Death in Zanzibar (27 page)

His face expressed nothing more than polite concern, but there was something in the tone of his voice that made Dany wonder if his linking of those two deaths had been deliberate, and she was conscious of a sudden and urgent sense of unease: as though someone had whispered a warning that she had been unable to catch.

‘Nigel Ponting told me in the market this morning,' said Seyyid Omar, ‘that she had been with Mr Frost's sister for many years — this Miss Bates. That is sad for Mrs Bingham; to lose a friend and a confidante. Nigel has not been so long with Mr Frost; a few years only, I think; but he could probably tell you more about Jembe than I could. You should ask him. If he does not know he will at least invent something interesting.'

Lash grinned. ‘Yeah. You're probably right there. Nigel's a mine of gossip. He ought to be run as a syndicated column. But it's your opinion I'm interested in, not his. You belong here.'

‘But is it not one of your sayings that the onlooker sees most of the game?' said Seyyid Omar with a slight smile.

‘Meaning that you yourself are right out there with the team?' inquired Lash.

Seyyid Omar laughed and helped himself to another cigarette. He said reflectively, reaching for the match box: ‘If you really wish for my opinion, I do not think that Jembe's group were either large enough or important enough to put any other party to the trouble of poisoning him. His was merely a splinter group, and though noisy, a thing of no real weight.'

‘Not even worth anyone's while to nip in the bud?' suggested Lash. ‘Vested interests, large land-owners and the ruling classes are never very anxious to see the seeds of revolution get sprouting.'

‘That is true, of course. But then they never believe it can come to anything. Never. And so they do not even trouble to reach for the weed-killer!'

‘You're probably right there,' said Lash. ‘Which leaves us with what?'

‘For a possible motive for the murder of a man like Jembe?' said Seyyid Omar, striking a match. ‘Who can say? Except that as a grave risk was taken, it must have been a strong one. Hate possibly: if it were deep enough and sharp enough. Or money, if it were a large enough sum.'

‘Say — three million?' suggested Lash gently.

Seyyid Omar was suddenly very still. So still that he did not seem to breathe, or be aware that he still held a lighted match between his fingers.

It burned down, and he dropped it with a quick gasp of pain and put his foot on the tiny glowing fragment, and Dany stood up hurriedly and said a little breathlessly: ‘It must be getting very late. I'm sure we ought to go. What time is it?'

‘Just on twelve,' said Lash, rising. ‘Yes, I guess we'd better be going. Well, thanks a lot, both of you, for a most enjoyable morning. It's been a great pleasure meeting you, and I hope we'll see more of you. A lot more.'

‘I shall call for you this afternoon,' said Seyyid Omar, recovering himself. ‘To take you to the wells. And now, if you must go, my car will be waiting below, and the driver will take you to the Club. You will forgive me for not taking you there myself, but I have some things to attend to.'

They took their leave of Zuhra, promising to come again, and went out into the high, shadowed verandah, closing the door behind them. There were no stone jars full of shrubs and creepers here, but in the courtyard below there was a tulip tree and a fountain, and Dany looking down from the verandah edge said: ‘Are all the big houses in Zanzibar built like this?'

‘To this design?' asked Seyyid Omar. ‘No. Very few of them. But it is not surprising that you should ask that, for this house and the one you are living in now were built for the same man, and almost certainly by the same builder. They are probably the oldest houses in Zanzibar. He was a bad character, that old gentleman, but plagued with many wives, so perhaps much may be forgiven him! He came to a bad end, but a richly deserved one — “hoist with his own petard”, I think you would say.'

‘How?' inquired Dany, intrigued. ‘What happened to him?'

‘He fell into a trap that he had often laid for others. I will show you. But you must not tell, for it is a secret that very few know. Is that agreed?'

‘Yes, of course. It sounds very exciting.'

‘I think you will find it so. And instructive.'

Seyyid Omar turned and looked over his shoulder down the length of the verandah, and then down over the balustrade at the storey below. But though they could hear voices and laughter, for the moment there was no one in sight, and he said: ‘Quick — while there is no one here.'

