She looked down at the floor and fingered the beads around her neck while he spoke.
He went on. “I have spent a lot of time among the English. Reading their stories, listening to their thoughts. They say bad things about women who do what you have done. But they also go to them to pay for sex. And even worse, after they marry, they still make sex with others. For me and you, we do not belong to any of these groups. But we can belong to each other. If I can belong to you and you can belong to me…”
She made a sound, a little high noise that could have been the sound of her heart breaking. But when she looked up into his eyes, he saw that she was giving herself to him. He put his arms around her and felt as if he was her man and also her shelter, where she would live and always be safe.
21
“What is this?” Tolliver looked down at the large pewter spoon that Vera had placed on the breakfast table in front of him. It lay on green tissue paper from which she had unwrapped it as gingerly as if it were a precious blossom. She stood stiffly beside the table.
“It is something I think will be very important to you.” It was almost a question. She looked as if she were teetering between triumph and defiance. “I tried my best to bring it to you yesterday. But I could never find you.”
There were times when he wondered if he knew her at all. He folded his arms across his chest. “Vera, why are you being so mysterious? What is this about?” He did not think she was giving him a household gift. Despite the warmth and satisfaction of their lovemaking the night before, she had awoken in a strange, touchy mood.
“What you see there may very well contain the murderer’s fingerprints.”
“Good heavens. What would make you think that?” He felt that his expression was far too skeptical not to be insulting. But really. Did she think the murderer was a waiter at a buffet restaurant?
“You don’t have to take my word for it. You can take it to your Inspector Patrick and find out.” Her hands were on her hips. Their words were logical and somewhat controlled but underneath, it felt as if an argument were trying to erupt.
“Yes, but where did you get it, and why do you think the murderer handled this?”
“I stole it if you must know. From the dried-fruit stall across from Majidi’s shop in the souk.”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday, but I didn’t tell you about it last night because I knew you would get angry. And tell me I was being childish.”
“Vera, really?”
“It’s what you always say when I try to act like an adult instead of some helpless little girl. This minute you are looking at me as if I put two and two together and made five. I am very good at maths, you know. While Majidi was still alive, I was buying some fruit from that vendor across from his shop.” She paused as if challenging him to guess correctly what she had in mind.
He remembered quite well how foolhardy her actions had seemed. He held his temper. “Go on,” he said quietly, though he did not approve of the risk she had taken then, nor of the one she might have taken to purloin this thing on the table.
“That boy whose picture was in the paper, who is going to Egypt with the Grand Mufti to study the Koran at Al-Azhar University. His grandfather owns that dried-fruit stall. While the boy was waiting on me, he told me, a perfect stranger, that he thought Majidi was an evil man. There was a distinct gleam of hatred in his eyes. Before I could ask him much about why he believed that, his grandfather came from behind a curtain and interrupted our conversation. I thought about that two days ago. And then I remembered what you said, that Mr. Patrick thought the fingerprints on the murder weapon were small and could be those of a woman. It occurred to me that they might be those of a boy, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, like him.” She turned her palms out to him in a gesture of innocence, but then she said, “That’s when I decided to go there again and steal this spoon.”
“You frighten me sometimes, Vera. You should have told me your suspicion and let me take what steps I thought appropriate.”
“I knew what to do,” she said. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I selected a few things and watched him spoon them up and wrap them. Then I paid him with a large bill, so that he had to go behind the curtain to get the change. There were many spoons like this one. I took the one I had seen him handle. Then I moved away so that he would have his back to the place where the spoon had been when he returned.”
Justin let out his breath with a sound very near disgust. “Suppose you had been caught?”
“I wasn’t, was I?” She was fighting back tears. She had hoped, this time, that he would admire what she had done.
“That does not make what you did right.” He was not about to give in.
“Very well,” she said, reaching out to pick up the spoon.
He caught her hand. “Don’t.”
