Death in Zanzibar (5 page)

Dany stopped: suddenly realizing that someone had got into her room without a key, and hidden a gun there. The balcony
____
? the fire-escape
____
?

Lash said: ‘Now relax. Just sit right down and have another slug of rye. Looks like you could use one. No? Well I certainly could. You've got me all confused. Chicago was never like this!'

Dany said: ‘Then — then it wasn't you. All that mess. I thought it was meant to be a joke, but it was someone looking for my passport. I — I don't understand. Why should anyone want to steal my passport?'

‘Probably to use,' said Lash. ‘Very useful things, passports. You can't go any place without 'em these days. Some dame may have needed one badly, and thought yours would fill the bill. Or else someone wants to stop you catching this plane.'

He paused for a drink, and then said meditatively. ‘You know, that's quite an idea — taking that gun into account. Know what I think? I think someone saw you leave this Honeyball's house, and decided that you'd make a very useful red-herring. Probably saw you coming away as he went in, and
____
Say, how did you get back to town yesterday?'

‘By train. The 12.5.'

‘Well, there you are. Simple! He bumps off this guy, takes what he wants from the safe, and beats it for the station. And who does he see on the platform but a dame who he knows was visiting this solicitor only a few minutes before he was there himself. If he can only play his trump card, it may keep the police dogs baying on the wrong trail for long enough to let him get clear. So he follows you up to town, works out a way of planting that gun among your undies to make the thing foolproof, and
____
Has that room of yours got a balcony?'

‘Yes. But I don't think
____
'

‘Too easy. The dam' things connect. And there's a fire-escape somewhere. He plants his little time bomb, and then suddenly notices that your bags are lying all over the place covered with air labels — seems you're lighting out for foreign parts. That washes you out as a red-herring, so where does he go from here? Easy: fixes it so you can't leave! No passport, no foreign parts; and there must be a passport around somewhere. He turns the joint upside down until he finds it, pockets the thing and lights out. You are now not only tied by the leg but, what with the newspaper accounts and the fact that you were in this Honeydew's house within the time limit — and that gun and no passport! — it's a cinch you'll panic and start behaving in a manner likely to arouse suspicion in a babe of three: which will be just dandy. How's that for a piece of masterly deduction? Brilliant, if you ask me. The F.B.I. don't know what they missed when father's boy followed him into the business!'

He put down his glass and sat down rather suddenly on the end of his bed, and Dany gazed back at him dazedly. She had taken in very little of what he had said, because her mind was filled with only one distracting thought: she could not catch the plane! She would have to stay here and face the police and questions and inquests and newspaper men, and the scandalized disapproval of Aunt Harriet who would, understandably, feel that all her dire predictions as to the fatal consequences of independence had been fully justified. She was caught!

‘No!' said Dany on a sob. ‘Oh
no!
I can't stay here. I won't. I
will
go to Zanzibar. They shan't stop me. But — but they can if I haven't got a passport! What am I going to do? Oh
why
did I ever telephone Mr Honeywood? Why did I ever change the times? If I'd only gone in the afternoon instead!'

‘And found the body? You wouldn't have liked that.'

‘It would have been better than this! Far,
far
better. Can't you do something?'

‘Such as what?' demanded Lash reasonably. ‘Call up the cops? That would be one helluva help! Now just shut up and let me think for a minute. I don't know how you expect anyone to think while you're carrying on in this uninhibited manner. Hush, now!'

He helped himself to another drink and relapsed into frowning silence while Dany struggled with an overwhelming desire to burst into tears, and was only restrained from this course by a strong suspicion that Mr Lashmer J. Holden, Jnr, was quite capable of boxing her ears should she try it.

She sat down weakly on the nearest chair, her brain feeling as numb and useless as wet cotton wool. The whole thing was impossible and horrible and fantastic: she must be dreaming and she would wake up suddenly and find herself back in her snug, safe bedroom at
Glyndarrow.
This could not be happening …

But it was Lashmer J. Holden, Jnr, who woke up.

‘I've got it!' he announced. ‘By God, what it is to have a brain! Can you type?'

‘Yes,' said Dany, bewildered.

