by Ngaio Marsh
‘I’m so sorry not to give you longer warning,’ said Mr Falls, grunting slightly as he came up the steps. ‘But this wretched incubus of a disease came upon me quite suddenly yesterday evening. I happened to see your advertisement in the paper and the doctor I consulted agreed that I should try thermal treatment.’
‘But we have no advertisement in the papers,’ said Mrs Claire.
‘I assure you I saw one. Unless, by any frightful chance, I’m come to the wrong Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs. Your name is Questing, I hope?’
Mrs Claire turned pink and replied gently: ‘My name is Claire, but you have made no other mistake. May I help you to your room?’
He apologized and thanked her, but added that he could still totter under his own steam. He seemed to be delighted with the dubious amenities of Barbara’s room. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said in a friendly manner, ‘how deeply I have grown to detest suites. I have been living in hotels for six months and have become so moulded to the en suite tradition that I assure you I have quite a struggle before I can bring myelf to wear a spotted tie with striped suit. It makes everything very difficult. Now this—’ he looked at Barbara’s pieces of furniture, which, under the brief influence of a domestic magazine, she had painted severally in the primary colours—‘this will restore me to normal in no time.’
The taxi driver brought his luggage, which was of two sorts. Three extremely new suitcases consorted with a solitary small one which was much worn and covered with labels. Mrs Claire had never seen so many labels. In addition to partially removed records of English and continental hotels, New Zealand place names jostled each other over the lid. He followed her glance and said: ‘You are thinking that I am “Monsieur Traveller, one who would disable all the benefits of his own country”, and so forth. The fact is the evil brute got lost and has followed some other Falls all over the country. Would you care for the evening paper? The news, alas, is as usual.’
She thanked him confusedly, and retired with the paper to the verandah where she found her brother in angry consultation with Barbara. Dikon stood diffidently in the background.
‘Well, old boy,’ said Mrs Claire, and kissed him warmly. ‘Lovely to have you with us again.’
‘No need to cry over me. I haven’t been to the South Pole,’ said Dr Ackrington, but he returned her kiss, and in the next second attacked his niece. ‘Will you stop making faces at me? Am I in the habit of lying? Why should I bestow raiment upon you, you silly girl?’
‘But truly, Uncle James? Word of honour?’
‘I believe he knows something about it!’ Mrs Claire exclaimed very archly. ‘Weren’t we silly-billies? We thought of a fairy godmother, but we never guessed it might be a fairy godfather at work, did we? Dear James, and she kissed him again. ‘But you shouldn’t.’
‘Merciful Creator,’ apostrophized Dr Ackrington, ‘do I look like a fairy! Is it likely that I, who for the past decade have urged upon this insane household the virtues of economy, and investment—is it likely that I should madly lavish large sums of money upon feminine garments? And pray, Agnes, why are you gaping at that paper? Surely you didn’t expect the war news to be anything but disastrous?’
Mrs Claire gave him the paper and pointed silently to a paragraph in the advertisement columns. Barbara read over his shoulder:
THE SPA WAI-ATA-TAPU HOT SPRINGS
Visit the miraculous health-giving thermal fairyland of the North. Astounding cures wrought by unique chemical properties of amazing pools. Delightful surroundings. Homelike residential private hotel. Every comfort and attention. Medical supervision. Under new management.
M. QUESTING
The paper shook in Dr Ackrington’s hand, but he said nothing. His sister pointed to the personal column.
‘Mr Geoffrey Gaunt, the famous English actor, is at present a guest at Wai-ata-tapu Spa. He is accompanied by Mr Dikon Bell, his private secretary.’
‘James!’ Mrs Claire cried out. ‘Remember your dyspepsia, dear. It’s so bad for you!’
