Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

Murder in a Time of Siege by Marjorie Eccles

Yorkshire-born novelist and short story writer Marjorie Eccles has a new book coming out in the U.S. next month. The Superintendent’s Daughter (St. Martin’s Press) features Ms. Eccles’s long-running series character, Police Superintendent Gil Mayo, the hero of more than a dozen previous novels. Her new short story for EQMM is a nonseries work set in 1899, during the Boer War.

They would soon be reduced to eating the horses. The idea was anathema to any I Britisher. They would do if it was a question of survival, but thank God it hadn’t come to that, not yet.

The small township in the middle of nowhere lay sweltering on the unending, sun-scorched expanse of the African veldt. A hitherto pleasant, orderly, and uneventful place, now seething with fifteen hundred defending troops, surrounded by the enemy, Mafeking had suddenly found itself turned into a garrison by virtue of its strategic position on the borderland railway.

The first actions of the Boers had been to cut through the telegraph wires, tear up two miles of railway, and seize the waterworks outside the redoubts — though as to this last, they might have saved themselves the trouble: There remained an ample supply of water within the town from tanks, and wells drilled through the rock. Three months of siege had followed, yet morale stayed resolutely high. Though the bombardment had been heavy, loss of life and the numbers of wounded had been comparatively light so far, mostly confined to the military in their storming parties against the enemy. Relief was expected daily, but was not yet forthcoming. Belts were tightened further, while the overall commander, Colonel Baden-Powell, the idol and hero of the hour, continued to keep General Cronjé and his Afrikaners busy, driving them back with his cavalry sorties and causing them considerable losses. His indefatigable, cheery confidence was immensely heartening to the beleaguered townsfolk. Better than a pint of dry champagne any day, good old B.P.!

Undeterred, the Boers celebrated the first day of the new century by shelling the women’s laager. Fortunately, only one person was slightly injured.

Then, on the ninety-ninth day of the siege, Edward Carradine was arrested for murder.

“Mafeking, upon the hundredth day of siege, sends loyal devotion to your Majesty and assurances of continued resolve to maintain your Majesty’s supremacy in this town.”

Having despatched his doughty telegram to his queen, via a trooper valiant enough to risk breaking through the enemy lines and riding with it to Pretoria, Mr. Frank Whiteley, the mayor of Mafeking, forsook his bicycle for once and made his way on foot down the main street. The town lay baking under the dry wind; red, gritty dust puffed out from under his boots at every step. An upright man with a clear and steady gaze, he was deeply tanned by his many years under the suns of Africa, thinner than he had been, by reason of the privations to which they had all been subjected in recent months here in Mafeking. He had followed the business of an Interior trader and hunter, in partnership with a brother-in-law in Bulawayo, since he was seventeen, and no one was better acquainted with the territories and people of Bechuanaland and the country north of the Limpopo than he. He loved and understood Africa and the African people almost as much as he honoured England and the English, His hard years in this land had made him a man of foresight and courage. But at the moment, he was also a man beset by worries: the great loss to him of his company stores, recently reduced to rubble by heavy shelling, his business already in decline because of the war, the longing for his absent wife and children, the continuing need to eke out food supplies. The responsibility — entirely his — of looking after five hundred women, children, and nuns in the women’s laager. And not least, the troubling business of Edward Carradine, an all-consuming anxiety which almost eclipsed all the rest.

Carradine! That unfortunate young man who had arrived in Mafeking with such high hopes and was even now languishing in a makeshift gaol until he could be moved to prison in Pretoria.

Although he was of a good family, his people English immigrants who had interests in the diamond industry in Kimberley, and it was understood that he would, in time, come into a not inconsiderable inheritance, Edward Carradine was of that new breed which needed to prove that they could make their own way in the world, a young man of independence who had chosen railway engineering as his special field. Due to this, he had been called to Mafeking to work on the Bechuanaland Railway. On the outbreak of hostilities, he had immediately leaped, with characteristic enthusiasm and impetuosity, into the foray as a volunteer fighter in the amateur army, four hundred of them native Africans, who augmented the forces drawn from the ranks of the British South Africa police and the five-hundred-strong force of Colonel Hore’s irregular cavalry. Since the township was bursting at the seams with police, the mayor should have felt able to leave Edward Carradine to them, despite their somewhat backward methods of detection, but he could not. It was a damnable business, but he could not simply wash his hands of this rash young man, a friend, a fellow-Britisher, tiresome and foolhardy though he had turned out to be.

