The Idol of Mombasa
Page 24
“I could stand here looking at you forever,” she said. But then she turned away and packed the shawl and did up the grip, which he took to the door.
Before they left the bungalow, he kissed her the way he would not be able to at the station.
In the buggy, she held his hand. “Kwai Libazo is meeting us there with Aurala. Wait till you see him.”
Tolliver had had to pull strings to get Libazo permission to leave, and it prickled Tolliver’s sensibilities that the argument that Egerton found most convincing was that Tolliver wanted Libazo to go as a bodyguard for Vera. Tolliver knew better than to bring up the need to protect a girl who had worked as a prostitute.
When they arrived at the station, a porter took Vera’s little trunk. The train was already in the station and beginning to build up steam. The freight wagons were at the front and the passenger carriages at the rear, farther away from the smoke and sparks of the engines.
The condition of the platform did not make it easy for them to spot Libazo and Aurala. The place resembled a disturbed anthill, with people moving in all directions—carrying things away, carting things toward the goods cars, which were being loaded with everything from automobiles to crates holding the china and crystal of newly arrived settlers.
“They are there,” Vera whispered as they pushed through the throng. “That’s Aurala in red.”
Near the end of the train they passed a tall Swahili dressed in a snowy kanzu, a dark green vest, and white turban with a length of fabric hanging down over the back of his neck. A typical jeweled dagger was stuck in the sash around his waist. Next to him was his wife, in purdah—covered completely from head to foot in a red bulbul that showed only her eyes.
“I would not have recognized Libazo if you hadn’t told me,” Tolliver whispered to her.
“That’s the idea, of course,” Vera said, her eyes scanning the crowd even though she hadn’t the vaguest capacity to recognize Aurala’s brothers or their spies.
Tolliver sidled around the couple and put on a gruff voice. “You should move aside. You are standing in the way.”
Libazo put his hands together and bowed. “Yes, your excellency,” he said in what sounded something like a French accent.
Tolliver and Vera did their best not to burst out laughing. They stopped a little farther on, near the first-class carriage where Vera would ride.
At that moment, Haki ran up to Kwai and Aurala. He was dressed as a little Arab boy, in a white kanzu, a tiny brocade vest, and an embroidered skullcap.
“Here I am, Father, Mother,” he said in a loud voice. “The ticket clerk told me that there is no charge for a child traveling with his parents.”
“What a clever lad,” Tolliver whispered to Vera.
True to his disguise, Libazo took the boy up the iron steps into the second-class carriage designated for the darker races.
Tolliver escorted Vera forward and lifted her into a compartment. He was delighted to find that a man he knew from Nairobi, Baron Von Blixen-Finecke, would be traveling with her. They exchanged pleasantries through the open window while they waited for the train to leave.
Tolliver remained on the platform, watchful for any sign that Aurala’s brothers might be in pursuit.
It wasn’t until the train was well out of the station that he turned and left, still on the lookout for he knew not whom.
His heart found again that sinking, lonely place it had occupied while Vera was packing.
***
As it turned out, except for the Sunday of her absence, Tolliver had no time to pine for Vera as much as he had imagined he would.
Within hours of the train’s departure, Singh came and told him that Leylo’s brothers had taken her. “Word in the souk is that they have carried her to a lonely spot on the mainland and beheaded her,” he said with a shudder.
“Do we have the body?” Tolliver asked.
“No, sir. The report said it was done north of the town, up nearer Malindi. At least that is what the traders in the souk are saying. Evidently, the brothers, knowing that Aurala had escaped, continued north, back to Somalia.”
Tolliver shook his head at the thought of such a gruesome end for the woman who could not have been much older than twenty, Vera’s age.
For the rest of the week, he was occupied day and night. The minor felons and petty thieves of Mombasa had evidently suppressed their temptation to do wrong while the Grand Mufti was in the town. They had now let loose their pent-up urges to garner ill-gotten gains. One of them had had the gall to steal the altar cloth from the cathedral.
On top of all this, every ship from Europe, India, or South Africa brought in new settlers, and it was up to the police to perform health inspections and make sure that anyone arriving who showed a sign of disease went into quarantine.
Without Libazo, Tolliver had to make do with various constables to work on the cases. None of them was at all as helpful as Kwai. Consequently, Tolliver went home exhausted each night, if he went home at all. He was busy, but bored.
