Free Murder on Safari by Elspeth Huxley Page A

when I heard the rifle speak twice, very close together, and I ran up quickly, and I saw the lion lying in the grass — quite dead.”
    “You only heard the rifle speak twice?”
    “Yes, twice only. The first time very close, and the second time very near to it. Then I stayed with the lion to drive away the vultures and the tracker went back to camp to fetch the skinners. The skinners came and did their work, and I found the
    bullet from bwana Danny’s rifle in the neck.”
    “Was that the bullet you brought to bwana
    Catchpole, and said was his?”
    “No, bwana.” Japhet shook his head. “Bwana
    Danny told me to throw away the bullet that killed the lion, and to bring instead a bullet that he gave me, and that had been fired from bwana Catchpole’s gun. So I smeared it with the lion’s blood,
    and then I took it to bwana Catchpole, and I said what I had been told to say.”
    “Are you positive that the bullet you found in the lion’s neck was from bwana Danny’s gun?”
    “Yes, bwana,” Japhet spoke emphatically, and
    his voice rose several keys. “Have I not been bwana Danny’s gun-bearer for ten years? Have I not cleaned his rifle every day, and seen him kill many, many animals — lions, elephants, and
    buffaloes?”
    “Have you got the bullet still?”
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    Japhet hesitated and looked rather embarrassed.
    Then he grinned, showing a fine array of white pointed teeth. “Yes, I kept it because a bullet that has killed a lion brings strength and good luck to the owner.”
    5╗
    “Show it to me, then.
    Japhet groped in the breast pocket of his shirt and extracted a slug of metal, which he handed to his interrogator. Its tip was slightly flattened from impact with the bone but its shape was intact, and Vachell had no difficulty in establishing that it was of the same bore as a cartridge from de Mare’s pocket which fitted the hunter’s MannlicherSchonnauer .375 magazine rifle.
    “I guess that proves the story,” Vachell said.
    De Mare nodded dismissal to Japhet. The gun
    bearer turned on his heel like an askari and left the tent.
    “I’m sorry, Gordon,” de Mare said. “But you
    needn’t worry. That’s one of the commonest
    hunter’s tricks on this sort of safari. We all do it on occasion. And it couldn’t have been your bullet that killed Lady Baradale. You fired straight ahead across the gulley and her — remains were found a hundred yards to the right, up the slope.”
    “Were you with Sir Gordon all morning?”
    Vachell asked the hunter.
    “Yes, after we left camp a little before ten. We tracked the lion from the kill and beat the gulleys for about an hour and a half, I should think, before we got a shot. You and Chris flew over the 79
    hippo pool, quite close to us, about five minutes after we got him — that ought to help you fix the time. Lucky it wasn’t five minutes before, incidentally; you made an awful racket starting up the
    engine. After we shot him, we hung about taking measurements and so forth for a bit, and we got back to camp between twelve and half past. We were together all the time.”
    “And you didn’t hear another shot?”
    De Mare shook his head. “No, I can swear to
    that.”
    “Do you confirm that statement, Sir Gordon?
    You were with de Mare all morning?”
    “Of course I was with Danny every instant^ Catchpole exclaimed, “and I know I didn’t hear another shot. Your mind is full of the most degrading innuendoes! I don’t see what it’s got to do with you, either. I think you’re being absolutely horrid.”
    “Not I,” Vachell said. “There’s some one else around here who’s being horrid.”
    “Yes, but that’s no reason to pick on me,”
    Catchpole complained. “I didn’t shoot poor Lucy.
    Since no one heard another shot, she couldn’t have been killed there, could she? No one saw her after she left Rutley at the drift. We’ve only got
    Rutley’s word for it that she ever went to the drift at all.”
    Rutley stepped forward from the side