The African Poison Murders (18 page)

“You start work early, Mr Vachell,” she said conversationally. She put on her spectacles, and fingered the wave at the back of her head. “There’s plenty to be done, no doubt. It’s a shocking business about Commander West — terrible for her, poor thing. She’s such a nice woman. One can only hope it will bring home to the Forest Department the necessity of doing something really effective to check these grass and forest fires. It always takes a dreadful accident of this sort to get any action out of a Government department, I’m afraid. Always excepting the police, of course.”

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“Thanks,” Vachell said. “The fire wasn’t pleasant, but I’ve come to you for information about a client.”

“I’ll do anything I can, of course, as I told you before. But you’ll realize, I know, that one comes up against certain standards of professional ethics, and so on….”

“I don’t believe they cover what I want to know, Mrs Innocent. Mrs Munson came to see you here on the afternoon of her husband’s death?”

“She did indeed. It wasn’t an easy interview by any means, Mr Vachell. I gave you an outline of Karl Munson’s will. Well, you can imagine how Mrs Munson felt about thatV She laughed heartily, and darted a quick sideways glance at her visitor from behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

“Badly, no doubt,” Vachell said, without joining in. “When she called, did she or Corcoran leave any sort of a package here, with instructions for its delivery to a third party?”

Mrs Innocent raised her eyebrows and said: “A package? No, not that I know of, Mr Vachell.”

“I’d advise you to think again, Mrs Innocent.

That package contained documents, and maybe the kind of documents it doesn’t do for a loyal citizen to handle. As a lawyer I don’t need to remind you of the position of a go-between in cases that involve information likely to endanger the safety of the public, or be of use to the King’s enemies….”

The shot went home. Mrs Innocent looked 183

extremely uncomfortable, and fidgeted with the papers on her desk.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“I don’t know anything about information of that sort. Mrs Munson is my client, you must remember, and if I execute a commission for her in good faith I hardly think it is a matter for police interference.

…”

“Then you forget the extent of the police authority here,” Vachell said. “Mrs Munson is an alien.

I guess you forget that too. Munson was a leader of the local branch of the Nazi party and Wendtland is an agent of the German Government. If I were you I’d check on your position as an intermediary before you decide to refuse assistance to the police.”

Mrs Innocent flushed angrily and pulled off her spectacles with a quick, agitated gesture. “You’ve got no right to say that!” she exclaimed. “It’s a total misconception of my position. At no time have I been an intermediary, or in any way …” She leant back in her chair and gave a half-hearted smile.

“You’re entirely wrong, Mr Vachell. I apologize, I lost my temper for a moment, but it’s not very soothing to be accused of what amounts to being a traitor to my country, I’m sure you’ll agree. I have no information to give you, I’m afraid.”

“Maybe I can refresh your memory again,”

Vachell said slowly. His face was hard and without expression, but there was a wary look in his eyes.

Dealing with a lawyer, he was venturing a long way on to the enemy’s ground. And a woman at that.

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He wished this job didn’t involve bullying women so much.

“Under our constitution here, the Governor-inCouncil can cause to be revoked licences issued to solicitors to practise law or to plead in Court,” he went on. “This power is very rarely exercised, but in the case of persons believed to be rendering assistance to the agents of a foreign political organization working against the security of the colony, it might be found necessary to bring the provision into force.”

Mrs Innocent stared for a few moments at her visitor without replying. She kept her temper this time.

“I see your extensive knowledge of Nazi organization has made you an admirer of what I believe is the Gestapo technique,” she said at last, her voice edged with anger and heavy with sarcasm. “I didn’t expect to learn blackmail methods from the police.

What do you want to know?”

“What you did with the package Mrs Munson left with you two days ago.”

“I am, or rather was, Munson’s solicitor,” Mrs Innocent explained carefully, choosing her words.

Anger made her voice shake a little, but it was under control. “I acted for him on various occasions. I did all his legal work. Naturally I knew he was connected with the local Nazis, that was common gossip, but it was nothing whatever to do with me.

Any more than it would be my affair, Mr Vachell, if General Goering was your uncle, or if your wife 185

was a lion-tamer, or if all your children had webbed toes.”

