A Spear of Summer Grass

22



I spent the night in my cell running over every word from the interview and listening to the rain pattering on the roof. I hadn’t mentioned the bracelet and neither had he. I think he meant to spring it on me and watch me fall like a house of cards. Little did he know the damned thing was most likely mine, and I had a witness who could prove it, so long as Bianca hadn’t been too lit to forget that she’d commented on it at Helen’s party. But the bracelet was a tricky card to play, and I wanted to save it for just the right moment. The next morning I was summoned bright and early for another interview with Gilchrist. This time he played to win, and I almost pitied him.

Almost. Instead, I waved my black ribbon in his face and fingered the butter knife, rubbing it against my wrist until he hollered for an officer and had me packed off back to my cell. That evening, after a surprisingly tasty meal sent over from the Norfolk, he came to my cell with two other officers, all dressed plainly. He brought me a simple black coat and told me to put it on.

“Well, it’s not exactly Patou, but I suppose it will have to do,” I commented acidly. I thrust my arms into the sleeves. “Where are we going, Inspector? Are you taking me out on the town?”

“Not precisely.” He took me by the arm and hurried me to the back door of the police station. He propelled me through the door, holding an umbrella over my head as we hurried to a waiting car. The driver apparently knew where we were headed because he floored it before the other two had hardly gotten themselves settled.

Gilchrist sat next to me, his shoulder pressed companionably to mine.

“Come on,” I said, batting my lashes. “I’m being winsome. The least you could do is tell me where we’re going.”

He sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you. Arrangements have been made to hold you until your counsel arrives.”

I steeled myself against the chill that went through me. “Kilimani, then?”

“Kilimani.” The inspector was decidedly happy about it.

* * *

Kilimani Prison was not exactly summer camp. They put me into a special cell of my own and left me to rot as the rain continued to fall, relentless and grey, as soft and unfocused as I felt. I spent the next three weeks in my little cell, practicing my Swahili with the girl who brought my food and reading books loaned to me by the warden. He had an unnatural fondness for Dickens, but I managed. I made my way through most of them except A Tale of Two Cities. I got to the part where Carton is mounting the scaffold to give up his life in place of the husband of the woman he loves and I closed the book. “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done” just struck a little too close to home. But later I went back and underlined it and when that wasn’t enough, I wrote it on the wall of my cell with a pencil.

I had visitors. Ryder didn’t come, and for that I gave fervent thanks every day. Each day that passed was hopefully taking him and Gideon farther into the bush. Helen visited, but cried so incoherently she had to be escorted right back out. Rex came, and insisted upon seeing me privately in one of the prison offices. I was shocked that they let him dictate the arrangements, but I suppose it was a mark of how much influence he had in the colony. Gilchrist was obviously looking at him as the future president and he gave us ten minutes together. Rex held me gently and didn’t say much. It felt glorious to have someone stroke my hair.

“I only wish you’d brought my hairbrush,” I told him. “I’m sure I look a fright.”

“You look wonderful,” he replied. He kissed me on the cheek then and asked all sorts of penetrating questions about the legalities and whether my rights were being respected. He told me he’d been in touch with Quentin and he was on his way, but there was nothing more he could tell me, and the inspector tapped at the door while he was still talking.

“I’m afraid your ten minutes are up, sir,” Gilchrist called.

Rex turned to me. “Is there anything I can send you?”

“A file?” I hazarded.

He smiled, but couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh. “Steady on, dear girl. It will all be over soon.”

“I hope so.” He left me then, and Gilchrist had me escorted back to my cell where I marked another day off the wall in pencil.

My next visitor wasn’t quite so diverting. Dora burst into lusty sobs the minute she saw me.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Dodo,” I muttered.

She blew noisily into her handkerchief. “I am sorry. I can’t seem to stop.”

“Were you able to get hold of Mossy? Did you explain the situation?”

“Not entirely,” she said. “I cabled that there had been a little trouble but that you were just fine and you would write her with details when you were able.”

“That’s just swell, Dora! Why didn’t you write her yourself? The story is bound to get picked up even by the London newspapers.”

She nibbled at her lower lip. “I didn’t know how much you wanted me to tell her. I didn’t think about the newspapers. I suppose I’ve muddled things.”

I sighed and folded my arms. “If I ever turn to a life of crime, you’ll excuse me if you’re not exactly my first choice for an accomplice.”

She threw her hands into the air. “I’m sorry. I did my best, but it’s all been so difficult. The funeral was—” She broke off and I wasn’t sorry. I had read about it in the newspapers. The occasion had been attended by almost every white person in Kenya, as much for ghoulish curiosity as respect for the dead. I was glad I’d missed it. I hated funerals almost as much as I hated weddings.