He led the way swiftly to the top of the staircase that curved down to the verandah below — a duplicate of the stairs in the House of Shade — and telling them to watch, went to a nearby pillar and stooping down moved something near its base.

There was a slow, soft grating sound; the sound of stone moving on stone; and two of the wide, shallow steps drew back into the wall, leaving a gaping space below the first step so that they were looking down on the stone floor of the verandah, sixteen feet below.

Dany gave a long, helpless gasp that was almost a scream, and Lash caught her by the arm and jerked her back as though he were afraid that she might have walked forward.

Seyyid Omar stooped again, and once more they heard that soft, rasping scrape, and the yawning gap closed as smoothly as it had opened. The steps were in place once more: solid and seemingly safe, and with nothing to mark them from any other steps.

‘It is very ingenious, is it not?' inquired Seyyid Omar softly. ‘More so than you would think. Naturally I cannot show you, as it is too dangerous, but when it is open, the first step will tilt when a foot is placed upon it: to ensure that the victim will fall head first, you understand. When that happens the steps go back of their own accord — it is all an ingenious matter of weights and balances — and if it is not done, then one can replace it oneself, as I did. I was sure that you would be interested.'

Lash swung round to stare at him, his mouth a tight line and his grey eyes dangerous, but Seyyid Omar returned his look blandly; the pleasant host, drawing attention to an unusual feature of his house for the entertainment of his guests.

‘You will understand,' he said with a smile and a shrug, ‘why I do not show many people this. It is always so much safer to keep one's own counsel, do you not think? Shall we go down? You need not be afraid. It is quite safe now.'

He led the way, talking polite trivialities, down the curving stairs to the ground floor and out into the street where a huge white car and an ebony-coloured chauffeur waited to drive them to the English Club.

It was a short enough drive, and during it neither Lash nor Dany spoke, or even looked at each other, and it was not until they were standing in the cool deserted hall of the Club that Lash said tersely: ‘Did you move her?'

‘Yes. I — I didn't think of that before, but she must have been lying under the staircase when I found her. It was dark and I tried to drag her towards my room. That was why it looked as if — as if
____
'

‘As if she'd fallen over the edge,' finished Lash. ‘Well, there's the proof, if we needed it. But at least it couldn't have been pinned on you. You couldn't possibly have known about that devilish booby-trap.'

‘Yes, I could,' said Dany, her voice a dry whisper. ‘Because I'm Tyson Frost's step-daughter, and it would be difficult to prove that I didn't know. You see, it's sure to be in the book.'

‘What book?'

‘
The House of Shade.
The one Tyson's uncle wrote. Tyson was talking about it at dinner that night, and he said that there were several copies in the house. There's one in my room. It may have been put there on purpose, so that it would look
____
'

‘Business again?' inquired a charming voice from the staircase, and Amalfi was there: wearing a preposterous rainbow-coloured hat of fringed straw, bought at some shop in Portuguese Street and looking, on Amalfi's golden head, as decorative and enchanting a piece of nonsense as ever came out of Paris.

‘No,' said Lash shortly. ‘Pleasure. I hope we haven't kept you all waiting?'

‘For
hours,
darling! We've all been drinking pints and pints of Pimms. Except Larry, who is being all British-to-the-Backbone on luke-warm beer. Did your fascinating Arab friend introduce you to all the luscious lovelies of his harem? Or don't they have them any more? Nigel says he has a quite ravishing wife, and Eddie's simply pining to meet her. But as it seems that she's got a classical degree, I feel he'd better keep away and keep his illusions.'

Amalfi turned and led the way up to a large high-ceilinged room where the rest of the
Kivulimi
house-party were sitting under whirling electric fans, moodily sipping iced drinks and making no attempt at conversation.

Gussie greeted them with a sombre look and Lorraine with a vague smile, and Nigel said crossly: ‘Had I known that you intended to spend the
entire
morning “fraternizing with indigenous personnel” as I believe it is termed among your countrymen, I should have gone home and sent the car back for you.
I
happen to have work to do, even though some people have not. I hope we can go now?'

