Eden to sell out to that syndicate of Afrikaners who offered a fortune for Flamingo last year. Wouldnât suit Hector one bit to have that sort of concern on his doorstep! Ruin the market for him. And the next thing you know theyâd build a decent road round the lake, and how heâd hate that! Hector and his like may talk a lot of hot air about the Colony, but the one thing theyâre terrified of is development around their own little bit of it. They like it just as it is. Just exactly as it ruddy wellâââ
He broke off abruptly and lifted his head, listening intently.
There was no breath of wind that evening. The vast stretch of the lake lay glass-green in the twilight, and even the birds were silent at last. But someone in the big rambling house that lay beyond the pepper trees and jacarandas in Emâs garden was playing the piano. The quiet evening lent clarity and a haunting, melancholy beauty to the distant sound, and Drew, who had turned away, paused involuntarily to listen, and said: âWhat is she playing?â
âThe Rift Valley Concerto,â said Gilly absently.
His thin, nervous, musicianâs fingers moved on the top bar of the gate as though it was the keyboard of a piano, and then clenched abruptly into fists, and he struck at the gate in a sudden fury of irritation and said savagely:
âWhy the hell canât she play that third movement as itâs meant to be played, instead of hammering it out as though it were a bloody pop tune? That woman âud make Bartok sound like âTwo Eyes of Greyâ and Debussy like âThe British Grenadiersâ! Itâs murder â thatâs what it is! Plain murder!â
He relapsed into glowering silence, slumping down on a square concrete block that stood among the grasses by the gate. His brief spurt of rage gave place to an alcoholic sullenness, and he took no note of Mr Strattonâs departure.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Alice was half-way back to the house when she remembered the Mardan roses that Em had wanted for the dining-room table, and she turned off the path and walked across the parched grass, and through a sea of delphiniums that grew waist-high and half wild at the foot of a small knoll that was crowned by a tangle of bushes and the trunk of a fallen tree.
From the crest of the knoll, and between a break in the bushes, she could look out over the lush green of the shamba and the wide belt of grey-green vegetation, dark now in the fading light, which was the marula â the papyrus swamp that fringed the shores of the lake with a dense, feathery and almost impenetrable jungle, twice the height of a tall man.
A broken branch of the fallen tree supported a cascade of white roses that were not easy to pick even by day, for they were plentifully supplied with thorns. But Em loved them, and during their brief season she liked to arrange them in the Waterford glass bowls that had belonged to her grandmother. Was that why she had asked for them now? So that she could fill other bowls with them and pretend that she did not care? For the Waterford glass bowls had gone. They had been found one afternoon almost a week ago, broken in pieces, though the house had been quiet that day, and the dogs had not barked â¦
âDonât touch them!â Alice had said, looking at Emâs drawn, ravaged face. âThere may be finger prints on them. We can find outâââ
âAnd have the police all over the house, trampling all over Flamingo and bullying my servants? No!â said Em. And she had gathered up the broken pieces with old, pitiful, shaking hands and given them to Zacharia, telling him to throw them away.
Em had refused from the first to send for the police. She had set a number of traps, but no one had fallen into them. The poltergeist seemed to be able to circumnavigate burglar alarms, trip-wires and similar booby traps, and to avoid by instinct objects smeared