The African Poison Murders (17 page)

“West’s no fool,” Corcoran protested. “He’s had experience of bush fires. He’d turn back if he felt the smoke getting too thick for his health.”

“If he was able,” Vachell said, and walked on.

Corcoran started to say something, checked himself, and shrugged his shoulders. Then he, too, began to search, taking a zigzag path through the burnt-over woods. Now and again a branch fell from a burning tree with a crash and a shower of sparks. A chip off a smouldering log that fell just behind him flew into his shoe and burnt his heel severely. He cursed loudly and limped on with increased reluctance.

Vachell was well ahead, quartering the ground like a bloodhound. He seemed quite determined that something had gone wrong.

A few moments later Corcoran stopped abruptly, and stared at the ground by his feet. Out of some straggling brambles that had been singed but not destroyed protruded something stiff and black. Corcoran leant down very slowly, to make certain, and then raised his head and tried to shout. The sound emerged from his throat as a sort of hollow croak.

Vachell heard it, and came racing back. He pulled 168

aside the half-charred brambles with a vicious tug; burnt at the roots, they snapped off easily. A faint smell of burning feathers was in the air. Corcoran’s eyes were fixed on the end of a black, shrivelled-up leg, bearing the remnants of what had once been a shoe.

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Prettyman’s cook had prepared a large tea, for he understood that the bwana from Marula was an important Government officer who had eaten no lunch. He was surprised, therefore, when the tray reappeared in the kitchen with the food almost untasted on the plate.

“Europeans are wasteful like chiefs whose wives are so numerous they do not know which is which,”

be remarked. “Why do I make cakes, when they are rejected as if they were stones? Why am I not left alone to sleep, if food is cooked for weevils?”

“It is the way of Europeans,” the houseboy said philosophically. “I think this European is ill — he pushed the food away and his appearance is that of a man whose head aches severely. What does it matter? He has left plenty of tea in the pot for us, and there is sugar in the bowl.”

“It is true,” the cook agreed, “that there is always a medicine-man ready to profit by another’s sores.”

In Prettyman’s bare, tin-roofed veranda Vachell smoked one cigarette after another while the sun 170

went down in a blaze of crimson over the hills. His eyes were tired and there was something dispirited in the way he sat, forearms resting on thighs, hands dangling down between his knees. Even Prettyman, leaning on the rail chewing a pipe, knew there was something seriously wrong. The superintendent had returned late, still black as a stoker, insisting on a bath before tea; and then he had eaten next to nothing, and kept silent as a giraffe. Prettyman could understand that he’d feel upset; West had been his host, and no man would want to break the hews to Janice. Still, policemen had to learn to take it, Prettyman reflected; a man so senior ought to be used to anything by now.

“It’s a darned funny thing, if you come to think of it,” he ventured, “that two fellers should get overcome by smoke, ostensibly, and go west in the same week. Of course, there’s no doubt this is all open and above-board, I suppose? I mean, no one could have poked West into the fire, or any hankypanky of that sort?”

The superintendent threw his cigarette-end over the veranda railings and watched its parabola through the air. He took so long to reply that Prettyman thought: huh, so you won’t talk; but then Vachell leant back in the wicker chair, stretched out his long legs, and said:

“On the surface everything looks tidy as a convict’s cell. West went back to see if all the boys had come out safely; he got cut off, tried to buck the flames, and the fire got him. It’s happened lots of 171

taken her in charge. Shorn of his facetious manner he had seemed at a loss for words, but he had put her into a car and driven her back to her home, and arranged for the native boys to carry on with the work of the farm. Janice had refused to go to a neighbour, or to let anyone come to stop with her at home.

The two askaris were still on duty there, but Vachell wasn’t satisfied. He’d always played his hunches, and now that the hunch was bad he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. It was very bad, and very much there. Things that had long been hidden, festering in the dark, were bursting out, like pus from a rotten sore too long bandaged up. Once the boil had burst there was no retreat. The evil had to come out; but who would be corrupted by its poison none could say.

When it had grown dark enough to see the red glow of a cigarette across the narrow veranda, Prettyman broke in on his thoughts. From the livingroom came a tinkle of glasses and bottles; the sun had gone down, and the houseboy had not forgotten to observe the European ceremony connected with that daily event.

