Death in Kenya (31 page)

Victoria saw it coming and flung herself to one side, and the blow missed its mark and grazed her right shoulder, shearing through the short linen sleeve.

She saw the blade flash in the dusk as it lifted again, and then she was struggling and fighting, gripped to something that was soft and yielding and as suffocating as a feather bolster; her hands round a wrist that seemed made of iron, fending it off, and her ears full of the sound of grunting, panting breaths.

She made no attempt to cry out, for she needed her breath and her young strength to fight for her life. Her foot caught in a rough tangle of grass and she stumbled and fell to her knees, and saw the panga lift again. But it did not fall.

There was someone else there. A dark shape that appeared out of nowhere and sprang at her assailant with the silent savagery of a giant cat.

Victoria, crouched on the grass, heard a hoarse gasping cry, and saw the shapeless scarlet-clad figure crumple and fall sideways. And then the green sky and the purple dusk darkened and closed in on her, and she pitched forward on her face into merciful unconsciousness.

*   *   *

There was a light somewhere that was hurting her eyes, and she felt cold and very sick and aware of a burning pain in her right shoulder.

There were voices too, and someone was saying: ‘She'll be all right. It's only a flesh wound.'

A hand touched her forehead and Victoria shuddered uncontrollably and opened her eyes to find that she was lying on her own bed and looking up into Drew Stratton's face.

She said in a gasping whisper: ‘
Drew!
— Oh, Drew!'

Drew said: ‘It's all right, darling. It's all over. Drink this——'

He lifted her against his shoulder, and holding a glass to her mouth, forced her to swallow something that tasted exceedingly nasty. But when he would have laid her down again she turned and clung to him.

‘Don't go. Please don't go.'

‘I won't.' Drew's leisurely voice was quiet and level and completely reassuring. And all at once she knew that she was safe – for always.

Someone who had been standing just out of the range of her vision went out of the room, closing the door, but she did not turn her head, and Drew did not move.

She could hear cars arriving and leaving, and the occasional shrilling of the telephone. The house was full of muffled voices and movement, and somewhere a woman was crying with a hysterical despairing persistency. But none of it had anything to do with her, and presently Drew lifted her head and kissed her, and time and death and violence ceased to have any meaning.

She said at last, with her head against his shoulder:

‘It was Aunt Em.'

‘I know, dear.'

‘Why did she do it?'

‘I'll tell you in the morning.'

Victoria said urgently: ‘No! Tell me now. I couldn't sleep – not knowing.'

Drew smiled down at her. ‘You won't be able to help yourself, darling. Not after that stuff you've just taken!'

‘Then I shall dream about it, and that will be worse. Tell me now.'

But Drew only shook his head, and presently she fell asleep, and when she awoke the sun was high, and it was Mabel Brandon, red-eyed with weeping, who had brought her breakfast on a tray, and after putting a fresh bandage on her shoulder, helped her to dress.

But Mabel would not answer her questions. She had only said: ‘She's dead. She died at three o'clock this morning. Eden was with her. One should not speak ill of the dead.' And she had gone away, blowing her nose vehemently and making no attempt to disguise her tears.

The drawing-room had been full of sunlight, and Drew had been standing by the window looking out across the garden. He turned and smiled at her, and Victoria said unsteadily:

‘Mrs Brandon says she – she is dead.' Even now she could not bring herself to say that name, because to say it was to admit the impossible. ‘Drew, what happened? I don't understand. I don't understand anything!'

Drew said: ‘Greg knows more about it than I do. Ask him.' And Victoria turned quickly and saw for the first time that there was someone else in the room.

Greg Gilbert gave her a brief smile that did not reach his eyes and left his face as grim and drawn as it had been a moment before, and when he spoke it was to ask what appeared to be an entirely irrelevant question:

‘Did you ever know why Eden broke off the engagement between you, and married Alice Laxton?'

‘No,' said Victoria, considerably taken aback. ‘I suppose he— What has it got to do with this?'

