Death in the Greenhouse

by JRL Anderson

  ‘All right, Peter. Well, I may have interfered with your leave, but I’m not going to interfere with your plans. Where are you going to make for in Africa?’

  ‘I want to go to that Christian Mission in the Otaro country on the Ga river – where Meredith Boscombe had his nearest neighbours when he ran his coffee farm. I haven’t worked out how to get there yet. I suppose you start by going to Fort Edward. I mustn’t call it that, though – that’s the old British name. I believe Boscombe said it’s called Otagara now. The Foreign Office will know, anyway. At least Boscombe is well-placed for giving that kind of help.’

  ‘Yes. Tell Rosemary when and where you want to go, and she’ll book your flight. She can also find out if you need any more injections, and arrange those.’

  ‘Thanks. I think most of my inoculation papers are fairly up to date, but I’ll get Rosemary to check things.’

  ‘Do I see you again before you go?’

  ‘Probably not. I haven’t worked out exact flight-times yet, but I think there’s a Central African flight in the early hours, and I’d like to get that if I can. I want to have a word on the phone with Professor Huntingford first, but even if I can’t get hold of him I’d like to go on that flight. I think it’s rather desperately urgent.’

  ‘All right, Peter. I may not be able to help you much if you get into trouble, but I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘I know that. Thanks.’

  ‘Well, good luck.’

  That was Sir Edmund at his best. He can be maddening in some of his habits, particularly in taking people for granted, but he makes up for it by his absolute trust in those who work for him. I was taking a slim enough chance – but if it didn’t come off, I knew that I’d never be reproached for it.

  *

  I had a lot to do. First there was Rosemary, Sir Edmund’s long-suffering secretary, who could safely be nominated for the world record in getting tiresome things done at short notice. She booked my flight in ten minutes, ran over my inoculation documents, decided that they met the regulations, and that was that. Next I phoned Meredith Boscombe at the Foreign Office, and asked if he could arrange a meeting with the High Commissioner for Mpuga, either later that morning, or in the afternoon. I said that I couldn’t explain things over the phone, but it was extremely urgent. He promised to get on to Sir Giles Hewitt at once, and ring me back as soon as an appointment had been fixed. I had confidence in the Permanent Secretary, and felt sure that the appointment would be made.

  While waiting for the Foreign Office to call back, I phoned Inspector Rosyth at Newbury. He had news of a sort, a long report from the superintendent at Bolton, enclosing some good photographs of the missing Miss Sutherland. He’d sent off an officer in a car at once with the photographs to the man who had given a lift to the woman on the Reading road, and had been lucky enough to catch him just before he left for work. He’d studied the photographs, and while doubtful if he could swear to it, he felt fairly sure that the woman in the photographs was the woman to whom he had given a lift. The report that came with the photographs said that the police had been unable to trace any van-hire firm which had provided a van for the removal of Miss Sutherland’s furniture. Discreet inquiries, however, had revealed a certain amount of information about Miss Sutherland herself. She was respected rather than liked as a headmistress, and had kept herself very much to herself at home. She’d had nothing to do with her neighbours, though she’d lived in the district for years. She would pass the time of day politely if she met them, but apparently had never invited any of them inside her house. The result – the inevitable result – was that there was some local inquisitiveness about her, and two neighbours had reported that she had been visited fairly frequently by a man in a car. The car would never be left in the road, but would be taken into the drive, so that the man himself was seldom seen. One neighbour, however, had seen him on the doorstep waiting to be let into the house, and described him as ‘young middle-aged, rather tall and nicely dressed’. He had not been wearing a hat, and she thought that his hair was ‘darkish, turning a bit grey’. The car, as may be the way of things nowadays, had been observed more than the man, and the neighbours agreed that it was a black Rover. Nobody seemed to have taken much notice of the number plate, though one woman thought that it might have had a K on it. The furniture van that came for the removal had been duly seen, and it was confirmed that it had no firm’s name on it. The reported colour varied from light grey to dark grey or green, but at least it was agreed that it had been plain.

