The Crocodile's Last Embrace Read online

  “Oooh!” said Helen. “The girl on page one hundred ninety-four is resuscitating a man by pressing on his back with Schafer’s system.” She peered at the illustration again. “He has no shirt on.” She slapped the book shut. “We must take his shirt off first.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Elspeth.

  “No!” snapped Mary. “This is my uncle. You can’t take his shirt off. It wouldn’t be proper. Besides, that’s for drowning victims.”

  “Then we must check for broken bones and bandage him up,” said Elspeth. She knelt down and started feeling Holly’s legs, starting at the calf and working up to the thighs.

  At that point, Mr. Holly stirred. “I say, where am I?” he muttered as he struggled to sit up despite the three young ladies doing their best to push him back down in a prone position.

  “Mary, give your uncle some water,” said Beverly. “The rest of you, please allow Mr. Holly some air.”

  Mary held the canteen for her uncle while the other two girls stepped back, their faces downcast. Jade couldn’t decide if they were more disappointed at not being able to practice their nursing skills or at not getting his shirt off. Elspeth and Helen were clearly interested in more than his health.

  Thank heaven Emily didn’t come with them.

  “Can you get up, Mr. Holly?” Jade asked. “We’ve got a car here to get you back to camp.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Jolly good of you to think of a car. Dreadful walk, that.”

  Then why did you go so far? Jade kept her questions to herself. Better to wait until she could talk to him alone. The girls, however, peppered him.

  “What happened?” “Did you fall?” “Were you lost?” “Why did you wander off?”

  Holly put a hand to his forehead and groaned. “Please, girls. Not now. I have the most horrid headache. So thirsty. Mouth feels as if I ate sand.”

  “You’re dehydrated,” said Beverly. “Come along. You can lie down in the back on a blanket.”

  They led Holly out and assisted him into the rear storage bed of the Overland. Biscuit climbed into the back and stretched out next to him. The three girls piled in next to the cheetah and Beverly took her place behind the wheel. “Come along, Jade,” she called.

  “Coming,” Jade replied. But she took a moment to look around Harry’s front room. The dust on the floorboards lay thick in spots, but there were more footprints than just those made by the girls and Holly, some leading to a back storage room, which, if she remembered correctly, also led outside to the separate kitchen. Jade was about to step into what had been Harry’s bedroom of his two-room house when she heard the car horn honk.

  She stepped out of the house and waved at Bev before replacing the door bar. Jade had been at Harry’s house only once, but she remembered him having a good well and pump in the far corner. It was still there. Why hadn’t Holly seen that if he needed water?

  “Just a moment,” Jade called. She trotted over to the pump and noticed the damp soil beneath it. When she took hold of the handle and pumped, water came out after only two primings, hardly what she’d expect if it hadn’t been used in a long while.

  “Everything in order?” asked Beverly.

  “I think a rat ate the fan belt,” Jade replied, with an eye on the girls. She hadn’t used the phrase since their days in the Hackett-Lowther ambulance corps. That event had actually happened once, and the phrase had become a code for something inexplicably amiss.

  “Indeed?” Bev replied. She arched her brows. “Do you know how large a rat it was? Perhaps only a mouse?” She put the Overland in gear.

  “By the marks, I’d say a big one.”

  “Well, we’ll have to flush it out then. Shall we?” said Bev. She focused her attention on turning the car around and driving back along the rough trail.

  Jade folded her arms across her chest. Message delivered and understood.

  Beverly took the rough terrain slowly and by the time they made it back to camp, the girls had wrapped bandages around Holly’s head.

  “In case he had a concussion when he fell,” explained Helen.

  “Help Miss Emily and your friends with dinner,” ordered Beverly, sending the three would-be nursemaids out of the way.

  “I’ll feed Pepper,” said Mary. She carried the caged bird over to her tent.

  “Leopold’s an ass!”

  “Lovely girls,” said Holly as he rubbed the bandages.

