Death in Kenya (3 page)

Gilly was talking again; his voice slurred and over loud: ‘Hear some of your cattle were stolen last night, Hector. Serve you right! Y'ought to keep 'em boma'd. Asking for trouble, leavin' 'em loose. It's men like you who play into the hands of the gangs. If I've heard the D.C. tell you that once, I've heard him tell you a thousand times! Invitation to help themselves – cattle all over the place.'

Hector's large red face showed signs of imminent apoplexy, and Mabel Brandon said hurriedly: ‘You know we always kept our cattle close boma'd during the Emergency, Gilly. But now that it's over there didn't seem to be any sense in it. And anyway, Drew has never boma'd his!'

‘Drew happens to employ Masai,' retorted Gilly. ‘Makes a difference. Makes a hell of a lot of difference! Who owned the Rift before the whites came? The Masai – that's who! And in those days if any Kikuyu had so much as put his nose into it, they'd have speared him! That's why chaps like Drew were left alone in the Emergency. But more than half your labour are Kukes. You're as bad as Em! Won't give them up, and won't hear a word against them.'

‘There isn't one of our Kikuyu who I wouldn't trust with my life,' said Mrs Brandon, bristling slightly. ‘Why, they've worked for us for twenty years and more. Samuel was with us before Ken was born!'

‘Then why do you carry a gun in that knitting bag?' demanded Gilly. ‘Tell me that! Think I don't know?'

Mrs Brandon flushed pinkly and looked as dismayed and conscience-stricken as a child who has been discovered in a fault, and Gilly laughed loudly.

‘Pipe down, Gil,' requested Drew mildly. ‘You're tight.'

‘
A hit, a very palpable hit.
Of course I am!' admitted Gilly with unexpected candour. ‘Only possible thing to be these days.'

Drew said softly: ‘What are you afraid of, Gilly?'

The alcoholic truculence faded from Gilly's pale, puffy face, leaving it drawn and old beyond his years, and he said in a hoarse whisper that was suddenly and unbelievably shocking in that frilled and beruffled room: ‘The same thing that Em is afraid of!'

He looked round the circle of still faces, his eyes flickering and darting as uneasily as trapped moths, and his voice rose sharply in the brief uncomfortable silence: ‘There's something damned funny going on at
Flamingo,
and I don't like it. I don't like it at all! Know what I think? I think there's something brewing. Some – some funny business.'

‘What d'you mean, “funny business”?' demanded Hector Brandon alertly. ‘Em been having trouble with her labour? First I've heard of it.'

‘No. I could take that. This is something different. Ever watched a thunderstorm coming up against the wind? S'like that! Waiting. I don't like it. Alice doesn't like it. Em don't like it either. She's stubborn as a mule – won't admit that anything could go wrong at her precious
Flamingo.
But she's not been herself of late. It's getting her down.'

‘Nonsense, Gilly!' Hector said firmly. ‘Saw her myself only this morning. Top of her form! You're imagining things. Only trouble with Em is that she's getting old.' He allowed Lisa to refill his glass and added reflectively: ‘Truth of the matter is, Em's never been her old self since Gus Abbott died. She never really got over that. Felt she'd murdered him.'

‘So she did,' said Gilly. ‘Murder – manslaughter – slip of the gun. What's it matter what you call it? She killed him.'

‘Gilly, how
can
you!' protested Mabel indignantly. ‘You know quite well that it happened in the middle of that dreadful attack. And it was largely Gus's fault. He saw one of the gang going for her with a panga, and jumped at him just as Em fired. She's never been quite the same since.'

‘That's right,' said Hector. ‘He'd been her manager since Kendall's day, and it broke her up. You didn't know her before – except by reputation. But we did. It did something to her. Not so much Gus's death, but the fact that she'd killed him. The whole thing must have been a pretty ghastly experience all round. She lost a couple of her servants that night, murdered by the gang, and two of her dogs were panga'd, and half the huts set on fire. But she shot three of the gang and wounded at least two more, and held off the rest until help came. It was a bloody fine show!'

