Green City in the Sun (65 page)

     "We've known each other for years."

     "Was Lord Treverton right-handed or left-handed?"

     "He was right-handed. I say, what is this all about? And why has CID been called into this?"

     "Because, Sir James, there has been a serious development in the case since the earl was found this morning."

     "What sort of development?"

     He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a photograph. "It seems a murder was committed as well."

     Lewis watched their faces as he told of the body in the trunk and of his theory that Valentine shot the man and was on his way to disposing of the body when he, too, was killed.

     "We are trying to identify the victim. Perhaps you know him?"

     They bent their heads over the grisly photograph. Mona turned away,
her hand pressed to her mouth. Tim said, "Jesus Christ," while James and Grace looked at it, stunned.

     But when Rose leaned over and saw the body of Carlo in the trunk, bound hand and foot with a bullet wound in his head, she suddenly screamed, "Valentine, you monster!" and collapsed to the floor in a faint.

     "R
ATHER AN INTERESTING
reaction," Superintendent Lewis said back at the police station. "Wouldn't you say?"

     Mitchell sipped his tea, his eyes focused on the bare block wall of his office. "I'd say that Lady Rose knew the chap."

     "That was my impression. The others reacted predictably enough. I didn't see any sign of recognition on their faces. They were simply looking at the shocking photo of a dead body. But Her Ladyship ... now there was a reaction."

     "Superintendent?" Dr. Forsythe, the young pathologist sent up from Nairobi, came in. "I've just started the autopsy you ordered on the earl, but I had to stop because there's something you must see."

     "What is it?"

     "You won't believe it. You had better come see for yourself."

     The police "mortuary" was actually an all-purpose room adjoining the one barred cell. The body of Carlo Nobili lay under a canvas on top of some packing crates; Valentine Treverton was lying stretched out on a table, naked.

     The pathologist didn't have to point out to the superintendent what had caught his attention. The detective had seen stab wounds before.

     It was very neat, just to the left of the breastbone, and practically bloodless.

     "This is what killed him," Dr. Forsythe said, "not the bullet in the head. I'd stake my reputation on it."

     Mitchell whistled. It looked so harmless, just a slit in the skin, about an inch and a half long, with a trickle of dark blood.

     But Lewis knew how deadly that insignificant-looking mark could be. Stab wounds, especially those that entered body cavities, such as the belly or
chest, rarely produced a lot of blood. The damage was done internally. He had no doubt that the knife had cut a major vessel, possibly even the heart itself, and that when the earl's chest was opened, they would find it filled with blood.

     "You definitely say this is the cause of death?" he asked the doctor.

     "I'll be more positive when I look inside, but judging from its location, I'd say yes. And when I look closely at the head wound, it appears to me to have been inflicted
after
death."

     "To make a murder look like suicide!" Mitchell said.

     The man from the CID turned on his heel and strode back into the office, where he retrieved the police photographs from Mitchell's desk. He studied in particular the ones of the passenger seat, showing mud. When the inspector joined him, Lewis said, "The car was at the side of the road, as if the earl had pulled over for a reason, and he left the motor running as if he hadn't intended on staying parked for long. Do you know what I think? I think someone caught up with him and got him to pull over. Someone who was carrying a knife."

     "You know," Mitchell said as he picked up the case file and thumbed through it, "now that I think of it, the woman who discovered the car, Nurse Billings, said something in her statement about bicycle tire tracks around the car. Where is it? Here."

     Lewis read the nurse's report of the tracks leading up to the passenger side of the car and then doubling back toward Nyeri. He put the paper down and said, "I've got another scenario for you, Inspector. Tell me what you think of this. The earl shot the bloke in the trunk. We'll figure motive when we've got the victim's identity, and we can go to Lady Rose for that. Ballistics in Nairobi will tell us if the same gun fired both bullets. No doubt the earl did do the trunk murder and was, as you say, on his way to getting rid of the body. But then, let's say..." He began pacing the small floor; he stopped and turned to Inspector Mitchell. "Let us say that someone followed the earl and caught up with him on the Kiganjo Road. He flagged him over, and the earl stopped probably because he
knew the person on the bicycle.
That person then walked to the car, climbed into the passenger seat, tracking mud because it had just been raining, and stabbed the earl once, through the chest.
Then the person panicked and, seeing the gun His Lordship had used on the man in the trunk, decided to make it look like suicide."

     "Surely he'd know the stab wound would be detected."

     "Not necessarily. There was no blood on the earl's clothing. And if no autopsy was going to be performed, it could very easily have been missed. And it damn near was missed, because I ordered the autopsy only after you discovered the bloke in the trunk."

     "Which means," Mitchell said slowly, "that chances are the person with the knife didn't know about the man in the trunk."

