He squared his shoulders and made an attempt at dignified speech. “As I have just tried to tell you, Mrs. Buxton, I am not at all sure that I should discuss my investigation with you. There are rules that govern my work.”
She was spooning sugar and pouring cream into the coffee the waiter had placed at her elbow. “I have information that will have a profound effect on your thinking about why Josiah Pennyman was killed and who might have done it,” she said. “I know that you have established where Kirk was at the time of Josiah’s death, that he could not have done it with his own hands. Have you considered that he may have paid someone to do the deed for him?”
She might have hit Tolliver with a thunderbolt. “Why would you imagine such a thing?” he managed to ask once he had recovered his thoughts.
She put down her cup and sighed. “I imagine, though I have never heard you say it, that you think Kirk might have killed Josiah to defend his honor against the man who seduced his wife. Believe me, Captain Tolliver, that would not be anything that would motivate old Kirk. It was Kirk’s true love, money, that was at stake.”
Tolliver saw where she was going with her line of talk and imagined that she was about to reveal what he already knew from Lord Delamere about Pennyman’s loan, but she surprised him. “If Kirk killed Josiah, it would have been to shut him up.” She studied him to see if she had engaged his interest.
She had. “Go on, please.”
She leaned forward and lowered her voice though the waiter had left and they were alone. “Kirk has been dabbling in land speculation in secret, something that is strictly against the rules, actions that could ruin his reputation as a banker. Such as it is.”
Tolliver wanted to know more about that reputation. His mother always tried to stifle his natural curiosity by warning him not to pry. Now it was his duty. “What would you say people think of Mr. Buxton?”
She looked surprised, as if he were the mere boy she sometimes assumed him to be. “He is working for the Standard Bank of India, Mr. Tolliver. It is owned by colonials in the Raj. It does have a London office, but it is not as if he is employed by a venerable old English institution. And he is the branch manager, not a managing director. Kirk Buxton has neither the bloodlines nor the brainpower to aspire to anything that one would actually call prestigious.”
Justin Tolliver’s headache was getting worse. “Just what has this got to do with the death of Josiah Pennyman?” His tone was harsher than he intended, but the words were spoken, and there was nothing he could do about them now.
She did not seem to mind. “Josiah found out about Kirk’s underhanded dealings. Given that Josiah was extremely upset when Kirk rescinded the loan for his improvements on his farm, he threatened my husband, said that if Kirk did not change his mind and give him the money, he would publicly accuse Kirk of using the bank’s deposits for his own speculative land deals. Certainly, then, Kirk would have lost his position with the bank. He might very well go to jail. You’re a policeman. You must know the law on such matters.”
“And this makes you think that Mr. Buxton paid someone to kill Dr. Pennyman?” He was incredulous, and it showed.
Lucy rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I told you that my husband does not think about anything but money. It is everything to him. It’s a short step from understanding that fact to knowing he is capable of using money as a murder weapon.” She stood.
Tolliver started to rise, but she held up her lovely hands to stop him. “Don’t bother to get up. Just think about what I have said.” She picked up her handbag from beside her chair and marched away, showing Tolliver his now favorite view of her, for more reasons than one.
He sank back in his chair. He had to report to D.C. Cranford at eleven. Lucy Buxton had just turned everything he thought he would say upside down.
He looked into his empty coffee cup and around at the deserted dining room. He reached across the table and took the half-cup Lucy had left behind and drank it. He was certain that putting on his pith helmet when he went outside would make his head explode.
* * *
Kwai Libazo was happy to take up his post at the wall behind A.D.S. Tolliver in the district commissioner’s office. Listening to these men talk had taught him more about them than any of the books by Englishmen that Libazo had read at his mission school in Kibwezi. The window beside him was open, bringing in the sounds of the crews installing the electric light poles. Electricity was a wonder, everyone said. When the whites came to the country with lanterns that could burn and give light in the night, the tribespeople had thought them a form of magic. This new thing, that required all these black wires—they said it would make the night in the town like the day. Kwai Libazo wished they would work faster because he was very keen to see them banish the darkness forever.
