The low sunlight painted the acacia trees a warm orange and the shadows began to stretch out long and blue across the rough Kikuyu grass of the lawns. Now was the time to telephone Drew, while the house was empty and there was no one to hear.
But Victoria had underestimated the difficulties of getting a number on a party line, and when at last she got the Stratton number Drew was out and the servant who answered the telephone spoke the minimum of English, so that after a brief but tangled conversation she was forced to abandon the attempt to make herself understood.
Returning to the verandah she was startled to find Zacharia there, patting the cushions into place, straightening chairs and emptying ash-trays. He must have been in the dining-room, and he gave Victoria the blank, disinterested glance of an elderly tortoise, and went away down the front steps and round the corner of the house.
Em returned just over half an hour later, but it was obvious that the exercise and exertion had not on this occasion produced a particularly mellowing effect upon her. She looked grim and exhausted and her clothes were stained and dirty and clotted with the dust of the ranges. She slapped it off in clouds, and having wiped her face with a handkerchief on which she had obviously cleaned her hands after assisting to degut the gazelle that was being removed from the back of the Land-Rover, said shortly:
‘Eden won’t be back tonight. He’s ridden over to Hector’s and he’ll put up there.’
She made no further mention of their previous conversation, but talked instead of the progress of the new bore hole and the unusual dryness of the season. It seemed that she had met Mabel and Lisa out on the ranges. They had driven out more for something to do than for any specific purpose, and Em reported that Lisa looked more her old self.
‘She says that she has got some of the account books that Gilly had brought up to date, and she asked if I’d send you over for them, as she can show you which sections will have to be completed, and which ones only need to be checked. I’d appreciate your help with them, if you feel up to it; I’m afraid I don’t.’
Victoria said gratefully: ‘Of course I will. I’ll go now. It will be nice to have something to do.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Em. ‘Work is a very useful thing in bad times: it has to go on, and so one goes on too. Don’t stay too long. It gets dark very quickly once the sun is down. You might pick me some of those delphiniums if you’re not too late. I’ve done nothing about the flowers for days. I haven’t had the heart to. But I suppose one has got to start again sometime. You’ll find a pair of secateurs somewhere on the bottom shelf of the book-case in the office.’
Em’s office was not noted for its tidiness, for she was in the habit of using it as a junk room, and Victoria discovered the secateurs among the welter of raffia and old seed catalogues; dislodging in the process a pyramid of dusty cardboard boxes that cascaded to the floor.
She was stacking these back again when one of them fell open, spilling out several dozen wooden slips of the type used for marking seed beds, and, from beneath them, a heavier object that slid out with a dull thud.
It was a very ordinary object to find in such a place: a well-worn and somewhat old-fashioned clasp knife faced with horn. But Victoria, touching it with shrinking fingers, saw that the small blade had been broken off short, and that there were initials cut deep into the horn. K. D. B.
So Em knew! Or if she did not know, she had suspected. She had palmed the knife that Eden had given her – his father’s knife – because she had realized that Gilly Markham had not died from snake-bite, and she had been afraid. And later, when she had realized her mistake, she could not explain why she should have hidden it, so had blandly insisted that she herself had taken that knife to Crater Lake. She would not have done that for anyone but Eden.
Victoria lifted it with an unsteady hand and put it back quickly into the box, covering it again with the wooden slips and thrusting the box at the back of the shelf and at the bottom of the pile.
She stood up, breathing quickly as though she had been running, and taking up the secateurs, left the office; closing the door very carefully behind her as though it were vital that she should make no noise that might remind Em of where she had been.
But Em would not have heard anything, for she was sitting at the piano and drowning her troubled thoughts in a flood of melody. The music filled the room and flowed out through the open windows into the quiet garden, and Victoria paused on the verandah to listen to it, and being no more than an average performer herself was not critical of her aunt’s execution, as Gilly would have been. Em was playing a Bach fugue, and playing it, in her niece’s opinion, remarkably well. Victoria listened, soothed and enchanted.
She did not know at what point she began to be aware that there was something missing from the verandah, or why she should have noticed it at all – or been worried by it. But some elusive fragment of memory nagged at her brain; a sixth sense that whispered words she could not quite hear and drew her attention to something that she could not see.
She looked about her uneasily, but nothing had changed. The shabby wicker chairs and table stood where they had always stood, and Pusser’s food and milk were still untouched. Why should she think there was something different about it? Something missing?
She gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders and turned away, and it was not until she had reached the gate in the plumbago hedge that the answer dropped into her mind as though it had been a dry leaf falling from the acacia trees above her – and with so little impact that she could smile at it, thinking only that it was a trivial thing after all …
One of the three remaining verandah cushions had been missing. There had been only two brightly patterned squares on the long wicker divan against the wall, though there had been three earlier in the day.
18
The Markhams’ bungalow appeared to be empty, and Victoria could hear no voices, though from somewhere in the silent house there came a faint, intermittent sound that resolved itself into the plaintive whining of a dog.
There was no bell, and as no one answered her tentative calls Victoria went through an open doorway and found herself in Lisa’s drawing-room.