Nor could he push the problem aside in his homeward progress; at every step he was greeted by friends and acquaintances wanting to discuss Carradine and the whys and wherefores of his incarceration. And when eventually he thought he had spoken to the very last of them, coming towards him was that prince of good fellows, Baden-Powell himself, but having other things on his mind, thank God, than Carradine. “Never fear, Frank,” he greeted the mayor, “we shall win through, come what may, and no small thanks to you and your calmness in the face of adversity. We are fortunate indeed in having such a stout fellow to maintain and support us in our efforts!”

Frank was uneasy with such compliments. A man of action, he preferred deeds to words. He was a notable game-shot and had had desperate adventures, had escaped being trampled by a rogue elephant and had saved a companion from a rhinoceros by great personal daring, and still his only comment on being congratulated on his bravery had been: “It was to be done, and I did it.”

He waved the flies away and sought an answer now as B.P. clasped his shoulder and made further congratulatory remarks on his capable administration.

“I said at the beginning I would sit tight and keep my hair on, and that’s all I have done,” he replied at last with a smile, taking off his hat and wiping his face with a bandanna.

The mayor’s noble brow, compensated for by his luxuriant, drooping moustache, attested to the fact that this was not to be taken literally, and the twinkle in B.P.’s eye showed he appreciated the joke. “That’s the ticket! It’ll take more than brother Boer to prevent we Britishers from holding aloft the flag, eh? Nil desperandum, Frank, nil desperandum has always been my motto!” And with the parting shot that Lord Roberts had promised relief within a few weeks and he had therefore placed the garrison on full rations again, the intrepid commander went on his way down the street, whistling and cheerful as though he had no cares in the world.

Frank accepted most of these last comments with reservations, having more knowledge of the stubbornness of the Boer character than most of the British commanders. He had the greatest admiration for Baden-Powell’s leadership qualities, but it was with growing alarm that he thought of the colonel’s last rash statement, relative to his own rapidly dwindling stores of provisions, hitherto so carefully husbanded. When the events of war began moving to a crisis, he had foreseen the strong possibility that Mafeking might fall under siege, and its people be forced to capitulate, not to the Boers, but to starvation. Planning for survival was second nature to him and, prepared for the worst, he had collected enormous stores of staple foods and medical supplies. The resulting diet was monotonous, to be sure, with no fresh meat other than that obtained through forages by the soldiery into the local African villages — something which the mayor strongly deplored. But it was a diet which kept hunger at bay. It was in no small part due to his native Yorkshire prudence that the story of the resistance of the gallant little garrison, which had not been expected to last out a month, had already become the stuff of legend back home in England.

If he had been vouchsafed the knowledge that Mafeking’s ordeal had but reached the halfway mark, he would have been even less sanguine.

Leaving behind the cricket ground and the racecourse, a now ruined hotel, and several private houses turned into hospitals, he approached his own residence, about a mile distant. This was a smart bungalow with a pitched, gabled roof, surrounded by trees, a low wall, and iron railings, with a striped awning to keep out the sun, and draped lace curtains at the windows. The most English home, the most hospitable rendezvous for British friends in Mafeking. At the corner of the garden, the flagpole defiantly flew the Union Jack. It was in this house, at one of Sarah’s “at homes,” that Edward Carradine had first met Kitty Rampling.

With this sombre reminder of happier times in his mind, he entered his now cheerless house, empty of all but servants, for Sarah, his wife, and his little boy and girl were six thousand miles away, at home in England. But safe from the perils of war and starvation, thank God.

