Murder on Safari (4 page)

Baradale’s voice was sharp and peremptory. Her husband checked himself and subsided into his chair. His face looked flushed and angry and, somehow, frustrated.

“Whose fault is it?” he asked. He was still breathing heavily. “This trip was your idea. You’ve

driven her into it. It was you who — “

“Be quiet, Thomas!” The drawl in Lady

Baradale’s voice had given way to the snap of command. “You can’t blame it on me if your

daughter prefers to go around with an illiterate Boer instead of with a boy from her own class. Mr Vachell, we dine at eight-thirty. Thomas, please light me to my tent.”

Lord Baradale picked up a safari lamp from a

row on the ground and escorted his wife to her tent. De Mare, remarking that he needed a bath, took another lamp and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Vachell and Catchpole alone.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” the young baronet

remarked. He smiled a little wistfully, and poured out another gin-and-French. His face was finely moulded and effeminate, his body slim and

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willowy. He had soft blond hair with a slight wave. “You look so sensible. To tell the truth, this safari has begun to get on my nerves. I’m sure Luke Englebrecht is highly satisfactory as a lover, though he doesn’t seem to me to have a spark of imagination, but I must admit that I find him boring. Of course, I should be the last person in the world to try to prevent Cara, poor sweet, from having a bit of fun, but I can’t pretend the situation’s easy.”

“I should say not,” Vachell agreed. Catchpole’s voice was growing a little squeaky, and there was no doubt that the numerous gin-and-Frenches he had put away were having their effect.

“You know, I like you,” he went on expansively.

“I know instinctively when I meet some

one I can trust. It’s all very awkward, as I was saying. Lucy’s a dear, but she hasn’t an atom of tact. I really can’t blame Cara for resenting the whole thing. After all, she never pretended to be in the least in love with me. But she hasn’t a bean of her own, poor sweet. I’d drop this marriage idea tomorrow, but Lucy’s so dominating. And then, of course, I’ve got a very expensive interior decorating business to keep up. I must say, Lucy’s been an angel over that.”

Vachell was uncertain of the correct response.

He drained his whisky and ventured: “I guess you can’t let Lady Baradale down.”

Catchpole nodded his head emphatically and

groped for his glass. He was having difficulty in 31

focusing his eyes. “That’s just it,” he said. “I knew you’d understand. It would break Lucy’s

heart if I left Cara to that handsome clod. Poor dear Lucy’s such a snob. I can’t desert the sinking ship, can I? That’s what Lucy is, stinking — sinking, I mean.”

“How do you mean, sinking?”

Catchpole looked melancholy, and wagged his

head. “Age has withered her, and custom staled her infantile — infinite variety. After all, even with all that money, you can’t expect these things to last for ever, can you? I think she’s being very unreasonable. He’s awfully attractive, and after all he’s twenty years younger, and you can’t expect him to stick to one job for the rest of his life, however well he does out of it.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know?” Catchpole looked surprised. “Rutley, of course. He’s Lucy’s boyfriend.

She picked him up on the lot and made

him into a daytime chauffeur.”

“I see,” Vachell said slowly, “And now he’s

beginning to tire of the night-time part of the job?”

Catchpole nodded. “Poor dear Lucy made an

awfully stupid mistake. She had to bring a maid, of course, but instead of a hideous old hag she brought an attractive young thing. And now, of course, her precious Rutley has gone and fallen for the lovely Paula.”

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It was nine o’clock before dinner began. The meal was not so difficult as Vachell had expected. Hot baths seemed to have restored everyone to a more mellow frame of mind. They all appeared in heavy silk dressing-gowns over pyjamas and mosquito boots, and ate in the open under the big acacia tree. The night was balmy without being too hot, and a myriad of stars glittered in a cloudless sky.

The meal was rich and excellent and the champagne superb. Glasses were kept constantly

replenished by a tall, slim young Somali with a beautiful, disdainful face and a proud bearing whom Vachell identified as Geydi, Lord

Baradale’s personal boy. He wore a white silk robe with a red sash and a coloured turban. Other

native servants, deft and silent, came and went with plates and dishes, and miraculously managed to serve the meal hot and steaming from a kitchen fifty yards away.

