by M. M. Kaye
Mabel said: ‘He’s been bitten – look!’ And plumping down on her knees she pointed a trembling finger at two small purplish punctures on Gilly’s bare forearm, from one of which hung a small drop of blood, already congealed. ‘Get the serum, Ken! Run——! It’s in the pocket of the car. Quickly!’
Ken turned and ran, stumbling through the bushes and panting up the cliff path, and Drew, who had not spoken, pulled back the lid from Gilly’s eye, and after a quick look, thrust his hand inside the open-necked shirt, feeling for the heart beat. He said: ‘Have we any brandy?’
Hector jerked a small silver flask from his pocket and handed it over without a word, and Drew forced the liquid between Gilly’s quivering lips while Em, who had torn the chiffon scarf from her hat, wound it tightly above the puncture marks in a tourniquet, and demanding a sharp knife, made a deep cross-cut from which the blood welled sluggishly.
Gilly made no sound beyond the shuddering breaths that another attack of shivering forced from him, and Em dropped the knife into the grass and said frantically: ‘What on earth is Ken doing? Mabel, where’s that permanganate you talked about? He’ll die before Ken gets back with the serum! Do something, can’t you!’
‘It’s in the car,’ gulped Mabel. ‘With the rest of the first-aid kit. But I’ve got some iodine——’ She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and produced a small bottle.
‘It may be better than nothing,’ said Em, and poured the contents over the cut.
The minutes ticked by, and except for Gilly’s laboured breathing the afternoon was so quiet that it seemed to Victoria that those who watched him must be holding their breaths; and in the silence she heard someone’s teeth chatter.
Em burst out desperately: ‘Eden, for goodness sake go and see what’s keeping Ken. He must have——’ And then Ken slithered down the cliff path bringing a young avalanche of stones with him, and crashed through the bushes to arrive hot and panting.
Em snatched the syringe from him, and filling it, plunged it into Gilly’s arm above the wound, and they waited breathlessly, watching the pallid face, while Mabel chafed his limp hands and the shivering lessened until at last he lay still. His colourless face twitched, and the brandy that Drew had been forcing down his throat trickled from the corners of his mouth.
Drew put down the flask and felt for Gilly’s heart again, and after a full minute he stood up and brushed the broken grass from his knees.
‘He’s dead,’ said Drew curtly.
Mabel gave a hoarse cry and Lisa broke into shrill hysterical laughter that was somehow worse than any screaming or tears would have been.
Em stood up swiftly and slapped her across the face with the flat of her palm, and the laughter broke off in a choking gasp.
‘Take her away, Mabel!’ said Em sharply. ‘Take her back to the car.’ She turned on Drew and said: ‘Don’t talk nonsense! Of course he isn’t dead. It’s only the reaction from the serum.’
‘Yes, I should say that was probably the last straw. His heart couldn’t stand any more. He’s dead all right.’
‘No!’ said Em hoarsely. ‘No!’ She looked dazedly at the syringe that she still held, and then threw it from her in a sudden convulsion of horror, while Eden, pushing her aside, went down on his knees beside Gilly, feeling for his heart as Drew had done.
After a minute or two he lifted a drawn and ravaged face, and Lisa, seeing it, said hysterically: ‘He is dead, isn’t he? Isn’t he! Oh God, what a fool I’ve been! Gilly! – Gilly!’
Em said angrily: ‘Mabel, I asked you to take her away! Is he dead, Eden?’
‘Yes,’ said Eden briefly, and got slowly to his feet.
They stood looking down at Gilly’s thin, bony face with its clever forehead and weak chin, and it seemed to sneer up at them; the mouth half open and pulled down at one corner, and the pale eyes glinting through their lashes as maliciously as they had in life.
Lisa said in a sobbing whisper: ‘He isn’t dead. He’s laughing at us! He’s laughing——’
Mabel put an arm about Lisa’s waist. Her pleasant gentle face was grey and shrunken, and she looked as though she were going to be sick. She said in a quavering voice: ‘Come away, dear. Drew, give me that brandy.’
