by Ngaio Marsh
“Why the hell not?”
“It just isn’t done in their world.”
“You’ve become maddeningly class-conscious all of a sudden, my good Dikon. What is their world, pray?”
“Shall we say proudly poor, sir?”
“The suspicious-genteel, you mean. The incredibly, the insultingly stupid bourgeoisie who read offence in a kindly impulse. You wish me to understand that these people would try to snub me, don’t you?”
“I think they would be very polite,” Dikon said, and tried not to sound priggish, “but it would, in effect, be a snub. I’m sure they would understand that your impulse was a kind one.”
Gaunt’s face had bleached. Dikon, who knew the danger signals, wondered in a panic if he was about to lose his job. Gaunt walked to the door and looked out. With his back still turned to his secretary he said: “You will go into Harpoon and give the order over the telephone. The bill is to be sent to me, and the parcel to be addressed to Miss Claire. Wait a moment.” He went to his desk and wrote on a slip of paper. “Ask them to write out this message and put it in the parcel. No signature, of course. You will go at once, if you please.”
“Very well, sir,” said Dikon.
Filled with the liveliest misgivings he went out to the car. Simon was in the garage. Gaunt had been granted a traveller’s petrol license and Simon had offered to keep the magnificent car in order. Gloating secretly, he would spend hours over slight adjustments; cleaning, listening, peering.
“I still reckon we might advance the spark a bit,” he said without looking at Dikon.
“I’m going into Harpoon,” said Dikon. “Would you care to come?”
“I don’t mind.”
Dikon had learnt to recognize this form of acceptance. “Jump in then,” he said. “You can drive.”
“I won’t come at that.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not my bus. Not my place to drive her.”
“Don’t be an ass. I’ve got a free hand and I’m asking you. You can check up the engine better if you’re driving, can’t you?”
He saw desire and defensiveness struggling together in Simon. “Get on with it,” he said and sat firmly in the passenger’s place.
They drove round the house and up the abominable drive. Dikon glanced at Simon and was touched by his look of inward happiness. He drove delicately and with assurance.
“Running well, isn’t she?” asked Dikon.
“She’s a trimmer,” said Simon. As the car gathered speed on the main road he lost his customary air of mulishness and gained a kind of authority. Bent on dismissing the scene with Gaunt from his thoughts, Dikon lured Simon into talking about his own affairs, his impatience to get into uniform, his struggles with Morse, his passionate absorption with the war in the air. Dikon thought how young Simon would have seemed among English youth of his own age and how vulnerable. “I’m coming on with the old dah-dah-dit, though,” Simon said. “I’ve made my own practice transmitter. It’s got a corker fulcrum, too. I’m not so hot at receiving yet, but I can get quite a bit of the stuff on the short wave. Nearly all code, of course, but some of it’s straight English. Gosh, I wish they’d pull me in. It’s a blooming nark the way they keep you hanging about.”
“They’ll miss you on the place.”
“We won’t be on the place much longer, don’t you worry. Questing’ll look after that. By cripey, I sometimes wonder if it’s a fair pop, me going away when that bloke’s hanging round.” They drove on in silence for a time and then, without warning, Simon burst into a spate of bewildered protest and fury. It was difficult to follow the progress of his ideas: Questing’s infamy, the Colonel’s unworldliness, Barbara’s virtue, the indignation of the Maori people, and the infamy of big business and vested interests were inextricably mixed together in his discourse. Presently, however, a new theme appeared. “Uncle James,” said Simon, “reckons the curio business is all a blind. He reckons Questing’s an enemy agent.”
Dikon made a faint incredulous noise. “Well he might be,” said Simon combatively. “Why not? You don’t kid yourself they haven’t got agents in New Zealand, do you?”
“Somehow he doesn’t strike me as the type — ”
“They don’t knock round wearing masks and looking tough,” Simon pointed out with an unexpected touch of his uncle’s acerbity.
