Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

Whether by accident or design, Mr. Falls switched on his torch and its strong beam shone full in Dikon’s eyes. He moved his head but the light followed him. He said thickly: “I’m going up there. To look.”

“I think you had better not do that,” said Mr. Falls.

“Why?”

“It should be left undisturbed. We can do nothing.”

“But you’ve already disturbed it.”

“Not more than I could help. Very little. Believe me, we can do nothing here.”

“It’s all a mistake,” said Dikon violently. “It means nothing. The path may have fallen in a week ago.”

“You forget that we came that way to the concert. It has fallen in since then.”

“Since you know all the answers,” said Dikon unevenly, “perhaps you’ll tell me what we do next. No, I’m sorry. I expect you’re right. Actually, what do we do next?”

“Establish the identity of the man in the overcoat, don’t you think?”

“You mean — find the members of the party. To see… Yes, you’re quite right. For God’s sake let’s go back.”

“By all means let us go back,” said Mr. Falls. “But you know there was only one member of the party who wore an overcoat, and that was Mr. Questing.”

They had agreed to tell Mrs. Claire and Barbara that they had met nobody on the reserve and leave it at that. The short drive home was made ghastly by Mrs. Claire’s speculations on the origin of the scream. She was full of comfortable explanations which, Dikon felt, she herself did not altogether believe. The Maori people, she said, were so excitable. Always playing foolish pranks. “I expect,” she ended on a note that was almost tranquil, “they just thought they’d give us a good fright.”

Barbara, on the other hand, was completely silent. “It was in another age,” Dikon thought, “that I kissed her.” But he did not believe that it was because of the kiss that she was silent. “She knows something has happened,” he thought. It was a relief to hear Mrs. Claire say that after such a late night they must pop straight off to bed.

When they had returned to the Springs, Dikon let his passengers out and drove the car round to the garage. He saw Mrs. Claire and Barbara walk along the verandah towards their rooms. He parked the car and returned to find Mr. Falls waiting for him on the verandah.

They had agreed that Dr. Ackrington should be consulted. It was not until now that Dikon remembered how scattered the various departures from the concert had been. Mr. Questing’s enormities, Gaunt’s fury, and the Colonel’s disappearance seemed now to be profoundly insignificant. But he knew a moment’s unreasoning panic as they crossed the verandah to the dining-room. He didn’t know what he had expected to find but it was extraordinarily disconcerting to hear Gaunt’s voice, angrily scolding.

“I maintain, and anybody who knows me will bear this out, that I am an amazingly even-tempered man. But mark this: when I get angry I get angry and by heaven I’ll give him hell. ‘Do you realize,’ I shall say, ‘that I–I whom you have publicly insulted — have refused to make a concert-platform appearance before royalty? Do you realize…’ ”

Dikon and Mr. Falls walked into the dining-room. Gaunt was sitting on one of the tables. His hand was raised and his eyes flashed. Dikon had time to remark that his employer was now coasting on the down-grade of a bout of temperament. When he began to talk the worst was usually over. Beside him on the table stood a bottle of his own whisky to which he had evidently been treating Dr. Ackrington and Colonel Claire. The Colonel sat with a tumbler in his hand. His hair was ruffled and his mouth was not quite closed. Dr. Ackrington appeared to be listening with angry approval to Gaunt’s tirade.

“Come and have a drink, Falls,” said Gaunt. “I’ve just been telling them — ” He broke off and stared at his secretary. “And may I ask what’s the matter with you?”

They were all staring at Dikon. He thought: “I suppose I look sick or something.” He sat at one of the tables and, resting his head on his hand, listened to Mr. Falls giving an exact repetition of the story he had already told to Dikon. He was heard in utter silence and it was some time after he had finished that Dr. Ackrington said in a voice that seemed foreign to him:

“He may, after all, have returned. How do you know that he hasn’t returned? Have you looked?”

“By all means let us look,” said Falls. “Bell, perhaps you wouldn’t mind?”

Dikon went along the verandah to Mr. Questing’s room. The pearl-grey worsted suit was neatly disposed on a chair, ties that had a familiar look hung over the looking-glass, the bed was turned back and a suit of remarkably brilliant pyjamas with a violent puce motif was laid out. The room smelt strongly of the cream Mr. Questing had used on his hair and, indefinably, of him. Dikon shut the door and went on to look, with an unhurried precision that surprised himself, through any other rooms where Questing might conceivably be found. He could hear Simon practising Morse in the cabin and through the open door saw that he and Smith were together there. On his return he saw Colly cross the verandah with a suit of Gaunt’s over his arm. Dikon returned to the dining-room and again sat down at the table. Nobody asked him if he had seen Questing.

Colonel Claire said suddenly: “Yes, but I don’t understand why it should have happened.”

Mr. Falls was very patient. “A probable explanation might be that he walked too near the edge and it gave way.”

“The only explanation, surely,” said Dr. Ackrington sharply.

“Do you think so?” asked Mr. Falls politely. “Yes, perhaps you are right.”

“Would it be possible,” asked Dikon suddenly, “to branch off from the path and return to the pa by another route?”

“There you are!” cried Colonel Claire with childish optimism. “Why didn’t somebody think of that?”

“Utterly impossible, I should say,” said Dr. Ackrington crisply. “Where’s that boy? And Smith? They ought to know.”

“Dikon will find them,” said Gaunt. “God, this can’t be true! It’s monstrous, it’s unthinkable. I–I won’t have it.”

“You’ll have to lump it,” thought Dikon as he went off to the cabin.

They were still there. Dikon interrupted Simon in the middle of a heated dissertation on fifth columnists in New Zealand. The sinking of the ship, together with all the other crises of the past week, had been forgotten in this new and supreme horror, but now Dikon thought suddenly that if Questing had indeed been an agent, it would have been better for him to have faced discovery and a firing squad than to have met his fate in Taupo-tapu. He hold Simon briefly what they believed to have happened, and was inexpressibly shocked by the way he took it.

“Packed up, is he?” said Simon angrily. “Yeh, and now they’ll never believe me. What a bastard!”

“Cursing and swearing about the poor bastard when he’s dead,” said Mr. Smith reproachfully. “You ought to be bloody well ashamed of yourself.” He stirred uneasily and disseminated a thick spirituous odour. “What a death!” he added thickly. “Give you the willies to think about it, wouldn’t it?” He shivered and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “I had one or two over at the pa with the boys,” he explained needlessly.

Dikon was disgusted with both of them. He said shortly that they were wanted in the dining-room, and walked out, leaving them to follow. Simon caught up with him. “Bert’s not so good,” he said. “He’s had a couple.”

“Quite obviously.”

Smith lurched between them and took them by the arms. “That’s right,” he agreed heavily, “I’m not so good.”