‘Your ethics, my dear Edward, may be admirable. No doubt they are. But having decided to reveal that which you formerly held locked in your bosom, will you be kind enough to come to the point and, in fact, reveal it.’
‘All right, James. Don’t start rattlin’ me, there’s a good chap. It’s only this. One of the boys over there said that during Questing’s speech he went up to a whare near the road. I’m afraid they’d got a keg of beer there stowed away for the evening. Young Eru Saul, it was. He said that some minutes later he heard a couple of pakehas having a fearful row. At least, one of them was abusin’ the other like a pickpocket and the other seemed to be half laughin’ and half jeerin’. “Made him get very angry” was the way Saul put it. He didn’t understand what it was all about but he listened to it until he heard one of them call the other a bloody liar (please forgive me, Agnes, I have been against your attendin’ this meetin’ from the beginnin’) and threatened to do something or another that Saul couldn’t catch. Then there was a long pause. He got tired of it and went back to the beer. He heard someone walk past the whare and went out to see who it was. Of course it was dark but he left the door open. They’re very careless about the blackout over there, my dear. I think we ought—’
‘Will you get on, Edward?’
‘Very well, James. The light from the door showed up this person and Saul said it was Gaunt. He said he’d recognized the angry voice as Gaunt’s as soon as he heard it and he’s quite certain the other man was Questing.’
III
During the next five minutes Dikon underwent as many changes of temperament as Gaunt himself at his worst. Incredulity, panic, sympathy, shame and irritation in turn possessed him as Gaunt first denied, then admitted and finally explained away his interview with Questing. He began by suggesting that the Colonel’s informant had either made up his story of a quarrel or else mistaken the principals. The Colonel remained unshaken.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t think there was any mistake, you know.’
‘The youth was probably tight. Isn’t he the fellow you’ve had to get rid of, Mrs Claire?’
‘Eru Saul? Yes, I’m afraid he really is an unsatisfactory boy. No home influence, alas. One of those unfortunate cases,’ said Mrs Claire meaningly. ‘We’ve tried to give him a good start but he’s drifted back. Such a pity, yes.’
Gaunt shook his finger at the Colonel: ‘You say yourself he’d been at the beer.’
‘Yes, I know I do, but he wasn’t a bit tight and I’m sure he believed he was speaking the truth.’
‘All right, Colonel.’ Gaunt raised his hands and let them fall on the table. ‘I give up. I met the man and told him precisely what I thought of him. I’m sorry it’s had to come out. Another bit of most undesirable publicity. If my agent was here he’d give me absolute hell, wouldn’t he, Dikon? My one desire was to keep out of this extremely distasteful affair. I’m perfectly certain that Dr Ackrington is right and that the whole thing’s a put-up job. Frankly, I’m tremendously anxious that my name should not appear and that is precisely why I hoped to avoid any mention of this encounter. I’ve been foolish. I realize that. I apologize.’
‘It’s just too bad about you,’ said Simon. ‘You’re in it with the rest of us. Why the heck should you get away with a pack of lies!’
‘You’re perfectly right, of course,’ said Gaunt. ‘Why should I?’
‘If people start talking about murder—’ began Smith confusedly, and Gaunt at once interrupted him.
‘If there’s talk of murder,’ he said, ‘I fancy this story gives me a complete alibi. Young Saul says that he saw me walking up to the main road. As a matter of fact I remember passing the lighted hut. I distinctly noticed a smell of beer. The thermal region’s in the opposite direction. I suppose I should be grateful to the dubious Mr Saul.’
‘You should be thankful you haven’t landed yourself in a damned equivocal position,’ said Dr Ackrington, staring at Gaunt. ‘I pass over the more serious view, which we should be perfectly justified in taking, of your attempt to keep us in the dark. I merely advise you to make quite sure of this alibi you have just thought of.’
‘It is quite genuine, I promise you,’ said Gaunt easily. ‘Might we get on with someone else’s movements?’
‘Well, of all the bloody nerve—’ began Simon.
‘Simon!’ said his parents together and the Colonel added, ‘You’ll apologize to your mother and sister, immediately, Simon. And to Mr Gaunt.’
Dikon, in his distress, had time to reflect that the Claires were a little too good to be true. Simon muttered his apology.
‘Suppose,’ Mr Falls suggested, ‘we get on with the other narratives. Yours, for instance, Ackrington.’
