Free The African Poison Murders by Elspeth Huxley Page B

been in the schoolroom until a boy came to summon her to Mrs Munson; and then she had heard the news. She remembered seeing Munson in the distance by the cowsheds when she 77
    first went out, but not to speak to; and that was all she knew.
    Roy Munson suddenly became embarrassed when Vachell asked him how he had spent the prebreakfast interlude. He wriggled and looked at the table and then at Miss Adams with a mute appeal for help. Beneath his freckles he was pale and his eyes were wide with alarm at the terrors of the morning. He was a well-built, sturdy lad, tall for his age. It seemed more of a mystery than ever that such unprepossessing parents should have given rise to such a promising product.
    Miss Adams smiled at him and said: “I don’t think you need worry, Roy. Mr Vachell won’t give you away.”
    With the children she seemed a different person from the defensive, awkward young woman he had seen at the Wests’. Her manner had softened and lost its prickles; the difference was that of a fish swimming in its native pond and a fish gasping on the bank. From their manner it was clear that the children, Roy anyway, liked her in return.
    “Well, I was out shooting,” Roy said defensively.
    “Say, that’s something,” Vachell remarked, deeply impressed. “What did you use? An air-gun?”
    Roy wriggled his shoulders again. “No, bow and arrows, but a proper real one, like the Dorobo have.
    Only don’t tell dad or …”
    Roy broke off and paused, horror-struck at what he had said. “I mean …”
    78
    “I won’t say a word to anyone,” Vachell promised.
    “What kind of game do you go after?”
    “Well, only birds so far, pigeons — but when I’m a good enough shot Arawak’s promised to make me a bigger one and I can get buck, duikers and bushbuck even, and one day I shall hunt buffaloes.
    The Dorobo do, you know, or at least they used to.
    Arawak’s father shot lots. So far I haven’t hit anything but I’ve only had it a week, and I can’t practise much as they’d take it away from me if they found out.”
    “This Arawak is a Dorobo mole-catcher who lives on the farm,” Miss Adams explained. “He made Roy a bow and arrows just like his own, only smaller.
    But please don’t tell Mrs Munson or I shall get into awful trouble. She’d be furious if she knew.”
    Vachell remembered hearing about Dorobo people; they were a small bright-eyed race of hunters who belonged to the forest and lived on honey and game. In the old days they had been adepts at killing elephant and buffalo with poisoned arrows and at trapping smaller beasts in pits. Now the Government had forbidden such pursuits, especially the use of poisoned arrows, and the Dorobo had left the forest, for the most part, to live on farms by catching moles and scaring birds and performing other light tasks.
    Roy and Theo had gone in search of pigeons that morning up behind the pyrethrum shed, where juniper and olive-trees stood among the park-like pastures. They were quite certain that they had 79
    caught no glimpse of their father, nor of anyone else except one or two natives, whom they knew, going down towards the pyrethrum.
    Vachell asked them to take him up there, and to show him where they had done their hunting that morning. They started out with enthusiasm, forgetting, with the resilience of childhood, the dreadful, half-comprehended things that had happened that day.
    “We’d better take the bow and arrows,” Roy suggested with transparent innocence, “if you want to see exactly what we did. I can show you which trees the pigeons we shot at were in.”
    The weapons were kept concealed in the mashroom behind a bin of kibbled maize.
    “Mr Munson never comes — came in here,”
    Anita Adams explained. “Mrs Munson does occasionally — she’s got a key — but we didn’t think she’d be likely to move the bin. It wasn’t safe to keep the weapons anywhere in the house.” All three had the air of conspirators; the secret drew