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

niece,’ said Mr Gilbert. ‘She told me you were coming out, but I understood that she’d sent a cable to stop you.’
    â€˜Yes, I know. I didn’t get it. I——’
    â€˜Do you want a lift, Greg?’ cut in Mr Stratton, brusquely interrupting the sentence.
    The S.P. threw him a quick look of surprise. ‘Are you in a hurry?’ he enquired.
    â€˜Not particularly, but Miss Caryll could probably do with something to eat. Her plane was late. Where do you want to be dropped?’
    â€˜Same place as Miss Caryll. Flamingo. ’
    â€˜Oh. Anything new cropped up?’
    â€˜Not much,’ admitted the S.P. climbing into the back of the car. He called out a few instructions to his driver and sat back, urging Mr Stratton to abstain from doing more than fifty: ‘My nerves are shot to pieces. I thought we’d finished with this sort of thing for the time being, and I find it pretty exhausting when it crops up again. Old James has gone straight in off the deep end. I’ve never known him to be in such a bad temper. He bit my head off this morning for making some innocuous remark about the weather.’
    â€˜Where was this?’ asked Drew, re-starting the car.
    â€˜Up at the Lab. They’d been doing a test on that ruddy verandah cushion.’
    â€˜Any results?’
    â€˜Oh, Alice’s of course. Or same blood group, anyway. It was unlikely to be anyone else’s. But it was just as well to make sure. Odd, though.’
    He tilted his hat over his nose, and closed his eyes. Victoria twisted round in her seat to face him, and as though he were aware of the movement he opened them again and said: ‘I must apologize for talking shop, but I’m afraid you’re in for a lot of this. In fact you couldn’t have chosen a worse time to arrive, and I wish I could suggest that you turn right round and go back again; though I can see that it is hardly practicable.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t go if it was,’ said Victoria with decision.
    â€˜Why not?’ enquired Drew shortly.
    Victoria turned her head to look at him, aware for the first time that his antagonism was personal and not a mere matter of irritation or bad temper. She said coldly: ‘I should have thought it was obvious. If my aunt needed someone to help her before, she must need it even more now.’
    She met his gaze with a hostility that equalled his own, and then deliberately turned her shoulder to him and gave her attention to the view.
    The road wound and dipped through hot sunlight and chequered shadows, and swinging to the right came out abruptly on to the crest of a huge escarpment. And there below them, spread out at their feet like a map drawn upon yellowed parchment, lay the Great Rift. A vast golden valley of sun-bleached grass, speckled by scrub and flat-topped thorn trees, and seamed with dry gullies; hemmed in to left and right by the two great barriers of the Kinangop and the Mau, and dominated by the rolling lava falls and cold, gaping crater of Longonot, standing sentinel at its gate.
    Nothing has changed! thought Victoria. But she knew that was not true. The passing of a handful of years might have made little difference, superficially, to the Rift, but everything else had changed. And looking out over that stupendous view she was dismayed to find that her eyes were full of tears.
    At the foot of the escarpment the road ceased to wind and twist. The forests of cedar and wild olive fell away, and the car touched ninety miles an hour and held it on the long straight ribbon of tarmac that the Italian prisoners-of-war had built in the war years, until at last they could see the shining levels of Lake Naivasha.
    â€˜Might I suggest,’ said Mr Gilbert gently, breaking a silence that had lasted for some considerable time, ‘that you slow down to sixty before you take the turn? I have no wish to provide Naivasha with two funerals within twenty-four hours, and