Murder on Safari (30 page)

“Why?”

“Because of the superior powers of penetration of the solid bullet. Suppose he’d used a soft-nosed for the job. The bullet would have killed her, all right, but most likely it would have lodged in her body. And de Mare knew that if we found the

bullet, we’d be able to trace it back to his rifle.

Nothing could have explained that away.

“So what occurred. I think, was this. De Mare and Catchpole were trailing the lion through the bush, without a thought of Lady Baradale. I guess they were just thinking lion. They’d spotted the quarry, and they knew he’d taken refuge in a

patch of bush down at the bottom of this gulley.

De Mare sent the two natives down the river end of it, to the left, to cut him off if he tried to break back, and to beat up the gulley. The two Europeans walked slowly and cautiously forwards, and

2. See p. 78

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climbed to the top of a little knoll on the bank of the gulley, where they halted to search the bush ahead with their eyes for a sign of the lion. They expected to see him break cover any moment, and streak away up the opposite side of the gulley.

They were all set to shoot at the drop of the hat, and without waiting to see the whites of his eyes.

“Things are pretty keyed up at a moment like

that. Every bit of attention is focused on the bush ahead where the lion is crouching; every sense is straining to catch the first glimpse of him when he moves. After all, there’s always the chance that he may come in the wrong direction Ч towards you, instead of away. Your eyesight is like the beam of a flashlight Ч it concentrates on one spot, and everything else is in darkness so far as you are concerned. You wouldn’t see a two-headed

monster or even King Kong at fifty paces in

circumstances like that, if they were out of your line of vision.

“So when, just at that tense moment when de

Mare and Catchpole had their eyes glued on the bush ahead and expected to see a lion pop out of it, Lady Baradale sailed into sight away over to the right and at least a hundred yards distant, Catchpole didn’t see her. De Mare did, though. I guess

these old-time hunters have a sort of sixth sense that detects anything that moves, the way an

animal does. He felt there was something moving, and when he turned his head he saw her walking through the bush towards him, on the way back to 307

camp from her morning stroll. Either she didn’t spot them Ч and it takes an experienced eye to pick out a stationary object in the African bush Ч

or she saw from the way they were standing on the knoll that there was something just ready to break, and stood still to see what it was all about.

“I believe, when de Mare saw her, the impulse to kill must have come over him like Ч well, like a sudden fever, or a wave of nausea. He was a hunter, and his blood was up. His whole mind and body was attuned to kill. All that had to change inside him was the object at which his lust to kill was directed. It must have come to him in a flash Ч the impulse to shoot the woman instead of the beast. She had threatened his safety, and so she had to go. It was almost an act of self-defence.

“Here’s where de Mare did some fast thinking.

He knew no one else had seen Lady Baradale.

Catchpole had both eyes and all his mind pinned on the bush where the lion still was. The two boys were out of sight down the gulley. He knew that as soon as the lion broke cover, Catchpole would take the first shot, and he, the hunter, would fire a moment later to drop it. That was the routine. It added up to two shots. He decided Ч and all this happened inside of a few seconds Ч to try a trick: to fire his first shot at the same instant as Catchpole’s so that the two shots would combine to

make one joint bang. That would give him a

second shot to use on Lady Baradale, and there’d still only be two bangs.

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“It was difficult, but it had this advantage: the trick shot was to be aimed at the lion, so that if it failed to synchronize with Catchpole’s he could call the murder off and no one would be any the worse or any the wiser.

“Well, the breaks were with him and the gag

worked. He slipped the soft-nosed cartridges out of his magazine and pushed in a clip of solids. He always carried his ammunition in a clip. A few seconds, maybe, after that, the expected

happened: the lion broke cover ahead and streaked off up the opposite bank. He’d been driven out, of course, by the boys who were beating up the

gulley below.

“Catchpole was standing just a little way ahead2

De Mare gave the word to fire, and drew a bead on the lion’s neck. Remember, de Mare was a firstrate shot with reactions like a flash of lightning.

