The Devil in the Bush

by Matthew Head

  “You’re a lot like her in a complicated way that’s too hard to explain,” Miss Finney said. “If you had skirts you’d be pulling at them all the time.”

  “And also you’re a fine one to tell me not to take it so hard,” I went on. “I had it all settled in my mind and now you’ve got it stirred up again. How do you suppose Gabrielle feels?”

  “I know how I’d feel in her place,” said Miss Finney. “I’d feel disappointed. But if you mean would I feel brokenhearted, no I wouldn’t. You’re not getting the idea that she’s in love with you any more than you’re in love with her, are you?”

  That was a sock in the teeth, because sure enough I was beginning to have a picture of Gabrielle as a sort of Ariadne back at the Congo-Ruzi.

  “Well,” said Miss Finney slowly and with great emphasis, “I will —be—damned!” I could feel myself getting red. She said, “What makes you think you’re so attractive? Of course you’re attractive, but only the way any healthy decent looking young man is attractive. You’re the best bet that ever came through the Congo-Ruzi station, even so, and I love Gabrielle and I thought it was worth our while to try to get you for her, pickings being as slim as they are in this vicinity.”

  “Many thanks.”

  “Not at all,” said Miss Finney. “You men make me sick. The way this goddamn world is set up, you’re in a bull market, or a bear market or something, whatever it is. Anyhow just by sheer sociological luck you’ve got something to sell that every woman wants, and all I’m talking about is security.”

  She was speaking in that way she had, when the words were pretty harsh but somehow the good nature never leaving the way she said them. I had to smile when I turned to her and said, “You seem to know an awful lot about it.”

  “I’m talking from experience, if that’s what you’re hinting at,” she said. “And I do know how Gabrielle feels, the way you asked. I know exactly how she feels,” she said, in a sort of flat voice. “I’ve just buried the only man I ever tried to get.”

  “André de l’Andréneau!” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “André. I got my fill of the Congo and the prospects of spinsterhood after I’d been out here a few years.” It was getting harder for her to talk. “I guess I threw myself at him. I lost my virginity, for whatever that was worth. But André didn’t come across for me any more than you’re coming across for Gabrielle. I guess that makes me pretty much of a fool for trying the same technique on you and Gaby.”

  She had dropped her hard, half-bantering manner altogether. There was a silence until finally I managed an “I appreciate your telling me. I thought at the funeral you were the only one who looked at him as if you were really saying good-by.”

  She looked out over the country half-absently and said, “Emily would die if she ever found out. I don’t know why I felt like telling you. I don’t even think about it much, most of the time. Some people you tell things to and some you don’t.” Then she picked up a little more of her old manner and said, “You’re not half as good-looking as André was at your age. And of course the worst thing that could have happened to me would have been to catch him. It didn’t go on very long, then we had it all out and neither of us ever mentioned it again. But the damn fool always thought he broke my heart.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked.

  She saw what I meant. “I’m sure my heart wasn’t broken,” she said sharply, “or if it was it doesn’t make any difference now. Now for God’s sake stop talking about it.”

  “O.K. by me,” I said. “You started it.”

  We rode along for a long time, then, before she burst out, “Once and for all, Hoop, can I talk you into marrying Gabrielle?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You damn fool,” she said. That time she really stopped talking, and we just kept on riding. It was the middle of the afternoon before the thing happened that began the end of the adventure.

  This woman didn’t look as much as thirty-five, not until you hunted for it. She was quite small and trim, with a lot of mascara on her eyelashes, and dark hot-looking reddish hair that had a bleached streak at one temple. She had on linen slacks and a halter that showed her bare pinched-in midriff and a couple of ribs—a little too skinny, but very fashionable somehow even in the heat and the dust, and with an immediately suggestive figure. She was smaller than I remembered, and a little older, and the bleached streak in the hair was new—it was a fad, all the women in Léopoldville were doing it that summer—but the minute I saw her I knew it was the woman I had seen in André de l’Andréneau’s room in Bafwali. It was like a tune that you had heard once and couldn’t remember, and couldn’t reconstruct, but the minute you heard it again you recognized it for sure, and could go on and sing the rest of it.