‘What about shorthand?'

‘A — a little.'

‘Secretarial college?'

‘No. Class at school. Why
____
'

‘Never mind. It'll have to do. O.K. Consider yourself engaged.'

‘W-
what!
' gasped Dany.

‘Oh — in a purely secretarial capacity. Nothing personal. I'm through with women. Now listen, kid; here's the layout — and is it a lily! If someone thinks they're going to use you as a red-herring to cover up their own get-away, let's wreck the scheme. I've been travelling with a secretary — Miss Kitchell. But Ada has developed mumps, and I haven't so far been able to get hold of a suitable substitute who possesses a valid passport and the necessary visas and forms and whathaveyou to enable her to leave pronto. So what do we do? We take you!'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Dany crossly. ‘You know quite well that I haven't got a passport either! That's the whole point.'

Mr Holden made an impatient noise that is normally rendered in print as
‘Tcha!'

‘Use your brain, girl! I'm not taking you as you. I shall take you as Miss Kitchell. You aren't too unlike her. Height about right. Eyes roughly the right colour. Shape a whole lot better, but they don't include that in the photograph. She's older of course, and her hair's red, but she wears glasses and a fringe and about a million curls. The thing's a gift! We dye your hair red — it's a pity, but one must suffer for one's art — get it fringed and frizzed
à la
Ada and buy you a pair of glasses. It's a cinch!'

‘But — but … No! it isn't possible! She won't agree.'

‘She won't be asked,' said Mr Holden firmly. ‘I have all her documents right here in a brief-case with my own, and all the files and things we need. She sent 'em to me along with the bad news, and forgot to take her own stuff out. So there we are. Masterly, I think. And what's more it will enable me to put a long-cherished theory to the test.'

‘What theory?' asked Dany faintly.

‘That no one ever yet looked like the photograph on their passport, and that anyway no official ever really glances at the thing. Well, we shall know tomorrow.'

‘We can't do it,' protested Dany, though with less conviction. ‘We can't possibly do it!'

‘Why not?'

‘Well — there's this secretary of Tyson's — Nigel Ponting. He's meeting the plane at Nairobi, and he's bound to have seen photographs of me, and
____
'

‘By the time I've finished with you,' said Mr Holden blithely, ‘you will have ceased to resemble any photograph ever taken. Except possibly the libel that is pasted to Ada's passport, and that only remotely. And he will not be expecting you, because we will cover that contingency by sending your parents an express cable to say ‘Sorry. Delayed — writing.' That'll hold 'em! As for this Ponting, he is an elegant tulip of the precious and scented variety that your great and glorious country has suddenly taken to breeding like rabbits. A pain — no kidding. I met him last time your step-father was in the States, and I can assure you he wouldn't know one girl from the next. One of those. So
phooey
to Ponting. You don't have to worry about him.'

‘Well…' began Dany hesitantly; and was caught in another spasm of panic and doubt. ‘No! No, I can't. We couldn't!'

‘What's to stop us? They can't give us more than a two-year stretch at Sing Sing — or Borstal, or wherever they send you in this country. And what are two years among so many? Haven't you British any guts?'

There was a sudden angry sparkle in Dany's grey eyes, and her chin lifted. ‘All right. I'll do it.'

‘That's the girl,' approved Mr Holden, and helped himself to another drink.

‘I can't think,' he said, ‘why I don't write for a living instead of publishing the puerile efforts of lesser minds. It's all here — brains, dash, fertility of invention and a frank approach to the problems of daily life. What are you just sitting there for? Get going, girl! Jump to it!'

‘What am I supposed to do?' inquired Dany, startled.

‘Well, pack I guess. You've got to get out of here before the cops catch up on you, so the sooner you check out the better. Get the girl at the desk to call up and cancel your seat on the plane and to send off that cable. That'll help. And tell the room girl and the hall porter and anyone else you meet that you've just heard that your bedridden old grandmother is dangerously ill in Manchester or Aberdeen or some place, and you're having to cancel your trip and rush to her side. Ask the hall porter to get you a taxi to go to whatever station it is where trains leave for the wilds of Caledonia.'

