A Spear of Summer Grass

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  But the moment passed and he rose, putting out his hand. “Come on, Delilah. I’ll take you home.”

  As he dropped me at the gate to Fairlight, he leaned across me to open my door. “I called in to the village before I came to get you. Moses is conscious and the babu says he will be fine.”

  “It isn’t his time to go,” I said, echoing Gideon with a small smile.

  “It isn’t yours either. Think about it.”

  * * *

  The next morning Gideon came to tell me that Moses was markedly better, and I told him to make arrangements to come with me to Nairobi. He would serve as my witness for the incidents with Gates. He argued, as politely as Gideon would ever argue, but in the end I won. Omar packed us a basket of food and we set off in Ryder’s appalling old truck. I managed to navigate the treacherous road to Nairobi with a little trouble and a great deal of flair. The result was that we arrived in record time, both of us covered in red dust. I had planned to take a room at the Norfolk to freshen up, but as soon as they sniffily told “my man” to wait outside, I turned on my heel and went straight to Government House. I could have gone to the police, but I thought more might be done if I initiated an investigation from the top down. Colonial police were most likely ill-equipped and underpaid and a case that would take them out into the bush would probably get shoved aside in favour of something easier. But they couldn’t ignore a directive straight from Government House, and I wasn’t about to take a refusal from a lowly clerk. That was a lesson I learned from my grandfather—never take a no from someone who doesn’t have the authority to give you a yes.

  I tidied myself as best as I could, then presented myself and Gideon at the reception desk and asked for Mr. Fraser. His secretary, the same rabbity-looking Bates who had escorted me there on my arrival, bolted from his seat to scurry into the inner office. After an unconscionably long period of time we were invited in. Mr. Fraser extended me the barest courtesy of a handshake. His necktie was askew and his hair was wild as if he’d been pulling at it. His desk was piled high with papers and maps and telegrams, and he didn’t quite manage to repress a sigh as I sat. Gideon stood behind me.

  “Miss Drummond, as you can see, I am quite busy. Quite busy. Can we make this very quick?”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling sweetly. “I wish to report an attempted murder.”

  His eyebrows jerked up and he gave a soundless whistle. “Yours?”

  “Of course not! What makes you think someone would want to murder me?”

  “It was the obvious answer,” he muttered. He drew a notebook towards him and opened it, licking the tip of his pencil. “Very well. Who was the intended victim?”

  “Moses, the cow herder who tends my cattle at Fairlight.”

  “A cow herder?” He paused, his pencil stilled. “You mean a native?”

  “Masai,” I replied, nodding towards Gideon. “This is Moses’ brother, Gideon. He will serve as my witness to the events I will describe for you.”

  Fraser slammed the notebook shut. “No, he won’t, because I won’t be hearing them. Native disputes have nothing to do with us and should have nothing to do with you. I told you to stay out of these things.”

  I took a deep breath and tried again. “Mr. Fraser, this was not a native dispute. The guilty party is a man named Gates, a white man I dismissed from employment at Fairlight.”

  His brow furrowed and he rummaged on his desk through the papers until he found what he was looking for. “Are you aware he lodged a complaint with the police here in Nairobi against you? Said you fired a rifle at him. Twice.”

  “He was defrauding my stepfather and beating my cow herder,” I replied calmly.

  “Neither of which is sufficient justification for shooting a man with a rifle.”

  “I didn’t shoot him. I shot at him,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  He skimmed the rest of the report. “With a Rigby .416? You could have blown a hole in his chest the size of a dog if you’d missed.”

  “I didn’t.” I was indignant at the slur against my marksmanship.

  He threw the paper onto his desk. “That is of no consequence. You recklessly discharged a firearm directly at this man with the intention of intimidating him. You might have killed him. If he chooses to prefer charges, there’s little I can do.”

  “You must be joking. He trespassed onto my property, killed all of my chickens and cows, and attempted to kill my cow herder. And you intend to do nothing?”

