The African Poison Murders (20 page)

“Yes, looking frightfully respectable in a gent’s lounge suiting, without that old raincoat of his, for once. He looked as though it had got him down, too. Of course, he was very friendly with the Wests.

He brought her, I think — anyway he was standing 203

with her all the time and sort of helping her out.

He’s got it badly, if you ask me. Shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t step into West’s shoes one of these days, when things have blown over a bit.”

“You’ll find it nice to go to weddings for a change,” Vachell remarked. “You know, you’re wasted in the police. If the Evening Standard heard about you they’d fire Corisande and sign you up.”

Prettyman sighed, and measured the perspective of the desk across the room with a pencil held upright in his hand. “I know you think I listen to gossip too much, sir,” he said, “but, after all, in a district like this it’s half the job — among the Europeans, I mean. I wanted to be an artist, as a matter of fact. However, I’ve traced something I hope you’ll think useful — more worthy of a policeman, so to speak.”

He took his wallet from an inner pocket of his khaki coat and pulled out a small slip of paper, folded over several times.

“Shoot,” Vachell said.

“It may mean a bottle of whisky for me.”

“You remembered whose handwriting was on the note I found in Munson’s room?”

“Better still, I’ve traced a letter in the file written in the same fist. We’ll make absolutely sure. Have you got the original note, sir?”

Vachell ran through the papers in his pocketbook until he found it — the scrawled, hastily written note cancelling a date because someone called D.

204 <

was getting suspicious, the note of a person having a flirtation or an affair.

“That’s it,” Prettyman said. “Now, here’s the letter on the file.” He drew towards him a sheet of notepaper covered with handwriting in the same loose scrawl. “Dear Sir,” it began, “I wish to report the theft of a high-grade Hereford heifer belonging to this farm which was last seen….”

“Check on that,” Vachell said. “They’re the same.”

“Now we’ll see about this bottle of whisky; I’m counting on it, because no one could possibly guess.” He started to unravel the slip of paper on which Vachell had written a name. “I must say, the last thing in the world I’d ever have believed is that a girl like that, with quite a decent cove already eating out of her hand, would look twice at a nasty piece of work, like Munson. He’s at least … well, I’ll be damned!”

Prettyman stared incredulously at the piece of paper in his hand and then at his superior. Vachell grinned.

“No whisky,” he said.

“By God, no,” Prettyman agreed. “Well, congratulations, sir. I had too pure a mind. Fancy a damned nice girl like Daphne Anstey carrying on with a stiff-necked old Boche twice her age …

Well, it just shows, you simply can’t tell what any woman will do next.”

“Check on that, too,” Vachell said.

205

After lunch Vachell drove a little way out of Karuna to an acacia wood on the edge of the big lake. It was shady there, and cool, and pleasant to hear pigeons calling and birds chirping overhead. He lay on his back in the shade and tried to get the facts sorted out in his mind. There were too many and yet not enough. Too many motives, too many lines crossing and re-crossing in a hopeless tangle. Yet, concerning Munson’s murder, West’s sudden death, there were almost no facts at all.

He went through the stories each person had given him, bit by bit, trying to find a flaw. Sooner or later all murderers were forced to lie about their movements, and he believed that with perseverance some little discrepancy of fact or statement could always be found. Sometimes the discrepancy was so insignificant that it was overlooked altogether; but always, he believed, it was there, a challenge to the investigator. Sometimes, even when found, it could be explained away; but at other times it couldn’t, and that was the beginning of the end.

206

But although he sought all the afternoon, he had not sifted from the evidence the one fact that would satisfy him before, in the cool of the evening, long shadows from the acacias fell across the lake shore and it was time to return. People concerned in the case had lied, often enough. But the inexplicable lie, the lie without apparent point, eluded him.

He looked into the police office on the way back and found Prettyman still there, long after hours, catching up on routine.

“I wish people would stop stealing stock and brewing beer illegally and busting into houses while murder cases are on,” he remarked. “One gets so awfully behindhand. They’ve no consideration. Oh, by the way, the lab rang up. The fellow gabbled off a lot of technical terms about Munson’s innards, but what it all amounted to, as I understood it, is that they’re stumped. Absolutely. Can’t find anything, and they’re mailing you a report to that effect tonight.”

