by Ngaio Marsh
‘Having one with the boys?’ Simon suggested.
‘Possibly. That can be checked. Now, we have discovered nothing to contradict my theory of a put-up job. On the other hand we’ve narrowed down the margin for murder. If the clod was dislodged with the idea of Questing putting his foot into the gap and falling over, this fictitious murderer must have dodged out after you, Edward, had gone by. He must have danced and stamped about, revealing himself on the skyline if you’d happened to glance back and, having completed his work, come on here or returned to the pa. During this period Gaunt had quarrelled with Questing, and gone up to the main road; Simon and Smith were drinking in somebody’s car after consorting for a time with certain Maoris; while Bell, Agnes and Barbara had gone to Gaunt’s car.’ Dr Ackrington looked triumphantly round the table. ‘We are completely covered for the crucial time. What’s the matter, Agnes?’
Mrs Claire was weaving her small plump hands. ‘Nothing really, dear,’ she said gently. ‘It’s only—I know nothing about such things, of course, nothing. But I do read some of Edward’s thrillers, and it always seems to me that in the stories they make everything rather more elaborate than it would be in real life.’
‘This is not a discussion on the dubious realism of detective fiction, Agnes.’
‘No, dear. But I was wondering if perhaps we were not a little inclined to be too elaborate ourselves? I mean, it’s very clever of you to think of all the other things, and I don’t pretend I can follow them; but mightn’t it be simpler if somebody had just hit poor Mr Questing?’
Dikon broke a dead silence by saying: ‘Mrs Claire, you make me want to stand up and cheer.’
Chapter 12
Skull
Dikon’s was the only voice lifted in praise of Mrs Claire’s unexpected theory. Her brother, after looking at her in blank astonishment, told her roundly that she was talking nonsense. He explained, as if to a child, that a blow from a hidden assailant would not account for the displaced clod of mud and that even in a struggle, which could scarcely have taken place without Falls hearing it, the path was altogether too firm for any portion of it to give way. The Colonel supported him, saying that when the iron standards for the flags were driven in, the Maoris had used a sledge hammer. Mrs Claire said that of course they were right, and they looked uneasily at her.
Barbara said: ‘Even if the police do think someone attacked him, haven’t we proved that none of us could have been there at the time?’
‘Bravo!’ cried Gaunt. ‘Of course we have.’
‘As far as that goes,’ said Simon, ‘there is one of us who could have knocked him over.’ He looked at Falls.
‘I?’ said Falls. ‘Dear me, yes. So I could. So I could.’
‘After all,’ said Simon, ‘they’ll only have your word for it that you didn’t know what happened. Bell heard Questing scream and went out there. And what did he find? You. Alone.’
‘I was not wearing hobnail boots, however.’
‘Lucky for you, I reckon. And talking about these boots, there’s something else I’ve got to tell you. Questing owned a pair of boots with sprigs. I can prove it.’
Dikon had seen enough of Simon by this time to know that a piece of portentous information burnt holes in the pockets of his reticence. He frowned at Simon. He even tried to stave him off by an effort of the will but it was no good. Out came the story of their climb up Rangi’s Peak, out came a description of the hobnailed footprints.
‘And if the police show me this clod of mud I reckon I can tell if it’s the same print. Anyway, they can go up the Peak and look for themselves. With any luck the prints’ll still be there.’
With this recital he bounded into popular favour. Dr Ackrington, after a comparatively mild blast on the danger of withholding information, declared that Simon, by his vigil on the rock, had gone far towards proving that Questing was the signaller. If Questing was the signaller it was almost certain, said Dr Ackrington, that the prints on the ledge were his prints. If these corresponded with the impression on the detached clod then they might well prove to be a determining factor.
‘You may depend upon it,’ cried Dr Ackrington, ‘the damned blackguard’s a hundred miles away if he hasn’t got clean out to sea, and wherever he is, he’s wearing these blasted boots.’
