by Ngaio Marsh
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Gaunt cheerfully. ‘I’ve been off my native diet long enough to have developed an inordinate appetite for it. But I must say I fail to see your point about the acts. Since we must abridge…’
Barbara looked out of the dining-room door, saw Questing still there, and hesitated. Without pausing in his argument, Gaunt put out his hand, inviting her to join them. She sat beside Dikon on the step. ‘This will be good for you, my child,’ said Gaunt in parenthesis, and she glowed ardently. ‘What on earth has happened to her?’ Dikon wondered. ‘That’s the same dress, better than the others because it’s simpler, but the same. She’s brushed her hair back since we came in, and that’s an improvement, of course, but what’s happened to her? I haven’t heard a hoot from the girl for days, and she’s stopped pulling faces.’ Gaunt had begun to talk about the more difficult plays, of Troilus and Cressida, of Henry VI and finally of Measure for Measure. Falls, still beating his irritating tattoo, followed him eagerly.
‘Of course he was an agnostic,’ he cried—‘the most famous of the soliloquies proves it. If further proof is needed this play provides it.’
‘You mean Claudio? I played him once as a very young actor. Yes, that speech! It’s death without flattery, isn’t it? It strikes cold.
‘Ay, but to die, and go we know not where: To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot…’
Gaunt’s voice flattened out to a horrid monotone and his audience stirred uneasily. Mrs Claire came to one of the windows and listened with a doubtful smile. Falls’s pipe dropped from his hand and he leant forward. The door of Dr Ackrington’s room opened and he stood there, attentive. ‘Do go on,’ said Mr Falls. The icy sentences went forward.
‘To be imprison’d in the viewless winds…’
Mr Questing, always polite, tiptoed across the verandah, and retrieved the pipe. Falls seemed not to hear him. Questing stood with the pipe in his hand, his head on one side, and an expression of proprietary admiration on his face.
‘…to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling.’
A shadow fell across the pumice. Smith, unshaven and looking very much the worse for wear, appeared from the direction of the cabin, followed by Simon. They stopped dead. Smith passed a shaky hand across his face and pulled at his under lip. Simon, after a disgusted stare at Gaunt, watched Questing.
Gaunt drew to the close of the short and terrifying speech. Dikon reflected that perhaps he was the only living actor who could get away with Shakespeare at high noon on the verandah of a thermal spa. That he had not embarrassed his listeners but had made some of them coldly uneasy was very apparent. He had forced them to think of death.
Questing, after clearing his throat, broke into loud applause, tapping Mr Falls’s pipe enthusiastically against the verandah post. ‘Well, well, well,’ cried Mr Questing. ‘If that wasn’t an intellectual treat! Quite a treat, Mr Falls, wasn’t it?’
‘My pipe, I believe,’ said Mr Falls, politely, and took it. ‘Thank you.’ He turned to Gaunt. ‘Of course you may lay the agnosticism of those lines at the door of character and set against them a hundred others that are orthodox enough, but my own opinion—’
‘As You Like It has always been my favourite,’ said Mrs Claire from the window. ‘Such a pretty play. All those lovely woodland scenes. Dear Rosalind!’
Dr Ackrington advanced from his doorway. ‘With all this modern taste for psychopathological balderdash,’ he said, ‘I wonder you get anyone to listen to the plays.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Gaunt stuffily, ‘there is a renaissance.’
Huia came out—clanging her inevitable bell. The Colonel appeared from his study looking vaguely miserable.
‘Is that lunch?’ he asked. ‘What have you been talking about? Sounded as if someone was making a stump speech or somethin’.’
Barbara whispered hurriedly in her father’s ear.