“You paint a pleasing picture, but I’m not married, Mrs Innocent. Shall we return to the package Mrs Munson left here the afternoon of her husband’s death?”

“She left a package, I admit. She asked me to say nothing of this, and to oblige a client I gave her my word. This you have forced me to break by, if I may say so, illegal and unscrupulous means.”

“You have the package now?”

Mrs Innocent shook her head. “It was called for within an hour of her leaving it in my office.”

“By Wendtland?”

“Yes.”

“And, knowing Wendtland’s position here, you still think you did nothing to aid and abet the King’s enemies?”

Mrs Innocent laughed; she’d had time to think the position over, and now she was sure of her ground. “Mr Vachell, you really shouldn’t take me for a child. Lawyers are rather too hard-boiled to fall a victim to spy mania, you know. The position is that a client of mine left a package in my office to be called for by a friend. She might equally well have left it at the grocer’s or the chemist’s or the bank. I haven’t the slightest idea what was in the package, I didn’t ask, and to be honest I don’t care.

I should say that it contained documents of some kind. If you can find anything irregular in that you’re welcome to it, and I shall be the first to 186

congratulate you.” She pushed back her chair with a gesture of finality, and got up.

“It’s what wasn’t in the package that interests me,” Vachell remarked thoughtfully. “Forgive me if I offer some advice. Next time Mrs Munson uses your office as a mail-box, call me up and I’ll see to the special delivery.”

From Karuna he drove out to the Munson farm.

The wide, dust-sheeted road was growing so familiar now that he dodged the worst bumps automatically.

The fields of maize he passed on either side were restfully green, the plants already tall and sturdy.

That morning he developed a sudden interest in the technique of farming, and Mrs Munson was called upon to satisfy it. Her pallid face went pink with irritation when he plied her with questions about poultry-raising, the keeping of labour sheets, the system of issuing tools and native rations, the repairs done two days ago to the corn-crib roof. He inspected the labour sheets and the boys’ monthly tickets, watched the weeding of the pyrethrum, and even insisted on seeing her prize white turkeys that had been imported from Holland, as eggs, by air.

“So this is what we pay the police for!” she exclaimed. “So that they can badger with questions a person whose husband has been dead two days!

So that they can ask how to mark a boy’s ticket or weed pyrethrum while a murderer stays at large a mile away — while naked sin flaunts itself unpunished in their faces. That is why we pay taxes to keep up the police!”

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“There’s no proof yet that your husband was murdered,” Vachell suggested mildly. “I’m sorry, we can’t go to work on that till the report from Marula comes in.”

“Proof! Can’t go to work!” she snorted. “Red tape, putting off, nothing to be done, always the same story! What proof do you want besides the evidence of your senses? Are you blind? You are all the same, because a woman has a painted face and a willing body…” She broke off, her face red, to berate a native who had appeared at the heels of an escaping calf, which galloped at full speed across the lawn. When this was over she outlined briefly but forcibly her views on the increase in native crime and the inefficiency of the police. Not until Vachell took his leave did she return to the subject, and then she was more cautious; he got the impression that she felt she’d said too much.

“I hope you are satisfied that you have done everything to protect my two children and myself,”

she said. “My husband is murdered, yesterday there is a fire over my land and another death, and the same person stays close at hand and unmolested, a mile away from my house. The murderer is not caught, and you leave me here with only two black apes of askaris. I am saying nothing, it is hopeless, but if there is more trouble it is you who will be to blame. Perhaps there will be questions even in Marula, if more than two people are murdered in one week, by the same hand.”

“We’ll do all we can to protect you,” Vachell 188

said. “If you’d like Inspector Prettyman to come out here for a while….”

“Prettyman! That little squirt!” Mrs Munson snorted savagely. “He’d be the first to have his head turned, to be taken in by the false smile and the lying tongue….”

Vachell found her strange mixture of blunt colloquialism and Calvinistic mock-biblical disconcerting.

“Okay, we’ll leave Prettyman out,” he said. “But tell Corcoran he should carry a gun, and don’t stray out of sight of him or the askaris after dark.”

At the mention of Corcoran he could see her stiffen, and the high colour left her face. Her lips set in a tight scar across her pudgy face.

“Corcoran,” she spoke the name slowly. “I shall have a lot to tell him, one day soon.”