  I told the inspector that events seemed to have moved rather away from Newton Blaize, that we had a possible suspect who might be in the United States or Africa – who seemed to be abroad, anyway. I might have to go after him at short notice, which would explain what had happened if he rang the department and I turned out to be away. ‘But keep in touch with the department whatever happens,’ I went on. ‘You have done remarkably well in tracing that woman on the Reading road, and in discovering about the delivery of Mr Quenenden’s box. That may turn out to be the key to the whole business, although I’m still in our old position of having various bits of jigsaw that don’t fit. There’s one job about the box that wants doing, and that you can do. Where is it? A tea-chest is seldom something that you just throw away – it’s too big to go in a dustbin, and in any event it’s the kind of thing that most people put by in case it comes in useful sometime. We’ve searched the place pretty thoroughly, but we’ve never come across an empty chest. You might have another go, looking particularly for it – in the garage, in the garden, anywhere. Of course it may been chopped up for firewood, but the cottage has central heating, and although there’s a fireplace in the sitting room I can’t recall its looking as if it was used much. If you can’t find any sign of the chest there’s a possible explanation for the appearance of the van. It may have been needed to take away the chest which, I think, was quite likely to have been in the greenhouse at the time of the murder.’

  ‘We’ll do our best, anyway,’ Inspector Rosyth said. ‘I hope you can get some of those damned jigsaw puzzle bits to fit.’

  *

  The call from the Foreign Office was not from Meredith Boscombe but from Sir Giles Hewitt. ‘Mr Malindono, the Mpugan High Commissioner in London, has agreed to call at three o’clock this afternoon. I hope that will be all right,’ he said. He was too well trained in diplomacy to ask directly why I wanted to see the High Commissioner so urgently, but he was obviously anxious to know. ‘Would you like me to be present at your meeting with Mr Malindono and Mr Boscombe?’ he asked. ‘I don’t, of course, wish to intrude in any way, but it might be helpful if I was there. I know the High Commissioner better than Mr Boscombe does – he has not been Minister of State long enough to have had more than I think one formal meeting with him. What do you feel about it?’

  ‘As far as I am concerned, delighted – I’m sure you’d be a help. But the matter is somewhat personal to Mr Boscombe. Can you fix it with him?’

  ‘I can try. And if I can say that in your view my presence would be helpful, I can see no reason why he should object.’

  ‘Say so then, by all means.’

  ‘The appointment with the Minister of State has been fixed for three o’clock. I’d be most grateful for a brief private discussion with you beforehand. Could you call at my office, say at half-past two, and after our talk we can go up to the Minister of State together?’

  I agreed to this. From Sir Giles Hewitt’s point of view it was a reasonable request, but from my point of view the Foreign Office end of things was tiresome and distinctly hard to handle. I needed the help of the Mpugan High Commissioner for the actions I wanted to take in his country, but I had no intention of disclosing my real reasons for them. Those could emerge later – if I was right, to the considerable benefit of Mpuga and, perhaps, of Mr Boscombe, but if I was wrong (and I could be wildly wrong) I might raise a lot of dangerous thoughts – dangerous to Mpugan relations with Britain, as well as being politically awk
ward for Mr Boscombe. I could invent a story easily enough, but plain fiction might recoil even more dangerously than the truth. I had, therefore, to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.

  My preliminary meeting with Sir Giles was useful to me as well as to him. I was not well up in Central African politics, and I needed to know something of our present relations with Mpuga. ‘Well, they’re not as bad as with some of our former dependencies, but the myths of imperialism die hard – indeed, there are plenty of people around doing their best to see that they don’t die at all,’ he replied. ‘It would be too much to say that the Mpugan Government really trusts us, and it’s done some pretty awful things in expelling thousands of East Indians, some of whom have had their homes in Mpuga for three or four generations. Fortunately, there was never European settlement on any scale – a few planters and people trying to develop forest products, but no great settlements or “White Areas” as there were in other parts of Africa. The officials of the old Colonial Service were mostly good people, genuinely trying to promote Mpugan interests, and on the whole they got on well with the local tribes. It is rather significant that while land and businesses owned by East Indians have been expropriated, British interests have been more or less left alone. Of course, it is in Mpugan interests to do so, because they provide employment and trade, but not every new nationalist Government recognises these things.’

