Murder on Safari (28 page)

He broke off to wriggle violently in his captor’s long arms, and to aim a vicious kick at the askari’s shins. The black policeman merely grunted “Stop it,” and tightened his grip. Vachell picked up two rifles from the ledge and said, “Don’t let him go,”

in Kiswahili.

“Did you fire that shot, Lord Baradale?” he

asked.

“Of course I did,” the indignant peer answered.

“Make this fellow let me go, I tell you.”

Then it’s my duty to place you under arrest, and to warn you that anything you say may be Ч “

“Don’t be a bloody fool,” Lord Baradale broke 285

in. “I was trying to save your damned life, not murder you. God knows why; I wish now I’d let the other fellow shoot. Now you’ve let him go, of course, and thrown me into the river. Exactly like the police, God damn their eyes.”

“What other fellow?” Vachell asked. “And

don’t try to pull anything now; it won’t do you a bit of good.”

“I was a fool to mix myself up in this,” Lord Baradale said disgustedly. “I ought to have known the police would bungle it. There was someone over on the other side of the river, aiming a rifle at you across the pool. I saw the gleam of his riflebarrel in the starlight, and I fired. I believe I

winged him, too. Tell this damned fellow to let me go can’t you?”

“My God,” Vachell said, “that must have been

the other askari.”

Lord Baradale’s captor released his prisoner

reluctantly, on Vachell’s orders. The still indignant peer explained that he had come down to the

pool with a rifle because he was afraid that there might be another accident, and he wanted to

prevent it. Vachell knew this for a lie, and

suspected that Lord Baradale had been moved by curiosity and a determination not to miss any of the fun. The second askari arrived from across the river, breathless and excited, to say that another person had been hiding by the pool. He had heard or seen nothing until just before the shot. Then his ears had detected the movements of Lord Baradale 286

across the water; but he had heard no sound from his own side of the pool.

The shot rang out, and after that he heard a

crashing in the undergrowth quite close to him, on his own side of the stream, and the noise of something running through the bush and up the hill. At

first he thought it was a large buck, perhaps a waterbuck, and he still couldn’t swear that it was not; but from the way it moved, he thought that it was a man. No, he admitted, he didn’t see it; but it made a noise — too much for a buck, certainly not enough for a rhino; about the same as a man.

So that, Vachell thought, was that. If it hadn’t been for Lord Baradale the interfering old

buzzard, the gamble would have worked out. The leopard came after the bait, but a damned hyena sprang the trap. The last chance of securing proof had gone.

Halfway back to camp they were met by Peto

and an armed askari, jogging down the gentle

slope towards them.

“You haven’t shot one of my nice askaris, have you?” Peto called through the darkness. “Ah, I see you haven’t. Well, did you get a bite?”

“The fish was all set for a rise,” Vachell

answered, “but we hooked an old boot instead.”

“You’re near the end of the chase,” Peto said.

He turned round and fell into step behind Vachell and Lord Baradale. He was panting slightly after the exertion of his run. “I saw the quarry just now, breaking back and going like hell towards the 287

camp,”

“You did?” Vachell exclaimed. “Then why

didn’t you stop. …”

“No chance, I heard a splash in the river below, and all I saw was a dark figure wading through the stream behind me and streaking like blazes up the bank and back towards camp. It had a rifle in its hand. Short of shooting it down, there was

nothing to be done. But it was headed in the right direction.”

“Do you know who it was?” Vachell asked.

“Too dark to see,” Peto said shortly.

There was a sort of excited splutter from behind and the askari who had been with Peto burst into speech. It was evident that he could contain

himself no longer.

“Bwana,” he said, “bwana! I saw someone

running from where the shot was fired towards the camp, just now. I do not know who it was, but I saw the person’s hair, and I saw that it was a woman.”

“A woman!” Lord Baradale ejaculated. “My

God, then it must be …” He started to break into a run.

“You needn’t worry,” Peto said. “Your

daughter wasn’t out of my sight until after we heard the shot. She kept her young man there, too Ч she thinks he did it, you know. Absurd, of

course; he hasn’t the brains to murder an ostrich.

