The African Poison Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

and generally ran the show. But when things began to warm up, and the boys in Berlin sent out a proper home-produced young Nazi, all booted and spurred, to make things hum, naturally Munson wasn’t any too pleased.”
    “We have all that on the file,” Vachell pointed out.
    “I know, sir, I’m just leading up to the point.
    Well, as you know, this super-Nazi Wendtland duly took over and rushed about the country giving peptalks to all the Germans and getting them signed up in the Bund. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but apparently Munson never really learnt to love this bloke Wendtland, and they had a real dust-up about some papers — records and things, I believe — that Munson refused to hand over to the new boss. Not only that, but there’s a rumour in Bund circles that Munson has managed to get hold of some dirt on Wendtland — what its nature is I don’t know — and that he’s trying to use it to get Wendtland unstuck. In fact, there’s quite a flap going on about it, I’m told.”
    “Where do you get all this?” Vachell asked.
    “Rather a roundabout way, I’m afraid, sir. The sister of a girl I know teaches in a bush school up beyond Mbale. A lot of Dutch kids go there, and some Germans, including the children of a bloke who’s a sort of lieutenant of Wendtland’s. The teacher speaks a bit of German and picked the gossip up. I don’t suppose it amounts to much, just a sort of internal dogfight in the Bund, unless 35
    possibly … though I suppose it seems a bit farfetched.
    …”
    “Go ahead,” Vachell encouraged him. He could see the iron roofs of Karuna glistening on the plain in front, like pools of water lying under a vast cloudpacked sky.
    “It’s part of my job to issue permits to move cattle,” Prettyman said, with apparent irrelevance.
    “Munson applied for one the other day. He sent Corcoran up to the Western Frontier to buy a batch of native cows, and bring them down. Probably that’s all in order, but it struck me as just a little odd. He’s never done it before, for one thing — I looked back through the records. He’s never gone in for native cattle at all. He’s got very high-class stuff, pedigree bulls and so on, and he grades up all the time. Why should he suddenly want to go right back to native stock? And why send Corcoran up there, anyway? There’s a couple of breeders in the district he could buy good native cattle from.”
    Vachell ground his cigarette against the top of the door, to make sure that no spark survived, and flicked it out of the window. “You reckon Munson has a plan to sell out this guy Wendtland to the boys over the border,” he remarked thoughtfully.
    “It’s only an idea, sir. The Bund are working hand in glove with Musso’s little gang — we know that — and if Munson could get the Italianos suspicious, he might put a spoke in Wendtland’s wheel. It does seem awfully farfetched, I know, but then Munson’s the sort of bloke who’d stick at 36
    nothing. And those small cattle-traders up on the Western frontier are obvious go-betweens, always popping over into Abyssinia and back again. I bet that’s how communications between Germans and Itos here and Addis Ababa go through.”
    Vachell nodded. It was a shrewd guess. “Smart work,” he said. “It’s a thought, anyway. Corcoran’s in with Munson, then?”
    Prettyman shrugged his shoulders and put on his helmet. They had reached Karuna’s one shopflanked street. “Don’t know, sir. He’s half Irish.
    May have spent his early youth slipping bombs into public lavatories and tube stations, for all I know.
    He’s a South African, though. His mother is Munson’s sister, I think. I believe he was in the Air Force for a bit at home, before he came out here to be uncle’s right-hand man.”
    “For a peaceful farming district, there seems to be plenty going on around here,” Vachell observed.
    Prettyman, unconscious of dangerous ground, remarked: “Anyway, sir, you’ve got