A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa (20 page)

‘A most intriguing story,' said
Tiger Singh, joining the others at the bar. ‘Well done, Malik. It certainly
explains the missing pieces of the puzzle. And thank you, Mr Nyambe. You have been most
generous in sharing your tale with all of us here at the Asadi Club. But, Malik, I still
don't understand what she was doing there. Why was Juanita Carberry hiding in the
car? Was A.B. right? Had she and Erroll been having an affair or something?'

‘No – as she says in her
autobiography, she had never met the man. It is quite simple. She was running away. You
may remember that ever since the previous November, when her father had found a soldier
climbing out of her window at the house in Nyeri, she had been locked in her room every
night. This was the first time since then that Juanita had been away from there. This
was her first chance of escape. And a few months later she really did run away to her
uncle's house in Nairobi – never to live with her father and stepmother
again.'

‘So she really had nothing to do with
Erroll? Well, I have to say that makes sense too. He always seemed to go for married
women. But where does all this leave
Broughton? Are you saying she
made up all that stuff about him confessing?'

‘I have to admit,' said Mr
Malik, ‘that was indeed a puzzle. Neither my friend Mr Nyambe here nor I could
work it out – until I remembered that though Juanita had been in the car when Erroll was
shot, she didn't see who did it.'

‘I still don't
understand.'

‘Well,' said Mr Malik,
‘let us suppose that Broughton did indeed confess to Juanita. Why should she not
believe him?'

‘Just a minute. Are you saying that Mr
Gopez was right, that it was all bravado?'

‘Possibly. Or perhaps …' Mr
Malik paused. ‘Or perhaps Broughton believed that Juanita Carberry was actually
the murderer.'

‘
He
thought
she'd
done it? Why?'

‘Think about what happened later that
night. Through his bedroom window Broughton sees Juanita returning to the house. He sees
her hiding the gym shoes. The next morning he hears that Lord Erroll has been found dead
in his car just down the road.'

‘He thinks there's a
connection?'

‘Quite so, A.B. But if the girl did
have something to do with it, Broughton wouldn't want to expose her – he'd
want to protect her. At lunch he's introduced to Juanita – remember, they'd
never actually met before. He takes her to see his horses, just the two of them
together. He can't just come straight out with it – I saw you sneak home last
night and hide the gym shoes, and I know you killed Lord Erroll, but I won't say
anything.'

‘Because he isn't absolutely
sure she'd done it.'

‘Exactly, A.B. He takes her past the
bonfire. When she sees her shoes burning she will surely realize that he is destroying
the evidence linking her with Erroll, that he is on her side.'

‘But hang on a minute, Malik. A few
minutes ago you said that she hadn't done it.'

‘Yes, but Broughton still thinks she
did.'

‘Wait,' said Tiger Singh slowly.
‘Are you now suggesting that Juanita Carberry thinks that Broughton did it, that
his was the voice she heard while she was hiding in the back of the car?'

‘Not at this stage. She is surprised
that her shoes have been found – and perhaps still worried that she'll get into
trouble. And no doubt she's puzzled as to why he's burning them.'

‘But the next day he took the police
investigator right past the bonfire too,' said Mr Gopez. ‘What was that all
about?'

‘It was quite deliberate, to ensure
that he is the number one suspect and so protect the girl – though, of course, at the
same time he denies any knowledge and is confident the police don't have enough
evidence to arrest him.'

‘Which they didn't.'

‘That's right, Tiger. At the
inquest he hears about the white marks on the car seat. He's seen her hide the
shoes, so now he's even more sure that Juanita Carberry must have had something to
do with it. He drives to Nyeri to find that June Carberry and his wife Diana are out. By
this time he's thought up another plan to let Juanita know that he knows. “I
killed Lord Erroll,” he says.'

‘Now you've completely lost
me,' said Mr Gopez. ‘How
does him saying to her that
he
did it, tell her that he knows that
she
did it?'

‘It was meant to be a sort of code.
Broughton had now convinced himself that Juanita was the murderer. By telling her that
he
shot Erroll, he thought she would realize that even though he knew the
truth, he wasn't going to say anything.'

‘So he still thought
she'd
done it, and now she was convinced
he'd
done
it.'

‘That's right, A.B. And all the
time it was neither of them.'

Tiger Singh smacked both hands to his
head.

‘Brilliant, Malik, absolutely
brilliant. Malik, my dear chap, your sleuthing skills are as impressive as your friend
Benjamin's. Yes, of course – I should have seen it.
Tempus veritas
revelit
. I do believe you've solved the case.'

‘No, no, Tiger, not solved it.
It's just a story – based like all the others on no more than circumstantial
evidence and hearsay. The witnesses are dead, the suspects are dead. But perhaps now so
is the crime.'

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,' said the
barman. ‘Mr Malik, your daughter is on the line. She says she has something
important to tell you.'

Mr Malik took the phone.

‘Hello, darling – can't it wait?
I'll be home very soon …' he paused. ‘Oh, I see.'

Mr Malik put down the phone and turned to
his friends.

‘Excuse me please, gentlemen,
I'd better get back home. My daughter tells me she has thought of a way to save
the Asadi Club.'

It had been, thought Mr Malik, as he
watched Benjamin cut some twigs to bind on the broom handle for his morning leaf
sweeping, a very good idea. Petula had been so excited. The time for defence was over,
she told him when he'd hurried back from the club last night. Now it was time to
attack.

‘Publicity, that's what you
need. I was talking to Angus – Angus Mbikwa, you know – just a few days ago and this
evening it came to me. Let the people see exactly what is going on. Shine the light of
truth on the murky doings of this
honourable
minister.'

‘This seems like an excellent
idea,' said Mr Malik. ‘But how exactly do you propose we do it?'