Her brother, white to the lips and trembling, presented the formidable spectacle of a man transported by rage. ‘After all,’ Mrs Claire added timidly, ‘it is going to be true, dear, we’re afraid. He will be manager very soon. Of course it’s inconsiderate not to wait. Poor Edward—’
‘To hell with poor Edward!’ whispered Dr Ackrington. ‘Have you eyes! Can you read! Will you forget for one moment the inevitable consequences of poor Edward’s imbecility, and tell me how I am to interpret THAT?’ His quivering finger pointed to the penultimate phrase of the advertisement. ‘Medical supervision. Medical supervision! My God, the fellow means ME!’ Dr Ackrington’s voice broke into a surprising falsetto. He glared at Barbara, who immediately burst into a hoot of terrified laughter. He uttered a loud oath, crushed the newspaper into a ball, and flung it at her feet. ‘Certifiable lunatics, the lot of you!’ he raged, and turned blindly along the verandah towards his own room.
Before he could reach it, however, Mr Septimus Falls, doubled over his stick, came out of his own room. The two limping gentlemen hurried towards each other. A collision seemed imminent and Dikon cried out involuntarily: ‘Dr Ackrington! Look out, sir.’
They halted, facing each other. Mr Falls said mellifluously: ‘Dr Ackrington? How do you do, sir? I was about to make inquiries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Septimus Falls. You, I take it, are the medical superintendent.’
Mrs Claire, Dikon and Barbara drew in their breaths sharply as Dr Ackrington clenched his fists and began to stutter. Mr Falls, with the experimental wariness of those suffering from lumbago, straightened himself slightly and looked mildly into Dr Ackrington’s face. ‘I hope to benefit by your treatment,’ he said. ‘Can it possibly be Dr James Ackrington? If so I am indeed fortunate. I had heard that New Zealand was so happy as to—but I am sure I recognize you. The photograph in Some Aspects of the Study of Comparative Anatomy, you know. Well, well, this is the greatest pleasure.’
‘Did you say your name was Septimus Falls?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good God.’
‘I can hardly hope that my small activities have come to your notice.’
‘Here!’ said Dr Ackrington abruptly. ‘Come to my room.’
Chapter 7
Torpedo
‘It appears,’ said Dikon later that evening, ‘that Mr Falls is a sort of amateur of anatomy and that Ackrington is his god. I am convinced that the revelation came only just in time to avert bloodshed. As it is the doctor seems prepared to suffer the adulation of his rather affected disciple.’
‘When is Falls going to appear?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Why didn’t he dine?’
‘I understand he took old Ackrington’s advice, had a prolonged stew in the most powerful of the mud baths, and retired sweating to bed. Ackrington suspects a wrong diagnosis and is going to prod his lumbar region.’
‘A terrifying experience. He tried it on my leg. Dikon, have you ever seen anything like the transformation in that child? She was almost beautiful with the dress in her hands. She will be quite beautiful when she wears it. How can we engineer a visit to the hairdresser before tomorrow evening? With any normal girl it would be automatic, but with Barbara Claire! I’m determined she shall dazzle the native audience. Isn’t it a fantastic notion? Metamorphosis at a Maori concert!’
‘Yes,’ said Dikon.
‘Of course, if you’re going to be cantankerous.’
‘I am not, I assure you, sir,’ said Dikon, and forced himself to add: ‘You have given her an enormous amount of pleasure.’
‘And she suspects nothing.’ Gaunt looked sharply at his secretary, seemed to hesitate, and then took him by the arm. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? A little experiment in psychology. I’m going to wait until she has worn her new things and everybody has told her how nice she looks, until she has been stroked and stimulated and enriched by good clothes, and then, swearing her to secrecy first, I shall tell her where they came from. What do you think she w
ill do?’
‘Break her heart and give them up?’
‘Not she. My dear chap, I shall be much too charming and tactful. It is a little test I have set myself. You wait, my boy, you wait.’ Dikon was silent. ‘Well, don’t you think it’ll work?’ Gaunt demanded.
‘Yes, sir. On consideration, I’m afraid I do.’
‘What d’you mean, afraid? We’re not going to have this absurd argument all over again I hope. Damn it, Dikon, you’re no better than a croaking old woman. Why the devil I put up with you I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps because I try to give an honest answer to an awkward question, sir.’
‘I don’t propose to make a pass at the girl, if that’s what’s worrying you. You’ve allowed yourself to become melodrama-minded, my friend. All this chat of spies and mortgages and sacrificial marriage has blunted your aesthetic judgement. You insist upon regarding a charming episode as a seduction scene on a robust scale. I repeat I have no evil designs upon Barbara Claire. I am not a second Questing.’
