Murder At Wittenham Park (15 page)

Savage thanked him and returned to something of a hero's welcome from the others.

“How clever of you!” Loredana cooed. “This horrid place was really getting on my nerves.”

“Wish I could get my study back,” Gilroy remarked. He was finding the whole performance extremely irksome, though, as Dee Dee had observed, there was no hope for the study because of the rows that been overheard going on there.

“I wish we could bloody well leave,” McMountdown said irritably.

“Well, we hardly can do now,” Jim remarked, annoyed at Hamish's persistently negative attitude. “Not when he's just given ground.”

The realization that by asking for the library back they had all committed themselves to remaining did nothing to help the conversation. When Dulcie joked that the situation was getting more and more like something out of Agatha Christie, nobody laughed.

They were all longing for Dodgson to announce dinner when Inspector Morton entered, said “Good evening, all,” and walked across to Gilroy. In fact, he had several things to talk to the peer about, one of which was that a bottle of morphine had been discovered in the medicine cupboard, and morphine, as even the most dim-witted lord ought to know, was a deadly opiate. But at this moment there was a more urgent problem.

“May I have a word, sir,” he said quietly, drawing Gilroy aside. “There's been an accident down at the Lion Park.”

Gilroy blanched. Today had been just one piece of bad news after another. He told Dee Dee to start the meal without him and left hurriedly with Morton, while their guests crowded round to ask her what was going on.

9

I
T WAS A
perfect summer evening to go for a stroll before dinner. The grass was not yet wet with dew. The sky was a blue that was not yet darkening, and the late sun bathed the stone façade of Wittenham Park in gold, making it look almost distinguished. If Gilroy had been selling the place, this would have been the moment to snap the estate agent's photos. Only a single detail was wrong.

In one place the grass was wet. Not with dew, but blood. Ted Matthews's body lay on its back in the Lion Park's enclosure. His right forearm was attached to the elbow only by skeins of tissue and tendon, the other torn to the bone, his old safari jacket was ripped and soaked in blood, and his head lacked a recognizable face.

“Jesus!” Morton muttered. “Poor bastard.”

Gilroy gazed down at the corpse, temporarily too shocked to speak, while the ranger who had found it explained and two others stood by, holding rifles and keeping an eye open for the lions. The ranger was a young Oxfordshire man dressed in the big-game-hunter-style gear that Mathews himself had refused to wear, and he spoke with a strong local farming accent. His name was Gary.

“Ted meant to go off around five, sir, before Caesar woke up proper. The lions all snooze in the afternoons. But then a detective comes down to ask what 'e knows about the deceased up at the house and one way and t'other 'twas six before he had the dart and all that ready and we could get on with it.”

“What dart?” Morton asked.

“It's a tranquillizer, sir. Ted makes up what he calls his ‘cocktail,' he loads the dart in the gun and off we all go. He takes his vehicle and we need two others at least.”

Morton was looking puzzled and Gilroy found his voice sufficiently to explain. “The problem is, Inspector, when you tranquillize one of these brutes you have to protect it from the rest of the pride. Otherwise while it's wandering around groggy, the others attack it.”

“Friendly lot,” Morton commented, then looked down again at Matthews's mutilated body. “Jesus,” he murmured again. “I've never seen anything like that. Have you called a doctor?”

“He's on his way, sir,” Gary said. “Not that he'll be much good. Can we take Ted's body away now, sir?”

“Why didn't you before?”

“We didn't like to until you was here, sir. Even though we've had to chase the other lions off a couple of times.”

The rest of the pride were some distance away, moving around in a restless and disturbed way, watched by yet another ranger in a third vehicle. Morton realized that this was not exactly the safest place to be with a fresh corpse. Gary's extreme caution must have been a reaction to the investigation going on up at the house.

All the estate workers would have heard how nothing there was allowed to be moved, not even the body, though this was different. No human could have inflicted these wounds. It was a killing all right, and a savage one, but not a homicide.

“You'd better take him back to the workshop,” Morton said.

