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

endured Mrs Brocas-Gill’s indefatigable monologue with barely a break since the aircraft had left London Airport, and as they had been delayed for twenty-four hours at Rome with engine trouble this meant that she had been compelled to listen to it for the best part of two days. Even the nights had not silenced Mrs Brocas-Gill, who had slept with her mouth open, and snored. And Victoria wanted to think.
    She had not allowed herself much time for thought during the last three weeks. Once she had made her decision and cabled her acceptance of Aunt Emily’s offer, there was little point in stopping to think; and little time in which to do so, for there had been a hundred things to see to. But there would be the flight to Kenya; twenty-four hours of sitting quietly in an aeroplane with nothing to do. There would be time then to think, and to sort out the turmoil in her mind and face the past – and the future. But she had not calculated on Mrs Brocas-Gill, and now they were flying over Africa, and the Dark Continent lay spread out below them with Nairobi Airport only half an hour ahead.
    Half an hour! thought Victoria in a panic. Half an hour in which to sort out her thoughts and prepare herself for meeting Eden. To face all those things that she had cravenly refused to face during the past three weeks, and that she had forced herself not to think of for more than five years. Half an hour …
    It was difficult to remember a time when she had not loved Eden DeBrett. She had been five on the day when she had tried to make Falda, the little zebra which her father had caught and tamed for her, jump the cattle gate by one of the waterholes. Falda had not taken kindly to the idea, and Victoria had pitched head-first into the sloshy churned-up mud by the drinking troughs where, in addition to winding herself badly, she ruined the clean cotton dress in which she was supposed to appear at a luncheon party.
    It was Eden, nine years old and spending the weekend with his great-Aunt Helen, who had saved the situation. He had retrieved Victoria from the mud, dried her tears on a grubby pocket-handkerchief and suggested the immediate removal of clothes, shoes and socks, and their immersion – and Victoria’s – in the clean water of the cattle troughs.
    His suggestion had been followed, with such excellent results that when the gong had sounded she had been able to walk demurely up to the house in a crumpled but undoubtedly clean dress, and no one had noticed that her long brown plaits owed some of their sleekness to the fact that they were damp. Eden’s superior male intelligence had saved her from disaster and from that day he was Victoria’s hero.
    She had been a plain little girl, with a tendency to stammer slightly when shy or upset; thin and leggy and very brown. Brown sunburnt skin, brown eyes and long, lank brown hair. But although her own lack of good looks had not interested her, she had been deeply impressed by Eden’s beauty.
    Even as a child Eden DeBrett was beautiful, and he did not outgrow that beauty as so many children do. It seemed, in fact, to increase as he grew older, and it had its effect on everyone he met, so that there were few people, if any, who were ever to know what he was really like, or to be quite fair to him: their judgement being invariably swung out of true by his amazing good looks.
    He was ten when Em hardened her heart and sent him home to a famous preparatory school in England, and the six-year-old Victoria had wept bitterly and uncontrollably, and greatly to Eden’s disgust and her own mortification, on the platform of Nairobi railway station where she had gone with her parents to see him off.
    Her gay and charming father had died two months later, and the tragedy of his death, the sale of the farm and the misery of leaving Kenya – even the parting with her ponies and dear fat friendly Falda – had been mitigated by the thought that she would be seeing