The Crocodile's Last Embrace (4 page)

“It seems most of the mail is still being sorted,” said Emily, “but I have some good news, Jade. There’s an envelope for you.”

Jade hurried to join her. “From America?” The question was rhetorical. The only mail she ever received was from either her parents or the editor of
The Traveler
, both in the States. What she really wanted to ask was, “From Sam?”

“Actually, I believe the postmark is Paris.” Emily thrust a letter into Jade’s hands. “I must get these inside. I suppose my darling sister is still entertaining?”

Jade nodded but didn’t reply. She was too engrossed in the envelope before her. The handwriting was elegant and somehow familiar, but it wasn’t Sam’s tight hand. She pulled her knife, and neatly sliced open the flap. Jade took out the paper inside and shoved the envelope in her pocket after replacing her knife in its sheath. But when she unfolded the single sheet of white paper, she felt her legs turn to rubber. Shaking, she found a bench and plopped onto it.

Clipped to the paper was a newspaper obituary for David Worthy. And on the paper were written the words:

It was signed,
David Worthy
. Even more unsettling, it was written in his hand.

—The Traveler

AVERY FOUND JADE FIRST. After recovering from the initial shock, she’d slipped away, avoiding the house and its people. She’d wandered first to her rooms, then past the darkroom and through the gardens, seeking a hiding place. Only she couldn’t find a way to escape from her inner turmoil.

Her rational mind didn’t believe that David’s spirit was reaching out to punish her, but after all she’d seen and experienced in the past few years, her heart wasn’t so certain. By the time Avery found her, Jade was at the stables, stroking a mare’s soft nose. Biscuit stood beside her.

“Jade,” he called, “are the junior Amazons finished for the day? Is it safe for me to enter my own house?”

Jade started. She’d forgotten that Avery had gone to work the horses. From the look of his dusty jodhpurs and riding boots as well as his rolled-up sleeves, he’d been engaged with them for a long while. “They’re having tea,” she replied. “Or at least, they were.”

“And you’d had your fill of the little darlings?” He chuckled and retrieved his jacket from a fence post, pulling a pipe and tobacco from one of the pockets. He leaned against the post and filled his pipe. “I commend Beverly for taking them on. It gives her something purposeful to do and it ensures an active company when little Alice is old enough to take part.”

“I like to think that it teaches the girls some self-reliance and skills other than arranging roses in a vase,” said Jade. “All the girls attend Nairobi Government School, but two, Helen and Clarice, board there while their parents are starting up farms. They could benefit the most.”

“I wondered why you agreed to help Beverly,” said Avery.

Jade shrugged. “I helped because Bev’s my friend. When she sent for me, her appeal sounded rather desperate, as though she’d bitten off more than she could chew, though I’ve come to suspect it was all a ploy to bring me back here.”

Avery lit his pipe and puffed at it for a few moments. “Don’t expect me to agree or disagree with you there, Jade. But we were worried about you.”

“Were?”

“Fair enough. Still are. For instance, right now you look as though you’ve received your death sentence.” He pointed with his pipe stem to the paper sticking out of her shirt pocket. “I say, how stupid of me. You’ve heard from your family. Bad news?”

Jade studied her friend from under lowered eyelids. The paper made him nervous.

“Not from my family.” She handed the brief note and obituary to Avery and waited while he read them.

“This must be a hoax. It can’t be—”

“From David? One wouldn’t think so, but it is his hand.”

“It’s a foul, dirty joke,” said Avery, anger edging his voice. “Someone’s done a good job of playing the forger, that’s for certain.” He turned the note over, looking for any clue on the back. “Did you see anyone in France? Someone perhaps who was suffering from shell shock?”

“No.” Jade didn’t tell him she thought she’d seen David. It
had
to have been a trick of the mind. “You flew in David’s squadron. You would know if any of the other pilots in your group blamed me.”

“And no one did,” he said. His pipe hung forgotten from his fingers until he raised his hand to stroke his chin. “Blast, it went out,” he said, and relit it. “I would suspect David’s mother, Lilith, was behind this. A retaliation of sorts for breaking up her smuggling ring in Morocco, but there’s been no word of her doing anything from prison.”

“You haven’t heard from your contact in London?” asked Jade.

“No, but I asked him to send word only if she did something major: relocated, received a caller. There’s been nothing since that clergyman visited her in August.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Beverly as she joined them. “Something very serious by the looks on your faces.”

Avery leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek. “All through with the Junior Amazon Society, are you?”

“Yes, so you are safe to come back to the house, my dear. Now, what is going on?”

Jade handed the note and obituary to Beverly. “This came in today’s mail,” she said.

Beverly’s eyes widened in surprise, then quickly narrowed in anger. “How dare someone do this to you, Jade. You should take this to the police immediately. Perhaps they can find some fingerprints on it.”

“Yes, the postal clerk’s and ours,” said Jade. “We’ve all handled it. And it’s hardly likely that Inspector Finch would have any record of prints on file from France. I think Avery was closer to the mark in suggesting this is Lilith’s work. She probably paid one of her confederates to do the job, imitating David’s hand.” Jade took back the letter and shoved it into her trouser pocket.

“We’ve never been able to find out just how many people she employed in her criminal network,” said Beverly. “You’ve run across some of them, but there must be more.”

“A feeble attempt to frighten you, made by a caged woman,” said Avery. “If she had anyone close at hand, they would have attempted to harm you by now, I should think. But I’m happy to know you haven’t received bad news from your family.”

