The Leopard's Prey

by Suzanne Arruda

  “Sounds like neither of the Berryhills liked Stokes. Could they have killed him?”

  “Maybe,” said Sam. “Although they’re hardly going to admit it. I’m not much of a detective, but I thought Berryhill looked awfully agitated. He kept his hands in his pocket, jiggling keys. And,” Sam added, “he has a motive.”

  Jade stopped and turned to Sam. “A motive? What are you keeping from me?”

  They’d paused by the Theatre Royale, its billings announcing the Leonard Rayne players in Naughty Wives, and a movie called A Daughter of the Gods, the story of a white woman sold at auction that had caused a sensation in the States. Jade frowned, recalling her own experience in Morocco’s slave market.

  “That scene look familiar?” asked Sam as he took her arm and escorted her across the split street. They wended their way among the parked cars in the median and across toward the New Stanley Hotel. “Recently, Berryhill discovered a discrepancy in the invoices,” he said, continuing his news. “It looks like Stokes may have been embezzling from the store.”

  Jade whistled. “That’s an interesting tidbit, but it could have been just as much a reason for Stokes to kill himself, knowing he’d be caught.” She felt a desperate need to ask Sam why Finch would suspect him, or herself, for that matter.

  It would have to wait. Too many people bustled around the New Stanley with its tearoom. They found the Thompsons seated in the entry lounge, oblivious to everything around them. Maddy gripped a white cotton handkerchief, which she used to dab her eyes, while Neville held her other hand firmly between both of his own, his gaze never leaving her face.

  “Maddy, Neville,” said Jade, “what happened? They didn’t turn you down, did they?”

  “Oh, Jade,” said Madeline with a choked sob, “we were too late. The baby’s been taken.”

  “What?” exclaimed Sam, loudly enough that several hotel guests turned and stared. He lowered his voice. “The notice just came out in the paper. How can the child be spoken for so quickly?”

  “How indeed,” echoed Neville. “The girl at the desk could only say that the ad had been closed early this morning.”

  “Did she say who took the baby? Or who bought the ad to begin with?” asked Jade.

  Neville shook his head. “It’s the second day for the notice. We don’t take a daily, so we hadn’t seen it. I’d assumed the baby was left at a mission, but perhaps a neighbor took in the child and decided to keep him.” Madeline sobbed again, and Neville turned his attention back to his distraught wife. “There, there, Maddy. Don’t cry. At least the little tyke has a home.”

  “But not with us,” said Madeline. “Oh, Neville, please take me home.”

  “That’s right,” said Sam. “You two go on and think about the fair tomorrow.”

  “The fair?” exclaimed Madeline. “Oh, how can anyone think about the fair?”

  “Sam is quite right, Maddy,” said Neville. “You mustn’t dwell on this disappointment. There will be another chance for us someday. Perhaps we might compose our own notice for the paper and advertise that we wish to adopt.”

  Madeline sat up straighter and clasped her husband’s hand. “Oh, Neville, do you mean it?”

  He smiled, his own eyes glistening with barely restrained tears. “Yes, my love. I wasn’t sure of the idea when you first mentioned it—adopting, I mean. Always hoped for our own. But as we went to the newspaper office, I found that I was actually looking forward to bringing this baby home. And now I feel as if I just lost someone, too.”

  Madeline kissed Neville’s rough hands. “Thank you, darling.” She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief and made an effort to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said to Jade and Sam. “I’m being selfish. We’ve all had a very trying morning.”

  “Oh, Maddy, stop with the stiff-upper-lip nonsense,” said Jade. “You have every right to be disappointed, and I don’t feel the least bit slighted because you aren’t fussing over me. But I agree with Sam. You need to focus on something else.”

  “Right! Think about the fair tomorrow,” said Neville.

  “Not just the fair,” said Jade. “You should go home and write this entire morning’s scene at the police station for your next book.”

  “But I didn’t think you liked when I wrote about your adventures, Jade.”

