The African Poison Murders (13 page)

“Here it is,” he said. “I knew it was here somewhere.”

He handed it over to Vachell, who looked curiously inside. A black sticky substance, so glutinous as to be almost solid, occupied half the tin.

Anstey rubbed his chin, a puzzled look on his face. “It is a funny thing,” he repeated. “I must ask my daughter about it when she gets back — at the moment she’s away. She’s my farm manager, you know. I’m certain that tin has been moved. I saw it myself over on that shelf about three weeks ago, the day the Wests were here for tea.”

Vachell looked up from the tin with a jerk of the head.

“Yes — delightful woman that, delightful. We were talking about this arrowpoison, as a matter of fact, and Mrs West wanted to see what it looked like, so I fetched the tin. But I’m sure I put it back.

However, here it is now.”

“And here, with your permission, sir, it stays,”

Vachell said. “I’m taking charge of this until the local population of thugs and maniacs is materially reduced.”

Anstey was standing by the desk, gazing abstractedly out of the window at the rolling glade and forest that stretched away to merge into the blue 126

valley far below. Now his manner underwent a subtle change. He brought his thoughts back from regions of theory and speculation with an obvious jerk, and looked at Vachell as if he were seeing him for the first time.

“You believe that this poison was used to bring about Munson’s death?” he asked abruptly, in suddenly crisp tones.

“Maybe — maybe not. I can’t tell, yet.”

“You are right to be cautious.” Anstey searched his visitor’s face with his keen eyes, as if uncertain how much he could say. Then he added: “When my boy told me of Munson’s death I asked his opinion and he answered: ‘God has helped us, because this was a bad man.’ I can almost believe he was right. We are told that God moves in a mysterious way to work His will. A student of the Bible, a Fundamentalist, might say that Munson’s sins have found him out. Are you certain that you are wise to question the judgment that has come upon him at last? Many innocent people have suffered injustice and ill-treatment at his hands. Must others suffer, after his death — must even his dead body have the power to bring down misery?”

Vachell looked at him curiously, and silence fell on the room. The ex-surgeon’s face was ruddy and healthy-looking as a child’s, but his eyes shone with some hidden inward fire. A breeze that stole in through the open window rustled the papers on the desk and Vachell answered:

“You’re advising me to let sleeping dogs lie?”

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Anstey nodded; his white hair was like a mane.

“There are times when that is the wisest thing to do.”

“Maybe, Sir Jolyot,” Vachell agreed. “But I don’t believe these dogs are fast asleep.”

He drove down the hill, absorbed in a train of thought, missing several trees by inches and doing no good to the springs of the car. His mind was on Sir Jolyot Anstey, an enigma; a fascinating talker, a brilliant intellect, once a famous surgeon, now an experimental philosopher, perhaps; a man to whom ideas were more real than persons, a mind built of scientific precepts in whose corridors the elusive ghosts of religious belief walked and dwelt.

As soon as he got off Anstey’s land he stopped the car on the edge of a glade, jumped out, and took a suitcase out of the back. He extracted a brown paper parcel, sat down with it on the running-board, and untied the string. Behind the car the heavy green shade of the forest ended abruptly; the high noon sun streamed over him, warming his shoulders and his bare head. A scarlet-winged turaco screeched in a falling cadence from the concealment of a tree. Vachell felt the excitement of the hunt as he fumbled at the string. He had a theory, and now he was going to see if it worked.

The parcel fell open and revealed a pair of heavy brown shoes, shaped like Indian moccasins, with thick leather soles. They were Munson’s, the ones he hadn’t worn on the morning he died. Vachell turned them over and examined both soles with 128

great care, letting the sunlight fall on them and screwing up his eyes in the glare. On the sole of the right shoe he found what he was looking for.

Taking a magnifying glass from his pocket he inspected it closely, and then ran his finger along the inside of the shoe. He felt like shouting, but instead he whistled a bar of an old tune, tossed his magnifying glass into the air and caught it, and returned it to a pocket of his coat. A glance at the autopsy report confirmed his theory, which had blossomed, now, like a full-blown rose in his mind.

In the sole of the right shoe was a small hole, almost invisible to the naked eye, where something had been driven through the leather. And the doctor, fortunately thorough, had noted a small, fresh puncture in the sole of Munson’s right foot.