  “If I instruct the police to start an investigation, they will turn over everything, including your firing a rifle at Gates. They will determine that you started the entire matter, and you will be made to look ridiculous.”

  I rose. “I assure you, Mr. Fraser, I am not the one who looks ridiculous here. I know what justice is, and I thank you for showing me precisely what it costs in Kenya.”

  I turned smartly on my heel and he jumped to his feet. “Miss Drummond, do not do anything reckless. Leave this alone. Post guards at Fairlight if you feel threatened, and leave Gates strictly alone. These things almost always blow over.”

  “And when they don’t?”

  He shrugged. “Someone usually dies.”

  “It isn’t going to be me,” I told him before sweeping out.

  In the truck, Gideon and I ate our sandwiches and drank cold tea. He had relaxed his rule about taking food from me, but he insisted upon sitting in the back. It felt absurd conversing with him through the small window, but he wouldn’t hear of sitting alone with me in the truck. He was very conscious of appearances, and I realised then that Gideon operated under two different sets of rules, one for the bush where he knew his way and one for the city where he was of no more importance than the occasional warthog that crossed the road.

  I fussed and fumed as we ate, dreaming up a dozen different petty vengeances for Gates, but none of them suited me. Gideon said nothing, chewing complacently at his food until I hit the window with the flat of my hand.

  “You aren’t helping, Gideon. I’ve spent the last half an hour listing the ways I could make Gates suffer and you’ve said nothing.”

  “It is not for me to speak.”

  “Why not?”

  “Such talk is poison. You must speak until you can speak no more. Then the poison is gone and you will be free of it.”

  I lapsed into silence, but he was right, of course. I knew he wanted Gates to pay for what he’d done to Moses, but his way was different. He would rely upon the lion or the cobra to act on his behalf, perhaps at the direction of the laibon. A Masai revenge would be a subtle thing.

  But something seemed different about him, a subtle shift in his mood, and I wondered if leaving the bush had overwhelmed him.

  “I’m sorry I made you come for nothing,” I told him. “I thought it would be necessary, but I think it has upset you.”

  “I am concerned, but not because of the city.”

  “What, then?”

  I turned in my seat and saw that his eyes were ringed with white. “Last night I killed the lioness who mated with the lion you killed, Delilah.”

  “But, I don’t understand. What happened?”

  “I had seen her many times since the day we hunted her mate. She always came quietly, low in the grass, but far away, and I was never near enough to throw my spear. Yesterday she came to the edge of the boma. She took one of the babu’s cows.”

  “But how do you know it was her? Surely there are thousands of lionesses in the bush,” I argued, but Gideon was shaking his head pityingly.

  “I know lions like you know dresses. You would not look at a purple dress and say it is the same as the blue one. This lioness was the mate. And I killed her.”

  “Why didn’t you wait for Ryder? Or for me?”

  “There was no time. She had already
attacked once and would not leave the boma. The children were very frightened, and it was up to the morani to do their duty. My friend Samuel was very pleased to try to kill her, and he took up his spear to do this.”

  “And he failed?”

  He nodded. “His spear only grazed her flank. She turned, very angry, and charged him. I had to throw my spear. I wanted only to stop her, so someone else’s spear would be the one that took her life, but she turned again, and my spear struck her in the heart.”

  “The tenth lion,” I said softly.

  “And this is what I think about when I am silent. This will bring bad luck, Delilah, and it will be worse than the pinching man or the rougarou.”

  I threw the greaseproof paper back into the basket and turned the engine over. I gunned the engine, leaving the dust of Nairobi behind us as we headed back into the bush.