Vera cabled him just before she boarded her return train, confirming that she would be arriving on schedule.
He did his best to get a decent amount of sleep the night before her arrival and met her at the train with a lovely bouquet put together by Frederick Dingle, and which Tolliver strongly suspected had been harvested from the Public Gardens.
Justin brought Vera home to bathe and change and then took her to the Grand for a dinner of roast beef and, all things considered, a quite passable Yorkshire pudding, even for a son of York.
He could not bring himself to tell her of the fate of Leylo Sagal. Not just yet.
At the table she was full of conversation and gossip about all that was going on in Nairobi. He sipped a lovely claret while she regaled him.
“Baron Von Blixen is going to try to grow coffee higher than anyone has before. He expects the future baroness to arrive next year when all is ready.”
Tolliver cared not for the news, wanted only to listen to her voice and hear her forthright, decidedly un-British opinions, and to smile inwardly at how many people she must have shocked at the dinner dance she had attended at the Nairobi Club.
“I did my best to be polite to District Commissioner Cranford,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose. “He made a great show of inviting me to dine at his table. Then he spent the whole evening complaining that the natives are lazy and prone to drunkenness. You will be very proud of me, Justin, that I never pointed out that Cranford calls the natives lazy while he doesn’t shave himself or tie his own tie or put on his own jacket, for that matter. He does not clean his own guns or prepare his own food. Those lazy natives do all that work for him.”
“You are right of course, my darling, but I am mightily glad you did not insult the district commissioner by telling him so to his face.”
“And have you ever seen a native drink as much as an Englishman?”
“Or a Scot, for that matter,” he said. His eyes were teasing her.
“Or a Scot.” She laughed and raised her wineglass and took a sip. She leaned across the table and whispered, “Let’s go home, darling.”
He folded his napkin and stood up immediately.
They walked toward the bungalow hand in hand.
“I have another bit of news,” she said. “Have you heard anything from Robert Morley?”
“Not a peep.”
“Papa received a letter from him. He and Katharine are moving away. He has agreed to take over a mission down in German East Africa, along the Ulanga River.”
“Why ever would he?” Justin’s mind was on getting home.
“His letter said he had been tempted to sin here in Mombasa and that he must go away. Papa thinks he is punishing himself for something.”
“Did you tell—” He caught himself. “Of course you did not.”
“No.”
“It seems a bad idea to go down there with things being so tenuous with the Germans. I suppose his poor sister is going to let
him drag her there.”
She drew his arm over her shoulder and twined her fingers into his. “It is so very upsetting. He does not seem to give a single thought to what she might want or not want. He just assumes that she will go along with whatever decision he makes. I have a good mind to tell her to abandon him to his own resources.”
“She probably would not take your advice.”
“That is exactly what Papa said. And I think you are both right. She seems to resent him some of the time, but I doubt she will ever stop thinking she must care for him, no matter what he does. Sisters are like that.”
They walked along, both thinking of Vera’s missing brother and the pain of not knowing where he was or how he was.
As soon as they were through the front door, she threw her arms around him. She kissed his ear and touched it lightly with her tongue—the way he sometimes did to hers. “I am about to act like the hussy you have often known me to be.”
“Oh, do, please do.”
Hours later, she snuggled against him, kissed his shoulder, and lifted her head. In the patch of sky visible from their window, out over the ocean, in the predawn, a few of the brightest stars were still visible.
“Dearest?”
“Mmm?”
“I waited till now to tell you.” Her voice was more energetic than he would have imagined.
“What? Not another piece of settler gossip? Go ahead, shock me.”
“I’m—I—I hope it will not shock you.”
Her tone told him to be on the alert. “Tell me.”
“We are going to have a baby.” In the candlelight, she searched his eyes for a sign of how he felt.
For a moment he could not react. He had of course imagined that this would one day be the case. He had not expected to be surprised. He had thought, until this moment, that he loved her an impossible, an indescribable amount. That his capacity to love was completely filled with her.
And then, suddenly, a door opened in his heart on a space the size of the Royal Albert Hall.
All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
THE IDOL OF MOMBASA
A Felony & Mayhem mystery
Copyright © 2016 by Annamaria Alfieri
All rights reserved
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63194-101-6
First edition, October 2016