by M. M. Kaye
Dany nodded. And then they were back once more in their seats, facing an illuminated sign that was saying ‘No Smoking. Fasten Seat Belts.’
Pemba dwindled in its turn to a little dark dot in a waste of blue, and ahead of them lay something that at first seemed no more substantial than the shadow of a cloud on the glittering sea. Zanzibar …
The blue of deep water gave place to the gorgeous greens of sandbars and shallows, and they were losing height and swooping in over acres of clove trees and groves of palms. Above orange orchards and the clustered roofs of houses.
Lash reached out a hand and closed it over one of Dany’s, gripping it hard and encouragingly, and then there was a bump and a jolt and they were taxi-ing up the runway to stop at last before a long white building backed by innumerable trees.
Lash unfastened his seat belt for the last time and said ‘Here we go!’ And went.
Dany never knew what he had said to her mother and Tyson, both of whom were at the airport to meet the plane. He had had less than five clear minutes; certainly not more; but he had apparently made good use of them.
‘Darlings!’ called Lorraine, greeting her guests as they emerged from behind a barrier where they had queued to have their passports and permits inspected and stamped. ‘How lovely to see you all. Elf____! What heaven to see you, darling. And Gussie! Gussie, you look marvellous. And madly smart. Hullo, Millicent. Eddie! — years since we saw you last! Oh well, months then, but it seems like years; and isn’t that a lovely compliment?’
Lorraine never seemed to change, thought Dany, regarding her mother with indulgent affection. She was not beautiful in the way that Amalfi Gordon was beautiful, but she managed none the less to convey an impression of beauty, and that did equally well. Part of her appeal, thought her daughter dispassionately, undoubtedly lay in her lack of inches and that entirely deceptive appearance of fragility. It made even undersized men feel large and strong and protective.
Lorraine was wearing white linen and pearls, and she did not look like anyone’s mother. Or, for that matter, like the wife of the burly, loud-voiced, bearded man in the salt-stained fisherman’s slacks and faded blue T-shirt, who seemed slightly larger than life and was clearly recognizable to any reader of the Press of any country in the world as Tyson Frost, author of Last Service for Lloyd, Clothe Them All in Green O, The Sacred Swine and at least half a dozen other novels that had been filmed, televised, analysed, attacked, imitated, selected by Book Societies and Literary Guilds and sold by the million.
Lash said briefly: ‘My secretary, Ada Kitchell; Mrs Frost,’ and Dany, demurely shaking hands with her own mother, was seized with a sudden hysterical desire to burst into helpless giggles.
Lorraine had not blinked, but her small face had paled a little and her blue eyes had widened in dismay. She said faintly: ‘So pleased____’ And then in an anguished whisper: ‘Darling — why red? and that appalling fringe!’
Tyson’s large, sinewy hand descended on Dany’s shoulder blades with a smack that made her stagger: ‘Well, Miss Kitchell — delighted to meet you. Perhaps you and Bates won’t mind going in the station wagon with the luggage. No, Lorrie! you’d better take Elf and Eddie and Nigel. Hiyah, Eddie? Back again like a bad lira? Didn’t think we’d see you down this way again after giving you sandfly fever or whatever it was you caught last time you were here. No, by cripes — it was dysentery, wasn’t it? Gussie, I’ll take you and young Lash. Go on, pile in.’
He opened the door of the car, and suddenly caught sight of Seyyid Omar-bin-Sultan. ‘Hullo, you old wolf. Didn’t know you’d be back so soon. How was the night-life of Nairobi?’
He took Seyyid Omar by the arm and said: ‘Gussie, this is a friend of mine. I’d like you to meet Seyyid — Oh, you’ve met? Good. Well get on into the car then. We don’t want to hang around here all day.’
Gussie got in, followed by Lash. ‘Come round and look us up as soon as you can,’ bellowed Tyson as Seyyid Omar moved off towards a large white car bearing a Zanzibar number plate. ‘Who the hell are you?’ He turned to glare at Larry Dowling, who removed his hat and smiled amiably.
‘Merely a fellow-traveller — in a strictly non-political sense,’ said Mr Dowling. ‘As a matter of fact, I came here hoping to meet you, Mr Frost. If I may call sometime____’
‘In what capacity? As a member of my public or the Press?’