Now, Vachell thought, things would begin to move.

Now he had proof that Munson was murdered, and he knew how the murder had been done.

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Prettyman was waiting at the Munson farm to report progress. The inquest was over, and an open verdict entered by the District Commissioner; no juries were called to inquests in Chania.

“Well, Munson’s underground,” Prettyman added. “I left the whole family having a good tuckin at Grant’s cafe — pork pies and strawberries and cream. Mother Munson’s paying. It’s created quite a sensation in Karuna already.”

“How was the funeral?” Vachell inquired. “Did it draw the town?”

“Not exactly, but about a dozen people turned up, and there was quite a Nazi atmosphere in a small way. Wendtland and a couple of his boyfriends were pall-bearers, all dressed up in their Bund breeches, which are much too baggy round the knees. (They start ballooning too low.) The fourth was Corcoran, of course. He looked a bit down about it all, I thought. I don’t think he’s altogether happy about being a sort of honorary Nazi, if you ask me.”

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“I’d like to know where he was last night,”

Vachell observed.

Prettyman’s eyes rested on his chiefs bruised temple and gaily decorated neck. He smoothed his moustache with one finger and inquired solicitously: “Did you have a bit of a bust-up, sir? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

Vachell shook his head. “A guy crowned me with a blunt instrument. He was burgling Munson’s room.”

Prettyman raised his eyebrows and smoothed down his hair. “After Munson’s papers, I suppose.

I don’t understand why Mother Munson and Corcoran are so thick with this Wendtland bloke.

Munson loathed him, if my information’s correct, and was out to spike his guns. Naturally, Wendtland would try to get hold of whatever dirt it was that Munson had on him as soon as he could, so I suppose he —”

“Burgled Munson’s bedroom and cracked me on the head when I interrupted,” Vachell concluded.

“That would be a swell idea except that Wendtland and Mother Munson seem to be good friends, so why stage a hush-hush burglary in the dark? Why not just walk in and take over the papers, so long as he knew where they were? There wasn’t any need to put me out, either. The papers were Mother Munson’s property, the police couldn’t take them over, not without breaking fifteen international conventions and scads of laws directly descended from 131

King John. Did you find out what Wendtland did with his time yesterday, by the way?”

“I haven’t had time to go out to his farm and check up with his boys, sir, but I’ve caught him out in one lie already. I asked him to give an account of his movements, and he said he was busy on the farm till soon after nine, when he went into Karuna to get a drum of cattle-dip and have a part of a plough repaired. He told me that he heard the news about Munson’s death in Karuna. That struck me as being unlikely, and it occurred to me, sir, that Corcoran might have phoned him, as soon as he — Corcoran — got to Karuna, and before he came to see me.”

Prettyman glanced at Vachell to see if the point had gone home. He hoped that the C.I.D. chief was a man who appreciated initiative in a rising young officer, and would put in a fair report so that credit would be given where credit was due.

“I managed to check this with the exchange before I came out here, sir,” he went on. “The supervisor got a move on, for once, and found that a call to Wendtland’s house was put through from the public call-box in the post office at approximately nine-forty yesterday morning. Corcoran got to my office at about a quarter to. That just about fits, doesn’t it, sir?”

Vachell nodded. “Good work. No way we can be certain the call was Corcoran’s, but it looks like it.

Then Wendtland hot-footed it out here to see if he 132

could pick up the papers he knew Munson had, but found we’d got here first.”

“It begins to look as though Mother Munson and Corcoran were double-crossing Uncle Karl, don’t you think, sir?”

“Wendtland gave Corcoran a message in German,” Vachell went on, speaking his thoughts aloud, “probably about the papers, and came back here at nine o’clock the same night. Maybe he came to collect the papers then. Well, he wouldn’t need to burgle them, if Mother Munson was in on his racket, so that leaves us with X and a broken pipestem.

…”

A

native came up with a note held in an extended hand. He wore a white houseboy’s kanzu, and Vachell recognized Mwogi, Munson’s personal boy.

“This letter has come to you from Bwana West’s,”

he said.

Vachell tore it open with a slight contraction in the chest and a quickening of the pulse. There were only two lines, in a sloping, sprawling hand. “This came for you by today’s post,” it ran. “Hope it will catch you at Munson’s. We expect you back tonight.”