“I know, I know. It’s only that one hears such a lot of palpable nonsense about spies that the whole idea is suspect. Like arrow poison in a detective story. Why does Dr. Ackrington think — ”
“I don’t get the strength of it myself. He wouldn’t say much. Only dropped hints that we needn’t be so sure Questing’d kick Dad ofï the place. Were you in this country when the Hippolyte was torpedoed?”
“No. We heard about it, of course. It was a submarine, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. The Hippolyte put out from Harpoon at night. She went down in sight of land. Uncle James reckoned at the time that the raider got the tip from someone on shore.”
“Questing?” said Dikon, and tried very hard to keep the note of scepticism from his voice.
“Yeah, Questing. Uncle James dopes it out that it’s been Questing’s idea to get this place on his own ever since he lent Dad the money. He reckons he’s been acting as an agent for years and that he’ll use the Springs as his headquarters with bogus patients and as likely as not a secret transmitting station.”
“Oh, Lord!”
“Well, anyway he’s acted pretty crook, hasn’t he? I don’t think it’s so funny. And if the old dead-beats at Home hadn’t been too tired to take notice, perhaps we wouldn’t have been looking so silly now,” Simon added vindictively. “Chaps like Questing ought to be cleaned right up, I reckon. Out of it altogether. What’d they do with them in Russia? Look here,” Simdn continued, “I’ll tell you something. The night before the Hippolyte went down there was a light flashing on the Peak. Some of the chaps over at the Kainga, Eru and Rewi Te Kahu and that gang, had gone out in a boat from Harpoon and they said they saw it. Uncle James has seen it since. Everybody knows there’s a reinforcement sailing any time now. What’s Questing doing, where does he go half the time? He’s messing round on the Peak isn’t he? Why did he try to put Bert Smith under the train?” Dikon attempted to speak and was firmly talked down. “Accident my foot,” said Simon. “He ought to be charged with attempted murder. The police round here seem to think they amount to something, I reckon they don’t know they’re born.”
“Well,” Dikon said mildly, “what action do you propose to take?”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” Simon roared out. “If you want to know what I’m going to do I’ll tell you. I’m going to stay up at nights. If Questing goes out I’ll slip after him and I’ll watch the Peak. My Morse’ll be good enough for what he does. It’ll be in code, of course, but if it’s Morse he’s using I’ll spot it. You bet I will, and by gum I’ll go to the station at Harpoon and if they won’t pull him in on that I’ll charge him with attempted murder.”
“And if they don’t care for that either?”
“I’ll do something,” said Simon. “I’ll do something.”
Chapter VI
Arrival of Septimus Falls
Friday, the day before the concert, marked the beginning of a crescendo in the affairs of Wai-ata-tapu. It began at breakfast. The London news bulletin was more than usually ominous and the pall of depression that was in the background of all New Zealanders’ minds at that time seemed to drag a little nearer. Colonel Claire, looking miserable, ate his breakfast in silence. Questing and Simon were both late for this meal, and one glance at Simon’s face convinced Dikon that something had happened to disturb him. He had black marks under his eyes and an air of angry satisfaction. Mr. Questing, too, looked as if he had not slept well. He spared them his customary sallies of matutinal playfulness. Since their drive to Harpoon two days ago, Dikon had tried to adjust his idea of Mr. Questing to that of a paid enemy agent. He had even k
ept awake for an hour or two beyond his usual time watching the face of Rangi’s Peak. But, although Mr. Questing announced his intention each night of dining at the hotel in Harpoon and had not returned when the rest of the party went to bed, the Peak changed from wine to purple and from purple to black outside Dikon’s window and no points of light had pricked its velvet surface. At last he lost patience with watching and fell asleep. On both mornings he woke with a dim recollection of hearing a car come round the house to the garage. Simon, he knew, had watched each night and he felt sure that the second vigil had been fruitful. Dikon fancied that Questing had delivered a final notice to the Claires, as at Friday’s breakfast they bore an elderly resemblance to the Babes in the Wood. They ate nothing and he caught them looking at each other with an air of bewilderment and despair.
Smith, who seemed to be really shaken by his jump from the bridge, breakfasted early, a habit that kept up the tradition that he worked for his keep.
