Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

For a moment nobody spoke, and then, to Dikon’s profound astonishment, one after another, Gaunt, Smith, the Colonel, and Simon, the last somewhat grudgingly, said that they had no comments to offer. It seemed to Dikon that the listeners round the table had relaxed. There was a feeling of expansion. Gaunt touched his forehead with his handkerchief and took out his cigarette case.

Obviously gratified, Ackrington turned to Falls. “You say nothing,” he said.

“But I am filled with admiration nevertheless,” said Falls. “A most ingenious theory and lucidly presented. I congratulate you.”

“What is it about the man?” Dikon wondered. “He looks all right, rather particularly so. His voice is pleasant. One keeps thinking he’s going to be an honest-to-God sort of fellow and then he prims up his mouth and talks like an affected pedagogue.” Out of patience with Falls, he turned to look at Barbara. He had tried not to look at her ever since she came in. Her pallor, her air of bewilderment, and the painful attentiveness with which she listened to everybody and said nothing seemed to Dikon almost unbearably touching. She was watching him now, anxiously, asking him something. She answered his smile with a shadowy one of her own. There was an empty chair beside hers.

“Dikon! ”

Gaunt had shouted at him. He jumped and looked round guiltily. “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say something to me?”

“Dr. Ackrington has been waiting for your answer for some considerable time. He wants your opinion on his solution.”

“I’m terribly sorry. My opinion?” Dikon thrust his hands into his pockets and clenched them. They were all watching him. “Well, sir, I’m afraid I’ve been completely addled by the whole affair. I can’t pretend to have any constructive theory to offer.”

“Then I take it you are prepared to accept mine?” said Ackrington impatiently.

Why had he got the feeling that they were bending their wills upon him, that they sat there boring into his mind with theirs, trying to compel him to something?

“What the devil’s the matter with you?” Gaunt demanded.

“Come, come, Bell, if you’ve nothing to say we must conclude you’ve no objection.”

“But I have,” said Dikon, rousing himself. “I’ve every objection. I don’t believe in it at all.”

He knew that his explanations sounded hopelessly inadequate. He heard himself stumbling from one feeble objection to another. “I can’t disprove it, of course, sir. It might be true. I mean, it’s all sort of logical but I mean it’s not based on anything.”

“On the contrary,” said Dr. Ackrington and his very mildness seemed to Dikon to be most disquieting, “it is based on the man’s character, on the circumstances surrounding him, and upon the undisputed fact that no body has been found.”

“It sounds so sort of bogus, though.” Dikon floundered about through a series of slangy phrases which he was quite unaccustomed to use. “I mean it’s the kind of thing that they do in thrillers. I mean he wouldn’t know there was going to be all that chat at the concert about the girl who fell in Taupo-tapu. Would he? And if he didn’t know that then he wouldn’t know about the scream keeping the Maoris away.”

“My good fool,” said Gaunt, “can’t you understand that the scream was introduced because of the legend? An extra bit of atmosphere. If he hadn’t heard the legend and the song he wouldn’t have screamed.”

“Precisely,” said Ackrington.

“Well, Mr. Bell?” asked Falls.

“Yes, that fits in, of course, but I’m afraid it all sort of fits too neatly for me. As if it was concocted, don’t you know? Like china packed too closely. No lee-way for jolts. I’m afraid my objections are maddeningly vague but I simply cannot see him hiding a disguise in an extinct geyser and tossing his boiled shirt into a mud pot. And then going off — where?”

“It is highly probable that a car was waiting for him somewhere along the road,” said Ackrington.

“There’s a goods train goes through at midnight,” suggested Smith. “He might of hopped onto that. Geeze, I hope you’re right, Doc. It’d give you the willies to think he was stewing over there, wouldn’t it?”

Mrs. Claire uttered a cry of protest and Ackrington instantly blasted Smith.

“Cut it out, Bert!” advised Simon. “You don’t put things nicely.”

“Hell, I said I hoped he wasn’t , didn’t I? What’s wrong with that?”

“If you are not satisfied with Dr. Ackrington’s theory, Mr. Bell,” said Falls, “can you suggest any other explanation?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I haven’t seen the print on the clod of mud, of course, but it seems to me it can’t be an old one if it suggests that somebody kicked the clod loose. If that’s so, it looks as if there has been foul play. And yet I’m afraid I don’t think Questing was drunk enough to fall in or even that it’s at all likely, if he did put his foot in the gap, that he would go right over. And it seems to be a very chancy sort of trap for a murderer to set, doesn’t it? I mean Simon might have gone over, or anybody else who happened to walk that way. How could a murderer reckon on Questing being the first to leave the concert?”

“You don’t think it was an accident. You can’t advance any tenable theory of homicide. You find my theory logical and yet cannot accept it. I think, Mr. Bell,” Dr. Ackrington summed up, “you may be excused from any further attempts to explain yourself.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Dikon sincerely. “I think I may.”

He walked round the table and sat down by Barbara.

From that moment the other men treated Dikon as an onlooker. It was impossible, they agreed, that in a homicide investigation the police could regard him as a suspect. He was with Mrs. Claire and Barbara when Questing screamed, he drove to the hall and had no opportunity to enter the thermal reserve either before, after, or during the concert. The fact that the path had been intact when the other men walked over to the village excluded him from any suspicion of complicity as far as the displaced clod was concerned. “Even the egregious Webley,” said Dr. Ackrington, “could scarcely blunder where Bell is concerned.” Dikon realized with amusement that in a way he lost caste by his immunity.

“As for the rest of us,” said Dr. Ackrington importantly, “I have no doubt that Webley, in the best tradition of the worst type of fiction, will suspect each of us in turn. For this reason I have thought it well that we should consult together. We do not know along what fantastic corridors his fancy may lead him but it is quite evident from certain questions that he has already put to me that he has crystallized upon the footprint. Now, did any of us wear boots or shoes with nails in them?”

Only Simon and Smith, it appeared, had done so. “I got them on now,” Smith roared out. “In my position you don’t wear pansy shoes. I wear working boots and I wear them all the time.” He hitched up his knee and planked a most unlovely boot firmly against the edge of the table. “Anybody’s welcome to inspect my feet,” he said.

“Thank you so much,” Gaunt murmured. “No. Definitely no.”

“That goes for me,” said Simon. “I’ve got three pairs. They can look at the lot for mine.”

“Very well,” said Dr. Ackrington. “Next, they require to know our movements. Perhaps each of us has already been asked to account for himself. You, Agnes, and you, Barbara, are naturally not personally involved. Nevertheless you may be questioned about us. You should be prepared.”

“Yes, dear. But if we are asked any questions we tell the truth, don’t we? It’s so simple,” said Mrs. Claire, opening her eyes very wide, “just to tell the truth, isn’t it?”