Murder on Safari (7 page)

Vachell and Chris congratulated him suitably

and toasted his success.

“We were lucky,” de Mare said. “We found last night’s kill and beat two or three gulleys down the river. My gun-bearer spotted the lion slinking out of the bottom of one of them. We marked him into a patch of bush, and the bearers beat up the gulley until he came out, and then Gordon got him with a peach of a shot. He dropped like a stone and never moved.”

The noise of the celebration attracted Lord

Baradale, who emerged from his tent looking hot and red-faced, with developer stains on his

fingers. They all had another round of gimlets and heard the story over again, in more detail and with dramatic embellishments, from Catchpole. Lord Baradale only grunted and muttered something

under his breath. It was clear that his temper was on edge. He even spoke sharply to Geydi when the young Somali, moving as though the very earth he trod on was beneath contempt, rattled the trays of the refrigerator when extracting ice cubes in readiness for the white wine at luncheon.

“It’s past one,” he said peevishly, after a third round of gimlets had been consumed. “Time for lunch. Where’s Lucy?”

“I haven’t seen her since our triumphant

return.” Catchpole said. “She must be brooding enviously in her tent.” Lord Baradale heaved

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himself out of his chair and went off to fetch her.

He strutted along on his short legs like a bantam in a hurry, too round to look impressive;

A few minutes later he returned to the table by himself. “She must have gone off somewhere,” he said. “I’ve been in my tent all the morning

developing, and I haven’t seen her. It’s damned inconsiderate. She knows I don’t like a late lunch.

Well, we won’t wait.”

It was not until they had finished the cold

guineafowl and canned Bradenham ham at two

o’clock that any one started to worry. Then de Mare slipped away from his seat and disappeared behind the tents. He came back looking perturbed and anxious. Chris Davis jumped to her feet the moment she saw his face.

“Rutley says he took her out in the car this

morning and dropped her at the drift about

eleven,” he announced. “She told him that she wanted to walk home along the river, and no one seems to have seen her since.”

“By herself?” Lord Baradale asked sharply.

“I was out with Gordon, and Vachell had gone

off in the plane with Chris. She shouldn’t have done it. She knows that no one’s allowed out of camp without one of the hunters.”

“Rutley had no business to let her go off alone!”

Chris exclaimed.

“No. He’s behaved like a fool. Vachell, take a car and a gun-bearer, go down to the drift and work back along the river. I’ll start from this end.

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You’d better go with him, Chris.”

“I’m coming with you, de Mare,” Lord

Baradale said. “This isn’t your fault. At last I’ll be able to get that bloody chauffeur sacked!”

At half past two de Mare, Lord Baradale, and

three natives, moving in open formation down the river, were halted by a shout from the hunter’s gun-bearer, a sturdy native by the name of Japhet.

“Look at the birds, bwana,” he said.

>, l╗ vv aiia,

A cloud of vultures was hovering and wheeling in the sky, black against a brilliant blue. De Mare squinted up at them in the strong light.

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “They are eating the lion which bwana Catchpole shot this morning.”

“There is another kill beyond,” Japhet said.

De Mare pulled out his glasses and focused on the hovering birds. He could see then that there were two separate points of attraction in the bush beneath. Sometimes the vultures settled in one spot, sometimes in another. He sprinted towards them up the gulley, dodging like a duiker through the bush.

A few minutes later he found all that remained of Lucy, Lady Baradale — a skeleton half covered with shreds of torn flesh and tattered strips of clothing, lying in a bloody trampled circle in the bush. Vultures wheeled overhead, angry at the sudden interruption. Lord Baradale panted up, and checked his impetus abruptly. He stared

down at the gruesome remnants, his chest heaving, the sun shining hotly on to his bare and

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polished head. Then he lifted his rifle and emptied the magazine into a cluster of vultures perched like obscene black fruit in the branches of a nearby tree. Three birds thudded heavily to the ground, and lay still.

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Half an hour after de Mare’s gun-bearer reached them, panting, with the news, Vachell and Chris Davis were back in camp. There was a tense air of expectation everywhere. Crowds of natives seemed to have sprung out of the ground. They stood

about in little clusters, chattering excitedly, and turning their heads at intervals to gaze towards the messtent where the Europeans had assembled.

