Strange Gods

by Annamaria Alfieri

  “Finish what you were saying,” Tolliver demanded under his breath.

  Miss Wilson inclined her head in the direction of the beautiful mother and child on the grass before them. “That girl in Edinburgh was Mrs. Newland’s sister,” she said, smiling despite the gravity of what she was revealing while she faced her approaching mistress. “She was barely thirteen years old.”

  Tolliver burned to ask her why she would reveal the family’s secret, but Mrs. Newland and Ella were on the porch before he had the chance of it.

  * * *

  Pretending she wanted to go shopping and spend a day visiting with friends, Vera McIntosh took the late morning train into Nairobi and hired a rickshaw to take her directly to the police station across from the Jeevanjee Gardens. She quickly learned that Captain Tolliver was out. Desperate to tell him what she had learned from the blacksmith, she immediately sought him at the Nairobi Club where she hoped he might be at lunch.

  The captain was not there, but true to form, the gossip mill of the Protectorate’s capital provided its latest information about him—that he was last seen calling on Lucy Buxton in the late morning. The dancing eyebrows on the person who told Vera this juicy tidbit froze the girl’s heart. She had heard an inkling of the Tolliver–Lucy Buxton gossip from one of her mother’s visitors but had refused to believe it. Now her feelings warred—on the one hand defending Tolliver as interested merely in solving the murder and on the other condemning his blushes and his boyish idealism as the masks of a traitor. She could not banish the thought that he was like half the other residents of the Protectorate. Going about professing all sorts of moral superiority over the natives, while they engaged only in greed and lust. Her higher self insisted that she had no right to judge Tolliver in this way, but another voice said he was breaking her heart. She could not banish her despair.

  Having given up on trying to deliver her new information to the captain and not knowing what to do next, she glanced through the Arab and Indian bazaars and then went to tea at the club. In the late afternoon, she called on her father’s dearest friend, the Reverend Bennett, rector of St. Phillip’s Church, where she was sure of an invitation to stay at the manse until the morning train could take her back home.

  13.

  In the darkest hours of the following night, from their separate points of view, a great sense of urgency descended on both Vera McIntosh and Justin Tolliver—an anxiety, a need to be swift that was out of harmony with their surroundings.

  Ordinarily, time seemed to pass more slowly in Africa than it did in London or Glasgow or even on a great estate in Yorkshire. In British East Africa, the hours and the days stretched out to match the enormous vistas, the pace was deliberate, the rhythms those of ancient tribal life. But each of the sleepless young people felt an inner storm bearing down, and they wanted to run from it, or to quell it before it overwhelmed their hopes and dreams.

  Tolliver had eaten an early supper and spent an hour at his cello. He began with the Bach Suite on his music stand, the sort of music that usually helped him organize his thinking, but soon he was playing randomly and furiously whatever came into his disturbed brain until some poor neighbor in the police barracks sent the hall boy to stop the disturbance.

  It was past midnight when he finally abandoned his worries to sleep. But he awoke again in the wee hours, on top of his bed, only half undressed, his mind still roiling with theories about the murder of Josiah Pennyman. None of the explanations he preferred to be true was as likely as the latest, detested ones: that the McIntosh family were covering up the real facts of when their son left and therefore were intentionally thwarting his investigation. Or, equally disturbing, that Richard Newland, a kind man with a beautiful family, well-liked by all, might have killed the Scots physician because Pennyman had harmed, in such a dreadful way, his wife’s little sister. And Pennyman’s only punishment had been to fork over whatever fortune he had had. He should have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Tolliver understood why he had not. Newland’s in-laws would not want the news to spread. It would only destroy the girl’s chances in society if it became known. Still, he understood Newland’s outrage. If Newland was indeed the murderer, Tolliver was not at all sure he had the stomach to arrest him.

  And where was the connection, if any, between the lies of the McIntoshes and the crime against Newland’s sister-in-law?