Drew picked up the flask and handed it over, but Lisa refused to drink from it. She wrenched herself free, gasping and panting. ‘No – no, I won’t! How do I know it isn’t poisoned? Drew gave it to him and he died! How do I know it didn’t kill him?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lisa!’ said Eden, exasperated. ‘Pull yourself together! Here, Vicky, give Mabel a hand and get her away from here.’
But Victoria was not listening to him. She was watching Drew who was looking at Gilly as he had once looked at Em on the verandah at Flamingo. As though some new and startling thought had suddenly presented itself to him. It was a look that had disturbed her then; but coming on top of the shock of Gilly Markham’s death it frightened her as Gilly’s death had not done, and she backed away from him, and groping for support, found a tree trunk behind her and leant against it, cold and shivering.
Drew turned abruptly away and stooped to search among the grasses, and when he straightened up again they saw that he was holding the syringe that Em had thrown away. The needle was broken and the glass appeared to be smashed, but he handled it with the extreme caution of a man who holds a live bomb, and wrapping it in his handkerchief, put it very carefully into his pocket and bent again to hunt very carefully in the tangled undergrowth.
Em said tersely: ‘What is it, Drew? What are you looking for?’
‘The needle,’ said Drew. ‘We may need it.’
‘What for?’ demanded Hector impatiently. ‘Can’t use that thing with a broken needle! Stands to reason. Come on, let’s get out of here. How are we going to get him up the cliff?’
Drew paid no attention and continued his search, and Em said heavily: ‘Eden and Ken should be able to manage it. The rest of us had better get back to the cars.’
She turned away, and pushing Mabel and the sobbing Lisa ahead of her, moved off through the bushes, walking very slowly and as though she were feeling for each step.
Victoria did not move. Partly because she felt incapable of movement, and partly because horrified curiosity had rooted her to the spot. Why should Drew think that it was important to find a useless thing like a broken piece of needle? And why were Hector and Eden watching him with such rigid apprehension? Why didn’t they take Gilly back quickly to the cars? Surely they should get him to hospital as soon as possible? He could not be dead! Not just like that. There must be something that a doctor could do. Why didn’t they do something – instead of watching Drew Stratton and looking so – so tense and strained and wary?
Something moved just behind her, and she whipped round, her heart in her mouth, but it was only old Zacharia calmly collecting the rugs and the ground sheets and various odds and ends that had not been taken away earlier with the picnic baskets.
Drew gave up at last, and turning to the three silent men who had watched him, he said curtly and incomprehensibly: ‘They’ll want that clasp knife, too. Where has it got to?’
The remark was meaningless to Victoria, but it was instantly obvious that it was clear to Eden, Hector and Ken. Eden’s face took on a blankly wooden look that Victoria knew, and Ken gave an audible gasp, while Hector’s bronzed features flushed darkly and he said explosively: ‘Now look here, Stratton – you keep out of this! We don’t want any more hysterical nonsense of that sort. I’ll forgive it in Lisa. She’s his wife – bound to be upset. But I’m damned if I’ll stand it from you! Now, let’s get the hell out of here.’
Drew said: ‘I’m sorry, Hector, but it isn’t as simple as that, and you know it. We must have that knife.’
But the knife was not there. They searched the grass and the bushes and shook out the rug on which Gilly had lain, but there was no sign of it.
‘We’re wasting our time,’ said Hector angrily. ‘It’s probably in Em’s pocket
. Let’s stop fooling about and get the body away. That’s the most important thing to do.’
But when they at last arrived at the cars, after a slow and difficult ascent out of the crater, neither Em, Mabel nor Lisa knew anything of the clasp knife.
‘I left it down there,’ said Em. ‘I think I dropped it on the grass. You can’t have looked properly.’
‘We looked everywhere,’ said Drew. ‘Who did it belong to? Was it yours?’
‘No. I asked for a knife and someone handed me one.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t remember. And what does it matter, anyway? Why are they putting Gilly in your car?’
Drew said: ‘We decided that Eden and I had better take him into Naivasha. You’ll have your hands full with Lisa.’
He turned to Mabel and asked if she still had Hector’s flask of brandy.