A typewritten envelope of a cheap brand, bearing a local postmark, was enclosed. Inside was a piece of common ruled notepaper with a few typed lines.

It ran:

“If you want to know the murderer of Karl Munson, find out who he was going to meet in the pyrethrum 133

shed, and ask Dr Lawson who went to him last month and what he prescribed.”

Prettyman read it through twice, his lips pursed in a whistle. “By God, sir, this is interesting,” he exclaimed. “You know, that’s just what I’ve been thinking: if we could only find out what made Munson go into that drying-shed I believe we’d get at the truth. I’ve been thinking about that ever since yesterday morning. It seems to me there’s only one thing likely to have taken Munson there.”

The young policeman paused dramatically, hoping for an eager prompt. But his superior did not even glance up. He was unfolding a second note that he had taken from his pocket.

“Only one thing,” Prettyman repeated, raising his voice a little. “And that is — an appointment with someone he very much wanted to see —

secretly. A lady, in fact.”

Again he paused, but again no encouragement came. The superintendent was staring intently at the two notes, one in each hand, comparing the writing.

“Don’t you agree, sir?” Prettyman said desperately.

“We know which lady he was interested in.

And the pyrethrum shed is right on the path that leads to their farm. Supposing, now, Mrs West had made an appointment to meet him there, not meaning to keep it, of course, but knowing that if she didn’t turn up he’d wait for her until the fumes of the charcoal braziers took effect and he died….”

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At last his chief seemed to take in what he had been saying. Vachell looked up, and a grin spread across his face. “Keep going, and you’ll finish up in the Big Four,” he said. “You got an idea there.

Take a look at these two chits, will you?”

Prettyman took them in his hand and examined them carefully. One was Janice West’s covering letter; the other the unsigned note Vachell had found among the loose papers in Munson’s room.

“D. is being difficult,” he read aloud. “I’m afraid he’ll suspect. Don’t want him upset now. Be at same place tomorrow, same time, will get there if I can.

You understand, don’t you? It’s all so difficult. Love.”

“Would you say they were written by the same hand?” Vachell asked.

“Definitely not. They’re absolutely different. I don’t think one could possibly be the other in disguise. You mean… this looks as though Munson had some other woman in tow.”

“I don’t reckon Munson had any woman in tow,”

Vachell said. “There’s things to be done in Karuna.

Come on, let’s go.”

Prettyman followed behind, feeling resentful.

These blokes from headquarters are always as stuckup as hell, he thought; they don’t believe anyone else is capable of having ideas. But the handwriting on the note Vachell had found seemed, somehow, familiar. He was certain he had seen it before.

The problem buzzed in his head, troublesome as a mosquito, while Vachell gave instructions to the 135

corporal and questioned Mwogi further about Munson’s boots. As they reached the cars he swallowed his resentment and said:

“That handwriting in the note you found among Munson’s things, sir — I’m sure I’ve seen it before, and in the last month or so, too. I have an idea it’s at the station, in a letter someone wrote about a complaint. In that case I’ll be able to find it on the files.”

“Fine. Check it when you get back,” Vachell said. “Want to make a bet?”

Prettyman looked doubtful. “Not if you know the answer already, sir.”

Vachell tore a leaf out of his notebook and scribbled two words. He folded the paper twice and handed it over to his assistant.

“A bottle of Scotch if I’m wrong,” he said.

“What — you give me?”

“Sure.”

“Done,” Prettyman said. “If I may say so, sir, you’re giving a neat performance this morning of the Master Mind.”

“It all comes from the stars,” Vachell explained.

“They send down mineral emanations — strictly according to the Harvard classification, of course.”

Prettyman looked at him pityingly, and not without a trace of alarm. He hoped, as he got into his car, that the crack on the head had not affected the C.I.D. chiefs mind.

Vachell spent the afternoon in the distasteful job of writing a report. It was waste of time, but in 136

accordance with the first principle of colonial government: that at all costs the yawning maw of the registry, the gaping mouths of files, must be fed. The Commissioner, Major Armitage, was a great report reader, and if a particular sample didn’t come up to standard his choleric temper was apt to erupt. Vachell appended a request for a resume of all information in the hands of the police about the Nazi Bund, including an outline of their last plan, so far as it was known, for organized sabotage in the event of war.