Green City in the Sun (64 page)

     The house was ominously still. A clock ticked somewhere; animal heads with magnificent horns stared down from the walls. Inspector Mitchell
wished the earl hadn't chosen this district in which to kill himself.

     "I'm afraid your brother won't be coming down for breakfast, Dr. Treverton, because he isn't here."

     "Not here? Of course he's here."

     "He was found in his car early this morning on the Kiganjo Road. One of your midwives, a Nurse Billings, found him."

     "What do you mean, found him?"

     "I'm sorry to say that His Lordship drove out in his car sometime during the night and committed suicide with a pistol."

     Grace sat motionless. She gazed at the police inspector through gold-rimmed glasses. Then she said, "Are you saying that my brother is
dead?"

     "I'm very sorry, Doctor."

     "Are you sure it's Lord Treverton?"

     "Quite sure."

     Grace stood up. "Pardon me, please," she said, and left the living room.

     When she returned a moment later, Sir James was with her. "Tell me what happened, Inspector," he said as he sat on the sofa next to a visibly shaken and upset Grace.

     The policeman repeated everything and added, "The motor was still running when the nurse found him. We don't think he had been dead long. The body will be taken to the police post. You can, ah, see him there."

     Grace said, "Oh, my God," and Sir James took her into his arms.

     "Thank you for coming by, Inspector," he said in a tight voice when the policeman rose. "I'll come to the station later and verify identity."

     "That would be most appreciated, Sir James."

     The inspector turned to go but stopped when he saw Rose Treverton standing in the doorway of the dining room.

     He stared at her. A large bruise covered her left cheek.

     "What has happened?" she said.

     James and Grace looked up. "Rose!" said Grace. "You're still here!" When she saw the bruise, she got up and went to her sister-in-law. Grace whispered, "What on earth has happened to your face?"

     But when she reached out to touch the black-and-blue cheek, Rose drew back. "Why is this policeman here?" she asked.

     "Rose," Grace said in a tight voice, "please come and sit down. I'm afraid there's some bad news."

     But she remained in the doorway. "What is it?"

     The inspector shifted self-consciously. He had glimpsed Countess Treverton on occasion—in her box at the Nairobi Racecourse or riding by in her chauffeured car. She was always beautiful and every bit the aristocrat. Her appearance now shocked him: the disheveled hair, half pinned up, half falling down; the rumpled dressing gown; the circles under her eyes; and that monstrous bruise.

     Grace said, "Rose, there's been an—" She stopped. She had been about to say "accident."

     "Is someone hurt?"

     Grace, unable to speak, turned to Sir James, who said, "Valentine is dead, Rose."

     Rose flinched, as if she had been struck.

     "Apparently he shot himself—" James's voice caught.

     Rose looked confused. "Valentine is dead?" she whispered. "He
killed
himself? But where?"

     "In his car, Your Ladyship," the inspector said. "On the Kiganjo Road. Sometime during the night. I offer my deepest condolences."

     She turned woodenly and moved to one of the dining room chairs. She put her hand on it as if to pull it out but simply stood, her eyes searching the polished surface of the table. "Valentine," she murmured. "Dead..."

     Then she buried her face in her hands and cried, "I hadn't meant for that to happen! Oh, Carlo!"

     After the inspector had gone, James and Grace helped Rose into the living room. "Rose," said Grace in a numb voice, "what happened last night? How did you hurt your face? And why haven't you gone away with Carlo?"

     Rose stared into her lap. "Valentine hit me. He came upstairs and said he was going to stop me from leaving him. We had a row. He struck me across the face."

     Grace waited. "And then what happened?"

     "I don't know. He knocked me unconscious. I only just woke up a few
minutes ago. I didn't hear him leave the house—" Rose started to sob. "You must believe me! I hadn't meant for him to
die!"

     "W
ELL
," I
NSPECTOR
M
ITCHELL
said as he walked into the small, plain police station, "this'll be one for the gossips!"

     An African constable looked up from his Corona typewriter and grinned.

     Mitchell shook his head and hung his hat on a peg. "Nothing like a high society suicide to get the tongues wagging!"

     As he was about to sit down at his desk to his morning tea and toast, another constable came running in. "Bwana! Come quick!"

     With a sigh, and asking himself why he had ever left his peaceful Cheshire to emigrate to Kenya, Inspector Mitchell followed the constable outside and around back into the police yard. Lord Treverton's car was there, its door and trunk open, undergoing an inspection by two constables.

     When Mitchell came around to the rear, he stopped cold and looked into the trunk. "Good Lord! Who is it?"

     Third-Grade Constable Kamau said, "We don't know yet, sir. There appear to be no identity papers on him. But we haven't searched him thoroughly. I wanted you to see him like this before we moved him."

     "Dead, I suppose?"

     "And for a long time, I think."

