by M. M. Kaye
Lash said: ‘It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it? If it weren’t for one outstanding snag, on which the whole thing snarls up.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘What the hell is the use of three million — or three hundred million if it comes to that — if you can’t get it out of the island? O.K. for you perhaps, or for anyone who lives right here. But how would anyone else start in shifting it? Me, for the sake of argument?’
‘I, boy. I! Don’t be so sloppy with your grammar!’
‘Okay; I. Me, Lashmer J. Holden, Jnr. What do I do with a coupla hundredweight of bullion? Load it into my bags and smuggle it through the Customs just like that, I suppose?’
‘Then you suppose wrong,’ snapped Tyson. ‘Use your head! Do you really imagine that anyone who is after that much money, and prepared to kill in order to get it, hasn’t worked that one out? Good God, boy, there are literally dozens of ways of getting in and out of countries illegally in these days, if you’ve money behind you — or the prospect of money. And don’t start yapping that “It isn’t possible!” Of course it is! A bloody sight too possible! What do you suppose there is to prevent you going for a sail or out fishing one fine evening, and being picked up a mile or so offshore by a dhow or a motor-boat? Or a private yacht? — damn it all, your own father’s got one of those! There are hundreds of miles of empty coast-line and little creeks or beaches where you could be landed on a dark night, and be picked up by a plane. Good grief, this is the Air Age! There are any amount of privately owned planes around — and any amount of empty Africa for ’em to land on! You wouldn’t be your father’s son if you couldn’t work out that one, and we can take it someone else has. The problem is, who?’
Lash shrugged his shoulders: ‘Someone who was on both plane rides, I guess. I checked up on that, and apart from your personal guests there were only two. That newspaper guy you were so charming to outside the airport____’
‘What newspaper guy?’ interrupted Tyson, sitting up sharply. ‘I don’t remember any____ Yes, by God, I do! Some blasted squirt in a panama hat who asked if he could call. Was he on the London plane?’
‘I just told you so. And staying at the same hotel in Nairobi.’
‘He was, was he?’ said Tyson meditating. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hasty. Well we can fix that. As there’s only one hotel in this salubrious spot, we know where he is. Lorrie darling, ring up the hotel will you, and ask for____ What’s his blasted name?’
‘Dowling,’ supplied Dany. ‘Larry Dowling.’
‘Mr Dowling; and when you get him on the line, tell him I’ll be delighted to give him an interview, and would he like to come and stay here. Run along and do it now.’
‘But Tyson____!’ Lorraine’s gentian-blue eyes were wide with dismay. ‘We can’t. Darling — a reporter!’
‘He isn’t a reporter,’ said Dany, but was ignored.
‘Everything will be all over the front page of every newspaper before we know where we are,’ wailed Lorraine. ‘Think of Dany — and all of us. Just think!’
‘I am,’ said Tyson impatiently. ‘And I appear to be the only one who is capable of doing so. It’s a dam’ sight safer to have all the suspects under one roof.’
‘With an eye, of course,’ said Lash, ‘to the cash deposit.’
‘If that was meant for sarcasm, boy, you’ll have to do better. Naturally with an eye to the cash deposit. What do you take me for?’
Lorraine’s hands made their familiar fluttering gesture, and she said: ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything.’
‘He means,’ translated Lash, ‘that one of a reasonably narrow field of suspects has just got hold of the key to grandpop’s bank vault. It is therefore quite an idea to keep ’em all right here, where he can watch ’em, and the first guy who is caught borrowing a spade and sneaking out to do a bit of digging is it. See?’
‘But of course!’ exclaimed Lorraine happily. ‘Tyson darling, how clever of you. I’ll ring up this Mr — Mr Dowling at once.’
‘You do that,’ said Tyson. ‘Get going. No — wait a minute. There were two of them. Didn’t you say there were two?’
‘Were,’ said Lash, ‘is right. There’s only one now.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘The other one,’ said Lash, ‘was an Arab. A shining light in the local Zanzibar-for-Mother-Russia movement, I gather. One Salim Abeid.’
‘Oh, Jembe — “the thin man”.’