‘
I grant him bloody
– S-Shakespeare!' said Gilly with a bark of laughter. ‘An' you're quite right, Hector. I didn't know her before. Mightn't have jumped at the job if I had! She's a difficult woman to work for. Too bloody efficient. That's her trouble. I don't like efficient women.'

He swallowed the contents of his glass at a gulp and Lisa seized the opportunity to return to a topic that was of more interest to her: ‘Tell us about this niece of Em's, Alice. What's she like? Is she plain or pretty or middle-aged, or what?'

‘I've never met her,' said Alice briefly. ‘She must be quite young.'

Her tone did not encourage comment, but Lisa was impervious to tone. She had, moreover, the misfortune to be in love with Alice's husband, and was therefore interested, with an avid, jealous interest, in any other woman who entered his orbit – with the sole exception of his wife, whom she considered to be a colourless and negligible woman, obviously older than her handsome husband and possessing no attractions apart from money. But this new girl – this Victoria Caryll. She would be staying under the same roof as Eden, and be in daily contact with him, and she was young and might be pretty …

‘I can't think why, if Em wanted a secretary, she couldn't have got a part-time one from among the local girls,' said Lisa discontentedly. ‘Heaven knows there are enough of them, and some of them must be able to type.'

‘Secretary, nuts!' said Gilly, weaving unsteadily across to the table that held the drinks, and refilling his glass. ‘If you ask me, she's getting this girl out with the idea of handing over half the property to her one day. Dividing it up between her and Eden. After all, they're the only two blood-relations she's got. And there must be plenty to leave. Bags of loot – even if it's split fifty-fifty. Bet you Hector's right! Come to think of it, can't see why else she sh'd suddenly want to bring the girl out in such a hurry. Or why the girl was willing to come! Bet you it's that!'

‘Perhaps,' said Mabel Brandon thoughtfully. ‘But it's more likely to be what Alice says. Em's getting old, and when you're old there are times when you suddenly feel that the years are running out too quickly, and you begin to count them like a miser and to realize that you can't go on putting things off like you used to do – you must do them now, or you may not do them at all, because soon it may be too late.'

‘For goodness sake, Mabel!' said Lisa with a nervous laugh. ‘Anyone would think you were an old woman!'

‘I'm not a young one,' said Mabel with a rueful smile. ‘It's later than you think.'

‘Don't!'
said Alice with a shiver. The unexpected sharpness of her normally quiet voice evidently surprised her as much as it surprised Mabel Brandon, for she flushed painfully and said with a trace of confusion: ‘I'm sorry. It's just that I've always hated that phrase. It was carved on a sundial that we had in the garden at home, and it always frightened me. I don't know why. I – I suppose it was the idea that everything would end sooner than you expected it to. The day – parties – fun – the years. Life! I used to make excuses not to go near the sundial. Silly, isn't it?'

‘No!' said Gilly, harshly and abruptly. ‘Do it myself. Make excuses to keep away from
Flamingo.
Same thing. Something that frightens me, but I don't know what. Don't mind a poltergeist that breaks things, but when it begins on creatures, that's different. That's – that's damnable. Working up to something. A sighting shot. Makes you wonder where it will end. What it's got its eye on…'

His voice died out on a whisper and Mabel surveyed him with disapproval and said with unaccustomed severity: ‘Really Gilly, you are talking a great deal of nonsense this evening. And you're upsetting poor Lisa. What are you hinting at? That Mau Mau isn't dead yet and that Em's servants have taken the oath? Well suppose it isn't and they have? There's hardly a Kikuyu in the country who hasn't. But it doesn't mean anything any more. The whole thing has fallen to pieces and the few hard-core terrorists who are still on the run are far too busy just keeping alive to plan any more murders. And if it's the poisoning of that unfortunate ridgeback that's worrying you, I'm sure there's nothing sinister in that. It cannot be wise to keep dogs like Simba who attack strangers on sight, and I am not really surprised that someone took the law into their own hands. I might almost have felt tempted to do it myself, fond as I am of dogs, but——'

‘But Simba didn't like Ken; that's it, isn't it?' said Alice, surprised to find herself so angry.

