by John Ukah
Hold on a minute! My thoughts suddenly stopped and my head began spinning. The white square button came from Mrs. Marshall’s sweater! Of course! I had seen her wearing it, on a number of occasions. And looking carefully now, I noticed that a button was missing! Was I on to something?
But she had legitimate reasons for visiting her daughter’s room, and one of her buttons could easily have come off there.
“Mrs. Marshall,” I said on impulse. “It seems one of your buttons on your sweater has come off?”
She looked down at the sweater and nodded her head, as if it did not matter. “Maria had promised to sew it for me. I just went to take the sweater from her room this morning. She evidently had not sewn it back before …” And she bit her lower up and lowered her head in grief. I supposed she had been, about to say before she was killed. Well, that seemed to settle the question of how the button came to be in Maria’s room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A NEW GUEST ARRIVES THE LODGE
Ayuba asked to have a word with me, in private. He looked distressed. I joined him at the bar.
“I am expecting a guest this evening, Mr. Simpson. She’s already on her way here. She’s my first cousin on my mother's side.”
“I think you should mention this to the DPO for clearance,” I said. “There’s an ongoing murder investigation. It is a serious matter. Is she aware of this?”
“She is aware. I also spoke with the DPO and he gave clearance.”
I was surprised. It was unusual. A guest had been brutally murdered. Why would the DPO in charge of the case, allow such an intrusion in the middle of his investigation? The way he was going about this, was rather unorthodox. Ordinarily, we should all have been whisked away to the Obudu Police Station and interrogated there. Instead of having cigarette smoke puffed into our faces. What manner of murder investigation was he conducting? Was he even taking this case seriously?
“But that’s not the main reason I wanted to talk to you.” Ayuba looked troubled.
“What is it, Ayuba?”
“We saw a colony of brown bats in one of the hollow trees in the garden.” He mentioned this like it was an ominous sign. I lifted my eyebrows in a silent enquiry. “Amina also saw a rat in the storage room. I have called the exterminator to come and fumigate the place. But the DPO instructed that we should wait until the investigation is concluded. He said he doesn’t want the crime scene to be contaminated.”
I was not sure why Ayuba shared this information with me.
“That’s fine. Is there something you’d like me to do?”
“We have the local rat poison. I was thinking we might use that in the meantime. What do you think?” He took down a small bottle from the top of a shelf and showed it to me. It contained a substance we called Otapiapia.
“Be careful with the rat poison,” I cautioned. “We don’t want anyone ingesting it. There’s an unresolved homicide already and another accidental death from rat poison won’t do your lodge, any good.”
“All right, now,” he said.
Tonye came over at that moment and stood beside my stool. He looked from one to the other of us with tense, suspicious eyes.
“Why are you both whispering?” he asked.
“Go and sit down, Tonye,” I advised. He looked at us as if he had caught us gossiping about him. He took one of the bar stools with a side glance, as if the stool was part of a conspiracy against him.
I may have mentioned that at first sight, I felt that Tonye was a little slow on the uptake. He also came across as unreasonable. But as I got closer to him, I realised how badly I had misjudged him. He was not slow and unreasonable. Far from it. It was patently clear that he was actually intellectually impaired.
I felt him watching me, as I sipped a malt drink Ayuba had offered me. I looked up and caught him staring. As usual, his mouth hung open.
“What?” I asked. Tonye had a way of staring at people for no reason. And he seemed unaware of this until they felt compelled to ask him what the hell he was staring at.
“The fear here is driving me nuts! I’m scared a killer is on the loose and we don’t know who the next victim could be. Do you know I was so scared this morning that I put a gun to my head? Why not end it all by myself, I wondered? In fact, I almost pulled the trigger,” he said looking downcast and frightened.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, shocked. I knew he was frightened, but from what he just said, it appeared that the situation was a lot more desperate than I had thought.
“I’m telling you the honest truth,” he said.
“So you own a gun?”
“Not really. It was an imaginary gun. But I put it to my head.”
He slowly got off the bar stool with his fingers shaped like a gun and walked away. I stared after him, as he made his way to the lounge area.
About an hour later, a lady walked into the Lodge. I was the only guest in the lounge watching TV. At the sight of her, a smile involuntarily spread across my face. She was tall, graceful and easy on the eyes. Her dark blue skirt suit sat well on her.
She was probably in her early thirties. Her searching, large eyeballs located Ayuba at the bar area.
“Sannu, Mallam Ayuba!” she screamed with delight. She ran towards him and they embraced. There was some good-natured laughter. Ayuba introduced her to me as his cousin, Wahimda.
“So you’re the guest Ayuba has been expecting?” I asked. She nodded. She told me she was a lawyer who worked with the United Nations Organisation. She had just returned from an official assignment in Congo.
