A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa

1: The Wings of a Butterfly do not Give the Power of
an Eagle

2: The Eagle on an Anthill Sees as Far as the Ant

3: The Ant is Eaten by the Aardvark, but Still the
Anthill Grows

4: Each Aardvark has Two Exits to Its Burrow

5: The Sand of its Digging does not Blind the
Porcupine

6: When Thunder Rumbles in the Sky, the Porcupine
Seeks Shelter Under the Same Tree as the Leopard

7: The Giant Tree Falls, and the Bush Pigs Eat its
Fruit

8: If the Rock Falls on the Melon or the Melon on the
Rock, it is Not the Rock that is Smashed apart

9: The Rhino Eats the Melon, but Kills the Lion

10: The Lion does not Approach the Buffalo from the
Front, the Zebra from the Back or the Snake from Any Side

11: The Snake Smiles Before it Strikes

12: The Chameleon does not Dance Before the Snake, nor
the Beetle Before the Chameleon

13: The Beetle on the Elephant's Back Cannot say
There is no Dew on the Ground

14: When Elephants Fight it is Mice that Suffer

15: The Mongoose that Hunts Both Mouse and Squirrel
Catches Neither

16: When the Squirrel Argues with the Monkey, it
should not Ask the Baboon to Act as Judge

17: The Sleeping Leopard Opens One Eye for a Mouse,
Two for a Baboon

18: As Raindrops Wash Away the Leopard's Spots,
so Wishes Blunt Its Teeth

19: A Hungry Leopard has More Teeth than a Well-fed
Crocodile

20: The Wise Frog does not Count the Teeth of the
Crocodile

21: The Frog Needs no String to Tether it to Water

22: A Raindrop has no Memory

23: When you give Water to a Monkey, do not Expect to
see Again your Coconut Shell

24: The Monkey Bitten by a Snake Fears a Vinestem

25: A Snake may Shed its Skin but not its Soul

26: Worm is to Frog as Frog is to Snake as Snake is to
Pig as Pig is to Man as Man is to Worm

27: The Worm will Reach the Water

28: As the Hyena Loves the Vulture, the Vulture Loves
the Worm

29: A Hyena Stung by a Wasp is Scared of a Gnat

30: The Gnat that does not See the Swallow's
Beak will See its Stomach

31: The Swallow does not Line its Nest with Its Own
Feathers

32: The Swallow does not Ask the Weaver Bird to Build
its Nest, nor the Weaver Bird the Swallow

33: It is by Coming and Going that the Weaver Bird
Builds Its Nest

34: The Weaver Bird does not Build its Nest Over the
Crocodile

35: The Crocodile does not Heed the Rain, nor the
Dying Butterfly

36: Happiness is a Butterfly

PENGUIN BOOKS

Nicholas Drayson was born in England and
moved to Australia in 1982, where he studied zoology and gained a PhD in
nineteenth-century Australian natural history writing and two daughters. He has worked
as a journalist in the UK, Kenya and Australia, writing for publications such as the
Daily Telegraph
and
Australian Geographic
. He is the author of
three previous novels,
Confessing a Murder
,
Love and the Platypus
and
A
Guide to the Birds of East Africa
(Penguin, 2008). He is now wandering
through England aboard his boat, the
Summer Breeze
.

‘I tell you she didn't do
it.'

‘And I tell you she jolly well
did.'

‘Listen, A.B.' Mr Patel leaned
forward over the table. ‘
He
admitted it – why won't
you
?'

‘Patel, my dear chap.' Mr A. B.
Gopez put down his glass of Tusker beer and forced a smile. ‘I, too, have read the
accounts. I accept that some people have
claimed
that he admitted it, but
it's pure hearsay, all of it.'

‘Here-say-there-say, it's on the
record. Three times he admitted it, to three separate people. Then he topped himself –
and if that wasn't an admission of guilt then what, I ask you, is?'

‘Hearsay, and circumstantial
evidence,' said Mr Gopez. ‘It would never stand up in court. Look,
here's the Tiger. There's nothing he doesn't know about the law. If
you don't believe me, ask him.'

To say that H. H. ‘Tiger' Singh,
LLB, MA (Oxon.) was a good lawyer would be like saying that Walter Lindrum – World
Professional Billiards Champion from 1933 until the day he retired from the game in
1950, the man who once while touring South Africa scored 1,000 points in
28 minutes, and whose single break of 4,137 against the great Joe Davis on the 19th of
January 1932 at the Victoria Club in London still stands as an unbroken record – was a
handy chap with a cue. In matters of law the Tiger was both craftsman and artist. Not
only was his knowledge of the law unmatched in the courtrooms and chambers of Nairobi,
but his ability to read the court, to understand the hopes and passions that drove
plaintiff, defendant, judge and jury, was wondrous – some said uncanny.

Tiger Singh put his own glass down on the
table and eased himself into his usual chair in the barroom of the Asadi Club beside his
two friends.

‘Good evening, gentlemen – please,
don't let me interrupt your conversation.'