The general atmosphere of discomfort and suspense was aggravated by the behaviour of Huia, who, after placing a plate of porridge before Dr. Ackrington, burst into tears and ran howling from the room.
“What the devil’s the matter with the girl?” he demanded. “I’ve said nothing.”
“It’s Eru Saul,” said Barbara. “He’s been waiting for her again when she goes home, Mummy.”
“Yes, dear. Ssh!” Mrs. Claire leant towards her husband and said in her special voice: “I think, dear, that you should speak to young Saul. He’s not a desirable type.”
“Oh, damn!” muttered the Colonel.
Mr. Questing pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.
“That’s the joker you ought to speak to, Dad,” said Simon, jerking his head at the door. “You’ve only got to look at the way he carries on with — ”
“Please, dear!” said Mrs. Claire, and the party relapsed into silence.
Gaunt breakfasted in his room. On the previous evening he had been restless and irritable, unable to work or read. He had left Dikon to his typewriter and, on an unaccountable impulse, elected to drive himself along the appalling coastal road to the north. He was in a state of excitement which Dikon found ridiculous and disturbing. During six years of employment Dikon had found their association pleasant and amusing. His early hero-worship of Gaunt had long ago been replaced by a tolerant and somewhat detached affection, but ten days at Wai-ata-tapu had wrought an alarming change in this attitude. It was as if the Claires, muddle-headed, gentle, and perhaps a little foolish, had proved to be a sort of touchstone to which Gaunt had been brought and found wanting. And yet Dikon, distressed by this change, could not altogether agree with his own judgment. It was the business of the dress for Barbara, he recognized, that had irritated him most. He had accused Gaunt of a gross error in taste and yet he himself had learnt to mistrust and deride the very attitude of mind that the Claires upheld. Was it not, in fact, an ungenerous attitude that forbade the acceptance of a generous gift, an attitude of self-righteous snobbism?
And exploring unhappily the backwaters of his own impulses he asked himself finally if perhaps he resented the gift because he was not the author of it.
The rural mail-car passed along the main highway at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and any letters for the Springs were left in a tin post-box on the top gate. Parcels too big for the box were merely dumped beneath it. The morning was overcast and Gaunt was in a fever lest the Claires should delay the trip to the gate and the parcel from Sarah Snappe be rained upon. Dikon gathered that the gift was to remain anonymous but doubted Gaunt’s ability to deny himself the pleasure of enacting the part of fairy godfather. “He will drop some arch hint and betray himself,” Dikon thought angrily. “And even if she refuses the blasted dress she’ll be more besotted on him than ever.”
After breakfast Mrs. Claire and Barbara, assisted in a leisurely manner by Huia, bucketed into their household duties with their customary air of laying back their ears and rushing their fences. Simon, who usually fetched the mail, disappeared and presently it began to rain.
“The oaf!” Gaunt fulminated. “He will lurch up the hill an hour late and bring down a mass of repellent pulp.”
“I can go up if you like, sir. The man always sounds his horn if he has anything for us. I can go as soon as I hear it.”
“They would guess that we expected something. Even Colly — No, they must fetch their own detestable mail. She must receive her parcel at their hands. I want to see it, though. I can stroll out for my own letters. Good God, a second deluge is descending upon us. Perhaps, after all, Dikon, you had better go for a stroll and casually pick up the mail.”
Dikon looked at the rods of water that now descended with such force that they spurted off the pumice in fans, and asked his employer if he did not think it would seem a little eccentric to stroll in such weather. “Besides, sir,” he pointed out, “the mail-car cannot possibly arrive for two hours and my stroll would be ridiculously protracted.”
“You have been against me from the outset,” Gaunt muttered. “Very well, I shall dictate for an hour.”
Dikon followed him indoors, sat down, and produced his shorthand pad. He was dying to ask Simon if he had succeeded in his vigil.
Gaunt walked up and down and began to dictate. “The actor” he said, “is a modest warm-hearted fellow. Being, perhaps, more highly sensitized than his fellow man he is more sensitive. .” Dikon hesitated. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Gaunt demanded.
“Sensitized, sensitive!”