‘Eh? I can’t hear you,’ he complained. ‘What?’ He stared at Gaunt. ‘Out of a play, was it? Good Lord.’ He seemed to be faintly disgusted, but presently an expression of complacency stole over his face. ‘We used to do quite a bit of theatrical poodle-fakin’ when I was a subaltern in India,’ he said. ‘They put me into one of their plays once. Damn’ good thing. D’you know it? It’s called Charley’s Aunt:’
IV
Throughout lunch it was obvious to Dikon that Simon was big with some new theory. Indeed, so eloquent were his glances that neither Questing nor anybody else, Dikon thought, could possibly mistake their meaning. Dikon himself was in a state of mind so confused that he seemed to be living in the middle of a rather bad dream. Anxiety about Barbara, based on an emotion which he refused to define, a disturbing change in his own attitude towards his employer, and an ever-increasing weight of apprehension which the war bred in all New Zealanders at that time—all these elements mingled in a vague cloud of uneasiness and alarm. And then there was Questing. In spite of Simon’s discoveries, in spite, even, of the witness of the torpedoed ship, Dikon still found it difficult to cast Questing for the role of spy. Indeed, he was still enough of a New Zealander to doubt the existence of enemy agents in his country at all, still inclined to think that they existed only as bugaboos in the minds of tiresome old ladies and clubmen. And yet…mentally he ticked off the points against Questing. Had he tried to bring about Smith’s destruction, and if so, why? Why did he pretend that he had been to Pohutukawa Bay, when, as Dr Ackrington had proved by his pitfall, he hadn’t been near the place? If he visited the Peak only to hunt for curios, why should he have six times flashed his signal of three, five, and three, from a place where obviously no curios could be buried? He couldn’t help looking at Questing, at his smooth, rather naïve face, his business man’s clothes, his not altogether convincing air of commercial acumen. Were these the outward casings of a potential murderer, who was quietly betraying his country? Irrelevantly, Dikon thought: ‘This war is changing the values of my generation. There are all sorts of things that we have thought funny that we shall never think funny again.’ For perhaps the first time he contemplated coldly and deliberately a possible invasion of New Zealand. As he thought, the picture clarified. An emotion long dormant, rooted in the very soil of his native country, roused in him, and he recognized it as anger. He realized, finally, that he could no longer go on as he was. Somehow, no matter how uselessly, he, like Simon, must go forward to danger.
It was with this new determination in his mind that he visited Simon in his cabin after lunch. ‘Did you guess I wanted to see you?’ asked Simon. ‘I didn’t like to drop the hint over there. He might have spotted it.’
‘My dear old thing, the air was electric with your hints. What’s occurred?’
‘We’ve got him,’ said Simon. ‘Didn’t you pick it? Before lunch? Him and his pipe?’
Dikon gaped at him.
‘Missed it, did you?’ said Simon complacently. ‘And there you were sitting where you might have touched him. What beats me is why he did it. D’you reckon he’s got it so much on his mind he’s acting kind of automatically?’
‘If I had the faintest idea what you were talking about, I might attempt to answer you.’
‘Aren’t you conscious yet? I was sitting in here trying to dope things out when I heard it. I snooped round to the corner. All through the hooey Gaunt and Falls were spilling about Shakespeare or someone. It was the same in every detail.’
‘For pity’s sake, what was the same in every detail?’
‘The tapping. A long one repeated three times. Dah, dah, dah. Then five short dits. Then three shorts. Then the whole works repeated. The flashes from the cliff all over again. So what have you?’
They stared at each other. ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ said Dikon. ‘Why? Why? Why?’
‘Search me.’
‘Coincidence?’
‘The odds against coincidence are long enough to make you dizzy. No, I reckon I’m right. It’s habit. He’s had to memorize it and he
’s gone over and over it in his mind before he shot the works on Thursday night…’
‘Hold on. Hold on. Whose habit?’
‘Aw hell,’ said Simon disgustedly. ‘You’re dopey. Who the heck are we talking about?’
‘We’re talking about two different people,’ said Dikon excitedly. ‘Questing had picked up that pipe just before you came on the scene. It wasn’t Questing who tapped out your blasted signal. It was Mr Septimus Falls.’
Chapter 8
Concert
The telephone at Wai-ata-tapu was on a party line. The Claires’ tradesmen used it, and occasionally weekend trippers who rang up to give notice of their arrival. Otherwise, until Gaunt and Dikon came, it was seldom heard. The result of housing a celebrity, however, had begun to work out very much as Mr Questing had predicted. During the first weekend, quite a spate of visitors had arrived, ostensibly for thermal divertissements, actually, so it very soon transpired, with the object of getting a close-up view of Geoffrey Gaunt. These visitors, with an air of studied nonchalance, walked up and down the verandah, delayed over their tea, and attempted to pump Huia as to the whereabouts of the celebrity. The hardier among them came provided with autograph books which passed, by way of Barbara, from Huia to Dikon and thence to Gaunt, who, to the astonishment of Mrs Claire, cheerfully signed every one of them. He kept to his room, however, until the last of the visitors, trying not to look baffled, had lost patience and gone home. Once, but only once, Mr Questing had succeeded in luring him on to the verandah, and on Gaunt’s discovering what he was up to had been treated to such a blast of temperament as sent him back into the house nervously biting his fingers.