He sulked the whole way home, but both Dany and Lash had too much on their minds to notice the fact, and Larry Dowling, who was the fourth passenger in their car, took one long reflective look at Dany and also relapsed into silence.

They found Tyson in good spirits but still as averse as ever to discussing any form of business, and on hearing that Lash and Dany were accompanying Seyyid Omar on a sight-seeing expedition that afternoon, he instantly announced that it was a damned good idea and that they could all go: it would give him a pleasant spell of peace and quiet.

‘Working, darling?' inquired Lorraine solicitously.

‘No. Sleeping! And I shall do it a damn sight better without people chattering and nattering all over the house. Last time Gussie was taken to the wells she was eight — and screamed the place down, as far as I remember! Time she saw 'em again.'

So they had all gone. Lash, Dany and Gussie Bingham in Seyyid Omar's great white car, and Nigel, Amalfi and Larry Dowling in one of the
Kivulimi
cars driven by Eduardo.

They stopped by the roadside in a forest of palms to drink coconut milk from the ripe nuts; explored a copra factory and saw a clove plantation; and leaving the cars in a small dusty side road, followed a narrow, winding track across a no-man's land of scrub and rocks and dried grasses, and came suddenly upon a hole in the ground where a flight of worn stone steps led down into darkness.

‘I don't think I like the look of it all,' said Gussie, shuddering and clutching nervously at Dany's arm. ‘Suppose we fall into the water and drown in the dark? Hasn't anyone got a torch?'

No one had. But there were matches and cigarette lighters, and Seyyid Omar assured them that there was not the least danger of anyone drowning, and that women from the little village where they had left the cars came here daily to draw water.

The steps led down into a huge underground cave where the light barely penetrated and smooth water-worn rocks sloped sharply downwards towards, not wells, but a spring of water or an underground stream that came up out of the darkness and disappeared again into a black rock tunnel.

Holding cautiously to each other so as not to slip and fall on the rocks, they ventured down to the edge of the spring, their voices echoing strangely through the shadowy vault, and Seyyid Omar told them that the water was supposed to be the continuation of a stream that fed one of the great lakes in Africa, and flowing on far under the sea bed, bubbled up briefly here in Zanzibar; to vanish again into the rock and the Indian Ocean.

‘I'm sure it's wildly interesting,' said Amalfi, ‘but let's go, shall we? I think it's dark and spooky and altogether rather gruesome, and personally, the sooner I get out of the place the better. What happens if the roof falls in?'

There was an unexpected note of shrillness in her voice, and instantly everyone looked up at the dark curve of rock overhead, and moved closer to each other, their feet slipping on the steep rock-face.

Eduardo said soothingly: ‘The roof will not fall in,
cara.
It is only a big cave. There are thousands of such places all over the world. But if it does not please you, we will go at once.'

‘Yes, do let's,' said Gussie, shuddering. ‘It's giving me claustrophobia.'

Within a few minutes they were out in the open air again. But it was not until two hours later, as the cars drew up before the gateway of the House of Shade, that Dany discovered that the white suede bag that she had carried had been neatly slit open with a sharp knife or a razor blade, and everything in it had gone.

17

‘I will see that it is reported at once to the police,' said Seyyid Omar.

He had invited Dany, Lash and Gussie to dine with him at a restaurant in the town, but Gussie having refused on the plea of tiredness they had dropped her at the House of Shade, and driven back to Zanzibar city under a green and lavender sky that was already freckled with pale stars.

‘No, for goodness sake, don't!' said Dany hastily. ‘The police have had enough of us. Besides, it isn't worth making a fuss about. There was nothing of any value in it. Only a handkerchief and a pair of sunglasses, and a powder compact and a lipstick. That sort of thing. And possibly about eightpence in English pennies!'

‘It must have been lifted by one of those picturesque characters in the village near the wells,' said Lash. ‘Darned disappointing for him. Though I guess his lady friends will get a load of fun out of smearing themselves with lipstick. It's a shame about the bag, though. I'll get you another one tomorrow. Souvenir of Zanzibar.'