Death on the Air

by Ngaio Marsh

  Towards daybreak the rain stopped. Water dripped from the trees, clouds rolled away to the south and the dawn chorus began. Soon after nine there came tentative glimpses of the sun. David Wingfield was first up. He squelched about in gum boots and got a fire going. Soon the incense of wood smoke rose through the trees with the smell of fresh fried bacon.

  After breakfast they went to look at the dam. Their pool had swollen up to the top of both banks, but the construction held. A half-grown sapling, torn from its stand, swept downstream, turning and seeming to gesticulate. Beyond their confluence the Wainui, augmented by the creek, thundered down its gorge. The campers were obliged to shout.

  ‘Good thing,’ Clive mouthed, ‘we don’t want to get out. Couldn’t. Marooned. Aren’t we?’ He appealed to Wingfield and pointed to the waters. Wingfield made a dismissive gesture. ‘Not a hope,’ he signalled.

  ‘How long?’ Susan asked, peering into Wingfield’s face. He shrugged and held up three and then five fingers. ‘My God!’ she was seen to say.

  Solomon Gosse patted her arm. ‘Doesn’t matter. Plenty of grub,’ he shouted.

  Susan looked at the dam where the sapling had jammed. Its limbs quivered. It rolled, heaved, thrust up a limb, dragged it under and thrust it up again.

  It was a human arm with a splayed hand. Stiff as iron, it swung from side to side and pointed at nothing or everything.

  Susan Bridgeman screamed. There she stood, with her eyes and mouth open. ‘Caley!’ she screamed. ‘It’s Caley!’

  Wingfield put his arm round her. He and Solomon Gosse stared at each other over her head.

  Clive could be heard to say: ‘It is him, isn’t it? That’s his shirt, isn’t it? He’s drowned, isn’t he?’

  As if in affirmation, Caley Bridgeman’s face, foaming and sightless, rose and sank and rose again.

  Susan turned to Solomon as if to ask him if it was true. Her knees gave way and she slid to the ground. He knelt and raised her head and shoulders.

  Clive made some sort of attempt to replace Solomon, but David Wingfield came across and used the authority of the physically fit. ‘Better out of this,’ he could be heard to say. ‘I’ll take her.’

  He lifted Susan and carried her up to her tent.

  Young Clive made an uncertain attempt to follow. Solomon Gosse took him by the arm and walked him away from the river into a clearing in the bush where they could make themselves heard, but when they got there found nothing to say. Clive, looking deadly sick, trembled like a wet dog.

  At last Solomon said, ‘I can’t b-believe this. It simply isn’t true.’

  ‘I ought to go to her. To Mum. It ought to be me with her.’

  ‘David will cope.’

  ‘It ought to be me,’ Clive repeated, but made no move.

  Presently he said, ‘It can’t be left there.’

  ‘David will cope,’ Solomon repeated. It sounded like a slogan.

  ‘David can’t walk on the troubled waters,’ Clive returned on a note of hysteria. He began to laugh.

  ‘Shut up, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s so grotesque.’

  ‘Listen.’

  Voices could be heard, the snap of twigs broken underfoot and the thud of boots on soft ground. Into the clearing walked four men in single file. They had packs on their backs and guns under their arms and an air of fitting into their landscape. One was bearded, two clean-shaven, and the last had a couple of days’ growth. When they saw Solomon and Clive they all stopped.

  ‘Hullo, there! Good morning to you,’ said the leader. ‘We saw your tents.’ He had an English voice. His clothes, well-worn, had a distinctive look which they-would have retained if they had been in rags.

  Solomon and Clive made some sort of response. The man looked hard at them. ‘Hope you don’t mind if we walk through your camp,’ he said. ‘We’ve been deer stalking up at the head of Welshman’s Creek but looked like getting drowned. So we’ve walked out.’

  Solomon said. ‘He’s – we’ve both had a shock.’

  Clive slid to the ground and sat doubled up, his face on his arms.

  The second man went to him. The first said, ‘If it’s illness – I mean, this is Dr Mark, if we can do anything.’

  Solomon said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ And did.