Mabel turned towards her, her gentle voice quivering with sudden emotion: ‘That is not kind of you, Alice. We all know that Simba liked you, and of course Em is crazy on the subject of dogs. But considering that he once attacked your own husband——'

‘Only because Eden was trying to take a book away from me. We were fooling, but Simba thought he was attacking me. He wouldn't let anyone touch me, and I suppose he thought that Ken——'

She bit the sentence off short, aghast at its implications. But it seemed to remain hanging in the air, its import embarrassingly clear to everyone in the room. As embarrassingly clear as the expression upon Mabel Brandon's stricken face, or Hector's stony tight-mouthed stare.

There was a moment of strained and painful silence which was broken by Drew Stratton, who glanced at his wrist watch and rose. He said in a leisurely voice: ‘Afraid I must go, Lisa. It's getting late, and my headlights are not all they should be. Thanks for the drink. Can I drop you off at the house, Mrs DeBrett, or did you drive over?'

Alice threw him a grateful look. ‘No, I came over by the short cut across the garden. And I really must walk back, because I promised Em I'd get some of the Mardan roses for the dining-room table.'

Drew said: ‘Then I'll see you on your way. Eden shouldn't let you wander about alone of an evening.'

‘Oh, it's safe enough now. Good night, Lisa. Shall I tell Em you'll go in with her on Thursday?'

‘Yes, do. I want to get my hair done. I'll ring up tomorrow and fix an appointment. Drew, if your headlights aren't working you'd better not be long over seeing Alice back.'

‘That's right,' said Gilly. ‘Remember Alice's sundial.
“It is later than you think!”
'

He laughed again, and the sound of his laughter followed them out into the silent garden.

2

The sun had dipped behind the purple line of the Mau Escarpment, and the lake reflected a handful of rose-pink clouds and a single star that was as yet no more than a ghostly point of silver.

There had been very little rain during the past month, and the path that led between the canna lily beds and bamboos was thick with dust. Mr Stratton slowed his leisurely stride to Alice DeBrett's shorter step, but he did not talk, and Alice was grateful for his silence. There had been too much talk in the Markhams' drawing-room. Too many things had been said that had better have been left unsaid, and too many things had been uncovered that should have been kept decently in hiding. Things that Alice had never previously suspected, or been too preoccupied with her own problems to notice.

Was it, she wondered, the long strain of the Emergency, and the present relaxing of tension and alertness, that had brought these more petty and personal things to the surface and exposed them nakedly in Lisa's pink-and-white drawing-room? Had she, Alice, displayed her own fears and her own feelings as clearly as Lisa and Gilly and the Brandons had done? Had the brief coldness of her reply to Lisa's questions on the subject of Victoria Caryll been as illuminating as Lisa's own comments?

‘Look out,' said Drew. He caught her arm, jerking her out of her abstraction just in time to prevent her treading full on a brown, moving band, four inches wide, that spanned the dusty track. A river of hurrying ants – the wicked safari ants whose bite is unbelievably painful.

‘You ought to look where you're going,' remarked Mr Stratton mildly. ‘That might have been a snake. And anyway you don't want a shoe-full of those creatures. They bite like the devil.'

‘I know,' said Alice apologetically. ‘I'm afraid I wasn't looking where I was going.'

‘Dangerous thing to do in this country,' commented Drew. ‘What's worrying you?'

Alice would have resented that question from anyone else, and would certainly not have answered it truthfully. But Drew Stratton was notoriously indifferent to gossip and she knew that it was kindness and not curiosity that had prompted the query. She turned to look at his brown, clear-cut profile, sharp against the quiet sky, and knew suddenly that she could talk to Drew. She had not been able to talk to anyone about Victoria. Not to Eden. Not even to Em, who had said so anxiously: ‘You won't mind, dear? It's all over, you know – a long time ago. But she shan't come if you mind.' She had not been able to confess to Em that she minded. But, strangely, she could admit it to Drew.

‘It's Victoria,' said Alice. ‘Victoria Caryll. Eden and she – they've known each other for a long time. They're some sort of cousins. Em's her aunt and his grandmother, and he used to spend most of his holidays at her mother's house when he was home at school – and at Oxford. They – they were engaged to be married. I don't know what went wrong. I asked Eden once, but he – wouldn't talk about it. And – and her mother died a few months ago, so now she's coming out here…'