Death in Kenya (7 page)

‘Are you Miss Caryll?'

It was an agreeable voice – or would have been agreeable if it had not been for her conviction that for some reason its owner disapproved of her.

‘Y-yes,' said Victoria, disconcerted by that disapproval and annoyed to find herself stammering.

The man reached out and calmly possessed himself of the small suitcase she held. ‘My name's Stratton. Lady Emily asked me to meet you. You'd better give me your passport and entry permit and all the rest of it, and I'll get someone to deal with it. Got any money on you?'

‘A little,' said Victoria.

‘You'll have to get it changed into local currency.'

He held out his hand and Victoria found herself meekly surrendering her bag.

‘Stay here. You'd better sit on that sofa,' said Mr Stratton, and left her.

Victoria took his advice and sat staring after his retreating back with a mixture of indignation and relief. She could not imagine why Aunt Emily should have sent this disapproving stranger to meet her, but at least it was not Eden.

She had not realized that she could feel like this. So shaken and unsure of herself and so afraid of being hurt. Well, it was entirely her own fault. She had refused to face facts while there was still time, and now it was too late. She leaned back on the sofa and rested her head against the wall behind it, unaware that she was looking exceedingly pale and shaken.

A stout figure bore down upon her, exuding an overpowering wave of expensive scent, and Mrs Brocas-Gill was with her once more, breathing heavily as though she had been running.

‘Ah, I see you've heard,' said Mrs Brocas-Gill, panting a little. ‘What an appalling reception for you.
Too
dreadful!'

Victoria struggled to her feet, endeavouring to collect her scattered thoughts, and said: ‘Aunt Emily's sent someone to meet me. A Mr Stratton.'

‘Oh, Drew,' said Mrs Brocas-Gill. ‘I wonder she didn't send Gilly Markham. He's her manager, you know. I was telling you about him. I should have thought he was the obvious person to – but then I don't suppose any of the
Flamingo
people could get away today. Too ghastly for you, my dear. Oh, there you are Oswin. Isn't it
too
dreadful?'

‘Yes, yes, yes!' said Mr Brocas-Gill, thrusting passports and permits into his wife's hands. ‘Don't let's go over all that again. Hullo, Drew. What are you doing here? Oh, you're collecting Jack's girl, are you? Splendid. Splendid! Was going to keep an eye on her myself until someone turned up. Knew Em wouldn't be here, of course. You'll be all right with Drew, m'dear. We shall be seeing you. Come
on,
Pet! Damned if I'm going to hang around here all day!'

He seized his wife's arm and hurried her away, and Mr Stratton piloted Victoria into the customs shed and said: ‘Here's the rest of your luggage. Have you got the keys? You may have to open them.'

Five minutes later she was out in the bright sunlight again and being driven away from the Airport through an area of ugly slums and unattractive bazaars.

There was nothing in these mean, crowded streets that was in any way familiar to Victoria, or that struck any chord of memory. And as they left the town behind, and eucalyptus trees and vivid masses of bougainvillaea replaced the squalid huts and shop fronts, she caught glimpses between the green trees of neat, white, red-roofed houses – primly British and more suggestive of Welwyn Garden City than Darkest Africa – that could not have been here when she had last driven through Nairobi over sixteen years ago.

Mr Stratton spoke at last, breaking a silence that had lasted since they left the Airport:

‘I take it that you didn't get your Aunt's cable? She was afraid you might not. That's why she asked me to call in at the Airport, in case you were on the plane.'

‘In
case
I was? I don't understand. What cable?'

‘I gather she sent one care of your bank, as she thought you might be spending the last few days with friends.'

‘I was,' admitted Victoria, bewildered. ‘But why did she cable? Didn't she want me to come?'

‘Well, hardly, at a time like this. After all, it's a fairly nasty mess to land you into.'

‘What mess?' demanded Victoria. ‘Is Aunt Em ill?'

Mr Stratton's head came round with a jerk and the car swerved on the road as though his hands had twitched at the wheel. He said incredulously: ‘Do you mean to say you don't know? But surely the Brocas-Gills— Look, wasn't it in the home papers?'