Sarah had not wanted to return home. She had stayed with him throughout all the anxious period when peace hung in the balance, while the gathering clouds of war began to darken the sky and many other women fled. “My place, as your wife, is surely here, by your side!” she declared, willing to enroll herself in the band of women who, rather than seek the safety of Capetown, had elected to stay and nurse the sick and wounded. Duties at which she would no doubt have excelled, as she did in most things. During the eight years they had been married, Sarah had proved herself to be everything a man could want in a wife: handsome, smiling and good-humoured, a woman of cultivated tastes and true Yorkshire grit. He counted himself a lucky man.

“Do you not think, my dearest,” he had answered in a low voice, “that you would not be the greatest support and comfort to me, the best friend a man might have at his side at such a time? But I should be a lesser man had I so little regard for your safety — or the safety of our children.”

It was only this last persuasion which had induced her to travel with the children the nine hundred miles to Capetown, on the last train before the line was blown up, and thence to take ship for the long journey to England. Now, her piano stayed as a silent reminder of her presence, the inexorable dry dust of the plains which insinuated itself everywhere collecting upon its keys, her books gathered more dust as they stood unopened on the shelves, her sketchbook and watercolours were put away, her sewing laid aside. Only her precious garden remained as she would have wished it. Frank tended it himself and would not leave it to the African boys. He missed her as a man might miss his right arm, but he had no regrets as to his decision.

How was he to answer her when he wrote to her about Edward Carradine?

Carradine had been a favourite of Sarah’s, a popular adjunct to Mafeking society, agreeable, amusing, and clever, if too outspoken in his extraordinary opinions, which he was wont to state with no little vehemence and less tact, and with no expectation in the world of being disbelieved. He had lately aired his view, for instance, after one glass of wine too many at Frank’s table, that it was a barbarity to hunt the ostrich and the elephant, not pausing to reflect that this happened to be the basis of Frank’s livelihood. Ostrich feathers for fans, boas, and hats, and for debutantes to wear in their hair. Elephant ivory for piano keys, billiard balls, oriental casings, and jewellery, for every decorative use that could be imagined. His was a luxury trade which had made him, if not rich, then comfortably off.

“With respect, sir,” Carradine had continued heatedly, “you do not realize the significance of what you are doing! Mark my words, these magnificent animals will one day be hunted to extinction and disappear from the face of the earth! You hunters resemble the ostrich you hunt — you run away and hide your heads in the sand!”

Frank had managed to conceal his anger and lighten the embarrassment at this rash and ill-considered statement — for Africa was vast, the bounty of her wildlife inexhaustible, was it not? Culling was necessary to keep the elephant population down, to preserve the trees and vegetation they destroyed. He made some humourous remark about the ugly, bald, and manifestly unmagnificent ostrich which occasioned smiles and passed the moment off. He would not take issue with one who was a guest in his house, and who, moreover, despite his brashness, was for the most part a very likeable fellow. His greatest fault lay in his youth, which time would overcome. His heart was in the right place. And to do him justice, Carradine had later apologized.

It was Sarah who had warned Frank of what was happening between Carradine and Mrs. Rampling, and the gossip it was causing. A certain coolness was always evinced by the female section of the community towards this lady, if not by their husbands, but it was impossible for someone of Sarah’s warmhearted and generous nature to follow suit, and she had been at special pains to be agreeable to her.

Kitty Rampling was pretty, lively, engaging, and thirty-five if she was a day. She had made an unfortunate and apparently disappointing marriage. Her husband, George, was considerably older than she was, a brute of a man, a sullen individual with a great propensity for quarrelling, one with whom Carradine, for one, had recently had a violent argument. He was said to owe money all around the town — as he certainly did to the mayor. Too busy, it was rumoured in the racecourse bar, drinking and losing on the horses what money remained to him to be any more suspicious of his wife’s affair with the handsome railway engineer than he had been of countless others. She held him in the hollow of her cool little hand — or under her thumb, depending on which way you regarded Kitty Rampling. She was small and feminine, wore pretty frocks rather than the fashionable, mannish coats and skirts, the shirtwaists and the ties which the other ladies favoured at the moment, and had huge, innocent brown eyes.