  ‘What is the High Commissioner like?’

  ‘We are lucky in him. His family did well in the old colonial days. He himself was an able boy, and won a Colonial Office scholarship that took him to Cambridge to read economics. For a short period he was Chief Administrator of the colony’s Board of Education. He was young for the job, and when the colony became independent he was an obvious candidate for political promotion. He was Minister of Finance in the new Government, then served for a time as the Mpugan representative at the United Nations. Later, when the question of extended British aid to Mpuga became rather pressing he was posted to London as High Commissioner. He handled the negotiations very well, and he has been here now for some years. On the whole I think he likes the job. The danger of staying on in London for a man in his position is that one is liable to become out of touch with power-shifts at home. I would say that he is well aware of this, and goes to a lot of trouble to maintain his personal links with the ruling party – I have heard him spoken of quite seriously as a possible candidate for the presidency at some stage. May I ask just how you think he can help in this dreadful Boscombe business?’

  ‘You may certainly ask, Sir Giles, but the trouble is that I can’t give you a satisfactory answer, because I don’t yet know the whole story. I think we have established that the attempted blackmail of Mr Meredith Boscombe has, in a sense, little to do with Mr Boscombe himself – I mean, that the threats to his personal reputation are not seriously intended as a demand for money, and could not in any case be carried out because his reputation would withstand them.’

  ‘I am thankful to hear that. I hope you are right! But what else can the whole extraordinary business mean?’

  ‘It means, we suspect, that the blackmailing initiative is anti-Mpugan rather than anti-Boscombe. Land that once belonged to Mr Boscombe – indeed, may still belong to him because he has never sold it – may conceal some threat to the present Mpugan state. It is remote and thickly forested country, and the Ga river there is not far from the frontier. There may be a substantial cache of arms, or perhaps a training centre for some elite corps of guerilla leaders. This is for your ear alone. I am planning to fly to Mpuga tomorrow to see if I can uncover some real evidence of these suspicions. I may need to call on Mpugan help, and I certainly need the approval of the Mpugan Government for my journey. But my task is both delicate and difficult, and I do not want the Mpugan army rushing in before I have had a chance to complete my work. I must, therefore, edit my story for the High Commissioner, and I rely on you not to say anything about what I have just told you.’

  Sir Giles’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘You mean that you may be in a position to uncover this threat? That would do us a world of good in Africa.’

  ‘I hope to try, at any rate. But I cannot hope to succeed unless I am left free to pursue discreet inquiries. That is why the High Commissioner must not know too much at this stage.’

  ‘I understand completely. Say what you like, and I shall not blink an eyelid. But I still don’t see how the blackmailing of Mr Boscombe comes into it.’

  ‘We think that the blackmailer believes that Mr Boscombe knows more about what is going on in the area – on his old land – than in fact he does, and that the blackmail is intended to preoccupy his mind until some coup has been carried out. I am quite sure myself that Mr Boscombe knows nothing whatever of the business in Mpuga, but the blackmailer cannot know this.’

  ‘You seem to have accomplished a remarkable amount of work with very little to go on. My respect for your department increases.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I think it is about time we went up for our interview.’

  I couldn’t help wondering if his respect for the department would have increased by quite so much if he had realised the amount of nonsense in the taradiddle I had just invented for him.

