Strange Gods

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Libazo dutifully asked the questions his captain had requested. He wanted to reveal his suspicions to Tolliver, but he was not sure that Mbura was as ignorant of the British language as he claimed to be. No matter what the English may say, he knew there was reason to fear the medicine man’s curses. And the lady who was standing by, he knew, spoke perfect Kikuyu, so she understood all that passed between him and the medicine man.

  Tolliver grunted. “This is not helpful at all.” There was an edge of frustration in his voice.

  “Perhaps,” Vera suggested, “Gichinga Mbura will look at the spear and tell us if he knows who the owner might be. Even if he does not know its owner, he may know which iron monger made it.”

  Tolliver turned his blue gaze on her. It went through her heart. “I’ll go inside, Miss McIntosh, with your permission, and get it.”

  She held his eyes with hers and nodded. While he was gone, she asked Libazo in English why Gichinga was so agitated. He told her in Kikuyu about the witch doctor’s anger at her uncle. He wanted Mbura to understand that his true feelings were being revealed.

  Tolliver returned before she could ask anything further. He stood the spear upright in front of Mbura, who looked carefully at the blade, pointed to it, and spoke animatedly to Vera.

  Tolliver interrupted. “Ask him if he knows who owned this,” he said to Libazo.

  Kwai nodded and spoke at length to the witch doctor, who answered with a torrent of words.

  “What is he saying?”

  Libazo raised a hand to quiet Mbura. “He says that this is a Maasai spear.”

  It seemed an entirely inadequate report of a conversation that had taken more than two minutes. “How does he know that?”

  Libazo pointed to the blade. “Do you see here, sir? This shape of the leaf, how it curves abruptly into the shaft? Well, that is the shape of Maasai blade. A Kikuyu blacksmith would make a blade where the bottom of the leaf slants more gradually into the shaft. Like this.” He traced a finger along the blade to demonstrate the difference between Maasai and Kikuyu spearheads.

  “But there are over a million Kikuyu in the Protectorate. There must be hundreds of blacksmiths in the tribal areas. Do you mean to tell me they all make their spearheads the same way and all the Maasai make theirs a different way?”

  Vera put a hand on his arm. “Englishmen,” she said, “often lump all the natives together as if they must all have the same attitudes and traits. They do not. One tribe is as different from another as the French are from the English or the English from the Italians. Each tribe’s artisans have their own signature way of making things like baskets or wood carvings, or songs and dances for that matter.”

  Tolliver gave her another assessing look and then addressed Libazo. “Is this a Maasai spear?”

  Libazo nodded. “Yes. And, sir, you see these lines cut into the blade.” He turned the blade over to show Tolliver both sides. “I have never seen anything like these. Both the Kikuyu and the Maasai might make a design there, but always something that resembles a snake. I have never seen a spear that looked exactly like this.”

  Tolliver examined the spearhead. Incised in it on one side was a squared-off design that resembled a Greek key. On the other side was a zigzag that looked very like something found among Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  “Also, sir,” Libazo said, “I think you ought—” he began hesitantly.

  Vera interjected, speaking to Libazo in English. “Let me explain to the captain.” She knew it would be best for Libazo if she, rather than he, revealed the witch doctor’s possible connection to the murder. She turned to Tolliver. “May I ask Mbura some questions?”

  “About?”

  She drew near and put her lips close to his ear. “I think Gichinga Mbura knows more about my uncle’s death than he is saying. Kikuyu do not easily answer direct questions from strangers, but they are usually more open with people they know. Mbura is being evasive with Libazo. It seems to me he has something to hide. He has known me from birth. Perhaps he will be more forthcoming with me. Shall I ask him?”

  Tolliver gestured with an open palm for her to proceed and waited while she spoke rapidly, but in a polite voice. The witch doctor accorded her no such civility. His tone was harsh, and he even stamped his foot at one point. At length she hushed him up with a gesture and turned back to Tolliver. “Mbura says that he has lost face with his people because they began to look to my uncle to cure their ills whereas in the past he was the one who could help them. From the way he spoke, he resented my uncle quite vehemently.”