‘Wasn't what in the home papers?' Victoria's eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘Aunt Em …
Eden!
He isn't——'

‘No,' said Mr Stratton shortly. ‘He's all right. It's his wife. She was murdered three days ago. I'm sorry. I thought you'd know. It was on the B.B.C., and it must have been in the home papers.'

‘No,' said Victoria unsteadily. ‘I mean – I didn't listen to the news. There was so much to do. And I – I missed the papers. How did it happen? Tell me about it, please. I'd rather hear now. Before I meet … Aunt Emily.'

She had hesitated for a moment before speaking her aunt's name, as though she might have intended to use another one, and Mr Stratton, who was at no time unobservant, did not miss it. He turned his head and looked at her, and there was once again, and unmistakably, dislike in the hard line of his mouth and the cold glance of his normally bland blue eyes.

He looked away again and said curtly: ‘Alice – Mrs DeBrett – was murdered in the garden of your aunt's house. Someone killed her with a panga – a heavy knife that the Africans use for chopping wood and cutting grass. Your aunt found her. It can't have been a pleasant sight, and though she's bearing up pretty well she was in no state to drive over a hundred miles into Nairobi and back in order to meet you. And neither was Eden. What with the shock, and the police and press swarming all over the place, they've both had a pretty bad time of it. And in any case the funeral's this morning.'

Victoria did not speak, and presently he glanced at her again and suffered a momentary pang of compunction at the sight of her white face. She looked a good deal younger than he had expected her to be, yet she must be at least twenty-four if she had been engaged to Eden DeBrett before he had married Alice. Quite old enough to appreciate the feelings of his wife, who could hardly be expected to welcome the idea of her husband's ex-fiancée as a permanent fixture in the home.

Drew had liked Alice, and he had been sorry for her. And remembering her haggard, defenceless face and haunted eyes, he took a poor view of Miss Caryll, whose arrival seemed to him vulgar and tactless, if not intentionally cruel.

Victoria spoke at last, and in a voice that was barely audible above the hum of the engine:

‘I thought it was all over. The Emergency, I mean. Mrs Brocas-Gill said it was. But if the Mau Mau are still murdering people——'

‘I see no reason to suppose that it was a Mau Mau killing,' said Drew shortly. ‘It merely makes a better headline in the press that way.'

‘Then who——?'

‘God knows! A maniac. Or someone with a fancied grievance. You never can tell what goes on in an African's head. And there have apparently been a lot of odd and unpleasant happenings at
Flamingo
lately.'

‘I knew there was something wrong,' said Victoria in a whisper, and once again Drew's head turned sharply.

‘Why do you say that?'

‘It – it was Aunt Em's letter. She wrote and asked me if I would come out. She said she was getting too old to do without someone to help her, and that Eden wasn't – and she would rather have someone who belonged, than a stranger. My mother was her only sister you see, and they were fond of each other. But there was something in the way she wrote. As if she had something on her mind that was – Oh, I don't know – But it was an odd letter. A rather frightening one.'

‘Frightening in what way?'

‘Well – perhaps not frightening. Uncomfortable. She sounded as though she really did need me. Badly. And she'd always been very good to me. My father didn't leave much money, and I know Aunt Em helped with the school bills. So I came.'

‘Was that your only reason?'

‘No,' said Victoria. She looked up at the blue sky and the blaze of sunlight, and thought of the London rain and fog, and of her longing to live once more under that hot sun and that wide sky. Her lovely mouth curved in the ghost of a smile, and she said softly: ‘No. There were other reasons.'

‘So I inferred,' said Mr Stratton unpleasantly.

Victoria turned to look at him in surprise, puzzled by his evident hostility, and after a moment or two she said a little diffidently: ‘What did you mean about odd and unpleasant things happening at
Flamingo?
What sort of things?'

‘Some person or persons unknown has been smashing up your aunt's possessions in a manner usually associated with poltergeists – or ham-handed housemaids.'

‘A p-poltergeist! You can't believe that!'