Later that evening, Ayuba introduced her to the male guests seated at the dining table. Nagoth and Mrs. Marshall had ignored the dinner bell, and were holed up in their rooms. Wahimda had a fetching personality, so the men were naturally taken with her. The mood was still sober in the Lodge. My hopes of a carefree vacation in Obudu had gone belly up.
“What would you like to drink?” Amina asked Wahimda.
“Hot chocolate,” she said. Amina brought it to her.
“Mr. Simpson, what do you think of the murder?” asked Wahimda. “Dan told me all about it.” Daniel Atanda was the name of the Divisional Police Officer.
“You have met us in very unfortunate circumstances,” I replied. “A killing with a knife, and one that was plunged so deep shows it was a personal attack; it was not a random act of violence. It was perpetrated by someone she knew. Perhaps, someone she even considered a friend.”
“The DPO assured me it is an open-and-shut case. He is going to find out who the killer is within the next 24 hours when he gets the lab result.” It was clear she was chummy with the DPO. This made me wonder if she was working undercover. Had the DPO planted a mole in our midst to aid his investigation?
Dinner went well. Amina surpassed all my expectations of delicious food and impeccable service. Forks clashed with plates amidst a steady bubble of quiet conversation.
“Have you set the rat poison?” I asked Ayuba, as he was filling my glass with water. And as if on cue, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria struck. We were all enveloped in darkness.
“Sit still, everyone,” Ayuba cautioned. “I will put on the generator now.”
I heard him open the main door and go out. Someone was still walking around the dining area, in the dark. There was the harsh scraping sound of a chair moving across the terrazzo floor surface and the person sat down finally.
Ayuba and the generator had an understanding. They had known each other for years. It purred and spluttered to life. Soon after, it was roaring like a wounded lion and the lights came back on. I looked around at everyone, they were all sitting calmly at their places at the table. I wondered which one of them had been moving about in the dark and why.
“I was asking you about the rat poison, Ayuba,” I said when he came back.
“It's there on …” began Ayuba pointing to a shelf. But now his mouth was agape in surprise and he couldn’t seem to continue. His hand hung in space, still pointing at the shelf
, as if held by a spell.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“The bottle of rat poison was on that shelf just before the lights went out, but it is no longer there now,” he explained, standing up to see better.
“Maybe someone accidentally knocked it over, when it was dark,” I suggested. We left the dining area and searched around the shelf and the bar area, but it was a waste of time.
“You’re sure it was here?” I asked.
“Yes, I saw it just before the lights went out.”
That was when Wahimda screamed.
“Ah! My tummy!” she shrieked, clutching at her stomach.
“What is it?” I asked going over to her. She was already on the floor.
She kept screaming, “My tummy! My tummy!”
Tonye almost jumped out of his skin. His eyes grew as wide as saucers. I was also startled by the piercing scream.
“Is she in labour?” Tonye asked no one in particular. His head seemed larger than usual.
“Maybe she had an abortion?” he suggested.
“Oh, shut up, Tonye!” I snapped. Then, I went on my knees and tried to calm Wahimda. What was the matter with her?
“The hot chocolate! The hot chocolate!” said Wahimda. “Ah! The hot chocolate!” There were beads of perspiration and signs of agony on her face.
“The hot chocolate?” repeated Amina incredulously. “How do you mean?”
But Wahimda groaned louder.
“She had better answer right now,” said Tonye, impatiently.
“Wahimda,” I called, holding up her head and wiping off some of the sweat with my handkerchief. “What is the matter?”
“The hot chocolate. It tasted funny like insecticide,” she said weakly, her eyes became glazed and she seemed to have difficulty keeping them open. “It tasted funny …” her voice trailed off as if she hadn’t the strength to continue.
“Oh, I see now,” said Tonye nodding his head sagely, as if everything was now crystal clear. He grinned at everyone with a moronic smile on his face. He reminded me of a cow having a good time in a grass field.
“But was it not normal chocolate?” asked Willie.
“It was,” Amina answered, looking bewildered.
“The rat poison!” said Ayuba in a sudden fit of inspiration.
“What happened to rat cousin?” asked Tonye with a blank expression on his face.
“The rat poison must have somehow found its way into the chocolate,’ explained a distraught Ayuba.
“It is not possible!” said Amina, with an emphatic shake of her head. “The bottle was never near where I made the hot chocolate. It was on that shelf until the lights went off.”
“Let’s get this young lady to the hospital,” said John.
We called for help from the policemen. They assisted in getting Wahimda into one of their police vans.
“Please, hurry!” Amina called out, as they left for the nearest hospital.
