The African Poison Murders (14 page)

At four o’clock he rang up the Marula labs. The Government analyst reported that he had been working on the specimens all day, but had found no traces of any of the recognized toxins or irritants in the stomach, liver, spleen or intestines. “Of course, you realize that this is a long job,” the analyst said. “And, frankly, there are certain tests too delicate to be applied with the apparatus I’ve got here. Besides, there’s the rapid rate of deterioration found in the tropics to be taken into account.”

“Okay,” Vachell said. “Make the analysis as thorough as you can. There may be a question of eliminating all possibilities but one in court.”

In the rush of events the mystery of the maniac who had killed Dennis West’s dog and Miss Adams’

pigeons had receded into the background; but it was unwise, Vachell reflected, to let it recede too far. Munson’s murder — if murder it was, and the arrowpoison theory was right — might or might not be connected with internecine warfare in the 137

Nazi Bund; in the meantime, so far as was known, a dangerous maniac with some kind of pathological blood-craving was still at large. So far birds and dogs had supplied the blood. It might be humans next time.

What was wanted, Vachell decided as he rattled along the dusty road to the Wests’ in his car, was a psychiatrist’s advice. Most likely an expert in abnormal psychology could dope it all out after five minutes’ conversation with the person whose twisted mind drove him to this midnight prowling with a knife. There would certainly be some psychological explanation of the whole thing. The trouble was that no expert in abnormal psychology lived in Chania, so far as he knew, unless Sir Jolyot Anstey included an acquaintance with psychiatry in his store of esoteric knowledge. But somehow he did not feel like consulting Anstey about it. A man who saw in murder a manifestation of the judgment of God was hardly dependable from the standpoint of the police.

It was because of the maniac that Vachell was going back to the Wests’ farm. He knew that he ought to leave, to have left already in fact; but he had a feeling that there was more to come. For some reason the Wests’ place seemed to be the centre of the maniac’s orbit. He or she — it — had been around there twice at least: when the dog Rhode was attacked, and before that, when Janice’s delphiniums had been senselessly, maliciously destroyed. It might come there again. And Janice 138

West had asked for protection. A couple of native askaris were insufficient to provide that. Besides, at the Wests’ he could keep right in the centre of things. He could reach the Munsons’ on foot in fifteen minutes, and without advertising his arrival, as he couldn’t fail to do whenever he went there in a car.

There were plenty of good excuses, he thought ruefully, as his car bumped over the Wests’ lawn, for staying on where he had no right to be.

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All through the evening Janice West was affable and polite, but some elusive change in her manner made Vachell feel shut out and lonely, ill at ease.

She had trusted him before — in subtle ways she had shown that she thought him her friend. Now the trust was gone, and a blank wall stood in his path.

There was nothing he could do. He fell back on an impersonal manner, too; a police superintendent spending the evening with strangers on the road.

He talked about some of his cases, they discussed local politics and the increase in native crime, and listened to the news on the Empire broadcast.

The news was depressing, too. West puffed at his pipe and said little. He looked harassed and rather ill. One of his cows had slipped a calf; he was afraid an epidemic of contagious abortion might be on the way. The only one of the party who seemed to feel entirely at home was Bullseye. She had settled down on excellent terms with the setters, and spent the evening curled up at Vachell’s feet in front of the fire.

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Her master took her for a bedtime walk over the misty lawn, and let her bark fiercely at the deep shadows of trees and bush which began where the garden ended. The moon was rising, low over the forest and black formless clouds drifted across the sky. A rustle in the bush beyond the split-bamboo fence that bounded the garden made Vachell strain his eyes. He saw nothing, but diagnosed a duiker disturbed in its evening meal. From the forest behind the house a hyrax screamed suddenly, and the noise subsided into a long-drawn mixture of rattle and croak. The valley below was like a vast black chasm, and in it, as the cloud passed over, gleamed the silver-white of water lit up by the moon.

The askari on guard was leaning against a tree at the bottom of the garden. He stood to attention and reported that no one had passed that way along the path leading to Munson’s farm.