She took out her handkerchief and sniffled into it.

“Stop sniveling, Dodo. It will all get sorted,” I soothed. “I have been in worse scrapes.”

“Scrapes? This isn’t a scrape, Delilah. You have been taken in for questioning about the murder of Kit Parrymore. Do you even comprehend that? If you are tried, you will be hanged.”

“Only if I’m convicted,” I pointed out.

“How can you be so calm? You are not human!”

She burst into sobs again and I waited until she had soaked a second handkerchief.

“How’s Lawrence?”

She snuffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “We’re getting married.”

“Congratulations. Do you want me to tell you now or later about his odd sexual proclivities?”

“He told me himself,” she said sternly. “I don’t care. He said when we’re married we will go to a new mission in Uganda, right away from here. And he doesn’t mind that I’m not interested in that side of things. We will have a Josephite marriage.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not. Plenty of people do, you know. Particularly clergymen.”

“For Christ’s sake, Dora, there’s no need to play Charlotte Lucas and throw yourself at some odious man just because you don’t want to be an old maid.”

“I’m not an old maid!” she cried. “I’m not a virgin, you know. There, does that shock you? I’ve had experiences. And I don’t want them anymore. I’m finished with that sort of thing. I only want security, companionship. And so does Lawrence.”

She wiped her eyes, and all the fight seemed to have gone out of her after her little outburst.

“How stupid I am,” I murmured. “It was when I was off on safari, killing the lion that took the Kikuyu child, wasn’t it? You changed after that. Was he going to paint you?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “No. Evelyn and I were supposed to have a lesson, but she had to stay behind at the school and I went anyway. I knew it would be just the two of us and I went anyway. I knew what would happen,” she insisted. “I wasn’t stupid or naïve. I knew he would try. And I knew I would let him.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Because I am twenty-nine. Because after the age of nineteen virginity is a burden. Because it was time to let go of it. I just wanted to feel. All my life is neat and tidy and so orderly I wanted to scream. I just wanted to put it all aside and feel for once.”

I said nothing and she went on, her voice calmer now. “It was different from what I expected. I’ve read books, plenty of them. But it was different. I thought it would hurt more. And I never realised...that is to say, when it was done, I think I understood you for the first time.”

“How?”

“It isn’t the pleasure you’re after. It’s the oblivion.”

She was right. She did understand me better. It was indeed the oblivion that I craved, that moment of swimming in the sea that is the wide-open pupil of God’s eye, where nothing exists but nothingness.

She went on. “I cleaned myself up and left him and I knew that would be the last time I ever did that. I thought I wanted it, that loss of control, that complete euphoria. But I was wrong. The feeling of things building up was quite pleasant. I shouldn’t have minded if that were all. But then it kept going, it kept pushing and urging, and it took on a life of its own. It frightened me, that feeling. I would have done anything it demanded. I would have killed in that moment, I think. I would have thrown myself into a fire or drowned myself to finish it. I would have clawed the flesh off my own bones to be rid of it, to have that moment of completion. It was frightful. Honestly, Delilah, I don’t know how you do it.”

She lit a cigarette then with a deft gesture.

“You’re taking on all my bad habits.”

“Just this one. But you can have men, at least the ones that want something back. I haven’t the stomach for it.”

She blew out a ragged little smoke ring that dissolved into the air. “Remind me to teach you how to do that properly.”

She smiled then and it was through her tears. She stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m marrying Lawrence this week. Then we’re leaving for Uganda. The inspector isn’t happy, but he has no grounds to ask us to stay. I won’t be here to see this finished.”

“I understand, Dodo. You’ve served your time. Godspeed.”

She rose and brushed the ash off her skirts. “I always knew it would end in tears between us.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Yes, you are.”

And so Dora left me. She had been my cousin, my companion, my chaperone, and I had become accustomed to her. Perhaps too much so. She had been my shadow, but shadows are insubstantial things, without depth or illumination, and Dora deserved better. I hoped she would be happy with Lawrence. Hoped it, but doubted it just the same. I heard through others that Evelyn was none too happy about Lawrence marrying and was devastated to leave her school. But Evelyn, like so many poor relations—like Dora, in fact—was at the mercy of her betters. She packed her bags and tagged along, the eternal third wheel. I hoped Kit had bedded her, too. God knew she’d have little enough to look back on with fondness at the end of her life if she kept on the way she was going.