Steps sounded outside, followed by a muffled grumble of voices. Dikon turned to look. Through the wide windows of the dining-room the men at the table watched Webley’s three assistants cross the pumice and come towards the verandah. Dikon was visited by a sensation of unreality, a feeling that the mental and physical experiences of this interminable morning were repeating themselves exactly. For the men walked in the same order that they had adopted when he last saw them. They carried again their muddy rakes and poles, and one of them held away from him a heavy sack from which a globule of mud formed and dropped. And just as before, his heart had jolted against his ribs, so it jolted again: As the men drew near the verandah they saw the party in the dining-room. They paused and the two groups looked at each other through the open windows. A car came down the drive. Webley and an elderly man got out. The men with the sack moved towards them and again there was a huddled inspection.
Mrs Claire and Barbara, who sat with their backs to the windows, followed the direction of their companions’ gaze, and half turned.
‘Wait a moment, Agnes,’ said Dr Ackrington loudly. ‘Will you attend to me? Never mind the windows now. Mind what I say. Barbara, will you listen!’
‘Yes, James.’
‘Yes, Uncle James.’
They turned back dutifully. Dikon, sharing Dr Ackrington’s desire that Barbara should not see the men outside, got to his feet and moved behind her chair. Dr Ackrington spoke loudly and rapidly. Colonel Claire and his wife and daughter looked at him. The others made no pretence of doing so, and Dikon tried to read in their faces the progress of the men beyond the window.
‘…I repeat,’ Dr Ackrington was saying, ‘that it’s as clear as daylight. Questing, having changed into workman’s clothes and heavy boots, stamped away the clod from the path, threw his evening clothes into the cauldron and bolted. We were meant to presume accidental death.’
‘I still think it was incredibly stupid of him to forget that he would leave prints,’ said Dikon. He saw Simon’s eyes widen as he watched the men beyond the windows.
‘He thought the clod would fall into the cauldron, Bell. It must be by the merest fluke that it did not do so.’
Simon’s hands were clenched. Falls raised an eyebrow. Dr Ackrington himself, looking, as they did, beyond the windows, paused and then added rapidly: ‘If Questing is found before he gets clean away, he will be wearing hobnail boots. I’ll stake my oath on it.’
Simon was on his feet pointing. ‘Look!’
Now they all turned.
The group of men outside the window parted. Webley had taken something from the sack. He held it up. It was a heavy boot and it dripped mud.
II
They were all shown the boot. Webley brought it into the dining-room and displayed it, standing on a sheet of newspaper in the middle of the table, and exuding a strong smell of sulphur. He wiped away most of the mud. The surface of the leather was pulpy and greatly disfigured, some of the metal eyelets had fallen out and the upper had become detached in places from the sole. There were, however, still two hobnails in the heel, though the others had fallen out.
Webley wiped his large flat hands on a piece of rag and looked woodenly at his trophy.
‘I’d be obliged,’ he said, ‘if any of you ladies or gentlemen could put an owner on this. We’ve got its mate outside.’
Nobody spoke.
‘We fished them out with a hay fork,’ Webley said. ‘Don’t any of you gentlemen recognize it?’
Dr Ackrington made a brusque movement. ‘Yes, Doctor?’ Webley said at once. ‘You were going to say something?’
‘I believe—I think that quite possibly they were Questing’s.’
‘His? But
you told me he wore evening shoes, Doctor.’
‘Yes. There’s a new development, however. My nephew—perhaps he should explain.’
Dikon wondered if for a fraction of a second Webley had looked resigned, if his singularly inexpressive face had been blurred momentarily with the glaze of boredom. He passed his flat fingers over his jowl, stared at Simon and said: ‘Oh, yes?’ Simon embarked with a great air of consequence upon an account of their visit to the Peak. He forgot to include Dikon in his recital. ‘The night before when I was out on the rock, I picked that Questing was signalling from this ledge on the Peak. That’s why I went straight up there yesterday morning. Soon as I got there I looked for footprints and did I find them! Two beauties. Squatting on his heels, he’d been, under the lee of the bank. Here! You let me have a look at the soles of the boots and I reckon I’ll tell you if they made these prints on the Peak. That’s a fair pop, isn’t it?’