  “Besides,” said Neville, “aren’t you writing about Jade’s Morocco adventure right now, Maddy?” He winced as his wife poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

  Jade laughed. “It’s all right. I figured as much already, and who am I to stifle your creativity? But I have an ulterior motive in mind.” She explained her plan to circumvent Finch’s restrictions.

  “Oh, hang that,” said Neville. “Everyone else is talking about Stokes. Why can’t we?”

  “I know I’m splitting hairs,” said Jade, “but if we are called onto a witness stand later, we need to be able to look anyone in the face and say truthfully that we did not discuss our interrogations with one another, as Finch ordered.” She looked to each one in turn. “So if everyone goes home and writes their experiences down, and we all just happen to read one another’s notes tonight or tomorrow . . .” She made an open-arm gesture expressing her attitude that it was all accidental and innocent.

  “I shall do just that,” said Madeline. “After Neville and I write our adoption notice.”

  To Jade’s eye, Madeline seemed more relaxed, more cheerful now that she and Neville had made plans and were taking steps. The relatively quick alteration in Maddy’s mood didn’t surprise Jade. After all, Madeline had not actually met this child or held it. Her attachment, and consequently much of her disappointment, had come from a quickly formed, romantic vision of a cooing baby. Not that Jade dismissed Madeline’s longing for a child. She knew it to be genuine. But with Neville’s support and a working plan, Jade felt sure their dreams of parenthood would be fulfilled soon enough. Orphans, while not as common as during the war, were not rare. Many of the settlers in the protectorate’s outer fringes often fell to accident or disease in their hard lives.

  “Of course, write your advertisement first. Do it here while you’re in town,” said Jade. “I can take it to both the Standard and the Leader if you like. It will give me an excuse to ask at the first about who placed the notice concerning Mrs. Stokes.”

  “You don’t think it was placed by her husband?” asked Sam.

  “I have no idea,” replied Jade. “That’s what I want to find out.” She repeated the information she’d picked up from Mrs. Berryhill. “Wait till you hear what Sam learned.”

  Sam held up his hand, signaling for a pause. “Can we eat first? I’m starved.” He looked at Madeline. “That is, if you think you can. If you . . .”

  “Yes,” she said. “By all means. I’m all right now.”

  The four went to the dining room and ordered a lunch of barley soup and roasted chicken served with an assortment of fruits, sliced and drizzled with honeyed oil and vinegar. Sam attacked the bread basket while they waited and buttered a sesame seed roll. Jade settled for a cup of black coffee. The soup came quickly, and once Sam had staved his hunger, he explained Mr. Berryhill’s discovery of embezzlement.

  “That’s all very interesting,” said Neville, “but I’m not sure why it concerns us. It’s not as if we are suspects.” As soon as he said the words, both Sam’s and Jade’s mouths tightened. “Oh!” Neville said.

  “I think we’ll understand one another better once we’ve . . . er . . . accidentally read one another’s journals,” said Jade. “Besides, the sooner Inspector Finch solves this murder, the sooner you’ll get your coffee dryer door back, Neville.”

  “Constable Miller returned very early this morning with an Indian constable,” Neville said. “They . . .” He stopped as the gloved African waiter removed the soup bowls and served the main course, then resumed as soon as the young man left. “They collected samples of dried blood from inside the drum.”

  “I wonder what that will tell them,” said Madeline. She dug
into her chicken, spearing a succulent piece of white meat.

  “Dr. Montgomery thought there was too little blood in the drum, as I recall,” said Neville. “Perhaps they plan to estimate the amount lost?”

  “They can do wonders with bloodstains,” said Sam. “One of my friends from Purdue is a chemist. They can tell not only if blood is human or not, but also what animal it came from, by using some serum produced from caged rabbits. More than that, human blood falls into four categories and they can use that information to identify where the blood came from.”

  “They can match it to a particular person?” asked Madeline.

  “No,” said Sam. “But let’s say that Mr. Stokes had type I blood. If the blood in the dryer is a different type, then the police know it isn’t his.”

  “But what if it is type I?” asked Neville. “What do they know then?”

