Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

“Had you not stumbled. By the merest chance, or Divine intervention, just as the fatal shot was being fired. So that the wrong man received the bullet.”

“She would have shot me,” Carradine repeated bleakly. “In God’s name, why?”

“For love of money, Edward. For this.” From his pocket, Frank pulled forth a small soft leather pouch and from that withdrew the costly blue diamond ring, its radiance undimmed in the starlit darkness. “For greed, the life of one young man less important than the glitter of a diamond she could not resist...” He had no need to add that, having obtained the diamond, she had had no more use for Carradine. “An ugly thought, is it not?”

“Supposing I had indeed been the victim? Rampling would have been the first to be suspected.”

“I believe he had prudently bought himself an alibi.”

“And what of the revolver — what did she do with it?”

“There is a well, not six yards away.”

“But beyond where Rampling fell. She did not pass me, Frank.”

Frank saw again the moonlit street as he had come upon it — Carradine kneeling over the dead man, the revolver lying between the young man and the Ramplings’ door, heard again the running feet which heralded the arrival of others on the scene in moments. What else could he have done but conceal the weapon in his Gladstone bag? A pity he could not have swallowed it, he had thought afterwards, as the ostrich swallows large stones, bricks, or even chunks of metal to aid the process of digestion in its gizzard. It had lain on his conscience just as heavily ever since.

“She threw the gun towards me, purposely to incriminate me. And you picked it up, did you not? Frank, I owe you my life.”

Frank did not say that it was Sarah to whom Carradine owed his life, prompting him as if she had been beside him, telling him that this man could not be capable of murder. “I could not let an innocent man hang,” he said, and added words he had used once before, “It was to be done, and I did it.”

Yet he had paid for his action with the sleepless nights which had followed. For the first time in his life, he had trifled with the law, and the burden of it had been heavy.

Until he had remembered the story Sarah had told him, of the blue diamond.

He held the sparkling jewel out once more to Carradine, but Carradine shrank from it as though it had been a snake. “She may keep it, for all I care!”

“Don’t be a fool, Edward. It is yours by right.”

“How did you come by it?”

“She asked me to return it to you.”

Carradine laughed bitterly. “Once I might have believed that!”

“It is true. When I saw that gun lying there on the ground, I picked it up with scarcely a thought, but when I took it out of the bag, at home, I recognized it as one I myself had sold to Rampling twelve months ago. It was one of several I wished to dispose of, and he insisted on taking it on trial. If he was satisfied with its performance, he would pay me — which, I might add, he never did! When I recognized what was once mine, I took it to Mrs. Rampling and confronted her with it. Our conversation was — interesting. She subsequently asked me to return the diamond to you.”

“In exchange for your silence? Am I expected to believe that?”

Frank said gravely, “There was no need to ask for it.”

“I don’t understand! Why did you not take the gun to the police when you knew to whom it belonged? I would have been released immediately! Instead, a guilty woman has gone free! You call that justice?”

Justice was a slippery notion, as Frank had discovered since coming to this land, not as clear-cut and unequivocal as it seemed in Britain. Sometimes, the Africans did it better. “Free? I think not.”

He had known native tribesmen who had decided to die, and did so. Through shame or dishonour, loss of face. Had the knowledge that she had accidentally shot the husband she had in some curious way loved worked upon Kitty Rampling so that she had lost the will to live? Maybe that was too fanciful, but he could not forget his meeting with her three months ago — that hectic flush on her cheekbones, the cough, the feverish brightness of her eyes. The loss of spirit, the fun of playing dangerous games at last over for her. “She was ill, very ill, Edward. She knew that she had not long to live.”

“What? Kitty?” Carradine sat in stunned disbelief, his complexion becoming, if possible, even paler than before. Then he leaped up, all that he had suffered on her account instantly forgiven. “I must go to her!”

Frank placed a hand on his arm. “Too late, my friend, too late. She died this morning.”

With a groan, Carradine sank back, covering his eyes with his hand.