The African Poison Murders (25 page)

“Why didn’t she carry on with the arrowpoison?

It seemed to have worked like a charm. And there isn’t a shred of proof … I’m sorry, sir, it’s not my business, I know. But there’s one thing you’ve absolutely left out. You surely don’t think it was Mrs West who cracked you on the bean and pinched the papers out of Munson’s room?”

Vachell withdrew his feet from the table, sat up, and ground out his cigarette. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think that.”

“Who was it, then?”

“That,” Vachell answered, “is what I’m going to Marula to find out.”

“And you really want me to make this arrest?

You’re certain it’s wise?”

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“Sure. I’ll make out the warrant now.” He drew a form towards him and signed his name. “Bring her in and keep her locked in your bungalow, and for Christ’s sake don’t let her sneak out of the window when the guard’s looking the other way.

And she’s to see no visitors, understand — no one at all.”

“Just as you say, sir. I can’t stop her seeing Mrs Innocent, if she insists.”

Vachell looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

“No,” he said. “No, I guess you can’t. But watch her carefully as hell. I reckon two murders just about fills the quota for this district, this year.”

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Vachell was running away, and he knew it; but he had to get down to Manila to look at the C.I.D. files on the local Deutsche Bund, see the Commissioner, and, after that, put through a long-distance call to London. By a stroke of luck he found that it was the day for the bi-weekly air-mail service connecting Karuna with the London-Durban Imperial Airways service. He caught a plane from Karuna at eleven and was in his office in the capital by half-past twelve.

By now, he thought, Prettyman would have done the job. The young inspector hadn’t liked it, and Vachell didn’t blame him. It was a lousy job. Some women got hysterical and raved, and others cried or even fainted; but he didn’t think that Janice West would do any of these things.

An hour in the office and ten minutes with Major Armitage was all he needed. He checked up his information about the Bund, and all that was available about the ramifications of the Landesgruppe Sudafrika in the Union, about the Deutsche Jugend 260

fur Siidafrika (a South African version of the Hitler Youth) and about the Deutsche Sudwest Bund in the South-West African mandated territory. After a short talk with the Commissioner he put in a call to London and spoke for five minutes to M.I. 5. By two o’clock he was through in Marula, equipped with all the information he needed to tie up the loose ends of the case. But although he had got what he wanted he felt no satisfaction; he had to go back, the last and worst river was still to cross.

In unimportant ways his luck was in. He ran into an acquaintance, a mining engineer from the goldfields, who was going back to his mine by way of Karuna that afternoon, and who offered him a ride.

By five o’clock he was back again in the little town.

The office was closed, and Prettyman’s bungalow forbidden ground. He went into the Black Buffalo and ordered tea in a long, empty room with a radio in one corner tuned in to the Australian news bulletin, and one or two native servants drifting about as vaguely as clouds, dressed in long white kanzus with red sashes.

The tea-tray arrived and in its wake came Sir Jolyot Anstey, who strolled across the room to greet his acquaintance, several large books tucked under his arm.

“May I join you”, he asked, “in a cup of tea? Ah, I’m glad to see you take milk in yours. Too much of this deplorable lemon habit nowadays, particularly among women, I’ve noticed. A thoroughly pernicious idea. Vitamin C is rarely lacking in the 261

modern diet, whereas the calcium in milk is not only highly necessary but neutralizes the action of any tannic acid that may have been liberated from the leaf by over-brewing.”

Vachell was feeling too hot and tired from a fast drive over bad roads to respond.

“I came in to secure some text-books on ecology,”

Anstey continued undismayed. “One would hardly expect to find books of that type here, but really it is wonderful what the Carnegie scheme does in small places like this. I am starting a small series of experiments with the object of studying plant succession on forest soil after burning and cultivation — the recent fire provides a chance to do this which may never recur. A detailed study of the order of colonization by plants on land where a climax vegetation is suddenly entirely destroyed has, so far as I know, never been made in this part of the world.”

“Sounds interesting,” Vachell remarked dutifully, spreading jam on his third scone.