‘Both,’ said Mr Dowling promptly.
‘Then let me break it to you right away,’ boomed Tyson, ‘that I despise my public wholeheartedly, and I never talk to the Press. Good day.’
He dived into his car, slammed the door and drove off in a cloud of dust, followed by his wife in a second car, and Dany, Millicent and the luggage in a station wagon. Larry Dowling, who was not unused to this sort of thing, bestowed a brief, good-humoured grin on Dany, shrugged philosophically and hailed a taxi.
* * *
At any other time or in any other circumstances, Dany would have found her first sight of Zanzibar fascinating and exciting. But now that she was here at last, all that she could feel was not so much relief as overwhelming exhaustion. She had, as Lash would have said, made it. But it did not seem to matter.
The station wagon, piled high with assorted suitcases and driven by a smiling African in a smart white uniform and a red tarboosh, whirled them along white, shadow-splashed roads, tree-lined or palm fringed. Past pastel-coloured houses and sudden glimpses of a sea that glittered blue as a broken sapphire.
Hibiscus, oleander, bignonia and wild coffee starred the roadside, and brilliant masses of bougainvillaea spilled over garden walls in an extravagant riot of colour. And then they had reached the town and were threading their way at a foot pace through streets so narrow that neighbours living on opposite sides of them could surely shake hands with each other from their upper windows. Tall, whitewashed houses, so high that the streets were deep canyons and crevasses. Hot white walls, hot black shadows, and white-robed black-faced men. Huge, elaborately ornamental doors decorated with fantastic carving and great metal spikes. The smell of strange Eastern spices and hot dust; the scent of sandalwood and frangi-pani and cloves. A sound of laughter and music and drums …
On the far side of the town they passed through a fringe of squalid slums: an ugly shanty-town of rusty tin, corrugated iron, crumbling mud walls and decaying thatch, which gave Miss Bates an excuse for a dissertation on the subject of Oriental inefficiency and the inexcusable stupidity of Eastern races who were critical of the benign blessings of British rule.
The road crossed a bridge over a malodorous creek and skirted a shallow bay full of mud flats where the rotting hulks of ancient dhows lay stranded beyond the reach of the tide. And then they were among trees again: forests of coconut palms, thick groves of mango and orderly plantations of clove.
‘How much farther do you suppose this place is?’ inquired Millicent Bates restlessly. ‘I should have thought Tyson would have had the sense to live nearer the airport.’
‘There wasn’t any airport a hundred years ago,’ said Dany.
‘What’s that? Oh — Oh, I see. Well it’s a bally nuisance all the same. I don’t mind telling you that I could do with a strong cup of tea. Gussie and I always have one about eleven o’clock, and it’s one of the things I miss. But at this rate it will be jolly nearly lunch-time by the time we get to this shady house of Tyson’s. Shady house…’
Millicent threw back her head and laughed uproariously at her own joke. ‘Not bad, that, you know. I must remember to tell Gussie. And I bet it’s not far out, either! From all one hears about old Rory Frost, I’d say there’d been a good few shady goings-on in that house. And I wouldn’t put much beyond Tyson, either! He’s the kind who’d watch his grandmother carved up if he happened to need some first-hand information on dissection for a chapter in one of his books. All the Frosts have been hard nuts; or else crazy, like old Barclay. I can’t think how Gussie____ Ah, this looks like it at last.’
The car turned left off the main
road and into a narrow side lane that was barely more than a track, and presently they were skirting a long, high wall of whitewashed stone. Bougainvillaea, flowering jasmine and orange trumpet flowers draped it with scent and colour, and from behind it rose the tops of many trees.
‘Yes, this must be it,’ said Millicent with relief. ‘The road seems to end here. There’s the sea.’
The station wagon had been the last to leave the airport, and the two other cars, having easily outpaced it, were already back in the garage. The road was empty as they drew up before an ancient, iron-studded door set deeply into the long wall, where a stately Somali servant in white robes and a wide, welcoming grin awaited their arrival.
