The Crocodile's Last Embrace Read online

  “I don’t want or need a doctor,” said Jade, her frustration mounting. “I want you to listen to me.”

  “Well, I’m having a very difficult time with all of this. Not that I don’t believe you, Jade. I do. It’s just all too bizarre.”

  “Not so bizarre, my love,” said Avery. He’d come in from training the horses and wore his working clothes of jodhpurs and a cotton shirt open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He tamped tobacco into his pipe and lit it, puffing. “Only just consider how tormented our poor Jade has been with those packages.”

  “And the drugged tea,” added Jade.

  “As to that,” said Avery, “I think we should send it off to a chemist in Mombassa to be analyzed. It could go off tomorrow with the down train. Send ours as well for comparison. It doesn’t seem to be tainted.”

  “I don’t understand how Jade’s could have been tainted,” said Beverly. She draped a cloth over her shoulder and laid Alice against it, patting her back softly. “Major Bertram sent that to us and to Jade as a gift. Why, Avery’s known him since school. Surely he wouldn’t have sent something to harm her.”

  “No, Tony wouldn’t have done so,” said Avery. “Someone must have come into Jade’s rooms and added the poison.”

  “He took a big chance then,” said Jade. “How would anyone know I had this South African tea to begin with? Anyone who knows me knows I drink coffee. But then, that’s why this person also took my coffee, making it look as if Bev did it.”

  “Perhaps they planned to add the drugs to the coffee and then found the tea,” suggested Beverly. “The spices in that blend would certainly disguise the taste better than coffee would do.” Her tone suggested that she didn’t believe her hypothesis herself.

  “The alternative is that the tea came already drugged,” said Avery. “Which means—”

  “Which means that your friend didn’t send it,” finished Jade. “We’re dealing with a decent forger, it seems. I wish I still had the note that came with the tin, Bev. And the one signed by you.”

  Avery paced around the floor. “I saw the box and the letter inside. I would swear that was Tony’s writing.”

  Beverly wiped Alice’s mouth. “I did put the tin and Major Bertram’s note on your table, Jade, but I didn’t write any note, nor did I take your coffee. I’m not that brave. You’re positive that it is the tea that was drugged? Not some bad food or medicine?”

  “I haven’t taken any medicine, and how else would Harry have taken sick like he did? And it would explain my feelings of apprehension, my crawling skin and seeing things that weren’t there. I’ve been drinking that concoction for more than a week.”

  “Yes, well,” said Avery, puffing on his pipe. “As to those hallucinations. I should like to hear more on that account. Just what have you seen?”

  He was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. Farhani appeared and picked up the handset, speaking softly. “Northey is telephoning you, bwana.”

  “The governor?” said Avery. He sounded alarmed.

  “No. His missus,” said Farhani.

  “Lady Northey,” corrected Beverly. “Farhani, when will you learn to use titles? I’m sure she wants a report on the girls’ safari. Farhani, please tell Lady Northey that I shall ring her up in an hour.” Farhani bowed and spoke softly into the phone before hanging it up. “Now, where were we?” asked Bev. “Hallucinations!”

  Jade ticked off the events on her left hand. “That red paint in the target, it looked like it was crawling. And I saw David waving to me one night before his face disappeared into a skull. And I thought that I saw Boguli.”

  “Boguli?” echoed Beverly. “That old man from Marsabit?”

  Jade nodded.

  “But I thought he didn’t actually exist,” said Bev. “That photo you took of him . . .”

  “The one in which he didn’t appear? Yes, that’s why seeing him again must be a hallucination,” said Jade. “I thought that I was experiencing some belated war trauma, brought on by my recent visit to France.”

  “But I’m confused,” said Avery. “You said that you also saw David in France. That was before you drank this drugged tea.”

  Jade nodded. “I can’t explain that either, unless David was actually trying to warn me.”

  “Nonsense,” said Beverly. “David is safely tucked away in heaven. You saw someone who resembled him. You were overwrought at being in France to begin with and it was accentuated by your fretting over Sam.” When Jade glared at her, Beverly raised her chin. “Oh, stop it, Jade. You’ve been a wreck since he left and you know it.”

