Murder on Safari (13 page)

“Not yet,” Vachell answered.” ” Say, listen, Sir Gordon, this is a sort of a one-man show. I guess you ought to follow out de Mare’s instructions and stick around in camp.”

A frown came over Catchpole’s fair, finely

moulded face. He pushed a lock of golden hair off his forehead and exclaimed petulantly: “I really don’t see whyl should. After all, surely one ought to be safe enough with the police, if nowhere else.

Between us we’ve got batteries of rifles. And I simply must do something — something physical. I’m absolutely worn out with worry; I didn’t sleep a wink all night. Besides, I’ve got something terribly important to tell you. At least, I think it may be important, though I don’t know quite why, but at any rate it is definitely odd.”

Vachell raised his eyebrows. “Sounds interesting, Sir Gordon. I’m all attention — shoot.”

127

“I can’t tell you till I’ve verified something,”

Catchpole said. “It may be a red herring, and I shouldn’t dream of saying anything that might Ч

well, compromise any one, until I’m absolutely certain. Let’s proceed, and if there’s anything in it I’ll let you know on the way home to breakfast.”

Vachell cursed under his breath, hesitated, and said “okay” in what he hoped was a non-commital voice. He wanted to send the baronet back, but he didn’t know how to do it. If Catchpole refused he couldn’t very well sock him on the jaw and carry him bodily back to camp, or tell the gun-bearer to do so. He realized how much a detective’s prestige depended on the unseen army of uniformed

policemen with truncheons or revolvers that

normally stood behind him Ч on warrants and

cells and magistrates, and the threat of force.

Stripped of all that, a policeman felt naked. If people refused to do what he said, it was just too bad. In this outfit he would have to call a different play: to say little, see a lot, and use plenty of cunning. The direct method wouldn’t work.

The little procession wound a wavering course up the hill, dodging round bushes and at times having to push its way through an extra bit of vegetation. The sun flamed in the sky above the hilltop and spread a golden glow over the dewdrenched grass. Soon they were wet to the waist,

but the sun’s fresh rays shone warmly on their faces and chests. The sky was robin’s-egg blue and cloudless, and a faint wind moved the grass stems.

128

Once or twice Konyek paused to kick up a little cloud of dust from a loose patch of earth with his naked toes. It floated softly back over their legs.

The wind was right.

About a mile from camp they came out on a

little bluff where they paused for breath. They had climbed up quite a way and the tents gleamed

white beneath them. They could see two black

figures drawing water from the blue thread of river, and the empty petrol cans used as containers flashed back the sunrays like a heliograph. Three columns of smoke rose up as straight as pines and then scattered in wisps and spirals into the clear morning air.

“Now, Sir Gordon,” Vachell began, “what’s

this dope you say you have on Ч “

He was interrupted by a sudden hiss from

behind. He jerked his hand round, looking for a snake. It was no snake, however, but Konyek,

who raised one hand with a gesture that could only mean: “Quiet, you fool, I’m listening.” The

tracker’s body was taut, frozen into an attitude of attention. Then his muscles relaxed. He turned without a word and started to move slowly and cautiously up the hill. Japhet quietly lowered the .470 from his shoulder and motioned to Vachell to go next. He himself fell in behind and left Gordon Catchpole, clasping his light rifle, to bring up the rear.

Vachell concentrated on trying to move as

noiselessly as possible through the thick bush. To 129

his straining ears, the rasp of thorns against his khaki shorts seemed as loud as the sound of

tearing canvas. Japhet, in reply to VachelFs

unspoken question, whispered “buffalo!” They

zigzagged slowly up the hill, following the line of one of the shoulders. A shallow gulley lay below them on the right. VachelFs heart began to step up its beats a little. He moved as if he were treading on thin ice, every sense wound up to its tightest pitch. Somewhere ahead was a mob of alert, wary black beasts invisible and unheard. The bush was so thick that they might be twenty yards away and still unseen.

Konyek stopped suddenly and bent down to

examine something on the ground. Vachell

stepped forward and peered over his shoulder.