A scent of orange blossom, frangi-pani and warm damp earth drifted out to meet them, and through the open doorway Dany could see a garden full of flowers and winding paths and freckled shadows, and a tall, square, three-storied Arab-style house whose windows looked out across the massed green of trees and a blaze of flowers towards the sparkling sea and the long blue horizon. Kivulimi, at last!
10
‘And now,’ said Tyson, closing the door of the guest-house behind him and depositing a bottle and a handful of glasses on the nearest table, ‘for the love of Allah, let’s get this sorted out. Have a drink, Junior. In fact, have several. You look as though you needed ’em — and by God, I do! What in the name of hell’s delight is all this about?’
Lash had been allotted the small, three-roomed guest-house that was built on the seaward wall of the garden overlooking a curving bay which was part of the domain: a wall that had once been part of the outer defences of a small fort, and dated from the days of Portuguese domination. Half a dozen armed men could have walked abreast along its crenelated top, and Tyson’s father, Aubrey Frost, had reinforced the crumbling stone, and converted a look-out and two guard rooms into a small but pleasant guest-house, shaded by a gigantic rain tree and overhung by a profusion of purple and crimson bougainvillaea.
Tyson had led the way there, followed by his wife, his step-daughter and Lashmer Holden, after first seeing to it that his other guests were safely in their several rooms, unpacking suitcases and preparing for luncheon.
Lash accepted a drink and disposed of half of it before replying.
‘You may well ask,’ he said. ‘And you aren’t going to like the answer. We are, not to put too fine a point on it, in one helluva jam.’
‘It was like this____’ began Dany.
Lash said: ‘Now look____! you keep out of it. Right now I’m doing the talking. You can take over when I’m through.’
He turned back to Tyson: ‘There’s just one question I’d like to ask before we get down to cases. Why did you send this kid here tracking all the way down to the country to fetch you a letter from a guy called Honeywood, when your sister’s living right plunk on his doorstep? Don’t think I’m inquisitive, but I’m interested. How is it you didn’t ask Mrs Bingham to collect it for you?’
Tyson stared. ‘What the hell’s that got to do with this? Or you?’
‘Plenty,’ said Lash. ‘How come?’
‘I don’t see that it’s any affair of yours. But if you’ve travelled out in the company of my sister without learning that she is talkative, untrustworthy and bloody inquisitive, you must have brought lack of observation to a fine art!’
‘Tyson, darling!’ protested Lorraine faintly. ‘Gussie isn’t____’
‘Yes, she is. And well you know it! And don’t interrupt. Well, boy, having answered your question, let’s have an answer to mine. What the hell is all this fantastic fandango about?’
‘Have you,’ said Lash, asking another one, ‘by any chance heard that Honeywood was murdered a few days back?’
‘Honeywood! Good God! When — how____’ He turned sharply to face his step-daughter. ‘Then you didn’t see him after all? Does this mean that you didn’t get that letter?’
‘Yes, she did,’ said Lash brusquely. ‘That’s the trouble. And it makes a long and screwy story.’
He finished his drink, and having replenished his glass sat down on the window seat and supplied the salient points of that story with terseness and economy.
‘Is that all?’ said Tyson Frost with dangerous restraint, breathing heavily.
‘It’ll do to go on with,’ said Lash laconically.
‘Then all I can say,’ said Tyson, saying it, ‘is that there must be insanity in your family! And, by heck, I always knew it! Were you out of your mind?’
Lash winced. ‘To be frank with you, yes. I happened to be plastered at the time.’
‘My God! So I should think! Why — it’s sheer lunacy. It’s criminal. It’s____’
‘I know, I know,’ said Lash wryly. ‘You aren’t telling me anything. I seem to remember saying all that myself when I surfaced yesterday. And more! There isn’t any angle you can put to me that I have not already come up against — hard. The point is, what do we do now?’
‘Cut her hair,’ said Lorraine in a fading voice. ‘And wash it. Darling, really____! It’s quite hideous. Not the colour so much; I could bear that. But that awful fringe! The sort of thing film stars used to wear in the ghastly twenties. Too frightful. And darling, those spectacles! For goodness sake take them off at once. They make you look too dreadfully intelligent.’
‘It’s an illusion,’ said Lash sourly.
Lorraine ignored him: ‘That’s right, darling. And don’t put them on again. You look so much nicer without them.’