  Tolliver looked from her to the blade of the spear to Mbura. “It is likely then that he killed your uncle.”

  Vera seemed about to object when her mother suddenly appeared in the doorway. Her father stood a few feet behind his wife in the hall. Mrs. McIntosh gave a slight bow to Tolliver in lieu of a greeting. “I think you should know that my brother was carrying on an affair with Lucy Buxton,” she said. “I do not like to reveal Josiah’s sins, but Kirk Buxton recently found out about his wife’s—” She grimaced. “Shall we say, activities?” Her lips pursed with disapproval.

  Tolliver glanced from the witch doctor to Blanche McIntosh. Kirk Buxton was the manager of the Standard Bank of India’s branch in Nairobi. Tolliver was well aware from his previous visit to the Protectorate of what went on among certain European settlers, had been part of it himself. He tightened his grip on the spear he still held. “But your brother was killed with a native weapon. And I have just this moment discovered that this Mbura had a motive to kill him.”

  Blanche McIntosh’s gray eyes widened. She looked down, and her shoulders sagged. Tolliver could not tell if she felt disappointment or just grief.

  In the dim light of the hallway, Clement McIntosh stepped forward. “Anyone could take a native spear and kill someone with it,” he said. “If a settler wanted to conceal what he had done, it would be the weapon to choose.”

  “I think, sir,” Libazo said, speaking out of turn, “that a Kikuyu medicine man would never choose a Maasai spear to reclaim his power. Mbura said this himself just now. The Kikuyu and the Maasai have been enemies since they found themselves together in this valley.”

  Tolliver let Libazo’s insolence pass. He was already struggling to keep control of his own thoughts. For a moment, it had seemed that this murder was going to be a straightforward case of resentment and a savage’s way of reasserting his power. Now he was not so sure. British interests required not only that the police force show that English law now ruled this land, but also that the British Empire stood for true justice. If they did not take the moral high ground and teach the natives the righteousness of British ways, the best of England would never prevail.

  “Ask him if he killed your uncle,” he said to Vera.

  She moved a step closer to Tolliver’s side. Her mother turned away and walked toward her bedroom with her head hanging. Her husband followed her.

  Gichinga Mbura’s answer to Vera’s question poured forth with such violent temper that Tolliver felt the need to step between her and the witch doctor.

  3.

  Back in Nairobi, Justin Tolliver’s steps slowed as he left the stable, on the back street near Government House. What he was about to tell D.C. Cranford played in his head. He had not taken Gichinga Mbura into custody. In the hour’s ride from the mission to town, he had not determined where to start in explaining why he had not arrested the witch doctor. He cursed the fact that this murder had taken place while the district superintendent of police was away.

  Cranford was a formidable man and too like Tolliver’s own father, the Earl of Bilbrough. And Tolliver was many ranks beneath Cranford in the local hierarchy. Perhaps the district commissioner resented Tolliver’s bloodlines; he lacked such distinction himself. Maybe that was why he went all toffee-nosed with Tolliver when he got the chance of it. Though jolly on the surface, the D.C. was completely certain of his own opinions and sure to be unyielding on the very point Justin wanted to make: that the
re was more to this murder than at first met the eye. Tolliver was not prepared to risk a native dying for a crime he did not commit. The Tolliver family’s antislavery position and the fervent conviction of his student days moved him more than ever. The natives must have the same consideration as an Englishman when it came to the law. He was not at all sure Cranford would see it his way.

  On a whim, he turned away from Government House, went instead toward the bustling main street, and dodging a dogcart as he crossed, made for the offices of the Standard Bank of India. There he hoped a preliminary chat with Kirk Buxton would give him some ammunition to convince Cranford that they needed to eliminate the other possibility before arresting Gichinga Mbura.

  The building that housed the third largest bank in British East Africa looked nothing like any bank Tolliver would have expected to encounter in his native York. There, banks were palacelike granite affairs meant to inspire absolute confidence in their financial solidity. This was a corrugated iron and wood building, the window frames painted a strange, muddy golden color. Only its stone stoop and heavy oak door gave any impression the bank might outlast the decade. The cramped interior smelled of pipe smoke and spicy hair tonic.