Vachell said little, and admired the skill with 33

which de Mare kept the conversation under full sail but steered it, on occasion, away from the rocks of controversy. A discussion on the coloration of game animals occupied most of the meal.

Lord Baradale defended the protective theory of coloration vigorously, while de Mare quoted

Stigand and Selous in support of his contention that the theory, as applied to game in Africa, was in the main a fallacy. All beasts of prey, he pointed out, hunted by smell and not by sight, and in any case at night; and an elaborate system of coloration to avoid natural enemies by daylight was therefore unnecessary. As for man, it was probable that primitive people were to a large extent colourblind and in any case insensitive to tones and

shades, so that subtleties of markings were equally wasted on them.

Catchpole joined in with some remarks on the

contribution of African game to the art of interior decoration. He was designing, he said, a material for curtains based on the colour scheme of Grant’s gazelle, and was planning to launch two new

shades for sitting-room interiors; one, “Cobus grey”, copied from the coat of the waterbuck, and the other, “Pachyderm pink”, from the inside of the hippopotamus’s nostrils. He was very excited over his discoveries.

“Africa is so magnificently modern I” he exclaimed, “We’ve neglected it for far too long.

Now, at last, it will come into its own as a wonderful source of original design in decoration.

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“I saw the Game Warden in Manila,” de Mare

intervened hastily. “He says we’re to keep a sharp lookout for a gang of Timburu rhino poachers in these parts. They’ve just killed a game scout who was trying to round them up. They’re ugly

customers, it seems.”

“But how thrilling!” Catchpole said. “Fancy

poaching rhinos! So much more unwieldy than

pheasants or rabbits. Why do they poach the poor dears?”

“For aphrodisiacs,” de Mare replied.

“Good heavens!” Catchpole exclaimed. “I

should never have thought that a rhino would have that effect. Of course, they are primitive looking things.”

“You don’t look at them,” de Mare explained.

“The Timburu sell the horns to Somali traders, who smuggle them down to the coast, and they —

the horns, I mean — finally get shipped to China and made into a powder.”

“What a sAame!” Catchpole said. “To think of

those poor prehistoric dears laying down their lives to stimulate the jaded appetites of the teeming millions of China! Could they know that they were being sacrificed on the altar of Venus, would they die more gladly, I wonder?”

“I doubt it,” de Mare replied.

“You ought to try it, some time,” Cara Baradale said. Her voice was low and husky, with an undertone of exasperation. “In small doses, not too

strong.”

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“There’s nothing I should love more. But I

think you would be better without it, don’t you, my sweet?”

Cara didn’t answer, and Lord Baradale quickly switched the conversation back to the Timuru. He asked de Mare a string of questions about their methods of hunting. They used poisoned spears, mostly, de Mare explained; rhino’s hide was

generally too thick for arrows. They were young warriors, as a rule, newly circumcised and anxious to obtain trophies of their own prowess, and

money to exchange for camels and cattle with

which to buy wives. Three or four would stalk the rhino to within fifteen or twenty yards and then hurl their spears simultaneously into its side. It was real murder, de Mare said; rhinos were easy game, and sometimes the poachers would get six or seven in a week.

Liqueurs were served with coffee, and afterwards the party sat out under the tree and watched

the starlight on the river and the mysterious misty veldt beyond, where a thousand invisible forms crept and stalked, fed and mated, listened and sniffed for smells, in the busy darkeness. A slight breeze stirred the acacia branches and cooled the faces of those who sat, replete and rather sleepy, beneath it.

Lady Baradale was the first to say goodnight.

When she had gone, de Mare leant over the back of Vachell’s chair and said, in a low voice: “She wants to see you in her tent.” A little later Vachell 36

pleaded fatigue and walked off with his lamp to his tent. He” left the lamp inside and made his way cautiously across the grass to obey the summons.