Jade looked at Avery from under hooded eyes. “You knew it wasn’t from Sam, didn’t you? You’ve heard from him, though.”

“Well . . . it’s only that . . .” Avery coughed. “Oh, blast! It’s been months. Not since he arrived in California, no.”

“This is all a lot of horrid nonsense,” said Beverly. “And, Jade, you’ve been wound as tightly as a watch spring since you came back from France. It’s high time you told us what happened there.”

“What makes you think something happened in France?” asked Jade.

“Because I know you. You’ve had a faraway, haunted look in your eyes ever since your return.”

Jade grimaced. “Haunted is right. I thought I saw David.”

“Blast and damn,” muttered Avery. “When?”

Jade briefly explained the encounter.

“Jade,” said Avery, “you held a dying man in your arms, one you cared for, and under horrific circumstances. Men still relive those experiences in their minds.”

“He was trying to tell me something.”

“It was the fog and another man in uniform,” insisted Avery.

Beverly put a comforting arm around Jade’s shoulder. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go. You’re overwrought. You need a diversion. Alice is asleep just now. Come with me into town. I have some shopping to do.”

Jade rolled her eyes. “Bev, I love you dearly. I’ll do nearly anything for you, including help you lead those female firecrackers of yours, but I draw the line at shopping. I think I’ll take Biscuit for a good run and go out to see Maddy and Neville.”

“Splendid. Fresh air and activity,” said Avery. “Tell them hello for us. Ask Neville how his new coffee machine is doing.”

“And ask Madeline about little Cyril. And remind her that she promised me a start of her blue ribbon cabbage rose,” added Bev as Avery checked the bolts connecting the sidecar to Jade’s Indian Power Plus.

Jade waved away their requests and called to Biscuit. She took off towards the Thompsons’ coffee farm near Thika, Biscuit loping alongside her. Once she’d crossed the Nairobi River and left the city’s residential districts behind, she cut her cycle across country, giving the cheetah a chance to open up and run without fear of vehicles.

Even then she had to mind where she rode the bike. So much of the surrounding area was farmed and fenced, but she’d already discovered a route that cut across strips of open grassland, still green from the rains that had continued long past the “short rains” that year. Despite the lush grazing, Jade saw none of the large herds that still marked the Serengeti. These had moved farther away from the town and habitations, and with them had gone most of the great predators: the lion and the leopard. Now the danger lay in African wild dogs and roving jackals. Jade despised them. The dogs were vicious, eating their prey alive. They reminded her of humans who preyed on simple, trusting folk with schemes and promises of wealth.

The February summer sun had begun its downward run for the day, casting shadows in front of the occasional flame tree. The wind brushed Jade’s exposed cheeks and tousled the hair that peeked from beneath her leather helmet. It felt cleansing, sweeping away the dread and horror of that letter. Biscuit raced just ahead of her, guessing her destination. His long, slender legs stretched ahead, then drove into the ground as the rear ones came forward to join them. Over and over his lithe body lengthened and contracted like a piston, and Jade rejoiced inwardly at the cat’s beauty and grace.

To the left, a lone male antelope—a gerenuk—stood on his hind legs and browsed a thorn tree branch. He spotted them and galloped away, his long neck raised high. Biscuit swerved towards him momentarily, but the cheetah had already spent most of his energy and dropped back into a trot, then a walk. Jade slowed her machine to allow him to jump into the sidecar for the remainder of the trip. All too soon, they’d reached the edge of the Thompsons’ farm. She spied Maddy taking down wash from a line. Her adopted son, Cyril, played with a ball by the clothes basket. Jade waved and pointed towards the makeshift thorn brush airplane hangar north of the house.

Maddy cupped her hands and shouted, “Come back to the house for supper.”

Jade nodded and puttered off to the hangar and Sam Featherstone’s Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny.” Leaving Biscuit to forage up a mess of hapless rodents for a snack, Jade immersed her mind in tending to Sam’s plane. She drained the radiator, refilled it, oiled the multitude of points that called for attention, twanged the wires to check for tension, and adjusted the bolts where the wires had loosened. She inspected the struts, the wing fabric, the engine, and anything else she could see before the long shadows made it impossible to distinguish one part from another. The plane had to be ready for Sam’s return.

It was a task Jade both loved and feared. Tending to any machine took most of her concentration, so the job became an escape from her trials. But in another sense, it added to them. What if Sam didn’t return? It was impossible to tighten a rusting cable bolt and not hear Sam’s gravelly voice, to caress the wing fabric and not feel his hand. She caught herself looking up from a task, expecting to see his angular face with his long, slender nose that seemed to grow out of his brow and the thin mustache that underscored it. The deep sigh that shuddered out of her throat made Biscuit look up inquiringly.

She put away the tools and locked the toolbox. “Let’s go, Biscuit. We’ll see if Maddy’s got something more for you to eat than those mice.”

Maddy had several soup bones for Biscuit. She served a large meal to Jade and Neville consisting of chicken roasted with various root vegetables, and a platter of steaming mealies, as corn on the cob was termed. A loaf of freshly baked bread completed the dinner. Cyril had eaten earlier and was asleep in his room. Conversation lagged while everyone ate; then Jade passed on Bev and Avery’s regards and questions. Neville told about the growing number of nearby farmers interested in his coffee-washing service as well as the advance orders for the washers from farmers farther afield. Madeline set out a pudding for dessert.

“We were a bit surprised to see you today, Jade,” said Madeline. “You worked over the plane just five days ago.”

Neville looked up from his pudding, his eyes alight with expectation. “I say, does this mean that you’ve heard—”