‘By all means. I shall begin by stating flatly that if I could have got at Questing last night I should have certainly have given him fits. I left the hall with every intention of giving him fits. I couldn’t find him. I heard voices in the distance; in the light of Gaunt’s amended statement, I presume they were his and Questing’s voices but I did not recognize them. I had it in my head that Questing would be halfway across the thermal reserve and I hurried along with the idea of catching him up. I did not find him. I carried on and came home.’
‘May one know why you wanted to tackle him?’ asked Falls.
‘Certainly. His behaviour at the concert. It was the final straw. Any questions?’ asked Dr Ackrington loudly.
‘Too right. Doc, there’s a question,’ said Smith with an air of the deepest acumen. ‘Can you prove it?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘Any other questions?’
‘I should like to know,’ said Falls, ‘if you noticed the gap in the path.’
‘I am glad, Falls, that you at least have had the intelligence to ask the only question that can possibly have any useful bearing on our problem. I did not. I must confess I don’t actually remember seeing the flag, which I admit is curious. But I’m perfectly certain there was no gap in the path.’
‘Might you have missed it, Uncle?’ asked Barbara suddenly and Dikon noticed how the men all looked at her as if a domestic pet had given utterance.
‘Conceivably,’ said Dr Ackrington. ‘I don’t think so. However. Now you, Edward.’
‘It’s unfortunate,’ said Gaunt airily, ‘that nobody saw the doctor whizzing past the geysers.’
‘I am aware of that. I realize my position. The purple policeman has doubtless put some fantastic interpretation upon the circumstance. I agree that I am unfortunate in that I was unobserved.’
‘But you were observed, James,’ said the Colonel, opening his eyes very widely. ‘I observed you, you know.’
IV
The Colonel seemed to be mildly gratified by his brother-in-law’s reception of this news. He smiled gently and nodded his head at Ackrington, who gaped at him, opened and shut his mouth once or twice, and finally swore softly under his breath.
‘I was behind you, you know,’ Colonel Claire added. ‘Walkin’.’
‘I didn’t suppose, Edward, that you cycled through the thermal region. May I ask why you have not mentioned this before?’
Colonel Claire returned the classic answer: ‘Nobody asked me,’ he said.
‘Were you hard on his heels the whole way, Colonel?’
‘Eh? No, Falls. No, you see he went so fast. I caught sight of him when I got to that gap in the hedge round the village and then the bumps in the ground hid him. Then I saw him again when I got to the top of the mound. He was nearly over at the hill by then.’
‘I must say it’s not my idea of a cast-iron alibi,’ said Gaunt, who seemed to welcome the chance of scoring off Dr Ackrington. ‘Two little peeps in the dark with craters and mounds between you.’
‘Oh, he had a torch,’ said the Colonel. ‘Hadn’t you, James? And, by the way, the scream was much later. I was nearly home when I heard the scream. I thought it was a bird,’ added the Colonel.
‘What sort o
f bird, for God’s sake?’
‘A mutton bird, James. They make beastly noises at night.’
‘There are no mutton birds round here, Edward.’
‘Does it matter?’ asked Dikon wearily.
‘Not two hoots, I should have thought,’ said Gaunt bitterly. ‘I’ve always detested nature study.’
‘He is sure of himself all of a sudden,’ thought Dikon.
They ploughed on with the Colonel’s story. When asked if he had noticed the gap in the path he became distressingly vague and changed his mind with each question as it was put to him. Falls took a hand. ‘You say you had a pocket torch, Colonel. Now my recollection of the gap is that it showed rather sharp and dark in the torchlight, like a shadow or even a stain across the outer edge of the path.’
‘Yes!’ the Colonel exclaimed. ‘That’s a jolly good way of describin’ it. Like a black stain.’
‘Then you did see it?’
‘I only said it was a good way of describin’ it. Vivid.’
‘Didn’t you notice that the white flag at the top was missing?’
‘Ah! Now, did I? You’d notice a thing like that, wouldn’t you?’
Dr Ackrington groaned and executed a rapid tattoo with his fingers on the table.
‘But then again,’ the Colonel said, ‘one saw the red flags going off at the foot of the mound, so naturally one wouldn’t follow them. And the path is quite sharply defined and that. One would just follow it up the mound, wouldn’t one, Agnes?’