“That’s what I expected,” Vachell said.

“Well, sir, you won’t have many disappointments in life if you keep that up. What do you think did him in — the evil eye?”

“Acocanthera schimperii.^

“Aco what?”

“Native arrowpoison. You can read all about it in there.” He threw a copy of the British Pharmaceutical Journal onto the table. “Anstey lent me that. There’s an article on page one hundred and sixty-two.”

207

Prettyman stared at the superintendent as if he were seeing things. “Sir, do I understand that you believe someone shot Munson with a bow and arrow?”

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Prettyman, you are a little inclined to sail off into space in pursuit of conclusions. I didn’t mention a bow, and the arrow only as an adjective.”

“Oh,” Prettyman said blankly.

“No one used arrows, so far as I know. On the sole of Munson’s right foot Dr Lawson found a small, fresh puncture.

In the sole of his right shoe I found a small hole. Figure it out for yourself.”

Prettyman thought for a little and suggested: “A nail.”

“Right. A small nail, unless I miss my guess, hammered through the sole so the point stuck up enough to scratch Munson’s foot when he rammed it into the shoe. He kicked the shoes into the wall opposite, pulled on an old pair, and made tracks for the farm without waiting to bawl out his boy. Does that suggest any further conclusions?”

“That he was in a hurry, or he’d have called in the boy to curse him, and to get the nail taken out.”

“That’s the way I figure it. It looks like he had an early appointment to keep. Between the time Mwogi cleaned Munson’s shoes the night before, and six o’clock next morning, someone stuck this nail in Munson’s shoe and doctored the tip. A touch of poison would do the job; Sir Jolyot told me there’s sufficient on one arrowhead to rub out two hundred 208

and fifty men. He said also it would take half an hour to two hours if it entered the bloodstream at a point far removed from the heart — for instance, a foot.”

“Damned ingenious,” Prettyman said. “You’re sure of those medical facts, I suppose?”

Vachell tapped the journal lying on the table.

“You can read about them here. Parts of the article are fine, exciting reading, packed with human interest. It tells of a native in Tanganyika who made successful passes at a neighbour’s wife. Finally this guy decided to bump off the husband, so he got some fruits of the castor-oil bush, round pods with big, strong prickles, dipped them in the arrowpoison, and scattered them around on the path this husband used to go to work. Sure enough, the husband trod on one and died. The pay-off was when the woman screeched because she saw her small son toddling along the path. So, you see, the method’s been tested, and found reliable enough to win a Good Housekeeping seal.”

“By God, sir, it looks though you’d got hold of the method all right,” Prettyman said excitedly. “By the way, could anyone have seen the article with that story in it?”

“Any reader of the British Pharmaceutical Journal:’

“Which boils down to Anstey; but, of course, the natives would know all about the way the poison behaves. It looks as though it must be someone who 209

knows a good bit about native customs and so on — unless, of course, it’s actually a native.”

Vachell shook his head. “I reckon not. For one thing, I believe Munson had a date in that pyrethrum shed. That’s the only way to explain his going in there at all, aside from his hurry when he got dressed.”

“In that case the murderer’s idea must have been to make it look as if Munson was choked by the fumes,” Prettyman suggested.

“It looks that way. And then, there’s Dennis West.”

Prettyman raised his eyebrows and chewed the end of a pencil, to help his concentration.

“You still think he was murdered, too, sir? By the same person, of course. It seems rather hard to find a motive to cover both.”

“Self-defence, the second time. West had a hunch who it was, all along, but he wouldn’t talk. The way I figure it, he caught the killer redhanded with that little bushbuck calf. This paper ofAnstey’s says that if the poison hits the bloodstream near the heart, it will kill in two minutes. So all the killer has to do is to jab West somewhere in the chest with any sort of weapon — a sharp-pointed stick would do —

smeared with a touch of poison, and his troubles are over. There isn’t any antidote and the poison’s infallible. West couldn’t make the rest of the party in two or three minutes. Along comes the fire to burn all the flesh off his body, and there’s the perfect murder. So perfect, we couldn’t get to first base 210

trying to prove it was a murder at all, much less who did it. Our only chance is to get the Munson killer and then we’ll have the guy who killed West, too.”

