by Ngaio Marsh
As they approached Gaunt’s rooms, Colly came out staggering under the weight of a wardrobe trunk. Webley gave him that hard stare with which Dikon was to become so familiar. ‘You’d better take that thing away, Colly,’ said Dikon.
‘Take it away?’ asked Colly indignantly. ‘I’ve only just brought it out. What am I supposed to be, sir? Atmosphere in the big railwaystation scene or what?’ He glanced shrewdly at Webley. ‘Pardon me, Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘There’s no corpse in this trunk. Take a look if you don’t believe me, and don’t muck up our underwear, We’re fussy about details.’
‘That’ll be quite all right, Colly,’ said Webley. ‘Stay handy, will you? I’d like to have a yarn with you.’
‘Rapture as expressed in six easy poses,’ said Colly. ‘Yours to command.’ He winked at Dikon. ‘If you’re looking for His Royal Serenity, sir,’ he said, ‘he’s in his barf.’
‘We’ll wait,’ said Dikon. ‘In here, will you, Mr Webley?’ They waited in Gaunt’s sitting-room. Colly, whistling limpidly, staggered away under the trunk.
‘That kind of joker’s out of our line in New Zealand,’ said Webley. ‘He’s different from what you’d have thought. A bit too fresh, isn’t he? Not my idea of a vally.’
‘Colly’s a dresser,’ said Dikon, ‘not a valet. He’s been a long time with Mr Gaunt, and I’m afraid he’s got into the way of thinking he’s a licensed buffoon. I’m sorry, Sergeant. I’ll just go and tell Mr Gaunt you’re here.’
He had hoped to get one word in private with Gaunt, but Webley thanked him and followed him out on the verandah. ‘Going in for the treatment, is he?’ he asked easily. ‘Just across the way, isn’t it? I’ve never taken a look at these Springs. Been here ten years and never taken a look at them. Fancy that!’
He followed Dikon across the pumice.
It was Gaunt’s custom before breakfast to soak for fifteen minutes in the largest of the pools, that which was enclosed by a rough shed. Evidently, Dikon thought, his new abhorrence of thermal activities did not extend to this particular bath.
Closely followed by Webley, Dikon went up to the bath house and tapped at the door.
‘Who the hell’s out there!’ Gaunt demanded.
‘Sergeant Webley to see you, sir.’
‘Sergeant who?’
‘Webley.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Harpoon police force, sir,’ said Mr Webley. ‘Very sorry to trouble you.’
There was no reply to this. Webley made no move. Dikon waited uncertainly. He heard a splash as Gaunt shifted in the pool. He had the idea that Gaunt was sitting up, listening. At last, in a cautious undertone, the voice beyond the door called him. ‘Dikon?’
‘I’m here, sir.’
‘Come in.’
Dikon went in quickly, closing the door behind him. There was his employer as he had expected to find him, naked, vulnerable, and a little ridiculous, jutting out of the vivid water.
‘What is all this?’
Dikon gestured. ‘Is he there?’ Gaunt muttered.
Dikon nodded violently and, with an attempt at cheerfulness that he felt rang very false, said aloud: ‘The Sergeant would like to have a word with you, sir.’
He groped in his pocket, found an envelope and a pencil and wrote quickly: ‘It’s about Questing. They won’t let us go.’ He went on talking as he showed it to Gaunt: ‘Shall I send Colly in, sir?’
Gaunt was staring at the paper. Water trickled off his shoulders. His face was pinched and looked old, the skin on his hands was waterlogged and wrinkled. He began to swear under his breath.
On the other side of the door Webley cleared his throat. Gaunt, his lips moving, looked at the door. He grasped the rail at the edge of the bath and stood upright, a not very handsome figure. ‘He ought to say something,’ Dikon thought. ‘It looks bad to say nothing.’ Gaunt beckoned and Dikon stooped towards him but he seemed to change his mind and said loudly, ‘Ask him to wait. I’m coming out.’
The morning was warm and humid and the pool Gaunt had left was a hot one, but even when he was wrapped in his heavy bathrobe he seemed to be cold. He asked Dikon for a cigarette. Conscious always of Webley on the other side of the thin wooden wall Dikon forced himself to talk. ‘I’m afraid this appalling business is going to hold us up a bit, sir. I should have thought of it before.’ Gaunt suddenly joined in. ‘Yes, a damned nuisance, of course, but it can’t be helped.’ It all sounded horribly false.