  They did not exclaim or overreact. The least talkative of them, the one with the incipient beard, seemed to be regarded by the others as some sort of authority and it turned out, subsequently, that he was their guide: Bob Johnson, a high-country man. When Solomon had finished, this Bob, with a slight jerk of his head, invited him to move away. The doctor had sat down beside Clive, but the others formed a sort of conclave round Solomon, out of Clive’s hearing.

  ‘What about it, Bob?’ the Englishman said.

  Solomon, too, appealed to the guide. ‘What’s so appalling,’ he said, ‘is that it’s there. Caught up. Pinned against the dam. The arm jerking to and fro. We don’t know if we can get to it.’

  ‘Better take a look,’ said Bob Johnson.

  ‘It’s down there, through the b-bush. If you don’t mind,’ said Solomon, ‘I’d – I’d be glad not to go b-back just yet.’

  ‘She’ll be right,’ said Bob Johnson. ‘Stay where you are.’

  He walked off unostentatiously, a person of authority, followed by the Englishman and their bearded mate. The Englishman’s name, they were to learn, was Miles Curtis-Vane. The other was called McHaffey. He was the local schoolmaster in the nearest township downcountry and was of a superior and, it would emerge, cantankerous disposition.

  Dr Mark came over to Solomon. ‘Your young friend’s pretty badly shocked,’ he said. ‘Were they related?’

  ‘No. It’s his stepfather. His mother’s up at the camp. She fainted.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Dave Wingfield’s with her. He’s the other member of our lot.’

  ‘The boy wants to go to her.’

  ‘So do I, if she’ll see me. I wonder – would you mind taking charge? Professionally, I mean.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do. I think perhaps I should join the others now. Will you take the boy up? If his mother would like to see me, I’ll come.’

  ‘Yes. All right. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Were they very close?’ Dr Mark asked. ‘He and his stepfather?’

  There was a longish pause. ‘Not very,’ Solomon said. ‘It’s more the shock. He’s very devoted to his mother. We all are. If you don’t mind, I’ll—’

  ‘No, of course.’

  So Solomon went to Clive and they walked together to the camp.

  ‘I reckon,’ Bob Johnson said, after a hard stare at the dam, ‘it can be done.’

  Curtis-Vane said, ‘They seem to have taken it for granted it’s impossible.’

  ‘They may not have the rope for it.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘By Cripie,’ said Bob Johnson, ‘it’d give you the willies, wouldn’t it? That arm. Like a bloody semaphore.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Mark, ‘what’s the drill, then, Bob? Do we make the offer?’

  ‘Here’s their other bloke,’ said Bob Johnson.

  David Wingfield came down the bank sideways. He acknowledged Curtis-Vane’s introductions with guarded nods.

  ‘If we can be of any use,’ said Curtis-Vane, ‘just say the word.’

  Wingfield said, ‘It’s going to be tough.’ He had not looked at the dam but he jerked his head in that direction.

  ‘What’s the depth?’ Bob Johnson asked.

  ‘Near enough five foot.’

  ‘We carry rope.’

  ‘That’ll be good.’

  Some kind of reciprocity had been established. The two men withdrew together.

  ‘What would you reckon?’ Wingfield asked. ‘How many on the rope?’

  ‘Five,’ Bob Johnson said, ‘if they’re good. She’s come down solid.’

  ‘Sol Gosse isn’t all that fit. He�
�s got a crook knee.’

  ‘The bloke with the stammer?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What about the young chap?’

  ‘All right normally, but he’s – you know – shaken up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bob. ‘Our mob’s OK.’

  ‘Including the pom?’

  ‘He’s all right. Very experienced.’

  ‘With me, we’d be five,’ Wingfield said.

  ‘For you to say.’

  ‘She’ll be right, then.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Bob. ‘What’s the action when we get him out? What do we do with him?’

  They debated this. It was decided, subject to Solomon Gosse’s and Olive’s agreement, that the body should be carried to a clearing near the big beech and left there in a ground sheet from his tent. It would be a decent distance from the camp.

  ‘We could build a bit of a windbreak round it,’ Bob said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s his tent, is it? Other side of the creek?’