Lady Baradale was waiting for him, seated at

her dressing table. She wore deep green velvet dinner pyjamas that glowed like creme dementhe in candlelight. The scent of perfume mingled with the smell of sun-bleached canvas. Vachell sniffed with interest, and diagnosed Chanel No. 5. The tent was a large one, with a veranda at one end and a bathroom partitioned off by a canvas flap at the other. To the right was a camp-bed with

mosquitonet, to the left a green-and-white check curtain that concealed a row of hanging skirts and dresses. The dressingtable, with a three-piece jointed mirror, was between the entrance and the bed. An electric bulb dangled from the ridge pole above it, and a reading-lamp stood beside the bed.

A small leather travelling-clock on the dressingtable told him that it was a few minutes past

eleven.

“Please sit down,” she said. He pulled up a

campchair and obeyed. She kept her profile

towards him and smoothed her silvery waves with a skinny hand. “I guess Danny de Mare has talked with you about the burglary. There’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels

missing, Mr Vachell, and I want to get them

back.”

“Where were the jewels kept?” Vachell asked.

She pointed to a small square safe standing on 37

the ground beneath the table at which she sat.

“In there. It weighs heavier than it looks, and it has a burglar-proof lock. The safe wasn’t busted open, though, some one used the key.”

“Where did you keep the key?”

“In my pocketbook. It stays there all of the time. I keep the pocketbook in the pocket of my slacks all day, and at night I sleep with it under my pillow.”

“And you’ve never loaned the key to any one?”

“Never. These jewels are genuine, Mr Vachell, not copies, and they’re worth too much money to trust any one with the key. Even my maid isn’t allowed to open that safe. I’m certain I haven’t had my pocket picked, and I can’t figure out how any one can have taken the pocketbook from under my pillow without waking me. I wonder if the

thief could have drugged my after-dinner coffee, or something? I’m counting on you to find out.”

” I’ll do my best,” Vachell said. “Have you had a thorough search made in the native quarters?”

Lady Baradale shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t believe a native stole my

jewels. Look, I’ll show you.” She knelt down by the table, twiddled the key, and flung open the doors of the safe. Inside were two compartments.

The top one was occupied by a red leather jewel case. The lower section was filled with papers done up in bundles in elastic bands, some of them obviously personal letters.

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Lady Baradale pulled out the jewel case and

opened it, and Vachell looked over her shoulder.

He saw that none of the drawers in the case was empty. Diamonds, sapphires, topaz and zircons gleamed at him invitingly from the shadows.

There were no emeralds, rubies, or pearls.

“I get it,” he said. “This was a selective

burglary. He knew enough to pick out the plums and leave the small-time stuff. A native would have cleaned out the lot — anything that sparkled.”

Lady Baradale locked the safe again and stood up. “That’s how it looks to me,” she said. “I hate to have to admit it, but I’m afraid you won’t have to look farther than the white section of the camp for the thief.”

“How about this maid?” Vachell asked. “How

long has she been with you?”

“Two years. I like her, but I guess I don’t know a great deal about her history. She claims to be a Russian of good family. Her father was killed in the revolution and her mother brought her over to the United States when she was a baby. She was raised in Los Angeles. My daughter, whose home is in Hollywood, found her for me. She’s had

ample opportunities to steal from me before, but she hasn’t used them.”

“And the chauffeur, Rutley?”

Vachell watched her face carefully as he spoke.

The mask remained expressionless, under perfect control.

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“He came to me with excellent references, and I have no cause to doubt his honesty. He has no need to steal. I see no reason to suspect him of this.”

“What are his relations with the maid?” Vachell leant forward in his chair and kept his eyes fixed on Lady Baradale’s face.

“He has nothing to do with Paula.” A new and

harder note had stiffened her voice. She took up an orange-stick from the table and started to treat her nails. Her lips were pressed together in a hard line.

“Looks like most any one could have sneaked in here and extracted the key while you slept,”

Vachell commented. “Is there any lead on that dope angle? Do you remember any occasion on the night before the theft when a member of the party might have had a chance to monkey with your

coffee?”

“I’ve thought of that,” she answered. “I can’t call anything to mind.”