Vachell shot a question at her quickly.

“Does he smoke a pipe?”

“A pipe, Edward? No.” She answered as he had hoped, without thinking, and then frowned and asked sharply: “Why?”

“I need to borrow some tobacco,” Vachell replied.

The askaris gave their brief reports before he left.

The only piece of information they had for him was negative: after diligent inquiry (according to instructions) they could not find anyone who knew of a note delivered to Munson the day before he died. It was just possible, the corporal admitted, that a man bringing a note might have delivered it to Munson on the farm without being noticed by any 189

other native; but if the chit had been brought first to the house, which was the invariable custom, one of the houseboys would certainly know of the matter. All had been tackled, and all were positive that no note had come.

This news interested Vachell a great deal. He thought about it in the car as he bumped over a farm track to Norman Parrot’s; and by the time he arrived it had given him a new and very startling idea.

The boundaries of Parrot’s farm marched with Munson’s on the other side from West’s; Anstey’s land lay above, a much bigger block, having a common boundary with Parrot’s, Munson’s and West’s. Parrot’s homestead was one of the least pretentious that Vachell had seen. It consisted of a ramshackle mud-and-rubble two-roomed cabin with a wooden veranda and a corrugated iron roof. Two big water tanks flanked the corners and a rough kitchen surrounded by two or three native huts stood out at the back. On almost any other continent the place would have looked mean and sordid; but in the African sunlight, with green grass all around, two beds of antirrhinums in front and a bougainvillea beginning to climb up a veranda post, it was cheerful and thoroughly at home.

Everything looked new and unfinished, and as yet no garden had been made out of the bush. Parrot had been settled there less than a year, Vachell recalled. He was a newcomer to the colony as well as to the district; Prettyman, the fountain-head of 190

gossip, had said his reputation was that of a good fellow but a bit of an ass, with not enough practical knowledge of farming and too many damn-fool ideas.

This time Vachell drew a blank; Norman Parrot was not at home. He was not on the farm either, his houseboy said; he had taken the car early that morning and driven down to the station, but he had not yet come back. Very likely he had gone on to Karuna, the boy added; perhaps the bwana would like to leave a note. He showed Vachell into the livingroom, and waved a hand at a table covered with a litter of bills, catalogues, letters, pipes, magazines and other miscellaneous things.

The rest of the furniture had barely got past the crate stage. There was one comfortable armchair, but evidently Parrot sat on a Tate’s sugar crate to eat meals off a couple of planks laid across two Shell gasolene cases. A big stone fireplace rather incongruously occupied most of one wall.

The books, stacked on rough shelves, were a mixed bag, mainly technical volumes on agriculture and stock-raising — Parrot evidently took his farming seriously — and accounts of travel. There were well-thumbed German and Italian dictionaries; some detective novels, and one or two tomes on international law. A couple of framed schoolgroup photographs leant against a wall, and on the desk was a picture of a group taken on a houseboat in what looked like the mountains of Kashmir.

Parrot was one of the party; so some of his stories 191

of travel in foreign parts, Vachell reflected, were true. Propped up on the mantel-shelf was a picture of a very attractive brunette, taken by a San Francisco studio.

West’s funeral was being held that morning in Karuna, and most likely Parrot had gone in to attend it. Vachell had no desire to write a note, but instead he took a quick look around. The pipes on the desk attracted his attention. They were old, well worn and undistinguished, like the rest of Parrot’s possessions, from his burberry to his books. There were three of them, all in use and all intact.

Vachell looked them over and walked to the door. The houseboy, with the usual faith in, or indifference to, European actions, had retreated to his own quarters and left the bwana alone. He had better look into the bedroom, Vachell supposed. It was a box of a room, only big enough to hold a camp-bed, a chest of drawers, table and a trouser press. The press lay open, as if a pair of pants had recently been taken out. There was a photograph propped up against a bottle of Eno’s on top of the chest of drawers He crossed the little room to look at it, and found himself gazing, with a shock of surprise, at Janice West. She looked younger, in a subtle, indefinite way. The shape of her face, perhaps, was less mature. But the same dark vital eyes, the familiar high cheekbones and fine pointed chin stared back at him. The picture had been taken in London, he judged some years before, and bore no inscription.