They came out of the bath house and there was Webley. ‘Hanging about,’ thought Dikon, ‘like Frankenstein’s monster.’ He walked up with them to the house and stayed outside Gaunt’s window while he dressed. Dikon sat on the edge of the verandah and smoked. The clouds that had blown up in the night were gone and the wind had dropped. Rangi’s Peak was a clear blue. The trees on its flanks looked as if they had been blobbed down by a water-colourist with a full and generous brush. The hill by the Springs basked in the sun and high above it the voices of larks reached that pinnacle of shrillness that floats on the outer margin of human perception. The air seemed to hold a rumour of notes rather than an actual song. Three men came round the path by the lake. One of them carried a sack which he held away from him, the others, rakes and long manuka poles. They walked in Indian file, slowly. When they came near, Dikon saw that a heavy globule hung from the corner of the sack. It swung to and fro, thickened, and dropped with a splat of sound on the pumice. It was mud. The rake and the ends of the poles were also muddy.
He sat still, his cigarette burning down to his fingers, and watched the men. They came over the pumice to the verandah, and Webley moved across to meet them. The man with the sack opened it furtively and the others moved between him and Dikon. Webley pushed his black felt hat to the back of his head and squatted, peering. They mumbled together. A phrase of Septimus Falls’s came into Dikon’s mind and nauseated him. Inside the house Barbara called to her mother. At once the group broke up. The three men disappeared round the far end of the house, carrying their muddy trophies, and Webley returned to his post by Gaunt’s window.
Dikon heard the creak of a door behind him. His nerves were on edge and he turned quickly; but it was only Mr Septimus Falls on the threshold of his room.
‘Good morning, Bell,’ he said. ‘A lovely day, isn’t it? Quite unsullied and in strong contrast to the events associated with it. “Only man is vile.” It is not often that one goes to hymns A and M for profundity of observation but I remember the same phrase occurred to me on the night that war broke out.’
‘Where were you then, Mr Falls?’
‘ “Going to and fro in the earth”,’ said Mr Falls lightly. ‘Like the devil, you know. In London, to be precise. I didn’t see you after your return last night but hear that your vigil on the hill was an uneventful one.’
‘So they haven’t told him I was watching him,’ thought Dikon. ‘And how did you get on?’ he asked.
‘I? I was obliged to trespass, and all to no avail. I thought you must have seen me.’ He smiled at Dikon. ‘I heard you falling about on your hill. No injuries, I trust? But you are young and can triumph over such mishaps. I, on the contrary, have played the very devil with my lumbar region.’
‘I thought last night that you seemed remarkably lively.’
‘Zeal,’ said Mr Falls. ‘All zeal. Wonderful what it will do, but one pays for it afterwards, unhappily.’ He placed his hand in the small of his back and hobbled towards Webley. ‘Well, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘any new developments?’
Webley looked cautiously at him. ‘Well, yes, sir, I think we might say there are,’ he said. ‘I don’t see any harm in telling you we’re pretty well satisfied that this gentleman came by his death in the manner previously suspected. My chaps have been over there and they’ve found something. In the mud pot.’
‘Not—?’ said Dikon.
‘No, Mr Bell, not the remains. We could hardly hope for them under the circumstances, though of course we’ll have to try. But my chaps have been
there on the lookout ever since it got light. About half an hour ago they spotted something white working about in the pot. Sometimes, they said, you’d see it and sometimes you wouldn’t. One of them who’s a family man passed the remark that it reminded him of the week’s wash.’
‘And…was it?’ asked Falls.
‘In a manner of speaking, sir, it was. We raked it out and are holding it. It’s a gentleman’s dress waistcoat. One of those backless ones.’
IV
Dikon, at his employer’s request, was present at the interview between Gaunt and Webley. Gaunt was at his worst, alternately too persuasive and too intolerant. Webley remained perfectly civil, muffled and immovable.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay, sir. Very sorry to inconvenience you but there it is.’