Tyson said: ‘Your mother, thank the Lord, is utterly incapable of intelligent thought or of grasping the essential guts of any situation.’
‘It would appear to run in the family,’ commented Lash caustically. And added as a gloomy afterthought: ‘And maybe they’ve got something there, at that. An inability to grasp the essential guts of this set-up is something I wouldn’t mind having myself right now. And you’re dead right about that hair-style. It’s a pain. I never did go for red-heads, anyway.’
‘No. You prefer blondes, don’t you?’ said Dany with a sudden flash of waspishness.
‘Hell, who doesn’t? Is there any more of that Scotch around?’
Tyson pushed across the bottle and said angrily: ‘You’re all mad! The whole lot of you! What the blue-asterisk-blank does it matter what Dany’s hair looks like? It seems to me, young Lash, that you’re taking a ruddy casual view of all this. What do you propose to do about it?’
‘I?’ Lash looked mildly surprised. ‘Oh, that’s dead easy. I propose to eat a hearty meal at your expense, and then I’m catching the next available plane out of here. And I don’t give a damn which way it’s headed! From now on this is your headache, brother!’
‘Lash!’ Dany’s voice had a sudden break in it.
Lash got up quickly and going to her, took her face between his hands. ‘Listen, babe, I know I got you into this, but you’ll be all right now. All you’ve got to do is to make a clean breast of it. Lay all your cards on the table. I can’t help you. You know that. All I’ve done is to give you a wrong steer, and make bad worse. I____’
Dany said in an imploring whisper: ‘Lash, please don’t go — please!’
‘Look, honey; it isn’t going to help one bit if I — Oh, hell!’
He released her abruptly and turned suddenly on Tyson Frost: ‘What I want to know,’ said Lash furiously, ‘is why you ever let her get mixed up in this sort of thing in the first place! Couldn’t you have got someone else to do your dirty work for you? You must have known darned well that there was dynamite in that letter. What was it?’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Lorraine, sitting suddenly upright. ‘What was in it? Why should anyone else want it?’
Tyson said: ‘Why does anyone want three million?’
‘W-what!’ Lorraine sprang to her feet. ‘Tyson, darling! What are you talking about? You can’t mean____’
‘Sit down,’ said Tyson. ‘All of you. That’s better.’
He crossed the room with a step that was curiously li
ght for so big a man, and reaching the door, jerked it open and peered out; looking along the broad open top of the wall and down into the green shade of the garden below, as though to assure himself that there was no one within earshot. After a minute he closed it again carefully, and went over to the window to lean out and look down on the sun-baked slope of rock thirty feet below. At last, satisfied with the result of his survey, he came back to the low cushion-strewn divan that stood against one wall of the sitting-room and sat down on it; the wood creaking protestingly under his weight.
‘I shall have to go back a bit,’ said Tyson Frost, lighting himself a cigarette and inhaling deeply: ‘As you probably know — it seems to be common property! — my revered grandfather, Rory — Emory Frost, who died way back in the eighteen-eighties — left a stack of papers and diaries with the family solicitors, Honeywood & Honeywood, with instructions that they were not to be opened or their contents made public for seventy years, which is reckoned to be man’s permitted span. That time limit expired a few months ago, and the stuff duly arrived out here. And good ripe stuff it is! Roaring Rory must have been a hell-raiser and a half in his day, and … But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that it took me some time to go through it, and it wasn’t until about three weeks ago that I came across a folded piece of paper that had been pushed in between the leather and the backing of one of the covers. And I wouldn’t have found it at all if the backing hadn’t split. It was interesting. It was very interesting…’
Tyson reached for the glass he had left on the floor and took a long pull at it.
‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s astonishing how often life can give points to the movies. Have any of you ever heard the legend of the lost treasure buried by Seyyid Saïd?’
‘Yes!’ said Dany.
‘No, really, darling,’ protested Lorraine. ‘You can’t believe that story! I mean, it’s too ridiculous. I know it’s in one of the guide books, but____’
‘“But me no buts”,’ said Tyson flapping an impatient hand, ‘I too thought I was too old to fall for that one. But there was something mightily convincing about that bit of paper. If no one else believed in the treasure, Grandfather Emory certainly did. And for a very good reason.’