Death in Kenya (20 page)

‘Of course they do. It's an elementary precaution that I insist upon. One should really carry permanganate as well.'

‘What for? Medicating the drinking water, or washing the salad?'

‘Snake-bite, of course. Serum is a bit bulky to take around, syringe and all. But permanganate is better than nothing. If you cut the wound across and rub the crystals in at once it can be very effective.'

‘Look, Mabel,' said Eden earnestly, ‘let's call off this picnic and go to a cinema instead. The whole thing sounds far too hazardous to me. My idea of a picnic is a peaceful afternoon spent flat on my back in the shade, after eating heartily of cold chicken, stuffed eggs, sausage-rolls and salad, topped off with coffee cake and several pints of beer. I am prepared to put up with flies and ants, but not with having myself carved up with a penknife and doctored with permanganate of potash!'

‘Not in the least likely to happen,' said Hector reassuringly. ‘Hundred-to-one chance. Though I'm not saying that Crater Lake hasn't got a bad name for snakes. Saw a mamba there once when I was a youngster. Came at me like the wind. Ugly brute. Fortunately I had m'shot-gun. Blew its head off. Very lucky shot.'

Eden covered his eyes and bowed his head on his knees, and Gilly burst into a roar of laughter to which Em added her rich chuckle, while even Ken Brandon momentarily abandoned his Byronic gloom and permitted himself to smile.

Hector said huffily: ‘It was not in the least amusing I assure you. If I'd missed it – well, that would have been the end of me. And it's very painful way to die, let me tell you! Seen a chap do it. Blue in the face – writhing and twisting. Not at all funny.'

His son's reluctant smile broadened into a grin, and he said: ‘Come off it, Dad! You're terrifying the girls. Lisa doesn't like snakes. Do you, Lisa?'

‘No,' said Lisa with a shudder. ‘Horrible things! Mbogo says that there are a pair of puff adders in a hole under the big acacia by the gate. He says he's seen their tracks in the dust.
Ugh!
'

Mabel gave a sympathetic shiver and said: ‘There seems to be a plague of them this year. We're always passing dead ones on the road that have been run over by cars. It's the only thing I don't like about the Rift – the snakes. Hector and Ken don't seem to mind them. They collected them for the venom centre once. That place where they keep snakes and collect the poison for serums.'

‘In that case,' said Gilly, ‘any intelligent snake should give us a wide berth on Wednesday.' He waved his glass and chanted:

‘You spotted snakes, with double tongue,

Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;

Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong;

Come not near
—there are Brandons about!'

‘I can't see what you've got to be so cheerful about this morning,' said Lisa crossly.

‘Can't you, my sweet? Well I'll let you into a secret. I've got a lovely surprise for you. Em's sending us off to Rumuruti when Jerry Coles leaves. How do you like that?'

There was a sudden startled silence. Eden sat bolt upright, while Lisa stared at her husband in open-mouthed, ludicrous dismay, and Drew's blond brows lifted in surprise. Even the Brandons seemed taken aback, and only Em remained tranquil.

The effect of his pronouncement appeared to afford Gilly considerable amusement, but Lisa's gaze had flown to Eden and she said involuntarily: ‘Oh no! it isn't true! We can't——'

‘Of course it's true,' said Gilly cheerfully. ‘Why are you all looking so surprised? I've been trying to blarney Em into nominating me for the job for weeks, and she's seen reason at last. I received the accolade this morning. Manager of DeBrett Farms, Rumuruti. That's me. Or it will be. Aren't you going to congratulate me, Eden?'

Eden's mouth tightened into a narrow and ominous line and he stared at Gilly for a dangerous minute, and then turned to his grandmother. ‘Is this true?' he demanded harshly. ‘Have you really promised him Coles's job?
Have you?
'

‘Come, come, my dear boy,' reproved Hector, intervening with all the tact of a charging rhinoceros. ‘Must remember that you're speakin' to your grandmother!'

Drew said very softly: ‘Ware wire, Hector!' but Eden did not appear to have heard the interruption.
‘Have you?'
he insisted, his eyes on Em.