“My object is to correlate this plant succession — the types of vegetation which succeed each other on cleared and then cultivated land — with changes in the soil fauna, which I’m convinced holds the key to the problem of the fertility of tropical soils,”

Sir Jolyot Anstey went on, warming to the task.

“You see what I’m aiming at, of course?”

Vachell smiled, and leant back against a cushion.

He felt weary and relaxed, and Anstey’s words were 262

like the smoke from his cigar — a pleasant cloud hanging overhead, indeterminate but soothing.

“I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “But go ahead just the same.”

“The real problem of tropical soils is their rapid loss of fertility,” the ex-surgeon began, “in contrast to the soils of North-West Europe, whose ecological climax was also closed forest, though of a very different type. In the case of European soils, persistent working for generation after generation has enormously increased their fertility; their original productiveness was not high. Tropical soils, on the other hand, are at their maximum fertility before, and not after, the plough or the digging-stick are brought to bear. Soil micro-organisms have done the work of generations of patient serfs. The native system of shifting cultivation….”

He broke off, and looked at Vachell with a comical expression of dismay.

“My dear fellow! I beg your pardon, I really do.

Here am I, riding my hobby-horse and boring you to distraction when you are no doubt exceedingly weary after a long day, and in any case quite uninterested, and naturally so, in the biology of tropical soils. I’m afraid it is quite unforgivable … Well, I hear you have made an arrest, so I suppose you consider your work in this district at an end.”

Vachell looked up in surprise at the sudden change of subject. The news had got about quickly, in spite of his warning to Prettyman to keep it quiet.

“How did you know?” he asked.

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“I met Norman Parrot in the street a short time ago. The poor fellow is almost distracted. He feels that a great mistake has been made.”

“So Parrot’s back.” Vachell nodded, and pulled a cigarette out of its pack. “The news fetched him, then. Where is he now.

“He was on his way back to his own farm when I met him. He’d been to see Mrs West, but the askaris refused admission absolutely. I myself tried, on the chance that I could be of some service to Mrs West in regard to legal defence, but was told that no one was allowed in.” He glanced at Vachell over his cigar, and there was the hint of a twinkle in his sharp eyes. “You are, I suppose, quite satisfied that no mistake has been made?”

“I’m satisfied that Mrs West’s detention was necessary in the interests of public safety.”

“Dear me! A very official-sounding reply. I apologize, Mr Vachell, if my suggestion has given offence.” There was no doubt, now, about the twinkle in his eye. He got up, collected his armful of books, and added:

“I must be getting home. I do not believe, if I may say so, that you are quite so foolish as you appear to be.” With the parting shot he was gone, hurrying out of the room as if he were late for an important meeting.

Vachell paid for his tea, retrieved his car, and drove out along the now familiar road with Parrot’s farm as his goal. But when he came to the Munsons’

turn-off he swung the wheel, on impulse, and 264

headed the car’s nose up the short hill leading to the homestead. He had better make sure everything was all right.

Mrs Munson had recovered so completely that she had gone out to see to the farm, he learnt. He found Anita Adams on the livingroom sofa, her knees wrapped in a rug, reading aloud to Theodora in the fading evening light.

“Mrs Munson’s amazing,” she said. “Really she is. I’m all right now, but I don’t feel a bit like walking about. Mrs Munson has been out since after lunch, seeing to things on the farm.”

“She’s a tough baby,” Vachell agreed. “I came to tell you Dr Lawson and I are ready to back you in getting the children away for a spell. It’s a hell of a place for kids just now, they’ve had a couple of bad shocks, and we reckon it would be best if you got them out for a week or two.”

Anita Adams’ thin, sallow face took on a new look of animation. The poisoning hadn’t improved her appearance; there were dark circles round her eyes and her hair had no lustre, like the coat of a sick animal; but she pushed it back with a gesture of relief and smiled.

“That would be marvellous. You’ve no idea what a release it will be — what it’s been like here the last week. I could take them to my sister in Marula — even to the coast. I’m not feeling awfully bright today, but tomorrow, perhaps….”

Vachell nodded. “You can call it a rest cure. The danger’s over now. The murderer’s under arrest.”

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Anita Adams stared at him with widened eyes.