  20

  The house was quiet that night without Dodo. We hadn’t been on good terms for a while, but I was always conscious of her, moving about, tidying and organising and patting things into place. Without her, I plumped cushions and changed the water in the flowers and dusted the picture frames myself. I even went outside and threw some toast for the tortoise, but it didn’t bother to visit me either. The chores killed a little time, but in the end I was forced to wind up the gramophone to break the silence. I put on my jazziest recordings and danced with my shadow until the machine wound down and it was time to go to bed. And before I slid under the mosquito netting, I looked at the calendar and counted down the number of days until I could reasonably return to Paris. It would be a matter of a few months and then I could leave Africa behind me. Africa with its beauty and its wildness and its two sets of laws, one for white men and one for blacks. Africa with its hot breath and its blood-warm rivers that ran like veins through its heart. Africa with its sudden sunrises and sunsets so swift that darkness fell like a mourning veil. I hated the place, I told myself sharply. I hated it as you can only hate something that is a part of yourself, long forgotten and unremembered. I hated it with the force of a child’s hate, unyielding and immovable. I hated it as I had never hated any place before.

  And I cried long into the night at the thought of leaving her.

  The next afternoon I consoled myself with a visit to Kit. His prospects were indeed improving. He’d gotten a much better gramophone, and a dozen new recordings which we spent the afternoon listening to while we sipped champagne—expensive stuff, not the swill he usually bought. He gave me caviar and toast points for lunch and when I asked if he’d sold a painting, he gave me a close-lipped smile and touched the side of his nose. I wasn’t surprised he chose to keep silent. I recognised the gramophone as Helen’s. She had apparently decided to tip the scales in her favour by giving him expensive presents, but she needn’t have bothered. Kit was a diversion for me and nothing more. I was frankly more interested in how my portrait was coming along. It was almost finished, he told me. Only the edges left to complete, but still he wouldn’t let me see it. He wanted it to be a surprise. That was Kit, I mused. Ever the child, he wanted the thrill of unveiling it at the opening. No doubt he expected gasps of admiration. But a grand gesture was a small thing to give him.

  Later I remembered that afternoon. I forced myself to relive every caress, every word, every stroke and kiss and gasp. I wrote it down and tore it up. I dreamed it. I sat for hours on the sofa with a gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other, remembering it all. Did I know when he touched me it would be the last time? Did I have a premonition when he slid into me that never again would I feel the weight of his body on mine? I don’t think so. But there was something sad about that last afternoon, a sense of something winding down, like a clock ticking past its last minutes, a phonograph offering up its last song.

  I kissed him as he slept and gathered up my clothes and walked back to Fairlight. I ate alone and it was afterwards, when I sat alone on the dark veranda nursing a gin and tonic that I saw lights approaching. The car turned sharply up the drive and I stood as the car rolled to a stop. Rex alighted and walked slowly to the house, his eyes fixed on mine. I must have looked ghostly in the darkness, my dress pale against the black shadows.

  He came near and he took my hand. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “What happened?” I asked in a voice I had not heard since I had buried Johnny.

  “He was found this afternoon. Shot in the head. I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

  “Was it an accident? On safari?”

  Rex held me by the shoulders. “Safari? What are you talking about? I’m not talking about Ryder. It’s Kit who has died, Delilah. It’s Kit. Kit is dead.”

  He tightened his grip, but no matter how hard he held on, I knew I was slipping away as I fainted straight into his arms.

  I came to on the sofa with Rex chafing my wrists. He had me propped against him, his arms holding me up. It felt blissful for a few minutes just to float there with nothing but his warmth tethering me to the earth. I knew there was something I did not want to remember, and I pushed everything aside except the feel of him. I was a shipwreck survivor, clinging to the only thing that could keep me afloat.

  “Delilah,” he said softly. And then I remembered.

  I sat up, pushing away from him. “What happened to Kit?”

  “There’s no need to go into it just—”

  “What happened?”

  “He was shot. In his house. In bed. It was murder, but no one knows by whom.”

