The African Poison Murders (2 page)

Munson broughtiitiss hea^d and half a dozen witnesses into couiri ^ th

buffaloes or a flock of satyrs or something. Of course the case was dismissed, and Anstey was landed with the costs. And there was a sequel to that story, too.”

Janice West looked up quickly and said: “Dennis, please, it makes me sick to my stomach to hear that.”

“You can hear it all the same!” West said explosively.

His eyes were snapping as he looked across at her. “This was your idea, to ]bring all this up.

You know I said….”

Janice got to her feet in a single motion. Her face in the shaded lamplight was white as the petals of a frangipane.

“I don’t want to listen,” she said. “Mr Vachell, please excuse me. I hope you have everything you want.”

The room suddenly seemed flat and empty after she had left it. She had spoken little, yet Vachell could remember every inflexion of tone. He had to make an effort to concentrate on what West was saying.

“It’s a beastly story,” his host went on, “and I’ve no proof, but it shows you the sort of fellow Munson is. Soon after the case, that boy of Anstey’s — the one that gave evidence against Munson — went on leave. About a week later he came back — carried in by some other natives. He’d been found in the forest behind Munson’s farm. His feet and hands were swollen the size of melons and stinking with gangrene. He was a pretty awful sight. When Anstey got him into hospital the doctor found loops of 10

baling wire somewhere deep down inside all the pus. His wrists and ankles had been wired together | and he’d been tied to a tree. He’d managed to twist Ifaimself free, but the wire dug into his flesh and I Isuppose he’d tripped up and stunned himself on |the way, or something. Anyhow, by the time he got to hospital it was too late. The doctor amputated his feet and hands, but luckily the wretched devil died.”

“There was no proof it was Munson,” Vachell said.

“None that a magistrate would accept. The boy never got coherent enough to make a statement, but Anstey swears he babbled Munson’s name. Of course Anstey was livid with rage. He’s tremendously keen on the natives anyhow, knows their customs and all that, and when the police found themselves up against a brick wall he raised a tremendous stink, and even went down to see the Governor about it. But it didn’t do any good. Munson’s boys are far too terrified to give him away.”

Vachell lit another cigarette and leant back in his chair, his long legs stretched out straight in front.

The fire toasted his soles and made his bony face with its deep-sunk eyes look gaunt. West, his hands clasped tightly between his knees, glanced up and decided that his guest looked like a Scot, as so many Canadians did. He had the sandy hair and long jaw of the true Scot. He looked young, too, to be head of the local C.I.D., but of course one of the things a Scot seldom gave away was his age.

ll

“Granted Munson’s the sort of guy who ought to be pushed down the bath-tub waste,” Vachell remarked, “what do you reckon anyone can do?”

West hesitated, stroking a sleeping setter with a thick, heavy hand, staring into the fire.

“It was really my wife’s idea to tell you all this,”

he said finally. “She thought you might know of some way to put a spoke in his wheel. At the moment, you see, we’re having another row. Some of Munson’s cattle have been dying rather mysteriously, presumably of poison, since the vet can’t think of anything else. Munson has accused me of putting some poison plant or other on his land, to kill them. Accused me, the damned swine.” His voice shook a little with anger. “Well, isn’t it criminal, or something, to make accusations like that?”

“Sure, you can file a suit for slander. If you can prove it, that is.”

“Proof! That’s the whole damned trouble. How can one prove anything in a country like this? I heard about Munson’s latest effort at the club; he’s said something one evening in the bar, but suppose I tried to get anyone to swear on oath —”

Footsteps came down the stone-flagged veranda and Janice West opened the door. She wore a black silk dressing-gown with a white monogram on the lapel. Her dark hair was rumpled; there was a look of fear in her eyes. Vachell’s heart missed a beat and his throat felt suddenly dry; it was a long time 12

since he had seen a woman who did so much to him. As he stood up she said:

“Dennis, I can’t find Rhode anywhere. He came out with me and I heard him barking way down towards the vegetable garden, but he hasn’t got back yet. Maybe you’d better go out and look for him.

There might be a leopard around….”

