Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

Dikon was in a quandary. If Gaunt was forced to acknowledge the authorship of the present to Barbara, his fury against Questing would be brought out in stronger relief, an unpleasant development. Dikon scolded, ridiculed, and pleaded. Barbara listened quietly and at last promised that she would say nothing of the dress without first telling him of her intention. “Though I must say,” she added, “that I can’t see why you’re getting into such a tig over it. If, as you say, it’s completely irrelevant, it wouldn’t matter much if I did tell them.”

“You might put some damn-fool idea into their thick heads. The mere fact of you lugging the wretched afïair into the conversation would make them think there was something behind it. Let it alone, for pity’s sake. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

He kept her with him a little longer. He had an idea that she’d substituted this nonsense about the dress for a more important discussion which, at the last moment, she had funked. He saw her look unhappily at the door into Gaunt’s rooms. At last, twisting her hands together, she said very solemnly: “I suppose you’ve had a lot of experience , haven’t you?”

“I must say you do astonish me,” cried Dikon. “What sort of experience? Do you imagine I’m dyed deep in strange sins?”

“Of course not,” said Barbara turning pink. “I meant you must have had a good deal of experience of the Artistic Temperament.”

“Oh, that. Well, yes; we come at it rather strong in our line of business, you know. What about it?”

Barbara said rapidly: “People who are very sensitive — ” she corrected herself —“I mean, highly sensitized, are terribly vulnerable, aren’t they? Emotionally they’re a skin short. Sort of. Aren’t they? Things hurt them more than they hurt us.” She glanced doubtfully at Dikon. “This,” he thought, “is pure Gaunt; a paraphrase, I shouldn’t wonder, of the stuff he sold her while I was sweating up that mountain.”

“I mean,” Barbara continued, “that it would be wrong to expect them to behave like less delicately adjusted people when something emotionally disintegrating happens to them.”

“Emotionally…?”

“Disintegrating,” said Barbara hurriedly. “I mean you can’t treat porcelain like kitchen china, can you?”

“That,” said Dikon, “is the generally accepted line of chat.”

“Don’t you agree with it?”

“For the last six years,” said Dikon cautiously, “part of my job has been to act as a shock-absorber for temperaments. You can’t expect me to go all dewy-eyed over them at my time of life. But you may be right.”

“I hope I am,” said Barbara.

“The thing about actors, for instance, that makes them different from ordinary people is that they are technicians of emotion. They are trained not to suppress but to flourish their feelings. If an actor is angry, he says to himself and to everyone else, ‘My God, I am angry. This is what I’m like when I’m angry. This is how I do it.’ It doesn’t mean he’s angrier or less angry than you or I, who bite our lips and feel sick and six hours later think up all the things we might have said. He says them. If he likes someone, he lets them know it with soft music and purring chest notes. If he’s upset he puts tears in his voice. Underneath he’s as nice a fellow as the next man. He just does things more thoroughly.”

“You do sound cold-blooded.”

“Bless me soul, I take pinches of salt whenever I enter a stage-door. Just as a precautionary measure.”

Barbara’s eyes had filled with tears. Dikon took her hand in his. “Do you know why I’ve said all this?” he asked. “If I was a noble-minded young man with gentlemanly instincts, I should go white to the lips and in a strangulated voice agree with everything you say. Since I can’t pretend we’re not talking about Gaunt I should add that it is our privilege to sacrifice ourselves to a Great Artist. Because I’m Gaunt’s secretary I should say that my lips were sealed and stand on one side like a noble-minded dumb-bell while you made yourself miserable over him. I don’t behave like this because I’m not such a fool, and also because I’m falling very deeply in love with you myself. There are Webley and your father going into a huddle on the verandah so we can’t pursue this conversation. Go back into the house. I love you. Put that on your needles and knit it.” iv

Somewhat shaken by his own boldness, Dikon watched Barbara run into the house. She had given him one bewildered and astonished glance before she turned tail and fled. “So I’ve done it,” he thought, “and how badly! No more pleasant talks with Barbara. No more arguments and confidences. After this she’ll fly before me like the wind. Or will she think it her duty to hand me a lemon on a silver salver and tell me nicely that she hopes we’ll still be friends?” The more he thought about it the more deeply convinced did he become that he had behaved like a fool. “But it’s all one,” he thought. “She’s never even looked at me. All I’ve done is to make her rather more miserable about Gaunt than she need have been.”

Webley and the Colonel were still huddled together on the verandah. They moved and Dikon saw that between them they held a curious-looking object. Seen from a distance, it resembled a gigantic wishbone adorned with a hairy crest. It was by this crest that they held it, standing well away from the two shafts, one of which was wooden while the other glinted dully in the sunlight. It was a Maori adze.

Webley looked up and saw Dikon, who instantly felt as though he had been caught spying on them. To dispel this uncomfortable illusion, he walked over and joined them.

“Hullo, Bell,” said the Colonel. “Here’s a rum go.” He looked at Webley. “Shall we tell him?” he asked.

“Just a minute, Colonel,” said Webley, “just a minute. I’d like to ask Mr. Bell if he’s ever seen this object before.”

“Never,” said Dikon. “To my knowledge, never.”

“You were in Questing’s room last night, weren’t you, Mr. Bell?”

“I glanced in to see if he was there. Yes.”

“You didn’t look in any of his boxes?”

“Why should I?” cried Dikon. “This isn’t a corpse-in-a-trunk mystery. Why on earth should I? Anyway,” he added lamely after a glance at Webley’s impassive face, “I didn’t.”

Webley, still holding the adze by its hairy crest, laid it carefully on the verandah table. The haft, intricately carved, was crowned by a grimacing manikin. The stone blade, which had been worked down to a double edge with a rounded point, projected, almost at right angles to the haft, from beneath the rump of the manikin.

“They used to dong one another with those things,” said Dikon. “Did you find it in Questing’s room?”

The Colonel glanced uncomfortably at Webley, who merely said: “I think we’ll let old Rua take a look at this, Colonel. Could you get a message over to him? My chaps are busy out there. I’d rather nobody touched this axe affair and anyway it’d be as well to get Rua away from the rest of his gang.”

“I’ll go,” Dikon offered.

Webley looked him over thoughtfully. “Well now, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Bell,” he said.

“Trophies of the chase, Sergeant?” asked Mr. Falls, suddenly thrusting his head out of his bedroom window which was above the verandah table. “Do forgive me. I couldn’t help overhearing you. You’ve found a magnificent expression of a savage art, haven’t you? And you wish for an expert opinion? May I suggest that Bell and I go hand-in-hand to the native village? We can, as it were, keep an eye on each other. A variant of the adage that one should set a thief to catch a thief. Do you follow me?”