  “Bev,” Jade growled.

  “My darling wife is quite right, Jade,” said Avery. “But all that aside, it seems that it has little to do with the real hallucinations. Someone wanted to torment Jade with those packages and letters.”

  “But without drugs, our Jade might not have taken the bait, right?” asked Bev.

  Avery simply raised his eyebrows and puffed away.

  “What am I saying?” asked Bev. “Of course not.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak about me as if I weren’t here,” said Jade. “I don’t know how I might have reacted to those items, and neither do you.”

  Bev handed Alice Merrywether off to Shilangi, the Seychellois nanny, to be changed and put down for a nap. “Nonsense, Jade,” Beverly said when baby and nanny had left for the nursery. “Your usual reaction is to take charge and sort it out.” She rang a little bell to summon Farhani and requested that tea be served soon.

  “You mean that she’d have—what do the Americans say?—walloped someone by now,” Avery said with a chuckle.

  “Perhaps,” said Jade, “but these packets were very disturbing on their own. The first one, the obituary, upset me without having had the tea. I would swear before Saint Peter that the letters were penned by David. But then I saw his scarf, and that was his scarf.” She shuddered. “It was enough to disturb anyone.”

  “True,” said Avery, “but if your reputation to charge in—”

  “Guns a-blazing,” added Beverly.

  “Thank you, my dear. Quite right. Well, this person needed to alter your usual behavior.”

  “Which is why my tea was laced with something,” concluded Jade. “It’s possible I wasn’t supposed to receive the obituary until after the tea arrived. But what’s the point of all this?”

  “To ruin your credibility with the police?” suggested Avery. “To make you flee the colony?”

  “Perhaps to put you in an institution?” offered Bev. “To get you out of the way.”

  “Or perhaps just for the sake of torturing me,” said Jade. “Having me declared mentally unfit and locked away would certainly be a suitable revenge for Lilith.”

  “But Lilith can’t be behind this,” said Beverly. “When Avery inquired last September, we learned that she’d seen no one in prison but one Anglican minister, and him only once.”

  “There’s been no other word at all,” said Avery, “and I’d left previous instructions to be notified if anything altered with her in any regard.”

  “And that,” said Jade, “is why I think this is the work of her lover, Pellyn. All we know of him is that he’s been in Africa for years, possibly since David was a child. We’ve always suspected that he acted as her right-hand man, carrying out her orders.”

  “But why wait until now?” asked Beverly. “This Pellyn could have done this any number of times before now. Of course, before now . . .” She paused and looked at Avery as though seeking guidance.

  Avery, like many good spouses, seemed to read her mind. “Before now Jade wasn’t as vulnerable emotionally.”

  “She may have been when she first arrived in Africa after the war, but she hadn’t done anything to rile Lilith yet,” said Beverly. “And finding David’s half brother accomplished two ends. It did infuriate Lilith, and it also made Jade stronger.”

  Jade waved aside their arguments, feeling uncomfortable with the conve
rsation. “We don’t know why Pellyn waited,” said Jade. “We don’t even know who he is or what he looks like.” The mondo-mogo’s and Mumbi’s warnings came back to her. “He could be hiding here in plain sight.”

  “All I ever found out was that he was from Cornwall,” said Avery, “and considered a scoundrel, but as that chestnut came from Lilith’s parents, it may have had more to do with his toying with their daughter and continuing the affair after her marriage to Gil Worthy.”

  “Pellyn would have to be at least forty-five by now,” said Beverly. “Assuming he was in his early twenties when he started the affair. He may be considerably older than that. And aren’t the Cornish usually . . . Jade? What are you thinking?”

  Jade stared at the floor, faces playing in her mind. “He could be anyone, but I was thinking of people whom we know. Harry for one, Inspector Finch for another.”

  “What?” exclaimed both Avery and Beverly.

  “Surely not Harry,” added Bev.