  “Only that it could be his, or it could belong to someone else with type I blood.” Sam stabbed a chunk of meat and an orange with his fork. “As I understand it, the idea in modern police work is to not assume anything until the facts are in.”

  “But they did make an assumption,” said Jade. “Finch and Miller assumed that Stokes committed suicide. Between the time we discovered the body and they discovered their mistake, a lot of those facts could have been lost.”

  “Which is probably what the killer intended,” said Madeline.

  “Well, it’s all speculation until we are up-to-date with one another,” said Neville. “So I declare an end to this morbid conversation until tomorrow. We need to get home and prepare our entries. We can all meet at the fair and discuss it then, along with all our blue ribbons.”

  They finished their lunch talking about Madeline’s produce and Neville’s coffee bean entries and agreed to gather at the roses tomorrow at noon. Before they parted, Maddy and Neville wrote out their advertisement twice, on two pages ripped from Sam’s new ledger.

  “One for the Leader and one for the Standard. We’ll have the replies sent care of our post office box rather than to the newspapers,” said Madeline.

  Jade read over the notice. “ ‘Farming couple wishes to adopt and provide a loving home. Respond to Nairobi post 54.’ ” She looked up at Madeline. “I see you did not stipulate an infant.”

  Maddy shook her head. “Neville and I decided we would be happy with any child.”

  “That’s very good of you,” said Jade, touched by her friends’ generous hearts. “I’ll pay for the ads. Consider it a present.”

  The Thompsons drove home, leaving Sam standing outside the hotel with Jade. She held up the Thompsons’ ads. “Shall we investigate alone or together?”

  “Together,” said Sam. “I want to hear what you find out.”

  They went to the Leader office first, ignoring the book and stationery store to one side and heading directly for the newspaper’s business counter, where a freckled young girl in her late teens stood. Jade saw how the girl’s eyes brightened as Sam approached, so she slipped one of the notices into his hands and stepped aside but not out of earshot.

  Sam put on his most engaging grin and leaned his left elbow on the counter. “Good afternoon, miss,” he said. “I’d like to run this notice for a week in the daily and once in the next weekly.” He handed it across with a hundred-rupee note.

  The girl took one look at the request for a child and her face became crestfallen. “You and your wife want a child?”

  “Oh, it’s not my ad,” he said. “It’s my employer’s ad. I’m not married,” he added.

  The girl brightened again, her smile renewed. She batted her eyelashes. “That is very sweet of them.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” said Sam. “They saw that someone had a Dutch baby boy for adoption, but it seems someone snatched the little tyke up right away. I just can’t see how anyone else could have gotten here so fast, though.” He let the statement dangle.

  “I don’t know much about that,” the girl said as she handed change for him.

  Sam put the money in his pocket and straightened. “Too bad. Well, nice talking to you.”

  He turned to leave and the girl made a grab for his shirt-sleeve. “I could look something up for you,” she suggested. “See what’s on the sales receipt at least.”

  Sam smiled, his teeth flashing under the brown mustache. “That’s very nice of you. I must own to being curious.”

  The girl sashayed off to the vertical filing cabinet, adding a few extra wiggles on the way. Jade caught Sam’s eye and rolled her own.

  The young lady returned. “I found the bill of sale for the ad,” she said. “It was sent through the mail with the money, but there was no name on it.”

  “But the ad said to reply to voucher nine-seven-five. Someone must have come in to pick up replies.”

  The girl shrugged. “Now that you mention it, that is rather odd. I’ve been here most of the day except to go to lunch and this is the first I pulled the file. Wait a minute and I’ll ask Viola.”

  Jade watched as the girl went to the desk of an older lady, presumably Viola, and wondered if this new search for more information was merely another pretense to walk for Sam. Strap a pint of cream on that backside and you’ll have butter by the time she returns. A tiny voice in her head asked her if she wasn’t thinking like a jealous woman.

  This time, Viola returned with the girl, handed her the file, and sent her back to the cabinets to put it away.