“Best use the lion stretcher, then.” Gary and another ranger fetched an unusually large canvas-and-wood stretcher out of the Land Rover's trailer and carefully lifted the body into it, folding the tattered arms across the abdomen. Morton noticed the blood was only just beginning to congeal. It left a wide stain on the grass. For the first time in many years, he felt sick.

They drove back in a small convoy, out through the gate in the electrified fence, and then to the workshop, with Gilroy thankful that the park had been closed early on account of the darting and there were no visitors around.

“So what exactly happened?” Morton demanded, when the corpse had been laid down on the floor of the room where Ted had prepared for his fatal mission.

*   *   *

T
HEY
had driven out from the park's offices around six-thirty. Ted was in his own Land Rover, the darting rifle secure in its clamp. He was towing a high-sided trailer, on which to lift the sedated lion, and had the specially fabricated stretcher in the back of his truck. A grown lion weighed all of five hundred pounds and the men would have to roll the lion sideways onto the stretcher before lifting it into the trailer. Then they would take it back to a cage and deal with the injured foot. The operation required three or four men.

Gary had gone in a second vehicle, two more rangers in a third. They were aggravated at running late, thanks to the detective, and to be missing good drinking time in the local pub. They had handheld walkie-talkies and they only had to drive along the park's winding roads for a few minutes to locate the pride. A male, two females, and several cubs were out in the open, lazily enjoying the last warmth of the sun, while Caesar lay apart from them beneath his favourite tree, occasionally licking his front paw.

They all looked somnolent and inactive, but Ted knew this was an illusion. In the wild they only killed every few days, and they had not been fed today.

“Are there any others around?” he asked over the radio.

“Can't see any,” Gary reported.

“Then go between Caesar and the pride and we'll get going.”

The rangers had driven off the road and positioned themselves on the grass, ready to head off any move by the other lions. Not that things would happen fast. The drug could take half an hour to act. They were facing the pride, their backs to Ted, but they knew what he would be doing.

Ted manoeuvred to within a few yards of Caesar and stopped, keeping his engine running, while he checked the rifle and loaded the steel cylinder of the dart. He had made up the dart himself with great care. The “cocktail” he had mixed up in one of his laboratory vials consisted of four millilitres of an opiate powder called Rompen and one millilitre of a liquid named Vetallar, plus a tiny amount of water, which produced a colourless solution of great potency. It would only need a drop, if he had a cut on his hand, to put him in serious danger of death, and the substance would have to be washed away with copious quantities of water immediately, before he injected himself with what the veterinary journals cheerfully called “an antagonist.”

This concoction went into a cylinder only a quarter inch thick, fitted with an explosive charge and a plunger. The final item, the hypodermic needle, was then screwed into the cylinder's top end, before the dart was fired like a low-velocity bullet. Firing a hypodermic into a lion's thigh was not the most elegant way to deal with the King of Beasts. The one certainty was that Caesar was not going to like it.

What happened after that could vary. The lion might career off, he might charge the Land Rover, he might react with fury at the dart itself and try to pull it out with his teeth, he might do anything. And Ted would proceed very cautiously until Caesar was definitely sedated. As his mentor in South Africa used to say, “There are good lions and bad lions, but no safe lions.”

Ted wound down the window and took aim at the fleshy, muscular part of Caesar's hind leg. Since the lion was recumbent, it was an angle shot. Caesar raised his great, dark-maned head and looked at him indolently as Ted fired.

There wasn't much of a bang. The rifle was only an adapted .22-caliber. But Caesar took off as if the Concorde had broken the sound barrier behind him. Growling, his tail thrashing, he charged the Land Rover, the dart firmly embedded in his rump. Ted hastily wound up the window. At the last moment Caesar sprang clear over the vehicle, walked around it growling angrily, then loped away.