Your chauffeur was with us, and the maid. We all sat under the tree with your cherry brandy and 288

talked about the weather. As there are only three women on this safari, that makes it easier for the police to perform one of their well-known feats of brilliant deduction.”

“My God!” Lord Baradale said. “I’d never have believed it.”

Vachell walked on in silence with long strides, and made no comment.

They found Chris Davis in her tent, seated on her bed beside a safari lamp, dabbing at a bleeding arm with cotton wool dipped in disinfectant. Her black dressing-gown was thrown aside and her

pyjama-clad arm was soaked in blood. She looked up as they lifted the flap of the tent and crowded through the entrance. Vachell was in the lead, followed by Peto and Lord Baradale.

Her face was white as milk and her blonde hair wild and windblown. As they entered she drew

her lips back in a sort of snarl, like a cornered animal.

“All right,” she said, “arrest me, and get it over.

I did it. Arrest me, for God’s sake, arrest me now.”

Vachell reached her side in two strides, lifted the lamp, and bent down to examine the wound.

The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of the arm above the elbow. The wound was bleeding badly, but the bone was intact.

“It needs a tourniquet,” Vachell said. “I’ll need your help, Mr Peto.”

Chris tried to jerk her arm away from Vachell’s 289

grip. “Leave me alone, damn you!” she cried.

“Arrest me, can’t you, and get it over. I don’t want your help.”

“There’s a bandage on the table, sir,” Vachell added.

Chris stopped struggling, her features screwed up with pain. “Leave me alone!” she repeated. “I tell you, it was me. Aren’t you going to arrest me?”

Vachell looked down on her distraught face for the first time and smiled.

“No,” he said.

Chris stared at him for a moment, misery in her eyes, and buried her face in her hand. Her shoulders shook with sobs. He pulled a handkerchief

out of his pocket and pushed it into her right hand.

“Here,” he said. “It isn’t very clean, but I guess it will do.”

The crowd at the tent-flap looked on in

astounded silence. Peto, bandage in hand, ordered them back in peremptory tones. Lord Baradale, clearly unaccustomed to being treated like one of the gaping crowd outside the church at a fashionable wedding, glared his anger, but obeyed. They

retreated from the small veranda, and the figure of Peto’s massive tribal retainer filled the opening.

“Bwana,” he said. “Here is a letter.”

“What on earth … ?” Peto ejaculated, busy working over Chris’s arm. Vachell stretched out his hand and took the note. “It’s addressed to 290

me,” he said. Then to the askari: “Who gave it to you?”

Japhet’s broad face appeared in the tent opening, peering over the tribal retainer’s shoulder. “I brought it, bwana,” he said. “Bwana Danny gave it to me. He told me to give it to you.”

The letter was in a sealed envelope. Vachell tore it open, unfolded the sheet of paper, and asked: “Where is bwana Danny now?”

Japhet shrugged his shoulders. “He did not say where he was going, bwana. Half an hour ago he took his rifle and a waterbag and a small sack of salt which he tied to his belt, and many matches, and he went away alone — I do not know where, for it is dark and he would not let me follow him.

I said: ‘Why do you go away like this, at night, when there are many lions and fierce animals that prowl about in the darkness?’ and he answered: ‘Why does the duiker run away when the huntingdogs are after it?’ He said that he would not come back. I do not know what he meant, or where he went. It is white man’s madness, perhaps.”

“Good God,” Peto said, straightening his back and staring round-eyed at Vachell. “How many

more rabbits have you got in the hat? Don’t tell me that Danny de Mare …”

“Didn’t fall into the trap,” Vachell said.

He smoothed out the note, and read it aloud.

“The fly regretfully declines the spider’s kind 291

invitation; he prefers the wide, open spaces to the more restricted atmosphere of the parlour. You win, but you will forgive me if I do not stay to celebrate your triumph. Tell Chris that beasts of prey break their hearts in cages. Good-bye, and good luck.

‘D.DEMARE.’”

Peto stood motionless for a moment, thunderstruck.

“I never would have believed it,” he

said at last. “Never. To think of Danny …”

Vachell looked down at the back of Chris’s

neck. She sat quietly, no longer sobbing, her face buried in his handkerchief. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked gently:

“You knew all the time, didn’t you?”