     "Get the photographer out here."

     Mitchell gazed down at the body in the trunk and felt all appetite for breakfast evaporate. The victim, wearing only trousers and a white silk shirt, was barefoot and bound with rope at the ankles and wrists. He had been shot through the head.

     "E
XECUTION STYLE?" SAID
Superintendent Lewis of the Criminal Investigations Division in Nairobi. He had just arrived in Nyeri, after receiving
a call from Inspector Mitchell, and was accompanying the inspector out to the police yard.

     "It looks that way," Mitchell said. "Trussed up like a sacrificial goat. Shot once, cleanly, through the head."

     "Any idea who he is?"

     "None at all. We've asked around. Appears to be a foreigner. No one knows him, and no one's been reported missing."

     They came to the car and looked into the empty trunk. Blood was spattered near the wheel well.

     "I reckon he was made to climb in," Mitchell said. "His hands and feet were tied, and then he was shot. The earl saved himself the trouble of trying to get a body into the trunk."

     Superintendent Lewis, a short, plump man with bifocals and a walrus mustache, stroked his chin in thought. He'd been called in on the Treverton case because it now involved a murder. "Are the pictures ready yet?"

     "Not yet, Superintendent. But I've told the man to hurry with the developing."

     Lewis walked around to the left side of the car and looked in. Directly across, on the driver's door, he saw a small bloodstain, just about on level, he estimated, with where the earl's head would have been as he sat behind the wheel.

     "The motor was running, you say?"

     "Yes, Superintendent. The way I see it, Lord Treverton put the man in the trunk, shot him, then drove off with the intention of dumping the body where animals could get at it or of burying it. But somewhere along the way, on the Kiganjo Road, he was overcome with guilt and remorse, pulled over, and put the gun to his own head."

     "Has the pathologist arrived yet?"

     "He's on his way up from Nairobi."

     Superintendent Lewis looked all over the inside of the car, noted the few things scattered about—a pair of men's gloves, an old magazine, a blanket neatly folded—then settled his small, intelligent eyes on the passenger seat. There were flecks of dried mud on it. Stepping back, he looked down at the running board and saw two big smudges of mud, which might or might not be taken for footprints.

     "Does the family know about this development yet?" he asked Inspector Mitchell.

     "Not yet. I informed them of the earl's death this morning. I thought I'd wait until you took a look at the situation before I followed up.

     The superintendent looked at Mitchell over the rim of his bifocals and said, "If you don't mind, Inspector, I'd like to be the one to break this news to them."

     Inside the police office the two men sat over the newly developed photographs. Superintendent Lewis lingered a long time over the shots of Treverton, his head, in profile, leaning against the window, a small round hole with powder burns in his left temple. There was also a photograph of the gun in his hand, resting on the seat at his side. In the picture bits of mud on the passenger seat could be seen. And the mud appeared to be fresh.

     T
HEY WERE SITTING
at the breakfast table with cold cups of tea before them when Rose came in and said, "He's not there!"

     James got up and helped her into a chair, while Mona poured from a fresh teapot and pressed the steaming cup into her mother's hands. But Rose didn't drink. "Carlo isn't in the greenhouse!" she said.

     "Where could he be?"

     Tim Hopkins got up and went to the window. He looked out at the deserted coffee fields, listened to the silence from the river, where the processing machinery stood idle, and heard, far away, the song of mourning in the Kikuyu village. The earl, he knew, would be greatly missed.

     But not by him.

     "Where would Carlo have gone to?" Mona asked, sitting next to her mother and laying a hand on her arm.

     Rose shook her head as tears gathered in her eyes.

     "Perhaps he got worried because you hadn't shown up as planned," James said. "Maybe he's at the train station."

     Tim said, "Someone's coming. Oh, it's that police inspector again. Got another bloke with him this time."

     "Grace," said Rose, seizing her sister-in-law's wrist, "I don't want to talk to them! Please keep them away from me!"

     "Don't worry, Rose," Grace said bleakly. Her face was white and drawn; she hadn't touched her tea. "James and I will see to everything."

     But Superintendent Lewis wanted in particular to ask Lady Rose a few questions. His first was how she had come by the bruise on her face.

     She twisted her hands in her lap and didn't meet his eyes as she said, "I fell."

     "You fell?"

     "Last night. I tripped on the edge of the carpet and hit my jaw on the edge of the dressing table."

     "Do you know what time your husband left the house last night?"

     "No. I was—sleeping."

     "Do you know
why
he left the house in the middle of the night?"

     "Superintendent," said James, "is this really necessary? Lady Rose has suffered a terrible shock. Surely I can answer your questions. I was in the house last night, too."

     His bushy eyebrows rose. "You were? Well then, perhaps you can help." He pulled a small notepad out of his breast pocket, flipped it open, and said to James, "You were close friends with the earl, were you not?"