Webley went out and returned with the second boot. It was further advanced in disintegration than its mate. He laid them on their sides with the soles towards Simon.
‘Some of the sprigs are gone,’ he said. ‘You can see where they’ve been, though. How about it?’
Simon leant forward portentously and stared at the boots. He counted under his breath and his face grew redder and redder.
‘How about it?’ repeated Webley.
‘Give us a chance,’ said Simon. He laughed uncomfortably. ‘I’ve just got to think. You know. You have to concentrate on a thing like this.’
‘That’s right,’ said Webley impassively.
Simon concentrated.
Gaunt lit a cigarette. ‘The young investigator seems to be going into a trance,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I shall wait for the revelation. May I be excused?’
‘Don’t you start being funny,’ said Simon angrily. ‘This is important. You stay where you are.’ Dikon took out his notebook and Simon pounced on it. ‘Here! Why didn’t you give me that before?’ He ruffled the pages. ‘This is what I wanted all the time, Mr Webley. I saw the significance of these prints right away and I got Bell to make a sketch of them. Wait till I find it.’
‘Was Mr Bell up there with you?’
‘That’s right. Yes, I took him along as a witness. Here,’ cried Simon in triumph, ‘here it is. Look at that.’
Dikon, having made the sketch, had a pretty clear recollection of the prints. He decided that they might have been made by the boots on the table. Such hobnails as remained, as well as the scars left by those that had fallen out, corresponded, he thought, with the impressions he had copied. Webley, breathing placidly through his mouth, shielded the sketch with his hand and compared it with his muddy exhibits. He looked at Dikon.
‘Would you have any objection, Mr Bell, to my taking possession of this page?’
‘None.’
‘That’ll be quite OK, Mr Webley,’ said Simon magnificently.
‘Much obliged, Mr Bell,’ said Webley and neatly detached the page.
Gaunt said: ‘And in what condition is our fugitive Questing now, Dr Ackrington? Is he galloping away to some hideout, dressed in dungarees and patent-leather pumps, or is he capering about in the rude nude?’
Dr Ackrington darted a glance of loathing at Gaunt and said nothing.
Webley said: ‘You’ve been telling them about your theory, have you, Doctor? Disappearance, eh? You’ll find it difficult to fit in these boots, won’t you?’
‘The difficulty,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘is not insuperable. Isn’t it at least possible that Questing realized he had left recognizable footprints and threw the boots he had intended to wear into the cauldron?’
‘You are as nimble in the concoction of unlikelihoods,’ said Gaunt, ‘as a Baconian nosing in the plays of Shakespeare.’
‘An utter irrelevancy, Gaunt. A little while ago you supported my contention. I find your change of attitude incomprehensible.’
‘I’m afraid that on consideration I find all your theories equally irrelevant and incomprehensible. I’m afraid that for me, however selfishly, the point of interest lies in the fact that whether Questing slipped, was pushed, or escaped, I cannot, in the wildest realms of conjecture, be supposed to have had anything to do with the event. If I’m wanted, Sergeant Webley, I shall be in my room.’
‘That’ll be quite OK, thank you, Mr Gaunt,’ said Webley and watched him go.
III
When Gaunt had gone, the meeting dissolved into a series of mumbled duologues. Dikon heard Webley say that he wanted to look through their rooms. Mrs Claire said that he would find them dreadfully untidy. It appeared that Huia, stimulated to the point of hysteria by the events of the last twelve hours, was incapable of performing her duties. She slept over at the native village which, Mrs Claire explained, she reported to be seething with terrified speculations.
‘They get such strange ideas, you know,’ said Mrs Claire to Webley. ‘One tries to tell them that all their old superstitions are wrong but still they are there—underneath.’
Dikon thought that Webley pricked up his ears at this. However the Sergeant merely said in his sluggish way that he would rather the rooms were not touched and that he hoped nobody would object to his looking through them. He added the ominous request that they should all remain on the premises as he would like to see them again. He went off with the Colonel in the direction of the study. Mr Falls looked after them meditatively.
