by Ngaio Marsh
Startled by this non sequitur, Dikon murmured politely: ‘Indeed?’
‘If you can call it fishing. Hope you and Gaunt aren’t counting on catching any trout. What with native reserves and the damned infamous behaviour of white poaching cads, there’s not a fish to be had in twenty miles.’
‘Now, now, now, Doctor,’ said Questing in a great hurry. ‘We can’t let you get away with that. Why, the greatest little trout streams in New Zealand…’
‘D’you enjoy being called “Mister”?’ Dr Ackrington demanded, so loudly that Dikon gave a nervous jump. Questing said uneasily: ‘Not much.’
‘Then don’t call me “Doctor”,’ commanded Dr Ackrington. Questing laughed uproariously. ‘That’s just too bad,’ he said.
Dr Ackrington looked round the room. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘what are you doing with the place?’
‘Mr Questing,’ began Mrs Claire, ‘has very kindly…’
‘I might have recognized the authentic touch,’ said her brother, turning his back on the room. ‘Staying here tonight are you, Bell? I’d like a word with you. Come along to my room when you’ve a moment.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon.
Dr Ackrington looked through the doorway. ‘The star boarder,’ he said, ‘is returning in his usual condition. Mr Bell is to be treated to a comprehensive view of our amenities.’
They all looked through the doorway. Dikon saw a shambling figure cross the pumice sweep and approach the verandah.
‘Oh dear!’ said Mrs Claire. ‘I’m afraid…James, dear, could you…? ’
Dr Ackrington limped out to the verandah. The newcomer saw, stumbled to a halt, and dragged a bottle from the pocket of his raincoat.
To Dikon, watching through the window, the intrusion of a drunken white figure into the native landscape was at once preposterous and rather pathetic. A clear light, reflected from the pumice track, rimmed the folds of his shabby garments. He stood there, drooping and lonely, and turned the whisky bottle in his hand, staring at it as if it were the focal point for some fuddled meditation. Presently he raised his head and looked at Dr Ackrington.
‘Well, Smith,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘You’re a sport, Doc,’ said Smith. ‘There’s a couple of snifters left. Come on and have one.’
‘You’ll do better to keep it,’ said Dr Ackrington quite mildly.
Smith peered beyond him into the room. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward to the verandah. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ said Questing importantly, and strode out to meet him. They confronted each other. Questing, planted squarely on the verandah edge, made much of his cigar; Smith clung to the post and stared up at him.
‘You clear out of this, Smith,’ said Questing.
‘You get to hell yourself,’ said Smith distinctly. He looked past Questing to the group in the doorway, and very solemnly took off his hat. ‘Present company excepted,’ he added.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Is that the visitor?’ Smith asked loudly, and pointed at Dikon. ‘Is that the reason why we’re all sweating our guts up? That? Let’s have a better look at it. Gawd, what a sissy.’
Dikon wondered confusedly which of the party felt most embarrassed. Dr Ackrington made a loud barking noise, Barbara broke into agonized laughter, Mrs Claire rushed into a spate of apologies, Dikon himself attempted to suggest by gay inquiring glances that he had not understood the tenor of Smith’s remarks. He might have spared himself the trouble. Smith made a plunge at the verandah step shouting: ‘Look at the little bastard.’ Questing attempted to stop him, and the scene mounted in a rapid crescendo. Dikon, Mrs Claire and Barbara remained in the room, Dr Ackrington on the verandah appeared to hold a watching brief, while Questing and Smith yelled industriously in each other’s faces. The climax came when Questing again attempted to shove Smith away from the verandah. Smith drove his fist in Questing’s face and lost his balance. They fell simultaneously.
The noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An inexplicable and ridiculous affair changed abruptly into a piece of convincing melodrama. Dikon had seen many such a set-up at the cinema studios. Smith, shaky and bloated, crouched where he had fallen and mouthed at Questing. Questing got to his feet and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief. His cigar lay smoking on the ground between them. It was a shot in Technicolor, for Rangi’s Peak was now tinctured with such a violence of purple as is seldom seen outside the theatre, and in the middle distance rose the steam of the hot pools.
Dikon waited for a bit of rough dialogue to develop and was not disappointed.
‘By God,’ Questing said, exploring his jaw, ‘you’ll get yours for this. You’re sacked.’
‘You’re not my bloody boss.’
‘I’ll bloody well get you the sack, don’t you worry. When I’m in charge here…’
‘That will do,’ said Dr Ackrington crisply.
‘What is all this?’ a peevish voice demanded. Colonel Claire, followed by Simon, appeared round the wing of the house. Smith got to his feet.
‘You’ll have to get rid of this man, Colonel,’ said Questing.
‘What’s he done?’ Simon demanded.
‘I socked him.’ Smith took Simon by the lapels of his coat. ‘You look out for yourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s not only me he’s after. Your dad won’t sack me, will he, Sim?’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Questing said.
