The African Poison Murders (29 page)

Janice frowned in thought. “I don’t know. Wait a minute, though. I lent a bottle to Anita one day, when she complained she couldn’t sleep. It had my name on the bottle and Mrs Munson may have seen it in Anita’s room.”

Vachell nodded. “That would be it. She wrote the note on Mrs Innocent’s machine when she went in to Karuna the afternoon of Munson’s death. At that time she didn’t know how Munson died. She guessed he’d been poisoned, but guessed the wrong kind of poison. We found afterwards that chloral hydrate didn’t come into it at all, and that put her in the clear, unless she was being more cagey than I gave her credit for. Anyway, after the night Bullseye got slashed, I knew it couldn’t be her.”

“Because she isn’t agile enough to jump the fence and get away from the askari,” Janice said. “I thought of that too. Up to that point I thought she 302

might be the one who’d been doing these crazy things, but after that I knew it couldn’t be. That was a terrible night. I couldn’t sleep, and I went out for a stroll, just when the maniac — Anita, I can’t get used to the idea — must have been around, I guess, because I’d only been back in my room maybe five or ten minutes when the askari fired and all the commotion began. I was so scared I told you I’d been in my bedroom all the time, and then you found the mud on my mules, and it nearly killed me.”

“You didn’t consider letting me in on the story?”

“I was too scared. The way you’d been looking at me, I thought you suspected I was the guilty one.

And then Dennis — I knew what he thought, I knew he wouldn’t believe that I’d just gone out to take a walk … And now it’s too late to explain.”

Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper, and she kept her eyes on the head of the setter that rested on her lap.

“That wasn’t suspicion, that was the look a guy keeps for women who can trample all over him and have him come back for more,” Vachell said lightly.

“I was telling you how you showed me the crack in Anita Adams’ story. It has to do with eggs.”

“Eggs?”

“Eggs. It wasn’t possible to check on the times during which the killer could have driven his doctored nail into Munson’s shoe, but it was possible to narrow down the time when the nail must have been taken out. We got it down to half an hour, 303

between a quarter to seven and a quarter after.

I checked on everyone’s alibi during that time.

Wendtland was on his own farm thirty miles away.

You, Parrot, seemed out, for the same reason. Corcoran was with a whole gang of natives, sowing oats.

Mrs Munson was in the office, but she was ruled out for other reasons, and Anita Adams was doing the morning chores in the poultry pens. One of the jobs a poultry-keeper mustn’t skip is to turn the eggs in the incubator night and morning — isn’t that right, Mrs West?”

“I wish you’d stop calling me Mrs West. Sure, that’s right. They have to be turned twice a day.”

“Anita Adams said she’d done the chores as usual between sixthirty and breakfast at seven-fifteen. But she hadn’t turned the eggs.”

Janice stared at him with eyes that were startled out of their preoccupation with her own tragedy.

“For Heaven’s sake, how do you know that?”

“When you show me something, it sticks. You showed me how you mark one side of the eggs with a cross and leave the other side bare. Anita Adams used the same technique. The eggs had a cross on top when I looked into her incubators around noon on the day before Munson died. I saw them again the following afternoon. In the interval they should have been turned twice, evening and morning. That would have brought the crosses back on top. But the bare surfaces were on top. That meant the eggs had been turned once instead of twice in the last twenty-four hours. Unless this could be explained 304

away, it meant that Anita Adams had skipped her normal routine that morning. She’d skipped it because she was waiting around within sight of Munson’s bedroom door for a chance to jump in and grab the nail. She got the chance, but not until nearly seven, and by that time it was too late to turn the eggs.”

Janice stared at him in amazement. “Well, for the Lord’s sake,” she exclaimed. “If that doesn’t take some beating. You mean to say you built up the whole case on Anita’s failure to turn the eggs?”

“No,” Vachell said. “There were lots of other things. It was obvious we were dealing with a person well on the road to the nut-house, someone as full of repressions and psychological kinks as a sheep is full of worms. Mrs Munson and Anita Adams seemed to be the only two mentally unhealthy people mixed up in the whole business, and Mrs Munson could be ruled out for the reasons I gave.

That just left Anita Adams; but it didn’t leave any proof.

