Death in Zanzibar (15 page)

The stewardess turned and smiled a bright official smile. ‘Just a moment, sir.' She leaned out and spoke to someone through the open door, and then came quickly down the aisle and vanished into the pilot's cabin. Two more minutes passed, and then she reappeared accompanied by the captain and the First Officer, and all three left the plane.

‘
Now
what?' demanded the gentleman who had a conference in Tanga. ‘This is the ruddy limit! How much longer do they intend to keep us hanging about?' He lumbered wrathfully down the aisle and peered out into the sunlight, and they could hear him shouting down to someone on the tarmac.

‘Really,'
said Nigel Ponting in a fading voice, ‘these business types and their
hustle!
As if half an hour one way or another
mattered!
'

‘There I don't agree at all,' said Gussie Bingham tartly. ‘Delay is always maddening. And it will probably be most inconvenient for Tyson, who is sure to be meeting us. What do you suppose is holding us up?'

‘Whatever it is, dear lady, it is surely a comfort to know that it is
Meant,
' said Nigel with malice. ‘But let us trust that it is not some vital fault in the engines, or we shall be pre-destined to wait here for
hours!
'

Mrs Bingham was saved the necessity of finding an adequate retort to this shrewd shot by the return of the Tanga-bound passenger. ‘Seems that one of the Zanzibar passengers has been taken ill,' he announced, and went angrily back to his seat. ‘Can't think why we should all be held up for a thing like that. Do they expect us to wait until he feels better?'

At this point the stewardess returned, looking flushed and put out, and made a brief announcement: ‘May I have your attention, please? I am afraid that we shall be delayed for a further — er — few minutes. We are so sorry that you should be put to this inconvenience, but we hope it will not be too long before we — er — take off. You may smoke if you wish, but will you all please keep your seats.'

Once again a buzz of conversation broke out; to die away as two airport officials and a young European police officer in a starched khaki uniform entered the plane. One of the officials spoke politely and briefly into the microphone: ‘Sorry to trouble you, but we have to make another passport check. Will you have your passports ready, please?'

Dany threw a wild, terrified glance at Lash, but he did not return it. He drew out his own passport and held out a hand for hers, still without looking at her, and his complete lack of emotion brought her some measure of reassurance. She could hear the voices and footsteps and the rustle of paper as the officials passed up the aisle, examining every passport, checking it against a list and jotting down brief notes on a loose-leaf pad.

‘Holden,' said Lash laconically, handing over his passport as they stopped beside him. ‘My secretary, Miss Kitchell.'

Dany forced herself to meet the man's gaze and hold it calmly, and although it seemed to her that he stood there for an appalling length of time, it was, in fact, all over in under three minutes. They had only asked one question: the same question that they had put to everyone on the plane. ‘Where can you be reached during the next ten days?'

Even the young police officer had heard of Tyson Frost, and had read his books. ‘Another of you,' he said jotting down the address. ‘Mr Frost seems to be throwing quite a party. He's a wonderful chap, isn't he? I saw him when he came through here a few months ago. Got his autograph, too!'

The boy grinned and passed on to the next passenger, and Dany relaxed again. It was all just some routine check after all. She turned to smile her relief at Lash, but Lash was not smiling. He was looking, on the contrary, remarkably grim and there was a curious suggestion of alertness about him: as though his nerves and muscles were tensed. It was the same look that he had worn during the previous night, and it frightened Dany.

The three men came back down the aisle, their check completed, and Larry Dowling said: ‘How is he, officer? — Mr Abeid? Nothing infectious, I hope? He seemed all right when he got off just now. Is he really bad?'

‘He's dead,' said the police officer shortly, and departed.

There was a brief shocked silence. The silence that must always greet such an announcement, whether it refers to a friend or a stranger. The ending of a life.

It was broken by Millicent Bates, who said loudly and incredulously: ‘
Dead?
D'you mean that Arab chap who was on the London plane with us? What rubbish! They must have made a mistake. Why, he was chatting away to Mr Dowling, on and off, all the way from Nairobi. I heard him. He can't possibly be dead!'

‘Heart, I expect,' said Larry Dowling uncomfortably. ‘He said he always felt bad in a plane. He looked a bit green. But he can't have been air-sick. We haven't bumped about at all. I think it was just nerves.'