They were all there except Lord Baradale. He

had retreated into his tent, and no one liked to disturb him. De Mare was pacing up and down

with nervous, jerky strides, looking white and unhappy. He was responsible for the safety of the party; the death of one of them might mean the end of his career. Gordon Catchpole sat limply in a chair, drinking neat gin. Rutley lounged by the opening, impassively smoking cigarettes. His

ruddy-cheeked, handsome face betrayed no

expression. Occasionally he raised his eyes and glanced at Paula, who sat rigidly with her hands 66

clasped on her crossed knees, pale and nervous.

Vachell looked at her quickly as he stooped to enter through the open flap . Her face was heartshaped; high, wide cheekbones, a pointed chin,

and dark wavy hair with a widow’s peak. Her skin was chalkwhite and she had long eyes with

heavily mascaraed lashes. She was small-boned, and wore a tight cream-coloured linen skirt, a navy open-necked linen shirt, and sandals.

De Mare halted abruptly in his stride as Chris and Vachell entered. He nodded towards the table and chairs in the centre of the tent.

“Sit down,” he said. His voice was low and incisive.

“We’ve got to get to the bottom of this. It

won’t be pleasant, but we’ve got to face it. We’ve got to find out how Lady Baradale died.”

“Can’t we send to Malabeya for the D.C.?” Catchpole asked. His voice was edgy and plaintive.

Surely it’s his job to deal with legal things like this.”

De Mare turned and stared down at him. “Yes,

it is. But the D.C. isn’t at Malabeya. Vachell and I called at his office yesterday and he’s gone out on a camel safari. No one knows when he’ll be back.”

“What a god-forsaken country,” Catchpole said.

He reached for the gin bottle and poured another drink.

“Lady Baradale must have been dead for at least two hours when we found the — her,” de Mare

went on. “Probably more. That would mean she

died some time between eleven and twelve-thirty 67

this morning. I don’t think we can put it any closer than that.”

“How about the vultures?” Vachell asked.

“Couldn’t we fix the time of the … accident, if any of the boys noticed when they started to, well, come around?”

“We could have,” de Mare answered, “if it

hadn’t been for Gordon’s lion. Lady Baradale’s remains were found about a hundred yards from where we killed the lion this morning. The

vultures started to gather at once, of course, and they were all round the place while the boys were skinning it. From a distance you wouldn’t be able to tell that they’d found a second kill;”

Paula gave a convulsive shudder and buried her face in her hands.

“My God, it’s awful,” Gordon moaned. “I can

see it all now! Poor dear Lucy came walking along after we’d shot the lion, not a thought of danger in her head, and met his infuriated mate! The lioness charged, intent on vengeance; she sprang on poor unsuspecting Lucy; she buried her claws in …

oh, I can’t bear it!” He rocked to and fro in his chair.

De Mare stared at him grimly, and with some

disgust. “That theory had already occurred to me,” he said, “in a rather less dramatic form.

Unfortunately the vultures got too long a start. I couldn’t see any traces of lion-mauling, but there’s very little left to show traces of anything.”

Paula shivered and cried out: “Oh, this is horri-68

ble!” Chris Davis patted her on the shoulder and said: “Spare us the details, Danny.”

“I propose that Vachell and I should examine

the remains shortly,” de Mare went on. “In the meantime, we must trace her movements as well as we can. Rutley, it looks as though you were the last one to see her alive. What time did you drop her at the drift?”

“We left here just after ten,” Rutley answered.

His voice was sulky and he spoke with an air of defiance. “She said she wanted to go for a ride. We went along the Malabeya track for six or seven miles until we came to a herd of giraffe. We

watched them for a bit, and then we turned back.

When we got to the drift she said she wanted to walk back to camp from there for the exercise. I suppose that was about a quarter to eleven. I didn’t look at the time.”

“Did Lady Baradale often walk home when she

went out for a drive with you?” de Mare asked.

His voice was as even and precise as ever.

Rutley shifted on his feet and flushed slightly.

