The African Poison Murders (26 page)

The turkey had probably escaped from the pen and just wandered off, he thought. All the same it was a little queer that only one should have disappeared, and that one, apparently, the pride of the flock. Vachell moved his shoulders impatiently and dug his hands into his pockets. He was getting jittery, seeing bogies behind every bush. The sense of strain, the expectation of dangerous events, was getting him down. Even a turkey couldn’t take a walk without a lot of sinister ideas showing their prick-ears through the long grass, like a pack of hunting dogs around a sick beast.

Although he knew his fears were foolish, he couldn’t leave the Munsons’ now until the insignificant mystery was solved. He followed a narrow native path from the turkey pen past the pyrethrum 270

shed and across the pasture to the forest’s edge.

Here it branched. One fork went left towards a dam and some cultivation, the other crossed the broad ride that marked the boundary between farm and forest, and plunged into the green depths. This part of the forest had escaped burning, but gaunt blackened branches stood against the skyline to the right as a stark reminder of the havoc of fire.

He sauntered along the path leading into the forest, keeping an eye open for the turkey, but preoccupied mainly with his own thoughts. He went over his conclusions for the hundredth time, and found no loophole. The path, he noticed, seemed to have had a lot of recent use. The underbrush on each side bore signs of bruising and breaking, as though something heavy had been dragged along.

The path itself, however, grew fainter; a game-track only, he thought. It was growing dark; the heads of the tall creaking junipers were clear against a darkblue sky, but only the faint blur of their thick boles was visible beneath.

Something loomed ahead in the path, black and solid. Vachell froze in his tracks. In an instant he thought of rhinos, buck, leopards … Of course, the leopard trap. This was where the boys had set it.

He stepped forward to examine it closer.

It was a solid cage of cedar posts planted in the ground.

They were set at an angle sloping inwards, their tops interlocking to form a tent-shaped structure.

The far end was closed. The open end faced the 271

path, and above it was poised a heavy door made of cedar logs.

The opening which confronted Vachell was black as a buffalo hide and the trap unsprung; but as he bent down to peer inside there came to his ears a sort of desperate breathing sound, and then a highpitched gurgle, like a man caught by the throat. He felt a cold tingle up his spine and the hairs rising on his scalp. There was something inside in the trap, something alive, something that was moving, invisible in the blackness.

His right hand stole round to the holster on his hip and clasped the comforting butt of his revolver.

The sound came again — a noise of struggling, a sort of shuddering rather, unlike anything he had heard before. He pulled out the gun and stepped forward to peer into the trap. Something white caught his eye, and the darkness was full of a sound of fluttering. He lowered the revolver and laughed aloud. The missing turkey gobbler was found. The head man who’d made the trap had taken it for bait — combining, Vachell supposed, a little quiet revenge on his employer with the execution of her instructions to bait the trap. He grinned in the halfdarkness; it was a neat trick.

The beam from his flashlight, playing over the trap’s interior, showed that the bird lay trussed on its side, unable to move anything except its wings, and tied to the posts at the back of the trap. To reach it the leopard must go completely in and tread on, or otherwise dislodge, a stick laid across the 272

floor and held loosely in position at each end by two nails. A string attached to the centre of this stick ran up to the roof, a thin white perpendicular line, and thence along the trap’s exterior to the front, where it supported the whole weight of the poised log door. Once the stick was knocked out of position the string would be released and the door would fall. Thus the leopard would be securely caught inside the little cage.

It all seemed straightforward enough, and yet there was something wrong. A turkey as bait for a trap. Did leopards eat turkeys? Vachell didn’t know.

Of course, they might. Or the natives might have put it there as a joke on Mrs Munson, knowing she’d find it missing when she shut in her turkeys for the night, or, perhaps, reckoning that she’d find it there when she went to see whether the trap was properly set… He gave a low whistle and felt the familiar thrill of excitement he always experienced when, like a ranging hound, he came on the scent.