On this particular Saturday afternoon, though there were no trippers, the telephone rang almost incessantly. Was it true that there was to be a concert that evening? Was Mr Geoffrey Gaunt going to perform at it? Could one obtain tickets and, if so, were the receipts to go to the patriotic funds? So insistent did these demands become that at last Huia was dispatched over the hill for definite instructions from old Rua. She returned, laughing excitedly, with the message that everybody would be welcome.
The Maori people are a kindly and easy-going race. In temperament they are so vivid a mixture of Scottish Highlander and Irishman that to many observers the resemblance seems more than fortuitous. Except in the matter of family and tribal feuds, which they keep up with the liveliest enthusiasm, they are extremely hospitable. Rua and his people were not disturbed by the last-minute transformation into a large public gathering of what was to have been a private party between themselves and the Springs, Huia, who returned with Eru Saul and an escort of grinning youths, reported that extra benches were being hurriedly knocked up, and might they borrow some armchairs for the guests of honour?
‘Py korry!’ said one of the youths. ‘Big crowd coming, Mrs Keeah. Very good party. Te Mayor coming too, all the time more people.’
‘Now, Maui,’ said Mrs Claire gently, ‘why don’t you speak nicely as you did when you used to come to Sunday school?’
Huia and the youths laughed uproariously. Eru sniggered.
‘Tell Rua we shall be pleased to lend the chairs. Did you say the Mayor was coming?’
‘That’s right, Mrs Keeah. We’ll be having a good party, all right.’
‘No drink, I hope,’ said Mrs Claire severely, and was answered by further roars of laughter. ‘We don’t want Mr Gaunt to go away thinking our boys don’t know how to behave, do we?’
‘No fear,’ said Maui obligingly. Eru gave an offensive laugh and Mrs Claire looked coldly at him.
‘Plenty of tea for everybody,’ said Maui.
‘That will be very nice. Well, now you may come in and get the chairs.’
‘Grandfather’s compliments,’ said Huia suddenly, ‘and he sent you this, please.’
It was a letter from old Rua, written in a style so urbane that Lord Chesterfield might have envied its felicity. It suggested that though the Maori people themselves did not venture to hope that Gaunt would come in any other capacity than that of honoured guest, yet they had been made aware of certain rumours from a pakeha source. If, in Mrs Claire’s opinion, there was any foundation of truth in these rumours, Rua would be deeply grateful if she advised him of it, as certain preparations should be made for so distinguished a guest.
Mrs Claire in some perturbation handed the letter over to Dikon, who took it to his employer.
‘Translated,’ said Dikon, ‘it means that they’re burning their guts out for you to perform. I’m sure, sir, you’d like me to decline in the same grand style.’
‘Who said I was going to decline?’ Gaunt demanded. ‘My compliments to this old gentleman, and I should be delighted to appear. I must decide what to give them.’
‘You could fell me with a feather,’ said Dikon to Barbara after early dinner. ‘I can’t imagine what’s come over the man. As a general rule platform performances are anathema to him. And at a little show like this!’
‘Everything that’s happening’s so marvellous,’ said Barbara, ‘that I for one can’t believe it’s true.’
Dikon rubbed his nose and stared at her.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Barbara demanded.
‘I didn’t know I was,’ said Dikon hastily.
‘You’re thinking I shouldn’t be happy,’ she said with a sudden return to her owlish manner, ‘because of Mr Questing and ruin staring us in the face.’
‘No, no. I assure you that I’m delighted. It’s only…’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s only that I hope it’s going to last.’
‘Oh.’ She considered him for a moment and then turned white. ‘I’m not thinking about that. I don’t believe I mind so very much. You see, I’m not building on anything. I’m just happy.’