It was an essentially feminine room. Pink and white and be-ruffled, with the accent on ribbons and roses. But at the present moment it bore a forlorn aspect, for the flowers in the white vases were fading or dead, there was a film of dust on the piano and the occasional tables, and the ash-trays did not look as though they had been emptied for days.
A familiar object lay upon the sofa and provided an incongruous note of colour against the chintzy prettiness: a large cretonne knitting bag in excruciating shades of blue and orange – the property of Mabel Brandon. But there was no sign of its owner, or of Lisa, and after a hesitant interval Victoria opened one of the doors leading out of the drawing-room and found herself on the threshold of an untidy office. If the account books were anywhere they should be here, and she was looking doubtfully about her when she became conscious of being under surveillance, and turned swiftly.
Lisa had entered the drawing-room by the verandah door and was standing quite still, watching her.
For a moment Victoria did not recognize her, for she had never seen Lisa dressed in this fashion before. She was wearing slacks and a shirt of faded khaki, both of which looked as though they might have belonged to her late husband, and in place of her usual high-heeled sandals she wore a shabby pair of tennis shoes, which accounted for the fact that Victoria had not heard her approach.
The room was already growing dark, and as Lisa was standing with her back to the windows Victoria could not see her face very clearly; but there was an expression on it that even in the uncertain light was sufficiently disconcerting to make Victoria regret that she had not waited until the morning before coming over to fetch Gilly’s account books.
Lisa was smiling – but only with her red, rigid mouth: above it her violet eyes were fixed in a look that was as purely animal as that of a cat w
ho is watching a bird, or a mousehole.
There was a curious moment of silence that had the effect of being loud with suppressed sound, and then Lisa laughed.
It was a gay sound, light and genuinely amused, and she moved forward and said: ‘So you did come! I wondered if you would. Em sent you for the account books, I suppose? They’re in there. On the table behind you.’
Victoria said confusedly, conscious that she was stammering badly: ‘I-I’m s-sorry. About w-walking in like this. It was r-rude of me, b-but there didn’t seem to be anyone about.’
Lisa walked past her into the office and picked up a pile of account books from one of the cluttered tables.
‘I know. But the servants are all to pieces because of Greg and his boys, and I don’t know where that little beast Wambui has got to. She’s been in an awful state since her boy-friend was dug up. I shall have to sack her. Here you are – I suppose this is what you want? It’ll do to go on with, anyway, ’Tis enough. ’Twill serve!’
She laughed again, as though at some exquisite joke, and said in a surprised voice: ‘You know, Gilly was always saying things like that. Bits of Shakespeare. It used to madden me. But it’s odd how those silly remarks seem to fit in.’
She came back into the drawing-room and said: ‘Would you like a drink? There’s gin and sherry, and there should be some whisky if Hector and Ken haven’t drunk it all.’
‘N-no thank you,’ said Victoria quickly. ‘I must be getting back.’
‘What’s the hurry? It isn’t dark yet.’
‘It’s not that, but Aunt Em’s alone. Besides I said I’d cut some delphiniums. We haven’t had any fresh flowers for days.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Lisa, looking vaguely round at the limp and faded stalks that lolled in the flower vases and made a faint, unpleasant smell in the room. ‘The best delphiniums grow by the knoll. The tall pink ones——’
She embarked on a long and disjointed account of the difficulties of growing flowers in a dry year, and as she was standing between Victoria and the door it was not really possible to push past her and leave. And yet Victoria discovered that she wanted to get out of that room as badly as she had ever wanted to get away from Flamingo: as badly as she had ever wanted anything. But Lisa continued to talk in her light brittle voice, and to keep between her and the door …
‘I do wish you’d have something to drink. I don’t like drinking alone. Mabel will be sorry to have missed you. She thought you’d be along a bit later. She’ll be back any minute now. She’s taking Dinah for a walk.’
A faint whining sound disproved her words, but she did not seem to have heard it: ‘It’s so good of her. Mabel is the kindest person. She knows how I hate taking out Dinah when she’s like this, because Em’s dogs sometimes follow us. You aren’t going, are you? I haven’t explained about the account books yet.’
Victoria, who had forgotten that she was clasping them, cast them a startled glance, and Lisa said: ‘Give them to me, and I’ll show you.’
She took them and carried them over to the window seat, where she laid them out carefully and slowly as though she were deliberately wasting time, and after studying them for several minutes announced that the ones with green covers dealt with the sale of fodder and vegetables, the red ones with fruit – mostly oranges – and the black ones with cattle.
‘Very simple and kindergarten, isn’t it? Gilly’s idea. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.’
Victoria scooped them up hurriedly and said: ‘No. I’m sure I won’t. Thank you so much. I really must be getting back.’
Lisa glanced over her shoulder at the sky beyond the window and said: ‘Yes. I think you should. Blue is a difficult colour to see in the dusk. The delphiniums, I mean.’
She laughed lightly and stood to one side, and Victoria said: ‘Good night. And thank you.’ And went quickly out of the room.
