Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“I should have thought,” said Gaunt, “that it followed as the night the day. I do not book rooms out of sheer elfin whimsy. Please settle with the Claires. We leave as soon as possible.”

“But, sir, your cure?”

Gaunt shook a finger at him. “Are you so grossly lacking in sensibility,” he asked, “that you can blandly suggest that I, with the loathsome picture of last night starting up before my eyes whenever I close them, should steep my body, mine , in seething mud?”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” said Dikon lamely. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell the Claires.”

“Pray do,” said Gaunt and turned his shoulder on him.

Dikon went to find Mrs. Claire and encountered Colly on the way. Colly turned his eyes up and affected to dash a tear from them. The phrase, “He’s too cheeky,” formed itself in Dikon’s thoughts and instantly reminded him of the small brown boys who had grimaced in the moonlight. He continued on his way without an answering gesture. He ran the Colonel to earth in his study where he was closeted with a large dark man with a high colour, wearing an uneventful suit and a pair of repellent boots. This person turned upon Dikon a hard speculative stare.

“Sergeant Webley,” said the Colonel. Sergeant Webley rose slowly.

“How do you do, sir?” he said in a muffled voice. “Mr…?”

“Bell,” said the Colonel.

“Ah, yes. Mr. Bell,” repeated Sergeant Webley. He half-opened his hand, which was broad, flat and flabby with lateral creases. He seemed to peer into its palm. Dikon realized with a stab of alarm that he was consulting a small note-book. “That’s right,” repeated Sergeant Webley heavily. “Mr. Dikon Bell. Would that be a kind of nickname, sir?”

“Not at all,” said Dikon. “It was given me in my baptism.”

“Is that so, sir? Very unusual. Old English perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” said Dikon coldly. Webley cleared his throat and waited.

“Sergeant Webley,” said the Colonel uncomfortably, “is making some inquiries…”

“Yes, of course,” said Dikon hurriedly. “I’m sorry I interrupted, sir. I’ll go.”

“No need for that, Mr. Bell,” said Webley with a sort of fumbling cordiality. “Very glad you looked in. Quite an unfortunate affair. Yes. Take a seat, Mr. Bell, take a seat.”

With a claustrophobic sensation of something closing in upon him, Dikon sat down and waited.

“I understand,” said Webley, “that your movements last night were as follows.” He flattened his note-book on his knees and began to read from it. “But I’ve heard all this before,” Dikon thought. “I’ve read it a hundred times in air-liners, on the decks of steamers, in hotel bedrooms.” And he saw yellow dust-jackets picturing lethal weapons, clutching hands, handcuffs, and men like Mr. Webley squinting along the barrels of revolvers. More in answer to his thoughts than to Webley’s questions he cried aloud: “But it was only an accident!”

“In a case of this sort, Mr. Bell, disappearance of the party concerned under circumstances pointing to demise, we make inquiries. Now, you were saying?”

His heavy interrogation began to take on a kind of lifeless rhythm: question, answer, pause, while Sergeant Webley wrote and Dikon fidgeted, and again, question. It was a colourless measure reiterated drearily with variations. Under its burden Dikon walked again down a narrow track, through a gap in a hedge, and across a barren place where white flags showed clearly. Beyond the drone of Webley’s voice a single scream rose and fell like a jet from a geyser.

Webley was very insistent about the scream. Was Dikon positive that it had come from the direction of the mud cauldron? Sounds were deceptive, Webley said. Might it not have come from the village? Dikon was quite positive that it had not and, on consideration, said he would swear that it had arisen close at hand in the thermal region. Where precisely had he been when he first saw Mr. Falls? Here Webley unfolded a large-scale and extremely detailed map of the district. Dikon was able to find his place on the map and, a punctual wraith, Mr. Falls walked again towards him in the starlight. “Then you’d say he was about half-way between you and the mud pot?” The sense of impending horror which had haunted Dikon ever since he woke was now intensified and translated physically into a dryness of the throat. “About that,” he said.

Webley looked up from the map, his pale finger still flattened on the point where Dikon had stood. “Now, Mr. Bell, how long would you say it was from the time you left Mrs. and Miss Claire until the moment you first saw Mr. Falls?”

“No longer than it takes to walk fairly briskly from the car to the point under your finger. Perhaps a couple of minutes. No more.”

“A couple of minutes,” Webley repeated, and stooped over his note-book. With his head bent, so that his voice sounded more muffled than ever, he said much too casually: “You’re in young Mr. Claire’s confidence, aren’t you, Mr. Bell?”

“In what sense?”

“Didn’t he tell you about his ideas on Mr. Questing?”

“He talked to me about them. Yes.”

“And did you agree with him?” asked Webley, raising his florid face for a moment to look at Dikon.

“At first I considered them fantastic.”

“But you got round to thinking there might be something in it? Did you?”

“I suppose so,” said Dikon and then, ashamed of answering so guardedly, he said firmly: “Yes, I did. It seems to me to be inescapable.”

“Is that so?” said Webley. “Thank you very very much, Mr. Bell. We won’t trouble you any more just now.”

Dikon thought: “I seem to be forever getting my congé .” He said to the Colonel: “I really came to tell you, sir, that Mr. Gaunt has been very much upset by this appalling business and thinks he would like to get away, for a time at least. He’s most anxious that you should know how much he appreciates all the kindness and consideration that he has been shown and… and,” Dikon stammered, “and I hope that after a little while we may return. I’m so sorry to bother you now but if I might settle up…?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the Colonel with obvious relief. “Quite understandable. Sorry it’s happened like this.”

“So are we,” said Dikon. “Enormously. I’ll come back a little later, shall I? We’ll be leaving at about eleven.” He backed away to the door.

“Just a minute, Mr. Bell.”

Webley had been stolidly conning over his notes, and Dikon, in his embarrassment, had almost forgotten him. He now rose to his feet, a swarthy official in an ugly suit. “You were thinking of leaving this morning were you, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes,” said Dikon. “This morning.”

“You and Mr. Geoffrey Gaunt and Mr. Gaunt’s personal vally?” He wetted his thumb and turned a page of his note-book. “That’d be Mr. Alfred Colly, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Well, now, we’ll be very sorry to upset your arrangements, Mr. Bell, but I’m just afraid we’ll have to ask you to stay on a bit longer. Until we’ve cleared up this little mystery, shall we say?”

With a sense of plunging downwards in a lift that was out of control, Dikon said: “But I’ve told you everything I know, and Mr. Gaunt had nothing whatever to do with the affair. I mean he was nowhere near. I mean…”

“Nowhere near, eh?” Webley repeated. “Is that so? Yes. He didn’t drive home in his car, did he? Which way did Mr. Gaunt go home, Mr. Bell?”

And now Dikon was back in the meeting-house, and Gaunt, shaking with rage, was pushing his way out along the side aisles as if propelled by an intolerable urge. He was engulfed in a crowd of people who stared curiously at him. He showed for a moment in the doorway and was gone.