  We were stopping at the lower of the way-stations between Ruzi-Busendi and Costermansville. We needed gas and we needed some beer or lemonade or whatever they would have to drink except the kind of water they would have, and as we drove up, Miss Finney recognized the dusty Dodge standing there.

  “Why, it’s Jacqueline!” she said. “You know—Gérôme’s wife.”

  We climbed out of the truck, and when we went into the rest-house, Jacqueline de l’Andréneau was sipping a beer at the one table. She turned and jumped up with a cry of recognition when she saw Miss Finney. It was enough like the time she had gasped and wheeled about when I came into the room in Bafwali to suggest the whole thing. Her eyes flickered over me for an instant and then left me so quickly that I knew she had recognized me too.

  She was all over Miss Finney then, calling her ma chère and so on, in a very affected and very beautiful Comédie-Française French, studied to the last little syllable until it came out fast and throaty and without hesitation.

  “This is Hoopie Taliaferro,” said Miss Finney, jerking her head my way. “You missed him.”

  “Enchantée,” she Comédie-Françaised me. Then she added that she was desolated to have missed me at the Congo-Ruzi. She held out a soft, thin hand, tiny, with lacquered nails, and when I pressed it I could feel the bones move. I kept it a moment overtime. Her eyes flickered again, on and off my face. She had the kind of good looks so many French women have— the nose too large and bony for real beauty, but an alive quality to the face that attracted you right away, and a frank use of every artifice of make-up to enhance whatever good points her features had. Jacqueline de l’Andréneau concentrated everything on making you notice her eyes, which were very dark with clear whites, and sparkled as she flickered them about. Her mouth was the brightest most artificial red.

  She pulled at her hand and I let it go, but I said, “Haven’t we met before?”

  “Of course not,” she said. She always spoke so artificially that she could make an easy lie. “I am in Léopoldville while you are here. Your Mr. Slattery told me about you.”

  “He told me about you, too,” I said.

  She hid her suspicion almost immediately.

  “How sweet of him,” she said.

  Miss Finney said, “Oh, goo, goo, goo. You two haven’t got the time to get anywhere with each other, you might as well lay off it.”

  “Funny,” I said to Jacqueline. “I could have sworn I saw you in Bafwali.”

  “Of course not,” said Jacqueline again, more sharply. She turned to Miss Finney and they went into a lot of talk about where Miss Finney was going, and when she would be back. The talk was mostly Jacqueline’s, all throaty and full of exclamations. Miss Finney just grunted out her answers. And then she said, “Too bad you missed the funeral.”

  “Oh, my dear!” said Jacqueline. “Then it is all over? Poor André!” She took one of Miss Finney’s hands in both of hers; they looked like fancy decorations on a well-baked ham. “And Gérôme—how is Gérôme?”

  “Oh, Gérôme’s O.K.,” said Miss Finney. “How’re you?” She didn’t even pretend to hide her dislike, but Jacqueline pretended not to notice it.

  “But exhausted!” she said. Her
voice became appropriately fainter and lower. “Such a shock, so unexpected, and this dreadful trip back. My dear, I—”

  “Well,” interrupted Miss Finney, “we’d better be getting on. Tell the lady good-by, Hoopie. Jacqueline, you be sure to give Henri my love when you see him.”

  Jacqueline didn’t quite spit in Miss Finney’s eye.

  “Good-by, Mr. Taliaferro,” she said, turning to me and baring her teeth. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have missed your visit.”

  “Perhaps another time,” I said.

  “How nice that would be,” said Jacqueline, as one would say, “May you boil in oil.”

  They had our tank filled by then so we went on out and drove off, everybody waving to everybody else.

  “You forgot you wanted something to drink,” I said to Miss Finney.

  She said, “I can’t take in food or drink when I’m around that—that—”

  “Bitch?” I suggested.

  “You know everything, don’t you,” said Miss Finney.