Foolish and infatuated as Edward Carradine might be, however, Frank could not believe that he was the sort of man to shoot another, and in the back, too.

There was no getting away from the circumstances, unfortunately. He had been discovered one evening outside the Rampling bungalow, kneeling over the man’s body, blood on his hands. It was popularly supposed that Rampling had come home unexpectedly and discovered Carradine and his wife in flagrante delicto, and a furtherance of their quarrel had ensued, though why the shooting had occurred in the street remained a mystery. Nor had the gun ever been found.

Carradine denied he had been with Mrs. Rampling. His story, not necessarily believed, was that he had been walking homewards along the street when a shot had rung out and the man walking in front of him had collapsed. He had run forward, discovered the injured man to be Rampling, and supported him in his arms, only to find him already dead. It was thus that the next man on the scene, the mayor, who had been working late and was bumping homewards on his bicycle, awkwardly carrying a Gladstone bag full of papers, came round the corner and found him.

His arrival was followed in but a few moments by others, including the ever-present police. Everyone was shocked; no one had liked Rampling and no one wanted to believe in young Carradine’s guilt, and it was at once suggested that Rampling had been killed by some sniper’s bullet, regardless of the fact that the scene of the shooting was almost in the centre of the town. Other equally baseless suggestions followed — that one of Rampling’s creditors had come after him, or, with more support, that due to the inadvisability of arming the natives, one of them had run amok. Or maybe drunken soldiers had been involved: The troops were not all disciplined regulars, and unruly incidents were not uncommon. However, Carradine’s presence outside the Rampling bungalow, the gossip about his association with Kitty Rampling, together with that recent angry clash in the racecourse bar between himself and her husband, witnessed by many, made him a prime suspect.

The mayor, sitting in his empty house, could find no answer to his own pressing problem of what was to be done about the matter.

The siege continued, Mafeking still miraculously holding out after more than six months. But the fortified trenches encircling the town were not proof against Cronjé’s onslaughts, and casualties grew, despite the warning horn blown from the lookout whenever the Boers’ twelve-pounders were being loaded. Small acts of heroism and courage were reported daily among the loyalist civilians, the women and children, the native servants. The townspeople buried their dead and at last began to eat the horses.

However, with the letters and despatches which still got through came news to stiffen the sinews — that Ladysmith, another beleaguered town, an important railway junction in Natal, had been relieved after a hundred and twenty days. It was reported that the Boers were losing heart. It was also reported, once again, that relief troops were within five miles of Mafeking, and B.P. promptly earmarked several more horses for a celebration dinner for the whole town, cheerfully urging everyone to bolster their courage, reminding them that their sacrifices for Queen and country would not be in vain. The relief forces, unfortunately, were driven back with heavy losses.

Mrs. Rampling, recovered from her prostration at the death of her husband, had refused to move out of her house into the women’s laager and stayed where she was, retrimming her pretty hats and entertaining off-duty officers at afternoon soirees. She had grown noticeably thinner, her skin was transparent, but it only enhanced her looks and increased the lustre of her big brown eyes.

Carradine was still imprisoned, half-forgotten in the troubles of the moment and allowed no visitors, and the mayor was looking, and feeling, ever more anxious. Problems other than the exigencies of the moment weighed heavily on his mind. Carradine had once accused him of burying his head in the sand, but he knew he could not do so forever.

He thought of his last letter from Sarah, and felt worse. “If Colonel Baden-Powell is the most popular man in England — as there is no doubt he is,” she had written, “then the most popular man here in all Yorkshire is the mayor of Mafeking. News of his courage and the tireless work he is doing there has travelled across the continents and has made his wife and children very proud.”

What would she think of him now, if she knew?

The Bechuanaland dusks were short, the nights cold, and after cycling briskly home one evening, shaken by what he had heard that morning, the mayor was promising himself a tot of carefully hoarded brandy before the scanty meal — dried biltong again, no doubt, which was all his servant would be able to provide — as he walked into his sitting room.

