Ngaio Marsh: Color Scheme

TO

the family at Tauranga

Cast of Characters

Dr. James Ackrington M.D., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P.

Barbara Claire, his niece

Mrs. Claire, his sister

Colonel Edward Claire, his brother-in-law

Simon Claire, his nephew

Huia, maid at Wai-ata-tapu

Geoffrey Gaunt, a visiting celebrity

Dikon Bell, his secretary

Alfred Colly, his servant

Maurice Questing, man of business

Rua Te Kahu, a chief of the Te Rarawas

Herbert Smith, roustabout at Wai-ata-tapu

Eru Saul, a half-caste

Septimus Falls

The Princess Te Papa (Mrs. Te Papa), of the Te Rarawas

Detective-Sergeant Webley, of the Harpoon Constabulary

A Superintendent of Police

Maori words used in the text

Aue! Aue! Aue! Te mamae i au , Alas! Alas! Alas! my grief.

Haere mai , Welcome

Hapu , Clan

Kainga , Unfortified place of residence

Marae , Enclosed space in front of house

Matagouri (incorrect dog-Maori), Discaria toumautu (Prickly shrub)

Makutu , Bewitch

Na waitana ? From whom are we?

Pa , Fortified place. Used loosely for native village

Pakeha , Foreigner. Chiefly used for white man

Toki , Adze

Toki-poutangata , Greenstone-adze

Whare , House

When Dr. James Ackrington limped into the Harpoon Club on the afternoon of Monday, January the thirteenth, he was in a poisonous temper. A sequence of events had combined to irritate and then to inflame him. He had slept badly. He had embarked, he scarcely knew why, on a row with his sister, a row based obscurely on the therapeutic value of mud pools and the technique of frying eggs. He had asked for the daily paper of the previous Thursday only to discover that it had been used to wrap up Mr. Maurice Questing’s picnic lunch. His niece Barbara, charged with this offence, burst out into one of her fits of nervous laughter and recovered the paper, stained with ham fat and reeking with onions. Dr. Ackrington, in shaking it angrily before her, had tapped his sciatic nerve smartly against the table. Blind with pain and white with rage he stumbled to his room, undressed, took a shower, wrapped himself in his dressing gown and made his way to the hottest of the thermal baths, only to find Mr. Maurice Questing sitting in it, his unattractive outline rimmed with effervescence. Mr. Questing had laughed offensively and announced his intention of remaining in the pool for twenty minutes. He had pointed out the less hot but unoccupied baths. Dr. Ackrington, standing on the hardened bluish mud banks that surrounded the pool, embarked on as violent a quarrel as he could bring about with a naked smiling antagonist who returned no answer to the grossest insults. He then went back to his room, dressed and, finding nobody upon whom to pour out his wrath, drove his car ruthlessly up the sharp track from Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs to the main road for Harpoon. He left behind him an atmosphere well suited to his mood, since the air, as always, reeked of sulphurous vapours.

Arrived at the club, he collected his letters and turned into the writing-room. The windows looked across the Harpoon Inlet whose waters on this midsummer morning were quite unscored by ripples and held immaculate the images of sky and white sand, and of the crimson flowering trees that bloom at this time of year in the Northland of New Zealand. A shimmer of heat rose from the pavement outside the club and under its influence the forms of trees, hills, and bays seemed to shake a little as if indeed the strangely primitive landscape were still taking shape and were rather a half-realized idea than a concrete accomplishment of nature.

It was a beautiful prospect but Dr. Ackrington was not really moved by it. He reflected that the day would be snortingly hot and opened his letters. Only one of them seemed to arrest his attention. He spread it out before him on the writing table and glared at it, whistling slightly between his teeth.

This is what he read: —

Harley Chambers,

Auckland, C.I.

My dear Dr. Ackrington,

I am venturing to ask for your advice in a rather tricky business involving a patient of mine, none other than our visiting celebrity the famous Geoffrey Gaunt. As you probably know, he arrived in Australia with his Shakespearean company just before war broke out and remained there, continuing to present his repertoire of plays but handing over a very generous dollop of all takings to the patriotic funds. On the final disbandment of his company he came to New Zealand, where, as you may not know (I remember your loathing of radio), he has done some excellent propaganda stuff on the air. About four weeks ago he consulted me. He complained of insomnia, acute pains in the joints, loss of appetite and intense depression. He asked me if I thought he had a chance of being accepted for active service. He wants to get back to England but only if he can be of use. I diagnosed fibrositis and nervous debility, put him on a very simple diet, and told him I certainly did not consider him fit for any sort of war service. It seems he has an idea of writing his autobiography. They all do it. I suggested that he might combine this with a course of hydrotherapy and complete rest. I suggested Rotorua, but he won’t hear of it. Says he’d be plagued with lion hunters and what-not and that he can’t stand the tourist atmosphere.

You’ll have guessed what I’m coming to.

I know you are living at Wai-ata-tapu, and understand that the Spa is under your sister’s or her husband’s management. I have heard that you are engaged on a magnum opus so therefore suppose that the place is conducive to quiet work. Would you be very kind and tell me if you think it would suit my patient, and if Colonel and Mrs. Claire would care to have him as a resident for some six weeks or more? I know that you don’t practise nowadays, and it is with the greatest diffidence that I make my final suggestion. Would you care to keep a professional eye on Mr. Gaunt? He is an interesting figure, and I venture to hope that you may feel inclined to take him as a sort of patient extraordinary. I must add that, frankly, I should be very proud to hand him on to so distinguished a consultant.

Gaunt has a secretary and a man-servant, and I understand he would want accommodation for both of them.

Please forgive me for writing what I fear may turn out to be a tiresome and exacting letter.

Yours very sincerely,

Ian Forster

Dr. Ackrington read this letter through twice, folded it, placed it in his pocket-book, and, still whistling between his teeth, filled his pipe and lit it. After some five minutes’ cogitation he drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to cover it with his thin irritable script.

Dear Forster [he wrote],

Many thanks for your letter. It requires a frank answer and I give it for what it is worth. Wai-ata-tapu is, as you suggest, the property of my sister and her husband, who run it as a thermal spa. In many ways they are perfect fools, but they are honest fools and that is more than one can say of most people engaged in similar pursuits. The whole place is grossly mismanaged in my opinion, but I don’t know that you would find anyone else who would agree with me. Claire is an army man and it’s a pity he has failed so signally to absorb in the smallest degree the principles of system and orderly control that must at some time or another have been suggested to him. My sister is a bookish woman. However incompetent, she seems to command the affection of her martyred clients, and I am her only critic. Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they make no money and work like bewildered horses at an occupation that requires merely the application of common sense to make it easy and profitable. On the alleged therapeutic properties of the baths you have evidently formed your own opinion. They consist, as you are aware, of thermal springs whose waters contain alkalis, free sulphuric acid, and free carbonic-acid gas. There are also siliceous mud baths in connection with which my brother-in-law talks loosely and freely of radio-activity. This latter statement I regard as so much pious mumbo-jumbo, but again I am alone in my opinion. The mud may be miraculous. My leg is no worse since I took to using it.