It was half-past ten when Vachell got back to his room. He drew the curtains to let in the moonlight, and opened the windows wide. A smell of honeysuckle drifted in. The lawn lay white outside, and peaceful. The small grey figure of a duiker picked its way across. Beyond lay the bush, a dense black cloak that hid a predatory world of bloodshed and cruelty, a sleepless world where eternal vigilance was the price of life. After a little he picked a light novel from his dressing-table and read himself to sleep.

He awoke, it seemed, an instant later. There had 141

been some sound, and Bullseye heard it too. She barked sharply and ran whining to the door. There was a moment of deep silence and then everything seemed to happen at once. A shout sounded from the garden, a shot cracked through the air and Bullseye sprang like a steeplechaser out of the open window and raced, a white streak, across the lawn.

Vachell leapt out of bed, seized his police revolver from the table, rammed his feet into a pair of shoes and followed. There was nothing to be seen. He sprinted after Bullseye and when he reached the bottom of the lawn he saw a movement in the bushes. A moment later the askari, panting loudly, appeared.

“There was a thing…” he gasped, his voice hoarse; and then stopped abruptly.

Away to the right, in a patch of bush, came a sudden bark and then a sharp yelp of fright. The yelp turned into a sort of shriek and then died away in a whine of pain. Vachell plunged off towards it, forcing his way through the bush, whistling and calling to Bullseye all the time. He tried to keep the direction but knew it was hopeless unless the dog could answer. No more sounds came, and when he got to the place where he thought the yelp must have originated he stood still and called. His voice sounded empty and futile in the vast darkness. The moon was hidden by clouds, and the disturbance had silenced all the normal noises of the night.

Then he heard a rustle in the bushes to the left, and a white figure came crawling low on the ground.

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He knelt down and stretched out his hands, and felt something warm and sticky. There was enough light to see that the dog had a bleeding cut across the face, and that an ear was nearly severed from the head. Vachell swore softly. The askari, who had followed behind, gave an exclamation of horror.

“It was the thing that struck him!” he exclaimed.

“The thing that ran away!” The native was still panting from his chase.

“Give me the story,” Vachell said.

“I was patrolling as you had told me,” he began.

“I had reached to over there beyond the bwana’s house, near the cowhouses. I heard a noise like a chicken crying. I went towards it and then I saw a thing in front of me, a bad thing, bwana, I do not know its name. It was crouching down on the ground like this.” The askari bent double and moved a few paces in a crouch, like a baboon. His voice was uneven, the whites of his eyes showing from fear. “It walked so that I did not know if it was a hyena or a monkey, or a madman. And then it jumped.”

“It came from where?”

“I do not know. It came from near the cowhouses, but suddenly I saw it there, like a hyena, like a spirit! Then it sprang to one side and ran towards the house. I shouted, ‘Stand, stand!’ but it ran and I followed. But it ran upright, bwana, like a man. When it got near to the house it swerved over the grass and then into the bushes beyond the flowers. There was something shining in its hand.

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I could see that it would escape so I fired, as you told me, bwana, at its legs. But it jumped the fence, like an antelope, and my bullet went beneath. I came to the fence a moment later, I was close behind, but it had vanished completely. It had gone.”

The askari looked nervously around as though expecting to see the nameless thing crouching in the shadow of a bush.

“Bwana, it was something very bad,” he added.

“What kind of a thing was it?” Vachell asked.

“Was it large or small?”

The askari shook his head. “Bwana, I could not see well, the moon was hidden and the night was dark. It ran like a man, yet what man walks doubled up like a hyena? It was a short thing, not tall, short like a spirit. But the walk, that was like a frog. I think it was a spirit, bwana, an evil spirit sent to bring great harm.”

“Spirits do not strike dogs with knives,” Vachell said. Bullseye was whimpering softly at his feet, stiff with fright and pain. Vachell lifted her gently and carried her back over the low fence and across the lawn. The fence would be an easy jump for a running person. And there had been no rain; the ground was hard and dry. No chance of footprints on the lawn.

