Dangerous Inheritance (37 page)

Next morning, after three abortive attempts, the Duke got through to de Zoysa. Meanwhile Truss had secured three seats on a ‘plane calling at Athens, from where there was a connection to Corfu, for Friday the 18th and one for himself to Manila, where his father should be on that date. After lunch he picked up Fleur in his self-drive car and they took the road to Ratnapura, arriving at Olenevka at a little before six o'clock.

They were made most welcome by de Zoysa and his wife: a large, smiling lady who was a little flustered at entertaining rich Anglo-American guests, but determined to do the honours of her house to the best of her ability.

After dinner de Zoysa produced toddy, the national drink of Ceylon. He explained that the ordinary brew is made from pressed coconut flowers. It is said to be very good for one but should be drunk within eight hours of being made. This was Ambassador toddy, and much superior to the ordinary type, its fermentation having been stopped by the addition of lime juice. Later he brought out a bottle of Arrack, a distillation of coconut which when new is sheer firewater but after keeping for twenty years can be very good, and resembles the Slivovitz made in the Balkan countries from plums.

On the way up, Truss and Fleur had been hoping that they would be able to sleep together. But the rooms they were given in the rambling old house were so far apart that they reluctantly decided that to do so might result in discovery and precipitate the scandal Fleur was so anxious to avoid; so they resigned themselves to becoming half muzzy on the potent Arrack and retiring to sleep the night through in their separate rooms.

Next morning there was no escape for them from making a tour of the mines with de Zoysa. On reaching the valley in
which they lay Fleur's mind was filled with vivid recollections of the time when, with de Richleau and her parents, she had been trapped there, and she pointed out to Truss the cave in the hillside in which they had taken refuge.

De Zoysa, evidently with the hope that Truss, if he became the new owner, would take him on as manager, or Fleur retain him, spared no effort to impress them with his activities and persuade them that the mine would soon again be a paying concern. That he might make it so if he could increase his labour force certainly seemed possible, as he had made good most of the sabotage that Ukwatte had carried out in the mines before leaving them; but the thoughts of Truss and Fleur were upon whether they would find anything in the Fernandos' pigsty; so they could only feel sorry for the wasted eagerness of the thin, nervous mine manager.

After the midday meal, when their host, hostess and the servants settled down for the siesta, their impatiently awaited opportunity came. They met by arrangement at the back of the house, Truss found a spade and shovel in a shed and, following Mirabelle's directions, they set off towards the bungalow, which lay only a quarter of a mile away.

They found it without difficulty and saw that the jungle had encroached on the ruin; several sizable trees sprouted from its interior and creepers covered the greater part of the structure that had not been eaten away by white ants and termites.

The pigsty, too, was half buried in lush greenery; but Truss set to work with a will, cutting at it with the edge of his spade. Under his powerful slashes, with Fleur pulling great armfuls of cut creeper away, after a quarter of an hour's intensive labour they had the greater part of it cleared.

Truss then remarked that if there had been pigs in the sty at the time the murder took place, the d'Azavedos would have had to bury the body several feet deep or the pigs would have rooted it out to eat the flesh; so by just turning up the earth he would not be likely to come on Vinala's skeleton.

With the sweat pouring from him under the scorching afternoon sun, he dug down into the hard, baked ground. Pausing only now and then for a minute to get his breath, he
stuck doggedly to his task while Fleur shovelled aside the tightly packed earth he turned up. For three-quarters of an hour they laboured and panted with growing depression. By then Truss had dug a pit in the centre of the sty about four feet across and three feet deep without coming on any indication that a body had been buried there.

Had Truss been a frailer man he would have been nearly exhausted and inclined to accept that further exertion would prove futile; but after a short rest, determined not to give up until he was convinced that Mirabelle had been mistaken, he began to attack the corners of the sty. He had dug out only a dozen spadesful from the second corner that he tried when Fleur gave an excited cry and, stooping, seized upon a small bone.