Em looked long and deliberately from Eden to Lisa, and back again, and said calmly: ‘Certainly, dear. On consideration it seemed to me an excellent idea. I admit that I once thought otherwise, but circumstances alter cases. And in the present circumstances I consider that it may prove to be a very satisfactory arrangement after all. To
everyone.
Victoria dear, you have not yet told us if there is any particular spot that you would prefer to visit rather than Crater Lake?'

Victoria, disconcerted at finding herself suddenly drawn into the conversation, disclaimed any preferences, and was perhaps the only person present who interpreted Em's apparently inconsequent query as an attempt to change the conversation. Eden glanced quickly at her, and then at Lisa, whose desperate gaze was still fixed on him, and there was, suddenly, comprehension and something that might almost have been relief in his face.

The rigidity went out of his slim figure and he relaxed in his chair, and Gilly, who had been watching his wife with bright observant eyes and a smile that was tinged with malice, said: ‘Aren't you pleased, dear? I thought you'd be delighted! Promotion. More pay. Nice house. New faces – I hope. You'll love it!'

Lisa said nothing. She looked away from Eden at last, her face white and wooden and her mouth a tight scarlet line, and it was Hector who spoke.

‘Must say,' said Hector judicially, ‘I'm surprised. Shouldn't have said you were up to it, Gilly. If you don't mind my speakin' frankly.'

‘But I do mind,' said Gilly. ‘And, speaking frankly, I don't consider that it is any of your dam' business. Which reminds me——' He turned his back on Hector, and addressing Ken said conversationally: ‘I've been meaning to ask you, Ken. Was that Kerry Lad you were riding on Tuesday evening? Because if so, you really should enter him for the open jumping at the Royal Show. There can't be many hunters who can clear that hedge and the wire on the boundary side of my garden without coming to grief. You should have a walkover.'

Ken Brandon did not reply, and for the second time that morning a stricken silence descended upon the verandah. But now it was the boy's face that was as white and still as Lisa's had been, and the affectation and the Byronic pose fell away from him. He stared at Gilly like a hypnotized rabbit and licked his dry lips, and then Mabel had risen swiftly and was standing between them, her cheeks pink and her grey curls quivering:

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Gilly,' she said in a calmly cheerful voice. ‘Ken was riding White Lady on Tuesday. Wasn't he, Em? And she's no good over the sticks.'

‘I didn't mean when he came over the first time,' said Gilly softly. ‘I meant later on.'

‘He wasn't out later on,' said Mabel positively, and turned to Lady Emily: ‘We really must be going, Em. Thank you for the shandy. It was delicious. Where are we going to meet tomorrow? I suggest you all come along to us about eleven, as we're on your way, and then we can sort ourselves out and go on from there. Drew, you'll come won't you? Yes, of course you must. We won't take no for an answer. We fixed up who brings what food, didn't we? Then that's all right. Come on, Ken dear. Goodbye, Victoria. It's nice to have met Jack's girl. Can we give you a lift, Drew? Oh – but that's
your
Land-Rover, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Drew, rising and stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I am an uninvited guest at this party. I would appear to have the only transport that does not break down at awkward moments. Which has its disadvantages.'

His smile robbed the words of any offence, and the tension in the atmosphere decreased almost visibly. ‘That's right,' confirmed Hector. ‘Afraid we broke down. That damned clutch again. Drew picked us up. Wasted his morning, I'm afraid. Hope you won't mind givin' us a lift back, Drew?'

‘Not at all, sir. Delighted. Goodbye, Em. Are you really expecting me to turn up at this picnic tomorrow?'

‘You heard what Mabel said,' retorted Em with something that in anyone else would have been described as a sniff. ‘She “won't take no for an answer”. So naturally I shall expect to see you there.'

‘All right,' said Drew resignedly, ‘though frankly – if I may borrow a favourite word of Hector's – if I had any sense I'd remove myself to Nyali or the Northern Frontier until the situation here was less electric.'

‘Greg wouldn't let you go,' announced Em a trifle grimly. ‘
You
haven't got an alibi either!'

The Land-Rover departed in a cloud of dust, and Eden, who had been watching the Markhams as they walked away across the garden, said slowly: ‘What was Gilly getting at – about Ken riding across our land on Tuesday evening? Do you suppose he was here?'