  “Knock off the pretense, Mr. Holly,” said Jade. She kept her voice low so the girls wouldn’t overhear, but it sounded more like a growl. Biscuit detected it and positioned himself beside her, his golden eyes fixed on Holly. “You’re not injured, so I want to know what in the name of holy Moses’ compass is going on. Why did you wander off so far? Why did you leave the dress on the tree? Why did you pretend to be dehydrated when you’d obviously been at the well?” She punctuated each question with another step closer to him until she was within a few inches of his face.

  Holly backed up two steps, tripped on a rock behind him, and fell down, Jade and Biscuit looming over him. He glanced towards Beverly for support, but she folded her arms in front of her and tapped her foot.

  Holly scrambled to his feet and dusted off his rear. Then, pulling himself to his full height, he stuck out his chin in defiance. “I don’t believe I deserve or appreciate this interrogation. I told you that someone threatened my life. When you made it clear that my presence around the camp was a danger to the girls, I took it upon myself to distance myself from them. I’ll admit that I had no idea where I was going. I believe I’d heard of some old ranches in the area and hoped to come across one sooner than later.”

  He tugged on the bandages around his head and pulled them off in one lump. “It was quite frightening, if you must know. I had no firearm.”

  “So you intended to hide out in one of the old ranches,” Jade said. “Then why advertise yourself by leaving the disguise scattered on your trail like so many bread crumbs?”

  Holly flung the bandages onto the ground. “I suppose it was rather unconsciously done. I must have thought I might get lost and have to find my own way back.”

  “But instead you found an empty house. What were you doing on the floor? Why pretend to be in a faint when we found you?”

  “I believe I passed out from dehydration.”

  “Was that before or after you visited the well pump?” asked Jade. Her expression of bored disbelief did nothing to put Holly at ease.

  “I . . . I have no recollection of any well pump. I barely recall the house.”

  “Then that cigarette on the floor must have been someone else’s,” mused Jade. “Were you meeting someone there?”

  Holly’s pale face blanched even whiter. “No, I was completely alone. I swear. That was my cigarette. I remember now. I had been smoking it when I got there. Must have fallen out of my hands when I fell.”

  “You’re very lucky it didn’t burn the house down around you then,” said Jade. “You’re without your disguise now, though. You’d better lie low in the back of the Overland and decide where we can take you tomorrow.”

  She turned away from him as though she’d just dismissed an underling. Holly shuffled over to the campfire to sit down.

  “Into the Overland, Mr. Holly,” said Beverly. “We’ll bring you supper.”

  He glowered at Bev and crawled into the backseat of the newer car.

  “What was that all about, Jade? I don’t recall seeing any cigarette stub.”

  “There was none. But did you see how he backpedaled to cover his tracks when he thought we found one? He met someone there, or planned to, and he’s lying about it.”

  “Or knows someone was there before him,” suggested Beverly. “Maybe he was waiting for this person to return when he heard us.”

  “And fell into his fake faint to avoid suspicion? Either way, he’s up to something. Someone had used that well pump recently. That’s why I didn’t tell him we had his disguise. It’s an excuse to keep him shut away in the moto
rcar. I wish I could lock him in there.”

  “What shall we do, Jade? It’s nearly sundown. I don’t care to take him back to Nairobi tonight.”

  Jade shook her head. “No. But we had better take turns at the watch tonight. Do you think Emily could take a shift?”

  Beverly shrugged. “If I ask her to, yes, but she’s so besotted by Mr. Holly that he could convince her of anything.”

  “Then it’s up to us, Bev. I wish I had some coffee. I need something to help me stay awake.” She rummaged through the supplies and pulled out her tin of South African tea.

  “You could drink some of our black tea instead. It keeps Avery awake,” said Beverly. Her nose wrinkled as Jade opened the can. “Are you certain that your tin hasn’t molded? It smells much stronger than ours does.”

  Jade took a whiff and felt that same inexplicable sensation of danger tingle along her arms and legs and prickle at her neck that she’d felt when Hascombe had been in camp. “You know I hate ordinary tea, Bev. You should have considered that when you took away my coffee. I meant to ask you about . . .” She stopped when she saw Beverly’s wide-eyed look of alarm.