I wrote letters to Dora and to Mossy and dozens of others, but there seemed little point in sending them. I tore them up instead and started a diary of sorts, writing down everything that had happened since that grey day in Paris when they had persuaded me to come to Africa. I didn’t blame them. I was a problem to be solved, and Africa seemed as good a solution as any. I had been swept under the carpet, tidied up like any other unpleasantness. And then I had to ruin it all by getting involved with a man who went and got himself murdered. The irony almost choked me.

So I read books I couldn’t remember and wrote letters I didn’t send, and taught the guards how to play poker. My grandfather had learned in the Civil War and taught it to me. We’d always played for cash, and he never cared if he cleaned me out of every penny of my pocket money.

Apparently, the press had gotten hold of the story in all its lurid detail and I had admirers. They flooded the place with gifts, including jewellery and liquor and proposals of marriage. They sent me Swiss linen handkerchiefs and Belgian lace collars, leather-bound books and boxes of marzipan fruits. I gave it all away. The other inmates had never owned such luxuries, and God knew I had little enough use for them.

But the result of my largesse was that I learned things. They paid me back in the only currency at their disposal—information. Every one of those girls knew someone or was related to someone who worked in a white household. I discovered the cannabis Gates had been growing at Fairlight had been a highly profitable operation for him and that he had sold to white settlers. I learned that Bianca’s cocaine was smuggled into the country in boxes of Spanish talcum that went straight to Government House in diplomatic pouches. And I learned that some of the white settlers were stockpiling weapons. Opinion was running hot against the powers in London that had squashed the idea of independence for Kenya. Many believed an armed rebellion was only a matter of time, and that certainty had caused most of them to secure caches of arms, ammunition and food to withstand the siege.

I learned, too, about the smaller dramas that had been playing out around me. I learned that people with daughters under seventeen gave Bunny Stevenson a wide berth, that Anthony Wickenden had moved off the ranch to live with a Masai woman who had given him the clap, and that Gervase had invested all of his money in a herd of Highland sheep that had fallen down dead in the heat. I also found out that the gallery owner in Nairobi had announced a posthumous showing of Kit’s work once my trial was over.

“Bastard thinks I’m guilty,” I muttered. I slipped the girl who told me that a box of violet creams from Charbonnel et Walker. I was still pondering the implications of an armed revolt when they removed me from my cell to meet with Quentin.

“You look like hell.” It wasn’t the nicest thing to have blurted out upon seeing him but it was true. His trousers were soaked to the knee and his hair was gleaming with raindrops.

He smiled ruefully. “Who knew it rained in Africa? And I wish I could say the same of you, my darling girl. You ought to at least have lost a little of your sleekness in prison.”

I patted my hair. “A girl has to have standards.” His smile faltered a little and I put up a hand. “Don’t. Anything but pity, Quentin. You know I can’t bear that.”

He reached into his pocket. “I’ve brought a letter from your mother.”

He held it out, but I hesitated. “I’m surprised the paper isn’t smouldering.”

Quentin smiled in spite of himself. “You might be surprised. You always did say Mossy came through best in a crisis.”

If she’d written to tell me off it would have been easier. But I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought that she might understand, might be on my side. I put the letter away to read when I was alone and looked up at Quentin. He sighed.

“Jesus, Delilah,” he said, subsiding heavily into a chair. “How did it come to this?”

“How does it ever? Wrong place, wrong man.”

“You have a knack for that,” he acknowledged. He leaned forward, and I could smell the familiar scent of his body, his cologne, the hair oil he used. “I have to ask. Did you do it?”

“I thought lawyers never wanted to know the truth.”

“I am a solicitor.”

I shrugged. “I never knew the difference.”

“The difference is that I intend to make sure you get out. Now, tell me the truth.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked him squarely in the eye. “No. I did not shoot Kit Parrymore. Happy?”

“Not entirely. You could be lying.”

“To you, darling? Never.” I bared my teeth in a smile.

“Delilah, you do understand this is serious? Murder is a hanging offense.”

I gave him the same response I’d given Dora. “Only if you’re convicted.”

“Dammit, Delilah!” He thrust both hands into his hair, disrupting his careful combing.

“I’m sorry, Quentin. Yes, I understand this is serious, but I didn’t do anything except lie to the police, and they deserved it.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you lie about and why?”

“I may have indicated that I killed Kit.”

He blanched. “You confessed? To murder?”

“Well, yes. It put them in a rather difficult situation, you see, because I wouldn’t make any further statements without my attorney. Now, they could have found one for me here in Nairobi, but all I had to do was wave my American passport and invoke the name of my senator uncle and they were happy to wait for you to arrive to question me further.”