There was a light on the veranda and both the Wests were there. The Commander was fully dressed, in slacks and an old tweed coat, and breathing heavily. Janice had thrown her black silk 144

dressing-gown over red pyjamas, and her eyes were wide with fear. In the lamplight her face looked white as a magnolia flower, and her rumpled hair was a dark halo. She was shivering slightly, with her arms crossed over her chest and her hands tucked under the sleeves of her dressing-gown.

“What’s happened?” West asked. His voice was sharp and harsh, the gun was in his hand. Then he caught sight of Bullseye and exclaimed: “Good God, another one! Is she alive? You’ll want permanganate and hot water. Did you get him? What was the shot?”

“Yes. No. The askari fired at something but it got away.”

“Something? What?”

“I don’t know.”

The lights went on in the sitting-room and a houseboy appeared, his eyes blurry with sleep. West told him to bring hot water and permanganate of potash at once.

“Where were you when you heard the shot?”

Vachell asked.

“In here.”

“The sitting-room? You didn’t go to bed?”

West shook his head.

“One of my new Friesian heifers was going to calve. She’s almost pure-bred, and this is her first calf, so I thought I’d see her through. After you and Janice went off I read for a bit and went out soon after eleven to see if she’d begun. She hadn’t, so I came back here. I’d been reading for about twenty 145

minutes when I heard the shot. I dashed out, but I saw you just ahead, so I left you to it and went to see if Janice was all right. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. We don’t often get midnight manhunts on a quiet dairy farm.”

Somehow the last sentence seemed to strike a false note. West looked ghastly: it was not the moment Vachell would have expected even a feeble effort at the facetious. Bullseye lay shivering violently on the couch, still bleeding a little. Janice was sitting on a chair with her eyes on her husband’s face, her legs crossed, and her hands clasped in her lap. She had gone over to look at Bullseye when Vachell first brought the dog in, but now she sat away from him, averting her eyes, as though she was going to be sick. She had blood on her hands.

“You found Mrs West in her room?” Vachell asked.

“Of course,” West answered shortly.

“I was in bed when I heard the shot,” Janice said quickly. “I saw someone running down by the fence out of the window, and a few minutes later Dennis rushed in. Then we came across here to see if the dogs were all right.”

“You came direct from your bedroom to this veranda?” Vachell asked.

“Yes.”

“Give me your right slipper, please.”

She looked at him as though he had gone crazy.

He repeated the sentence; his voice was expression146

less and hard. West made an uneasy movement by the door.

Without answering she pulled off the mule and handed it over, her eyes on his face. He put his palm over the sole for a moment and handed it back. There was fresh mud on it, packed under the heel, and the sole was wet. He said nothing at all.

A covered way with a cement floor led from her bedroom to the veranda, and the lawn was dry.

Neither of the Wests spoke. The houseboy came with a basin of warm water, some cotton, and a bottle of permanganate tablets. West held the lamp while Vachell went to work on Bullseye’s wound.

It was a deep knife-slash that had just missed the eye and ran down from ear to cheek. The dog squealed in pain as the permanganate stung. Vachell held her still by the muzzle and discovered that the underpart of the jaw was bruised and tender. It was easy to see what had happened. Bullseye had overtaken the quarry and got a blow on the jaw. She had sprung again and the knife had slashed out at her throat, just missing. Luckily the shock had made her give up: she was only eight months old. The next knifethrust would have been the last.

“Both askaris will be on duty the rest of the night,” Vachell said, when the firstaid job was done. “One outside your door and the other over by the farm buildings. Has the heifer calved yet, Commander West?”

“No. Not yet.”

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minutes when I heard the shot. I dashed out, but I saw you just ahead, so I left you to it and went to see if Janice was all right. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. We don’t often get midnight manhunts on a quiet dairy farm.”

Somehow the last sentence seemed to strike a false note. West looked ghastly: it was not the moment Vachell would have expected even a feeble effort at the facetious. Bullseye lay shivering violently on the couch, still bleeding a little. Janice was sitting on a chair with her eyes on her husband’s face, her legs crossed, and her hands clasped in her lap. She had gone over to look at Bullseye when Vachell first brought the dog in, but now she sat away from him, averting her eyes, as though she was going to be sick. She had blood on her hands.