It might well have been part of some dead animal that had been thrown to the pigs, but Truss continued to dig with renewed energy and his efforts were soon rewarded. Two minutes later he turned up a larger bone that looked as though it might have come from a leg; then, with a gasp of triumph, he heaved clear of the hole a human skull.

For a full minute they both stood back, their thin shirts drenched with sweat, striving to recover their breath while they stared with mingled horror and satisfaction at the earth-clogged ball that had been Vinala Fernando's head. Then Truss rasped out:

‘We've got him! This will put paid to Lalita all right. Now to take some pictures for the record.'

Picking up the camera he had brought with him, he took a dozen shots: first close-ups of the skull and leg bone, then others showing the sty in relation to the ruins of the bungalow. When he had done, he rolled the gruesome remains into the deep hole in the middle of the sty and began to shovel earth back to fill it up. As soon as he had levelled the surface and stamped it down Fleur trailed over the sty all the nearby creepers that had not been cut, so that only anyone coming close to it would notice that it had been disturbed.

By the time they got back to the house over two hours had elapsed, but they succeeded in reaching their rooms without
being seen by the de Zoysas or any of the servants and, utterly worn out, threw themselves down on their beds to sleep. So exhausted were they from their labours that they both slept until after six o'clock. When they had cleaned themselves up and put on fresh clothes it was seven and close on time for dinner; so, although, after finding the skull, they had hoped to return to Colombo that night with news of their success they decided against making the long drive in the dark.

Anxious, nevertheless, to let the Duke know as soon as possible that the object of their mission had been accomplished, Truss went to the telephone but, to his annoyance, found that it was out of order. De Zoysa, with a smiling apology, told him that in such remote places the line was broken every few months by wild animals, and might not be mended for some days; but as they did not use the telephone much they never worried about this minor inconvenience.

Next morning, when they got up they saw that the sky was overcast and at breakfast the de Zoysas urged them to postpone their departure for Colombo until the next day, predicting that a heavy storm was about to break. Truss thanked them but would not hear of it, pleading urgent business in the capital; so, having said good-bye to their friendly hosts, shortly before ten o'clock they set off.

Had they known what a storm could be like in the ‘wet' zone of Ceylon they might have heeded the de Zoysas' warning. They had been on the road for only half an hour when flashes of forked lightning began to streak a now black sky and peals of thunder like the explosions from the broadside of a battleship echoed round the jungle-clad hills. Five minutes later the rain came down.

It struck the car like a cataract, a solid sheet of water reduced visibility to a few yards and Truss was compelled to pull up at the side of the road. For three-quarters of an hour the rain sheeted down and now and then, between the crashes of thunder, they caught the sharp crack of trees felled by lightning. When the storm eased a little they went on but now with caution as, every half mile or so, big branches partly blocked the road.

Twenty minutes later there came another cloudburst but this
time, luckily, they were just entering a small town, and a white man, already drenched to the skin, who had been shopping there, very decently ran out of a store to tell them that there was a rest house only a few hundred yards' distant.

Nosing the car slowly through the veil of descending water, they managed to reach it then, soaked through in a moment, ran inside. As it was now after midday they decided to have an early lunch, then for another hour or more they sat impatiently watching the downpour.

By half past two it had ceased, and with extraordinary swiftness the black clouds rolled away to be replaced by blue skies and brilliant sunshine. But the heat of the sun on the sodden jungle soon caused steam to rise almost with the density of fog. Added to which, for several hundred yards in some of the valleys the road lay under a sheet of water, in places a foot deep; while now and then rushing streams eddied and gurgled from one side of the road to the other. In consequence a journey that they should have done in three hours took them over eight, and it was half past five before they reached Colombo.

On arriving at the Galle Face, still damp and tired from their frustrating drive, but brimming over with excitement at the goods news they brought, they went straight up to de Richleau's sitting room.

With him he had Nicholas van Goens, and the Duke said at once, ‘You may speak freely in front of our friend here, because I have taken him into our confidence. But I have bad news for you.'