‘But why…’ Colonel Claire began, and was cut short by his brother-in-law.
‘If I may interrupt for a moment,’ said Dr Ackrington acidly, ‘I suggest that I take Mr Bell to my room. Unless, of course, he prefers a ring-side seat. Will you come and have a drink, Bell?’
Dikon thankfully accepted, leaving the room in a gale of apologies from Mrs Claire and Barbara. Questing, who seemed to have recovered his temper, followed them up with a speech in which anxiety, propitiation and a kind of fawning urgency were most disagreeably mingled. He was cut short by Dr Ackrington.
‘Possibly,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘Mr Bell may prefer to form his own opinion of this episode. No doubt he has seen a chronic alcoholic before now, and will not attach much significance to anything this particular specimen may choose to say.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course,’ Dikon murmured unhappily.
‘As for the behaviour of Other Persons,’ Dr Ackrington continued, ‘there again, he may, as I do, form his own opinion. Come along, Bell.’
Dikon followed him along the verandah to his own room, a grimly neat apartment with a hideous desk.
‘Sit down,’ said Dr Ackrington. He wrenched open the door of a home-made cupboard, and took out a bottle and two tumblers. ‘I can only offer you whisky,’ he said. ‘With Smith’s horrible example before you, you may not like the idea. Afraid I don’t go in for modern rot-gut.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dikon, ‘I should like whisky. May I ask who he is?’
‘Smith? He’s a misfit, a hopeless fellow. No good in him at all. Drifted out here as a boy. Agnes, my sister, who is something of a snob, talks loosely about him being a public-school man. Her geese are invariably swans, but I suppose this suggestion is within the bounds of possibility. Smith may have originated in some illconducted establishment of dubious gentility. Sometimes their early habits of speech go down the wind with their self-respect. Sometimes they keep it up even in the gutter. They used to be called remittance men, and in this extraordinary country received a good deal of entirely misguided sympathy from native-born fools. That suit you?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dikon, taking his drink.
‘My sister chooses to regard him as a sort of invalid. Some instinct must have led him ten years ago to the Spring. It has proved to be an ideal battening ground. They give him his keep and a wage, in exchange for idling about the place with an axe in his hand and a bottle in his pocket. When his cheque comes from home he drinks himself silly, and my sister Agnes gives him beef tea and prays for him. He’s a complete waster but he won’t tr
ouble you, I fancy. I confess that this evening I was almost in sympathy with him. He did what I have longed to do for the past three months.’ Dikon glanced up quickly. ‘He drove his fist into Questing’s face,’ Dr Ackrington explained. ‘Here’s luck to you,’ he added. They drank to each other.
‘Well,’ said Dr Ackrington after a pause, ‘you will doubtless lose no time in returning to Auckland and telling your principal to avoid this place like the devil.’
As this pretty well described Dikon’s intention he could think of nothing to say, and made a polite murmuring.
‘If it is of any interest, you may as well know you have seen it at its worst. Smith is not always drunk and Questing is not always with us.’
‘Not? But I thought…’
‘He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However.’
Dr Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.
‘Since we have mentioned him,’ Dikon began nervously, ‘I confess I’m in a state of some confusion about Mr Questing. May I ask if he is actually the—if Wai-ata-tapu Springs is his property?’
‘No,’ said Dr Ackrington.
‘I only ask,’ Dikon continued in a hurry, ‘because you see I was approached in the first instance by Mr Questing. Although I’ve warned him that Gaunt may decide against the Springs, he has been at extraordinary pains and really very considerable expense to—to alter existing arrangements and so on. And I mean—well, Dr Forster’s note suggested that it was to Colonel and Mrs Claire that we should apply.’
‘So it is.’
‘I see. But—Questing?’
‘If you decide against the Springs,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘you should convey your decision to my sister.’
‘But,’ Dikon repeated obstinately, ‘Questing?’
‘Ignore him.’
‘Oh.’
Steps sounded outside the window, and voices: Smith’s voice slurred but vicious; Colonel Claire’s high-pitched, perhaps a little hysterical; and Questing’s the voice of a bully. As they came nearer, odd sentences separated out from the general rumpus.
‘…if the Colonel’s satisfied—it’s not a fair pop.’
‘…never mind that. You’ve been asking for it and you’ll get it.’
‘…sack me and see what you get, you—’
‘…most disgraceful scene—force my hand…’
‘…kick you out tomorrow.’
‘This is too much,’ Colonel Claire cried out. ‘I’ve stood a great deal, Questing, but I must remind you that I still have some authority here.’
‘Is that so? Where do you get it from? You’d better watch your step, Claire.’
‘By God,’ Smith roared out suddenly, ‘you’d better watch yours.’
Dr Ackrington opened the door and stood on the threshold. Complete silence followed this move. Through the open door came a particularly strong wave of sulphurous air.