  *

  I took to Mr Malindono. One of the most tiresomely arrogant things about some of the English is the assumption that what they call ‘birth’ or ‘breeding’ is an English monopoly, particularly of an England south of the River Trent. The High Commissioner belonged to one of the traditionally ruling tribes of Mpuga, and if he could scarcely have boasted Norman blood (any such possession would have horrified him) there was fine breeding in every line of him. He was fine-boned and slight, with an alert, vivacious face. And his Cambridge education had given him a faultless, and apparently effortless, English.

  Mr Malindono was considerably more at ease than Mr Boscombe, and I began by addressing myself to him rather than the Minister of State. ‘It is good of you to come at such short notice,’ I said. ‘Doubtless the Minister has explained the urgency of the matter.’

  Mr Boscombe (understandably) looked unhappy. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t really had time to explain anything. The High Commissioner was good enough to accept my statement on the question of urgency. It would be helpful, Colonel Blair, if you could outline matters for the High Commissioner.’

  ‘Your Excellency will be accustomed to discretion, and what I have to say must be a matter of complete confidence between us – it must not go beyond the walls of this room,’ I began. Mr Malindono nodded, and I went on, ‘As you know, the Minister of State was once a coffee planter in Mpuga.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did not know. It is most interesting. May I congratulate a former Mpugan resident on his political advancement?’

  ‘Thank you, High Commissioner, but I scarcely merit such congratulations. My late father was in the old Colonial Service, and he served for a time in what is now Mpuga. I had most happy memories of my childhood in your country, and when I left school I thought I would try my hand at coffee-growing. I’m afraid my venture wasn’t much of a success. I didn’t have much money, and the only land I could afford was in the remote Otaro region.’

  ‘It is, indeed, remote. And in the economic circumstances of the period I can understand your difficulties.’

  I interrupted the exchange of diplomatic courtesies. ‘The remoteness of the area is largely responsible for bringing about this meeting,’ I said. ‘Mr Boscombe never sold his farm or plantation, which covered a considerable extent. Whether it still belongs to him or not I can’t say – I don’t know how your law would view the matter.’

  ‘As far as our law is concerned such land has never been expropriated, and if Mr Boscombe wished to reclaim it there should be no great difficulty, if the original deeds exist.’

  ‘The point is irrelevant,’ Boscombe put in hastily. ‘I have no wish to try to reclaim the land, and I shall be happy to present it to the Mpugan people, if that would tidy up the situation.’

 
‘It would be a generous act, and doubtless it could be arranged, but it seems scarcely a matter of urgency,’ the High Commissioner said rather drily.

  ‘No. But the ownership, or possible ownership, of the land is highly relevant to what comes next,’ I said. ‘I represent a department of the Home Office which is concerned with national security. We do not conflict with the Foreign Office and other intelligence agencies – we co-operate in every way, but our own work is specifically concerned with crime, both national and international. We have evidence that a criminal act of perhaps major importance either has been, or is about to be, committed in the Otaro region of Mpuga. Treasure of some sort, probably of great value, is apparently secreted somewhere on what was Mr Boscombe’s land. Someone has got wind of this, and in our view is already in Mpuga in an effort to recover it. Attempts have been made – I must rely on your absolute discretion here, Your Excellency – to blackmail the Minister of State in the belief that he knows of the existence of the treasure. I need scarcely add that he does not. He may be entitled to some share of it, but it belongs quite clearly to the Mpugan state. With your help, we may just be in time to prevent the theft of the treasure, and be able to restore it to the state.’

  ‘Such help as I can give is yours, of course. Have you any idea of the source of the treasure?’

  ‘In the late eighteenth and well into the nineteenth centuries there was a considerable slave trade along the Ga river. Some of the traders became immensely rich, investing their profits in gold, ivory and jewels. Naturally there were rivalries, and we believe that one such hoard, acquired by a slaving family over several generations, is secreted in the area I am talking about. The family, we think, was wiped out in one of the tribal wars of that period, and its treasure never found. At today’s values it may run into several millions. It would be useful to Your Excellency’s Government.’