He bent low and dived into the trap’s mouth, stepping carefully over the loosely secured stick that released the door. The gobbler renewed its struggle with a desperate gurgle of fright. He knelt down and played his flashlight over the turkey’s bound legs and over the back of the trap, to which the bird was attached by a piece of strong twine. If you wanted to release the captive you’d cut the twine, but if you hadn’t got a knife you’d have to untie the knot where it was fastened to one of the logs forming the back of the trap. And to do that you’d have to 273

fumble at the knots with both hands close up against the posts….

Vachell thrust his flashlight against the cedar logs and directed the beam on to the knot. In sharp relief the light picked out something that he already knew was there: two nails, driven through a log just above and just below the knot. They projected perhaps an eighth of an inch above the surface of the wood. They did not shine in the light. Their tips were coated with a black substance that dulled the glint, making them invisible against the dark, wooden logs. They were neatly placed; you could not have untied the knot without tearing your flesh, however slightly, on their poisoned points.

The turkey, which had been temporarily quietened by hope of release, started to struggle again.

A big useless wing, flapping in panic, caught Vachell in the face and stung his eyes. Involuntarily, and still kneeling, he fell back and put out a hand to steady himself. It met the ground behind his feet, and something gave way. He heard a click and then a loud thud as the heavy door of the trap, released from suspension, crashed down into position and blotted out the last of the twilight. For the second time, Vachell laughed aloud. He’d never played leopard before. It was a new experience, to be caught in a trap.

He felt the first twinge of misgiving when he wondered if any more doctored nails had been planted, just for good measure, in the woodwork of the trap.

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The second twinge came when he put down his flashlight and tried to lift the door. He couldn’t make it budge. He tried again, bracing one knee against each wall and heaving with all his strength, but there was nothing to get a grip on with his fingers, and the door would not yield. He went on till the sweat broke out on his forehead and his chest felt like bursting, but it was no good. From outside, the door would be easy enough to shift —

you could get a leverage on it, and there was a crossbar to grip — but from the inside there was nothing to hold on to but the smooth vertical logs.

When he stopped he was panting, and alarm was beginning to chill his blood. Trapped in a leopard trap. It sounded funny, but it didn’t feel that way.

He sat back on his heels to think it out. Darkness was complete now in the forest, and dense in the tent-shaped trap. The hoarse, raucous croak of a plantain-eater sounded from a nearby tree, and died out in a fading cackle. The turkey started to struggle again, croaking in agitation. Night had come.

The trap wasn’t more than half or three quarters of a mile from the Munson homestead, Vachell reckoned. If he fired his revolver the corporal would probably hear, and send a man to investigate. Or, in any case, Mrs Munson might come out to look at the trap. Or the head man might want to be sure it was properly set. Or —

The thought made Vachell remove the hand he had already put to his revolver holster. It wasn’t comfortable in the trap, and soon he would be very 275

cold, but he could stand that. It was best to wait.

The person who had baited the trap might return to see what sort of game had been caught.

Vachell grinned ruefully at the extent of his preparations for the night. There was nothing to be done about the turkey. It lay in the corner, calmer now, but still restive. At intervals it rattled its wing feathers against his back. There was no room to stretch his long legs. He put the revolver on the ground beside him next to his flashlight, ready for use. Already the damp, cold night air was beginning to make him shiver.

There were six cigarettes left in the pack. He lit one gratefully; no chance of visitors yet awhile. Best let his thoughts roam where they wanted; no need for concentration yet. They came to rest quickly enough. Janice West’s face appeared before him as clearly as if she had been standing there. He could see her deep eyes, the colour of peaty water, the smile that lay a little behind her lips, the high cheekbones that gave her a wild, sculptured look when the light fell from certain angles. He sighed, and reflected: a hell of a thing to think about in a leopard trap. The whole situation was screwy, if it came to that; a policeman shut in a trap with a turkey gobbler in a forest in the middle of Africa, waiting for a killer who went around smearing nails with native arrowpoison, thinking about a woman who went around with sadistic Nazi roughnecks and neighbouring farmers and anyone who came 276

along, while her husband was driven half crazy. It didn’t make sense whichever way you looked at it.