  “I understand you’re interested in that adoption. You’re the second person to ask today. There was a nice couple in earlier.”

  “Yes,” said Sam, “that would be my current employer. I just placed an adoption ad for them.” He pointed to the paper still on the counter.

  Jade joined him. “They were so disappointed,” she said. “We thought if we could assure them that the child had been well placed, it would ease their sorrow.”

  Viola nodded. “That’s very kind of you, I’m sure, but even if I knew, I’m not certain that I could relinquish that information. However, I can tell you this. I did a bit of looking myself after that nice couple left because I didn’t recall anyone else coming in about the notice. It seemed odd in a way.”

  “And did you discover anything?” asked Sam.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. The notice saying that the child was already taken was mailed here just as the original ad was. So whoever adopted the child must have learned about it from another source because they didn’t apply through us.” She picked up the Thompsons’ notice. “I certainly hope that this brings them the child they want.”

  Jade and Sam said goodbye, and Sam waved to the girl who’d first helped him. She didn’t return the gesture or the smile.

  “You broke that poor child’s heart, flirting and leaving,” said Jade as they left.

  “You handed me the notice,” said Sam. “I was just being friendly.”

  Jade elbowed him. “See if I fall for that devilish grin of yours next time you try it on me.”

  “Oh, that was just my being friendly grin. I’ve got a completely different smile for you.”

  He flashed one at her, and she threw her hands in front of her eyes, pretending to be blinded by the dazzle. “Come on, Sam,” she said. “We’ve got another stop to make.”

  They hurried to the office of Nairobi’s other newspaper, the East African Standard, and this time, Jade decided to try her luck, leaving Sam to wait for her in the foyer. The middle-aged woman behind the counter looked tired. Jade hoped she might be happy for some friendly conversation, especially if it involved missing people, murder, and other tantalizingly grisly topics. She placed and paid for the Thompsons’ ad, then said, “So much has happened recently. First Mrs. Stokes disappears and then Mr. Stokes commits suicide.” She gave the other woman a chance to speak.

  “I have a friend who works at Dr. Montgomery’s office,” the woman said. “He took over for Dr. Abercrombe, you know. My friend keeps me very informed. She telephoned me at lunch to say that Mr. Stokes couldn’t
have killed himself. There wasn’t enough of his blood to have died by bleeding out.”

  “But I heard he was practically drowning in blood in that dryer where they found him,” Jade said, embellishing her information so the woman would contradict it to set her straight.

  “It wasn’t all that much,” she said and leaned closer. “And it wasn’t his blood!”

  “No?”

  The woman shook her head solemnly. “No. It was from some kind of bird. They have ways of telling what type of animal it came from. But you are nearer the truth with the drowning part. He had some kind of liquid in his lungs.”

  Jade put her hand to her mouth to express her pretended shock. “So did he fall into a well or a pond?”

  “Likely he fell into something else. The doctor is still doing chemical tests on it.”

  Jade shook her head and made tsk sounds. “I hope nothing horrid happened to Mrs. Stokes. I saw the notice in the wanted section looking for information regarding her whereabouts.”

  “I’m afraid for her,” said the woman. “I knew her from church when she was a girl, though I can’t say I’ve seen her more than once since she married.” The woman dropped her voice. “She should have married that Alwyn Chalmers instead of Martin Stokes. A man’s looks aren’t everything. I’m sure she wasn’t the happiest lady and I can imagine her running off to England maybe, but I can’t see her abandoning her baby.”

  “She had a baby?” asked Jade. This time she didn’t have to pretend to be shocked.

  “I don’t suppose many people knew about him, her always being at home and the Stokeses living out of town. Dr. Abercrombe delivered a sweet little boy about, hmm, four months ago, just before he left for England. My friend told me.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Maasai lump all other peoples together as ilmeek, or “aliens.”

  Europeans are sometimes called iloridaa enjekat, which means

  “people who enclose their flatulence” due to our custom of wearing trousers.

  —The Traveler

  “MRS. STOKES HAD a baby boy?” asked Sam.