  “I didn’t take your coffee, Jade.”

  Jade capped the tin and dropped it onto the ground. “Then who did?”

  CHAPTER 13

  The massive teeth, as horrid and large as they are,

  are not used to bite off meat, but to clamp down and hold.

  The crocodile resorts to drowning its prey.

  —The Traveler

  EVERY HOUR OF THE NIGHT WATCH felt like three. Emily had volunteered for part of the watch, so Jade gave her from nine until midnight, but noticed that Beverly kept her company for the last two hours before taking her own shift. The two chatted softly as one might expect of two sisters, their conversation punctuated by occasional laughter. Jade knew in her heart that Bev was staying up so that Jade wouldn’t worry about Emily on guard and could catch at least a few hours of sleep. But Jade, restless and ill at ease, relieved her yawning friend at one o’clock instead of three and held the long dawn watch with only Biscuit for company.

  She couldn’t have asked for a better ally. The cat, though not nocturnal by nature, had a keen sense of hearing that more than made up for a lack of predatory night vision. Twice during the night he growled softly when an elephant trumpeted from across the Athi. And he heard Holly stir from the Overland before she did.

  “Only going to see to nature’s call,” Holly said grumpily when Jade stood by the fire watching him, her rifle cradled across her arms. Biscuit accompanied him at Jade’s command of “Guard,” escorting the man back to the vehicle before rejoining her. Only when the sun rose and the camp stirred did Biscuit trot off into the brush to find some unsuspecting breakfast.

  Biscuit had returned and was eating his usual ground bird as Bev rousted up the girls and Emily. She was assigning them breakfast duty when a Kikuyu man ran into camp. Jade recognized him as one of the men from Jelani’s village.

  “Memsahib Simba Jike,” he said between deep gulps of air. “You must come to village,” he continued in Swahili.

  Jade answered in the same language. “Why?”

  “Bwana Nyati very sick. Speaks out of head.”

  “Spit fire!” Jade swore in English before replying in Swahili, “I am coming.” She expected the man to wait for her, but he simply turned and ran back to his village, splashing across the shallows of the river on the way.

  Beverly joined her. “Is there trouble?” she asked softly.

  Jade nodded. “Harry’s sick at the village. Sounds like he’s raving.”

  “Malaria?”

  Jade paused, remembering his visit. “No, I don’t think so. He drank my tea. A lot of it all at once, and it had brewed even longer than usual.”

  Beverly gasped. “Your tea was poisoned!”

  “I’d bet my rifle on it now. It would certainly go a long way towards explaining my recent hallucinations.” She knew it didn’t explain her vision of David in France, but at present, she wasn’t ready to deal with that. Jade looked long and hard at the old Overland, where Holly still lay in the back. She could hear his soft snores through the closed doors. “I’m taking him with me. I don’t trust him out of my sight right now.”

  “I could have the girls bandage him up like a mummy,” Beverly suggested.

  The image brought a smile to Jade’s face. “Tempting, but you have enough to deal with without him.”

  Bev nodded, a coy smile playing on her lips. “These little darlings? But what are you going to do about Harry? He should have a proper doctor.”

  “Who? Dr. Mathews is away. I don’t know Dr. Dymant well enough. Most of the others are in the government’s employ, except for Burkitt, and his solution would probably be to dump Harry in the river to shock him out of it. Besides, none of them are here. I’d rather trust Jelani’s skills right now.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bev raced back to the supplies and returned with a box of her black tea and a tin of crackers. “At least see if you can get some of this down him.”

  “I might not be back before it’s time to take the girls home,” Jade said. “Can you manage without me? You’ll have to take my motorcycle. Do you remember what I taught you?”

  “Of course. It will be fun. I’ll take Helen in the sidecar. Take the new Overland. We’ll have more room to stow the gear on the top of the old Express. Some of the girls can sit on boxes in the rear if we need to. I’ll have them back to town before lights-on,” Bev said, referring to the required six-o’clock headlamp law. “And then you and I are going to gather with Avery and sort out this shauri.” She grinned and nodded to the Overland. “Don’t toss him around too much, darling. I’d hate to ding up the car. It’s hired, you know.”