“Death and damnation!.. he is more responsive, then, to the more subtle …”
“More, sir, and more.”
“Then delete the second more. How often am I to implore you to make these paltry amendments without disturbing me? …to the subtle nuances, the delicate half-tones of emotion. I had always been conscious of this gift, if it is one, in myself.
“Do you mind repeating that, sir? The rain makes such a din on the iron roof I can scarcely hear you. I got the subtle nuances.”
“Am I, then, to compose at the full pitch of my lungs?”
“I could trot after you with my little pad in my hand.”
“A preposterous suggestion.”
“It’s leaving off, now.”
The rain stopped with the abruptness of subtropical downpours, and the ground and roofs of Wai-ata-tapu began to steam. Gaunt became less restive and the dictation proceeded along lines that Dikon, in his new mood of open-eyed criticism, considered all too typical of almost any theatrical autobiography. But perhaps Gaunt would rescue his book by taking a line of defiant egoism. He seemed to be drifting that way. There was a growing flavour of: “This is the life story of a damn’ good actor who isn’t going to spoil it with gestures of false modesty”; a fashionable attitude, and no doubt Gaunt had decided to adopt it.
At ten o’clock Gaunt went down to the Springs with Colly in attendance, and Dikon hurried away in search of Simon. He found him in his cabin, a scrupulously tidy room where wireless magazines and text-books were set out on a working bench. He was in consultation with Smith, who broke ofï in the middle of some mumbled recital and with a grudging acknowledgment of Dikon’s greeting sloped away.
In contrast to Smith, Simon appeared to be almost cordial. Dikon was not quite sure how he stood with this curious young man, but he had a notion that his passive acceptance of the rôle cast for him in the lake incident as the remover of Barbara, and his suggestion that Simon should drive the car, had given him a kind of status. He thought that Simon disapproved of him on general principles as a parasite and a freak, but didn’t altogether dislike him.
“Here!” said Simon. “Can you beat it? Questing’s been telling Bert Smith he won’t put him off after all, when he cleans us up. He’s going to keep him on and give him good money. What d’you make of that?”
“Sudden change, isn’t it?”
“You bet it’s sudden. D’you get the big idea, though?”
“Does he want
to keep him quiet?” Dikon suggested cautiously.
“I’ll say! Too right he wants to keep him quiet. He’s windy. He’s had one pop at rubbing Bert out and he’s made a mess of it. He daren’t come at that game again so he’s trying the other stuff. ‘Keep your mouth shut and it’s O.K. by me.’ ”
“But honestly —”
“Look, Mr. Bell, don’t start telling me it’s ‘incredible.’ You’ve been getting round with theatrical sissies for so long you don’t know a real man when you see one.”
“My dear Claire,” said Dikon with some heat, “may I suggest that speaking in the back of your throat and going out of your way to insult everybody that doesn’t is not the sole evidence of virility. And if real men spend their time trying to kill and bribe each other, I infinitely prefer my theatrical sissies.” Dikon removed his spectacles and polished them with his handkerchief. “And if,” he added, “you mean what I imagine you to mean by ‘sissies,’ allow me to tell you you’re a liar. And furthermore, don’t call me Mr. Bell. I’m afraid you’re an inverted snob.”
Simon stared at him. “Aw, dickon!” he said at last, and then turned purple. “I’m not calling you by your Christian name,” he explained hurriedly. “That’s a kind of expression. Like you’d say, ‘Come off it.’ ”
“Oh.”
“And sissy is just a chap who’s kind of weak. You know. Too tired to take the trouble. English!”
“Like Winston Churchill?”
“Aw, to hell!” roared Simon, and then grinned. “All right, all right!” he said. “You win. I apologize.”
Dikon blinked. “Well,” he said sedately, “I call that very handsome of you. I also apologize. And now, do tell me the latest news of Questing. I swear I shan’t boggle at sabotage, homicide, espionage, or incendiarism. What, if anything, have you discovered?”
Simon rose and shut the door. He then shoved a packet of cigarettes at Dikon, leant back with his elbows on his desk and, with his own cigarette jutting out of the corner of his mouth, embarked on his story.