Death in Zanzibar (18 page)

‘But I didn't,' protested Dany, on the verge of tears. ‘I had it under my pillow for the rest of the night, and it was perfectly all right when I wrapped it in the scarf this morning. The seal wasn't touched. I tell you, I
know!
I would have felt at once if it was empty. Like I did just now.'

Tyson said: ‘You must have washed, I suppose? Or had a bath!'

‘Of course I did, but
____
'

‘And you took it with you?'

‘No, but
____
'

‘Well, there you are! Someone must have got into the room.'

Lorraine said plaintively: ‘Tyson darling, don't keep on interrupting the child. Do let her finish a sentence.'

‘Lash was there,' said Dany. ‘He was dressing while I had a bath.'

‘It all sounds very intimate and domestic,' growled Tyson.

Lash said pleasantly: ‘It was. Though quite unavoidable, as I have already explained. But if you make any further cracks like that you are going to find that life is even more like the movies than you had supposed.'

‘Meaning that you'll knock me down?' inquired Tyson. ‘You couldn't do it, boy.'

‘It would give me the greatest pleasure to try,' snapped Lash.

‘I daresay it would. But I do not intend to let the sons of my college friends use me as a punching-bag to work off their spleen.'

‘Then stop bullying the kid!' said Lash. ‘Can't you see that she's had just about all she can take? Lay off her, will you?'

Tyson cocked an eye at him, and said meditatively: ‘I well remember your Aunt Maimie describing you once — accurately I have no doubt — as a rakish heel who could hook the average woman with the ease of a confidence trickster getting to work on a frustrated small-town spinster. That was when you were getting into trouble over the Van Hoyden girl — or was it girls? So let us have less of the Galahad attitude from you, boy, and fewer back-answers! Were you really in that suite the entire time that Dany was in the bathroom?'

‘I was.'

‘Did you know where the letter was?'

‘I did. Are you by any chance suggesting that I took it?'

‘
Bah!
Don't be tedious,' said Tyson crossly. ‘Can you be quite certain that no one else came into the room during that time? No hotel servant, for instance?'

‘No one. Repeat — no one.'

Tyson turned back to Dany. ‘I presume he didn't stick around while you were dressing?'

Dany flushed pinkly. ‘No, he didn't. He went off to have breakfast.'

‘And no one else came in?'

‘No. I locked both doors. And I took the coat with me when I went in to breakfast, and I've never let go of it since, until I came in here and put it on that chair. No one could have taken that letter. No one but myself or Lash. It isn't possible!'

‘Did you take it?'

Lash took a swift step forward and Tyson said: ‘Let her answer for herself, boy! Well, Dany?'

Dany looked at him; her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide and sparkling. ‘I think,' she said stormily, ‘that you are the most odious, selfish, egotistical,
impossible
man I have ever met, and I'm sorry I ever came here!'

‘Yes, isn't he?' said Lorraine, giving her husband a fond glance. ‘I remember saying just the same thing to him the first day I ever met him. And he gets worse. But baby, you didn't really take it, did you?'

Dany rounded on her, anger giving away to exasperation. ‘Mother, you cannot really think
____
'

‘Darling,'
protested Lorraine plaintively, ‘
how
many times have I asked you not to call me that? It makes me feel a
hundred.
No, of course I don't think you stole it or anything like that — nor does Tyson. Just that you may have thought that — what with the murder, and everything being so foul for you — that it would be better if you simply tore the horrid thing up and got rid of it.'

‘Well I didn't!' said Dany tersely. ‘And perhaps it's a pity I didn't think of it — now that someone else has got it.'

‘Meaning me?' inquired Lash gently.

‘Why do you have to say that?' demanded Dany resentfully. ‘You know quite well I don't mean anything of the sort!'

‘But you've just said that only you or I could possibly have taken it. And if
you
didn't, that leaves me, doesn't it? Or is there something wrong with my arithmetic?'

‘Don't bully the girl!' boomed Tyson. ‘Can't you see she's had all she can take? Lay off her, will you?'

Lash laughed and threw up a hand in the gesture of a fencer acknowledging a hit. ‘
Touché!
I'm sorry, Dany. Well, what do you suggest we do now?'