‘But I’ve told you a dozen times I’ve no information to give you. None. I’m unwell and I came here for a rest. A rest! My God! You may have my address and if I should be wanted you’ll know where to find me. But I know nothing that can be of the smallest help to you.’
‘Well, now, Mr Gaunt, we’ll just see if that’s so. I haven’t got round yet to asking you anything, have I? Now, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me just how you got home last night.’
Gaunt beat the arms of his chair and with an excruciating air of enforced control said in a whisper: ‘How I got home? Very well. Very well. I walked home.’
‘Across the reserve, sir?’
‘No. I loathe and abominate the reserve. I walked home by the road.’
‘That’s quite a long way round, Mr Gaunt. I understand you had your car at the concert.’
‘Yes, Sergeant, I had my car. That did not prevent me from wishing to walk. I walked. I wanted fresh air and I walked.’
‘Who drove the car, sir?’
‘I did,’ said Dikon.
‘Then I suppose, Mr Bell, that you overtook Mr Gaunt?’
‘No. It was some time before we left.’
‘Longer than fifteen minutes after the concert was over, would you say?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought.’
‘Mr Falls puts it at about fifteen minutes. It’s a mile and a quarter by the main road, sir,’ said Webley, shifting his position in order to face Gaunt. ‘You must be a smart walker.’
‘The car can’t do more than crawl along that road, you know. But I walked fast on this occasion, certainly.’
‘Yes. Would that be because you were at all excited, Mr Gaunt? I’ve noticed that when people are kind of stimulated or excited they’re inclined to step out.’
Gaunt laughed and adopted mistakenly, Dikon thought, an air of raillery. ‘I believe you’re a pressman in disguise, Sergeant. You want me to tell you about my temperament.’
‘No, sir,’ said Webley stolidly. ‘I just wondered why you walked so fast.’
‘You have guessed why. I was stimulated. For the first time in months I had spoken Shakespearean lines to an audience.’
‘Yes?’ Webley opened his notebook. ‘I understand you left before the other members of your party. With the exception of Mr Questing, that is. Mr Questing left before you, didn’t he?’
‘Did he? I believe he did.’ Gaunt put his delicate hand to his eyes and then shook his head violently as though he dismissed some unwelcome vision. Next he smiled sadly at Mr Webley, extended his arms and let them flop. It was a bit of business that he used in Hamlet during the penultimate duologue with Horatio. Mr Webley watched it glumly. ‘You must forgive me, Sergeant,’ said Gaunt. ‘This thing has upset me rather badly.’
‘It’s a terrible affair, sir, isn’t it? Was the deceased a friend of yours, may I ask?’
‘No, no. It’s not that. For it to happen to anyone!’
‘Quite so. You must have seen him, I suppose, after you left the hall.’
Gaunt took out his cigarette case and offered it to Webley, who said he didn’t smoke. Dikon saw a tremor in Gaunt’s hand and lit his cigarette for him. Gaunt made rather a business of this, and as they were at it, said something not so much in a whisper as with an almost soundless articulation of tongue and teeth. Dikon thought it was: ‘I’ve got to get out of it.’
‘I was saying—’ said Webley heavily, and repeated his question.
Gaunt said that as far as he could remember he had caught a glimpse of Questing outside the hall. He wasn’t positive. Webley kept him to this point and he grew restive. At last he broke off and drew his chair closer to Webley.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘I’ve honestly told you all I know about this poor fellow. I want you to understand something. I’m an actor and an immensely well-known one. Things that happen to me are news, quite big news, at home and in the States. Bell, as my secretary, will tell you how tremendously careful I have to be. The sort of things that are said about me in print matter enormously. It may sound farfetched, but I assure you it is not, when I tell you that a few sentences in the hot-news columns, linking my name up with this accident, would be exactly the wrong kind of publicity. We don’t know much about this unfortunate man but I’ve heard rumours that he wasn’t an altogether savoury character. That may come out, mayn’t it? We’ll get hints about it. “Mystery man dies horribly after hearing Geoffrey Gaunt recite at one-eyed burg in New Zealand.” That’s how the hot-columnists will treat it.’
‘We don’t get much of that sort of thing in this country, Mr Gaunt.’
‘Good Lord, man, I’m not talking about this country. As far as I’m concerned this country doesn’t exist. I’m talking of New York.’