His shot and Catchpole’s went off almost at the same instant. Not quite, of course, I guess de Mare’s was a split second behind. De Mare

couldn’t have gotten away with it if Catchpole had been an experienced hunter, or a less excitable sort of a guy. But he knew nothing about shooting, and he was so steamed up over the lion he’d hardly have noticed an earthquake.

“De Mare’s shot was a honey. His bullet hit the vertebrae of the neck and the lion dropped like a stone in a pond. Catchpole’s shot, of course, missed. A second later de Mare swung around

1. See p. 12 2. See p. 74

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to the right, sighted full on Lady Baradale’s forehead, and fired the second shot. It was another bull. The solid bullet went clean through her skull, drilling a neat round hole in the bone,” and she dropped without a sound. Catchpole most

likely went racing ahead towards the lion, convinced that he’d dropped it with a beautiful shot. He heard the second bang, of course, and thought it was de Mare making sure the dead lion would stay dead, the way hunters normally do.

This takes a long time to tell about, but I guess it all happened in the inside of a minute.

“Well, the double-shot gag fooled me — that, and another thing. When I went over the territory that afternoon, I marked three points — where the lion was shot; where Lady Baradale was found; and where de Mare told me he and Catchpole had stood to shoot the lion. Now, the place where Lady Baradale’s body was lying couldn’t be seen from the spot where de Mare said he stood to

shoot the lion. This rocky knoll I mentioned was llllllllll II m the way- ^ut^ y011 see?lt was ^y ^e Mare who told me where he’d stood.! There was no evidence to confirm that. Japhet and Konyek were out of sight, and Catchpole died before I had a chance to take him out there to check positions. So de Mare took me for a ride. He and Catchpole stood on top of the knoll, not to the left of it — and Lady Baradale was in full view.

“I should have seen it, though, from the first.

3. See p. 83 1. See p. 83 310

Chris saw the truth that afternoon, when Japhet handed over the solid bullet he’d taken from the lion. A soft-nosed bullet that had hit the bone would have been flattened out into a shapeless lump of metal,2 and I’d have had a hard job to decide the calibre of the rifle that fired it.

“And, looking back, there was another pointer that I missed. Japhet and Konyek both agreed that only two shots had been fired, and that helped to convince me that Catchpole and de Mare were on the level. But Japhet said something that should have given me a lead. He said there were two

shots, “the first one very close. ““It sounded louder than he expected, and that made it seem close. But I missed the lead he gave me. I’m a dope, and I know it.”

“You need consolation,” Peto said. “Regrets

were made for drowning. Try some more beer.”

White foam rose in a frothy column as Peto

emptied the bottle into VachelFs glass. The sun was already high overhead, and the air pleasantly warm and drowsy. “You’re assembling a

convincing case for your theory,” Peto added, “considering that you’re making it all up. It fits in with Danny’s nature, I’ll say that. He always acted on impulse, as you say. A trick like that needs speed, luck, and skill, and Danny had plenty of all three.”

“Especially luck,” Vachell agreed. “I reckon

any one who had a girl like Chris Davis so crazy 2. See p. 14 & 151 3. See p. 78

311

about him she’d cover up for him when she knew he’d committed a murder is a hell of a lucky guy.”

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“Lady Baradale’s murder,” Vachell went on when the glass of beer in front of him was empty and Peto had resumed his posture of apparent sleep, “was a better piece of strategy, I reckon, than de Mare himself realized when he drilled her with a bullet at around eleven-thirty on a fine African morning, and her prospective son-in-law standing a few feet away. Because it silenced Rutley as well as her.”

“I don’t see that,” Peto said, shifting himself in the chair and rubbing a hand through his thatch of tousled grey hair. “Rutley must have known that de Mare had done her in. Why didn’t he tell you about it?”

“Because he didn’t know what had happened to

the jewels,” Vachell said. “Of course, he felt pretty sure that de Mare had dug them out of the footpump and had them somewhere salted away.

But he didn’t know. De Mare’s story about the footpump being swiped by a garage might have 313

been true.

