Strange Gods
Page 22
* * *
In the following days, in deference to her father’s grief, Vera pressed aside her desire to find out more details of her mother’s death and the murder of her uncle. “The least said is the soonest mended,” her mother had always advised. Vera doubted her heart would ever mend when it came to this subject, but she could not see how forcing her father to reveal more would stop her grieving.
She lay in bed and longed for Tolliver. The day after her mother’s funeral, she wrote to him thanking him for his condolences and complimenting him on his playing at the funeral. A note came back the very next day. “I would like to call on you and your father,” he wrote. “Please tell me when I may. I hope it will be soon. Justin Tolliver.”
She kissed his signature. Given the state of her father’s mourning, she wrote back that midafternoon on the last Sunday of the month would be a good day.
He again responded immediately. “The day cannot come fast enough for me. Please be assured of my undying esteem for you and your father.” Vera smiled at how very proper he was being.
On Sunday afternoon two weeks later, Tolliver rode Bosworth out to the Scottish Mission, and as he had hoped, he found Vera and her father on the veranda.
“Dear boy.” McIntosh rose when Justin approached. “How very nice of you to come keep us company.” He shook Tolliver’s hand; some of his usual energy had returned. “We lingered over luncheon, and we are just having a coffee. Would you like one?”
“That would be very lovely, thank you, sir.”
Justin looked down at Vera, sitting holding her cup in her lap. The wan, beat-down look that he had seen on her at the funeral had begun to lift. She rang the little silver bell on the table to her left. When Njui appeared, she asked him to bring Captain Tolliver a coffee. It was soon delivered. They sat together for a long time, chatting about the coffee bean crop coming on well and the difficulties of the coming dry season. They said nothing important, nothing disturbing. When, for a few minutes, they ran out of things to say, her father began to nod. She indicated it to Tolliver with her eyes. He signaled her to walk with him out on the lawn.
“I am left alone with my father,” she said when they were far enough away to speak without rousing Clement. She was turned away from Tolliver. The lengthening shadows thrown by the setting sun made the plain before them dramatic. Without looking at him, she put her hand on his wrist and squeezed it. “I miss my brother so.” She let go of him and bowed her head. “When we were very small children, I was just ten, Otis was just five. We were visiting our grandmother in Glasgow. Otis came to me and told me. He said Uncle Josiah asked him to touch his penis. I didn’t know what it meant. I just felt ashamed to hear it. I … I … let my brother down. I should have told someone. But I was too ashamed to speak of it. I suppose you think me dreadful for saying it now.”
“No,” he said. “I do not.” He could not explain how it made him feel important that she trusted him with her secret—shocking as it was.
“I will never forgive myself.” The words came out strangled.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “You were just a child. How could you have known what to do?”
“I should have told my grandmother, but—” She could not say how she disliked and distrusted her mother’s mother.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think the worse thing for English people is not being able to say the things we want to, that we ought to.”
“Why do you think my mother took her own life? My father agreed with me that it was because she could not live without Otis, but the more I have thought about it, the more I think that I was wrong, that that cannot be all of it.”
“Your father told me that he wanted to spare you the details.”
She turned to him and looked into his eyes. “I will not stop being troubled by it until I know the truth.”
“She felt guilty that Gichinga Mbura was executed wrongly for what she and your brother had done.”
She grabbed his forearm with both her hands. “Why did they kill Uncle Josiah?”
Tolliver took her hands in his. “They confronted him with his misdeeds, trying to put a stop to his behavior. He laughed at them. I think they did not mean to take his life, but they lost their tempers.”
She stood up tall and straightened her neck. The kind of gesture he had seen on her father. “I would have done the same thing,” she said.
He smiled at her, a sad smile but a proud one. “I do not doubt that for a minute.”
She turned and looked out over the plain and then glanced back over her shoulder, up into his eyes. Hers shone even in the dim light.
“I love you,” he said. “I want you to marry me.”