‘As long as it's not plague or cholera or one of those beastly Eastern diseases!' said Millicent with an audible shudder. ‘I told you we should regret coming out East, Gussie!'

Dany heard Mrs Bingham turn sharply in her seat. ‘Don't talk nonsense, Millicent! Of course it can't be anything infectious. If it were they'd quarantine the lot of us!'

‘How do we know they haven't?' inquired Miss Bates. ‘We're still here!'

The entire plane was silent again, digesting this. Presently the silence was broken by the return of the captain and the First Officer, and five minutes later Mombasa Airport was behind them — a dwindling speck among toy trees.

Dany turned to look at Lash again, and said in an anxious undertone: ‘Would they really quarantine us if it was something infectious?'

‘If it had been anything infectious they'd never have let us leave.'

‘Oh. Yes. I didn't think of that. I suppose it must have been a heart attack. Or a heat stroke.'

‘I doubt it,' said Lash curtly.

‘Why?'

‘They wouldn't have taken all that trouble to check up on the lot of us, and make certain of being able to get in touch with us again, if it were anything as simple as that. They think it's something else.'

Once again Dany was conscious of feeling oddly breathless. She said: ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Then you're lucky,' said Lash briefly, and put a stop to any further conversation by lying back and closing his eyes with deliberation.

Small puff-ball clouds lazed in the hot blue air and trailed their shadows far below across acres of pineapple plantations spiked with sisal, and thick, pale, leafless baobab trees …

Tanga, and another wait: shorter this time. An agonizing wait: but there were no police officers to meet the plane. The voice of the stewardess again: ‘May I have your attention, please. The indicator will tell you when to fasten your seat belts…'

Now they were over the sea. A glassy sea that merged into a glassy sky with no line anywhere to show where one ended and the other began: blue and green, violet and amethyst, streaked with the pale ribbons of wandering currents; the colours shifting and changing as the shadow of the plane swept across deep water, coral beds, rock bottom or sandy shallows.

Pemba: the Green Island. Rich in cloves and dark with the legends of witches, demons and warlocks. A long, sandy runway and the sea wind rustling the palm-leaf thatch and matting sides of the little hut that did duty for airport office and waiting-room. Amalfi Gordon, looking as out of place as a diamond tiara in the one-and-ninepennies, and gazing in horrified disbelief at an enormous slow-moving millepede that was crawling placidly across the dusty floor. Millicent Bates, her worst fears realized and ‘What Did I Tell You?' written all over her. Gussie Bingham, seated on the extreme edge of a wooden bench upon which she had first thoughtfully spread a clean handkerchief, and also watching the millepede with an expression of acute apprehension. Eduardo di Chiago, Nigel Ponting and the Arab in the white suit standing together in the open doorway, silhouetted against the hot empty expanse of sand and sky, talking together in Italian. And Larry Dowling fanning himself with his new panama hat and gazing absently at a framed poster that urged prospective travellers to ‘Fly BOAC.'

There were eight other passengers of assorted nationalities in the hot little hut. A stout German business man, a Swedish tourist hung about with expensive cameras, two British army officers on leave, a Parsee, an elderly Indian couple and a citizen of the United States of America — Mr Lashmer J. Holden Jnr, who once again appeared to have fallen asleep.

How
can
he just doze off like that, thought Dany indignantly, when we shall be arriving in Zanzibar in no time at all, and if they've heard anything there we may find police waiting for us at the airport? And if Mother is there to meet us she'll know me at once, even in spectacles and with this hideous hair-fixing, and suppose she says something in front of the passport and customs people before we can stop her, and
____
Oh, I wish it were all over! How
can
he go to sleep!

Lash opened one eye, winked at her solemnly, and shut it again, and Dany blushed as hotly as though she had been caught speaking her thoughts aloud. She turned her back on him with deliberation as Nigel Ponting drifted in and introduced the Arab:

‘Here's someone you simply
must
meet. Seyyid Omar-bin-Sultan. He has a simply heavenly,
heavenly
house in Zanzibar. In fact two — or is it three? Anyway, if you want to see the island you must lure him into taking you on a conducted tour. No one can tell you as much about it as he can. He practically
is
Zanzibar!'