The sun had gone and there were bats flittering in an airy ballet among the trees as Victoria hurried down the dusty path that wound between feathery clumps of bamboo, pepper trees and jacaranda. She was out of sight of the bungalow and had begun to walk more slowly when a nightjar flew up with a harsh cry that startled her, and something rustled in the bushes as though an animal, perhaps an antelope, had slipped past her unseen.
She stopped and stood listening, but a vagrant breeze blew in from the lake and rustled the leaves and grasses, drowning all other sounds. And when it died away she could hear nothing but a distant crying of birds from the papyrus swamp, and the sound of Em’s piano, sweet in the silence.
She began to hurry again, and turning a corner, reached the gate and found that she must have forgotten to latch it, for it stood open. She closed it carefully behind her and walked on quickly through a grove of acacias, listening to the music that drifted out across the garden from the open windows of Em’s drawing-room.
Em had abandoned Bach and was playing something that was unfamiliar to Victoria. A strange, passionate, haunting piece of music that somehow fitted into the scene as though it were a tangible thing and an integral part of the Valley.
The Rift Valley Concerto! thought Victoria. It could not be anything else. Toroni must have loved the Rift – or hated it – to write like that.
She had almost forgotten the delphiniums, but the weight of the secateurs in her pocket reminded her of them, and she turned off the path and walked across the grass to the foot of the knoll, where they made a sea of blue and pink and purple.
She had begun to cut the flowers when another breath of wind blew across the garden, filling the green dusk with soft and stealthy rustlings, and she straightened up and stood alert and listening. Had it really been only the wind that had moved among the bushes?
The secateurs slid from her hand and were lost among the flowers, and she was aware that her heart was thumping painfully against her ribs. She had not realized that it was so late, or that the interval between sundown and darkness was so brief. Down in the papyrus swamp beyond the shamba birds were crying and calling. As though they had been alarmed by something …
Victoria stood quite still, held by the instinct that will make an animal freeze into immobility in the hope of being overlooked, rather than draw attention to itself by running. And as she stood there a familiar figure materialized out of the dusk, walking towards her, and her heart gave a great bound of relief.
She called out a little breathlessly: ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. It was the flowers——’ And bent to pick them up.
Her hands were full of them when something suddenly slid into her mind; icily and with a blinding impact. Something completely impossible.
The piano was still playing.
The flowers fell from her hands and she jerked upright, staring at the figure that stood facing her in the dusk: staring, paralysed, at a stranger, suddenly and horribly unfamiliar.
Her eyes widened in her white face and her mouth opened in a soundless scream – as Alice’s had done. But Alice had not fought, or even flinched from the savage sweeping stroke of the sharpened panga.
Victoria saw it coming and flung herself to one side, and the blow missed its mark and grazed her right shoulder, shearing through the short linen sleeve.
She saw the blade flash in the dusk as it lifted again, and then she was struggling and fighting, gripped to something that was soft and yielding and as suffocating as a feather bolster; her hands round a wrist that seemed made of iron, fending it off, and her ears full of the sound of grunting, panting breaths.
She made no attempt to cry out, for she needed her breath and her young strength to fight for her life. Her foot caught in a rough tangle of grass and she stumbled and fell to her knees, and saw the panga lift again. But it did not fall.
There was someone else there. A dark shape that appeared out of nowhere and sprang at her assailant with the silent savagery of a giant cat.
Victoria, crouched on the grass, heard a hoarse gasping cry, and saw the shapeless scarlet-clad figure crumple and fall sidew
ays. And then the green sky and the purple dusk darkened and closed in on her, and she pitched forward on her face into merciful unconsciousness.
* * *
There was a light somewhere that was hurting her eyes, and she felt cold and very sick and aware of a burning pain in her right shoulder.
There were voices too, and someone was saying: ‘She’ll be all right. It’s only a flesh wound.’
A hand touched her forehead and Victoria shuddered uncontrollably and opened her eyes to find that she was lying on her own bed and looking up into Drew Stratton’s face.
She said in a gasping whisper: ‘Drew!— Oh, Drew!’
Drew said: ‘It’s all right, darling. It’s all over. Drink this——’
He lifted her against his shoulder, and holding a glass to her mouth, forced her to swallow something that tasted exceedingly nasty. But when he would have laid her down again she turned and clung to him.
‘Don’t go. Please don’t go.’
‘I won’t.’ Drew’s leisurely voice was quiet and level and completely reassuring. And all at once she knew that she was safe – for always.
Someone who had been standing just out of the range of her vision went out of the room, closing the door, but she did not turn her head, and Drew did not move.
She could hear cars arriving and leaving, and the occasional shrilling of the telephone. The house was full of muffled voices and movement, and somewhere a woman was crying with a hysterical despairing persistency. But none of it had anything to do with her, and presently Drew lifted her head and kissed her, and time and death and violence ceased to have any meaning.
She said at last, with her head against his shoulder:
‘It was Aunt Em.’
‘I know, dear.’
‘Why did she do it?’
‘I’ll tell you in the morning.’
Victoria said urgently: ‘No! Tell me now. I couldn’t sleep – not knowing.’