‘That’s the guy. Or to be accurate, that was the guy.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Tyson sharply.
‘I mean he’s dead. He died rather suddenly this morning at Mombasa Airport, which is why our plane was held up. I thought maybe they’d have told you that one: you must have had to wait quite a while for us.’
‘Dead?’ said Tyson, his bull voice almost a whisper. ‘You don’t mean … What did he die of?’
‘They didn’t say. He walked off the plane and into the airport with the rest of us, apparently a sound insurance risk, and when we were herded back on, he failed to turn up. There was a certain amount of delay and flurry, and first the stewardess told us he’d been taken ill, and then a squad of cops and officials turned up and took another look at our passports and re-checked our visas — and for all I know got our fingerprints as well. They seemed anxious to know where they could get in touch with us during the next few days.’
‘What do you suppose they’d want to do that for?’
‘Your guess,’ said Lash dryly, ‘is as good as mine.’
Lorraine looked anxiously from Lash’s face to her husband’s, and came back from the door to clutch at Tyson’s arm. There was a sudden trace of panic in her light, lilting voice: ‘What guess, Tyson? What does he mean? What are you both hinting at?’
‘Nothing,’ said Tyson brusquely. ‘Only that Jembe had a lot of political enemies. There’s no need for us to start visualizing burglars under every blasted bed in the island. And anyway he probably died of heart failure.’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Lash pleasantly. ‘Few of us die from anything else.’
‘Be quiet, boy!’ blared Tyson. ‘The young should be seen and not heard! It’s all right, Lorrie. You run along now and phone that infernal reporter. And be nice to him.’
Lorraine sighed and relaxed. ‘I’m always nice to people, darling.’
She turned from him and directed an appealing smile at Lash. ‘I do hope you don’t mind being in the guest-house by yourself, Lash?’
‘Why should I mind? It’s charming.’
‘Now that is sweet of you! I was afraid you might feel sore about it. Being put up in a sort of honeymoon cottage when____’
‘Oh, not again!’ groaned Lash. ‘Once was enough. I get you — you mean this was the cosy little hideaway that you’d gotten all fixed up for the newly-weds, was it? Well, it was a swell idea and I shall not feel any qualms about occupying it — provided I’m allowed to do so strictly solo. You don’t have to worry about it. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘But it was. That’s what’s so awful,’ Lorraine’s voice was tragic. ‘I feel that it’s so much my fault: Elf wrote to me, you know. You see it was I who asked Eddie — Eduardo — to look her up when he was in London, because he’d suggested that he might come down here again, so I thought it would be nice for them to know each other, and of course I never dreamed____ But I don’t expect it will come to anything: so much that Elf starts doesn’t, you know. She’s so vague and soft-hearted and irresponsible, and she never means any harm. She’s like a sweet, spoilt child who just picks things up and then drops them.’
Lorraine illustrated with a graceful, expressive gesture, and Lash winced. ‘I get you.’
‘Oh, but I didn’t mean you, Lash!’ Lorraine’s eyes were wide with dismay. ‘I meant Eddie. He’s only a new toy. And rather a novel one. But when that’s over, everything will be all right again, won’t it?’
‘Sure. Just dandy,’ said L
ash bitterly. ‘And now if you don’t mind, could we just cut the whole question of my love-life off the agenda? I prefer murder.’
‘Yes of course, dear,’ said Lorraine hastily. ‘I do feel for you. And I’m sure it will all come out right in the end. Come on, Dany darling, let’s go and get tidy. And you will get rid of that awful fringe, won’t you sweetie?’
‘No she won’t!’ declared Tyson unexpectedly. ‘Here, Dany____’ he picked up the discarded spectacles and replaced them firmly on her nose. ‘I’m sorry if it worries your mother and fails to please the United States Marines, but it seems to me that you’d better stick to that fancy dress and go on being Miss Kitchell for the next few days. It’ll save a lot of explaining. And the less explaining we have to do once that scribbling journalist is on the premises, the better.’
‘Are you really going to ask him over?’ inquired Lash.
‘Certainly,’ said Tyson, bristling. ‘Any objections?’