‘Yes,' said Em shortly. ‘I imagine he did it fairly frequently, and for no better reason than the time-honoured one of passing the house in which his lady lived. Infatuated youth has done that sort of thing – and will go on doing it! – for centuries. But Ken is young enough and foolish enough to try and hide the fact, and Gilly is trading on that to tease him – and Mabel. It's a very silly thing to do, and I shall have to speak to Gilly. Drew is quite right. Too much electricity. I don't like it. I don't like it at all!'

She sighed heavily, and rising from her chair walked away down the verandah, muttering to herself after the manner of the old.

The remainder of the day had passed peacefully enough, but Victoria slept little that night. She lay awake hour after hour, worried at first by personal problems, but later by fear. For as the slow hours ticked away, the house that had seemed so silent began to fill with innumerable small stealthy sounds, until at times she could have sworn that someone was creeping about the darkened rooms – tip-toeing across the floors and easing open doors very softly so that the hinges should not creak.

She had locked her own door when she went to bed, and had been ashamed of herself for doing so. But as she lay awake in the darkness, straining her ears to listen, it occurred to her that it was no use locking your door against a ghost, and that if there were such things as poltergeists it might be in her room at the moment, watching her and chuckling at her fear.

Beyond her window the garden had been white with moonlight, but even there it had not been silent, for down in the papyrus swamps birds were calling; crying like gulls on a windy day; though there was no wind, and it was night.

Were there really still remnants of the Mau Mau gangs hiding in the swamp? – desperate, hunted, hungry men who were being fed in secret by those who were, by daylight, faithful and trusted servants of the settlers whose estates bordered the lake?

Several times during that long night the dogs had growled and barked and scratched at the door of the disused storehouse in which they were locked, and though there might be a trivial reason for that – a rat scuttling in the roof, or a prowling cat – might they not be barking at a man creeping out from the labour lines with food in his hands, to meet a shadow who had come up through the darkness of the shamba and the papyrus swamp? A shadow who had perhaps killed Alice DeBrett——?

12

The Land-Rovers bumped and bounced and jolted over the unmade lake road, trailing the inevitable dust clouds behind them like smoke from an express train, and the morning was hot and blue and brilliant.

The country was more rugged here, near the foothills of the Mau, and oddly shaped hillocks that had once been the cones of volcanoes jutted up out of the plain, turning from green to darkest midnight blue as an idling cloud shadow would engulf one and silhouette it blackly against the surrounding blaze of sunlight.

There was little game to be seen at this hour of the day, for in the hot noonday the great herds of zebra and gazelle that grazed across the open ranges in the early morning and the late afternoon had retired to the shade of the trees. But in a grove of acacias outside a small village a troop of baboons howled and leapt and danced among the branches as the Land-Rovers passed.

The picnic party had arrived separately at the Brandons' farm, and had there sorted themselves out into three Land-Rovers. Ken Brandon and Lisa in Drew Stratton's, Em with Mabel and Hector, and Victoria and Gilly with Eden.

Eden's complement had also included Thuku, Em's African driver, and old Zacharia who had been brought along to deal with such tedious but necessary chores as the cleaning of dirty knives and dishes, the disposal of debris and the repacking of depleted baskets. The Brandons had also brought their driver, Samuel, for it was still not considered safe to leave a vehicle unguarded in the remoter parts of the Rift, and both Samuel and Thuku carried loaded shot-guns.

‘There's Crater Lake,' announced Gilly, breaking a silence that had lasted for several miles. ‘Or rather, there's the rim of the crater. Over on the right——'

‘But there's no road,' objected Victoria.

‘Lor' bless you, we don't need roads in this country,' said Gilly. ‘What do you take us for? Sissies? I admit that this appalling chain of rocks and potholes that we have been bouncing along for the last umpteen miles or so calls itself a road, but you won't notice any appreciable difference when we take to the open range. Here we go!'

As he spoke, Eden drove the Land-Rover off the dust-laden road and across a long stretch of open country that sloped upward towards high ground crowned with rocks, candelabrum trees, thorn scrub and thickets of wild olive.