  “Why not?” asked Jade. “He’s the right age, and he was involved with passing off another man as Gil’s bastard son. He was around in September when that native stabbed the movie producer while intoxicated with datura. He could have learned about it and other drugs then and waited to use them until I was, um, vulnerable, as you put it.”

  “Hmmm,” mumbled Avery around his pipe stem. “And the inspector?”

  “Again, the right age, and who better to operate anything illegal than someone inside the police force? Perhaps it’s not true that there were no fingerprints on any of my packets excepting my own and the postal clerk’s. It would be easy enough for him to declare it to be so.”

  Beverly sat up straighter, her eyes wide and her mouth agape. “Oh, Jade, think of what you’re saying. To accuse these two men of being—”

  “A shifty, low-down, no-good, thieving, murdering forger,” finished Jade. “You’re right, Harry isn’t clever enough. The man can barely lead a safari.”

  “Jade!” exclaimed Beverly. “You’re hardly being fair to Harry. He’s quite clever. Only think how he managed your safari in Tsavo on half the budget, and how he was there to help save you from Lilith’s gunrunner on Marsabit and—”

  “My dear,” began Avery with a sidewise glance at Jade’s face.

  Beverly held up her hand. “Please, darling, don’t interrupt me. He’s been here since he was a young man and knows Africa very well. He even did some mining in Tsavo. How else could he . . . Oh, dear.” She put a hand to her mouth. “I seem to have just put him squarely on the suspect list, haven’t I?”

  Jade smiled. “You’ve explained it very nicely, Bev. Harry has been here since Gil Worthy came over. He probably knows enough about mining to perpetrate a fraud, he’s been in contact with several of Lilith’s confederates in one capacity or another, he travels a lot, he was familiar with that crocodile, and he knows us well enough to gain access to our houses. He could have found a letter from Major Bertram and used it to copy his handwriting.”

  “But surely you don’t think Harry would try to poison you, Jade,” said Avery. “He took the drink himself.”

  “He might not have been as sick as we thought. It could have been a ruse to throw us off track. Remember, he still has property near Ol Donyo Sabuk. He might have known we were there and needed to get us away from it.” Jade thought about her earlier meeting with Jelani. Mutahi, the Kikuyu accused of witching the other man, had been around the mountain before he gave his gift of herbs to Irungu and his wife. He could have gone into Harry’s old house.

  And Harry wanted me to go there with him, too. Was it a ploy to capture me?

  “Jade, we’ve known Harry far too long,” said Avery. “There could be any number of men in the colony who would meet the criteria to be suspects. Someone in the land office, a railroad man.”

  “Or even Inspector Finch,” said Jade. “But you have made my point, Avery. We can’t trust anyone.”

  “Well, that’s a bad ticket and no mistake,” said Avery. “Makes sending a telegram or a letter a bit of a problem.”

  “Someone in the postal service,” suggested Beverly.

  “Hamilton is too old and too stout,” said Avery. “Hardly a match for Lilith, and the underlings are mostly either young men or Indians. Not that she hasn’t employed them,” he added. “We suspected before that Jade’s letters had been opened.”

  “I suppose Mr. Holly is too young,” mused Beverly.

  “Too young to be Pellyn, but not too young to have been recruited by him,” said Jade. “He claims that someone sent him an ear. But no one has actually seen it. He heard Hamilton talk about the Congo natives losing ears. It may have given him the idea.” She felt exhausted, physically and emotionally. Maybe Bev was right. Maybe she did need to sleep before she started hallucinating again—without the benefit of drugged tea. For that matter, she had no idea how long any residual effect might last. Her skin didn’t feel as if it were crawling anymore, but that didn’t mean her mind was unaffected.

  This is ridiculous. What am I doing here?

  “I should leave,” Jade said.

  “But tea is almost ready to be served,” Beverly protested. “Good British tea at that. You can drink it if you put in enough honey. You must eat before you go back to rest. We’ll get coffee for you in town later.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Bev. I should leave Kenya, maybe Africa. Go home, or someplace remote like New Guinea or Bora Bora.”