     Lewis's eyebrows arched. "Maybe"—he stroked his chin—"maybe that person thought he was
preventing
the earl from committing the murder, not knowing he was too late."

     The two policemen stared at each other. The enormity of the case, which had taken place in Mitchell's normally peaceful and uneventful district, started to settle upon the inspector's shoulders. He developed a pronounced stoop within minutes.

     "I want every possible witness rounded up," Lewis said abruptly, pulling out his notepad and starting to write. "I want every lead, no matter how insignificant, to be traced. I want that bicycle found. I want the knife found. But I'll tell you one thing, Mitchell. Things aren't quite right in that big fancy house on the hill."

     G
RACE PAUSED ON
the veranda of Bellatu to pull the black veil of her hat down over her eyes. Today was the second time she had worn black since her service in the navy, twenty-six years before.

     She watched as everyone got into the line of cars waiting to go to the Treverton family plot, where Valentine was going to be laid to rest next to Arthur, his only son. Grace was shaken. She desperately needed James's arm to lean on.

     Morgan Acres, the banker's eldest son, was the Treverton family lawyer, and he had just told Grace the most astounding thing.

     Valentine's will had been read that morning, revealing no surprises:
Rose was left a rich widow, heiress to the Bellatu coffee estate plus the ancestral estate, Bella Hill, back in England. But after the others had left, Mr. Acres had taken Grace aside and told her that regrettably, because of His Lordship's death, the annual contribution to her mission bank account, which had been started years ago, would now end.

     Grace had been so stunned that she had had to sit down. "Valentine?" she had said. "My
brother
was the anonymous benefactor? I had always thought it was James...."

     
After all this time, Val
, she thought sadly.
And I never got a chance to thank you.

     James finally came out onto the veranda and took Grace's arm. They climbed into a limousine, which they shared with Rose and Mona, and the procession moved out. Tim Hopkins rode at the end in his own truck, thinking of the grave he was about to visit, which he had not been to in eight years—Arthur's grave.

     The line of cars moved slowly down the dirt road that skirted the vast estate toward the lonely spot where a section of ground had been fenced off. Africans stood along the road, waving a sad good-bye to their bwana. David Mathenge was there, with his mother, watching silently as the grieving white people went to put another of their kind into the ground.

     S
UPERINTENDANT
L
EWIS WAS
studying the photos pinned to the bulletin board—pictures of Lord Treverton's car and of the earl's body—and the map of the murder scene, with a dotted line showing the route Nurse Billings claimed the bicycle had taken, when Inspector Mitchell came breathlessly in.

     "We've got it!" he said, and held out a large envelope to the detective.

     Lewis took it and hefted it thoughtfully. He was tired. The two policemen had been five days at the investigation, using every available man on the small Nyeri force and borrowing forensic specialists from Nairobi. They had had little sleep, too much coffee, and both men had red eyes. The contents of this envelope were the culmination of their five-day search.

     Yesterday they had found the bicycle.

     It had been abandoned in the bush approximately halfway between the earl's car and the town of Nyeri, tossed on its side with a punctured rear tire. The detectives surmised that when the tire had blown, the murderer had dragged the bike into the bush and then made the rest of the way home on foot. The bicycle had been identified as belonging to the Treverton plantation.

     Their interrogations had been thorough and intense. Both had gone out with a pair of askaris, talking to anyone, no matter how remotely connected with the earl, who might give a shred of evidence, the tiniest clue. They had even questioned the Africans who worked and lived on Treverton's land, including the medicine woman, Wachera, who just kept saying something about a
thahu.
But the most telling interviews had been with the family members themselves.

     Lady Rose wouldn't talk. She had said not one word since her collapse five days earlier, when she saw the photo of the dead man. She had sat still and silent through the questioning, her face abnormally pale so that the bruise stood out all the more. It was Dr. Treverton who had answered the detective's questions.

     The man in the trunk, she had explained, was an escaped Italian POW named Nobili.

     "No one else in the district knows him," Superintendent Lewis had said. "How is it that you do?"

     "Rose spoke of him to me."

     "Where did he live?" Lewis asked, holding his pencil ready to write down the address.

     But when she paused too long and then finally told him about the greenhouse and Rose's intention to leave Kenya with Nobili, Lewis had seen the greater and clearer picture.

     And now, here was final proof, according to Inspector Mitchell.

     Three men had been put on the estate grounds to watch the comings and goings of the family, to question the staff, and to search for any possible clues. This morning one of the askaris had reported that rubbish was being burned in a pit not far from the house. It was routine work; the estate
workers burned the trash on a regular basis, usually once a week. Lewis sent someone from Forensics to give a look through. This envelope contained the findings.