‘I suggest, Edward,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘that you continue your conversation in the laundry. Mr Bell has no doubt formed the opinion that we do not possess one.’
He shut the door. ‘Let me give you another drink,’ he said courteously.
Chapter 3
Gaunt at the Springs
‘Five days ago,’ said Gaunt, ‘you dangled this place before me like some atrocious bait. Now you do nothing but bemoan its miseries. You are strangely inconsistent.’
‘In the interval,’ said Dikon, wrenching the car out of a pot hole, and changing down, ‘I have seen the place. I implore you to remember, sir, that you have been warned.’
‘You overdid it. You painted it in macabre colours. My curiosity was stimulated. For pity’s sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat track possibly be the main road?’
‘It’s the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know, and these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South.’
‘I’m afraid you’re a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand. There’s a most unpleasant smell about this place.’
‘It’s the thermal smell. People are said to get to like it.’
‘Nonsense. How are you travelling, Colly?’
Fenced in by luggage in the back seat, Colly replied that he kept his eyes closed at the curves. ‘I didn’t seem to notice it so much this morning in them forests,’ he added. ‘It’s dynamite in the open.’
The road corkscrewed its way in and out of a gully and along a barren stretch of downland. On its left the coast ran freely northwards in a chain of scrolls, last interruptions in its firm line before it tightened into the Ninety Mile Beach. The thunder of the Tasman Sea hung like a vast rumour on the freshening air, and above the margin of the downs Rangi’s Peak was slowly erected.
‘That’s an ominous-looking affair,’ said Gaunt. ‘What is it about these hills that gives them an air of the fabulous? They are not so very odd in shape, not incredible like the Dolomites or imposing like the Rockies—not, as you point out in your superior way, Dikon, really mountains at all. Yet they seem to be pregnant with some tiresome secret. What is it?’
‘Perhaps it’s something to do with the volcanic silhouette. If there’s a secret the answer’s in the Maori language. I’m afraid you’ll get very tired of that cone, sir. It looks over the hills round the Springs.’ Dikon waited for a moment. Gaunt had a trick of showing a fugitive interest in places, of asking for expositions, and of growing restless when they were given to him.
‘Why is the answer in Maori?’ he said.
‘It was a native burial ground in the old days. They tipped the bodies into the crater. It’s extinct, you know. Supposed to be full of them.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Gaunt softly.
The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. ‘You can see quite clearly,’ Dikon said, ‘the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.’
‘Gawd!’ said Colly.
‘Can you look into the crater and see…?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu, of course.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.’
‘How far away is it?’
‘About eight miles.’
‘It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.’
‘Kind of black, sir, isn’t it?’ said Colly.
‘Black and clear,’ said Gaunt. ‘A marvellous back-drop.’ They drove on in silence for some time. The flowing hills moved slowly about as if in a contrapunta
l measure determined by the progress of the car. Dikon began to recognize landmarks. He felt extremely apprehensive.
‘Hullo,’ said Gaunt. ‘What’s that affair down on the right? A sort of doss-house, one would think.’
Dikon said nothing, but turned in at a ramshackle gate.
‘You don’t dare to tell me that we have arrived,’ Gaunt demanded in a loud voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘My God, Dikon, you’ll writhe for this. Look at it. Smell it. Colly, we are betrayed.’
‘Mr Bell warned you, sir,’ Colly said. ‘I daresay it’s very comfortable.’
‘If anything,’ said Dikon, ‘it’s less comfortable than it looks. Those are the Springs.’
‘Those reeking puddles?’
‘Yes. And there, on the verandah, I see the Claires assembled. You are expected, sir,’ said Dikon. Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Gaunt’s gloved fingers go first to his tie and then to his hat. He thought suddenly: ‘He looks terribly like a famous actor.’
The car rocked down the last stretch of the drive and shot across the pumice sweep. Dikon pulled up at the verandah steps. He got out, and taking off his hat approached the expectant Claires. He felt nervous and absurd. The Claires were grouped after the manner of an Edwardian family portrait that had taken an eccentric turn. Mrs Claire and the Colonel were in deck chairs, Barbara sat on the steps grasping a reluctant dog. Dikon guessed that they wore their best clothes. Simon, obviously under duress, stood behind his mother’s chair looking murderous. All that was lacking, one felt, was the native equivalent of a gillie holding a couple of staghounds in leash. As Dikon approached, Dr Ackrington came out of his room.
‘Here we are, you see,’ Dikon called out with an effort at gaiety. The Claires had risen. Impelled by confusion, doubt and apology, Dikon shook hands blindly all round. Barbara looked nervously over his shoulder and he saw with a dismay which he afterwards recognized as prophetic that she had gone white to her unpainted lips.
He felt Gaunt’s hand on his arm and hurriedly introduced him.