‘I've thought of that
too.' Petula slammed down a copy of the
Evening News
. ‘We
haven't got the whistle-blower website going yet, but you know about that Dadukwa
chap, the one that writes the “Birds of a Feather”
column? Get in
contact with him, let him know what's going on. The
Evening News
prints
the story, and bingo! Problem solved.'

Mr Malik picked up the paper. How much
should he tell her?

‘I don't know if you looked at the
date on this paper?' he said.

She took it from him.

‘Tuesday the twenty-first. The column
comes out on a Wednesday. There's plenty of time.'

‘Then I suppose you haven't
heard.'

And Mr Malik explained to Petula how there
would be no paper next Wednesday. That as from yesterday there was no more
Evening
News
.

‘They used the same trick to close
down the paper as they're using to close down the club. The paper's
certificate of registration mysteriously disappeared. No certificate, no
newspaper.'

He wished he hadn't had to tell her
even this much. When she came to kiss him goodnight, she had looked so sad. In the
morning she left the house before he was up.

Benjamin had finished making the broom and
was already sweeping up the leaves at the bottom of the garden into neat piles. If only
his life was as simple as Benjamin's. Mr Malik thought back to his revelations of
the previous night at the club. He should be feeling just a little triumphant, but he
wasn't. Though the Tiger had been most flattering about his deductive skills, it
was his friend Thomas Nyambe who had really solved the mystery. And really, it was not
important. What mattered was not the past but the present. In three days the Asadi Club
would be no more. Never mind solving the mystery of who killed Lord Erroll – what about
the mystery of the vanishing lion and the missing certificate? Mr Malik reached for his
cup of Nescafé and took a troubled sip.

For the umpteenth time he went over the
sequence of events that Friday night at the club. It might be best to treat the lion and
the certificate separately. So … when had the lion last been seen? It was when
the Tiger and Harry Khan went to leave. There had been that business with the keys and
the briefcase. Could Harry Khan have had anything to do with it? He had come out of the
club with the Tiger, gone back inside, then come out and closed the door behind him. Had
he seen the lion again on his way out? As far as Mr Malik could remember, no one had
asked him. Harry had taken the Tiger home, returned to give the manager the spare key to
the back door, then driven back to his hotel. The manager had gone into the club through
the back door, locked up and left – again through the back door. He had only noticed the
lion missing the next day when he opened up. The lion could have gone missing any time
between the three men walking out of the front door and the following morning – but
how?

Now for the certificate. This was more
difficult. Even though he had himself noticed its absence quite soon after getting back
to the club after the safari on Sunday night, he couldn't swear that it had
definitely been there on Friday – or Thursday or any other day, for that matter. Nor
could anyone else. And were the two disappearances linked or weren't they?
Removing a small framed certificate was certainly a different matter from stealing a
stuffed lion. There could be little doubt that the theft of the certificate was linked
to the letter from the minister – but as for the lion … If only that could be
tracked down as easily as Benjamin had tracked those leopards on the safari.
Benjamin was now sweeping up the last of the leaves near the veranda.
Wait. It had been two weeks now, but perhaps there was still just a chance.

‘Benjamin,' he said out loud.
‘Benjamin, I have had an idea.'

Benjamin had no time to object or even speak
before he found himself being bundled into the front seat of Mr Malik's car. On
the way to the Asadi Club Mr Malik told him all about the recent goings-on.

‘I know it has been two weeks since
the robbery – or robberies – but there is just the chance that some trace remains. I
have seen you track a leopard and I have seen you track an ocelot. Benjamin, would you
be able to use those clever young eyes of yours to track down a lion?'

As soon as they arrived at the Asadi Club,
Mr Malik hurried Benjamin into the lobby.

‘This is where it was,' he said.
He showed Benjamin to the oh-so-empty space inside the front door.

‘The lion, Mr Malik, was it very
heavy?'

Mr Malik thought for a moment.

‘No, not heavy – but it would be very
awkward to carry. It would really need two men to lift it.'

Benjamin looked at the place where the lion
had been. He looked at the walls, he looked at the ceiling. He got down on his hands and
knees and examined the floor.

‘And all these doors, Mr Malik, what
are they for?'

Five doors led off the lobby. There was the
front door through which they had just come. Just to the left of that was the
manager's office – which you could also enter from the dining room – and then the
double glass doors
that led through to the dining room and bar. On the
right-hand side of the lobby were two smaller doors.

‘That one is the cleaner's
cupboard, where he keeps all his buckets and things, and the other one is the club
darkroom – for making photographs, you know – though nobody uses it much these days.
We've been thinking of turning it into a computer room.'

Benjamin went round the lobby examining each
door and door frame.

‘People do not bring other animals
here?'

While the club rule forbidding women to
enter the club had, after much heated debate (and even the threat of murder and/or
suicide by Jumbo Wickramasinghe), been rescinded as long ago as 1977, Rule 11 forbidding
pets was still in force – a fact which Mr Malik was able to confirm to his friend.

‘Then this, I think,' said
Benjamin, taking something from one of the door frames and holding it up between finger
and thumb, ‘must be the hair of a lion.'

Mr Malik went over to where Benjamin was
standing beside the door to the darkroom.

‘But this door is always kept locked.
No one goes in there. Only the manager has the key, in his office.'

He tried the door handle and, sure enough,
it was firmly locked.

‘But look, Mr Malik.' Benjamin
pointed to the floor. ‘Tracks.'

Mr Malik looked down at the polished wood,
almost expecting to see the wide round footprints of a big cat. What he saw were not
prints, but scratches. With the light coming in through the front door he could see a
definite
line of faint scratch marks leading to where he stood. It
took only a minute for him to find the manager, who quickly found the key to the
darkroom hanging on the board in his office.

He unlocked the door, pushed it open and
turned on the light.