She struggled to pull away. He held her hand as gently as he could. When she stopped struggling, he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “You make me so afraid for you sometimes.”
“Why can’t you believe that I might know something you don’t know?” Her eyes challenged him.
“You know a great many things that I don’t know, dearest.” He had added the last word to try to soften his approach, but it did not suffice.
“What are you going to do with the evidence I collected?” she demanded.
He kissed her hand again and let it go. He pulled out his pocket watch. He was wearing dress whites because of the ceremony to see off the Grand Mufti. “Why don’t you come with me to drop it off at Patrick’s laboratory? Then you may want to witness the great man’s farewell.”
“The great man? When did you become so admiring?”
“I didn’t, really. The chaps on the force started to call him the G.M. Then that evolved into ‘the great man.’ ” He picked up the pewter spoon with the green tissue paper.
She was putting on her hat inside the front door when she asked, “You do realize that the G.M. is taking the boy with him back to Egypt today?”
“Good grief,” he said. “We have only an hour before the farewell parade to the port. The ship sails at eleven.”
They caught a trolley at the end of the road. “Fast as you can,” Tolliver said to the trolley boy as they shoved off.
“No speed limit, Bwana?” the boy said with a grin.
“Don’t be cheeky,” Tolliver responded. He put his arm around Vera and held her close as they hurtled down the hill. Game girl that she was, she didn’t scream, not even when they nearly collided with a donkey cart crossing at the bottom.
Luckily, Inspector Patrick was in his room at headquarters. Tolliver watched the seconds ticking by on the round clock on the wall while Patrick donned his white cotton gloves and meticulously went about his business, carefully dusting the spoon with his powder, picking up his magnifying glass as if he had all the time in the world. He turned the spoon and dusted the other side. He took out the silver-and-marble box that had been the murder weapon and adjusted the lamp. He looked from the box to the spoon and back and forth, until Tolliver had all he could do not to tap his foot or say something.
Vera made matters worse by making bug-eyed faces and shaking her shoulders as if she were about to explode. She would start to pace if this took much longer.
Finally Patrick put down his glass, took off his spectacles, and announced, “Well, there is only one set of fingerprints on this spoon. Fortunately, the grip is broad enough that there is one very clear thumbprint, just there.” He pointed to a spot between the end of the handle and the bowl. “It is an excellent match for the thumbprint on the murder weapon. Whoever used this spoon is your culprit, Tolliver.”
Vera applauded, but Tolliver knew it was not time to celebrate. The murderer was about to leave the Protectorate, and he had no idea whether he would be able to stop that from happening. “I haven’t a moment to lose,” he said. He turned to Vera. “Dearest, I must make tracks. Can you—”
“You run ahead. I will make my own w
ay to the ceremony.”
“Are you sure you don’t—”
“Go,” she said.
He went down the stairs two at a time. He checked Egerton’s office thinking to ask if it would be possible to apprehend the boy, but the D.S. had already left to follow the parting procession to the dock. Down on the ground floor, Kwai Libazo was nowhere in evidence.
The streets were thronged with Arabs decked out in all their finery, each one wearing an ornamental sword as well as a bejeweled dagger. A picture fell into Tolliver’s mind of him with only his pistol trying to hold off an army of angry Arabs wielding sabers and cutlasses. Trying to make any headway in the crowded street was like trying to swim in a pool where the water was filled with yards of thick brocade. A hundred or so feet from the marquee at the dock, he came upon the end of the formal procession.
Egerton and the district commissioner were just ahead of him. He could have caught them up and told Egerton what he knew. That was what he should have done.
But he knew exactly what Egerton would say about leaving well enough alone and not causing a scandal at this point. Every sinew and bone in Tolliver’s body rebelled against that. He would not cause a scene, but he would at least give himself a chance at confronting the killer.
As the British contingent entered under the marquee, he squared his shoulders and, giving an imitation of a man with a special role to play in the ceremony, he followed the Arab high-muck-a-mucks up the gangplank and onto the deck of the steamer, saluting the French officer at the top.