“You mean — who?”

“Janice West.”

“The girl jumped to her feet, throwing off the rug in which she was wrapped. “I don’t believe it!

You’re playing some kind of joke! Janice didn’t do it — she couldn’t, you know she’s not that sort of person. You’re making a mistake. You’re….”

Vachell shook his head. “There’s no mistake.

I’ve got proof, and I’m going to get more — from you.”

Anita Adams sat down again heavily on the sofa.

Her voice was flat and hard. “I don’t understand.”

“You took a message to Munson from Janice West. To meet him in the pyrethrum shed early in the morning — she had something to say. You gave him the message, and that’s why he went.”

The girl was watching him with a set face and wild eyes. She shook her head slightly. “No, no, no. You’re wrong.”

Vachell shrugged his shoulders. “The prosecuting counsel will pull it out of you on the stand.

He’ll unwind you like a bandage. You don’t have to tell me now.”

Anita Adams ran her tongue over dry lips. “I’ve got nothing to tell.”

“You can tell Mrs Munson about the arrest. It’s nice to be the bearer of good news.” Vachell took up his cork helmet with the police badge in the band and made for the door. He turned in the doorway and looked back. “You’ll have to put on a 266

better act if you want to convince a jury. You gave Munson that message all right. You may get orchids for loyalty to friends but for perjury you can get five years.”

Anita Adams answered: “I’ve got nothing to say.”

267

The corporal in charge came up to report as soon as Vachell left the livingroom. Mrs Munson, he said, had not been out of his sight all day. She had spent the first part of the afternoon supervising the boys who were working on the leopard trap. Then she had returned to the office. She’d had tea in the house, gone out to a nearby bail to inspect the milking, checked the cream after separation in the dairy, and now she was out with the white turkeys, giving them their evening feed. Extra precautions were being taken because of the leopard, the guard added. Miss Adams had —

The man broke off as a shrill shout came from the direction of the chicken-houses. Vachell jumped and began to run, but when the sound came again he realized that it was not fear but anger. The voice was Mrs Munson’s, shouting for a boy. He found her outside the pen which housed the white turkeys.

Her black eyes were gleaming dangerously and her face was set. She glared at Vachell, and spoke directly to the boy.

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“You, what sort of poultry-guard are you?” she asked furiously. “Where is the gobbler, the white gobbler? Where?”

The native looked helplessly at the turkeys, as if hoping to see the missing male appear out of the ground. He counted them over with his eyes.

“Are you dumb?” Mrs Munson insisted. “Is it not your task to look after these turkeys? Where has the gobbler gone?”

The native shook his head in obvious bewilderment and despair. “He was here at four o’clock,”

he said. “At four o’clock I went into the pen to fill the water-troughs and scatter cabbage leaves for food. The big male was here then. I went out and closed the door and I don’t know —”

“You fool, you left the door open,” Mrs Munson exclaimed. Her voice was shaking with rage. “That is what you did. That gobbler is a valuable bird, very highly valuable, and through your foolishness he has run away. Go and look for him at once! Call the others! Go, all of you, search the paths quickly, before it is dark.”

The boy hurried off to call his friends and to start the search. There was not much time. The sun had gone down behind the mountains and shadows had faded abruptly into the grey-blue mists of early dusk.

“Was the pen door open when you got here?”

Vachell asked.

Mrs Munson turned her eyes on him. “With two of your askaris camped on the place,” she observed, “yesterday a murderess comes to this farm 269

attempting to poison me, and leaves unmolested.

Today my pocket-knife is stolen and now a valuable turkey, an imported bird. Can’t you even recover a stolen turkey? If you did, it would be the first time for the police to find anything stolen or lost in their history, so far as I know.”

“Governments just hate a guy to set a precedent,”

Vachell observed. “But I’ll risk a try.” He waved to the corporal, and by a flick of the hand indicated that the askari was to stay close to Mrs Munson.

When he had gone a little way he looked back and saw the native following her only a few yards behind.

She might as well try to get rid of her own toenails as of Corporal Abdul. Native policemen might not be unobtrusive shadows, but they stuck.