Buffalo droppings. Konyek turned them over with his toe and whispered softly “yesterday.” Japhet grunted agreement. “What time yesterday?”

Vachell whispered back, his mouth close to

Konyek’s ear. The tracker prodded them again

and breathed back: “yesterday morning, but not very early.” Japhet pointed with the muzzle of the rifle to another heap of droppings farther on.

“Look,” he whispered, “more. Many buffaloes.”

So, Vachell thought, at least Rutley was

speaking fifty per cent of the truth.

Konyek, like a hound searching for scent, had scouted a little way ahead, and was already out of sight. Just as Vachell was opening his mouth to recall the tracker, a low whistle sounded from the 130

wall of bush a little to the left. Japhet jerked his rifle to his shoulder instantaneously and pushed the safety-catch over. Nothing happened for a full minute, and then the whistle sounded again.

Japhet started towards it, motioning Vachell to follow. He moved with redoubled caution. They found Konyek squatting on his heels, examining a blade of grass which he held between finger and thumb. Vachell bent over it and felt the muscles of his throat tighten at what he saw. Across the grassblade ran a red streak of blood.

He stretched out his hand and took the leaf

from the tracker. Then he saw, with mounting

excitement, that the blood was wet. That could only mean one thing: that Rutley’s random shot, unknown to him, had found its mark. There was a wounded buffalo somewhere, close at hand, in the bush.

Konyek got to his feet and moved on, slipping through the wall of bush like a fish gliding

through water. Vachell scrambled after him, going in sideways, with his rifle held out behind him in one hand. Konyek was moving silently and with great care. A few yards farther on the tracker pointed with his stick to a small speck of blood on the leaf of a bush, about waist high. Japhet moved like a cat, with his eyes fixed on the bush ahead and the rifle at full cock.

A minute later Konyek stopped again and

pointed to the ground ahead. The grass was bent and trampled and bore the impress of a heavy

131

body that had recently rested there. Blood was spattered over the grass stalks, and in one place there was a dark brown patch where a pool of it had partially congealed.

They all halted, while Konyek and Japhet made a thorough examination of the spot. Catchpole came up a minute later, panting, with scratches on his face and arms. He looked pale and scared.

Vachell cursed him, silently, for being there.

Japhet said in a low whisper; “The buffalo

rested here last night. He is wounded in the

stomach. He has lost much blood, and will be very savage. It would be best to return that way — ” he motioned with his hand towards the river — “to camp.”

“Which way did the buffalo go?” Vachell whispered back.

Japhet stretched out his arm and pointed in the other direction. “But he is very close. The blood is fresh. Go very carefully. Let Konyek go first.”

Vachell hesitated. All his instincts were to

follow the wounded beast and finish it off. He hated to leave it wandering about with an abdominal wound. But then there was Catchpole. His

own job, he supposed, was to keep people out of danger, not to carry out mercy slayings in the bush. He nodded, and Konyek started, as cautiously as before, to thread his way through the

bush.

They had settled one thing, anyway, Vachell

thought. Rutley had been speaking the truth about 132

the shot. A wounded buffalo had proved his alibi.

It was anxious work, easing through the bush in the sun and listening with every sense alert for the danger signal of a snapping twig. They heard the crack of a branch once, and all four halted as though a lightning flash had paralysed them in the act of movement. They waited, motionless, for several seconds, and then moved slowly on. A

stembuck, probably, or some other buck. As they moved away from the wounded buffalo’s restingplace VachelFs muscles began to relax a little, and his heart to feel less bumpy. Every step took them farther from the danger zone.

Then, without warning, it happened. There was a crash in the bush to the left and a noise like the roar of an express. Almost simultaneously a black form hurtled down upon them with the velocity of a torpedo. Konyek dived sideways in the split second before it appeared. Vachell was conscious of two huge spreading horns and a black circle at the other end of his sights. He sighted just below the thick bosses, pressed the trigger, and sprang sideways in a single motion. A violent blow caught him in the ribs and knocked him off his feet as if he had been a skittle, and he hit the bush five paces from where had had been standing. Above the drumming of blood in his ears he heard two quick shots and then a frightful bellow, a

compound of pain and futile fury that wrenched the nerves at the pit of his stomach. Then another crash, and a sudden silence.

