Something Wicked by David Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

be made out of agriculture – flax, coffee and all the rest of it aren’t worth the effort. You remember Algy Robertson? When the crops failed three years on the trot – it was locusts the last time – he shot himself.’
    ‘No! I’m so sorry, but surely there’s still money to be made out of the visitors? Don’t you still take tourists out on safari?’ Edward heard himself sounding almost contemptuous but Harry didn’t seem to mind.
    ‘I’ve more or less given that up. To tell the truth, I got a bad mauling some months back. All my own fault. I was sleeping off too good a lunch and woke to find this mangy old lion breathing down my neck. In fact, it was his stinking breath which woke me up. Talk about a hangover, that old beast needed his teeth seeing to, that’s for sure.’
    ‘You didn’t have your gun?’
    ‘No, idiot that I was.’
    ‘So what did you do?’
    ‘We looked each other in the eye for a rather long minute, then I got up and made a run for it shouting for help. Fortunately, I was only just outside the camp or I wouldn’t be around to tell you the story. Jake Gore – do you remember him or was he after your time . . .?’
    ‘After my time.’
    ‘Well, he heard me shouting and came with his gun and shot him dead. Though not before . . .’ Harry rolled up his sleeve and Edward saw the scars of three long claw marks running from elbow to wrist. ‘I was lucky not to lose my arm. I suppose that was the moment I began to wonder if I wasn’t a bit too old for the game.’
    His rakish grin – the same one with which he had described every prank at school – sent Edward back to the days when they had been as David and Jonathan. He found himself smiling in response.
    ‘Then you heard you had inherited a title?’
    ‘Yes, it means nothing really but I was curious to see the place I’d been lumbered with, so here I am.’
    He gestured with his good arm. Edward idly picked up a book from a pile lying on the table beside Harry’s armchair.
    ‘Walt Whitman? I didn’t know you liked poetry?’
    ‘I’ve rather taken to it. The old man seems to express my philosophy of life as well as anyone. “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”’
    Edward saw that the other books by the armchair were also poetry and plays – Ben Jonson, John Webster, Shakespeare. He was impressed. ‘It’s a long time since I read Whitman. I can see why he appeals to you.’
    ‘It’s a funny thing. I wasn’t much of a reader at school but there’s so damn little to do in Kenya that I began to find – after you left – I was eating up books – poetry in particular. Less hard work than women . . .’ he laughed, sounding rather shy, ‘and in many ways more satisfying.’
    The coolness which had been between them seemed to vanish, re-establishing the intimacy they had shared at school. Edward had no wish to spoil the atmosphere but felt he had to ask. ‘Lady Redfern – did that . . .?’
    ‘I had a sticky few weeks but, in the end, they couldn’t pin anything on me. It was just an accident. You scurried off as quick as your feet would take you.’
    ‘I made a statement to the police,’ Edward said defensively.
    ‘I don’t blame you for getting out of it, old man.’
    ‘I didn’t “get out of it”. It was nothing to do with me. It was your accident – not mine.’
    Harry visibly restrained himself, shrugging his shoulders. ‘No hard feelings, old boy. Just one of those things, eh? Anyway, it’s good to have you here. I’m going to put together a bit of a party for the regatta. You don’t mind, do you?’
    ‘Not at all. I’m hoping Verity may be fit enough to enjoy a little gentle boating. It’s still a week or two off, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes. It begins on the twenty-ninth and ends on the second of July. You rowed at Eton, didn’t you?’
    ‘Not seriously. I was a dry-bob. I rowed a bit at