Free Murder on Safari by Elspeth Huxley

exclaimed.
    “Of course, that’s it. Lucy was shot close to where I got the lion. Then Danny fired, a second after I did, and missed. The lion was only hit once.
    Danny’s bullet must have ricocheted off something, and hit poor Lucy. Chris, don’t you see?”
    <(
    ((
    The tent darkened momentarily and they all
    looked up, as though their necks had been
    manipulated by a single cord, to see de Mare in the opening of the tent. He took off his hat and
    walked with long, jerky strides to the table.
    “What’s the excitement, Gordon?” he asked.
    “Oh, my poor Danny,” Catchpole exclaimed,
    compassion in his voice. “It’s too awful for you.
    It’s one chance in a million, and it’s too cruel, but it must have happened. The shot you fired at the lion, the one that missed, was the fatal shot. You killed Lucy!”
    De Mare’s mouth tightened into a hard line and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
    It was a gesture of sudden selfcontrol.
    “Save your sympathy,” he said. “You might
    need it for yourself. If either of us shot her, it was you.”
    “But it couldn’t have been, Danny. It was my
    75
    bullet that killed the lion. Your gun-bearer brought it to me himself — he’d cut it out of the carcase. Look, I’ve got it here!”
    Catchpole dug his hand into his pocket and
    threw a twisted, shapeless scrap of metal on to the table. It was a spent bullet. “My rifle’s a .315,” he went on, “and that’s a .315 bullet. So it couldn’t have been my bullet that killed Lucy. It was
    yours.”
    “You did not shoot that lion,” de Mare said. He spoke slowly and distinctly. “I did. My job as a white hunter is to see that my clients shoot the animals they want to shoot, and have paid for on their licence. It they’re such damned bad shots they couldn’t hit the Albert Hall at twenty yards, I have to shoot the animals for them. But I have to be careful that they don’t know I’ve done it. That lion was killed by a bullet through the vertebrae of the neck at eighty yards while he was moving. Do you seriously think you could make a shot like that?”
    “But the bullet,” Gordon wailed. “They found
    my bullet!”
    “They found nothing of the sort,” de Mare said.
    “That bullet on the table was dug out of a zebra you shot a week ago. When I gave instructions to my gun-bearer about skinning the lion this morning, I gave him that bullet and told him to bring it to you, saying that he’d found it in the lion’s heart.
    You missed that lion completely. Your shot went high,”
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    Catchpole’s face was white and contorted. He gripped the edge of the table and looked as though he was going to cry.
    “I don’t believe it!” He stamped one foot on the ground.
    “I’d suggest that you call your gun-bearer to confirm that,” Vachell said.
    De Mare walked to an opening and bellowed
    “Japhet!” in the direction of the boys’ quarters.
    The gun-bearer came running — a tall, beefy
    African with an intelligent, friendly expression, who carried himself like a soldier. He was dressed in khaki shorts, a bush shirt, and sandals made from an old car tyre. He stood smartly at attention in the opening of the tent and said “Bwana,” in a crisp military tone.
    De Mare nodded to Vachell. “You ask the questions,”
    he said.
    “Listen, Japhet,” Vachell began. “Who shot the lion that died this morning?”
    “Bwana Danny shot it,” Japhet answered
    without hesitation.
    “And this other bwana, bwana Catchpole, did
    he shoot it also?”
    Japhet shook his head emphatically. “No.
    There were two shots, but only one bullet in the lion’s body.”
    “Did you see the bwanas fire?”
    “No, because I was walking through the bush
    close to the river, with a man who works as a tracker. Bwana Danny told me to stay close to the 77
    river so as to drive back the lion if he tried to escape in that direction, and then to walk up the gulley so as to drive him ahead. I was going slowly up the river