Unlike Tolliver’s usual posture of standing before his superior’s desk, today he had taken a chair. Libazo was happy that his ears were good because the sounds from outside would otherwise drown out Tolliver’s voice.
Cranford and Tolliver had begun, as the white men always did, by not speaking about what they had come together to say.
“Very well done, on the polo field yesterday, my boy. Very well, indeed.” The district commissioner’s voice, as usual, boomed. He always seemed to be speaking to a whole village, even when there was only one person in the room with him. Cranford, of course, would not count Kwai Libazo. British people did not care what he thought, or even if he thought. At first, Libazo had found it insulting when they paid him so little mind, though he knew he could never complain about it. But now, he found it convenient. His insignificance meant they also did not care what he heard. More than once since he joined the police force, he had overheard very helpful information. His missionary teacher had often instructed the boys in his class about the two sides of the coin. With white people there was always the coin, and it always had two sides.
“Thank you, sir,” Tolliver was saying, “Thistle is a great pony.”
“Capital. Capital. Now let us get this business of the witch doctor over and done with, shall we?”
“Well, sir, I believe you saw in my written report, about Kirk Buxton’s whereabouts, etc.”
“Damn fine job of work, too.” Cranford slammed his hand on a sheaf of papers to his right on the desk. Behind him, the punkah toto, pulling the cord for the overhead fan, gave a shudder of shock. The district commissioner went right on. “I sent a copy of it to London in the dispatch box on this morning’s train.” He fingered the pages. “This will keep those interfering homebodies in the colonial office in London out of our hair.” He ran his hand over his head and what there was left of hair on it.
Captain Tolliver leaned forward and put his forearm on the desk. He pinched the bridge of his nose, which meant that the headache he had complained of coming here was getting worse. “Just this morning, I have found there is something more to add, I am afraid, District Commissioner, sir.”
Libazo’s attention perked up. When the captain had come to get him and take him along to this meeting, he had said that he needed an extra pair of ears with him, that he had to drop a bombshell, and that he was hung over. These were the kind of terms that Libazo now understood. The captain did not mean to cause an actual explosion, but to say something that would upset his superior very much. Many times in speaking, British people said things in this descriptive way; similar to the way the Kikuyu named white people for things they wore or said. The captain was about to explode his bomb.
“Lucy Buxton suggested to me this morning, sir—”
D.C. Cranford looked very sour and waved his hands in front of him, as if he were trying to stop a wagon. “Let us not bring your pillow talk into this, Mr. Tolliver. I’ve told you—”
Tolliver leapt to his feet. Now his voice was almost as loud as Cranford’s. “If you please, District Commissioner. Your assumptions about Mrs. Buxton and me are entirely wrong. There is no pillow talk. In fact, there is no pillow anything between Mrs. Buxton and me. I
resent…” His voice trailed off. He took several breaths and sat back down. “I apologize, sir. Last week, in her grief over Pennyman’s death, and in her cups, Mrs. Buxton lost control and tried to … Whatever she thought, I was not her man. I am not her man. Please let me tell you what she suggests.”
“Very well, but I don’t see how it could possibly change my mind.”
Tolliver went on to say something that seemed not to impress Cranford at all, but impressed Libazo very much—that Mr. Buxton might have paid someone to kill the Scottish doctor. This was an idea entirely new to Kwai Libazo. Would anyone accept money to kill a person? Certainly he knew that people had killed others to rob their money. The first case he had worked on with Tolliver, six months ago, when Inspector Tolliver had been new to the force, had involved such a thing. Also, the Kikuyu and Maasai killed each other in wars to steal cattle. And tribesmen had been known to kill members of their own tribes in rages. But would someone do it to be paid?
“I’m not having any of it.” The district commissioner sounded like a roaring lion.