Seyyid Omar smiled and bowed. His English was as fluent as his Italian had been and he spoke it with barely a trace of an accent. He in no way resembled his compatriot, the late Mr Salim Abeid, for his complexion was no darker than the Marchese di Chiago's, and he was a charming and entertaining conversationalist.

Lash did not open his eyes again until the passengers were summoned once more to take their seats in the plane, but as they left the little palm-thatched hut he took Dany's arm and delayed her, walking slowly until the others had drawn ahead.

‘Now get this,' said Lash, speaking quickly and in an undertone. ‘When we get there, waste as much time as you can before you leave the plane. Fuss over the baggage — anything. But get right at the end of the line. I've got to see your mother first — if she's at the airport. Or your step-father. Or both. Otherwise we're going to find ourselves in the can before we can blink twice. Got that?'

Dany nodded. And then they were back once more in their seats, facing an illuminated sign that was saying ‘No Smoking. Fasten Seat Belts.'

Pemba dwindled in its turn to a little dark dot in a waste of blue, and ahead of them lay something that at first seemed no more substantial than the shadow of a cloud on the glittering sea. Zanzibar …

The blue of deep water gave place to the gorgeous greens of sandbars and shallows, and they were losing height and swooping in over acres of clove trees and groves of palms. Above orange orchards and the clustered roofs of houses.

Lash reached out a hand and closed it over one of Dany's, gripping it hard and encouragingly, and then there was a bump and a jolt and they were taxi-ing up the runway to stop at last before a long white building backed by innumerable trees.

Lash unfastened his seat belt for the last time and said ‘Here we go!' And went.

Dany never knew what he had said to her mother and Tyson, both of whom were at the airport to meet the plane. He had had less than five clear minutes; certainly not more; but he had apparently made good use of them.

‘Darlings!'
called Lorraine, greeting her guests as they emerged from behind a barrier where they had queued to have their passports and permits inspected and stamped. ‘How lovely to see you all. Elf
____
! What heaven to see you, darling. And Gussie! Gussie, you look
marvellous.
And madly smart. Hullo, Millicent. Eddie! —
years
since we saw you last! Oh well, months then, but it seems like years; and isn't that a lovely compliment?'

Lorraine never seemed to change, thought Dany, regarding her mother with indulgent affection. She was not beautiful in the way that Amalfi Gordon was beautiful, but she managed none the less to convey an impression of beauty, and that did equally well. Part of her appeal, thought her daughter dispassionately, undoubtedly lay in her lack of inches and that entirely deceptive appearance of fragility. It made even undersized men feel large and strong and protective.

Lorraine was wearing white linen and pearls, and she did not look like anyone's mother. Or, for that matter, like the wife of the burly, loud-voiced, bearded man in the salt-stained fisherman's slacks and faded blue T-shirt, who seemed slightly larger than life and was clearly recognizable to any reader of the Press of any country in the world as Tyson Frost, author of
Last Service for Lloyd, Clothe Them All in Green O, The Sacred Swine
and at least half a dozen other novels that had been filmed, televised, analysed, attacked, imitated, selected by Book Societies and Literary Guilds and sold by the million.

Lash said briefly: ‘My secretary, Ada Kitchell; Mrs Frost,' and Dany, demurely shaking hands with her own mother, was seized with a sudden hysterical desire to burst into helpless giggles.

Lorraine had not blinked, but her small face had paled a little and her blue eyes had widened in dismay. She said faintly: ‘So pleased
____
' And then in an anguished whisper: ‘Darling — why
red?
and that
appalling
fringe!'

Tyson's large, sinewy hand descended on Dany's shoulder blades with a smack that made her stagger: ‘Well, Miss Kitchell — delighted to meet you. Perhaps you and Bates won't mind going in the station wagon with the luggage. No, Lorrie! you'd better take Elf and Eddie and Nigel. Hiyah, Eddie? Back again like a bad lira? Didn't think we'd see you down this way again after giving you sandfly fever or whatever it was you caught last time you were here. No, by cripes — it was dysentery, wasn't it? Gussie, I'll take you and young Lash. Go on, pile in.'