  Jade started up the vehicle with Biscuit on the bench beside her. She took off in a rush, not bothering to go up to the bridge. Instead she took the river at the shallows and made the turn to the village faster than caution dictated. She was gratified to hear Holly’s startled yelp in the back followed by some ripe curses.

  “Have you gone mad? What the blazes are you doing? I demand you stop this car at once!”

  “If I do, it’ll only be to leave you behind. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Holly, you can walk back to Nairobi or Thika or to the devil.” She punctuated her statement with another sharp and completely unnecessary turn, slamming him into the side of car. She didn’t trust Holly and intended to establish straightaway that she was in charge. “You can hike up the mountain if you’d like and hide out.”

  “No, thank you. I believe if I—” He bit off the words as his head knocked against the ceiling. “Ouch! If I survive this kidnapping I shall take an extended holiday to the Blue Posts Hotel and hide there.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jade rounded the northernmost part of Ol Donyo Sabuk and followed the river southeast to Jelani’s village.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Kikuyu village. There’s a sick man there.”

  “Oh, dear. Nothing contagious, I hope.”

  “Never know. But if it is, it’s at least a new place for you to hide.”

  Holly’s voice rose to a frightened squeal. “I’m not staying in any stinking native village.”

  Jade smiled and made another quick turn, ostensibly to avoid a rock. Behind her, Holly banged into the other side. “You should hold on to something back there. Biscuit keeps his seat better than you do.”

  She passed the Kikuyu messenger, who seemed in no hurry to return to his village. Shortly after that she saw Harry’s truck, abandoned farther down the Athi. Jade stopped her car. “Mr. Holly, can you drive?”

  Holly twisted around and grabbed hold of the rear bench for support. “Even if I couldn’t, I would just to get out of this vehicle alive.”

  “Good. That’s Harry Hascombe’s truck. Drive it to the village.”

  She got out and waited while Holly started the truck and put it into gear without too much grinding. Then she pointed dow
nriver, got back in her Overland, and followed him. They left both vehicles below Jelani’s village and, after prodding Holly with her rifle butt, they started into the narrow winding path, Biscuit in the lead. Several village women and their children met them halfway.

  “Simba Jike,” they cried. “Kwa haraka!” Quickly!

  They turned and led Jade and Holly along the pathway, pausing to look over their shoulders to make certain that Jade was following. When she nearly collided with the woman directly in front of her, Jade shooed them all on with a flap of her hands.

  “Bwana Nyati very sick.”

  Holly hugged himself and shied away from the palisade sticks, the stray chickens, the goats, and the people. “This is intolerable,” he said. “I want to wait outside.”

  “You’re not leaving my sight,” Jade replied. “Not after yesterday’s stunt.” She took hold of his left elbow and pulled him along like a recalcitrant child. The women led her to a hut at the edge of the village. It had the look of abandonment, with missing thatch in the roof, but the added sunlight and ventilation could only improve Harry’s chances.

  Harry lay faceup on a mat woven from leaves. His shirt was missing and his hands were tied at the wrists to two wooden stakes so that his arms were drawn out to the sides. A row of long scratches ran across his chest where he’d clawed at his skin. An old Kikuyu woman knelt beside his head, dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth. On second glance, Jade recognized both the woman—Jelani’s mother—and the cloth—Harry’s missing shirt. His breathing was shallow and rapid, more like that of a panting animal than a sleeping man. Biscuit chirped once, then voiced his distress in soft churring calls.

  Mumbi glared at Jade. “Has the crocodile come for you yet?” she snapped. “She hides from you in full day as a harmless log, waiting to pull you under.”

  Jelani stepped into the hut, a gourd bowl in his hand. “Good, you are here, Simba Jike. Mother, you may go.” He nodded to the door and Mumbi left, leaving Harry’s shirt in a bowl of water near him.