‘ West jumped to his feet and said: “Til just get a lamp.” He was out of the door in an instant. Alarm had sprung up like a flame; there was something seriously wrong. Vachell looked across the room at his hostess and asked: “How long is it since a leopard took one of your dogs?”

She turned her head slowly to face him and he saw nothing but her eyes. Their pupils were wide and black and he thought again that they were almost frighteningly alive. She shook her head faintly and answered:

“We’ve never lost one that way yet, but there’s always a chance a leopard might come around.”

Vachell gave a little twitch to his shoulders and walked over to offer her a cigarette. She fumbled as she took one from the box. When he lit the match he saw her eyelashes reflected in faint shadows on her smooth, high cheek.

“Why are you scared?” he asked.

She drew on the cigarette and looked up at him.

He could not read the expression in her eyes. There was something hard in them and hostile, like an animal behind bars. He thought that if she was 13

angry her face would turn as cruel and cold as a stone gargoyle on a Gothic church.

“Because of Rhode. I told you there’s always a chance of a leopard,” she answered, “and sometimes the natives set traps. He’s the pride of the pack. We call him that after our Rhode Islands. They’re such good setters.”

Vachell didn’t smile or answer. After a pause she spoke again, reluctantly, he thought. “There’s been some queer things going on around here lately. You may hear talk and gossip. But there’s probably a perfectly rational explanation to everything. It just makes me nervous, that’s all.”

Vachell nodded, and walked over to the fireplace to throw away the match. “Suppose you tell me about it,” he suggested. “That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?

She hesitated, looking at her cigarette end, and said: “No — not exactly — well, I guess so, in a way. Most likely it’s all imagination. The fevered fancies of a disordered mind. After all, there weren’t any footprints.” She seemed to be talking half to herself.

Vachell looked at her face with narrowed eyes.

“Listen, what is this, a poltergeist or something? Or do I have to guess? Animal, vegetable, mineral….”

“Or things that go bump in the night,” she added, and smiled. Little creases formed at the corners of her lips; he noticed that her mouth was wide.

“Lately they’ve been bumping outside my window.

Last night something knocked against the pane.

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Three nights ago I thought I heard something breathing outside. I didn’t get up, I was too scared.

Next morning we looked in the flower-bed, but we couldn’t see any footprints. It was kind of — well, you know how it is when you feel as if spiders were crawling up your spine?”

Vachell nodded. “Sure. Sounds like^ native burglar looking the ground over. Have you missed anything lately, or had anyone break into the store?”

She shook her head. “About a week ago there was another queer thing. It hardly seems —” She hesitated, and Vachell, watching her face, said gently:

“Go ahead all the same.”

“It was the garden — my delphiniums — I raise good delphiniums, you know; I’ve taken prizes.

Well, one morning I found them all decapitated —

the blooms were lying around in the dirt. They’d been cut off with a knife. It was so senseless, so …

malicious.”

Vachell ran his long fingers over his chin.

“Someone has it in for you, maybe. You’d better lock the door before you go to sleep.”

“The goblins will get you if you don’t watch out.”

She smiled again, but the shadow of fear did not leave her face.

They sat on the sofa for twenty minutes, talking idly and listening for any sound. The night was still and windless. A waning moon had risen over the forest above the farm, but the sky was hard and brittle with stars. Out of the window Vachell could 15

see a square full of them, sharp and unwinking in the clear mountain air. There was a tension, a feeling of expectancy, in the silence of the night.

He felt restless and ill at ease. He had only to put out his hand a little way to touch her arm.

Mohammedans, he thought, managed these things better. If women were kept in purdah, wrapped up in thick black veils, they couldn’t go around doing a lot of damage among reluctant strangers. And with belly-dancers you’d know just where you were.

At last they heard West’s voice giving a sharp order, and saw the light of a hurricane lamp bobbing over the lawn. Janice caught her breath and her hand went up to her throat, a white V below her black silk robe. West’s boots clanged on the stone steps outside.

“Janice!” he called. His voice was like a knifeblade rasping on a brick wall. “Get the permanganate and some hot water. And bandages. Don’t come out here.”