‘You’d be less of a potential danger if you were,’ Dikon blurted out. ‘The little fool’s not besotted on Questing. Don’t you see, sir, that if you go on like this the resemblance to King Cophetua will become so marked that she won’t know the difference and will half expect the sequel? She’s gone all haywire over you as it is.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Gaunt. But he stroked the back of his head and small complacent dints appeared at the corners of his mouth. ‘She can’t possibly imagine that my attentions are anything but avuncular.’
‘She won’t know what to imagine,’ said Dikon. ‘She’s in a foreign country.’
‘Where the alpine ranges appear to be entirely composed of mole hills.’
‘Where, at any rate, she is altogether too much i’ the sun. She’s dazzled.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Gaunt, ‘that you are dressing up a very old emotion in a series of classy, and, if I may say so, rather priggish phrases. My good ass, you’ve fallen for the girl yourself.’ Dikon was silent, and in a moment Gaunt came behind him and shook him boisterously by the shoulders. ‘You’ll recover,’ he said. ‘Think it over and you’ll find I’m right. In the meantime I promise you need have no qualms. I shall treat her like porcelain. But I refuse to be deprived of my mission. She shall awake and sing.’
With this unconvincing reassurance Dikon had to be content. They said goodnight and he went to bed.
II
At twenty minutes past twelve on that same night a ship was torpedoed in the Tasman Sea six miles northwest of Harpoon Inlet. She was the same ship that Simon, from his eyrie of Friday night, had watched loading in the harbour. Later, they were to learn that she was the Hokianaga, outward bound from New Zealand with a cargo of bullion for the United States of America. It was a very still night, warm, with a light breeze off the sea, and many Harpoon people said afterwards that they heard the explosion. The news was brought to Wai-ata-tapu the following morning by Huia, who rushed in with her eyes rolling and poured it out. Most of the crew were saved, she said, and had been landed at Harpoon. The Hokianaga had not yet gone to the bottom, and from the Peak it was possible, through field glasses, to see her bows pointed despairingly at the skies.
Simon plunged into Dikon’s room, full of angry triumph, and doubly convinced of Questing’s guilt. He was all for leaping on his bicycle and pedalling furiously into Harpoon. In his own words he proposed to stir up the dead-beats at the police station, and the local army headquarters. ‘If I’d gone yesterday like I wanted to, it wouldn’t have happened. By cripey, I’ve let him get away with it. That was your big idea, Belt, and I hope you’re tickled to death the way it’s worked out.’ Dikon tried to point out that even if the authorities at Harpoon were less somnolent than Simon represented them to be they would scarcely have been able in twelve hours to prevent the activities of an enemy submarine.
‘They might have stopped the ship,’ cried Simon.
‘On your story that you saw lights on the Peak? Yes, I know there was a definite sequence and that it was repeated. I myself believe you’re on to something, but you won’t move authority as easily as that.’
‘To hell with authority!’ poor Simon roared out. ‘I’ll go and knock Questing’s bloody block off for him.’
‘Not again,’ said Dikon sedately. ‘You really can’t continue in your battery of Questing. You know, I still think you should speak to Dr Ackrington, who, you say yourself, already suspects him.’
In the end Simon, who seemed, in spite of his aggressiveness, to place some kind of reliance on Dikon’s advice, agreed to keep away from Questing, and to tell his story to his uncle. When, however, he went to find Dr Ackrington, it was only to discover he had already driven away in his car saying that he would probably return before lunch.
‘Isn’t it a fair nark!’ Simon grumbled. ‘What’s he think he’s doing? Precious time being wasted. To hell with him anyway, I’ll think something up for myself. Don’t you go to talking, now. We don’t want everyone to know.’
‘I’ll keep it under my hat,’ said Dikon. ‘Gaunt knows, of course. I told you—’
‘Oh, hell!’ said Simon disgustedly.
Gaunt came out and told Dikon he wanted to be driven to the Peak. He offered a seat in the car to anyone who would like it. ‘I’ve asked your sister,’ he said to Simon. ‘Why don’t you come too?’ Simon consented ungraciously. They borrowed the Colonel’s field glasses and set out.