“Would you like me to make my report now, sir?”

he inquired. “It’s past office hours, but I thought that possibly in a murder case….”

Vachell relaxed in his chair and laughed. “Murderers do get careless about Government hours,”

he said. “It doesn’t show a proper spirit in this time 174

of national emergency, but since it’s too late to stop the rot I guess you’d better go ahead.”

“I followed out your instructions,” Prettyman began. “First of all, about the anonymous note. You know, ‘If you want to find the murderer of Karl Munson, ask Dr Lawson who went to him last-month and what he prescribed.’ I haven’t been able to trace the typewriter it was written on yet. It isn’t Munson’s own machine, I got a sample of that and the type’s different. West and Parrot say they don’t possess one. Wendtland does, I believe, but I haven’t been able to get its fingerprints yet. It may be a long job. There are probably dozens of typewriters in the district and if I have to check up on them all….”

“It won’t be necessary,” Vachell said. “Did you see Dr Lawson?”

“Yes. I saw him first thing, but he couldn’t help much. I asked him whether anyone connected with the Munson household had been to see him recently, and he said neither Uncle Karl nor Mother Munson ever went near him. He said Ma Munson would much rather bleed to death than pay for a suture. The only person connected with them who had been to see him lately was Anita Adams.”

“Why, what was the matter with her — malnutrition?”

“Well, yes, in a way — at least it was some sort of digestive trouble, I gathered, only Dr Lawson said it was because she was run down. He’told her she ought to go away for a rest, but she said she couldn’t afford it and wouldn’t leave the children 175

anyway, so he gave her an ordinary tonic and she hasn’t been back since. I don’t see what we can get out of that, do you, sir?”

“It doesn’t seem to fit,” Vachell agreed.

“Then there was the second point,” Prettyman went on. “So far I’ve had no luck. I couldn’t find a soul on the place who saw anyone go into Munson’s bedroom between the time he went out to the cowsheds, on the day he died, and the time his boy started to do out his room.”

Vachell nodded in the darkness. “I didn’t expect you would. But someone walked into Munson’s bedroom, just the same. The guy who killed him did.”

The houseboy appeared with a tray of drinks and put it down on a table. He came back a second time with a gasolene lamp, ready pumped and lit.

Prettyman poured out two whiskies, handed one to his guest, and took a small, black notebook out of his pocket.

“I’ve got everything I collected in here,” he went on. “Actually, I don’t think anyone could have got into Munson’s room unobserved for the best part of half an hour after he left, which was about sixfifteen a.m. One of the poultry-boys, by the name of Mbegu, was sweeping the .paths round about the sort of shed the Munsons sleep in, at the time Munson went out. He says he saw the bwana leave his room, and that for some time after that he was sweeping under the windows and round about the front of the rooms; and he’s absolutely positive that 176

no one else went in or out. Of course, you know how unreliable that sort of evidence is, sir; but this boy does seem awfully positive, and says he does the same job every day and he’d be sure to notice if anything so unusual happened as someone sneaking into Munson’s room.”

“He needn’t have sneaked.”

“No, I mean gone in, in any manner. Of course, we can’t be certain how long this boy was there. He says till seven, but seven is just a nice round hour, and we can’t rely on that. But Mrs Munson says that she came out of her room at about a quarter to seven and he was still on the job. So we can knock out the time between, say, six fifteen and six fortyfive, so far as the person we’re trying to find is concerned. After six fortyfive there doesn’t seem to have been anyone about until Munson’s boy Mwogi went in to make the bed and sweep his bwana’s room a little after a quarter past seven. I think we can be fairly sure of that time, because Mwogi said he started on the bedroom directly after he’d taken the children’s breakfast across to the schoolroom, and I gather that’s held punctually at seven-fifteen. So this burglar chap’s best bet for getting unobserved into Munson’s bedroom seems to have been some time between a quarter to seven and a quarter past.”

“How about the window in the back?”

“In my opinion we can rule that out. Luckily, it looks slap on to the kitchen and the boys’ quarters, and you know what a kitchen’s like at that hour.