  Tolliver had respected his promise to Nanny Wilson and refrained from questioning Mrs. Newland about the murder. He had asked her only what day the safari party departed. To his surprise, she readily confirmed what Kwai Libazo had discovered, that her husband, her son, and Otis McIntosh, with their entourage of gun bearers and porters, had left just before dawn on the morning Pennyman’s body was discovered. Her willingness to reveal this fact puzzled Tolliver. Perhaps Mrs. Newland did not know that her husband had avenged the attack on her young sister. Surely she could have figured that out when she heard the news of the murder. If she knew, wouldn’t she have lied about his departure time to try to provide him with an alibi? Had she perhaps learned about Libazo’s Sunday visit and given up hope of any help from that fiction? Was Vera McIntosh’s family complicit in all this? Tolliver’s only way to find the truth was to follow the safari party. His impatience stemmed from that. Such excursions were usually arranged weeks, if not a month in advance. Then there was the obstacle of D.C. Cranford.

  * * *

  Across the sleeping town, in the snug guest room of the manse of St. Phillip’s, Vera McIntosh’s mind grappled with the same subject. She, too, was planning to go after the Newland safari party.

  In one way, her heart was back to where it had been two nights before her uncle’s death—filled with the excitement at the prospect of going out into the wilderness. If her five months in Glasgow with her granny had taught her anything, it was how much she loved her home in Africa. In fact, having been away from it had fed her infatuation with going into the African wilderness, of what seeing it, hearing it, breathing it did to her soul. She refused to be kept out of it, forced to stay at the mission, going to Nairobi for visits, pretending to live the life of a Scottish maiden. What was the point of pioneering in this exotic place if all one did was try to pretend that here life should be as much as possible like life in Glasgow? That would be to waste all that was glorious in this country. Her heart compelled her into the open spaces.

  But now Vera’s mind dwelt on something far more serious than a happy jaunt into a landscape where her spirit would feast. She needed to go out there, not to seek bliss, but to answer a brutal question about Richard Newland. Did the man who had just recently acquired a very distinctive Maasai spear use it to kill her uncle? And if he was willing to harm a member of her family, could her brother be safe with him? Her whole body tensed at the thought that Otis might be in danger. She could not imagine how or why Newland would do such a thing to her uncle, much less to harm her brother, Newland’s boy’s dearest friend. But every sinew in her body was telling her that her brother was in danger over this. So she had made up her mind. She would set out to follow him. She would have to do it on her own.

  She would not let herself even think of involving Justin Tolliver. If he wanted to make love to Lucy Buxton— No. She pressed her mind away from that subject. She refused to need him. She would go this alone. She was certain she could. She was born here, raised here; she knew things Tolliver did not know, that her parents did not know, about how to manage. The Newland party had planned to stop at Berkeley Cole’s farm on the Naro Moru. It was a great distance away, but not impossible to reach. She knew where to find the help she needed. She knew how to get past her parents. All she needed to do was get moving.

  She would tell her parents she had met her friend Frances Bowes in town. This was true. They had chatted briefly in the tearoom at the club yesterday. She would then lie and say Frances had invited her to visit at Fort Hall, where her father was the commandant. Vera’s mother and father would never know this was not true. In Scotl
and, they would have been able to send wires to find out things from far away. Here, blessedly, the telegraph ran only along the railroad and the rail line to Fort Hall was not complete. Vera would be long gone before they found out she was lying, if they ever did.

  Vera would ask to take Wangari’s brother with her and one or two of the boys from the farm. She would set out as if she was going by way of Chania Bridge, but then she would take the train to Naivasha. From there the journey would be quite easy. And she would show Justin Tolliver what a real girl could do. Let him have his Lucy, if that was the sort he wanted. Vera meant to be a heroine, not a hussy.

  She finally fell asleep as dawn was breaking with pictures of her plan fading into dreams.

  * * *

  The image of Vera McIntosh that Tolliver took to breakfast with him the following morning was not exactly like the real thing. But not entirely inaccurate either.

