Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

Quietly, not at all enjoying this, Andrew said, “Mayani is still a hero, matron. And rumors travel quickly in this township. Life would not go well for someone who was accused of informing on him.”

She stared at him. She pursed her lips, took a long deep breath. “You can’t prove that.”

“No. But rumors do not require proof.”

She looked down at her desk, lifted a ballpoint pen, dropped it. Looked up. “What is it, exactly, you want from me?”

“Only the answer to a single question. When you recognized Robert Atlee on the airplane two days ago, did you notify Minister Nu that the man had returned to the Township?”

She stared at him again, longer this time. At last, firmly, decisively, she said, “No.” She stood, authority and command restored. “This is preposterous. I recognized no one. I notified no one. And now, sergeant, if you’ll excuse me. As I said, I’ve a hospital to run.”

Andrew, who had been leaning slightly forward, now abruptly experienced that feeling which obtains at the top of a stairway when one takes a step which, remarkably, is not there.

He looked at her face. Shuttered, blank. He stood. “Thank you, matron.”

The bloody woman was lying. She had to be.

His moped leaning on its kickstand at the beach road, fifty yards behind him, Andrew sat in the thin shade of a thorn tree atop a tall sand dune. To his right, far off, the minarets and gleaming high-rise luxury hotels of the Township. To his left, the tangle of bright green mangrove swamp stretching off into infinity. Below him, the beach, an empty expanse of bone white sand. Beyond that, the blue sea, empty as well, fiat and featureless out to the horizon.

She recognizes Robert Atlee on the plane. She follows him to his hotel. She informs Nu by telephone of Atlee’s location. Nu commandeers a ministry helicopter, flies to the Township, lands somewhere outside. As Daniel Tsuto had pointed out, this could be done with no one the wiser.

Nu goes to Atlee’s hotel. Kills him.

Why?

According to Daniel Tsuto, Nu had known Mayani. Mayani and Atlee were in the same G.S.U. company. Nu, therefore, had known Atlee.

Later, after the highjacking, Nu was in the township looking for Mayani. Mayani and Atlee had fled together. Suppose Nu found not Mayani but Atlee. Suppose he and Atlee worked a deal. Atlee’s life, and a share of the gold, in exchange for the rest of the gold and Mayani’s whereabouts. Nu kills Mayani, then helps Atlee escape.

Why help Atlee? Why not simply kill him?

Atlee, somewhere, has left a record of the transaction. If he dies, the facts will be revealed.

Yes. And so, for over thirty years now, Nu and Atlee keep their shameful secret. That they betrayed Mayani and stole the gold.

And then Atlee returns. Why?

Guilt? Greed? His share of the gold gone, he returns to threaten Nu with exposure?

No matter. Nu kills him.

But if the gold is gone, why then this secret hunt for it?

Ah, but how secret was it? Precisely secret enough to provide a major topic of gossip for the Township. The ministry helicopter landing at the airport in the middle of the night. Sergeant Mbutu snooping about the town, asking “discreet” questions which themselves were answers.

Not foolishness, as Daniel Tsuto had said, but slyness. The slyness of a jackal. If Nu pretends to believe the gold still exists — and by now the entire Township thinks he does — what motive has he for killing Robert Atlee?

All of this, if true, left Andrew in an interesting position. If he could find any proof to support these conjectures, he would soon have to accuse the Assistant Minister of the Interior, not a pleasant man at best, of murder.

When Andrew entered Bwana Teggay’s hotel room late that afternoon, to ask a series of what he hoped were carefully disguised questions, he saw that the man was packing. In a trim safari suit of beige Egyptian cotton, Teggay stood bent over his suitcase, arranging the clothes inside.

“Ah, Mbutu. Good to see you. You’ve heard, I suppose.”

“Heard?” Andrew said.

“About the confession.”

“Confession?”

Smiling his thin smile, carefully folding a pair of brown twill slacks into the suitcase, Teggay said, “So you haven’t heard. Well, you’re off the case. It’s closed. We got a confession just an hour ago. Apparently Atlee’s return had nothing to do with the gold. It seems he spent it all. Came back here for reasons of his own. Picked up some chippie on the beach, took her to his room, and tried a bit of rough and tumble. She stabbed him. It’s as simple as that. I’ve already called the minister and told him. He agrees it’s time to fold our tents.”

Believing what he did, Andrew would have found this story dubious in any event. That it sounded much like one of Cadet Inspector Moi’s notorious summaries only increased his distrust. He asked, “Who is the woman who confessed?”

Teggay shrugged. “A nobody. Some local nurse.”

“Do you know her name?”

The man told him, and Andrew suddenly understood.