‘I don't. I'll start believing in evil spirits only when someone has eliminated all possibility of the evil human element; and not before! Your aunt must have been mad not to send for the police at once, but she's been fighting a rear-guard action with the authorities over her Kikuyu servants for the last five years, and I suppose she wasn't going to give Greg or the D.C. a chance of having them all up and grilling them again, and jailing a handful under suspicion. Trouble is, she's an obstinate old lady, and once she decides on a course of action she sticks to it. She says now that she realized it must be the work of one of her house servants, but that whoever it was must be acting under orders – or threats.'

‘But why? Why should anyone do that?'

Mr Stratton shrugged. ‘A Mau Mau gang attacked
Flamingo
during the Emergency, and your aunt stood them off and killed several. One of the dead men was rumoured to be a relative of the man who calls himself “General Africa” and who is still at large; so it's just on the cards that this is a private vendetta on the part of the “General”. He was always one of the more cunning of the Mau Mau leaders, and there has been a story in circulation for several years that he was and still is employed on one of the farms in the Naivasha area.'

‘You mean – you
can't
mean that someone, a settler, is deliberately hiding him?' said Victoria incredulously.

‘Good lord, no! If it's true, you may be quite sure that his employer hasn't a clue as to his identity, and that he is using that as a cover. Playing the part of a faithful and probably dull-witted retainer by day, and organizing prison breaks and thefts of cattle, and planning bloody murder by night.'

‘Surely that isn't possible!'

‘Why not? There is no photograph of him in existence and he wears a mask. A square of red silk with holes burned in it for eyes, nose and mouth. None of the men who have turned informer have ever seen his face, so that it's quite possible that he might be going about openly and quite unsuspected. It's also possible that he may have planned this poltergeist business at
Flamingo
as a prelude to murder, and intimidated someone into carrying it out. From all accounts he is intelligent enough to work out a really subtle revenge.'

Victoria shivered despite the hot sunlight, and said: ‘I don't see anything subtle about murdering someone with a panga!'

‘It isn't the method,' said Drew impatiently. ‘It's the murder itself, coming as the climax of a series of petty outrages. If Mrs DeBrett had been murdered out of a blue sky, so to speak, it would have been ghastly enough. But it wouldn't have had half the impact that this has had. Especially on a woman of Lady Emily's temperament. Em can take a straight left to the jaw and survive it, but there's a kind of creeping, cumulative beastliness about this business that makes it all the more frightening for her. A sort of softening-up process. Starting in a small way and getting progressively crueller. She thought it was only an attempt to scare her into selling up and getting out, but when her dog was poisoned she ought to have been warned. That was what Gilly Markham called a “sighting shot”. It seems to have scared
him
all right! He's manager at
Flamingo.
'

They were passing through the Kikuyu Reserve, and the scenery was at last vaguely familiar to Victoria: terraced hillsides and clusters of neat round beehive huts; fields of maize and small white patches of pyrethrum; the spiky foliage of pineapples and the vivid green of vegetables and banana palms. Mile upon mile of native shambas, bright against the red-ochre clay, and interspersed with plantations of eucalyptus. But Victoria had no eyes for the scenery. Even the sunlight had ceased to feel warm and gay, and she felt cold and a little sick.
‘A sighting shot…'

She turned sharply to look at her companion, and spoke a little breathlessly: ‘Is it the end? Or——'

She found that she could not finish the sentence, but Mr Stratton appeared to have no difficulty in translating her confused utterance. He said:

‘I imagine it's that thought that is getting Em down. Ever since it started it's been a case of “What next?” Now I should say it's “Who's next?”'

‘Eden!'
said Victoria in a whisper, unaware that she had spoken aloud.

Drew gave her a cold glance and said curtly: ‘Why do you think that?'

‘Who else would it be? Unless – unless it were Aunt Em herself.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' said Drew with deliberate brutality. ‘Anyone she liked – or who was useful to her. Or to
Flamingo.
'

‘I don't believe it!' said Victoria suddenly and flatly. ‘Things like that don't really happen. Not to real people.'