‘Ah, Tiger. You're just in time
to tell Patel here that he's talking tosh. Please explain to him, using if you
will the very simplest of words, that hearsay evidence is no damned good.'

‘You are quite right, A.B. The type of
evidence to which I think you are referring cannot be used against an accused in a
criminal case.'

‘There,' said Mr Gopez.
‘What did I tell you?'

‘I should emphasize that I'm
only referring to criminal cases here, of course,' said the Tiger, settling back.
‘In civil proceedings the rules are somewhat different –
onus probandi
and all that.'

‘Civil, criminal, what does it matter?
We're not talking about a trial, we're talking about what he said
after
the trial. He admitted it to three separate people.'

‘Ah,' said Tiger Singh.
‘May I assume, gentlemen, that you are discussing the case of Lord Erroll's
murder?'

Do you get a kick from champagne?

Do cocaine and heroin give you a thrill?

And tell me if it's ever true that
unconstrained sex is for you?

If you have answered yes to one or more of
the above questions you may well have felt at ease with the small band of settlers who
between the two world wars made their homes in Nairobi and the rich farming land to the
north. At ‘Happy Valley' such fun was to be had by all – providing, that is,
that you were young, wealthy and white. But early one rainy morning in January 1941,
everything changed. The 22nd Earl of Erroll, known to his friends as Joss and one of the
most active members of the Happy Valley set, was found dead in his car, shot in the head
with a revolver.

Josslyn Hay had eloped from Britain to Kenya
in 1924 with a rich English widow. Four years later he assumed the Earldom of Erroll on
the death of his father and twelve years later was already divorced from his first wife
and separated from his second. He was by all accounts a singularly good-looking man and
his conquests were legion – he sometimes had two or three affairs going at the same
time. No one was surprised when in the December of 1940 the beautiful Diana Broughton,
then aged twenty-seven and recently arrived in Kenya with her new husband, the
57-year-old Sir Jock Delves Broughton, fell for him. Broughton soon found out. On the
10th of March, having just returned from a two-week hunting safari with his wife, Sir
Jock Delves Broughton was arrested by police for the murder of Lord Erroll.

The trial made headlines not only in Kenya
but around the world. The police produced evidence that on the night
of
the murder Broughton, Diana, Erroll and their friend June Carberry dined at the Muthaiga
Club. Several witnesses saw them, and heard Erroll ask Diana to go dancing with him
after dinner at the late-night Claremont Club. Broughton did not want to go dancing, but
asked Erroll to bring Diana home by 3 a.m. Broughton and June Carberry went back to the
house he had been renting in the Nairobi suburb of Karen. The prosecution alleged that
when Broughton heard Erroll return with Diana at about 2.20 a.m., he put on a pair of
white gym shoes, climbed out of his bedroom window and down the drainpipe without being
seen. Armed with a revolver that he had previously reported stolen, he hid in the back
seat of Erroll's car. When Erroll slowed down at the first road junction, he shot
him. He then ran back to the house and climbed back into his room, again without being
seen.

Broughton maintained his innocence and paid
£5,000 plus a bottle of whisky a day to the best barrister in Africa to defend him.
On the 26th of May the trial began. Late in the evening of the 1st of July the foreman
of the jury stood to deliver their verdict.

Not guilty.

But if not Broughton, then who?

For more than sixty years this question has
been the subject of many a heated conversation in every hotel bar and club in Kenya –
and in this respect, at least, the Asadi Club is no different.

‘Damned right we're talking
about the Erroll case,' said Mr Patel. ‘But as I say, it's not the
trial I'm talking about, it's what happened after the trial.'

‘And as I keep trying to explain, my dear
Patel, second-hand reports of what Sir Jock Delves Broughton might or might not have
said are of no more use outside a court of law than they are inside. Next thing
you'll be asking us to believe all that stuff about the British Secret Service –
SOD or whatever-they-were-called – being in on the job.'

‘SOE is the correct acronym, I
believe, A.B. – Special Operations Executive. You've read that book too, have you?
But never mind your conspiracy theories. It was Broughton.'

‘It was Diana, I tell you. She and
Erroll had a row – the maid heard it. He was probably going to dump her. It stands to
reason – the woman scorned, and all that. She'd probably stolen that gun herself –
the one Broughton reported missing. Ah, forgot about that, did you?'

‘What
you
seem to have
forgotten, A.B., is that Diana had an alibi.'

‘Oh, they all had alibis. In those
days you got a free alibi in every jolly box of cornflakes.'

‘Well, why didn't the police
chappy arrest her then?'

‘Because, my dear Patel,' said
Mr Gopez, turning again to the third person at the table, ‘and I'm sure the
Tiger would agree with me here – the “police chappy”, as you call him, was
an incompetent twit who couldn't see where the evidence pointed if it was tattooed
on his
tululu
.'

‘Quite,' said the Tiger. He
drained his glass and rose from his chair. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me,
gentlemen, I promised Bobby Bashu a quick game of billiards before Malik arrives. Let me
know when he's here, would you? I need to talk to him about the club
safari.'