The African Poison Murders (23 page)

Mrs Munson pulled him up with a gesture of a podgy hand.

“We can discuss that some other time,” she said.

“Mr Vachell, will you have a drink? The whisky is finished, I believe, but we have some sherry here.

Edward, will you get it from the cupboard over there?”

Corcoran raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Are we celebrating something?” he asked. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone offer a drink to a guest.” He got up, crossed to a cupboard standing against the wall, pulled it open and extracted some glasses and a bottle of sherry, half full.

“I’m sure we should all benefit from a glass,”

Mrs Munson said.

Vachell had never seen her like this before. She reminded him of the wolf in Red Riding Hood. “Sit down, Mr Vachell,” she went on. “You know, of course, that owing to the condition in which my 237

husband’s affairs were left my income in future is to depend on the price of butterfat?”

“Is that so?” Vachell said, apparently much surprised.

“You mean you were left shares in a creamery business?”

Mrs Munson uncorked the bottle of sherry and poured out four glassfuls.

“You need not pretend that you knew nothing of this.” Her voice had taken on some of its normal sharpness. “That Innocent woman admitted that she had talked to you about other people’s affairs.

I shall contest the will, and even in a country where justice is always twisted to suit the convenience of black pagan apes I shall get it upset. When my legal right to this farm is established I shall sell it, and take my children back to South Africa. In the Union there are decent people, respectable people fit for my children to grow up among. Not like the people here. Like women who brazenly enter houses where they should be ashamed to set foot, who come where they are not wanted, where they have wronged.”

She glared at Corcoran, and took a mouthful of sherry.

“I’ve told you already, Aunt —” Corcoran began, then he shrugged his shoulders and picked up his glass. “Oh, what’s the use. Happy landings, and here’s to the quickest way out of this bloody mess.

Come on, Anita, drink it up. This is about the first free drink I’ve ever collected on this farm. Let’s gather the rosebuds, even if they’ve got canker in the middle and black spot on the outside.” He made 238

a grimace at the sherry and put down the empty glass.

Anita said “Here’s luck” and sipped hers without enjoyment. Vachell left his severely alone; bad sherry had no appeal.

“You had a visitor here?” he asked.

“My aunt says so,” Corcoran answered. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“Edward was not here. He was out to shoot a buck. Therefore he missed a visitor who was looking for him.”

“I don’t believe it,” Corcoran said flatly.

Anita Adams got up and walked to the doorway with her long awkward stride, turned her head, and said abruptly: “I’m just going to see that the children are all right.”

“Just a moment,” Vachell said. “Did you see this unwelcome guest?”

“No. I was putting the children to bed.” She opened the door and disappeared into the darkness outside.

“Suppose you tell the story,” Vachell suggested to Mrs Munson. His voice was soothing.

“There isn’t a story. That West woman saw fit to come over here, to my own house, this evening.

She asked to see my nephew. With my husband dead two days, she waited two days to start her poison on the next … I found her sitting here alone, in this room. When I came in, and told her that Edward was not here, she left. That is all. I have no objection to the visits of decent people, 239

although we’re farmers here and don’t spend all our time poodle-faking and drinking cocktails like some I could name, but this was too much. To come into my own home, two days after my husband’s murder….”

“Do you wish to make any accusation against Mrs West?”

“I make no accusations against anyone. I only tell what I know, the truth. I do my duty as a citizen, I hope.”

“I can check on Mrs West’s movements at any hour of the night or day. If your story’s a phony I can bust it wide open and leave you on the spot.”

She looked at him with contempt in her small cold eyes. “You think I invented this?” She laughed a little, her shoulders shaking like a jelly. “What good would that do? You can ask my boy, Mwogi.

He brought her in here to wait for me.”

“Okay,” Vachell said. “That’s just what I’ll do.”

Corcoran went with him, out on to the rough lawn where oxen grazed and hens and turkeys pecked by day. His annoyance seemed to have evaporated as quickly as dew before a hot sun; he spoke rapidly, forgetting his drawl.

“Look, there’s something seriously wrong here,”

he began, as soon as they were out on the lawn.