Prettyman had been chewing his pencil hard.

“This question of the nail in Munson’s shoe,” he said thoughtfully. “Did Munson’s boy find it when he did out the room at seven-fifteen?”

“No. He looked Munson’s shoes over carefully when he saw them strewn around the room, and he’s positive as daylight there wasn’t any nail, then, in the sole. If he’s on the level, that evidence is dependable, he couldn’t miss a nail sticking up out of the sole. So you see what that gives us. Between sixfifteen and seven-fifteen that morning the murderer walked into Munson’s room and swiped the nail, reckoning if we found no sign of any funny business, we’d write it off as death from misadventure, with a rider on the danger of charcoal fumes in pyrethrum-drying sheds. It darned nearly worked out.”

“It would have, sir, if it hadn’t been for your bright idea,” Prettyman said dutifully. “Well, I’m glad I know now what the feller I was trying to find was supposed to have taken from Munson’s room.

That brings us back to the question, who was Munson going to meet in the pyrethrum shed? I’m afraid there can only be one answer to that, knowing Munson’s little ways. But it does seem an extraordinary hour for a date, doesn’t it, sixthirty in the morning? I simply can’t imagine being romantic on 211

an empty stomach like that, at any rate not in a pyrethrum shed. Although, according to some statistics in America I read the other day, the second most popular time was ten in the morning and apparently a canoe….”

A knock on the door interrupted his remarks, and the lanky figure of Dr Lawson loomed in the doorway.

“Good Lord, you are late,” he said. “How you fellows do work. The influence of the Big Four in One from Marula, I suppose.” He came in and pulled the door to. “I hope I’m not intruding, but a small point occurred to me which I thought I’d better mention, since it’s connected with the case I assume you’re working on now.”

Vachell pulled a chair out from the table and said; “Sit down, doctor, and give us the lowdown.

It’s good of you to come.”

“Thanks, but it won’t take a moment, and very likely it’s a point of no importance in any case. It’s about that question you asked me, Prettyman —

whether one of the Munson family or their pals had consulted me professionally lately. It had something to do with an anonymous note, I believe.”

“That’s right,” Prettyman said. “You told me about Anita Adams.”

“Yes, and it puzzled me a bit, as there didn’t seem to be any possible connexion between that and Munson’s death. I was going through my books today to send out some bills, and I was reminded that I did see someone else about a month ago who, 212

although not directly associated with the Munson family, is a neighbour, and has — er — been connected with them in a way. Only by gossip, of course, and there may have been nothing in it at all.”

“Who was this, doctor?” Vachell asked.

“Perhaps I’d better tell you what I prescribed for first, and if you don’t think it necessary I needn’t give the name. I’m rather overstepping the mark, you know — professional confidence and all that, but I want to help you if I can. My patient complained principally of insomnia, and mentioned one or two other symptoms indicative of considerable nervous strain. I prescribed the usual things — rest, avoiding worry so far as possible, and a sleepingdraught.”

“That

contained a drug, of course.”

“Yes, chloral hydrate, for which I gave a prescription that ought to have been renewed. I’m afraid the local chemist was a bit slack, they know everyone so well, of course, in a small place like this, and I found today that three bottles have been made up.”

“This is more like it,” Prettyman exclaimed with enthusiasm. “This must have been what the anonymous note-writer was getting at. You could kill a person with this chloral stuff, couldn’t you?”

“Well, if you made them drink enough of it you could,” Dr Lawson said.

Prettyman glanced across at his chief. “I think it’s important to hear who it was, isn’t it, sir? This anonymous bloke does seem to know something.

213

He implied the person who’d been to see Dr Lawson was the same as the person that Munson had a date with in the shed.”

Vachell was pulling hard on a cigarette, staring out of the window at long shadows fading before the advance of night. He barely seemed to hear the other’s comment, and his lean face was grave and set.

“Sure,” he said at last, without turning his head.