Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (7 page)

“And Cyrus Reed, parent,” added her father. Sinking into the chair beside Mrs. Pollifax he smiled at her and said, “Good to see you again.”

Steeves looked pleased. “Americans, are you? I do wish you’d sit down over here—I’ve not met an American in years. Perhaps you can explain to me what’s been happening in your country.”

“Lisa can if anyone can,” said Reed. “A biased account, naturally.”

Steeves flashed his quick, radiant smile. “But all accounts are biased, surely? You had something called a watershed affair?”

That won a smile from Lisa. “No, no,” she said, sitting down next to him, and began speaking with quick gestures, her face very serious, her slender hands cutting the air with incisive slashes.

Her father turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “Thought you’d like to know, by the way, that someone was asking for you at the hotel when I checked out.”

“Asking for me?” gasped Mrs. Pollifax. “Was he tall, with dark hair and blue eyes and—”

Reed shook his head. “Zambian. Short black chap. Dressed in a kind of—well,” he said, looking pained, “it had hibiscus all over it. Or bougainvillea. That sort of shirt, with black trousers and sneakers.”

Puzzled, Mrs. Pollifax said, “And you’re quite sure he was asking for
me
?”

“Clearly,” nodded Reed. “Couldn’t help but overhear. Asked for your room number, the clerk said you’d already checked out, he left.”

“How very odd,” said Mrs. Pollifax, frowning. “There’s that advertisement, of course, but it won’t be published in the
Times of Zambia
until tomorrow morning.”

Her companion nodded. “Unless the typesetter knows someone who knows someone who knows your friend. Or perhaps the travel bureau sent a chap along to make sure you’d gotten off on time.” With a gesture toward the other two he said, “Damn glad to see there’s someone young and male for Lisa.”

Mrs. Pollifax wrenched her thoughts away from the mysterious man at the hotel. “I thought,” she said, “that your daughter blushed when she saw him.”

His brows lifted. “Thought so, did you?” He turned and gazed at Lisa with interest. “Amazing. I missed that.”

“You were standing behind her.”

“So I was. Seems an engaging fellow, Steeves.”

John Steeves was certainly being very attentive, thought
Mrs. Pollifax, glancing at the two across the campfire: those haunted eyes of his were fixed intently on Lisa’s face as he listened, his quick smile occasionally transforming their sadness. It was a rare person who listened like that, reflected Mrs. Pollifax, and thought it a quality difficult for any woman to resist.

“And you?” asked Reed, directing his quizzical glance at her. “Always travel alone?”

“Oh yes,” she said simply. “At least—”

“At least you start off alone,” he said with his slow smile, “and then collect people like a Pied Piper? Ah, here comes whatsisname. Dour fellow you rode out with.”

“Mr. Kleiber,” she reminded him. “Willem Kleiber.”

Mr. Kleiber approached the fire hesitantly, sat down two chairs removed from Cyrus Reed and said distastefully, “There is a
complete
absence of running water here. Exactly how does one wash?”

“The word
safari
,” said Reed in an offhand voice, “means camping, you know.”

Lisa had turned at the sound of his voice. “There are shower pipes behind those reed fences, you know. Hot water too.”

Mr. Kleiber’s nose looked, if anything, even more pinched; he had the most active nostrils of anyone she’d met, thought Mrs. Pollifax. “Anyone can walk in,” he said coldly. “Anyone. There’s no door, there’s no roof.”

In a rather amused voice Steeves said, “I really don’t think anyone would want to, you know. Try singing loudly while you’re under the tap.”

“That’s just what
I
did,” said Amy Lovecraft, strolling into the circle and joining them. She was looking very elegant in snug black pants, a cashmere sweater and a
short suede jacket. She chose the seat on the other side of John Steeves and sat down, placed a hand on his arm and smiled into his face. “I do hope we’re on a first-name basis now so that I can call you John.”

“Please do,” he said politely. “Have you met Lisa Reed?”

“No, duck,” she said and, leaning forward, gave Lisa a much less enthusiastic smile. “I’ve not met that lovely huge man over there, either.”

“We’re both Reeds,” Lisa said shortly. “I’m Lisa and he’s my father Cyrus, and that’s Mrs. Pollifax next him.”

