The African Poison Murders Read Online Free PDF

take too much notice of all that West says about Munson,” Prettyman remarked confidingly on the way back to Karuna in the car. “He’s what you might call prejudiced. For one thing, he was a prisoner in the war, and as a result he’s convinced every German commits atrocities in his sleep. Of course that’s rot. In spite of Hitler and all the rest of it, there are some jolly decent Germans round here. One of them’s a damned good full back. I think it’s a silly attitude myself.”
    “Narrow.”
    “Yes, exactly. And then, of course, there’s all this business about West’s wife.”
    Vachell pushed in the electric lighter on the dashboard and held it to the end of his cigarette without comment.
    “It must cut both ways having a wife like that,”
    Prettyman went on. “Hell of a good-looker, isn’t she? You can’t blame half the blokes in the district for wishing they were in West’s shoes. Anyway, 32
    Munson’s a stiff-necked beggar but apparently he’s sound at heart underneath; he fell for Mrs West and got it pretty badly, they say. What I can’t understand is what the hell she can see in him. You’d think she’d give him the air as soon as look at him, he’s got about as much appeal as a he-goat, and it isn’t as if she couldn’t have her pick if she wants to play around. There’s Norman Parrot, for instance —
    one of the neighbours. He’s a funny sort of bloke in some ways, to meet him you’d think he was a bit half baked, but actually he’s very much all there.
    Well, he’d jump to it if she lifted her little finger, I should say. But there she is, letting this stuckup bloke Munson show her his compost pits and take her for picnics by the reservoir and all that sort of thing. Women are damned queer, I must say.”
    Vachell was staring straight ahead at the dusty road and the graceful rounded shoulder of an extinct volcano crater ahead.
    “If you want to hear the scandal, ask a policeman,” he said.
    “We always get it, sooner or later,” Prettyman agreed. “Pretty useful sometimes, too. Well, you can’t blame West for getting fed up. As a matter of fact I’m surprised myself that he hasn’t cut up rough before now. He must know damned well what’s going on, and I hear he did turf Munson off his farm once, and tell him he’d knock him to blazes if he — Munson that is — ever came near the place again. But I should have thought he’d do more than that myself. Now I hear Munson has accused West 33
    of poisoning some of his cattle. Well, I suppose people do funny things when they’re worked up, but I must say it’s the last thing I’d have expected of West. It’s a bit… well, somehow….”
    “Un-British,” Vachell suggested.
    “Yes, that’s it exactly. After all, an old sea-dog like West. Still, perhaps there’s nothing in it. I wouldn’t trust Munson an inch, and they say his wife is the worst of the two. She’s a dreadful old trout, isn’t she, sir?”
    Vachell grunted agreement, eyes fixed on the road. His arms were tense on the wheel. He was finding the conversation a bit of a strain.
    “I had your report on Munson,” he remarked. “I want to find out some more.”
    Prettyman smoothed his slight blond moustache with a forefinger and nodded sympathetically. “I thought you would, sir. With the situation as it is you must have to keep a pretty close check on Germans and their pals over the Abyssinian border.
    I bet they’ll spring something pretty hot on all of us when the balloon goes up. So I ventured to do a bit of inquiring on my own.”
    “Fine,” Vachell said. “Shoot.”
    “Apparently there’s been quite a row going on in the inner circles of the Nazi Bund. Munson was the local Fuhrer for years, as you know, sir, back in the good old days when pacts were pacts and Papa Hitler didn’t give a hoot in hell for his faraway little colonial baby. In those days the Bund consisted of two men and a swastika, more or less, and Munson 34
    kept all the records