She put out a hand to steady herself on the back of the sofa. Vachell could see that she was feeling sick. In three strides he was across the room and on the veranda. A native was holding a hurricane lamp above his head and West was bending over a limp brown form on a garden settee. Dark stains covered the front of his shirt. Vachell felt his stomach contract. He leant over the settee and looked down at the red setter. Its mouth was open and its tongue hanging limply out, but life still flickered in the desperate pain-racked eyes. Both the fore-paws had 16

been slashed off clean above the joint, and a thin trickle of blood oozed on to the cushions.

Vachell swore in a low voice, and then saw West’s dark line-graven face. The expression made his blood run colder than the sight of the dog’s raw bleeding paws, and its look of agonized betrayal.

“By God,” West said softly. “I swear to God I’ll get the swine for this.”

17

Breakfast was served on the veranda, with morning sunlight streaming gaily on to a blue-and-white check tablecloth, and the honeysuckle that smothered the stone pillars scenting the air. In front of the house were beds of delphiniums bluer than the sky, set in a deep green lawn shaded by tall junipers and flowering native trees. Beyond lay a view that, Vachell reflected, people might travel across half the world to see if it wasn’t in a British colony, and therefore taken for granted at home and unknown abroad. A long wide valley carved away the earth beneath, lakes shone like bits of fallen sky in its hollow shimmering depths, and, beyond, range upon range of purple mountains rose to meet the bases of cloud mountains piled in the sky above.

The air was clear and cold as iced water, and the sun had warmth but not savagery in its rays.

But Vachell’s first breakfast at the Wests’ was not a cheerful meal. The injured setter had not survived the night. A rug to hide the bloodstains had been thrown over the settee where he had died. While 18

West and Janice had bandaged the dog’s mutilated legs Vachell had searched the garden and paddocks beyond in the half-hearted moonlight, without reward. He had slept a little, Bullseye within reach of his hand, and searched again at sunrise. But he had found no traces of the night marauder. The house’s surroundings were all under pasture or light bush. Besides the road going down to the club and railway station, two wagon trails branched out from the farm buildings, one leading to the cattle dip and the river, the other to the cultivated land. A footpath wound away towards the other side of the farm, taking off from the bottom of the garden.

“Goes to the Munsons’,” West told him. “It’s only about a mile — our boundaries adjoin. We’re getting very suburban here.”

They ate, for the most part, in silence. Janice was looking paler than ever; she had hardly slept at all.

West’s face was grey as that of a sick man. Vachell noticed that the two avoided each other’s eyes. They nibbled at their food, but his appetite was not affected and he felt half ashamed to eat so much.

The pawpaw was ripe and firm, the scrambled eggs light and full of flavour, the toast crisp and hot.

After an excellent meal he lit a cigarette and said: “Of course, Commander West, this thing has to be looked into. I’ve a little time in hand, and I’d be glad to take up the investigation myself. I hope you’ll allow me to question any of your boys, and generally nose around.”

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West looked at the table and mumbled: “Of course.”

“I’ll need your co-operation in another way,”

Vachell went on. “Naturally I know pretty well what’s in your mind. But it doesn’t do to jump at conclusions. I’ll have to ask you not to go over to see Munson about this. I’ll handle that end myself.”

West didn’t argue. After a pause he said: “I’d better not see him. I wouldn’t answer for the consequences if I did.”

Janice said quickly: “But you must do something.

You can’t leave a maniac like that loose, free — it isn’t safe. He — or someone — has gone crazy, next time he might….”

“I’ll do all I can,” Vachell promised. “But I have to get proof.”

“Proof.” West snapped, and swore. Then he apologized and left the table, looking distraught. The calf-feeding had yet to be done. It was obvious that he was having to keep a tight hold on himself, and Vachell felt sorry about it. He seemed to be one of those reserved, disciplined men who didn’t invite sympathy, but there was something likeable and a little pathetic about him now that he was faced with a situation where direct action couldn’t be applied.

Vachell telephoned to the local town and told Prettyman, one of the two white policemen stationed there, to come over with his car. While he was waiting he questioned West’s house-servants, but got nothing useful out of them. About the dog they shrugged their shoulders and said: “Perhaps a 20