  “What was going on in there?” Miss Finney asked me after we got started again. “First I thought you two were trying to make each other, and then I was afraid I wouldn’t get you out of there before she bit your jugular in two.”

  “I know something about Jacqueline,” I said. I decided to tell it. There was too high a potential in the whole business to pass it up any longer, respect for the dead or no respect for the dead. “I really did see her in Bafwali.”

  Miss Finney jerked around and looked at me with wild speculation.

  “If you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say— where in Bafwali? Oh, Mary Finney, you dummy! Hoop, I feel a tie-up. Oh, Lord, there’s something here!” She was acting like a kid about to be let in on a secret, but then the brightness drained out of her face and something between puzzlement and anxiety came into it. “I don’t know,” she said, “it might be bad, this tie-up. Go ahead.”

  “I just saw her for a minute but I’m sure it was Jacqueline,” I said. “In the de l’Andréneaus’ house in Bafwali. André didn’t know she was there. Of course I didn’t know who André was, at the time. And he didn’t know who I was, yet. Then he left and I didn’t know Jacqueline was in the bedroom—”

  “My God,” said Miss Finney, “didn’t anybody know anything? Start over again, Hoop, and slow it down.”

  I went over the whole thing for her. From time to time she looked as if she might explode if she didn’t say something, but she would always just say “Go on!” She was so intent that her lips parted and I could hear the breath going through them. A little more and I could have heard her brain clicking, too.

  When I finished, she turned around straight again and pulled off her helmet and rested her head against the back of the seat. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as if she were settling down to go to sleep. “Don’t say anything to me for a while, Hoop,” she said.

  You’d have thought she was asleep except that the hard, blunt nail of one finger kept tapping the helmet in her lap. And from time to time she would breathe out a half-formed exclamation.

  She opened her eyes once and said, “What was the exact date?”

  “July first,” I said. “I’ve been counting back, and it was July first.”

  “Why’d you count back?”

  “Because I got a letter from my boss in Léopoldville saying she was in town for our Fourth of July party.”

  Miss Finney beat her brow. “Mary Finney, you fleabrain!” she said. “Of course it works out. Of course she spent an afternoon and night in Bafwali between planes. Then another day to get to Léopoldville. Then give her the third for sharpening her claws and putting on her war paint. If your boss had fireworks on the fourth, I bet they weren’t a patch on Jacqueline. All right, I’m thinking again. Don’t drive too fast, Hoop, we may be turning around and going back.”

  “Boloney,” I said.

  But she closed her eyes again, and it must have been fifteen minutes before she opened them and sat up with the air of having settled everything. She looked alert and quick, but not tense.

  “All right, Hoop,” she said. “Go back.”

  “Nothing doing,” I said.

  “Goddamnit, turn this truck around and go back,” she said, in a voice like a bear-trap closing.

  “You’re the boss from now on if it’s that important,” I said, and stopped the truck.

  “It’s that important and you’re damn right I’m the boss,” Miss Finney said. She turned to me and said penitently, “I’ll try to stop swearing, Hoop. I do need your help.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said.

  It had been an hour since we left Jacqueline at the waystation. She had better than a two hours’ start on us in a car that could go faster than our truck.

  I drove along waiting for Miss Finney to begin talking, because I knew she wouldn’t until she was ready. Pretty soon she began.

  “Dysentery,” said Miss Finney, “is a disease as old as man. It is referred to in some of the most ancient writings on medicine. Naturally I’ve seen dysentery cases by the thousands, but I never saw one like André’s before. That’s why I was so fussy about having those slides and cultures. You diagnose this stuff from clinical manifestations and half the time you make a mistake. But when the laboratory says it’s amoebic, it’s amoebic.”

  “What made you so fussy?” I asked. “Didn’t you trust Henri?”