“This has been a hell of a case, there never was enough proof to make a grass-blade tremble. Right now I haven’t a shred of proof that she killed the Commander. I reckon he came on her during the fire, just at the moment when the bushbuck calf had bumped into her legs, and the sight of something scared and helpless aroused the rage in her to destroy, so she cut its throat. Most likely she was carrying a shot of arrowpoison around with her in case a chance arose to get at Mrs Munson’s 305

bloodstream. All we know is, he dropped his axe, maybe to grab hold of her, and she struck him.

Anita Adams caught up Janice — and came out with the rest of the party. My only chance to pin anything on her was to close in during the attempt I knew she’d make, if my calculations were right, on Mrs Munson. I encouraged her to think she could take the kids away, so she’d figure her big chance had come and go ahead and make her play.

I was in a spot: if she’d succeeded, Mrs Munson’s death would have been at my door, and the sort of murder you can commit by leaving a nail or splinter around for the murderer to scratch a hand on is kind of hard to stop.

“Right here I got the breaks. Anita Adams figured Mrs Munson would be certain to look over the leopard trap last thing to see it was properly baited.

She always saw to things like that herself. So Anita fastened the pride of the turkey flock in the trap, so Mrs Munson couldn’t help but wound her hands when she went in to rescue the bird. Anita was thorough, too. She even swiped Mrs Munson’s knife so the string couldn’t be cut, and Mrs Munson would have to undo the knots. If I hadn’t happened to take the path into the forest last night the trick would have worked, I guess.

“There was one more piece to the plan. I reckon Anita Adams intended to return later and open the trap so Mrs Munson’s body would be leopard’s bait, and next morning another of those deaths that looked like accidents and couldn’t be proved to be 306

anything else would be discovered. Then Anita Adams would be free to take away the kids, with no one to kick. And there’d still be no proof, even that Mrs Munson had been murdered. It was neat, but the wrong sap fell for the turkey gag, and when she came back later that night she found a live body instead of a dead one in the trap. She tried to put things right, even at that late stage, and if it hadn’t been for the askari who followed her down I guess she’d have had her third killing after all.”

“It was lucky the corporal fired that shot,” Parrot observed.

“Sure was,” Vachell agreed.

They sat in silence for a little, watching the wide view below them trembling in the midday heat, ponderous clouds resting on the horizon, and sunbirds flashing with metallic brilliance among the flowers. The dogs had quietened now, and lay, panting gently, in the shade. After a little, Norman Parrot got to his feet, stretched, and picked a battered old felt hat off the grass.

“Well,” he remarked, “thanks for the beer, Janice.

It hit the spot. I must be getting along.”

“Stop to lunch,” Janice said.

Parrot shook his head. “I’d like to, but I’ve got to pack and fix things up for the farm to carry on.

You’ll have a rest from my ugly mug for a while.”

Janice sat up in her chair in consternation and surprise. “You’re not going away?”

Parrot nodded. “For a bit. One job is over, there’s another to come. Onwards and upwards is our 307

motto. All the little pyrethrum flowers will bow their heads, the cows conceive in sorrow and the tassels of the mealies wilt, but, nevertheless, I must leave them to their fate. It’s a hard life.”

“But you’ll come back?”

“Oh, rather,” Parrot said cheerfully. Janice got up and he shook hands, started to say something, and then changed his mind. He looked embarrassed and unhappy, like a small boy going back to school.

“I shall pop up from time to time,” he added. “But it isn’t exactly the sort of job one can settle down in, if you know what I mean. One day I shall retire on to the Stock Exchange with a cosy little flat near Marble Arch and marry my cook, if she’ll have me, and spend a week-end at the Metropole at Brighton now and then. That’s always been my secret ambition.”

“Oh,” Janice said, a little blankly. “We shall miss you. It won’t seem the same.”

Parrot rammed his hat on to the back of his head and managed a grin. “Time, the great healer, already has the situation in hand,” he remarked.

“Anyone who can handle a scythe and an hourglass at once, plus a long beard, can fix anything.

Besides, you’ve now got the devoted personal attention of the Chania police. Make the most of it —

exploit it to the full. Thanks for everything, Janice, good-bye and good luck.”