  While Tolliver grappled with the idea that his lovely Vera might actually be a deceitful vixen helping her family to cover up a crime, Vera herself was carefully planning to mislead her parents and do what they would never allow. As the day began, Tolliver and Vera were moving in opposite directions, she toward the railroad station and home to begin her deception and departure. He toward Government House and an encounter with the district commissioner. He picked up Kwai Libazo and went directly to his superior’s office. There his morning report drew exactly the response he expected.

  “Bugger all,” Cranford shouted. Tolliver worried that the district commissioner’s trumpet voice might be heard as far away as Mombasa, perhaps even in the home office in London if things got worse. And Tolliver was about to make them very much worse.

  “I understand, sir, that the delay causes you some—”

  “You do not understand at all. I am under constant pressure from the settlers about every minuscule thing that goes wrong here. Twelve days have gone by since a British doctor has been slain by a native. I can’t walk the three blocks down the bloody street from here to the club without being stopped by eight men who want to know why we didn’t shoot the savage sod on the spot.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand the difficulty that must cause you.” Tolliver knew that in this discussion he was the one who cared about the rule of law. Cranford’s cares were much more varied.

  “I sincerely doubt you understand. Now, tell me about this new information, which you call extenuating evidence. Bloody waste of time is what I call it.”

  Tolliver explained about the circumstances between Richard Newland’s family and Josiah Pennyman. Cranford’s thick gray eyebrows raised higher and higher until Kwai Libazo, in his accustomed place against the mahogany paneling, thought they would leave his head entirely and fly off like little birds.

  This was a curious turn of events for Kwai. The Christians, he guessed, were like the Somalis, very careful about their girls. Neither the Kikuyu nor the Maasai would ever imagine that one man would kill another over one’s having had sex with a girl. When the young females of the tribes were ready to, they made love with any man they wanted. They were only required to be faithful to their husbands once they were married. The foreign people were not like that. If a Somali father found that his daughter had been with a man, he would kill her. From what the captain and the district commissioner were saying to each other, among Christians, a man would kill, not the girl, but the man who had been with her. It all seemed very strange to Kwai Libazo.

  But it was extremely serious to these British. When Tolliver finished telling his tale, Cranford looked as if he had seen a ghost. “Where did you hear this about Pennyman and Mrs. Newland’s younger sister?”

  “It was told to me in confidence. I cannot tell you who it was, sir, but I have every reason to believe the story is true.”

  Cranford’s shoulders sagged as if the air had gone out of him. “That is ghastly, positively ghastly.”

  “I cannot agree more,” Tolliver said. “If it is true, and I sincerely believe it is, it could very well be the motive for Josiah Pennyman’s murder and make Richard Newland the murderer.” He steeled himself for a fresh outburst. When it did not come, he went on. “That is why I think that I must mount a party immediately to go after Newland and bring him back to be questioned.”

  Cranford did not shout. He laughed. “Have you gone mad? Many people do here, you know, from the sun. Of course we are not going to send out any such party.”

  “But, sir—”

  “My dear boy, I am sure you know full well what such an expedition would cost and how much time it would take. How can we justify the expense and delay?”

  “Richard Newland had every reason to want to kill Josiah Pennyman.”

  “That’s as may be, but come to your senses, Tolliver. What self-respecting Englishman would stab another man in the back with a spear? An act of total cowardice. And we all know precisely how cowardly the Kikuyu really are, despite all the professorial treatises about the noble savage that might be written to the contrary. No. We all know full well that this is the work of a fuzzy-wuzzy.”

  “I must—” Tolliver cut himself off. Cranford was right. A true Englishman’s code of honor would preclude such an act, and Newland was a true Englishman. But Tolliver had seen enough double-dealing and backstabbing in his short life to know that the code of honor was sometimes an ideal rather than a closely followed practice. Still, it would be a huge insult to drag Newland back to Nairobi on suspicion alone. Tolliver was too torn between his proper English upbringing and the demands of his position to think what to do.