‘Eat,' said Lorraine firmly, and rose to her feet. ‘It must be nearly one o'clock, and everyone else will be wondering what on earth has happened to us, and getting hungrier and hungrier. Come on, darling, let's go and see what they're doing. And Dany will want to wash.'

‘Just a minute,' said Tyson. ‘Let's get this straight. If we are to subscribe to this theory that whoever was after that letter was also on the London to Nairobi plane, it follows that whoever has got it now was on the Nairobi to Zanzibar one this morning. Am I right?'

Lash said: ‘It certainly looks that way, doesn't it? If it weren't for one outstanding snag, on which the whole thing snarls up.'

‘And what would that be?'

‘What the hell is the use of three million — or three hundred million if it comes to that — if you can't get it out of the island? O.K. for you perhaps, or for anyone who lives right here. But how would anyone else start in shifting it? Me, for the sake of argument?'

‘I, boy.
I!
Don't be so sloppy with your grammar!'

‘Okay; I. Me, Lashmer J. Holden, Jnr. What do I do with a coupla hundredweight of bullion? Load it into my bags and smuggle it through the Customs just like that, I suppose?'

‘Then you suppose wrong,' snapped Tyson. ‘Use your head! Do you
really
imagine that anyone who is after that much money, and prepared to kill in order to get it, hasn't worked that one out? Good God, boy, there are literally dozens of ways of getting in and out of countries illegally in these days, if you've money behind you — or the prospect of money. And don't start yapping that “It isn't possible!” Of course it is! A bloody sight too possible! What do you suppose there is to prevent you going for a sail or out fishing one fine evening, and being picked up a mile or so offshore by a dhow or a motor-boat? Or a private yacht? — damn it all, your own father's got one of those! There are hundreds of miles of empty coast-line and little creeks or beaches where you could be landed on a dark night, and be picked up by a plane. Good grief, this is the Air Age! There are any amount of privately owned planes around — and any amount of empty Africa for 'em to land on! You wouldn't be your father's son if you couldn't work out that one, and we can take it someone else has. The problem is, who?'

Lash shrugged his shoulders: ‘Someone who was on both plane rides, I guess. I checked up on that, and apart from your personal guests there were only two. That newspaper guy you were so charming to outside the airport
____
'

‘What newspaper guy?' interrupted Tyson, sitting up sharply. ‘I don't remember any
____
Yes, by God, I do! Some blasted squirt in a panama hat who asked if he could call. Was he on the London plane?'

‘I just told you so. And staying at the same hotel in Nairobi.'

‘He was, was he?' said Tyson meditating. ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have been so hasty. Well we can fix that. As there's only one hotel in this salubrious spot, we know where he is. Lorrie darling, ring up the hotel will you, and ask for
____
What's his blasted name?'

‘Dowling,' supplied Dany. ‘Larry Dowling.'

‘Mr Dowling; and when you get him on the line, tell him I'll be delighted to give him an interview, and would he like to come and stay here. Run along and do it now.'

‘But Tyson
____
!' Lorraine's gentian-blue eyes were wide with dismay. ‘We can't. Darling — a reporter!'

‘He isn't a reporter,' said Dany, but was ignored.

‘Everything will be all over the front page of every newspaper before we know where we are,' wailed Lorraine. ‘Think of Dany — and all of us. Just
think!
'

‘I am,' said Tyson impatiently. ‘And I appear to be the only one who is capable of doing so. It's a dam' sight safer to have all the suspects under one roof.'

‘With an eye, of course,' said Lash, ‘to the cash deposit.'

‘If that was meant for sarcasm, boy, you'll have to do better. Naturally with an eye to the cash deposit. What do you take me for?'

Lorraine's hands made their familiar fluttering gesture, and she said: ‘I don't understand. I don't understand anything.'

‘He means,' translated Lash, ‘that one of a reasonably narrow field of suspects has just got hold of the key to grandpop's bank vault. It is therefore quite an idea to keep 'em all right here, where he can watch 'em, and the first guy who is caught borrowing a spade and sneaking out to do a bit of digging is it. See?'