“Delighted, Cyrus,” said Mrs. Lovecraft, giving him a warm smile and ignoring Mrs. Pollifax. “And here comes Tom Henry. I think it’s super our having a doctor with us as well as a noted travel writer, don’t you?”

This was tactless, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and quite enough to antagonize the remaining men, but if she decided to reserve judgment on Mrs. Lovecraft for the moment she could welcome Dr. Henry wholeheartedly. He sat down next to her, crossed his legs, gave her a cheerful smile and said, “I hope dinner’s soon, I’m starving.”

“About five more minutes,” Mrs. Pollifax told him after a glance at her watch. “Or just enough time to ask what Homer meant when he said you’re at a mission hospital. Does that mean you live here in Zambia?”

He wrenched his eyes from Lisa Reed and turned to give her his full attention. “Yes it does—the hospital’s over on the Zambesi River near the Angolan border. I came out from Canada three years ago and I’m sure all my friends expected me back in Windsor a week later.”
He gave her a sidelong boyish smile. “Needless to say I’m still here.”

“You like it.”

“Love it,” he admitted. “So much so that I wanted to try a safari on my seven days’ leave. There’s so much about the bush I’ve been too busy to learn, and a great deal about wild animals I want to learn.”

“Including
Homo sapiens
?” said Cyrus Reed, leaning forward to enter the conversation.

“Well, I see a good many of
them
,” said Dr. Henry, smiling back, “but aside from several missionary families at the hospital it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a group like this. I’d forgotten,” he said dryly, “what a lot of nonsense people talk.”

Cyrus Reed smiled. “I agree with you completely.”

“What do you talk about at your hospital when you’re relaxing?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

He grinned. “Oh—life, death, septicemia, who’s due to boil the next drinking water, or what the village witch doctor said that day.”

Mrs. Pollifax laughed. “Scarcely small talk.”

“God, no.” He looked chagrined. “Obviously I’ll have to brush up on that.” He smiled at Chanda as the boy walked into the campfire circle and came to stand beside him.
“Bweleniko
,
”
he said.
“Mwapoleni.”

“Kuntu kuli kusuma
,
”
the boy said, smiling.

“Endita.”
Turning to Mrs. Pollifax he said, “Chanda talks Bemba but he speaks a little English now and understands it very well. When we first met I was struggling to learn Nyanga, and now I’m having to learn Bemba, and it all grows rather confusing. Chanda, you’ve not met this gentleman yet. He’s Mr. Cyrus Reed.”

Chanda stepped forward and shook hands with Reed and then, to their surprise, clapped his hands three times. “That’s the Zambian greeting,” explained Dr. Henry with a grin. “Chanda’s given you only the modified version. When it’s done properly it’s repeated three times … a handshake followed by three claps and then another round or two. Quite a ceremony.”

“Certainly feel thoroughly greeted,” admitted Reed.

Somewhat removed from them, Willem Kleiber said in alarm, “He’s not—uh—yours, is he?”

Tom Henry’s smile was friendly. “He is now. He was brought into the hospital half-dead, his entire village wiped out by fighting on the Angolan border. Freedom fighters brought him in.”

Overhearing this, Lisa gasped, “You live there?”

He nodded.

“But that must be fascinating.”

“It is,” he said, meeting her glance with a faint smile.

At that moment a drum began beating to announce dinner. Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw that in the open-air dining room behind her a huge tureen was being carried in by a boy in a white jacket. She also saw Mr. McIntosh standing on the step, hesitating between them and the dining hall. He had changed into khaki slacks over which he wore a white shirt open at the neck and a black V-neck sweater, and she wondered if he was going to appear late at every meal and leave early, like a shadow. Intuitively she felt that he was an intensely private, introverted man, but having decided this she wondered how: was it the manner in which he looked out from under his brows, head slightly bent? or was it that his smile, which was surprisingly sweet, never changed
or wavered? He simply stood and waited, smiling, while they left their chairs and moved toward him, and then, still smiling, he turned and walked toward the buffet table and placed himself in line.