“Even an Englishman”, Vachell observed, “might concede a couple of murders indicated something a little wrong.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean since then —

today. There’s something queer going on.”

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“Yes?” Vachell prompted. “Shoot.”

“There’s nothing absolutely definite. To begin with, my aunt seems to be — well, the engine’s snatching, if you know what I mean. Of course, Uncle Karl’s death must have been a frightful shock, but it seems to me she’s going bats.”

“What’s she done?”

“She hasn’t exactly done anything. She’s behaving oddly. For instance, when I got back from Karuna last night I thought I’d let her know how things had gone, and when I got to her room I heard a peculiar voice coming from inside. A sort of moaning, I thought at first, but then it sounded as if someone was talking very quickly in an odd kind of mutter. I don’t know how to describe it. Then it stopped. I thought there must be someone in there besides my aunt, so I — well, I —”

“You peeked through the window.”

“Well, yes, I did. I couldn’t make it out at all. No one else was there, only aunt in a dressing-gown.

She was walking up and down the room as if she was an animal in a cage. You know, prowling, sort of. It gave me quite a turn. I couldn’t see all she did because I only had a crack in the curtains to look through, but after a bit she stopped prowling and went over to her big desk. When she came back into sight she was staring at something in her hand.

At first I couldn’t see what it was, she had her back to me. But then she put it down on a table and it looked like a small square of paper. She lit a match and burnt it up carefully, so that nothing was left.

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I know this doesn’t sound much when I tell it like this, but there was something extraordinary about it when you saw it done. It was like a … well, more like someone going through a ritual than just burning an old letter.”

“Was it a letter — could you see that?”

“No. I didn’t get a clear view, but I didn’t think it was one, somehow. It was too small, and it looked kind of stiff. And then, do you know what she did with the ash? She burnt the paper over an ashtray, and then she emptied it on to the floor! Doesn’t that sound completely batty to you?”

“Your aunt is an unusual woman,” Vachell observed.

“Oh, God, yes. There’s one thing more.” Corcoran spoke with hesitation, as if it was something distasteful that he had to say.

“Yes?”

“My room has been searched.”

“When?”

“This evening. While I was out on the farm.”

“Anything taken?”

“No, that’s the odd part. If it was just another native theft one wouldn’t think anything of it. But nothing was taken, and God alone knows what they can have been after. I’ve got nothing worth pinching.”

“Did you ask the houseboys if they’d seen any one hanging around?”

“Yes, of course. That’s why I thought I’d better mention it, because you’re going to question Mwogi.

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I may as well tell you he claims that he saw Mrs West coming from the direction of my room, which is out behind the livingroom. That was before she asked for me, and Mwogi took her to the livingroom to wait. The whole thing simply doesn’t make sense. Why should Janice West want to see me?

And why the hell should she search my room? I don’t believe it. I think Mwogi made it all up. Well, anyway, you can question him, but there’s the story, and all I know is that my room has been searched.”

Vachell sighed and lit a cigarette in the darkness.

“This case is like a switch-yard with the signalmen drunk in the box,” he remarked. “All the tracks cross and everyone takes a hand at switching the points. Let’s see how much Mwogi can add to the confusion.” They walked towards the boys’ quarters, behind the Munson block. A low hum of voices come from the kitchen, but that was the only sound.

“Listen.” Corcoran said suddenly. From the forest came a sharp, low, grating sound, like the slash of a saw on wood. It ceased abruptly, and the silence was deeper than before. “That damned leopard. I built a trap today, quite close to the farm buildings. It tried to get into our calf-house last night.”

The kitchen was hot and filled with smoke. Somewhere amongst the crowd there was doubtless an oven and a meal cooking, but Vachell could only see a mass of black faces and long-legged forms draped around the small mud-walled room. A hurricane lamp stood on a table and a number of very 243

old and dirty cards littered the floor. Huddled in the corner were some women, dressed in goatskins, their own soft skins well greased with castor oil.

The long gourds of millet gruel which they had brought for their husbands stood beside them against the wall. A chipped teapot on the table competed with the oldfashioned drink.