His face was so grave that for a moment they feared to ask for it, then he added, ‘Lalita has struck sooner than we expected. Douglas was arrested yesterday afternoon.'

‘Oh no!' exclaimed Fleur.

‘Yes, my child. This is a wretched business. But, of course, his father is doing everything possible to get him released.'

Truss nodded. ‘Yes, that's bad. But not so bad as it might be now we've got the goods on Lalita. Mirabelle was right about Vinala Fernando having been buried in the pigsty. We found her skull and I photographed it. We're all set now to have Lalita charged with murder.'

De Richleau shook his head. ‘No, Truss; we've lost the game there, too. I don't doubt that he and his father murdered her, but there's not one scrap of evidence to prove they did, except that Mirabelle de Mendoza could have given about the bloodstains on their clothes. She——'

‘Could have!' Fleur interjected sharply.

‘Yes. Van Goens has just been telling me that her dead body was found in the lake this morning.'

Fleur and Truss stared aghast at de Richleau. After a moment he said:

‘It's a tragic business. That poor woman: such a pleasant creature both to talk to and to look at. Only yesterday, full of life and with high hopes that she was about to win for herself a happy future. Then last night stabbed in the back and thrown in the city lake to become food for the fishes.'

‘How awful,' Fleur murmured. ‘And with her has gone our one chance to get the better of Lalita.'

‘Surely there's still a case against him?' Truss argued. ‘We can produce the photographs I took, and it's obvious that Vinala was murdered. The motive stands out a mile. If the d'Azavedos hadn't done her in she might have endorsed her husband's confession that the will was a forgery. And living so near her they had ample opportunity.'

It was van Goens who answered, ‘That's not enough, sir. We wouldn't have a hope of getting a verdict.'

‘But Douglas,' said Fleur quickly. ‘Tell me about him.'

‘He was arrested in his office soon after lunch yesterday,' the Duke replied. ‘Then they went to your house, turned it upside down and took away all his papers. We can't be certain, of course, but it seems highly probable that it was that which led to Mirabelle's death. You will recall my fears that one of Douglas's clerks might be in Lalita's pay, and my asking him to draw up the deed of gift himself at home. All the odds are that Lalita found it among Douglas's papers. A glance at it would have
been enough to tell him that Mirabelle was double-crossing him. Being the villainous devil he is that would have been quite sufficient to make him decide to pay some thug to put her out of the way.'

‘And now … and now,' Fleur choked with tears in her eyes. ‘Now he has Douglas in prison he will have gloated over him about …' She had been going to say ‘Truss and me', but, realising that van Goens was present, hastily checked herself.

‘I doubt if he will have had time to interrogate your husband yet, Madame,' van Goens said. ‘He will have been too occupied with a bigger fish and a number of other people that the Government are out to get.'

‘D'you mean that Lalita's excuse for roping him in is that he has taken part in a conspiracy?' Truss asked.

‘Well, not exactly. This concerns smuggling. Some time ago two ships of the Royal Ceylon Navy were sent out on a cruise to the Far East, to show the flag, so to speak. Since their return there have been rumours that they brought back a large quantity of dutiable goods and have been gradually bringing them ashore. The senior officer on the cruise was Rear-Admiral Royce de Mel. He is reputed to be an efficient man, and it's very probable that any smuggling that did occur was done without his knowledge. But as he is a Roman Catholic the Bandaranaike crowd have got it in for him. He and six of his officers were interdicted this morning and since then, I gather, Lalita and his Security boys have been hard at it searching the two ships from bridge to keel for any contraband that may still be in them.'

Truss frowned. ‘But what could Mr. Rajapakse have had to do with a racket of this kind?'

‘I don't suppose he had anything at all to do with it, sir. But he is accused of receiving some of the smuggled goods. I expect d'Azavedo bribed one of the servants to plant them in the house. He has used this affair only as a means of pulling in Mr. Rajapakse.'

‘Well, anyway, it's not a very serious charge.'