The Frog in the Moonflower by Roger Longrigg

Author:Roger Longrigg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Frog in the Moonflower
ISBN: 9780755135059
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

Sandro was sure it was meaningless, but he was occupied with certain quiet inquiries.

He found out everything there was to know about Kamau and it was nothing. There was nothing in his background to say that it was impossible he had been bought or converted by Wing, and nothing to say that it was remotely probable. There was nothing to say that it was remotely probable that he had run away from the camp before the elephant came, and nothing to say it was impossible.

Sandro also found out what foreigners and senior Africans were in the Northern District on the night of the stampede. There were the priests and missionaries. The managers of game lodges. A veterinary officer and a pest-control officer. Three American hunting safaris with English hunters. A party of ornithologists and one of game-fishermen at Ferguson’s Gulf, three tour parties at the Samburu lodge and one at Marsabit. A game warden. An Oxfam group. Police-officers and some soldiers.

Sandro worked down the list in a little back office in a ministry in Nairobi. Any of these people, European and American and educated African, could have been Wing’s representative or Wing himself. All of them were far from the trampled camp on the night the camp was trampled.

‘Ornithologists,’ said Jenny later.

‘Yes, carina, of course. They were half-way up Lake Rudolph, on the west side. One hundred and forty miles from our camp as the bee flies.’

‘Crow, could you mean?’

‘Not even any crow could cross that country in between, which is the hottest place in the world. The only thing that is alive in that country is the volcanoes.’

‘Even so, chum,’ said Colly, ‘like you said, and I thought it was a pretty neat epigram, Wing has a long feather. Check out those ornithologists.’

It was easy to do this, since they were distinguished people. A well-known bird writer, a retired general, a woman professor from Canada, and the head of SIPHEN in East Africa.

‘What’s SIPHEN?’ asked Jenny. ‘Same like Sodastream? Do-it-yourself tonic-water?’

‘La Société Internationale pour la Préservation de I’Héritage de la Nature.’

‘Oh yes. Your auntie’s gang. Fatty, we must be getting warm.’

‘As warm as Teleki’s Volcano where the crows and the bees do not fly. No, cara. We are not warm at all. The gentleman of SIPHEN is Mister Timothy Hikohoki, a rich Japanese Christian, working very hard, for no money, with all the governments of East Africa.’

‘You know a lot about him.’

‘Just so much. He was at Ferguson’s Gulf with the English general and the others.’

‘Oh. Then there’s no need to talk to him.’

‘There is no need, but he is a colleague of Zia Ortensia so I will talk to him.’

Mr Timothy Hikohoki lived in a small neat house outside Nairobi but he was not at home. He had an office in a bank building but he was not there either. He was in Kilifi, at his villa by the sea. His Indian secretary said she hoped he was resting but she thought it most doubtful.

‘He will poke about and fuss.

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