She laughed, making a bitter little sound. “Marry into this family? You would have to be mad.”
“I am not asking to marry your family. I am asking to marry you.”
She turned back to him. The sun was red over her shoulder. Her eyes were appraising his. “Is it because of what happened in the tent on safari? Because you feel guilty that you made me spoiled goods?”
“It is not about that. It is not out of guilt.”
Her heart was beating against her ribs. “That’s good, because you needn’t feel guilty. You have not spoiled my chances. My father has explained to me that I will inherit quite a lot of money from my grandmother one day. My grandfather may not have been an aristocrat, but he was a very successful man. When my granny dies, I will be quite rich. Plenty of men will want me. Sons of earls even.” She knew her tone was wrong, but she could not help it. She was so frightened at this moment—that he wanted to marry her only out of a sense of obligation. That one day he would resent her. “What will you do if Otis ever comes back?” she asked
“If he does, I hope he will be my brother by then.”
“Tell me plainly and truly why you want to marry me.”
He smiled. “You have not listened to a thing I have said since our last night on safari. I want you to marry me. And yes, it is about what happened in the tent. Not because I feel guilty about it. But because I cannot wait to do it again. I want to spend my life doing that, and every other thing that is important to me, with you.”
“I will not go and live in England. I never want to do that.” The full moon was rising behind him. It was huge and impossibly beautiful.
He moved closer. The light had turned from red behind her to silver on her cheeks. “We will visit there certainly,” he said, “but I belong here. When I went home two years ago, I thought my infatuation with Africa would fade away, that my love of England would cure it. But I could not stay away. I did not want to give in to Africa. I told myself practical reasons, about money, about adventure, that they were the real reasons I was coming back. That my time here would be only temporary. That I would return to England one day. But I know better than that now. I am here because I cannot resist it. Africa has captured my soul.”
She took his hand in hers. “Are you in love with Africa or with me?”
He took her in his arms and held her close. “Once I fell in love with you, it all became one thing. Loving you and being here are all I want now.”
She kissed him swiftly on the lips. “Let us go and wake up my father,” she said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to:
Stanley Trollip, who understands and shares my love of Africa and who inspired me in writing this story. And to Stan and his writing partner, Michael Sears—the talented authors who write as Michael Stanley—for reading my draft and helping me make sure I got the details right for life in the bush.
Adrienne Rosado, my agent, who helped me choose this subject. I am incredibly fortunate to have her belief in and support for my work to keep me going.
Toni Kirkpatrick, my editor, who has been with me from my first novel. Her delicacy of spirit, her respect and insights see me through a process that could otherwise be daunting.
And as always Jay Barksdale and the staff of the great New York Public Library
, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Without the collection of this jewel on Fifth Avenue, none of my novels would have been possible. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!
ALSO BY ANNAMARIA ALFIERI
Blood Tango
Invisible Country
City of Silver
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNAMARIA ALFIERI served as president of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America for two years. She is the author of Blood Tango, Invisible Country, and City of Silver, and is a member of the Historical Novel Society. Alfieri lives in New York City and serves as Vice President of the Board of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.
Visit her Web site at www.annamariaalfieri.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
AN IMPRINT OF ST. MARTIN’S PUBLISHING GROUP.
STRANGE GODS. Copyright © 2014 by Annamaria Alfieri. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: Africa © Andrzej Kubik / Shutterstock.com; man © Chris Gordaneer / Gallerystock
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Alfieri, Annamaria.
Strange gods: a mystery / Annamaria Alfieri.—First edition.
pages cm
“A Thomas Dunne book for Minotaur Books.”
ISBN 978-1-250-03971-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-03972-9 (e-book)
1. Women missionaries—Fiction. 2. Police—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Ethnic relations—Fiction. 5. Race relations—Fiction. 6. Africa, East—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.L3597S77 2014
813'.6—dc23
2014008321
eISBN 9781250039729
First Edition: June 2014