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People of all sorts coming and going, three-quarters of them having nothing to do with the household staff but just drifting in for a chat. The chances would be a hundred to one you’d be spotted if you tried to climb in by the window. Besides, if you were seen, obviously your actions would arouse a good deal of interest, to say the least. But the door of Munson’s room isn’t in sight of anything, except the side windows of the sitting-room, and if by any chance you were seen walking in, no native would think twice about it — that is, if you were someone belonging to, or in some way connected with, the Munson family, as I gather you’re assuming.”

“Okay, check on that,” Vachell said. “It makes sense, though it’s not conclusive. But you’ve overlooked one thing.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Prettyman said, a little stiffly. “If I may say so, it would be easier to make an efficient inquiry if I were to be given some indication of what the person I’m trying to trace intended to do.”

“He did it, he didn’t intend. I have to tighten up a few bolts on the theory before I put it on the road.”

“I’m sure you know best, sir. May I ask what it is I overlooked?”

“The third way into Munson’s room.”

Prettyman poured out two more drinks, squirted the soda into them, and said, a little defensively: “You mean the door that leads into the bathroom, and then into Mrs Munson’s room. Yes, but the 178

poultry-boy swears that no one went into either room, Munson’s or his wife’s.”

“No one who wasn’t already there.”

“Yes, I see,” Prettyman said slowly. “You mean, before Mrs Munson went out she could have simply walked through. Yes, I suppose she could. There’s no method of proving it one way or the other, I’m afraid.”

“None,” Vachell agreed. “Go ahead with the rest of the story.”

“I tried to get everyone’s movements for that halfhour straightened out, but it’s a hell of a job, sir; you can’t get any native to be accurate about times.

Wendtland seems to have a cast-iron alibi; he was thirty miles away, on his farm. So was Parrot, according to his headman, though I haven’t had time to check that yet with his other boys. Mrs Munson emerged at a quarter to seven, as I told you, and went to the store, where she issued weeding knives to natives working on the pyrethrum and made out labour tickets until Munson was discovered at eight. By the way, sir, there’s one small point there — I can’t see any connexion, but it might be worth noting.”

“Yes?”

“There’s a big drum of cattle-dip in the Munsons’

store. It’s open, anyone can get at it, and, of course, it’s full of arsenic. I wondered if it was quite safe, seeing how things are.”

“Things aren’t safe just at present, however else they are. Would there be a farm in the district that 179

didn’t have a drum of arsenical cattle-dip lying around?”

“No, I suppose not,” Prettyman admitted. “You can get hold of it anywhere. I just thought it might be rather a temptation. Well, to get on with the story: Miss Adams was coping with the chickens at the specified time, apparently that was her usual morning job, and Corcoran was out on a pony setting the task for some boys who were seeding and harrowing a field of oats. That’s as far as I got.

I didn’t have time to do the Wests, sir — besides, I thought you’d probably got them taped.”

“I haven’t anything taped yet,” Vachell said. “I guess you got all this from native boys?”

“Every bit of it, sir. They all seemed quite definite, I must say, and, of course, natives can be observant enough, but it’s no good pretending they’ve got the least sense of time.”

“I often wondered how a spider would feel if it got tight and had trouble on all eight legs, with three knees to a leg,” Vachell remarked. “Well, I guess this is it — fixing times of people working on a farm in Africa, with native witnesses who don’t use clocks. If I ever decide to rub out a guy I’ll pick a quiet dairy proposition for a background. One moment you’re milking a cow, next you’re bumping off a neighbour, and then you’re back again feeding the pigs. There’s one thing, though.” He knocked away a flying beetle that was hitting the lamp like a simple-minded bull.

“Yes?” Prettyman inquired.

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“We have a hidden witness who may give us a line.”

“A hidden witness?” Prettyman inquired. “I don’t quite understand.”

“A way of checking on the alibis,” Vachell said.

“It’s a shot in the dark, but it’s worth a try.”

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Clara Innocent was not altogether at ease. Her manner was as hearty as ever, but she fingered the papers on her desk a little too frequently, adjusted her shoulder straps a couple of times, and kept her eyes on the activities of the street below. Shops were opening up and down the main street of the little town, and natives with big baskets in their hands were setting out on marketing expeditions before the rush began.