Free Death in Kenya by M. M. Kaye Page A

alive. I knew she never carried a gun, and it was getting dark; but it was only a short distance to the house and it seemed safe enough. I could even hear that damned piano! Oh well – what the hell’s the use of making excuses for oneself now? It’s done.’
    He wrenched savagely at the wheel as they swerved to avoid a stray goat, and accelerated as though speed afforded him escape from his thoughts.
    â€˜But there must have been some clues,’ persisted Victoria. ‘Footmarks – tracks – bloodstains. Something! ’
    â€˜You’ve been reading detective stories,’ remarked Drew satirically. ‘Possibly in books the body is not moved and no one mucks up the ground, but it’s apt to happen differently in real life. Your aunt wasn’t thinking of clues when she found her grandson’s wife dead in the garden. All she could think of was that she might possibly be alive, and she tried to carry her to the house. She almost managed it, too! But she had to fetch one of the house boys in the end, and by the time the D.C. and the doctor and Greg Gilbert and various other people arrived, the “scene of the crime” had been pretty well messed up.’
    Victoria said: ‘Didn’t they find anything, then?’
    â€˜Yes. They found a blood-stained cushion, belonging to one of the verandah chairs, in the long grass about twenty feet or so from where Mrs DeBrett’s body was found. It looked as though it had been thrown there. And they found some marks among the bushes that seemed to suggest that someone had been standing there for quite a time, presumably watching her. There’s a track that runs through the bushes and that links up at least three of the lakeside estates. It’s an unofficial short cut that the labour use, and that the Mau Mau undoubtedly used during the Emergency.’
    â€˜So it was a gang murder after all!’ said Victoria with a catch of the breath.
    â€˜Perhaps,’ said Drew. ‘But not on that evidence. Whoever had been watching from the bushes had never left them. The ground just there is pretty dusty, and it was obvious that he had merely turned and gone back the way he came.’

5
    The car had been singing down a long straight stretch of road when it brought up suddenly with a screech of tortured tyres, and an abruptness that jerked Victoria forward and narrowly missed bringing her head into violent contact with the windscreen.
    â€˜Sorry,’ said Mr Stratton, ‘but I believe that was a friend of mine.’
    He put the gear lever into reverse and backed some fifty yards through a dust cloud of his own making, to draw up alongside a stationary car that stood jacked up on the grassy verge where an African driver wrestled with a recalcitrant tyre.
    A tall European in shirtsleeves and wearing a green pork-pie hat jammed on the back of his head appeared from the other side of it, wiping dust and sweat off his face with a handkerchief, and came to lean his elbows on the window of Mr Stratton’s car:
    â€˜I might have known it,’ he remarked bitterly. ‘My God, Drew, the next time you do that I’ll have you up for dangerous driving and get you sixty days without the option if it’s the last thing I do! Didn’t you see me flagging you?’
    â€˜No,’ admitted Mr Stratton, unabashed. ‘My mind was on other things. Greg, you won’t have met Miss Caryll. Miss Caryll, this is Mr Gilbert, our local S.P. – Superintendent of Police, Naivasha.’
    Mr Gilbert reached across him and shook hands with Victoria. He was a long, lean man who except for the fact that his hair was streaked with grey at the temples did not appear to be much older than Mr Stratton. His square, pleasant face was less deeply sunburnt than Drew’s, and he possessed a pair of sleepy grey eyes that were anything but a true guide to his character and capabilities.
    â€˜You must be Lady Emily’s