133

He kicked himself free of the bush and stood up unsteadily, half winded. Blood trickled down his face from scratches and his left side felt battered and numb. He half ran, half lurched, a few paces towards the sounds. Then he stopped dead in his tracks and stared down at the grass by his feet, feeling sick and dizzy.

A slight, khaki-clad figure lay sprawled limply on the ground, one arm flung out towards the rifle which lay by its side. Vachell knelt down and turned the figure over on its back. The whole of one side was flattened out, the ribs stove in like a broken eggshell. Blood crept slowly over the torn khaki shirt while he watched, paralysed with

horror. A great gash across the chest had ripped open the body as if it had been made of paper. The head sagged limply against Vachell’s arms.

The gored body gave a convulsive twitch and

Catchpole’s eyelids fluttered. He wasn’t quite dead. Vachell watched the white, delicate face speechlessly, and saw the eyes open and the lips move a little. Catchpole was trying to say something.

He bent down to listen, but the words were

blurred and faint. “Tell Cara,” he thought he heard; then a mumble, and the word “Luke”.

Catchpole’s right arm contracted in a sort of gripping gesture and his arm jerked feebly back, as if he were trying to reload a rifle. His lips formed a word which sounded like “seen”. The rest of the sentence was inaudible until the end, when, in a sort of croak, he said distinctly “shot Lucy.” It 134

was the final effort. His head fell back in the flaccid inertia of death, and his lips were still.

135

FR1;FR2;CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

When Vachell looked up he saw Japhet and

Konyek standing silently by his side, gazing with round and terrified eyes at the body in the grass.

“This is a very bad affair,” Japhet said. He

shook his head slowly from side to side. “What will bwana Danny say? The bwanawho-walkslikea-baboon was too slow. Konyek jumped you

jumped, and I jumped; but he did not jump with sufficient speed.

“Is the buffalo dead?” Vachell asked. His voice sounded cracked and uneven.

“He is dead. I shot him twice as he turned after he knocked down the bwana — first in the heart, and a second time in the ear. He ran a few paces; then he bellowed, and fell like a tree, and died. He is here.”

Japhet led the way round a thorny bush and

Vachell saw the buffalo’s black bulk lying on its side in the grass. A little bloody froth still clung to its nostrils, and blood oozed from a hole low down 136

behind the shoulder. He bent over it and found a second hole below the ear. It was a big bull with heaving, spreading horns. He grasped one of the horn tips and turned the head so that he could see its forehead. There was no hole there, but there was a small fresh cut in the flesh, such as might have been inflicted by a branch.

“Where did my bullet hit?” he asked.

Japhet shook his head. “Your bullet did not hit, bwana.”

Vachell swore and looked again. “It must have hit,” he said. “The buffalo was so close that it was impossible to miss. I aimed just below the boss, where this little cut is.”

Japhet shook his head again and said: “No.

Look, that’s all. Only two bullets hit this buffalo.

And another which hit yesterday.”

He seized the bull by the hind-legs and Konyek took the forelegs. Together they heaved and

hauled until the buffalo reposed on its other side.

Then they could see the third bullet hole. It was low down on the body, about half way between

shoulder and haunch. There was clotted blood on the hair all round the wound.

“Listen,” Vachell said. “Cut out the bullets, all three of them, that are in the buffalo, and give them to me.”

He recovered his rifle, apparently unharmed,

from the grass near the bush into which he had been thrown, opened the breech and extracted an exploded shell. Certainly it had been fired, and 137

certainly the buffalo hadn’t been hit. There was only one conclusion: that he was a lousy shot. And yet he’d won medals for his marksmanship in the past. Scoring bulls on a target, of course, was a different thing from stopping a charging buffalo at ten yards. Vachell felt angry and bitterly ashamed.

If that shot had gone home, Gordon Catchpole

would still be alive. Beneath his rage was an undertone of bewilderment. He’d have bet a

million bucks to a mouse-trap that his aim had been true.

A shadow flickered over the grass, and he