‘More than you would think,' said Greg tiredly. ‘He broke it off because your mother told him that there was insanity in the family.'

‘
Insanity!
Do you mean that I——' Victoria's face was white.

‘No. Not in yours. Your grandfather married twice. But both Lady Emily's mother and her grandfather died in lunatic asylums, and there was always some doubt about the manner in which Eden's father met his death.'

‘But – but it was a car accident!'

‘Yes. But an odd one. Odd enough for a rumour to get around that he might possibly have engineered it himself. There was no shadow of evidence that he was abnormal, or even highly strung. But your mother heard the rumours, and because she knew all about Em's family history she believed them. And in spite of everything that the doctors say about insanity not being hereditary, she was very much against your marrying Eden.'

‘Yes,' said Victoria in a whisper. ‘I remember.'

‘In the end she told Eden, as the only way of stopping it. He was young and impressionable, and it came as an appalling shock to him. I gather he went off for a week by himself and drank himself silly, and decided on a heroic gesture. He wouldn't tell you, because you would insist on disregarding it, and he felt he must do something quite irrevocable – burn his boats before he could weaken. He had met Alice Laxton a few weeks before, and through a cousin of hers he knew her history. Alice had had a bad riding accident in her early teens, and she could never have children. That was the deciding factor. He married her in a haze of self-sacrifice, youthful heroics, desperation and alcohol – and pure selfishness! And woke up to the full stupidity of what he had done when it was too late.'

But Victoria had no interest and little sympathy to spare for Eden just then, and she brushed the information aside and demanded bluntly: ‘Do you mean that Aunt Em was mad?'

Greg said: ‘No; she was sane enough. But she loved
Flamingo
too much and made a god out of it, and she had meant to found a dynasty: a Kenya dynasty. When she realized that Alice could never have children it meant only one thing to her: that there would be no heir to
Flamingo.
She had a shrewd suspicion that Eden was still in love with you, and she thought you were the right kind of girl for Kenya – as Alice was not! I think the seeds of the idea must have been in her mind for a long time.'

Victoria said: ‘But the – poltergeist. They were
her
things. The things she liked best. She
couldn't
have done that!'

‘Oh, yes she could. Not the first time. That was the cat, who had chased a bird round the drawing-room. But it gave her an idea for an alibi – that and the rumour that “General Africa” was hiding somewhere in the Naivasha area – and she decided to use it as a smoke screen. I think too that it appealed to some twisted instinct in her. She seems to have looked upon it as a – a penance for what she intended to do. A sort of burnt offering upon the altar of
Flamingo.
There was too much of the fanatic in Em's make-up: and plenty of cunning too, for she knew that if the broken things were her own personal treasures she would be the last person to be suspected of destroying them. But it must have been a small martyrdom to do it.'

Victoria said: ‘
Things,
yes. But not her dog!'

‘Ah! The dog was a different matter. It had been her favourite, and it had switched its allegiance to Alice. She couldn't forgive that.'

Victoria shivered and said in a whisper: ‘You said once that the first killing was the hardest. Perhaps that was why she had to do it. To – to practise.'

‘It wasn't her first killing. She'd killed her manager, Gus Abbott. We always thought that was an accident, but it seems we were wrong. Abbott lost his nerve, and when
Flamingo
was attacked he didn't want to stay and fight. He wanted to save himself, and he thought he could make a break for it and hide in the garden. But to run away, and from a gang of Mau Mau, was to Em an unforgivable sin, and she apparently shot him quite deliberately. I think that afterwards it gave her a sense of power. To have done that and got away with it. Perhaps it swung the balance, and made it possible for her to plan the murder of Eden's unsuitable wife. For she did plan it. She seized on that first accident, for which Pusser was responsible, and kept on with a series of faked ones; and at the psychological moment she sent for you. It had given her a good excuse for doing so.'

Victoria said: ‘She sent for me because my mother had died!'

