Free Murder on Safari by Elspeth Huxley Page B

of the tent where he had been standing, his jaw thrust out and his fists clenched. “If you’re suggesting that I 80
    had anything to do with this — ” he said, and stopped.
    Gordon Catchpole hit the table with the flat
    palm of his hand. “I’m not suggesting anything!”
    he said hysterically. “You’re all suggesting things.
    First Danny says I never shot the lion at all, and now Vachell tries to make out that I sneaked off and killed Lucy when Danny wasn’t looking. I
    won’t stand it, I tell you, I won’tV
    “Take it easy, Sir Gordon,” Vachell said. “No one’s picking on you.” He turned to Paula, who was sitting, stiff and scared, rigidly in her chair.
    “Did you hear those two shots here in camp this morning?” he asked.
    She shook her head, “No, not those. That is, I don’t think so. I wasn’t listening.”
    “The camp’s up-wind of where we got the lion,”
    de Mare put in. “I don’t think you’d be likely to hear the shots up here.”
    “What time was it,” Vachell asked slowly,
    “when you heard the other shot?”
    Paula ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed hard. “I never said I heard another shot,”
    she said in a dry voice. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
    “What the hell has it got to do with you?”
    Rutley demanded. His fists were still clenched and his jaw thrust forward. “You keep out of this.”
    Vachell turned and looked at him steadily. His face was grave and set.
    “You thought I came up from Marula to replace Englebrecht,” he said. “Well, I didn’t. I’m a 81
    detective from the Chania C.I.D. I was called here by Lady Baradale to investigate the theft of her jewels three days ago. Now it’s turned into a murder case, and there’s going to be an investigation.
    From now on, I’m in charge.”
    82

CHAPTER
NINE
    Shadows from the thorn trees were lying in dark bars across the bleached pale-green grass, and the evening light was clear and golden, when Vachell finished his investigation on the spot. The storm had spent itself in the west, and the sun was setting like a shining dove in a fleecy nest of red and violet shreds of cloud over the hills towards Malabeya.
    The examination yielded negative results.
    Vachell ruled out a ricochet from Catchpole’s rifle, for there were no rocks or trees so placed as to deflect the bullet. Nor, apparently, could the possibility that Catchpole had shot Lady Baradale deliberately be entertained. De Mare had picked out, without hesitation, the place where they stood to fire at the lion across the gulley; and from this spot Lady Baradale, advancing through the bush, would have been invisible. A rocky knoll on the right cut off the view. In any case, Catchpole had been slightly in the lead, and if he had swung his 83
    rifle round to aim at a target to his right, de Mare could not have failed to see the movement. The hunter was emphatic on this point. As for de
    Mare, since his bullet had been recovered from the lion’s backbone it could not, obviously, have killed his employer as well.
    “God, what a mess,” de Mare commented as
    they walked back together towards the camp. “If I hadn’t seen the bullet-hole in her skull with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. How can a woman be shot without any one hearing the
    report? It isn’t possible.”
    “There isn’t any evidence to show where she
    was when the killer shot her,” Vachell reminded him. “Dead bodies get shifted around.”
    “I suppose so. But it’s a bit of a coincidence that it should be shifted so close to that lion.”
    “I don’t care for coincidences in a murder case.
    Maybe this isn’t one.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “How do you ever find a dead body in the
    African bush?” Vachell countered.
    “By the vultures, in the daytime,” de Mare
    answered promptly, “if you find it at all.”
    “Right. Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that Lady Baradale was shot some place else, and the killer just left the body where it lay.