  Tolliver asked the Indian clerk on the ground floor for Buxton and found him at a desk on a loft that overlooked the complete lack of activity below. The manager had an accounting journal open before him, but he was reading the day’s copy of The Leader, the local paper. Gossip spread with the speed of sound in this town. Buxton might already know of Pennyman’s death. But at least, he could not yet have read it in the newspaper.

  “Halloo, Tolliver, my boy,” Buxton called out as Justin mounted the short wooden staircase. It was what all the sporting supporters called him. They admired his prowess at cricket and polo, and especially at tennis. And they thought their cheering for him at matches made him a chum. But calling him “my boy” also established the superiority of Buxton’s social position, at least according to local rules. The thing Tolliver most disliked about the Protectorate—the only thing he disliked really—was that the officials hereabouts had, like Buxton, served first in India. They brought with them the strict social stratification of the Raj, a detestable snobbery based only on administrative rank and salary. When Justin first arrived to stay, he came as an English nobleman, albeit a younger son. He was welcomed everywhere and included in the best gatherings. But he soon had to give up the idea of farming. At the instigation of a fellow army officer, he had volunteered for the understaffed and desperate police force, at which point the social structure pushed him down into a limbo. His invitations to dine with the tonier settler families, especially those with eligible daughters, had all but dried up. The only reason he was still welcomed at the Nairobi Club was that they wanted him for their cricket team. Without sport, Tolliver would have been tantamount to a social pariah.

  Buxton extended his hand, and Tolliver endured his crushing handshake. The banker was a broad, sturdy man, built more solidly than the office of the business he ran. Like almost every European settler, he wore a light-colored gabardine suit and a shirt of heavy cotton that was, in this climate, no more comfortable than Tolliver’s uniform khaki.

  Buxton indicated the chair beside his desk. “Can I offer you a whiskey?”

  Tolliver took the seat. “No, but I would gladly take some quinine water.” He nodded toward the bottle on the sideboard.

  Buxton poured the water into a glass and, without asking, put in a splash of gin. He grinned at Tolliver. “Only thing that makes the vile stuff tolerable,” he said and handed over the drink.

  Tolliver took a sip. “Thank you. I’ve had a hot ride just now, coming back from the Scottish Mission.” He watched Buxton’s eyes, but Buxton acted as if he didn’t know the news. Tolliver decided he would blurt it out when the moment was right and see how the man reacted when he heard.

  Buxton’s face took on an expression of apprehension. “The hospital? You aren’t ill, are you? Have you fever? Do you think it’s malaria?”

  “No, no. I am afraid I have awful news. Dr. Pennyman has been murdered.”

  Shock froze Buxton’s heavy aquiline features. “Good God, man. How could such a thing have happened?”

  If he was acting, he was doing a good job of it. Tolliver sipped his drink and waited for the banker to ask a real question. Before he did, there came the sound of a woman’s voice from below and a foot on the stair.

  Lucy Buxton’s face appeared coming up from the ground floor. Tolliver had met her before, danced with her once or twice at socials. It was evident that the news of her lover’s death had reached her. The pale, normally perfect skin of her face was blotched with red, her eyes shone with tears; her usually rosy lips were pale and drawn. She barely looked at Tolliver, who had risen from his seat as soon as he saw her on the steps. Kirk Buxton remained seated. “You’ve heard,” she said to her husband.

  He showed none of the warmth with which he had greeted Tolliver, a man he barely knew. “Just now. Evidently, you have too.”

  Mrs. Buxton went straight to the credenza, poured herself a generous whiskey from the cut crystal decanter, and drank down a large gulp. She sank into a chair in the corner and stared into her glass.

  Tolliver knew the couple would have preferred that he leave and let them get on with whatever hostilities might ensue, but in this situation he was a policeman and sometimes that took precedence over gentlemanly behavior. He had been tripped up in the past by watching his manners rather than the people he was investigating. This was a case of murder and finding the real culprit was the only way to do what he had joined the police force to do: help Britain bring peace and prosperity and civilization to this beautiful but savage land. Half-justice was no way to accomplish that.