  ‘Yeah. Beyond the bridge.’

  ‘I didn’t see any bridge.’

  ‘You must have,’ said Wingfield, ‘if you came that way. It’s where the creek runs through a twenty-foot-deep gutter. Couldn’t miss it.’

  ‘Got swept away, it might have.’

  ‘Has the creek flooded its banks, then? Up there?’

  ‘No. No, that’s right. It couldn’t have carried away. What sort of bridge is it?’

  Wingfield described the bridge. ‘Light but solid,’ he said. ‘He made a job of it.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Bob.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll go up and collect the ground sheet from his tent. And take a look.’

  ‘We’d better get this job over, hadn’t we? What about the wife?’

  ‘Sol Gosse and the boy are with her. She’s OK.’

  ‘Not likely to come out?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Bob.

  So Wingfield walked up to Caley Bridgeman’s tent to collect his ground sheet.

  When he returned, the others had taken off their packs and laid out a coil of climbers’ rope. They gathered round Bob, who gave the instructions. Presently the line of five men was ready to move out into the sliding flood above the dam.

  Solomon Gosse appeared. Bob suggested that he take the end of the rope, turn it round a tree trunk and stand by to pay it out or take it up as needed.

  And in this way and with great difficulty Caley Bridgeman’s body was brought ashore, where Dr Mark examined it. It was much battered. They wrapped it in the ground sheet and tied it round with twine. Solomon Gosse stood guard over it while the others changed into dry clothes.

  The morning was well advanced and sunny when they carried Bridgeman through the bush to the foot of the bank below that tree which was visited nightly by a morepork. Then they cut manuka scrub.

  It was now that Bob Johnson, chopping through a stand of brushwood, came upon the wire, an insulated line, newly laid, running underneath the manuka and well hidden. They traced its course: up the bank under hanging creeper to the tree, up the tree to the tape recorder. They could see the parabolic microphone much farther up.

  Wingfield said, ‘So that’s what he was up to.’

  Solomon Gosse didn’t answer at once, and when he did, spoke more to himself than to Wingfield. ‘What a weird bloke he was,’ he said.

  ‘Recording bird song, was he?’ asked Dr Mark.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘A hobby?’ said Curtis-Vane.

  ‘Passion, more like. He’s got quite a reputation for it.’

  Bob Johnson said, ‘Will we dismantle it?’

  ‘I think perhaps we should,’ said Wingfield. ‘It was up there through the storm. It’s a very high-class job – cost the earth. We could dry it off.’

  So they climbed the tree, in single file, dismantled the microphone and recorder and handed them down from one to another. Dr Mark, who seemed to know, said he did not think much damage had been done.

  And then they laid a rough barrier of brushwood over the body and came away. When they returned to camp, Wingfield produced a bottle of whisky and enamel mugs. They moved down to the Land Rovers and sat on their heels, letting the whisky glow through them.

  There had been no sign of Clive or his mother.

  Curtis-Vane asked if there was any guessing how long it would take for the rivers to go down and the New Zealanders said, ‘No way.’ It could be up for days. A week, even.

  ‘And there’s no way out?’ Curtis-Vane asked. ‘Not if you followed down the Wainui on this side, till it empties into the Rangitata?’

  ‘The going’s too tough. Even for one of these jobs.’ Bob indicated the Land Rovers. ‘You’d never make it.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Unpleasant,’ said Curtis-Vane. ‘Especially for Mrs Bridgeman.’

  Another pause. ‘It is, indeed,’ said Solomon Gosse.

  ‘Well,’ said McHaffey, seeming to relish the idea. ‘If it does last hot, it won’t be very nice.’

  ‘Cut it out, Mac,’ said Bob.

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  Curtis-Vane said, ‘I’ve no idea of the required procedure in New Zealand for accidents of this sort.’

  ‘Same as in England, I believe,’ said Solomon. ‘Report to the police as soon as possible.’

  ‘Inquest?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yes. You’re one of us, aren’t you? A barrister?’ asked Curtis-Vane.

