distinguished guests. After further enquiry

Vachell identified the palace as one of Lyons’

Corner Houses, and wondered if Sir Isidore

Salmon was aware of his African reputation for record wife ownership, and of the great prestige that it had brought him.

Lord Baradale’s tent was the last port of call.

The flap was closed, but a streak of light falling on to the grass outside indicated that the occupant was not asleep. Vachell called “hodi,” and had to proclaim his identity rather in the manner, he felt, of a stranger seeking entry outside the gates of a baronial castle in medieval days. Lord Baradale went through life trailing clouds of feudalism, 220

Vachell decided. He was a queer old buzzard; probably never done a day’s work in his life and lived on his wife’s money, and yet he not only expected universal respect and deference, but apparently got it — at any rate now that his wife was dead. He must have a lot of nerve, to get away with it.

Vachell ducked under the flap and entered,

blinking at the strong electric light. It was remarkable that any tent could look so much like a junk-shop. Two folding tables were littered with papers, magazines, enlargements, chemicals, and photographic apparatus. A movie screen stood

propped up against one side of the tent, between a rack of guns and rifles and a tool chest, and two projectors occupied the only chairs. The most surprising part of the equipment was a large log mounted on four wooden posts over which a zebra skin had been flung. Nails, hammers, glue, a roll of calico and several tins of paint were strewn about the floor all around it.

“That’s a blind,” Lord Baradale explained.

“I’m going to mount the zebra skin on the frame and hang two curtains, painted brown and green, on each side. That will form a hiding-place underneath, big enough for me to crouch in with the

cameras. I shall plant it at a waterhole and leave it there until the animals get used to it.”

“Very ingenious,” Vachell commented.

“It worked with bears,” Lord Baradale said

defensively, “in Glacier Park, I think it was, or it 221

may have been in Canada. Fellow dressed up in a she-bear’s skin and got some beautiful studies. I read about it in an American paper. The only

trouble was, the disguise was almost too good; it was the mating season, and he had some nasty

moments with a grizzly. This zebra is a male.

Well, you didn’t come here to discuss game photography, I take it.”

Lord Baradale sat down abruptly on the bed, lit a cigar, and jerked the match across the tent with a flick of a wrist. “I suggest that you come straight to the point, and look sharp about it,” he added.

He made no attempt to offer his visitor a chair.

Vachell leant against the tent-pole, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the light bulb, encased in an orange paper shade, that dangled from the

ridge-pole. His eyes were heavy and his skin stiff from fatigue. The bruises on his side were aching steadily and he felt a sudden strong impulse to lie down on the bed, relax his muscles, and sink into sleep. He rubbed one palm over his forehead and through his ruffled sandy hair and said:

“First, sir, I’d like to know about Geydi. He was seen leaving camp yesterday morning in one of your Fords, a little after ten o’clock. He crowded a boy who was toting firewood off the road. Later, he saw this boy and tried to throw a scare into him so he wouldn’t talk. Now, sir, what’s Geydi’s game?”

“How the devil should I know?” Lord Baradale

said. He sat bolt upright on the bed, the cigar 222

smoking in his hand, glaring angrily at his

inquisitor. “Why don’t you ask him, man? I’m not Geydi’s keeper.”

“That bird has something to hide, and I believe, sir, that you know what it is.”

“Oh, you do, do you! Confound your impertinence, young man! I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and listen to a young puppy of a policeman telling me that I’m a liar. Your superiors shall hear of this. I’m not accustomed — “

“Take it easy, sir,” Vachell’s voice betrayed, a little, the strain of keeping his temper. These volatile lords who kept popping like a vat of halfbrewed beer, he thought, and went off with a bang

whenever any one asked them a plain question, got into his hair. “I guess you want to clean this case up as much as I do,” he went on.

“Geydi lied about his movements, and I’m going to find out why. And he’s your boy. Any suggestions?”

“None whatever, and I’ll ask you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“And there’s another thing. He was seen talking with three Timburu warriors on the edge of camp, two nights ago. He gave them something —

money, the boys thought. Does anything there

strike a chord in your memory, sir?”

” I don’t believe a word of it!” Lord Baradale said vigorously. “If you credit every cock-and-bull story brought to you by disgruntled natives, you won’t get very far towards solving this damnable crime — or any other, for the matter of that.”