  Cranford held up his hand. “I can see that you are having trouble relinquishing your latest theory.” He sat up straight and squared his shoulders. “Assistant District Superintendent Tolliver, I will chalk your recent flirting with insubordination up to your—ahem—illness last week. But you must prove to me that you are fit for duty or I will have to remove you from your post. You have your man. The witch doctor is the culprit. Let that be an end on it.” Tolliver heard the words “or else” even though the district commissioner did not speak them.

  Kwai Libazo saw Tolliver do what he never expected. He stood and saluted. “Very good, sir.”

  Libazo’s neck went cold. His new god of justice was slipping away from him again. He marched smartly as he followed his captain out to the room, but his heart was not in it.

  Tolliver did not speak until they were out of the building. He turned toward the police station. Libazo feared he was going to see the execution immediately. But then Tolliver said under his breath, “We are going to visit Mbura. I am going to ask you to translate for me, but no matter what I say, you must tell Mbura that his only hope is to fake an illness, to pretend he is dying from being imprisoned. Do you understand what I am trying to accomplish with this?”

  Libazo wanted to smile with relief, but he kept his face neutral. “I do.”

  “You will do it? You will explain this to him, no matter what I say?”

  “I will.”

  Tolliver was relieved. The British settlers universally believed that if the natives were put in jail they would die. Imprisonment was tantamount to execution. They said that the natives had no concept of the future, that therefore if they were jailed they would think it was permanent, equivalent to being buried alive. Imprisonment would cause them to languish and expire. Tolliver did not believe this was necessarily true. For one thing, he knew that the natives did understand the concept of time. How could they not? Their life was different from an Englishman’s, but they lived in time like all human beings. Their babies took nine months to be born. They knew that. They waited for their crops to grow and their fruit to ripen. Tolliver believed that they could therefore look forward to a day when their term of imprisonment would end. If Gichinga Mbura had any sense, however, he would begin to languish and look very sick, very soon. If Mbura would feign illness, Cranford would conclude that he was on the verge of death. That would stay his having to face the noose.

  The sergeant of the guard at the
jail was a Sikh who Tolliver knew did not speak Kikuyu. When he took him and Libazo past the other snoring prisoners to the cell where Gichinga Mbura was being kept, he asked the guard to remain with them.

  Despite Tolliver’s intense dislike of the witch doctor, he was relieved to see that he seemed to be surviving his imprisonment quite well, contrary to popular European expectations. In fact, hate gleamed in Mbura’s eyes with such intensity that he seemed more than just alive, but to draw increased power from his predicament. Justin tried to inure himself to the fact that the animosity was directed at himself. For the benefit of the Indian jailer, Tolliver asked questions about Mbura’s whereabouts at the point the crime was committed. He told Libazo to say that if it were decided that Mbura had killed Pennyman, he would be immediately tried and executed for the crime shortly thereafter. Tolliver trusted that the words Libazo was saying in Kikuyu had nothing to do with such thoughts.

  This idea of faked illness had dropped into Tolliver’s head while he was with Cranford. He knew he was grasping at straws, looking for any expedient that would delay the witch doctor’s execution until Justin could be certain of his guilt or disprove it. Cranford could be difficult but there was no way to try a man too ill to stand up, and not even Cranford would send a man who could not walk to the gallows. Tolliver was not going to see Mbura die if he was not guilty. Everything he had been brought up to believe warred against such an outcome. All his life, like all his family, Tolliver had embraced fervently the need for Britain to wipe out slavery. Right here in East Africa, many of his countrymen had come with that as a primary goal. They were, to this day, trying to stamp out its embers along the coast where, against English law, the Arabs still surreptitiously sold men and shipped them off to work in the plantations on Zanzibar. If British men stood for protecting Africans from slavery, must they not protect them from other injustices as well? Even if the native in question was as arrogant and nasty as Gichinga Mbura seemed to be at this moment, with evil dancing in his eyes.