  In the same bed where I had slept with him only that afternoon. I went to the bathroom and heaved for several minutes. I felt better then. I washed out my mouth with eau de cologne and went back to the drawing room to find Rex with his face buried in his hands. I sat next to him, shoulder touching shoulder, soldiers together.

  “Helen is grief-stricken, as you can imagine. She was very fond of Kit. We all were. I will make the necessary arrangements. I don’t suppose his family would care to.”

  “They’ll have to be told.”

  “Of course. But they wouldn’t have time to come out. We will have to stand as his family instead.”

  He rose and straightened, and I saw the force of Empire in him. “I will make sure an investigation is opened and the culprit is found. If it’s the last thing I do, I promise you. I will make certain there is justice for Kit.”

  He left me with my unanswered questions, but I did not blame him. We could have circled around them like dogs snapping at a piece of meat and it wouldn’t do any good. Not until the police had had their way, asking questions and turning over stones. I knew I didn’t have long before they came to me. I sat smoking in the dark, knowing it would be the last peaceful evening for a very long time.

  The next morning I was awake early, gritty-eyed and in a stupor. I thought Dora would have come back, but she didn’t. Only Gideon came, but he seemed preoccupied and his smile was not in evidence. I worried Moses might have taken a turn for the worse, but when I taxed him with it, he merely shook his head.

  “Moses does well, Bibi.”

  “You’re supposed to call me Delilah,” I snapped.

  “I am sorry, Delilah,” he returned, but there was no gleam of amusement, no shared jokes. I took his hand.

  “What is it, Gideon?”

  “It is Bwana Tausi. The police have questioned me.”

  “Questioned you about Kit? What on earth for?”

  His eyes slid from mine. “They think it is possible I may have done this terrible thing to Bwana Tausi.”

  His hand was like ice and I understood why. What sort of justice would a black man face in the murder of a white if there was evidence to connect him?

  “Had you been to see him?”

  “Not in many months. He painted my picture, but that was before the last rains.”

  “Don’t you worry, Gideon. You had no reason to harm
Kit. You have nothing to fear. I will take care of this.”

  He straightened to his full warrior’s height. “It is not your place to take care of me, Delilah.”

  “Gideon, in the bush, I would trust you with my life if we were faced with a lion. There is no one I would rather have protecting me.”

  A proud smile touched his lips. “Thank you.”

  “But these are my lions. And it’s my time to protect you.”

  * * *

  That afternoon the police came. I was ready for them. I left off the riding breeches and Misha’s shirts and put on a dress. It was white silk, light as a cloud, and designed to make me look fragile and vulnerable. I might have undone the effect by the red lipstick, but I had powdered well, making myself as pale as possible. I wanted them to remember I was not one of them, not a settler with skin browned and toughened to leather by seasons of equatorial sun. I came from a privileged place and privileged people who would use their influence to whatever end I wanted.

  I received them in the drawing room and told Pierre to bring in tea and cakes. The inspector was athletic with a wiry build and a thatch of ginger hair he stroked constantly. He gave me a card that said his name was Gilchrist. He didn’t bother to introduce his subordinates and instructed them to wait outside.

  “No need to overwhelm the lady,” he said with a small mournful nod in my direction. I gave him a wan smile in return and waved him to a sofa with a languid arm.

  “Miss Drummond, I am very sorry to have to put you through this,” he began.

  I opened my eyes very wide. “But of course, Inspector. I understand perfectly. You must do your job,” I finished.

  That was the end of the pleasantries. For the next hour he hammered me, going over every inch of the same ground until he beat it flat. He explained that Kit had been killed most likely between five and six in the afternoon by a large-calibre revolver that belonged to him. The angle of the wound precluded suicide, and there had been no struggle. He covered my affair with Kit and everything else he thought might be pertinent. He was particularly insistent upon the point that this seemed to be a crime passionnel. Why were sex crimes always described in French terms, I wondered? Did it make them more palatable to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities? His eyes lit when he described what he thought might have happened.