‘None at all. It’s your funeral. But it seems to me that your sense of proportion has slipped a disc. If you import this Dowling guy you can watch to see that he doesn’t start in digging up grandpop’s dollars, but if he starts digging any of this dirt instead, how are you going to stop him splashing it all over the tabloids?’
‘Murder him!’ said Tyson succinctly. ‘Now let’s get on up to the house and have some food.’
12
The House of Shade stood three storeys high on a wide stone terrace that was approached from the garden by short flights of steps set at regular intervals about it. Each of its storeys was of a different height, for the ground floor had once been a colonnade surrounding an open central courtyard about which the house was built, and the rooms on the first floor had been large and long, and were abnormally high. It had been Tyson’s father — who had a mania for improvements — who had divided them into bedrooms, bathrooms and dressing-rooms.
The top storey, by comparison, appeared unduly low, and the rooms were hotter than those on the floor below, for the sun beat down strongly on the flat Eastern roof and the shade of the trees did not reach them. But the breeze did, and by night they were cool.
There was a lily pool in the courtyard, where lethargic goldfish idled in the shade of the flat green leaves, and on each floor the rooms led out on to pillared verandahs that faced each other across it, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a courtyard in Seville.
Curious, curving stone staircases with shallow, disproportionally wide treads, their heavy banisters of hammered iron wrought in an odd geometrical design and barely a foot and a half in height, rose from each corner of the courtyard, inside the verandahs and leading up on to the next. Dangerous looking things, depending for their support only on the stout metal and the proportion of stone that had been built into the thickness of the wall, and proof that some long-dead Arab builder had known his trade as well as Adams or John Nash.
At the edge of each verandah, stone jars filled with sweet-scented creepers and flowering shrubs stood between the tall supporting pillars, and gave an entrancing impression of hanging gardens. But from the outside the house looked far less decorative and unusual: a square, white, very high building with a flat crenelated roof and rows of green-painted shutters.
It was sometime during the afternoon, and shortly before Tyson left to take a letter in to the Residency, that Mr Cardew, the Police Superintendent of the Zanzibar Division, called briefly at the House of Shade.
His car came and went again, making so little sound on the white coral dust of the palm-shaded road that no member of the house-party heard it, and apart from Tyson, only a Somali servant, a somnolent gardener’s boy, and a drowsing cat on the wall above the main gate, had seen him.
He had stayed less than a quarter of an hour, and it was not until much later in the day, when night had fallen and the house-party were seated at the dining-room table in a glow of candlelight, that Tyson had chosen to bring up the subject of his visit.
The dining-room at Kivulimi was a long narrow room, with a row of arches along one side that had once been open, but which Tyson’s father, Aubrey, had converted into french windows. They stood wide tonight, letting in a heady scent of flowers and luring moths and other nocturnal insects to a fiery death in the candle flames, and from her seat between Nigel and Larry Dowling, Dany could see out into the garden where the tree shadows and the moonlight formed a complicated mosaic patched with gold from the lighted windows.
She had plenty of leisure to enjoy the sight, for Lorraine, in the interests of playing safe, was keeping Larry Dowling engaged in conversation, while Nigel was hotly defending a modern masterpiece, recently purchased for the nation, in the face of Gussie Bingham’s assertion that it was a shocking waste of the taxpayers’ money (by which she meant her own) and indistinguishable from a pool of spilt ink and a squashed tomato — which would have come cheaper.
Larry Dowling had arrived in a taxi shortly after luncheon, and much to her surprise Dany had found herself not only pleased, but more than a little relieved to see him. Which was foolish of her, she knew, since Larry’s profession made him a danger to all of them. But for some indefinable reason she felt a greater sense of safety and a lessening of tension while he was within reach. Larry, she thought, would not let one down.
Lash Holden had greeted Mr Dowling with a marked lack of enthusiasm, and having commandeered his taxi had returned in it to the airport to inquire into the possibility of reserving a seat for himself in a Nairobi-bound plane on the following day. He had not been back by four-thirty, when Lorraine’s guests had assembled for tea on the shaded terrace outside the drawing-room windows, but he had joined them later when they had gone down to explore the sea shore and exclaim over the weird, wind-worn shapes of the coral rocks, and watch the sun go down in a blaze of rose-tinted splendour.
