Death in Kenya by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online

herself was afraid of it. She shivered convulsively, clutching her hands tightly together in her lap; and as she listened a little breath of wind whispered through the bushes and swayed the hanging trails of roses, and somewhere near her a twig cracked sharply.
    Quite suddenly, with that sound, the garden was no longer a friendly place, but as full of menace as the house, and Alice stood up quickly and stooped to gather up the fallen flowers, aware that her heart was thumping painfully against her ribs. She had not realized that it had grown so dark.
    Below the knoll and beyond the shamba, from the shadowy belt of the papyrus swamp, birds began to call; their clear piping cries mingling with the sweet clear notes of the distant piano. But the day had almost gone and the sky was already shimmering with pale stars, and there was as yet no moon. There should be no birds calling at this hour. Had something, or someone, startled them?
    She remembered then what Gilly had said less than an hour ago. Something about General Africa – still at large despite the heavy price that the Government had set on his head, and suspected of being in the employment of one of the settlers in the Naivasha district. Something about a gang under his command who were rumoured to be still in hiding somewhere in the papyrus swamp, being fed by the African labour of the farms that bordered the Lake.
    She had not paid much attention to it at the time, but now she remembered it with alarm, and remembered, too, Em’s instructions that she should not stay out after sunset. But the sun had set long ago, and now it was almost dark, and the evening breeze had arisen and was stirring the leaves about her and filling the green dusk with soft, stealthy rustlings.
    A twig cracked again immediately behind her, and turning quickly she caught a flicker of movement that was not caused by the wind. Her hands tightened about the roses, driving the thorns into her flesh, but caught in a sudden spider’s web of panic she was almost unaware of the pain. Her brain told her to run for the house, but her muscles would not obey her. She could not even scream; and she knew that if she did so no one in the house would hear her, for the music of the piano would drown any sound from outside. But there was someone watching her from among the bushes; she was sure of it——
    Alice stood quite still, as helpless and as paralysed with terror as the victim of a nightmare. And then, just as she thought that her heart must stop beating, a familiar figure materialized out of the dusk at the foot of the knoll, and the blood seemed to flow again through her numbed veins.
    She dropped the roses, and with a choking sob of relief began to run, tripping and stumbling over the rough grass in the uncertain light. She was within a yard of that dimly seen figure when something checked her. A sound …
    There was something wrong. Something crazily and impossibly wrong. She stopped suddenly, staring. Her eyes widened in her white face and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. For it was someone else. Someone suddenly and horribly unfamiliar.

3
    â€˜And as I was saying, what with Income Tax and strikes and the weather, well it’s no wonder that so many people decide to live abroad. In fact, as I told Oswin – that’s my present husband – I can’t understand why more of them don’t do it. Don’t you agree?’
    There was no answer, and Mrs Brocas-Gill, observing with annoyance that her neighbour had fallen asleep, turned her attention instead to the desolate green and brown expanse of Africa that lay far below her, across which the big B.O.A.C. Constellation trailed a tiny blue shadow no bigger than a toy aeroplane.
    Miss Caryll, however, was not asleep. Only an exceptionally strong-minded woman, or one in need of a hearing-aid, could have slept in the company of that human long-playing record, Mrs Brocas-Gill. Victoria was neither; but she had