‘Yes,’ said Mabel, handing it over. ‘Though I’m afraid there isn’t much left. I think there’s a bottle of whisky somewhere if you’d rather have that.’
Drew pocketed the flask without replying, and was turning away when Em spoke softly behind him.
‘You’ve forgotten the iodine,’ she said.
13
It was close on five o’clock by the time they arrived back at Flamingo, and Em had sent for Dr North and attempted to put Lisa to bed in one of the guest rooms.
But Lisa had refused flatly and with hysteria to sleep at Flamingo. The prospect of spending a night in a house that harboured a poltergeist appeared far worse to her than that of returning alone to her own empty bungalow, and eventually it was decided that Mabel should go back with her and stay the night.
Em and Victoria had eaten supper in the candle-lit dining-room, and it was towards the end of that silent meal that Victoria had asked a question that had been troubling her for several hours:
‘Aunt Em, what did you mean when you told Drew – Mr Stratton – that he had forgotten the iodine?’
Em looked up from the food that she had barely touched, and her face in the soft light was grey and bleak. As grey and bleak as her voice:
‘Because he does not happen to be a fool.’
She pushed her plate away and stared unseeingly at the candle flame that wavered in the faint draught made by Zacharia as he passed silently around the table, and Victoria said uncomfortably: ‘I don’t understand.’
‘No,’ said Em slowly. ‘You wouldn’t, of course. There are so few poisonous snakes in England. But I expect Drew has seen someone die of snake-bite, and that is why he thinks that Gilly Markham was murdered.’
She had spoken the word quite softly and casually into the quiet room, but it seemed to Victoria as though she had shouted it, and that the whole house must echo with it. Murdered …
Em waved away the dish that Zacharia was proffering, and selecting a cigarette from a box in front of her, lit it from the nearest candle and leant back in her chair, her bulky figure slumped and shapeless.
Victoria said with a catch in her voice: ‘But why? How can he think that? It was a snake, wasn’t it? We all saw it. Does he think that someone put it there? But no one could have— He didn’t say so. He didn’t say anything! I was there the whole time, and he never said anything about it being – being——’
‘Murder,’ said Em. And once again the word was like a stone dropped into a quiet pool. ‘He may not have used that word; but all the same, that was what he meant.’
‘No!’ said Victoria breathlessly. ‘I don’t believe it. If anyone had put a snake there on purpose it might not have bitten him. Or it might have bitten them! No one would risk it.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose Drew thinks it was put there on purpose,’ said Em impatiently. ‘I imagine he thinks that someone who happened to have the means was quick enough to seize the opportunity, and make quite sure that Gilly did die. Stupid, really, because if he had been bitten the chances are that he would have died anyway. Personally, I think Drew is wrong. I think Gilly had a heart attack, and that is why he didn’t cry out. But if I’m right, then either I killed him, or Drew did. And – and that is not going to be a very pleasant thought for either of us to live with.’
‘You! You mean he thinks— You think——’ Victoria’s voice stopped on a gasp and she pushed back her chair and stood up, gripping the edge of the table. ‘Aunt Em, you can’t think he did it! You can’t!’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ said Em with a return of impatience. ‘Sit down, child. I will not have hysterics. They do not help at all, and after Lisa I have had enough of them to last me a good many years. Neither does Drew think I did it – on purpose. But only two people touched Gilly. Myself and Drew. I made two cuts in his arm and gave him a full strength dose of snake serum, and Drew gave him a great deal of brandy. You cannot do that sort of thing to a man who is having a heart attack without killing him. And then again, if someone did give him poison to ensure that he died, then it was given in one of four ways. It might have been on the blade of the knife, or in the iodine, or the syringe, or in the brandy. Though of course there is always a fifth possibility: that he was given something at luncheon. But Zacharia had washed up all the glasses in the lake. I asked.
Victoria sat down again and stared at her aunt. She said imploringly: ‘It isn’t true. They’ll find out that it was only snake-bite, won’t they? The doctors will know. It must have been snake-bite.’