There he found Edward Carradine, sitting in his own favourite chair in an attitude of great melancholy, twisting round and round in his hands an object which had previously been standing on one of the small tables in the room — an ostrich egg mounted upon ebony and painted with a charming, delicate depiction of flowers of the veldt. He was regarding it intently. Perhaps his time in prison had taught him to abandon his scruples in regard to ostriches.

Frank’s greeting could not have been more heartfelt. “Carradine, how extremely glad I am to see you!”

Carradine was very pale from his incarceration, his ruddy good looks diminished, with lines drawn about his mouth. Frank looked at him with pity and saw that he had lost his youth. “They have let me go, Frank,” he said. “I had become nothing more than an embarrassment to them; they had to release me.”

“I have never doubted they would do so, my dear fellow — in fact, I have expected it daily! I have spared nothing in arguing with the officer in charge for your release, given him every assurance that a man of your character could have done no such thing!”

Carradine maintained silence at this until finally he said, “There is still no trace of the weapon, and they inform me they have better things to do at the moment than to search for it. So there is nothing to prove my guilt, and she — Mrs. Rampling — supports my story that I was not with her that night.” An inscrutable expression crossed his face. “She even submitted to her house being searched, but of course no gun was found there. No doubt some unknown native with a grudge against Rampling will be the convenient scapegoat,” he finished bitterly.

“The scapegoat?”

Carradine did not answer the question, looking down at the ostrich egg once more. “She painted this, did she not?” he remarked at last.

Frank regarded him gravely. “Mrs. Rampling did indeed, and gave it to my wife on the occasion of her birthday. She is not untalented in that direction.”

“In other directions, too.”

The pretty trifle in Carradine’s hands trembled. Frank reached out and removed it from him.

Suddenly, the young man sprang up, almost knocking over the lamp on the table beside him. “We must talk — but outside! I have for some reason developed a strange aversion to being inside four walls!” He laughed harshly and strode to the door.

Frank followed him into the cold dusk. The light was fading fast and the sky was the colour of the brandy Frank had been denied, shot with rose and gold, the garden smelling of the jasmine Sarah had planted around the door. He sank onto a seat, which held warmth from the heat of the day, under the jacaranda tree, while Carradine paced about. Suddenly, he turned and faced the mayor.

“I did not fire that shot, Frank.”

Frank moved the toe of his boot about in the red earth, deflecting a column of ants. He moved his toe away and the ants regrouped themselves and went on. He busied himself with his pipe. In the light of the match, a column of fireflies whirled. The rich aroma of tobacco overpowered the scent of the jasmine.

“I know that for an indisputable fact, Edward.”

Carradine stood very still and upright, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the mayor. “Do you, Frank?” he said at last. “Do you, indeed?”

Frank saw the young man struggling to come to terms with something which he now recognized, and perhaps had subconsciously known all along. “It was not I who shot him either, my young friend.”

“Then who?”

The sound of the lookout horn suddenly rang out from the redoubts, echoing throughout the town, signalling that the Boers were mustering for another bombardment, a warning to take cover while there was still time. A distant noise and confusion broke out as the townspeople ran for shelter, obeying the edict that civilians were to stay indoors as far as possible during an attack so as not to hamper the trained volunteers, competent to deal with such a situation. Hooves clattered down the street, wagon wheels rumbled, a few shouts were heard, but presently the ominous waiting silence they had all become accustomed to fell, the lull before the shelling and retaliatory mortar fire began. The interruption might have been a mere rumble of thunder for all the attention the two men paid to it.

“If I did not shoot him, and you did not, then who did?” Carradine repeated tensely. “If—” He could not go on.

Frank decided to help him. “It was the blue diamond that started it, was it not?”

Carradine started. “How in the world do you know of that?”