“Suppose he’d accused de Mare of theft and

murder. First he’d have had to ante up a reason for his suspicions that would satisfy the police. I’d have been a lot harder to satisfy than Lady

Baradale, because on the face of it everything pointed to Rutley himself as the guy who did the stealing. And then suppose, after all, de Mare hadn’t got the jewels, Rutley would have pushed his own neck right into the noose. For, if the police had found that he’d accused de Mare

without reason, they’d naturally assume that

Rutley had stolen the jewels and then knocked off Lady Baradale when she got suspicious, and was trying to frame de Mare. It was too much of a risk to take. If he lost out, he’d most likely take the rap for murder. Rutley’s temper had cooled down by then, and he was too scared to talk.

“There was another reason, too, I guess. Rutley wouldn’t get any percentage on a dead and hanged de Mare, but he would on a live one who could be squeezed. If he could secure some sort of proof that de Mare was the killer, he’d have as sweet a blackmail set-up as you ever saw. He’d be able to twist the screws so tight he’d wring the marrow out of de Mare’s bones. So he was another

member of the outfit who didn’t want the murderer caught.

“He has his troubles, though. He came under

suspicion himself, and that scared him plenty.

Motive was his weak point, and he knew it. More 314

women have been knocked off because their men friends couldn’t think of any other way to get rid of them than for any other reason, I guess. Rutley almost admitted there was a bunch of letters in Lady Baradale’s safe that gave him a dandy motive1

Ч love letters at the bottom of the pile and

letters that showed he was through and wanted to quit on top. So he sneaked into Lady Baradale’s tent the night after the murder to see if there was any way he could dig them out Ч at least, this is the way I’ve figured it Ч and after a little while I came along. He hid in the clothes closet, and when he saw me just about to turn the key he crowned me with a spanner and swiped the letters, and the key.

“It was de Mare, of course, who left those

walnuts on the coffin. They didn’t mean much, but they bothered me a lot. They were a gesture, that was all, but it didn’t seem to me that any of the suspects I’d booked in my mind for the crime would have made a gesture like that. It showed a sort of flippant, perverted sense of humour, a touch of bravado, that didn’t fit Rutley, or

Englebrecht, or Lord Baradale. It did fit de Mare, but I’d eliminated him. I couldn’t figure it out at all.

“De Mare put them there when he found me

lying unconscious in Lady Baradale’s tent, I

reckon; he was checking up on my whereabouts in order to plant five dud cartridges in the belt I’d 1. See p. 190

315

left lying in my tent. For he’d decided that I had to go. I had his bullet — the one found in the lion, that he told Japhet to throw away2 — and he

knew that bullet could hang him, once I saw its significance and started to ask questions. Chris had seen it right away, and he figured it was only a question of time before I saw it too. Chris was safe; the tortures of hell wouldn’t have dragged the information out of her. But I was hunting too close up to this trial. The scent was fresh, and he reckoned that it was him or me.

“I haven’t a shred of proof, but I’ve no doubt at all that it was de Mare who cut the powder in my cartridges, hoping that it would get me into trouble.

He knew there were buffalo in the hills, and

that I meant to go after them — I told him that.” I think that goes to prove that he wasn’t, by nature, a killer. He might have found a much more certain way of knocking me off, but I think he somehow shrank from the actual commission of a planned, cold-blooded murder. He wanted the buffalo to do the job for him. It was a long shot, but it involved no risk, and if nothing came of it, why, no harm was done.

“The trick worked all right, but it worked on the wrong guy. I got the breaks; and the buffalo trod on Catchpole instead of on me. That was

luckier for de Mare than he realized. I believe that Catchpole, who was smart enough underneath his pansy poses, had got suspicious of de Mare.

2. See p. 78 3. See p. 113 316

When he died, he was trying to tell me something, and I think he was going to name de Mare. The last words I could catch were “… shot Lucy.” He may have remembered there was something phony about the shot Ч the double shot Ч or he may

have thought of another thing: that de Mare

unloaded his rifle just before they saw the lion. He may have got to wondering why a hunter should change the cartridges in his magazine with a lion all ready to jump a few bushes away. Anyway, he died before he could tell me what was on his mind, and that was a break for de Mare. Then we found Rutley’s bullet inside the wounded buffalo. That put Rutley out of the running as a serious suspect; the buffalo gave him an alibi, in fact. I told you this was an unusual case.