Mwogi emerged from the smoke-filled gloom a moment after the door opened. He had shed his white robe and red tarboosh, and appeared in a pair of brown plus-fours, a green jacket, a football jersey and bare feet. “What is it you want, bwana?” he asked.

“You have a celebration when your master has died?” Vachell inquired.

“This is not a celebration. The cook is preparing a meal, but we are unhappy, and so we drink tea to bring strength to our hearts.” Mwogi destroyed the effect of this by grinning broadly as he spoke.

Yes, he had seen Mrs West, he said in response to questions; she had come on foot, he supposed, for he had heard no car, just as it was getting dark, about an hour ago. Perhaps she had been in Bwana Corcoran’s room; he did not know. It was not his affair. She waited in the livingroom alone while he went to fetch Mrs Munson, and later on she went away. That was all he knew.

“All right,” Vachell concluded. “One more thing.

The white man’s beer that lives in the cupboard in the livingroom. Has it been there long?”

“The sherry,” Mwogi said, using the European 244

word. “Yes, but it is always kept in my mistress’s room. She does not like to offer it to strangers.”

“Did you move it to the other room, where it is now?”

Mwogi shook his head. “No, it is not my affair.”

“And the cupboard in the livingroom,” Vachell persisted. “Was it the custom to lock it, or to keep it unlocked?”

“It was always locked.”

“What’s the idea?” Corcoran asked.

Vachell did not reply at once. He was frowning in the darkness, trying to fit the sherry and the unlocked cupboard and Mwogi’s story and Mrs Munson’s strange behaviour into a pattern that would make sense. Corcoran could see, in the shaft of light that emerged from the open kitchen door, that his face was stern and worried. Then, suddenly, the missing piece appeared in his mind, its outline stark and shocking: the open drum of cattle-dip Prettyman had seen in Mrs Munson’s office. The pattern fell neatly, and with finality, into place.

Vachell came quickly to a decision.

“Listen,” he said to Corcoran.”! have to get a message to Karuna urgently. It’s very important.

Will you take it in?”

“Right away?”

“Yes. And make it snappy.”

“All right, I suppose so. But what’s the sudden rush? I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Vachell answered. His voice sounded full of meaning, and grim. He walked quickly back 245

to his car, switched on the spotlight, and in the beam scribbled a message on a leaf of his notebook.

He tore the note out, slipped it into an envelope and said:

“Take this to Prettyman, at his house. If he’s gone out to the movies or somewhere chase him up, wherever he is. He’s got to get that message.

Even minutes may count.”

“Good Lord, you are in a stew,” Corcoran remarked. “Very Edgar Wallace, this is. All right, I’ll deliver it. I feel I ought to wear a false beard, though, and go into Karuna in an invisible ray.”

“Go in by car, and step on it,” Vachell said briefly. “This isn’t a joke.”

Corcoran took the note without another word and made for the shed in which the Munson car was parked. Vachell stood still, his hands in his pockets, until he heard the motor start and the car back out and go. Then he walked over to the livingroom, opened the door softly and stepped in. It was in darkness; Mrs Munson had gone to her room, to prepare for the evening meal, perhaps. He tried the cupboard door and found it open. The bottle of sherry had been returned. He poured a very small quantity into a glass, sipped it, and made a wry face.

The sherry was sweet and heavy, but beneath the sweetness was a harsh, gritty flavour. He put it back carefully, closed the cupboard and walked out of the room and across to the children’s quarters.

He rapped on the door of the room next to the schoolroom, that he judged would be a bedroom, 246

and heard Anita Adams call out in Swahili: “Who is it? What do you want?”

“The police again. I’d like to speak with you a moment.”

Anita Adams’ voice sounded nervous when she called back: “All right. I’ll come out.” A moment later she appeared in the doorway, tall and angular, drying her hands on a towel.

“The children are asleep,” she said. “Please don’t talk too loud, we mustn’t wake them. Theo hasn’t been sleeping awfully well the last two or three days.”

“I have some news that isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t so serious, either, as I guess it’s going to sound,”

Vachell said. “I know you can take it, I’m depending on you for common sense.”

She stared at him silently, standing very still. Her long face with its pallid skin looked grey in the starlight.