‘Oh,’ said Mr Webley impassively.
‘See here,’ said Gaunt, ‘I know you’ve got your job to do. If there’s anything more you want to ask, why, ask it. Ask it now. But for God’s sake don’t keep me hanging on here. I can’t invite you to come out and have a drink with me but—’
Dikon, appalled, saw Gaunt’s hand go to the inside pocket of his coat. He got behind Webley and shook his head violently, but Gaunt’s note case was now in his hand and Webley on his feet.
‘Now, Mr Gaunt,’ Webley said with no change whatever in his uninflected and thick voice. ‘You should know better than to think of that. If you’re as careful of your reputation as you’ve been telling me, you ought to realize that anything of this nature looks very bad indeed if it gets known. Put that case away, sir, We’ll let you go as soon as possible but until this black business is cleared up nobody’s leaving Wai-ata-tapu. Nobody.’
Gaunt drew back his head with a certain characteristic movement which Dikon always associated with an adder.
‘I think you’re making a mistake, Sergeant,’ he said with elaborate indifference. ‘However, we’ll leave it as it is for the moment. I’ll telephone to Sir Stephen Johnston and ask him to advise me what steps to take. He’s a personal friend of mine. Isn’t he your Chief Justice or something?’
‘That’ll be quite in order, Mr Gaunt,’ said Webley tranquilly. ‘His Honour may make some special arrangement. In the meantime I’ll ask you to stay here.’
‘Great God Almighty!’ Gaunt screamed out. ‘If you say that again I’ll lose all control of my temper. How dare you take this attitude with me! The man has been killed by a loathsome accident. You behave, my God, as if he’d been murdered.’
‘But,’ said a voice in the doorway, ‘isn’t it almost certain that he has?’
It was Mr Septimus Falls, standing diffidently on the threshold.
V
‘Do forgive me,’ said Mr Falls in his rather spinster-like fashion. ‘I did tap on the door, I promise you, but you didn’t notice. I came to tell Sergeant Webley that he is wanted on the telephone.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Webley, and went out.
‘May I come in?’ asked Falls, and came in. ‘As that large efficient man has tramped away, it seems a propitious moment to review our position.’
‘Why did you say that—that—about Questing?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Why in heaven’s name?’
‘That he has been
murdered? Because of several observations I have made. Let me enumerate them. A, the attitude of the police seems to me to be more consistent with a homicide investigation than with an inquiry into an accident. B, the circumstances surrounding the affair appear to be suspicious; as, for instance, the bite out of the path. Have you ever tried to dislodge a piece of that solidified mud? My dear sir, you couldn’t do it unless you positively danced on the spot. C, I observed by the light of my torch that the displaced clod had fallen to the foot of the bank. It held the impression of a nailed boot or shoe. Questing was the only man in evening dress at the concert. D (and, dear me, how departmental I sound), the clod had contained a white flag which lay beside it, the only white flag on that side of the mound. As far as I could see the grooves on the edge of the gap and down the sides of the clod must have been the hole made by the flag standard. I am certain Webley and his satellites have discovered these not inconsiderable phenomena. Which would account for their somewhat implacable attitude towards ourselves, don’t you feel? I too have been forbidden to leave Wai-ata-tapu. A tiresome restriction.’
‘I fail utterly,’ said Gaunt breathlessly, ‘to see why these ludicrous details should suggest that there has been foul play.’
‘Do you? And yet when Hamlet felt the point unbated did he not smell villainy?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. I still think it monstrous that I, who after all am a guest in this country, should be subjected to this imbecile entanglement in red tape. If the position continues,’ said Gaunt, speaking very rapidly and looking down his nose at Mr Falls, ‘I shall appeal directly to the Governor-General whom I have the honour to know personally.’
‘This is frightful,’ thought Dikon. ‘First a Chief Justice and now a Governor-General. We shall be cabling to the Royal Family if Webley remains unshaken.’
At this point Dr Ackrington appeared in the doorway.
‘May I come in?’ he asked.
Gaunt waved his hand.
‘I don’t know whether you realize it,’ said Dr Ackrington, taking them all in with a comprehensive glare, ‘but we are under suspicion of homicide, every man jack of us.’ He gave an angrily triumphant laugh.