With the arrival of McIntosh Mrs. Pollifax realized the safari group was now complete and she wondered, not for the first time, which of these people could be an assassin. Now that she’d met them all she found this a very jarring thought because they all looked so normal, even wholesome, and certainly all of them were—well, explainable, she reasoned, reaching for a word that eliminated the existence of sinister motives and façades. She could not imagine any of them a professional killer standing in a crowd with a gun in his pocket, waiting, measuring, judging, whipping out the gun and firing, then vanishing into the crowd. In the first place, none of these people looked capable of such brutal violence, and in the second place she couldn’t imagine any of them managing such a thing without being noticed.

Cyrus Reed would certainly be noticed, she thought with an amused glance at him towering over the soup tureen. It was possible that without his goatee Mr. Kleiber might look sufficiently nondescript; it was also possible that Tom Henry was not a doctor at all. McIntosh, she thought, would certainly melt into a crowd—he was doing so right now; John Steeves was too distinguished to melt, but she knew from his books that he was a genius at disguising himself.

If Carstairs was right, she thought, one of them had to be wearing a devilishly clever mask … and then she recalled with interest Carstairs’ telephone call to her the evening before she left New Jersey. She had assured him
that yes, her passport had been returned safely to her and that yes, Bishop had explained the importance of the snapshots, and then she had asked him the question that had begun to exasperate her. “I realize this is an insane world,” she had told him, “but can you please tell me why an assassin would go on a
safari
?”

“Why, to meet someone, I imagine,” Carstairs had said pleasantly. “Plan the next assassination, perhaps, or be paid for the last one. Certainly not for
fun.
”

If this was true—and Carstairs’ suppositions nearly always proved sound—there could be two people wearing masks on this safari, each watching the others and wondering, as she was doing … and this meant that eventually they would have to go off together for a good little chat, didn’t it? It occurred to her that if she was very observant and very discreet she might be able to do a little eavesdropping …

Of course Carstairs had made it very clear to her that she was to do nothing but take photographs, and she planned to do a very
good
job with her picture-taking, but now that she thought about it, it seemed incredible waste for her to be here on the spot and not do a little spying as well. After all, it was taxpayers’ money that was paying for her safari, she thought virtuously, and as a taxpayer herself she abhorred waste.

Besides, she added, dropping all pretense at justification, it would be such fun to surprise Carstairs and catch Aristotle.

In the morning the safari officially began with the game-viewing excursion up the river before leaving for Kafwala camp. Mrs. Pollifax came to breakfast early and still a little sleepy, for it was barely seven and she’d not slept with any continuity. The walls of her cabin had rustled all night—she was convinced that some small animal lived in them—and at one point she had awakened to a loud animal cry, followed by a soft whistle and the pounding of feet. After this another fruit had dropped from the tree outside her cabin, and the reeds had begun to whisper again … At breakfast Julian told her that animals roamed freely through the camp at night, that a hippo had been heard and that pukus, who liked the safety of the camp at night, made soft whistling sounds. It was just as well she’d not known, she reflected, or she
might never have dared fall asleep again.

“I want you to meet Crispin now,” Julian said as they rose from the breakfast table. “I will be staying at camp to make final arrangements for our trip at noon, and Crispin will take you game-viewing. He’s assistant safari manager and he’ll be with us for the entire safari.”

Crispin was not in uniform, and looked surprisingly like an eager schoolboy in his flowered shirt, dark trousers and sneakers. He had a long slender face and bright, interested eyes. He actually looked excited about taking them out game-viewing, and Mrs. Pollifax found this rather endearing.

John Steeves said, “Crispin’s even more English than Julian. What are your Zambian names?”

“Mine?” Julian laughed. “You want it all at once? Milimo Simoko Chikwanda.”

Steeves grinned. “I’ll call you Julian. And Crispin’s?”

“Wamufu Chinyanta Muchona.”

Steeves nodded. “Definitely Julian and Crispin.”

“I think so,” Julian said in amusement

There was a charming picnic air about the excursion up the river. The sun was soft and golden, the river full of morning sounds, and they traveled on a splendid breakfast of bacon and eggs, sausage, toast and coffee. Mr. Kleiber, sitting next to Mrs. Pollifax, went so far as to confide that he would like to see a crocodile. Across the aisle Amy Lovecraft had blossomed out with a professional-looking camera loaded with all kinds of attachments that she tried to explain to John Steeves. The Reeds sat together in front, both looking sleepy; Tom Henry and Chanda stood in the stern of the boat and
McIntosh by himself in the bow; he too bristled with cameras and light meters.