“But, sir—”
“No, Captain. The entire idea is preposterous. I’ve known Kirk Buxton for years. He is a banker, not a member of some secret Chinese killing society. Besides, except for a talent for bridge, the man is practically an idiot. He doesn’t have the capacity to organize such an endeavor.”
“Now, sir, really. He is the manager of one of the largest banks in Nairobi. Surely if he can run a bank—”
“No. No. First of all, he is only the branch manager. That doesn’t take the intelligence of a flea. Banking is the easiest game in the world. It’s run on the principle of if you have an orchard we will be happy to lend you an apple. They lend money only to people who don’t really need it, charge them for the privilege, and almost always get recompensed no matter what happens. You don’t need to be a strategist to be a banker.”
“So, what do you think I ought to do about Mrs. Buxton’s suggestion, then?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Waste of time. Can’t see how you could ever prove such a thing anyway. You have your man. Get him up before the magistrate immediately, give the court the facts of the case, and put Mbura before a firing squad.”
“A firing squad, sir? Not a hanging?”
Libazo had thought they were through with firing squads.
“What’s the difference? The disgusting barbarian will be dead at the end of it.”
Tolliver stood up, at attention. Libazo knew from his determined posture that he was about to say something dangerous to himself. “I must tell you, sir, that I am absolutely set upon seeing justice is served. I intend to file a report to the colonial office of Mrs. Buxton’s accusation. And for the rest of it, if you are set on a premature trial and the execution of Gichinga Mbura before we have exhausted the other possibilities of who might have killed Josiah Pennyman, you will have to find someone else to do it. I will not carry out your order until I have decent evidence that Mbura committed the crime. He may very well be the murderer, sir, but if we are here to bring to this continent all that is best of England and English law and justice, then we must do it properly.”
Only with a great effort was Kwai Libazo able to keep his statuelike posture. He had not yet told Tolliver what he had found out on Sunday at Richard Newland’s farm. He wanted to blurt it out now, to support Tolliver’s contention, but he knew he would lose his position on the police force if he said a word.
His work had become more important to him than anything else in his life. In fact, it was the first thing he had come across that drew all of him, that made him feel like a man. He had been denied warrior status in both his mother’s and his father’s tribes. He belonged nowhere in his native land. And he knew very well that he could never be seen as a true member of the white people’s tribe, though he now served them. But when Justin Tolliver spoke to him of their mission to instill the rule of law and justice, he wanted to serve that. The rule of law and justice was his tribe.
A very red D.C. Cranford was sputtering. “Stop with that immediately, Mr. Tolliver. You risk your position entirely if you continue with this nonsense. Sit back down, man. You are forgetting yourself.”
Libazo’s heart trembled when he saw Justin Tolliver retake his seat. If Tolliver gave in to Cranford’s demands, Kwai’s loyalty to Tolliver would be destroyed, and Kwai’s purpose in serving him would be lost.
“That’s better,” the district commissioner was saying. “I think you are letting your feelings for Lucy Buxton get the better of your good judgment.”
Kwai Libazo saw Tolliver’s neck and back turn to the stone he himself was trying to imitate. Tolliver gripped the sides of his chair.
“Ah, I seemed to have hit the mark. I have told you that you must not—”
“Begging your pardon, sir, I have already told you, you are mistaken. I do not have the feelings for Mrs. Buxton you imagine.”
Cranford patted the air in front of him and laughed. “Ever the gentleman,” he said. “You needn’t deny it to save the lady’s reputation, my boy. I saw it with my own eyes. And quite understandable it was, though I must say—”
Tolliver started to get up again.
“Oh, sit back down. I was a young buck once myself. I understand the temptations of virility, it’s just that—”
“Really, Mr. District Commissioner, sir, you must allow me to explain.”
The missionaries who taught Kwai Libazo to speak English had made a great point that it was forbidden to interrupt a person who was speaking. Yet, British people seemed to do it to one another all the time.