He shook hands quickly with Vachell and muttered awkwardly: “You’ll do all you can? I mean, she’s on her own, and things have been a bit 308

harassing. I wish I could stay. Well, so long, and next time you want to make a study of African wild life don’t do it in a leopard trap.” He looked back from the other side of the lawn and waved his hat as he climbed into his dilapidated car.

“That’s one swell guy,” Vachell said, looking after him, “with a tough job. He has to travel light.”

“He’s a good neighbour,” Janice said.

Vachell looked at her across the table where brown bottles caught gleams of sunlight that shone down through the tree. Wild thoughts and hopes were rushing around inside his head like a flock of madly excited birds. None of them paused for long enough for identification.

“I thought maybe he was more to you than that,”

he said. His mouth had suddenly gone dry.

Janice glanced at him and he looked straight into her eyes. He lost all sense of time and place; he felt as if he were swimming in a depthless pool between high rocks. There was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

“Listen,” he said, and his voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. “This is a hell of a time to say it, but I’m madly in love with you. Ever since I first saw you, since the night you asked me up to dinner, I’ve been so damned much nuts about you I haven’t been able to think of anything else.

It’s like being drowned in the sea, and never quite going under. Now you can throw me out on my ear, but I had to say it before I go. The trouble is, I don’t want to go. I want to stay right here and 309

look at you, I want to help you out of this jam. I don’t want to leave you like this, alone.”

Janice smiled, but it was a weary smile, and her eyes were sad.

“Everything moves too quickly,” she said. “I’m sorry, I can’t keep up any more.”

Vachell stepped forward eagerly, a new and brilliant idea filling his mind. “Look,” he said quickly, “you can’t stay here alone, no one to help out or anything, even Parrot gone. It’s impossible, it’s absurd. All I want is to be some use to you, that’s all I care about now. I’m no farmer, I don’t know yet what it’s all about, but I can learn, and in the meantime I can take care of the labour and fix all the business side and see the boys don’t start to chisel now there’s no boss. I could move into Parrot’s place for the time being and maybe one day when….”

“Have you gone entirely crazy?” Janice demanded sharply. She looked amazed. “Have you got a touch of the sun, or have I, or what? Or have you just been pretending all this time to be a superintendent in the Chania police?”

“None of those things,” Vachell said. His eyes were shining with excitement. He seized a bottle of beer off the table and waved it in the air. “I’ve just given birth to the only swell idea I’ve ever had. I’m sick of this police racket. I’ve been feeling that way for months, only I didn’t know it. I’ve held down one job long enough. I’m through with the whole darned thing. I’ll call up Major Armitage right now 310

and tell him I’m quitting, and nuts to him. I’ll stay up here for a while and help straighten things out, and when you’re ready to say the word we can pull stakes and go places I’ve always wanted to go —

China, maybe, and the Dutch East Indies, there’s islands in there that still haven’t been explored, and New Guinea, where the head-hunters are; we’ll explore it all together and we’ll keep a place here so we —”

He broke off and put down the bottle, abashed and suddenly calm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess you’re right. I’m nuts — it must be the sun. This is a hell of a way to talk, when only two days ago … I mean it, though. I’ll wait ten years if I have too; but one day you’re going to marry again, and when you’re ready I’m going to be on hand, and if you won’t have me at least I’ll be the first guy you turn down. Janice, tell me something, will you?”

“You make me dizzy in the head.”

“You haven’t got Norman Parrot on your mind?”

“No, of course not, I —”

“Nor any other guy?”

“Will you please not talk this way? Do you think it’s even decent, when Dennis —”

“I’m sorry, Janice, you’ll have to forgive me, this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Does it get you down to run this place singlehanded?

Do you need help?”

“Of course, but I decline —”

“Do you hate to be alone?”

“What is this? Will you —”

311

“Do you want to go places and see things? Do you like to act crazy, to go as far as your money takes you and then find a job that pays you some more? Do you think of the hell it would be to stop in one place all your life and never see all the things you want to see? Of course you do. I knew it the first time I met you. I read it in your eyes, the way you spoke, and everything about you. Janice, I —”