Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“Really? Extraordinarily interesting.”

Mrs. Te Papa continued to wail like a banshee while Eru led them to the largest of the cottages that stood round the marae . Like its fellows it was shabby. Its galvanized iron roof was corroded by sulphur.

“That’s it,” said Eru, and made off.

Attracted by Mrs. Te Papa’s cries, other women came out of the houses and, calling to each other, trooped towards the meeting-house. Eru was joined by three youths. They stood with their hands in their pockets, watching Mr. Falls and Dikon. Dikon still felt very sick, and hoped ardently that he would not disgrace himself before the youths.

Mr. Falls was about to tap on the door when it opened and old Rua stood upon the threshold. Mrs. Te Papa shouted agitatedly. He answered her in Maori and waited courteously for his visitors to announce their errand. Falls delivered Sergeant Webley’s message and Rua at once said that he would come with them. He shouted, and a small girl ran out of the house, bringing the grey blanket he wore on his shoulders. “It is as well,” he said tranquilly, but with a faint glint in his eyes, “to give instant obedience when it is a policeman who asks. Let us go.” He turned off as if to follow the track that led to the main road.

“We’ve got the Sergeant’s permission to cross the reserve,” said Mr. Falls.

“It will be better by the road,” said Rua.

“It’s very much further,” Falls pointed out.

“Then we should take Mrs. Te Papa’s car.” Again Rua shouted and Mrs. Te Papa broke ofif in the middle of a desolate wail to say prosaically: “All right, you take him but he won’t go.”

“We shall take him,” said Rua, “and perhaps he will go.”

“Eru can make him go,” Mrs. Te Papa remarked and she hurled an order across the marae . Eru detached himself from the group of young men and slouched off behind the houses.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Te Papa,” said Falls, taking off his hat.

“You are very welcome,” she replied, and composed herself for a further lamentation.

Mrs. Te Papa’s car was not so much a car as a mass of wreckage. It stood in a back yard in a little pool of oil, sketchily protected by the remains of its own fabric hood. One of its peeling doors hung disconsolately from a single hinge. It was markedly bandy and had that look of battered gentility that belongs to very old-fashioned vehicles.

Rua opened the only door that was shut and said: “Do you prefer front or back?”

“I shall sit in the back with you, if I may,” said Falls.

Dikon climbed into the front. Eru wrenched at the starting handle and, as though he had dug a thumb in her ribs, the old car gave a galvanic start and set up a terrific commotion. “Ah!” Rua shouted cheerfully. “She goes, you see.” Having been left in gear, she almost ran over her driver. However, Eru flung him self in as she passed, and in a moment they were jolting up the hill. The noise was appalling.

“I see no reason,” Mr. Falls began in a stentorian voice, “why you should not be told the object of Sergeant Webley’s message.”

Dikon slewed round in his seat to gaze in consternation at Mr. Falls. He met the unwinking stare of old Rua, huddled comfortably in his blanket.

“Webley wants your opinion on a native weapon,” Falls continued. “A beautiful piece, it seems to me, a collector’s piece.” Rua said nothing. “I should call it an adze but perhaps that is incorrect. Let me describe it.”

He described it with extraordinary accuracy and in such detail that Dikon was first amazed at his faculty of observation and then extremely suspicious of it. Could Mr. Falls possibly have seen all these things through his window during the brief time that the adze was on the verandah table?

“One thing struck me very forcibly,” Mr. Falls was saying. “The figure at the head of the haft has got, not one protruding tongue, but two. Two long protruding tongues, side by side. The little god, if indeed he is a god, holds one in each of his three-fingered hands. Between the fingers there are small pieces of shell and beneath them the tongues are encircled by a narrow band.”

“You are driving too fast, Eru,” said old Rua, to Dikon’s profound relief. Mrs. Te Papa’s car, bucketing down a steep incline, had developed a curious flaunting movement which, he felt certain, its back axle could sustain no longer. Eru checked her with a jerk.

“The band itself,” Mr. Falls continued mellifluously in the comparative silence, “is most delicately carved. One marvels at the skill of your ancient craftsmen, Mr. Te Kapu. When one considers that their tools were those of a stone age — What did you say?”

Rua had made some ejaculation in his native tongue.

“Nothing,” he said. “Drive carefully, Eru. You are too impetuous.”

“But it seems to me that across this band some other hand has graved three vertical furrows. The design is repeated all over the weapon, but in no other place do these three lines occur. Now how do you explain that?”

Rua did not answer at once. Eru trod violently on the accelerator, and Dikon repressed a cry of dismay as Mrs. Te Papa’s car responded with a shattering leap. Rua’s words were lost in the din of progress. “Wait… impossible… until I see…”

He roared at Eru and at the same time Dikon turned to protest against this new turn of speed. He saw, with astonishment, that the half-caste’s lips were trembling, that his face was livid. “He must be feeling like I feel,” thought Dikon. “He must have seen everything through the hole in the manuka hedge.”

Mr. Falls leant forward and tapped Eru on the shoulder. He started violently.

“I hear you missed the star turn at the concert last night,” said Mr. Falls.

“We heard some of it,” said Eru. “It was all right, too!”

“Mr. Smith tells me you missed the earlier speeches. I do hope you returned in time for the magnificent Saint Crispin’s Eve.”

“Was that when he said something about the old dugouts being asleep while him and the boys was waiting for the balloon to go up?”

“ ‘ And gentlemen in England now a-bed’ ?”

“Yeh, that’s right. We heard that one. It was good, too.”

“Marvellous,” said Mr. Falls, and sat back in his seat. “Marvellous, wasn’t it?”

They arrived intact at Wai-ata-tapu. The adze had been removed, evidently to the Colonel’s study, as Rua was at once taken there, Falls, rather unnecessarily, ushering him in. Dikon was left alone with Eru Saul in Mrs. Te Papa’s palpitating car. “Hadn’t you better turn off your engine?” he suggested. Eru jumped and switched back the key. “Have a cigarette?” said Dikon.

“ Ta .” He helped himself with trembling fingers.

“This is a bad business, isn’t it?”

“It’s terrible all right,” said Eru, staring at the study window.

Dikon got out and lit his own cigarette. He was feeling better.

“Where did they find it?” Eru demanded.

“What? Oh, the axe. I don’t know.”

“Did they find it in his stuff?”

“Whose?” said Dikon woodenly. He was determined to know nothing. Eru electrified him by jerking his head, not at Questing’s room but at Gaunt’s.

“That’s where he hangs out, isn’t it?” said Eru. “Your boss?”

“What the hell do you think you’re talking about?” said Dikon violently.

“Nothing, nothing!” said Eru, showing the whites of his eyes. “I was only kidding. You don’t want to go crook over a joke.”

“I can’t see anything amusing in your extraordinary suggestion that a Maori axe should be discovered in Mr. Gaunt’s room.”

“O.K., O.K. I only wondered if he was one of these collectors. They’ll come at anything, if they’re mad on it. You know. Lose their respect for other people’s property.”