“My wife had the story of it from Mrs. Rampling herself. I fear,” he said carefully, looking directly at the young man, “that the lady is one of some — acquisitiveness. Sarah told me how you had procured the diamond for her—”

“How I did so in the hopes that it would buy her love, though I knew I could never marry her?” Carradine was suddenly in a passion. “How I beggared myself to procure it? No, I wager she would not have told Mrs. Whiteley that! I was — infatuated, there is no other word for it, I have had time to come to my senses and see that, at least. Infatuation that I thought was love. Through my brother’s good offices, I was able to obtain the diamond at a fair price, though its value was still staggering and it cost me all I possessed in the world, and though my expectations for the future are not nearly as high as many suppose.” Carradine came to a wretched halt and then said, “I see I must tell you everything... Between us, we may arrive at the truth.”

Frank, who already knew the truth, said nothing, looking at the brilliant stars pricking the darkening sky. Every sound was exaggerated in the expectant stillness, the shrill of the cicadas, the croo-crooing of sleepy doves, a shouted command from the defences.

Carradine sank onto the seat beside Frank. “She knew I had bought the diamond. I had had it set into a ring for her, but it took me some months to pluck up enough courage to put it on her finger, with all that such an extravagant gesture implied. Though there could have been no marriage between us, our friendship had not yet reached...” He faltered, a deep and painful flush mantling his pale cheek. “However, she had given me to understand that, on that very evening, she would accept the ring from me, and thereafter our relations would be somewhat different. She allowed me to put it on her finger before we dined. Rampling came home unexpectedly, just as we had finished our meal. He was drunk, but not so drunk that he did not immediately see how it was between us. He burst into a vile stream of abuse and Kitty became very — excited, I think, is the only word which will serve.” Carradine passed a hand across his brow. “How can I explain this? Her husband’s abuse did not appear to distress her — indeed, those big eyes of hers softened and sparkled, colour came to her cheeks when he actually raised his hand to her — it was almost as though — as though she was enjoying it! As if there was some strange complicity between them... Maybe, even, a kind of love. I think I began to see my folly, how I had been deceived, even then.”

The desperate young man buried his face in his hands. When he raised his head, his face was wet with tears. “Nevertheless, I squared up to Rampling. I could scarcely tell him to get out of his own house, but I warned him that he must not lay a finger on his wife. Whereupon, he laughed insolently and swaggered outside.” “Are you going to leave it at that, Edward?” she asked. “No, by God, I am not,” said I, and rushed out after him, intending to knock the fellow down. “But, stumbling in the darkness, I had not reached him before... before the shot rang out and he fell down dead. And that, I swear, is the truth of what happened.”

Into the silence erupted the loud crump of the first mortar shell, followed by another. A horse whickered in fright, and the night became hideous with noise and flames. Within the little garden, Edward Carradine sat as though turned to stone. “How could I have been such a fool? Seen with hindsight, it is so obvious — Rampling coming home, apparently unexpectedly, finding me in intimate circumstances with his wife, strutting out like that... Either she had arranged matters so, or she seized her chance. In any case, she had estimated my nature well. She knew I would go after him, prompted by her.” He said, his voice hard and dry as pebbles, “She would have shot me, like a dog—”

“Had you not stumbled. By the merest chance, or Divine intervention, just as the fatal shot was being fired. So that the wrong man received the bullet.”

“She would have shot me,” Carradine repeated bleakly. “In God’s name, why?”

“For love of money, Edward. For this.” From his pocket, Frank pulled forth a small soft leather pouch and from that withdrew the costly blue diamond ring, its radiance undimmed in the starlit darkness. “For greed, the life of one young man less important than the glitter of a diamond she could not resist...” He had no need to add that, having obtained the diamond, she had had no more use for Carradine. “An ugly thought, is it not?”

“Supposing I had indeed been the victim? Rampling would have been the first to be suspected.”

“I believe he had prudently bought himself an alibi.”

“And what of the revolver — what did she do with it?”

“There is a well, not six yards away.”

“But beyond where Rampling fell. She did not pass me, Frank.”

Frank saw again the moonlit street as he had come upon it — Carradine kneeling over the dead man, the revolver lying between the young man and the Ramplings’ door, heard again the running feet which heralded the arrival of others on the scene in moments. What else could he have done but conceal the weapon in his Gladstone bag? A pity he could not have swallowed it, he had thought afterwards, as the ostrich swallows large stones, bricks, or even chunks of metal to aid the process of digestion in its gizzard. It had lain on his conscience just as heavily ever since.