  “You’re speaking nonsense, Jade,” said Beverly. The words sounded like a slap. “If you think I’m going to let you go harebraining off to some faraway island to face headhunters or even the French in this state of mind, then you had better think again.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Avery.

  “But if I go where Pellyn can’t find me—”

  “Then we won’t be able to find you either. And that is not acceptable.”

  “We are not without resources, Jade,” said Avery. “I’ll start by seeing if anyone is staying at Lord McMillan’s Juja farm. And I think that we should question Mr. Holly more thoroughly.”

  “He’s at the Blue Posts Hotel,” said Jade.

  “Splendid. I’ll drop in and pay him a visit later,” said Avery. “Catch him unawares. You see, Jade, now that we know of Pellyn’s activity, we shall be on our guard so he can’t harm you.”

  A commotion on the veranda interrupted them, and the three hurried to the door.

  “Oh, thank heaven you’re home and safe,” said Madeline. She clutched her son, Cyril, in her arms as though she feared someone might snatch him away at any moment. Neville followed close on her heels, along with Biscuit.

  Beverly led Maddy to a chair.

  “My stars, Neville!” exclaimed Avery. “What happened?”

  “Someone tried to take our son!”

  CHAPTER 15

  The Africans have many sayings about crocodiles. One is,

  “The strength of the crocodile is in the water.” This is true,

  but that doesn’t mean that one is safe on the riverbank.

  —The Traveler

  THE ANNOUNCEMENT STUNNED EVERYONE, resulting in a disjointed moment when no one moved, no one so much as breathed, followed quickly by a flurry of activity, as though nature rushed to fill the void.

  “You cannot mean it?” said Beverly. “Surely . . .”

  Farhani entered with a tea tray loaded with little sandwiches and cakes.

  “The devil with tea,” said Avery. “What Neville needs is a good gin and soda.”

  “No,” said Neville, raising his hand, “tea will be fine. I need to keep a clear head.”

  “As you wish,” said Avery, but he poured a drink for himself and downed it in one gulp while Beverly ordered a glass of milk for the Thompsons’ adopted son.

  “Tell us what happened,” said Jade.

  Maddy set the twenty-two-month-old boy on the floor with a cheese sandwich in his hands. Biscuit, who always seemed intrigued by the little fellow, lay down bes
ide him, a deep raspy purr rumbling from his throat.

  “It happened today,” said Madeline. “Neville and I had gone to the little prayer meeting at Thika. We left Cyril at home in the care of Samuel.”

  “He’s watched Cyril many times while we were busy on the farm,” added Neville.

  Beverly and Avery both nodded. Jade knew that hiring a trusted Kikuyu servant to act as a yaya, or nanny, was very common, especially on the farms. Samuel, the son of their head Kikuyu worker, Kimathi, had been with the Thompsons for years as a general house servant.

  Neville and Maddy looked at each other, as though they sought in each other’s eyes confirmation that they had done nothing wrong in taking care of their child.

  Beverly added her own assurance. “Samuel is a fine young man.”

  “Thank you, yes,” continued Maddy. “We returned home and found Samuel positively frantic. It seems that there was a fire in the grasslands behind the coffee orchard. No one knows how it started. Terrible commotion. Samuel put Cyril in his crib and went to help. The fire didn’t go far, thanks largely to the longer rainy season we’ve had. Much of the grass was still fresh. But when Samuel returned, the boy was gone.”

  “We returned home not long after,” said Maddy, her voice breaking. She put her hand to her face, hiding her eyes as she fought back tears.

  “There, there,” cooed Beverly. “The little tyke is here and safe.”

  Maddy pulled a white kerchief from her dress pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Yes, thank you. It’s just that . . .” Neville stood behind his wife and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “Where did you find him?” asked Jade. “Why do you think someone tried to take him rather than him simply climbing out of his bed and toddling off?”

  “We called and called,” said Maddy, “and found him curled up asleep inside . . .” Her voice gave way here and she broke into a sob. Cyril, noticing the sound, turned around and offered his half-eaten sandwich to his mother. Maddy scooped him up and hugged him close.