Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“That’s right. And d’you know what I reckon he was doing?”

“You’re asking me!” said Smith. “He was passing over the doings. Had a bottle in his overcoat pocket. One of those flatties.”

“Brandy,” said Simon.

“Yeh. I saw him slip it to young Maui Matai. It’s like what I told Rua. He was keeping in with the young lot. That’s why Maui asked us to have one. I could of done with it, too,” confessed Smith.

“Well, and then Ernie Priest came along,” Simon explained, “and the four of us sloped off up to his car.”

“Leaving Questing with those Maori youths?” asked Falls.

“That’s right,” said Smith.

“Interesting!” Falls murmured. “And your Maori friends said nothing to you of this, Colonel?”

“They wouldn’t. They know what we think about the whole business of giving spirits to the natives.”

“It would be after this that you met Questing, Mr. Gaunt?”

“I suppose so. Yes, yes,” said Gaunt in an exhausted voice.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Falls blandly. “Quite so. Afterwards. I take it,” he went on with his air of precision, “that this meeting doesn’t wish for a repetition of my own extremely inconclusive statement? I understand that you have all become acquainted with it.”

“That’s right,” said Simon before anyone else could answer. “We know you were just about on the spot when he yelled. We know you took pretty good care to keep us off the path while you went back there yourself. We know you wouldn’t have had to say anything if Bell hadn’t come along and found you. You’re the only one of the lot of us except Uncle James that’s seen this gap in the path. You seem to have got hold of the idea that everything you say goes for gospel. Well, by cripey, it doesn’t for mine. By my idea you’ve had a free run of the hot air round here for a bit too long. There’s one other thing we know about you. What about that stuff with your pipe?”

“ Simon !” said his father and uncle together.

“What about it? Come on. What about it?”

“Simon, will you…”

“No, no, please!” begged Falls. “Do let us hear about this. I’m completely baffled, I assure you. Did you say my pipe ?”

“I’m not saying another thing, Uncle. Keep your shirt on.”

Colonel Claire looked coldly at his son and said: “You’ll come and speak to me afterwards, Simon. In the meantime you will be good enough to say nothing. I am ashamed of you.”

“Damned young cub,” Dr. Ackrington began, and his sister at once said: “No, James, please. It’s for his father to speak to him, dear, if he’s done wrong.”

“ I’m sorry,” Simon muttered ungraciously. “I didn’t mean to…”

“That will do,” said his father.

“Well,” said Falls, “since this seems to be another little mystery that is to remain unsolved, perhaps, Ackrington, you would sum up for us.”

“Certainly. I’m afraid,” said Dr. Ackrington, clearing his throat, “that beyond establishing a species of alibi in three cases, and also clarifying the situation generally, we do not appear at first glance to have attained very much.”

“Hear, hear,” said Gaunt.

“Nevertheless,” continued Dr. Ackrington, quelling him with an acid stare, “there are certain valuable points to be noted. The gap in the path was not there before the concert. I didn’t see it on my return and as Claire was close behind me it seems most unlikely, indeed impossible, that it could have appeared before he got there or that even he could have missed it. We are agreed that the clod of mud could only have been dislodged by considerable force and we know that it bears the deep impress of a nailed boot. The only two members of our party wearing nailed shoes or boots appear to have alibis. Questing must have entered the thermal reserve after Claire and I had crossed it and after his scene with Gaunt. What was he doing in the interim?”

“Having one with the boys?” Smith 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 sky-line 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.”

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.”