‘No, she didn't. If it had been that, she would have sent for you six months earlier. She sent for you because her plans were working out, and she murdered Alice just as soon as you were due to leave England and could not turn back. If she'd done it earlier, you wouldn't have come, would you?'

‘No,' said Victoria slowly.

‘Because of Eden. Yes, she knew that. You thought it was safe to come because he was married. But by the time you arrived here he would be free, and she was banking on his marrying you.'

Victoria went over to the window seat and sat down on it, staring out at the green lawns and the placid lake, and presently she said without turning her head:

‘There are so many things I don't understand. The piano. Gilly Markham. Were there two records of the concerto? I found one, you know. It was in the false bottom of a hat box in Eden's room. I – I thought it must mean that he was the poltergeist, and that he'd kept it to blackmail her with.'

‘Did you? That's irony, if you like! Em didn't know that. She said you told her that you'd found something, and you must leave at once, or go to the police. She went straight to Eden's room and realized that you'd been at the cupboard, and knew what it was that you had found. She thought it meant that you knew everything. That was why you had to be killed. She told us a great deal before she died. I think she was afraid that we might suspect Eden, and she had to clear him.'

‘Then there
were
two records!'

‘No. Only one. She needed it to manufacture that alibi, and she couldn't bear to destroy it. She smashed another one instead. One long-playing record looks much like another when it's in bits, and no one bothered to piece it together to read the label. She had the whole thing worked out by then. She went off ostensibly to shoot a buck, but actually to ensure that she had a good excuse for getting bloodstained – which was a point that had escaped me. And when she came back she sent Alice over to the Markhams', put a house-coat over her stained clothes and started to play the piano. And when she'd got rid of Zacharia she put on the recording instead, removed the house-coat and went out to meet Alice …

‘She killed Alice with a panga in order to bolster up the “General Africa” angle, and she came back to the house and dropped it, with a piece of twine round the handle, into the rainwater tank outside her window. Then she came back to her room, took off her stained clothes, put on the house-coat again, and went back to the drawing-room where she was found by Zacharia, still playing the piano, half an hour later. After that it was easy. She removed the record, took it back to its hiding place, stopped to pick up her stained clothes and see them put into the boiler – Majiri did most of the washing at night – and went out to search for Alice.'

Victoria said: ‘But the cushion! Why should she have needed that?'

‘She didn't. That was a mistake. Mine, as much as anyone's! That cushion threw me right off beam, and incidentally frightened the life out of Mabel! Apparently there had been six of those cushions sold at some charity bazaar, and Mabel had bought two; one of which had disappeared only about ten days ago. Ken says he took it on a picnic on the lake and lost it overboard, but Mabel began to add two and two together and make it eighteen.'

‘Then why was it there?'

‘Someone had left it on the verandah rail by the rainwater tank, and Em knocked it off and it fell against the panga and got badly stained. It couldn't be left there with the stain on it, so she ran back with it and threw it into the bushes. It was the best she could do, and as it turned out it provided her with an alibi that she had never even thought of – which is why she took another with her when she went out to meet you! She thought she'd covered everything, but she hadn't.'

Victoria said: ‘You mean Kamau.'

‘Kamau – and Gilly Markham.'

‘
Gilly?
But he didn't see her! He only heard her playing. He said so.'

‘No he didn't. We merely jumped to the conclusion that that was what he meant. But Gilly was doing a very stupid and dangerous thing. He was letting Em know that he knew the difference between her playing and Toroni's. Gilly knew quite well when Em put on the recording of the concerto. And he wanted that job at Rumuruti and thought he could blackmail her into giving it to him. He should have known better.'

Victoria said in a whisper: ‘Then – then that was her too.'

‘I'm afraid so. It was a fairly easy job I gather, and done in the way I had outlined – She carried a dead puff adder to the picnic inside her cushion. But Mabel threw a spanner into the works by hiding the clasp knife, and Hector by palming the iodine bottle.'

‘But
why?
' demanded Victoria. ‘Why should they have done that?'