Dikon went to see his employer and found him on the sofa with his eyes closed.
‘Well?’ said Gaunt, without opening his eyes.
‘Well, sir, the meeting’s dissolved.’
‘I’ve been thinking. The Maori youth must be found. The youth who saw me go up the main road.’
‘Eru Saul?’
‘Yes. They must get a statement from him. It will establish my alibi.’ He opened his eyes. ‘You’d better tell the empurpled sergeant.’
‘He’s not to be approached at the moment, I fancy,’ said Dikon, who did not care at all for this suggestion.
‘Well, don’t leave it too long. After all it’s of some slight importance since it protects me from a charge of homicide,’ said Gaunt bitterly.
‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘No. I’m utterly prostrated. I want to be left alone.’
Hoping that this mood would persist, Dikon went outside. There was no one about. He crossed the pumice sweep and wandered up and down the path by the warm lake. Wai-ata-tapu was unusually silent. The familiar morning sounds of housework were not to be heard or the voices of Mrs Claire and Barbara screeching companionably to each other from different rooms. He could see Huia moving about in the dining-room. Presently Smith and Simon walked round the house, Simon discoursing magnificently. Webley came out of the study, unlocked the door of Questing’s room and went in. Dikon was overstimulated and so restless that he was unable to think closely about Questing’s disappearance or indeed about anything. He was conscious that he had been frustrated at the moment of departure upon an emotional journey; he was both dissatisfied and apprehensive.
Presently Barbara came out of the house. She looked about her in desultory fashion and, after a moment, caught sight of him. He waved vigorously. She hesitated and then, with a backward glance, came to meet him.
‘What have you been doing all this time?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Nothing. I ought to be seeing about lunch but I can’t settle down.’
‘Nor can I. Couldn’t we sit down for a moment? I’ve been pounding to and fro like a sentry until I feel quite worn out.’
‘I feel I ought to be doing something or another,’ said Barbara. ‘Not just sitting.’
‘Well, perhaps we could march up and down together.’
‘Oh, Dikon,’ Barbara said, ‘what is it that’s waiting for us? Where are we going?’
He had no answer to this and after a moment she said: ‘You don’t think he’s alive, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you th
ink somebody killed him?’ She looked into his face. ‘Yes, that is what you think,’ she said.
‘Not for any logical reason. I can’t work it out. I’m like your mother, I can’t go all elaborate over it. I certainly can’t believe in Dr Ackrington’s theory. He’s so hell-bent on making everything fit into the mould of his own idea. Intellectually he’s as obstinate as a mule, it seems to me.’
‘Uncle James turns everything into a kind of argument. Even terribly serious things. He can’t help it. The most ordinary conversation with Uncle James can turn in the twinkling of an eye into a violent argument. But, though you mightn’t think it, he is open to conviction. In the end. Only by that time you’re so exhausted you’ve forgotten what it’s all about.’
‘I know. The verdict goes by default.’
‘Would that be the way the scientific mind works?’
‘How should I know, my dear?’
‘I should like to ask you something,’ said Barbara after a silence. ‘It’s nothing much but it’s been worrying me. Suppose this does turn out to be—’ She hesitated.
‘Murder? One feels rather shy about uttering that word, doesn’t one? Do you prefer the more classy “homicide”?’
‘No, thank you. Suppose it is murder, then. The police will want to know every tiny little thing about last night, won’t they?’
‘I suppose so. It’s what one imagines. A prolonged and dreary winnowing.’
‘Yes. Well now, please don’t fly into another rage with me because I really couldn’t bear it, but ought I to tell them about my new dress?’
Dikon gaped at her. ‘Why on earth?’
‘I mean, about him coming up to me and talking as if he’d given it to me.’
Appalled by the possible implication of the project Dikon said roughly: ‘Good Lord, what tomfoolery is this!’
‘There!’ said Barbara. ‘You’re livid again. I can’t think why you lose your temper every time I mention the dress. I still think he did it. He’s the only person we knew who wouldn’t see that it was an impossible sort of thing to do.’