The Lion Park wasn't densely wooded or large enough for him to vanish and Ted followed at a distance in the Land Rover, until Caesar sat down. Ted thought he was trying to extract the dart. Then he realized it was no longer embedded in the skin and must have dropped off along the way. At last, Caesar lay down, looking sleepy. It was thirty-five minutes since he'd been darted. Taking a normal rifle with him, Ted got out of the vehicle and approached cautiously. When he was satisfied that the lion was out for the count, he would radio the others, who were keeping the rest of the pride away.

Caesar stirred and came to when Ted was only four yards away. He lolloped groggily to his feet, then suddenly gathered himself and sprang, knocking Ted onto his back. There was no time to fire, only to fight with legs and arms against the lion's crushing, clawing biting weight.

*   *   *

E
VEN
though Inspector Morton's words about the Lion Park had been sotto voce, the way Gilroy left the room so rapidly with him caused immediate comment, from the self-centered to the curious.

“I suppose we'll have to wait for dinner until he's back, damn it,” Hamish complained to no one in particular, still smarting from having had his belongings searched earlier.

“Not at all,” Dee Dee said. “We shall dine at eight, with or without my husband.”

“What's happened?” Loredana asked. All of them except the Savages were together in the library. Loredana had been making stilted conversation with Priscilla, whose principal concern was catching the butler's eye for more gin.

“There's a small problem down at the Lion Park,” Dee Dee said.

“Nothing serious?” Loredana sounded concerned.

“I hope not.”

“Your keeper is such a nice man.”

“Aren't all men nice?” Dulcie asked innocently.

“What a silly thing to say.” Loredana gave her an icy look. “Trevor can be an appalling bore. Men are just a necessary nuisance, in my opinion.”

“Well, you're the expert.”

Sitting a little way away, Jim and Jemma listened to this exchange.

“There's going to be a show-down there before long,” Jim commented softly. “I might just have a word with Mrs. McMountdown.” He got up, leaving his daughter to read a glossy magazine, and went across.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Please do,” Dee Dee said, making room on the sofa. Savage was one of the very few people on this weekend whom she liked and, better, still trusted. Then it occurred to her that with him around she could temporarily cease shepherding Adrienne and get on with more important things, like working out cheaper menus with the cook, and she left them.

After a little small talk Savage casually asked Dulcie, “Had any luck finding that contract?”

He could hardly have grabbed everyone's attention faster if he had sprouted donkey's ears and begun braying. Adrienne looked flustered and Dulcie drew in her breath sharply, as if this were an unexpected lapse of taste. Even Hamish looked interested, while Loredana abandoned her stilted conversation with Priscilla.

“Since you ask, the answer is no,” Dulcie said. “But why do you ask?”

“You've mentioned it several times,” Jim said, as if defensively. “I merely had a sudden thought about where it might be.”

“It was nowhere in George's room,” Adrienne said, as she had many times before.

“Oh, no. I'm sure you're right about that. And I don't think the police have it either.”

“Well, spill the beans then, old chap,” Hamish said. “Don't keep us all in suspense.”

“Your wife might prefer to hear my ideas in private.” Jim smiled confidentially at Dulcie.

“I think I might,” Dulcie agreed, giving her husband a stony look.

“Why don't we go for a short stroll before dinner? It's a beautiful evening.”

“If that's allowed.”

“We can but try.”

Jim led her through to the hall, where they ran into Sergeant Timmins, who had just received the first results of inquiries about the Savages. Their neighbours all regarded Jim as reliable, if quiet. His former employers gave him good references. There was nothing conclusive about all this, but it inclined Timmins to respond positively. In any case Morton had emphasized that if the guests' freedom was too curtailed, they might well insist on their rights and leave. Both officers remained equally wary of the lawyer. So Timmins wished them a pleasant evening and they walked out onto the lawns that led down to the lake and the landscape of the late George Welch's development dreams.

When they returned twenty minutes later, Dulcie had the expression of someone to whom a truth has been revealed. Not an eternal truth, but a significant one. She now knew that she'd slept like a log last night because she'd been doped. Furthermore, Savage had explained his theory about the contract.