‘What, dear?’ said Mrs Claire, startled by this sudden demand upon her attention. ‘Yes, of course. Naturally.’
‘The hole!’ Dr Ackrington shouted. ‘The gap! For pity’s sake pull yourself together, Edward. Throw your mind, a courtesy title for your cerebral arrangements, I fear, back to your walk up the path. Visualize it. Think. Concentrate.’
Colonel Claire obediently screwed up his face and shut his eyes tightly.
‘Now,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘you are climbing the path, using your torch. Do you see the white flag on the top of the mound?’
Colonel Claire, without opening his eyes, shook his head.
‘Then, as you reach the top, what do you see?’
‘Nothing. How can I? I’m flat on my face.’
“‘What!’—
‘I fell down, you know. Flat.’
‘What the devil did you do that for?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Colonel Claire, opening his eyes very wide. ‘Not on purpose, of course. I caught sight of you some way ahead and I thought to myself, “Hullo, there goes James,” and there, at that moment, went I. It gave me quite a fright because after all one is close to the edge up there. However, I picked myself up and carried on.’
‘Did you fall into the hole, dear?’ asked Mrs Claire, solicitously.
‘What hole, Agnes?’
‘James seems to think there was a hole,’ she muttered.
‘Did you look to see why you’d fallen? Did you examine the path with your torch?’
‘How could I, James, when the torch had gone out? I fell on it and it wouldn’t go on again. But I could see the flags dimly so I was all right.’
‘I’m glad you weren’t hurt, dear,’ said his wife.
‘And so there, in effect,’ said the Colonel quite cosily, ‘we are.’
‘Precisely nowhere,’ said Dr Ackrington. ‘I take it you can’t produce a witness to your movements, Edward?’
‘Not unless Questing saw me. And even if he’s alive, as we all seem to have agreed, he’s vanished into thin air, so that’s no good, is it?’
Dr Ackrington pointed at his nephew. ‘You,’ he said.
‘Bert and Colly and I were together,’ said Simon. ‘A chap from Harpoon gave us a lift back. Ernie Priest, it was. Some of the boys over there wanted us to stay for a drink but I don’t think it’s so hot getting dragged in on those parties. It was Eru Saul’s gang and I draw the line there. Ernie had a bottle of beer in the car. We had one with him and he dropped us up at the front gate. That’s right, isn’t it, Bert?’
‘I’ll say,’ said Smith moodily.
‘Did any of you leave the hall during the performance?’ asked Falls.
‘You did, didn’t you, Bert?’
‘What if I did!’ cried Smith, instantly on the defensive. ‘Sure, I did. I went out with two of the boys for a quick one. There’s some people when they’ve got a drink on the place has the decency to offer you one.’ He looked accusingly at Gaunt. ‘Some people, I said,’ he added. ‘Not everyone.’
‘Who were the two youths?’ Dr Ackrington demanded.
‘Eru Saul and Maui Matai.’
‘Did you separate at all, Mr Smith?’ asked Falls.
‘That’s right, pick on me. We did not. We stuck together and we got back in time to hear his nibs screeching his socks off.’
‘Are you talking about me?’ asked Gaunt bristling.
‘That’s right.’
‘I should be glad to know at what point in my performance I could be said, even by a drunken Philistine, to screech.’
‘ “Once more into the blasted breeches, pals,” ’ said Smith in a shrill falsetto. ‘ “Once more” We could hear you all the way down the path. Does it hurt you much?’
‘Cut it out, for Pete’s sake, Bert,’ whispered Simon and stifled a laugh.
‘I resent this,’ said Gaunt, breathing noisily.
‘My dear Gaunt, surely not?’ soothed Mr Falls. ‘A piquant incident! You will dine off it when the undesirable publicity has subsided. I should like to ask Mr Smith and Mr Claire,’ he went on, ‘if they and Mr Gaunt’s man remained in the hall until the general exodus.’
‘Yes,’ said Simon, glaring at him.
‘Did you see Questing go out?’ asked Dr Ackrington.
‘Too right we did,’ said Smith. ‘He was talking to us. Well, to me. Very pleased with his bit of a speech and skiting about it. It was while we were with some of the Maori gang, wasn’t it, Sim? Outside the hall.’
‘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 toge
ther.
‘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 impression 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?’