I wondered what had happened. Had Amina accidentally or deliberately put rat poison in Wahimda’s hot chocolate? But why would she want to hurt her husband’s cousin? Had someone else done so under the cover of darkness? Who moved when the lights went off? Had the young lady deliberately poisoned herself? But she did not seem to be the suicidal type! Or was she?
The other guests were asking questions along similar lines. But where was the bottle of rat poison now? Empty or not, where was it?
I called out to Tonye, “Help me look around for the bottle of rat poison. Don’t touch it if you see it. Just show it to me.”
We began searching for it. Unfortunately, Tonye was hell-bent on following me around and searching in the very places where I put my hands to search. At a point, we were both under the same table. I had no idea he would try to get under the same table, as I was. We ended up knocking our heads together. Stars exploded before my eyes, as soon as my head struck his rocky head. I was pissed, to say the least. The others asked what we were looking for, when they saw me rubbing my head in pain. I stared at Tonye with deadly intent; he had the nerve to watch me in surprise, as if wondering what the matter was with me! I told them what we were looking for, then tried to get up, forgetting that I was still under the table. This time, when my head struck the table, I saw stars, comets and asteroids colliding and exploding. I cried out in pain. They all joined their voices in consoling me.
“Be careful,” said Philip.
I groaned and carefully came out from under the table. Willie and Ayuba joined us in searching for the bottle of rat poison.
We never found the bottle of rat poison.
Events at the Lodge were getting more bizarre. I just could not sit still. We would know what was wrong with Wahimda, when the police came back with a report from the hospital. But Maria's murder was still unsolved. She had come to me, for advice and I felt I owed it to her, to find out just who had killed her. Besides, I had liked her. We had shared a brief but intimate moment of passion. I decided to retire to my room, where I would be able to think without any interruptions.
I was soon at my table in my room, deep in thought. I honestly did not have much faith in the lab test. Nor in the manner the DPO was carrying on! It seemed he would like to implicate all of us!
What if the lab results came and the blood under the nails did not belong to any of us? What if there had been more than one assailant, but only one was scratched? What if she had scratched some other innocent person, just before the murderer came? So many what ifs. That was why I did not have much faith in the lab test.
I had been privy to a similar case, in which someone was wrongfully arrested because he had the same blood type as that under the nails of the murdered person. As he also lived in the same house as the murder victim, it had been an open-and-shut case … until the murderer who did not even live in the vicinity, was compelled by a guilty conscience to come forward with a voluntary confession.
I had a strong feeling that Maria’s death was not unconnected with whatever had been troubling her, that had made her come to seek my advice. I tried to recall all that she had said to me. Suddenly, I realised what a fool I was!
“… I heard a noise in my room, like a rat scurrying around. It had disturbed me, all through the night. So, I decided to search for it. I went over to my chest of drawers …”
Of course, the answer to the puzzle was in the chest of drawers in her room! She had discovered whatever was troubling her, in there. And it might still be there! What a blind fool I had been!
I sat up, quite excited; that was when I heard the first knock.
“Come in,” I said, trying to hide my excitement. The door handle turned and Nagoth came in. I was surprised to see him in my room. Even though he had thawed considerably towards me after my fall down the stairs, he had never entered my room before.
“Hello, Nagoth,” I said. He looked troubled, as he stood with the door still open.
“Can I have a word with you, Mr. Simpson?”
“Why, of course,” I replied. “Come in.”
He entered and closed the door.
I indicated that he could sit and he sat on the bed. I had a few questions I wanted to ask him about Maria, but I decided to hear what he had come to say first.
“I’m in trouble!” he said suddenly. Then, he held his head in his hands, his face filled with anguish.
“What kind of trouble is that, Nagoth?” I asked calmly.
“I didn’t kill Maria!” he said, desperately.
“Has anyone accused you of killing her?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “But the lab results, Mr. Simpson! It will prove that it is my blood and skin that was under her fingernails!”
I was taken aback and I lost some of my composure.
“But how is that?” I asked. Nagoth rolled up his shirtsleeves and showed me his bare arms. Sharp nails had recently raked them.
“You had better explain everything to me, Nagoth.” I said, with a serious expression on my face, as I took a seat.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NAGOTH TELLS HIS STORY
It is two months now after the accident. I have never felt so alone and confused in my life. The accident taught me a lot about human nature, especially the ugly side of it.
At first, it had been about my height and size. People had little or no respect for me, often taking me for granted or simply trying to walk all over me. You can imagine standing in front of a crowd of people, in an eatery, and the attendant is asking some big fellow behind you what he wants, completely ignoring you! Why do people think short men are so aggressive? It is the only way we get noticed. It is the only way we get the service and the respect that we deserve, just like anybody else.
People would make annoying comments when they saw me, just because they thought they were funny. But I had learnt to cope with them. It did not affect the quality of life I led, in any way. I was a successful artist by many standards.