Em shook her head. ‘People who have been bitten by poisonous snakes do not die like that. It’s a pity Drew was there. Probably no one else would have noticed details. Or if they had, they’d have kept their mouths shut.’
‘But if it was murder——’
‘There are some things that are worse than murder,’ said Em wearily. ‘Trials, hanging, suspicion, miscarriage of justice.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and quoted in an undertone: ‘Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. Hmm. Gilly was fond of quoting Shakespeare. That would have appealed to him I imagine. Malice domestic … I wonder——’
She relapsed into brooding silence, looking exhausted and ill, and Victoria eyed her in some disquiet and wished fervently that Eden would return. But although it was by now well past nine o’clock there was still no sign of him, and when Em had gone to bed Victoria went out into the dark verandah to listen for the car.
The moon was already high and the lawns and the trees were silver-white and patched with black shadows, and once again from somewhere down by the shamba and the papyrus swamp, birds were calling.
A bat flickered along the verandah almost brushing Victoria’s head, and something moved in the shadows and sent her heart into her mouth; but it was only Pusser, the Flamingo cat, who had evidently been asleep in one of the wicker chairs.
Victoria was annoyed to find that her heart was racing and that she was breathing as quickly as though she had been running. Why didn’t Eden come back? What were they doing – he and Drew? It was hours since they had left Crater Lake with Gilly Markham’s body.
Somewhere in the house a clock struck ten, and the light in the dining-room, where Zacharia had been putting away the silver, was turned out. Victoria heard his shuffling footsteps retreating down the hall and then the sound of a door closing. And all at once the house was deathly quiet and only the night outside was full of small sounds.
Victoria clutched at the sides of her chair and glanced quickly over her shoulder at the open doorway that led into the hall, but the silent house seemed more frightening to her than the moonlit garden, and she stayed where she was, tense and listening, until at last she heard the faint, far-away purr of a car.
The sound grew louder and nearer, and presently the yellow glare of headlights lit up the pepper trees and threw long black shadows across the sweep of the drive, and Eden walked up the verandah steps and checked at the sight of Victoria.
‘Vicky! What are you doing here! You ought to be in bed. Did
you wait up for us?’
‘Us?’ said Victoria. And saw then that Drew Stratton and young Mr Hennessy of the police were with him.
‘Drew brought me back. It was his car. And Bill has been sent along to keep an eye on us and see that none of us makes a break for the border. They’re staying the night. We thought it would be more convenient, as Greg wants to see us all in the morning. They can share the double bed in the blue room, and I hope one of them snores!’
He stopped by the hall door and said suddenly: ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Is Gran all right?’
‘No. I mean, there’s nothing wrong. Aunt Em went to bed. I stayed up because – because I didn’t feel like going to sleep.’
‘You look as though you could do with it, all the same,’ said Eden as the light from the hall fell on her face. ‘How’s Lisa?’
‘All right, I think. Aunt Em wanted her to stay here, but she wouldn’t. Mrs Brandon is spending the night with her.’
‘Good for Mabel. She won’t enjoy it!’
There was a solitary table lamp burning in a corner of the drawing-room, and Eden switched on every other light and said: ‘That’s better! Vicky, I suppose you couldn’t be a darling and rustle us up some coffee and sandwiches, could you? We’ve just driven back from Nairobi. I ought to have ’phoned, but I didn’t want Em asking all sorts of awkward questions with half the Valley listening in on the party line.’
Victoria said: ‘There’s both in the dining-room. Aunt Em said you’d probably need something when you got back. Wait, and I’ll fetch it.’
‘Bless you,’ said Eden, sinking gratefully into an arm-chair, ‘and her. God, I’m tired!’
He lay back and shut his eyes, and looking down at him Victoria felt protective and maternal and as though, in some strange way, she had suddenly grown up.
She became aware that she herself was being watched, and turning her head met Drew Stratton’s cool, level gaze. But tonight there was no hostility in his blue eyes; only interest and a faint trace of surprise. Victoria returned his look gravely, and then went away to fetch the Thermos flasks and the chicken sandwiches that Zacharia had left on the sideboard in the dining-room.