“You mean you haven’t been charged?”

“No.”

“Good God. And they’ve kept you in prison the entire time?”

“I think they said I was ‘helping police with their inquiries.’ Makes me sound quite eager, doesn’t it?” He rubbed his face, and there were shadows under his eyes and around his mouth. “Poor Quentin. How long is it since you slept?”

“Days. I can’t remember. I think I may have dozed on that god-awful train from Mombasa, but some fellow kept telling the most frightful stories of lions eating the railway workers.”

“The lions of Tsavo. You ought to have listened. It’s a fascinating tale.” I thought back to the day I had tortured Dora with it. It seemed a lifetime ago.

“Be that as it may, I would rather keep to the matter at hand. The police inspector will be wanting a formal statement from you, and I would advise you to answer as fully as you can without revealing anything that might be prejudicial to your case.”

“I don’t even know what that means. Why don’t I just tell the truth and we’ll see where we are when we’re finished?”

“It might be at the end of a hangman’s noose,” he replied brutally. “If you don’t know if you ought to answer something or not, look at me. I will guide you.”

“Fine.”

“Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

* * *

It lasted seven hours with short breaks for lunch and tea. By the time we were done, the inspector lectured me thoroughly on the venality of making false statements and Quentin lectured him thoroughly about due process. It was a very thorough experience for everyone, and when it was finished, I was free to go. Inspector Gilchrist had arranged for me to leave from the back of the prison and he personally escorted us to the door. He opened it and I saw that the rains were still coming down in a soft grey curtain. Gilchrist turned to Quentin.

“Mr. Harkness, perhaps you will be good enough to make certain the car has arrived. I wouldn’t like Miss Drummond to stand around outside and attract the attention of the press. No need to give the reporters anything else to write about,” Gilchrist said, his lips twitching like a rabbit’s. Quentin hurried out the back door leaving us alone for just a moment.

“Thank you,” I said, tipping my head and smiling sweetly.

“Don’t bother,” he growled. “I ought to charge you with making false statements and hindering my investigation. You’ve cost me nearly three weeks.”

“No, I didn’t. I’ve had time to work it out, Inspector. You knew the first day you had me here that I didn’t do it. And you knew Gideon didn’t do it either. You wanted me in custody because as long as I was being held somewhere, you could claim to be doing your best to bring Kit’s murderer to justice and you could keep Government House happy. And all the while, you gave an innocent man a chance to get to freedom.”

His jaw hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” The inspector wasn’t tall. I didn’t have to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. I pressed my lips to his and moved back just as he lifted his arms. “Thank you.”

He reached into his pocket. “I believe this belongs to you.”

He held out a Masai bracelet, blue and white, with a thin line of distinct green beads. I would still look in my jewel box when I went back to Fairlight, but it would be a formality. This was the one Moses had given me, the bracelet that had led Gilchrist to Gideon in the first place. The slight kink where I had stepped on it getting out of Ryder’s truck was unmistakable.

I hesitated. “What makes you think that is mine?”

“Routine investigation. It does uncover most things eventually. You know, we’d have saved a great deal of time and trouble if you had just admitted that you lost it at Parrymore’s during one of your trysts.” But the inspector was wrong. I hadn’t seen it since the night I had been with Ryder, the night I had tucked it into my jewel box for safekeeping. Gilchrist wasn’t the only one to get it wrong, I realised as I took it from him. Gideon must have thought I had dropped it, too. He would have known it wasn’t his, but he would not put me in danger by telling anyone it was mine. He had protected me with his silence.

I slipped it into my pocket and assumed a nonchalant smile.

“I wasn’t sure you had mine. For all I knew it might have been safely back at Fairlight sitting in my jewel box. Besides, I thought it might be more fun to spring it on you in court if you ever managed to get your hands on Gideon.”

His expression was earnest. “He can’t come back, you know. I’ve spent the past weeks persuading Government House that he’s out of reach. If they so much as catch a rumour that he’s back, they’ll force me to take him in. I won’t have a choice, and he will hang.”

“I understand. Tell me one thing. How did you know he was innocent?”

“Because I know who did it. And that’s all you will get from me.”

He was as good as his word. He refused to tell me anything else, and when he handed me over to Quentin, he seemed happy to be rid of me. But I looked back once and I saw him standing alone, his eyes closed, his face pale, his hands clenched at his sides.

“That man looks anguished,” Quentin said, smiling slightly. “You must have been hard on him.”

“You have no idea.”