He had not spoken to Dany, and had in fact appeared to avoid her, and she looked at him now across the width of the wide table in the glow of the candles, and wondered if she would ever see him again. I suppose I could always get a job in America, she thought. Tyson or Lorraine could fix that; they’ve got loads of friends there, and Lash’s father is Tyson’s best friend. I’d be able to see him. But if Mrs Gordon decides that she likes him better than Eduardo after all …
Dany turned to look at Amalfi, who was being charming to Tyson and prettily petulant to Eduardo, and her heart sank. She knew that she herself had little to complain of in the way of looks, for she had inherited them from her father who had been an outstandingly handsome man. But Ada Kitchell’s unfortunate hair-style did not suit her, and neither did Ada Kitchell’s spectacles. They combined to reduce her from a pretty girl to a nondescript one, and even the dress she had chosen to wear did not help, though once she had thought it entrancing — a short, smoke-grey dress whose wide skirt, ornamented with two enormous patch pockets appliquéd with white magnolias, reduced her slim waist to hand-span proportions. She had been charmed with it when she bought it; but now it only appeared rather ordinary, and what Aunt Harriet would have termed ‘suitable for a young girl’.
Amalfi, looking anything but ordinary, was wearing pale gold chiffon that exactly matched her pale gold hair, and her jewels were an antique set of topazes set in gold filigree. It was a colour that did charming and complimentary things to her sea-green, mermaid’s eyes, and she was using them now with dazzling effect on Tyson.
I don’t know how Mother stands it! thought Dany resentfully: and turning to look at Lorraine was instantly answered.
Lorraine, wearing a fragile confection of black spider-lace, with diamonds that were a magnificent reminder of the brief reign of Dwight P. Cleethorpe, was, in her own and entirely different way, as entrancing as Amalfi, and she was engaged in employing all her charms on Larry Dowling; who was looking equally dazzled.
They can’t help it, thought Dany, feeling depressed and deplorably gauche. They were born with charm. They just turn it on like a tap, and half the time it doesn’t mean a thing. They can’t help h
aving it, or using it, any more than Millicent Bates can help being — Millicent Bates!
Millicent was sitting opposite her between Lash and Eduardo di Chiago, and ‘Dressing for Dinner’ meant only one thing to Miss Bates. A long dress, and she was wearing one. An undatable garment in solid blue marocain that made no concessions to frivolity and did nothing for her flat-chested, square-shouldered figure. She was engaged in giving Lash, as an unenlightened Colonial, a lecture on the advantages of a National Health system, when she was interrupted by Tyson who at last elected to broach the subject of the Superintendent of the Zanzibar Division’s afternoon call. His voice boomed down the lengh of the table and successfully terminated an anecdote concerning scheming foreigners in search of free false teeth.
‘By the way, Lash, about that plane reservation you wanted for tomorrow, I’m afraid you’ll____’
Amalfi turned sharply: ‘What plane reservation? Lash, you aren’t leaving? Not when you’ve only just arrived! Darling, don’t be silly!’
Nigel gave his little giggling laugh. ‘It’s all this American passion for hustle. Here today and gone tomorrow! So enervating.’
‘On the contrary,’ snapped Lash, ‘it’s a strong instinct for self-preservation.’
‘Darling, I’m not all that dangerous,’ cooed Amalfi dulcetly. ‘Are you frightened?’
‘Terrified!’ said Lash promptly. ‘But apart from that, as I find that the business side of this trip can be dealt with in half an hour — provided our host will sit still that long — I don’t feel justified in wasting too much time idling; however pleasantly. I have a lot of commitments.’
Mrs Bingham said: ‘Poor Miss Kitchell! And I feel sure that you were so looking forward to seeing something of Zanzibar. What a slave-driver your Mr Holden is!’
She beamed sympathetically at Dany, and Lash looked startled. It was a point that had somehow escaped him. If Dany had to continue masquerading as his secretary he could hardly leave without her. Or with her.