  “I don’t trust anybody, not any more than I can help,” she said. And then she gave me that long speech I’ve already put in, the one about white men’s false faces in the tropics, and about how she always looked twice at people, once on the surface and then a good long time underneath, trying to find out what they’re really like. “I don’t mean this to be a lecture on Henri,” she finished. “I mean it about everybody. I wasn’t afraid Henri had any reason to fool me, but he might be careless. Well, it was amoebic all right—no room for doubt. I collected the dejecta myself and kept check while we searched for the amoebae. We did that on a slide, of course. The culture was a sort of side experiment. I wanted it to compare with Henri’s other dysentery cultures. The thing that worried me about André was that I never had seen amoebic come on so fast or work so quick. You can carry that stuff around with you as long as thirty years and never die from it or even have anything worse than recurrent inconvenience. Or I’ve seen it take them off after a few weeks. Acute onset’s always the gravest form, I already knew that, but André’s case was at the extreme limit as far as speedy development was concerned. He must have swallowed enough bugs to infect a regiment. And I don’t understand how that could have happened in the normal run.”

  “What’s so suspicious about it?” I asked. “It could happen to anybody, couldn’t it?”

  “It could,” Miss Finney admitted, “but here André had been out in this country going on thirty years, and he never picked it up. Some people seem to have a greater susceptibility to it than others. And then André wasn’t a fool, anyway, not when it came to routine precautions against disease. They get to be second nature. Anyhow he was one of the toughest specimens I ever saw. The way he abused his body with liquor and everything else, he ought to have killed himself long ago, but he never even got sick. Then all of a sudden he comes down with this stuff and out he goes, in a matter of days. Sure, it could happen to anyone, and if he’d had a mild case I’d have taken it for granted. But a thing like this! Remember that time in Chicago during the World’s Fair?—1933, I think, when they had an outbreak of the stuff. That night club woman, Texas Somebody, she died of it along with a lot of others. Well, those were supposed to be especially violent primary infections. The people began to develop symptoms eight or ten days after infection and they went out pretty quick. But André was already having belly cramps when he showed up at the station on the fifth of July, and that means it only took four days to develop.”

  I felt cold and thin for a minute. “What are you trying to say?” I asked her. “You’re counting b
ack to something that happened in the house in Bafwali.”

  “I only mean that André’s infection wasn’t a normal one. It would be hard to get infected as badly as he was without trying. Or without somebody doing it for you—feeding you more bugs than you’d ever pick up by any accident I can imagine. I’m not figuring on anything but arithmetic and geography. Arithmetic says that since a case as severe as this one should have started showing symptoms four or five days after infection, infection occurred about July first. Geography says that André and Jacqueline were together that day, and anybody could tell Jacqueline was ready to rip you to pieces because you knew she’d been there. Ordinarily Jacqueline likes her young men whole. I guess I’m figuring on something besides arithmetic and geography after all. I hate Jacqueline. She’s rotten mean. She’s spoiled and she’s desperate and she’s got the conscience of a storm-trooper. The only thing I can’t figure out is what she could get out of feeding André a culture of amoebae. She’s in the same spot now that she was before he died, so far as I can see—or worse, because now Gérôme would have to stay out here to manage things even if they had the money to get away.”

  I asked, “If she had a culture of this stuff she had to get it somewhere. Are you still trying to drag Henri into this?”

  “I said I wasn’t, and I’m not,” said Miss Finney. “Not any more than I’m trying to drag Gérôme or the Boutegourdes or Emily, or Father Justinien and Albert for that matter.” She considered for a moment and then said reflectively, “Henri. Maybe that’s worth working on. But anybody could go in the laboratory and pick up some of that stuff. Henri always had cultures of everything lying all around, just the way he does everything. Everybody’s in and out of there, from Gabrielle on up. They never lock the buildings.”

  “I suppose you know what you’re saying,” I said. “You’re accusing Jacqueline of murder.”

  “Not quite,” said Miss Finney. She quoted: “Poison is a woman’s weapon. It would certainly be Jacqueline’s. But all I’ve done so far, Hoop, is put two and two together. I already knew the answer to that one, though—four. Four isn’t enough, and so far that’s all the figures I’ve got, just two and two. I’ll damn well accuse Jacqueline of murder if I get enough figures to add up to the total I’m after, you can depend on that.”