‘King's Cross, I think,' said Dany.

‘O.K. King's Cross. And when you get there, grab a porter and get him to put your bags in the checkroom, and I'll meet you in the booking hall in an hour and a half's time. Think you can make it?'

‘I'll try.'

‘Try, nothing! You'll make it or else. If there's one thing that makes me madder than a hornet it's women who keep one waiting around. I've put up with plenty of that in the past, but no more of it for L. J. Holden, Jnr. No sir! Not from now on. Besides, there won't be much time to waste. We have a stiff itinerary before us. Check you in at another hotel, change all your baggage labels, find an intelligent hairdresser and buy a pair of spectacles, for a start. So the sooner you get going the better. See you at King's Cross at 11 a.m. sharp. And mind, I'm not waiting there for ever! Ten minutes is my limit.'

It was, in actual fact, twenty. But he was still there, and in excellent spirits — in every meaning of the words.

‘I'm sorry I'm late,' apologized Dany breathlessly, ‘but as I was checking out I saw him again — at least it may not have been, but I thought
____
'

‘Saw who?' demanded Lash, confused.

‘The African — or whatever he is. I told you I passed one when I was leaving Mr Honeywood's. No, it couldn't possibly have been the same one I suppose. I'm being silly. But he was talking to the man at the desk about some letters, and it gave me such a jolt that I forgot I'd left a coat in the ladies' room, and so of course I had to go back and fetch it, and that made me late. I was afraid you would have left.'

‘Another two minutes, and your fears would have proved well founded. But a mish ish as good as a — A miss ish — Oh, well; the hell with it! Let's go.'

He hailed a porter, retrieved Dany's suitcases from the left-luggage office where they had been deposited only a few minutes previously, and half an hour later she was sitting in front of a large looking-glass, swathed in a peach-coloured overall, while Mr Holden explained breezily to a giggling blonde hairdresser's assistant the details of Miss Ada Kitchell's coiffure.

‘He's a one, isn't he? Your gentleman friend,' said the blonde, dunking Dany's head into a basin. ‘In films, are you dear? Must be ever so interesting. Ever been a red-head before? No? Well I expect it'll make a nice change. You won't know yourself.'

‘Not bad,' said Lash, viewing the result some time later: ‘Not bad at all. Though I can't say that it's an improvement. Definitely a retrograde step. Or is that because I'm seeing two of you? Never mind — you can't have too much of a good thing. Let's eat.'

They had eaten at a small restaurant in a side-street near the hairdresser's shop. Or rather Dany had eaten while Mr Holden had confined himself to drinking. And later that day he had deposited her at a sedate family hotel in Gloucester Road, with instructions to keep to her room and not to panic. He would, he said, call for her on the following morning on his way to the Air Terminal, and he regretted his inability to entertain her further, but he had a date that evening. In fact, several.

‘You won't oversleep, or anything dreadful?' said Dany anxiously, suddenly terrified by a vision of being abandoned — alone, red-headed and masquerading as Miss Ada Kitchell — in darkest Gloucester Road.

‘Certainly not,' said Mr Holden, shocked. ‘You don't suppose that I intend to waste valuable time in going to sleep, do you? In the words of some poet or other, I am going to “cram the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of drinking done”. Or know the reason why!'

‘But you didn't have any sleep
last
night,' protested Dany, worried.

‘What's that got to do with it? Tomorrow is another day. Be seeing you, sister.'

Dany passed the remainder of the day in solitude and acute anxiety, and crept out at dusk to buy the evening papers. But a fire in a large London store, a train crash in Italy, another revolution in South America and the fifth marriage of a well-known film star, had combined to push the murder of Mr Henry Honeywood off the front pages and into small type.

There were no further details, and with repetition the accounts lost much of their horror for Dany, and became more remote and impersonal. Which soothed her conscience somewhat, though not her fears, for there had been nothing either remote or impersonal about the gun that had been hidden in her room at the Airlane. Or in the fact that someone had stolen her passport! The whole thing might sound like an impossible nightmare, but it had happened. And to her — Dany Ashton. Oh, if only — if
only
she had gone to see Mr Honeywood at the proper time!