“She threw the gun towards me, purposely to incriminate me. And you picked it up, did you not? Frank, I owe you my life.”

Frank did not say that it was Sarah to whom Carradine owed his life, prompting him as if she had been beside him, telling him that this man could not be capable of murder. “I could not let an innocent man hang,” he said, and added words he had used once before, “It was to be done, and I did it.”

Yet he had paid for his action with the sleepless nights which had followed. For the first time in his life, he had trifled with the law, and the burden of it had been heavy.

Until he had remembered the story Sarah had told him, of the blue diamond.

He held the sparkling jewel out once more to Carradine, but Carradine shrank from it as though it had been a snake. “She may keep it, for all I care!”

“Don’t be a fool, Edward. It is yours by right.”

“How did you come by it?”

“She asked me to return it to you.”

Carradine laughed bitterly. “Once I might have believed that!”

“It is true. When I saw that gun lying there on the ground, I picked it up with scarcely a thought, but when I took it out of the bag, at home, I recognized it as one I myself had sold to Rampling twelve months ago. It was one of several I wished to dispose of, and he insisted on taking it on trial. If he was satisfied with its performance, he would pay me — which, I might add, he never did! When I recognized what was once mine, I took it to Mrs. Rampling and confronted her with it. Our conversation was — interesting. She subsequently asked me to return the diamond to you.”

“In exchange for your silence? Am I expected to believe that?”

Frank said gravely, “There was no need to ask for it.”

“I don’t understand! Why did you not take the gun to the police when you knew to whom it belonged? I would have been released immediately! Instead, a guilty woman has gone free! You call that justice?”

Justice was a slippery notion, as Frank had discovered since coming to this land, not as clear-cut and unequivocal as it seemed in Britain. Sometimes, the Africans did it better. “Free? I think not.”

He had known native tribesmen who had decided to die, and did so. Through shame or dishonour, loss of face. Had the knowledge that she had accidentally shot the husband she had in some curious way loved worked upon Kitty Rampling so that she had lost the will to live? Maybe that was too fanciful, but he could not forget his meeting with her three months ago — that hectic flush on her cheekbones, the cough, the feverish brightness of her eyes. The loss of spirit, the fun of playing dangerous games at last over for her. “She was ill, very ill, Edward. She knew that she had not long to live.”

“What? Kitty?” Carradine sat in stunned disbelief, his complexion becoming, if possible, even paler than before. Then he leaped up, all that he had suffered on her account instantly forgiven. “I must go to her!”

Frank placed a hand on his arm. “Too late, my friend, too late. She died this morning.”

With a groan, Carradine sank back, covering his eyes with his hand.

Frank had obtained her written confession, on his promise that he would wait until after her death before handing it over. He had immediately done so that morning, after hearing the news that she had died. His action in retaining the gun had not been viewed very gravely by the chief of police — who had, after all, himself known and been entranced by Mrs. Rampling — it had been humanely prompted, he thought, and in any case, without her admission, her guilt or otherwise would have been difficult to establish. The authorities would have been bound to release Carradine after a time, and it was his opinion that the spell in gaol cooling his heels had done the hot-headed young fellow no harm at all, rubbed a few corners off, in fact.

The shelling had stopped. There would be no more that night. People were emerging from shelter, and a growing noise and confusion travelled across the night, from perhaps a mile away. Carradine raised himself, and the two men walked out of the garden and stood looking out across the darkness, lit by flames soaring skywards. Not a house remained standing in the street where Kitty Rampling had lived. A pall of smoke rose like a funeral pyre over the area of flattened buildings. A Red Cross ambulance could be distinguished standing by.

Mafeking’s siege was nearing its end. Victory or capitulation, one of them must come soon. Its story was played out.

“Come,” said Carradine, beginning to walk rapidly down the road, “let us see what we can do to help.”