The boy whose picture he had seen taken at the Baranza Hall looked very formal in a midnight-blue kanzu. He sported a square hat that resembled nothing so much as a candy box covered with red silk. His large, soft brown eyes were fringed with thick lashes and filled with fear at the approach of the British policeman.
The Liwali, beside him, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and then spoke to Tolliver. “Mr. Egerton told me that you might try to interfere, Mr. Tolliver,” he said quietly. He looked over his shoulder to the Grand Mufti, bidding farewell to a long line of well-wishers. The great man looked, as usual, completely at ease, as if nothing ever disturbed his equanimity. The Arabs were bowing to him and then exiting back down the gangway.
Tolliver turned again to the Liwali and spoke to him in English. “I have definitive proof that this boy killed Khalid Majidi.”
“Nevertheless, he is leaving with the Grand Mufti.”
Tolliver opened his mouth and closed it again. He had not even considered what jurisdiction he had on land in Mombasa—which actually belonged to the Sultan of Zanzibar—much less whether he had the authority to make an arrest aboard a French vessel.
“I think the boy may have been incited to do what he did by people still living here,” Tolliver said, not knowing what he could do about that either.
The boy looked up at the Liwali with a grave expression and said something in Arabic. The two exchanged a few sentences. The Liwali became more and more animated with each retort. In the end, he smoothed the fine wool of his garment with both hands and held up his head, the gesture of a man who seemed to want to make himself taller. He put a hand on the hilt of the jewel-encrusted saber at this side, but it seemed merely an assertion of authority, rather than a threat. “The boy has just told me that he acted on his own,” the Liwali said. “His grandfather had told us that he suspected the boy. We thought the child wanted to rid the sons of Islam in Mombasa of the evils that Majidi inflicted, but it is more basic than that. It is something I would not expect.” He paused and put a fatherly arm across the boy’s shoulders. “In his first sermon after arriving, the Grand Mufti described the world into which our Holy Prophet was born, and his battle against idolaters. Taimur, here, has just told me that every day, in the souk—in fact, many times each day—he gazed into Majidi’s shop and saw him, in the back room, kneeling before the safe where he kept his money, adoring his wealth as if he were kneeling on his prayer rug and praying to Allah. The boy became more and more outraged, thinking of the idolaters who had persecuted the Holy Prophet, and how Majidi called himself a follower of Islam, but did so many evil things. Until he…”
The Liwali did not finish. The line of well-wishers was petering out.
After bidding farewell to the last of them, the Grand Mufti approached. He seemed completely serene. “It is so kind of you to come aboard to see me off, Mr. Tolliver,” he said in perfect English. He nodded in the direction of the men in white uniforms and linen suits under the marquee. “Your countrymen were kind enough to bid me farewell as I came out of the mosque, and they honor me by joining in the procession to escort me here. But you have done me this special honor, and I appreciate it. I hope that we will meet again, Insha’Allah.”
Tolliver had no idea how to respond. He bowed and, having no other sane choice, left it at that.
The Grand Mufti then took the boy whom he had chosen for a great honor and moved to the railing to the cheers of the crowd.
“Good-bye for now,” the Liwali said to Tolliver. “I am sure we will see each other often.”
Tolliver bowed to him too, saluted the French officer who stood guard at the top of the gangway, and marched onto the shore to join those under the marquee. He did not know if he was frustrated or relieved. He was watching the boy who had killed Majidi go free. But Majidi had deserved to die, hadn’t he? And Justin knew that if he had been the one to prosecute the case, he would have had to explain Vera’s part in gathering the evidence.
He found her—his exasperating and beloved wife—in the crowd of onlookers and took her with him to stand beside Egerton.
Egerton introduced Tolliver to a studious-looking man about Tolliver’s age. “This is Bowes. Read Arabic at Oxford.”
Bowes shook Tolliver’s hand but turned his attention to the Grand Mufti as he began to address the crowd from up on the deck.