‘But of
course!
' exclaimed Lorraine happily. ‘Tyson darling, how clever of you. I'll ring up this Mr — Mr Dowling at once.'

‘You do that,' said Tyson. ‘Get going. No — wait a minute. There were two of them. Didn't you say there were two?'

‘Were,' said Lash, ‘is right. There's only one now.'

‘I don't get you.'

‘The other one,' said Lash, ‘was an Arab. A shining light in the local Zanzibar-for-Mother-Russia movement, I gather. One Salim Abeid.'

‘Oh, Jembe —
“the thin man”.
'

‘That's the guy. Or to be accurate, that was the guy.'

‘What do you mean by that?' demanded Tyson sharply.

‘I mean he's dead. He died rather suddenly this morning at Mombasa Airport, which is why our plane was held up. I thought maybe they'd have told you that one: you must have had to wait quite a while for us.'

‘Dead?'
said Tyson, his bull voice almost a whisper. ‘You don't mean … What did he die of?'

‘They didn't say. He walked off the plane and into the airport with the rest of us, apparently a sound insurance risk, and when we were herded back on, he failed to turn up. There was a certain amount of delay and flurry, and first the stewardess told us he'd been taken ill, and then a squad of cops and officials turned up and took another look at our passports and re-checked our visas — and for all I know got our fingerprints as well. They seemed anxious to know where they could get in touch with us during the next few days.'

‘What do you suppose they'd want to do that for?'

‘Your guess,' said Lash dryly, ‘is as good as mine.'

Lorraine looked anxiously from Lash's face to her husband's, and came back from the door to clutch at Tyson's arm. There was a sudden trace of panic in her light, lilting voice: ‘What guess, Tyson? What does he mean? What are you both hinting at?'

‘Nothing,' said Tyson brusquely. ‘Only that Jembe had a lot of political enemies. There's no need for us to start visualizing burglars under every blasted bed in the island. And anyway he probably died of heart failure.'

‘Almost certainly,' said Lash pleasantly. ‘Few of us die from anything else.'

‘Be quiet, boy!' blared Tyson. ‘The young should be seen and not heard! It's all right, Lorrie. You run along now and phone that infernal reporter. And be nice to him.'

Lorraine sighed and relaxed. ‘I'm always nice to people, darling.'

She turned from him and directed an appealing smile at Lash. ‘I do hope you don't mind being in the guest-house by yourself, Lash?'

‘Why should I mind? It's charming.'

‘Now that
is
sweet of you! I was afraid you might feel sore about it. Being put up in a sort of honeymoon cottage when
____
'

‘Oh, not again!' groaned Lash. ‘Once was enough. I get you — you mean this was the cosy little hideaway that you'd gotten all fixed up for the newly-weds, was it? Well, it was a swell idea and I shall not feel any qualms about occupying it — provided I'm allowed to do so strictly solo. You don't have to worry about it. It wasn't your fault.'

‘But it
was.
That's what's so
awful,
' Lorraine's voice was tragic. ‘I feel that it's so much my fault: Elf wrote to me, you know. You see it was I who asked Eddie — Eduardo — to look her up when he was in London, because he'd suggested that he might come down here again, so I thought it would be nice for them to know each other, and of course I never dreamed
____
But I don't expect it will come to anything: so much that Elf starts doesn't, you know. She's so vague and soft-hearted and irresponsible, and she never means any harm. She's like a sweet, spoilt child who just picks things up and then drops them.'

Lorraine illustrated with a graceful, expressive gesture, and Lash winced. ‘I get you.'

‘Oh, but I didn't mean
you,
Lash!' Lorraine's eyes were wide with dismay. ‘I meant Eddie. He's only a new toy. And rather a novel one. But when that's over, everything will be all right again, won't it?'

‘Sure. Just dandy,' said Lash bitterly. ‘And now if you don't mind, could we just cut the whole question of my love-life off the agenda? I prefer murder.'

‘Yes of course, dear,' said Lorraine hastily. ‘I
do
feel for you. And I'm sure it will all come out right in the end. Come on, Dany darling, let's go and get tidy. And you
will
get rid of that awful fringe, won't you sweetie?'