She nodded her head.

292

Breakfast was late next morning; and the atmosphere of the camp had undergone a subtle change.

The strain of suspense and fear had vanished, and, for the first time since Lady Baradale’s death, the meal was a reasonably cheerful one. Nerves were less edgy, and the feeling that a molten volcano lurked underneath a thin crust of civility was no longer there.

Peto and Lord Baradale found a topic of mutual fascination in the study of East African birds, on which the D.C. was a recognized authority. Cara ate with renewed appetite, and talked of going off later in the day with Englebrecht to track the elephant that had been so abruptly rebuffed when it came down to the pool to drink on the previous evening.

“Thank God it’s all over,” she said. “Though

I’m sorry for Danny, and I hope he gets away. The last few days have been absolute hell. I thought Vachell was going to arrest Luke.”

293

“Why should he?” Peto asked. “Luke wasn’t

guilty. You’re suffering from over-development of the female protective instincts. As a matter of fact I think he ought to be arrested anyway—for agreeing to your absurd plan to get married in order to annoy your stepmother. I’ve heard of a lot of fatuous reasons for getting married, but that’s the silliest of the lot.”

Cara flushed a little and drank some more black coffee before replying. “It wasn’t to annoy Lucy,”

she said. “Or, at least, only partly. She was so lousy to Luke… . Anyway, the awful thing was, Luke hadn’t the ghost of an alibi. You see, when we went off that morning, we picked a place for Luke to camp and got everything ready before we went to Malabeya. It took some time, and after breakfast Luke left me to fix the camp while he went off to shoot a buck for his dinner. He didn’t get back till about twelve o’clock, so at the critical time he was wandering about alone in the car with a rifle, and I couldn’t have given him an alibi. You see how bad it looked?”

“It wouldn’t have to me,” Peto said, helping

himself liberally to marmalade. “I’ve known your friend Luke for many years, and much as I respect him, I wouldn’t put him down as the scheming

Machiavellian type. Did you really think he’d shot your stepmother?”

“No, of course not,” Cara said quickly. “I

didn’t think he’d done it, but of course it did look a bit, well, suspicious. I was terrified when I got 294

back to c,amp and heard about it. I knew how bad it would look for Luke, especially after the way Lucy had behaved to him, and our Ч the call we made on you that afternoon. So I thought the best thing was for Luke to stay hidden, and then

everyone would think he’d gone away, and

wouldn’t worry any more about him. So when he came to the camp that night we cooked up a story about a kudu, only I think Vachell caught us out about that, over what Luke did with the skin. It’s awfully difficult to think of everything.”

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” ‘ Peto

quoted. “Take my advice, if I may speak as one bachelor to another, and give your young man the air. Charming as he is, I doubt whether suspecting your future husband of murder is a good, solid foundation for married life.”

Cara started to look aloof, but thought better of it and gave Peto a kindly smile. She stood up, preparing to go, hitched up her shorts and took a cigarette from a silver case out of her pocket.

“There may be something in what you say,” she remarked. “Anyway, I know now where not to

apply for a marriage licence.”

It was a glorious morning, bright and sparkling, and the blue of the sky was as pure and vivid as the petals of a delphinium. Rain had brought a cloud of new, pale lemon buds to cover the vivid green of the acacias, and the air was full of their delicate scent and of the joyful song of birds.

Only Peto was left at the breakfast-table when 295

Vachell appeared. He puffed wisps of blue tobacco smoke into the still, clear air while the latecomer, rested and refreshed, ate a large meal in silence.

TheD.C. refrained from questions until the last piece of toast had disappeared. Then he said: “I’d like to hear the story. I still can’t believe it, but I suppose you’re right. Incidentally, we’ve got our little Timburu boy back amongst us again. He panicked in the night — he’s only a youngster, and this country’s all new to him — and he was afraid he’d get lost if he tried to follow his pals all the way to Timburu-land. So he sneaked back into camp late last night, and the askari he’d been handcuffed to woke up to find him trying to

snuggle in under the blankets. He’s satisfied, now, that he isn’t going to be eaten or mutilated, it seems. He told us who knocked out the askari to let him escape.”