It was the first time Dikon had been to Rangi’s Peak. After crossing the railway line, the road ran out to the coast and thence along the narrow neck of land, at the end of which rose the great truncated cone. So symmetrical was its form that even at close quarters the mountain seemed to be the expression of some grossly simple impulse—the impulse, one would have said, of a primordial cubist. The road ended abruptly at a gate in a barbed-wire fence. A notice, headed Native Reserve, set out a number of prohibitions. Dikon saw that it was forbidden to remove any objects found on the Peak.
They were not the first arrivals. Several cars were parked outside the fence.
‘You have to walk from here,’ said Simon, and glanced disparagingly at Gaunt’s shoes.
‘Oh, God! Is it far?’
‘You might think so.’
Barbara cut in quickly. ‘Not very. It’s a good path and we can turn back if you don’t think it’s worth it.’
‘So we can. Come on,’ said Gaunt with an air of boyish hardihood, and Simon led the way, following the outside of the barbedwire fence. They were moving round the flank of the Peak. The turf was springy under their feet, the air fresh with a tang in it. Some way behind them the song of a lark, a detached pin-prick of sound, tinkled above the peninsula. Soon his voice faded into thin air and was lost in the mewing of a flight of gulls who came flapping in from seawards. ‘I never heard those creatures,’ said Gaunt, ‘without thinking of a BBC serial.’ He looked up the sloping flank of the mountain, to where its crater stood black against the brilliant sky. ‘And that’s where they buried their dead?’
Barbara pointed to the natural planes of ascent in the structure of the mountain. ‘It looks as if they had made a rough road up to the top,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think they did. It’s as though the hill had been shaped for the purpose, isn’t it? They believe it was, you know. Of course they haven’t used it for ages and ages. At least, that’s what we’re told. There are stories of a secret burial up there after the pakehas came.’
‘Do they never come here, nowadays?’
‘Hardly at all. It’s tapu. Some of the younger ones who don’t mind so much wander about the lower slopes, but they don’t go into the bush and I’m sure they never climb to the top. Do they, Sim?’
‘Too much like hard work,’ Simon grunted.
‘No, it’s not that, really. It’s because of the sort of place it is.’
Simon gave Dikon a gloomily significant glance. ‘Yeh,’ he said. ‘Do what you like up here and nobody’s going to ask ques
tions.’
‘You refer to the infamous Questing,’ said Gaunt lightly. Simon glared at him and Dikon said hurriedly: ‘I told you I had spoken to Mr Gaunt of our little theory.’
‘That’s right,’ Simon said angrily. ‘So now we’ve got to gas about it in front of everybody.’
‘If you mean me,’ said Barbara, whom even the mention of Questing could not embarrass that morning, ‘I know all about what he’s supposed to do on the Peak.’
Simon stopped short. ‘You!’ he said. ‘What do you know?’ Barbara didn’t answer immediately, and he said roughly: ‘Come on. What do you know?’
‘Well, only what they’re all saying about Maori curios.’
‘Oh,’ said Simon. ‘That.’ Dikon spared a moment to hope that if Simon did well in the Air Force they would not make the mistake of entrusting him with secret instructions.
‘And I know Uncle James thinks it’s something worse, and…’ She broke off and looked from one to another of the three men. Dikon blinked, Gaunt whistled, and Simon looked inescapably portentous. ‘Sim!’ cried Barbara. ‘You’re not thinking…about this…the ship? Oh, but it couldn’t possibly…’
‘Here, you keep out of this, Barbie,’ said Simon in a great hurry. ‘Uncle James talks a lot of hooey. You want to forget it. Come on.’
The track, curving always to the right, now mounted the crest of a low hill. The seaward horizon marched up to meet them. In three strides their whole range of vision was filled with blue. Harpoon Inlet lay behind on their left; on their right Rangi’s Peak rose from the sea in a sharp cliff. The fence followed the top of this cliff, leaving a narrow path between itself and the actual verge.
‘If you want to see anything,’ said Simon, ‘you’ll have to get up there. Do you mind heights?’