  ‘And solicitor. We’re both in this country.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  A shadow fell across the group. Young Clive had come down from the camp.

  ‘How is she?’ Wingfield and Gosse said together.

  ‘OK,’ said Clive. ‘She wants to be left. She wants me to thank you,’ he said awkwardly, and glanced at Curtis-Vane, ‘for helping.’

  ‘Not a bit. We were glad to do what we could.’

  Another pause.

  ‘There’s a matter,’ Bob Johnson said, ‘that I reckon ought to be considered.’

  He stood up.

  Neither he nor Wingfield had spoken beyond the obligatory mutter over the first drink. Now there was in his manner something that caught them up in a stillness. He did not look at any of them but straight in front of him and at nothing.

  ‘After we’d finished up there I went over,’ he said, ‘to the place where the bridge had been. The bridge that you’ – he indicated Wingfield – ‘talked about. It’s down below, jammed between rocks, half out of the stream.’

  He waited. Wingfield said, ‘I saw it. When I collected the gear.’ And he, too, got to his feet.

  ‘Did you notice the banks? Where the ends of the bridge had rested?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Solomon Gosse scrambled up awkwardly. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘What is all this?’

  ‘They’d overlaid the bank by a good two feet at either end. They’ve left deep ruts,’ said Bob.

  Dr Mark said, ‘What about it, Bob? What are you trying to tell us?’

  For the first time Bob looked directly at Wingfield.

  ‘Yes,’ Wingfield said. ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Noticed what, for God’s sake!’ Dr Mark demanded. He had been sitting by Solomon, but now moved over to Bob Johnson. ‘Come on, Bob,’ he said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘It’d been shifted. Pushed or hauled,’ said Bob. ‘So that the end on this bank of the creek rested on the extreme edge. It’s carried away taking some of the bank with it and scraping down the face of the gulch. You can’t miss it.’

  Clive broke the long silence. ‘You mean – he stepped on the bridge and fell with it into the gorge? And was washed down by the flood? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Bob Johnson.

  Not deliberately, but as if by some kind of instinctive compulsion, the men had moved into their original groups. The campers: Wingfield
, Gosse and Clive; the deer stalkers: Bob, Curtis-Vane, Dr Mark and McHaffey.

  Clive suddenly shouted at Wingfield, ‘What are you getting at! You’re suggesting there’s something crook about this? What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Shut up, Clive,’ said Solomon mildly.

  ‘I won’t bloody shut up. If there’s something wrong I’ve a right to know what it is. She’s my mother and he was—’ He caught himself. ‘If there’s something funny about this,’ he said, ‘we’ve a right to know. Is there something funny?’ he demanded. ‘Come on. Is there?’

  Wingfield said, ‘OK. You’ve heard what’s been suggested.

  If the bridge was deliberately moved – manhandled – the police will want to know who did it and why. And I’d have thought,’ added Wingfield, ‘you’d want to know yourself.’

  Clive glared at him. His face reddened and his mouth trembled. He broke out again: ‘Want to know! Haven’t I said I want to know! What the hell are you trying to get at!’

  Dr Mark said, ‘The truth, presumably.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Wingfield.

  ‘Ah, stuff it,’ said Clive. ‘Like your bloody birds,’ he added, and gave a snort of miserable laughter.

  ‘What can you mean?’ Curtis-Vane wondered.

  ‘I’m a taxidermist,’ said Wingfield.

  ‘It was a flash of wit,’ said Dr Mark.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You all think you’re bloody clever,’ Clive began at the top of his voice, and stopped short. His mother had come through the trees and into the clearing.

  She was lovely enough, always, to make an impressive entrance and would have been in sackcloth and ashes if she had taken it into her head to wear them. Now, in her camper’s gear with a scarf round her head, she might have been ready for some lucky press photographer.

  ‘Clive darling,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter? I heard you shouting.’ Without waiting for his answer, she looked at the deer stalkers, seemed to settle for Curtis-Vane, and offered her hand. ‘You’ve been very kind,’ she said. ‘All of you.’

  ‘We’re all very sorry,’ he said.

  ‘There’s something more, isn’t there? What is it?’