He read in her eyes the knowledge that she had betrayed herself. To forestall, if he could, the hurt that her pride would suffer when it recovered from the opiate Gaunt had administered, Dikon said: ‘But you can build on looking very nice tonight. Are you going to wear the new dress?’
Barbara nodded. ‘Yes. I didn’t change before dinner because of the washing-up. Huia wants to get off. But that’s not what I mean about being happy…’
He cut in quickly. She must not be allowed to tell him the true reason for her bliss. ‘Haven’t you an idea who sent it to you?’
‘None. Honestly. You see,’ said Barbara conclusively, ‘we don’t know anyone in New Zealand well enough. You’d have to be a great friend, almost family, wouldn’t you, to give a present like that? That’s what’s so puzzling.’
Mr Questing appeared from the dining-room in all the glory of a dinner jacket, a white waistcoat and his postprandial cigar. As far as anybody at the Springs knew, he had not been invited to the concert, but evidently he meant to take advantage of its new and public character.
‘What’s all this I hear about a new dress?’ he asked genially.
‘I shall be late,’ said Barbara, and hurried into the house.
Dikon reflected that surely nobody in the world but Mr Questing would have had the gall, after what had happened by the lake, to attempt another three-cornered conversation with Barbara and himself. In some confusion, and because he could think of nothing else to say, Dikon murmured something about the arrival of an anonymous present. Mr Questing took it very quietly. For a little while he made no comment, and then, with a foxy look at Dikon, he said: ‘Well, well, well, is that so? And the little lady just hasn’t got a notion where it came from? Fancy that, now.’
‘I believe,’ said Dikon, already regretting his indiscretion, ‘that there is an aunt in India.’
‘And the pretty things come from Auckland, eh?’
‘I don’t think I said so.’
‘That’s quite all right, Mr Bell. Maybe you didn’t,’ Mr Questing conceded. ‘Between you and me, Mr Bell, I know all about it.’
‘What!’ cried Dikon, flabbergasted. ‘You do! But how the devil…?’
�
�Just a little chat with Dorothy Lamour.’
‘With…?’
‘My pet name for the Dusky Maiden,’ Mr Questing explained.
‘Oh,’ said Dikon, greatly relieved. ‘Huia.’
‘Where do you reckon it came from, yourself?’ asked Mr Questing with an atrocious wink.
‘The aunt, undoubtedly,’ said Dikon firmly, and on the wings of a rapid flight of fancy he added: ‘She’s in the habit of sending things to Miss Claire who writes to her most regularly. A very likely explanation is that at some time or another Miss Claire has mentioned this shop.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ said Mr Questing. ‘Accidental-done-on purpose, sort of?’
‘Nothing of the kind,’ said Dikon furiously. ‘The most natural thing in the world…’
‘OK, OK, Mr Bell. Quite so. You mustn’t mind my little joke. India,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘That’s quite a little way off, isn’t it?’ He walked away, whistling softly and waving his cigar. Dikon uttered a few very raw words under his breath. ‘He’s guessed!’ he thought. ‘Blast him, if he gets a chance he’ll tell her.’ He polished his glasses on his handkerchief and stared dimly after the retreating figure of Mr Questing. ‘Or will he?’ he added dubiously.
II
Although it had been built with European tools, the meeting house at the native settlement followed the traditional design of all Maori buildings. It was a single room surmounted by a ridged roof which projected beyond the gable. The barge boards and supporting pillars were intricately covered in the formidable mode of Polynesian art. Growing out of the ridge pole stood a wooden god with out-thrust tongue and eyes of shell, squat, menacing, the symbol of the tribe’s fecundity and its will to do battle. The traditional tree-fern poles and thatching had been replaced by timber and galvanized iron, but nevertheless, the meeting house contrived to distil a quintessence of savagery and of primordial culture.
The floor space, normally left clear, was now filled with a heterogeneous collection of seats. The Claires’ armchairs, looking mildly astonished at their own transplantation, were grouped together in the front row. They faced a temporarily erected stage which was decked out with tree-fern, exquisitely woven cloaks, Union Jacks and quantities of fly-blown paper streamers. On the back were hung coloured prints of three kings of England, two photographs of former premiers, and an enlargement of Rua as an MP. On the platform stood a hard-bitten piano, three chairs and a table bearing the insignia of all British gatherings, a carafe of untempting water and a tumbler.