Time dragged by very slowly. A cold wind swept insidiously through the undergrowth, rustling leaves and branches. It pierced Vachell’s thin clothes like a million tiny needlepoints of ice. His limbs became stiff and frozen. He could barely move his fingers, and all his joints ached. Every position became unbearable. It was impossible to lie down or stand up, and his knees were tortured with bending. His breath came in little gasps and his stomach was a dull ache of emptiness. A dozen times he thought: the hell with it, this is a sucker’s game, I’m getting out of here; and reached for his revolver. But each time he put it down again. It was the last chance. If the killer came and he could swear to the identity, then that would be some sort of proof.

Strange rustlings and groanings came out of the forest all around. The natives, he remembered, believed the forest to be haunted. “A very bad place,” his boy had once remarked, “there are spirits there.” “Of whom?” Vachell had asked. The boy had shrugged his shoulders. “Of bad men. In the old days little hunters lived there, in holes in the ground, like moles. They lived on the blood of wild beasts, and at night their spirits come out of the ground, to hunt again.” Vachell had laughed at their superstitions. They were foolish, of course, but somehow their ideas didn’t seem so fantastic any longer.

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The sharp crack of a twig plucked his tautened nerves as a finger twangs the string of a guitar.

Vachell’s hand groped for his revolver, and closed around it. Slowly he raised the gun and listened, holding his breath. A sound like a low moan made his spine tingle. A painful, muffled groan, as if wrung from a throat. It came again, and Vachell lowered the revolver and slowly expelled his breath.

His nerves were getting jumpy; this wouldn’t do at all. The sound was only the creak of a cedar as it stirred a little in the wind. Curious how like it was to a human in pain. No wonder the natives believed the forest to be full of spirits. And the crack was probably a bushbuck moving about in the darkness, going out stealthily to feed.

A rustling in the bushes to the right made him jump a little and grip the gun. A long silence, and then the rustle again, a little farther away. The bushbuck, probably, moving cautiously, smelling for danger. He wondered if—

The night was broken by a sharp grating cough, like the sound of a saw against wood, broken off abruptly. It was quite close. An icy chill crept up Vachell’s back and the hand of fear gripped his heart tightly so that he felt it couldn’t beat. The leopard: here in the forest, near at hand. He’d almost forgotten about the leopard. Suppose it came up to the trap, smelling meat. Well, if he couldn’t get out, the leopard couldn’t get in. He breathed more easily, but then the noise came again. Nearer this time, much nearer. The prickles were busy again in his 278

spine. A primitive impulse to leap up and run itched in his legs. He fought it down, but still wished himself a hundred miles away.

The leopard’s call came again, the most coldblooded sound he’d ever heard. Then there was silence, and he wished frantically to hear it, to know which way the leopard was moving. It might be coming closer, right up to the trap, perhaps.

Between chinks in the logs he could see leaves against a star-spangled sky, and a black wall of living darkness. He wished feverishly that he could know.

The hand gripping the revolver was damp.

Behind him, in the forest, came a sharp, frightened cough, and then silence again. A bushbuck warning its mate, probably. Those soft sensitive black nostrils had caught a whiff of death’s scent in the air. A frantic chattering broke out, a little while later, and there was a stirring in the foliage as if a sharp gust of wind had blown. Baboons or monkeys, giving warning to all other beasts that the dreaded shadow was passing with silent footfalls below. Then silence again, but a silence full of small, indeterminate sounds.

A hundred dramas of the night were being played all around him, Vachell thought; moles burrowing softly underground, hurrying ants quartering the surface for food, nervous twitch-nosed dikdik courting in the undergrowth; tree-hyraxes coming out of their hollows in the trunks to feed and mate and serenade the stars. And the leopard, prowling in his nightly quest for blood. To all this, Vachell 279

thought, man’s ears are sealed, his nose insensitive, his eyes blind, his senses dumb. Only his brain is keener than theirs, only his ingenuity can protect him.

A soft rustle just outside the cage made him hold his breath again. He put his eye to a chink and thought he could detect a movement in the dark undergrowth beyond. He listened almost actively, trying to force his ears into sensitivity. The rustle came again. He was certain something had moved.