“Sometimes,” he said. “She said she wanted the exercise.”

Vachell, his eyes fixed on the chauffeur’s face, asked: “Did she intend to take that walk when you started out?”

Rutley turned on him with something like a

snarl. “How the hell do I know what she meant to do?” he snapped. “She didn’t tell me her intentions, did she? All she said was she wanted a drive.

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What’s it got to do with you, anyway? You

keep — “

“Shut up, Rutley,” de Mare said. “You know

perfectly well you had ‘no right to let Lady

Baradale walk back alone. It was criminal carelessness, if not worse. It’s you who are

responsible — “

He checked himself in mid-sentence and went

on with his striding to and fro. “What did you do after Lady Baradale got out of the car?”

“I drove back to camp.”

“What time did you get in?”

“Just after eleven.”

De Mare jerked his head up sharply and looked at the chauffeur.

“It’s about three miles to the drift,” he said.

“How could it take you twenty minutes or more to drive three miles?”

Rutley glared at him and fingered the wide brim of his double-felt hat in his hands.

“I keep telling you, I didn’t watch the time, particular,” he said. “I wasn’t hurrying. I stopped a few minutes for a smoke when I left her at the drift.”

De Mare stared at him for a few moments

without speaking, and then resumed his pacing.

The chauffeur looked as though he was going to take a swing at his questioner at any moment.

“After you got back to camp,” de Mare went

on, “what did you do?”

“Adjusted the timing on one of the trucks.”

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‘Were you in camp all the rest of the morning?’

Rutley’s eyes flickered quickly in Paula’s direction, and again back to de Mare.

“Yes,” he said.

Vachell was watching Paula. He saw her raise

her head sharply to glance at the chauffeur, and then lower it again to stare at her clasped fingers.

“Then Lady Baradale left the drift at about a quarter to eleven,” de Mare continued, thinking aloud. “The spot where we found her body is

about two miles from the drift. If nothing

occurred to delay her, she’d have reached it

between 11.15 and 11.30 - say 11.30. Paula, did Lady Baradale say anything about going for a walk when she left camp in the morning?”

Paula looked up with an anxious face. “I don’t believe so,” she said. Her voice was rather shaky.

“She said she was going to take a ride with George —with Mr Rutley.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Right after ten, like George says.”

“Did you see Rutley when he came back?”

“Sure. I saw him fixing the motor on the

truck.”

“And after that?”

The girl hesitated and passed her tongue over her brilliant carmine lips. “I guess he was

around,” she said. “Yes, I remember now. I saw him over at his workshop. I was in my tent all morning.”

“Where was Lord Baradale? Did you see him?”

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Paula seemed relieved when the questioning

took another turn. “He was right here in camp, I guess. Why don’t you ask him where he was?”

De Mare, still pacing up and down, paid no

attention to her remark. He looked across at

Vachell. “We’d better get this job over,” he said.

“The rest of you will stay here until we’ve

finished. I’ll tell a boy to bring tea.”

He led the way through the open flap and across the grass to Lady Baradale’s tent. The dead

woman’s remains had been collected in a sack and carried there, after much protest, by two reluctant natives. The others waited in uneasy silence in the stuffy messtent, trying to keep their imaginations from playing with the scene they knew was taking place.

“My God, this is awful,” Gordon Catchpole said at last. “I shall never forgive myself, never. I shouldn’t have killed that magnificent beast, leaving his mate to avenge him with poor Lucy’s blood… . Though I must say, I don’t think Danny ought to have left Lucy all alone in camp.

After all, he’s paid to profecrus.”

“He couldn’t protect her and get you a lion at the same time, could he?” Chris asked acidly.

“He didn’t get me a lion,” Catchpole said, “I got it for myself. I do really feel that he’s rather to blame. Chris, when do you think Cara will be

back? There’s something so strong and comforting about her.”

Chris walked to the tent opening and looked out 72

over the white sand and the blue river to the line of the veldt beyond. An immense, formless bank of violet and indigo cloud was massed over the flat horizon, vivid and heavy. The hills to the right looked dark and menacing, and every thorn tree was sharply defined.