“I am all ears,” the district commissioner said, which almost made Libazo laugh out loud, since the district commissioner did have extremely large ears that stuck out from his head. That and the grayness of his habitual clothing, his hair, his eyes, and even his skin was why the Kikuyu nicknamed him Elephant-man.
“Please, let me put aside this notion of my having an … of anything serious going on between Mrs. Buxton and myself. You must believe me. What you saw that night was Mrs. Buxton, having had too much to drink, looking to me for … It was not my intention to…” The back of Tolliver’s neck had changed nearly to the color of Kwai Libazo’s uniform fez.
Tolliver’s hands gripped the edge of his chair again. “Sir, I am acting as an investigator here. That is all, and I do think we must deal with Mrs. Buxton’s accusation. We are here to serve justice, are we not?”
“Dear boy, what is to stop us imaging that Lucy Buxton is accusing her husband of doing what she herself might have done: hired someone to kill the doctor. She is far cleverer than her husband, I dare say. If we are going to let our imaginations run wild, suppose Pennyman was throwing her over and she could not stand to lose him. I would not put it past him to be two-timing the lady—given the reputation he arrived with about not being able to control his pudding.”
Again Tolliver was struck as silent as Kwai Libazo had been trained to keep himself. It took him a moment and then he said, “With great reluctance, sir, I am going to reveal that Mrs. Buxton told me that Pennyman had information about Kirk that could ruin him. Information Pennyman had threatened to reveal.”
“What information?”
“Sir, it is an act that could be a crime. I will not accuse Mr. Buxton of it until I have corroboration of his wife’s word.”
Libazo did not understand the word “corroboration,” but it seemed to quell the D.C.’s curiosity.
“Given your confounded idealism, I will not press you for it now, but whatever it is, you had better get to the bottom of it and quickly.” Now the district commissioner rose from his chair. “I am in a mood to be a bit lenient about this, my boy, but not for much longer. Let the witch doctor rot in jail a few more days. Give it one last stab to put your conscience to rest on this subject. But I will not stand for any threats of making trouble for me by writing reports to London. I will give you one more chance, but this is the last. And if I hear another word about yo
ur writing reports, I will write one that will destroy your career, about your making love to a suspect in the case.”
Tolliver opened his mouth as if to object, but Cranford signaled him to hold his words. “It may be stuff and nonsense, but I do not have to take your word on that. If you are going to go about acting like a jumped-up little shit and threatening to go over my head, I shall have to put you in your place. I give you one week to answer for all of this. If you refuse after that to follow my orders and get the witch doctor before the magistrate, I’ll have you on a boat back to Portsmouth before you can say Jack Robinson.” He then put his left hand on Tolliver’s shoulder, like a father would do giving advice to his son. “Get on with it then and give it your best if you must. Youthful idealism will have its day. Then, once you have seen the folly of trying to make a watertight case of this, take the evidence to court. You know very well that when you finally follow my orders, the mumbo-jumbo man will be found guilty and that will be an end on it, and we’ll have the barbarian’s head.” He extended his hand to the captain.
Tolliver shook the district commissioner’s hand, an Englishman’s sign of having reached an agreement, but Kwai Libazo could not tell exactly what it was they had decided to do. It seemed to have something to do with stopping before the truth was known and taking off Gichinga Mbura’s head, something Kwai knew from reading the missionary’s English books that the British actually used to do to their criminals. But Kwai Libazo believed Mbura was not the murderer. The god of justice, that he had lately learned to worship, demanded that he save the medicine man’s head, even if he despised the man himself.
Libazo marched smartly behind Captain Tolliver out to the lobby of Government House and into the street. “Where can we go from here?” Tolliver said under his breath more to himself than to his companion.
“Sir?” Kwai Libazo was not sure what Tolliver wanted him to say, but he had a very good idea about where they should go.
“Nothing. I was just thinking aloud,” Tolliver said. He looked distracted and confused.
Strange Gods Page 13