“He is speaking the Omani dialect,” Bowes said. And then he listened to the Grand Mufti’s speech and put it into English at the same time. Tolliver had seen Vera do this with Kikuyu and English. It always seemed like a magic trick.
“In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” came the great man’s words in Bowes’s voice. “Inspired by God himself, idolatry was first of the evils that the Holy Prophet preached and toiled against. He was born into a world of chaos and licentiousness, where men who worshipped idols behaved like animals. God spoke to him and gave him the path away from such outrages and toward a world of brotherhood and love. The oath of his very first converts began, ‘We will not associate anything with God.’ They swore this to the Holy Prophet himself. And so we must swear it again today and every day in our prayers. The just, the righteous worship only Allah.” The Grand Mufti reached out and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy beside him. “Those who worship riches are idolaters, just as if they had made a golden calf and knelt to it. Be strong in your faith, my brothers. As surely as darkness flies before the rays of the sun, falsehood will vanish before truth.” He put his hands together in front of him and bowed to the assembly.
The crowd listening on the dock raised a clamor. The Grand Mufti lifted his hands over his head and continued to wave while the gangway was raised and the French steamer weighed anchor. With billows of smoke rising from her stacks, and with the Grand Mufti still looking toward shore, the big ship slipped away and, surrounded by an escort of dhows under sail, made its stately way out onto the ocean.
***
Vera’s voice was gentle but firm. “It will be only a week. Egerton has said you must stay, so what can we do? I have to go without you.” She was packing a carpetbag with things she would need during the twenty-four-hour train journey from Mombasa to Athi River station, the rail stop closest to her father’s Mission just below Nairobi. Her small steamer trunk already contained some of her warmer clothing and many gifts for her father and Wangari, the Kikuyu woman who had been her nanny. She put her hands on Justin’s forearms. “For now, let me spirit Aurala away before he
r brothers find her. I wanted to take her sister too. Aurala at first refused to go without her. But Leylo flatly refused. She gave Aurala only two choices: Go alone or stay behind.”
“Do you think Leylo is staying behind to throw the brothers off Aurala’s trail?”
“It does not bear thinking about,” Vera said with a shudder. “It was all Kwai and I could do to convince Aurala to leave without her.”
She put her hand on Justin’s shoulder. “And I do want to see Father. It’s been ever so long since I left him alone.”
Justin’s face remained sour. “If I know you, you will be off into the wilderness hours after you arrive.” He was afraid he sounded like a petulant child.
She was holding a green shawl and looking at him with an imploring expression. “I promise I will do no more than go out into the Kikuyu reserve for a picnic with Papa. You and I will go up together to visit him at Easter.”
A vivid memory of a picnic he and Vera had taken in that reserve together filled him with envy. He wanted to continue complaining, to add that it always rained in Nairobi at Easter. He knew he was making too much of this. She was going on a very short trip for a very good reason. Libazo was going too, “to guard our ladies,” as he put it. But since their wedding day, Tolliver had not been apart from her except when he was at work. He had even brought her along on the foxhunt his brother, John, had made such a big show of staging at Tilbury Grange during their honeymoon.
Deep inside, he felt as if he would be bereft without her. What would his days be like without her conversation, without hearing her playing the piano as he entered the front walk? In the months since their wedding he had grown so used to her being always close by. Reminding himself that she sometimes outraged his sense of propriety did not help. Propriety be damned. He knew in his blood and bones that he was always meant to be joined to her. If his male acquaintances—he couldn’t call them friends—on the force could read his thoughts, they would think she had somehow unmanned him with her sex. Well, they would be wrong. He never felt stronger, more of a man, than he did with her. Together, they were complete. So what if, in day-to-day things, she did not always obey him. He was certain that she would never bore him. A wave of desire was coming over him. Something for which there was no time; her train would leave in less than an hour.
The Idol of Mombasa Page 23