  Now that the lady, if she qualified for that description, was seated, he sat back down, sipped his drink, and waited to see how this man and wife would behave while being observed by an officer of the law.

  He gleaned no clues, only embarrassment for his trouble. Buxton also helped himself to a very large whiskey. Lucy gave him a look she might have bestowed on a cockroach.

  “Don’t worry,” her husband said with distain. “If I know you, you won’t be in mourning for long.”

  “Quite right.” She drained her glass.

  Her husband took it, refilled it, and left it on the credenza for her to take. “Sometimes, Lucy,” he said, “I think you should have been born a man.”

  She grabbed her drink. “That’s funny. I always think that of you.”

  Her husband rounded on her and said, in too loud a voice, “Why don’t you just go back to Berkeley Cole?” At which point, Lucy launched what was left in her glass at Buxton. Much of it ended up on Tolliver’s uniform jumper.

  He stood up and mumbled apologies, all of which were drowned out by the biting, venomous words they spat at each other. There was nothing for it but to leave. He would now have to go back to his room at the officers’ barracks and change. He could not report to the D.C. smelling like a Scottish distillery. He was glad of the delay, though he was sure no amount of forethought would increase his chances of convincing Cranford of anything.

  4.

  Even in the highlands around Nairobi, far away from the torrid tropical climate of the coast, by noontime the heat became oppressive, so it was best to bury the dead quickly. The Kikuyu had no rituals connected with interment of a corpse. They ordinarily left bodies out in the bush; the hyenas cleaned up whatever remained of a tribesman after life was gone. The Christian converts at the mission, of course, learned to put their dead in the churchyard like any other believer in the one true God and in Jesus their savior, for they anticipated—one day—the resurrection of the body. The nonbelieving tribesmen thought such a hope ghoulish at best.

  Barely eight hours after the discovery of his brother-in-law’s murder, Clement McIntosh was arranging rites for the next morning. Nurse Freemantle had dressed the body in Pennyman’s best frock coat and striped trousers, not wor
n since he had left Edinburgh. The mission boys were building a coffin and digging a grave.

  Vera and her mother stayed close to one another, but mostly in silence. Her father was dismayed at the fact that his wife would not go to see her brother’s body. He worried that this decision meant she was having a great deal of trouble dealing with her grief, and that it would weigh on her for a long time. “I do not want to say good-bye to him,” was all Blanche would say in response to her husband’s pleas.

  All the many novels and stories Vera had read told her that women were the softhearted sex, that they were the ones who would express their emotions, wanted love and tenderness, were vulnerable to hurt. In her family, however, it was not that way at all. It was her father who wept when he listened to the mission children singing carols at Christmastide, who touched her hair and fondly kissed her cheek when he said goodnight, who wrote to her almost daily during that six months when she went to stay with her grandmother in Glasgow when she was ten years old. It was her mother who had insisted that she go “home,” to her home, to be brought up a lady. And it was her father who responded to her pleading letters and decided to bring her back from that luxurious and intensely cold place, where the warmest beings were the dogs and the butler.

  Vera sat on the veranda and did not grieve over her uncle. When he first arrived in the Protectorate, he had caused a stir in the country—a real Scottish doctor, someone to care for the colonists’ ills with up-to-date medicine, unlike the doctor in Nairobi who was drunk most of the time. Josiah Pennyman was handsome and exceedingly charming, tall and slender, with shining dark hair, very like Vera’s and her mother’s. Otis had taken after their father—red-haired, florid, and big-boned. Uncle Josiah had a beautiful voice, perfect teeth, and a joke and a smile for everyone—white or black, gentry or civil servant, attractive or plain. Everyone loved him. But he was not a good person, and Vera had learned that he used that magnetism of his not just to conquer the souls of the natives but also the hearts of other white men’s wives. Proper maidens were not meant to know such things, but not even Blanche McIntosh could shield Vera from knowing her uncle Josiah’s reputation. And that was not the only reason she had to think of him as other than a good man.