Peter Dickinson - The Poison Oracle

Everybody shouted. Morris pushed Dinah clear and leaped to his feet, shouting too, and pointing to the gallery. A few yelling heads turned, then more. The ensuing silence was ridiculously dramatic.

“Let no man move,” panted Morris. He turned from where the six dark muzzles poked through the frivolous white tracery of the screen and knelt by the fallen man. The pulse seemed reasonably strong, and the gash in the forehead not deep, though very productive of blood.

“Let Salim tend to the wound,” said Umburak in an arid voice. “We would hear your accusation, Morris. We have known bin Zair many years.”

Morris went back to his cushions pulling at his lip. Dinah scuttled out from behind the throne, crept into his lap and pulled her lip also.

“Let us begin with the film bin Zair showed us,” said Morris. “Now, the Frankish woman left my office and passed in front of the cages very shortly before bin Zair and the Sultan also came that way. She says she was still in the gallery when they came, and she turned and waved to them. Yet we watched the film for several minutes before the Sultan and bin Zair appeared, and we did not see the Frankish woman. Nor did Dinah appear in the cage. Moreover you all said that the Sultan staggered like a man shot in the back—would he have staggered so if he had been struck with a sharp dart in the neck?”

There was some disagreement on this point, with evidence adduced from personal experience of shooting men in the back, and (given equal weight) from the elderly westerns nowadays available to any Arab who didn’t mind doing two hundred miles across the desert to the nearest drive-in cinema.

“Furthermore,” said Morris, “I have taken many films with that camera, but none so bad. What does all this mean? It means that the film was taken in the early morning, when the sun shines from the east. This was done for two reasons—first because nobody would come to the zoo at that hour, and second in order that the bad light would help to hide the fact that the larger figure was not the Sultan but one of the slaves bin Zair had found for the zoo, a man called Maj.”

“I am an old man and unused to machines,” said bin Zair. “What do I know of films?”

“You told me that you had made a film of a male prostitute who dances among the Hadahm,” said Morris.

“True, I have seen it,” said somebody.

At this piece of corroborative evidence, however peripheral to the real case, a new note entered the coughs and whispers of the men. One of them, and not this dubious Frank, had now cast his tiny stone at old bin Zair.

“There are other matters,” said Morris, “which bin Zair both understands and is ignorant of. At the flood-going feast he questioned me about my tape-recorder, and yet I am told he uses such things in his work. And you yourselves will remember that at some moments he cannot understand the marshmen’s language, and at others he understands it clearly enough. However, let us return to the film. The big man in the picture may have been Maj, but the little man was undoubtedly bin Zair. Therefore the film must have been made with his help.”

“The points are not very strong,” said Umburak. “The ape might have been hiding, the light might have been bad, who knows how a man will act when a bullet or dart strikes? And a woman’s evidence—a woman who then ran from the palace—it is all frayed rope.”

“There is more,” said Morris. “Let me continue about these slaves. At the flood-going feast I asked bin Zair for better help in the zoo, and within two days he found me these two men. Now one of these men was a good mechanic and the other was large and stout, like the Sultan. They were Sulubba, and they told me that they were hereditary slaves . . .”

A few grunts of disbelief filled the pause which Morris deliberately left.

“On the morning of the murders,” he went on, “they were cleaning the cages and had brought a pile of fresh reeds to make bedding for the animals. They had brought more than was necessary, so when they had finished they left a pile of reeds in the passage near the chimpanzee cage . . .”

“Enough to hide a man?” asked Umburak.

“No,” said Morris. “But enough to hide a gun, and some other small object.”

He fished more fruit out of the basket for Dinah, and in doing so pressed the “Play” button of the recorder.

“Now before bin Zair came to my room,” he said, “I heard a lot of noise from the chimpanzees, noise enough to drown the sound of a quick scuffle and perhaps a shout of anger. When bin Zair came to my room he said he had been struck by the Sultan, and asked whether I had heard anything. I said I had not. We talked for a short time, and then . . .”

He didn’t time it quite right. There was a longish pause, during which mutters of doubt and impatience began to gather strength. But suddenly they were drowned by the rushing whoosh of an airgun, a hoarse cry and another whoosh. Morris lifted the recorder out of the basket, ran the tape back to the monkey noises, and played some of them.

The reaction was that of children watching a conjurer, small cries of amazement and even delight, deliquescing into seriousness as each man explained to his neighbour the significance of the sounds. Head after head turned towards bin Zair, who sat stroking his beard but showing no more emotion than a look of scholarly interest. Morris gave him time to answer, but he was too wary for that.

“Whence came the tape?” said a providential straight man.

“I will tell you. It concerns the two slaves of whom I was speaking. When I went at your bidding into the marshes I had travelled less than a mile when I came upon the body of a man floating in the water. He had been killed with a spear-thrust, stripped naked and mutilated. He was Maj.”

The news brought only a few cries of rage, and many reminders that the man had not been a true bedu, but a Sulubba.

“Now, later,” said Morris, “I went to a ceremony in the marshes, and there I saw a marshman wearing this tape as an ornament from which hung the penises of two pale-skinned men. I made enquiries and found that this marshman had come upon two men lying in wait in the two channels that led from the landing-stages below the palace. They were armed and hiding, as if to ambush a man coming into the marshes. The marshman came from behind and killed them. In the canoe of the smaller man was this tape.”

A dour, tall Arab who had not so far spoken coughed for silence.

“I believe I have heard of this pair, under other names,” he said. “They were skilled assassins. Certainly if they were thus taken by surprise it proves that the marshmen would have been difficult to fight in the marshes.”

The point was argued around for a while, and the true identity of Maj and Jillad discussed, and tales of their earlier, more successful craftsmanship retold.

“And what is the significance of all this?” asked Umburak at last.

“I think bin Zair’s whole object was to open up the marshes,” said Morris. “He visited the oil wells from time to time, and I think he probably arranged with them, in exchange for a large sum of money, that he would bring about a situation in which it would eventually become possible for the marshes to be drained and exploratory drilling begin. A war between the Arabs and the marshmen would be one way of achieving this. If an Englishman appeared to have been killed by the marsh-people that would help too, and you will all bear witness that it was bin Zair who persuaded me to go into the marshes. On the other hand, if the marshmen killed Maj and Jillad, that would remove two witnesses who might have been troublesome later. He was right in this—I have no doubt that Jillad took the tape in order to blackmail bin Zair later.”