by Ngaio Marsh
Smith sucked his teeth savagely, muttered “Excuse me” and slouched out to the verandah. The pressman looked up hopefully and spoke to him but evidently got an uncompromising answer. He let Smith move off, looking wistfully after him.
In heavy silence the remaining seven men finished their meal.
“One can hardly hear oneself speak for the buzz of gay inconsequent chatter,” said Gaunt. “I think I shall relax for half an hour.”
He pushed back his chair.
“There is, after all, sufficient reason for our silence,” said Mr. Falls.
Something in his attitude, though he had not risen, and some new quality in the tone of his voice, which was a deep one, brought a sudden stillness upon his hearers.
“When one is in danger of arrest,” said Mr. Falls, “one does not feel disposed for chatter. May I, however, claim the attention of the company for a moment? Sergeant Webley, will you indulge me?”
Webley, who had made a brusque movement when Gaunt’s chair scraped on the floor, leant the palms of his hands on the table and, looking attentively at Falls, said: “Go ahead, sir.”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Falls, “whether you are all devotees of detective fiction. I must confess that I am. It is argued, in respect of these tales, that they bear little or no relation to fact. Police investigation, we protest, is not a matter of equally balanced motives, tortuous elaborations, and a final revelation in the course of which the investigator’s threat hangs like an ignis fatuus over first one and then another of the artificially assembled suspects. It is rather the slow amassment of facts sufficient to justify the arrest of someone who has been more or less suspect from the moment that the crime was discovered. Sergeant Webley,” said Mr. Falls, “will correct me if I am wrong.”
Sergeant Webley cleared his throat sluggishly. One of the men outside the window looked over his shoulder into the room, turned away again, and moved out of sight.
“However that may be,” Falls continued, and they listened to him with confused attention as if he had, without warning, thrust an embarrassing ceremony upon them, “however that may be, I detect some resemblance in our present assembly to those arbitrary musters, and with the permission of Sergeant Webley I should like, before we break up, to clear the memory of Mr. Maurice Questing. Mr. Questing was not an enemy agent.”
Here Dr. Ackrington broke out with some violence and was not silenced until an account of Questing’s letter had, by a sort of forcible feeding, been rammed down the gullet of his understanding. He took it rather badly. The recovery of Questing’s skull had evidently been broken to him but this final blow to the very cornerstone of all his theories seemed literally to horrify him. He turned quite pale, his protestations ceased, and he waited in silence for Falls to go on.
“Not only was Questing innocent of espionage but, if we are to believe his letter, he actually recognized and accused the real culprit, who adopted a threatening attitude, and, by a species of blackmail, extracted an undertaking from Questing that he would not betray him. Questing suggests that when they parted they were mutually distrustful of one another, and I suggest that fright, rather than business, prompted his sudden decision to go to Australia. He felt himself to be in danger just as we now feel ourselves to be in danger, and, in a figure that he himself might have used, he passed the buck to Mr. Bell. I think he must have written that letter just before we left for the concert. I happened to pass his open door and saw him with his elbows squared on his table. As you know, some three hours later he was killed.”
“Will you excuse me,” said Gaunt. “I don’t want to be difficult but, as I’ve tried to point out before, I’ve been extremely upset by this unspeakably horrible affair and I’m afraid I just haven’t got the kind of mind that revels in post mortems. I’m sorry. I shall leave you to it.”
“One moment, Mr. Gaunt,” said Falls. “You’re upset, I fancy, not so much by the knowledge that Questing died very horridly, as by the fear that you yourself might be implicated.”
“I won’t have this!” cried Gaunt, and sprang to his feet. “I resent this, bitterly.”
“Do sit down. You see,” said Mr. Falls looking amiably about him, “in spite of ourselves we are becoming the orthodox muster of suspects. Here is Mr. Gaunt who quarrelled with Mr. Questing because Mr. Questing used his name as an advertisement, and because he pretended he was the author of a gift that Mr. Gaunt himself had made.”
Barbara started galvanically. Gaunt began to accuse Dikon. “So I’ve got you to thank — ”
“No,” said Falls. “My dear Gaunt, who but you could have made this gift? A quotation from Shakespeare on the card? Written by the shop assistant? You see I have heard all about it. And, if that was not enough, your very expressive face betrayed you most completely last night, when Questing spoke of her enchanting dress to Miss Barbara. You looked — please forgive the unhappy phrase — positively murderous. Was it not the memory of this that led you to conceal your subsequent quarrel with Questing? It seems to me you had quite a lot to agitate you when Questing was killed.”
“I have explained to the point of hysteria that I was anxious to avoid publicity. Good God, who ever committed murder for such a motive? Sergeant Webley, I beg that you — ”
“I quite agree,” said Falls. “Who ever did? May I pass on, for the moment, to another of our suspects? Mr. Smith.”
“Here, you lay off Bert!” shouted Simon. “He’s right out of this. He’d got his agreement.”
“His motive,” Mr. Falls continued precisely, “appears at first to be revenge. Revenge for an attempt on his life.”
“Revenge, my foot. They buried the hatchet.”
“In order to resurrect a much more valuable one in the form of Rewi’s adze. Yes, yes, I agree that the revenge motive breaks down but it does well enough for a red herring. Dr. Ackrington: your motive, at first, would seem to be a kind of quintessence of fury. You believed Questing to be a traitor and you could find little support in your efforts to bring him to book.”
“It’s perfectly obvious to me now, Falls, that the man was done to death by someone from the native settlement. No doubt some wretched youth in the pay of the enemy.”
“Ah! The Maori theme. Shall we leave that for the moment? Now, in your case, Colonel, the motive is much more credible. Forgive me for introducing a painful theme but your position was, I’m afraid, only too clear. Questing’s extraordinary assumption of proprietorship alone would have betrayed it. He was, as Mr. Bell remarked a little while ago, a keen man of business. Have you not benefited greatly by his death…”
“Cut that out!” Simon cried out angrily. “You damn’ well lay off my father.”
“Be quiet, Simon,” said the Colonel.
“… as indeed,” Mr. Falls completed his sentence, “have all the members of your family?” He looked at his hands, lightly clasped on the table. “The Maori element,” he said, and paused. “Revenge for the violation of a sacred object? Not an inconsiderable motive. To my mind, a perfectly credible motive. But did anybody beside Mr. Gaunt, outside the Old Firm, as I feel tempted to call the Smith-Questing-Saul link-up, know of the disappearance of the adze? And beyond that there seems to be a jealousy theme centering round your maid, Colonel. Questing appears to have supplanted the man with the debatable shirt. Eru. Eru Saul.”
“But my dear Falls,” said Dr. Ackrington, “you seem to accept Questing’s letter. Surely, then, the murderer is the spy?”
“Certainly. It is most probable. The point I am leading up to is this. It seems to me that in this case motive should, for the moment, be disregarded. There are too many motives. Let us look instead at circumstances. At fact.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gaunt said wearily.
“Four apparently inexplicable points have interested me enormously. The railway signal. Eru Saul’s shirt. The pohutukawa trees. The misplaced flag. It seems to me that if an explanation is found that will apply equally to these four parts, then we shall have gone
a long way towards solving the whole. These are factual things.”
“How about yourself?” Simon demanded abruptly. “If it comes to facts you look pretty fishy, don’t you?”
“I am coming to myself,” said Mr. Falls modestly. “I look extremely fishy. I have left myself to the last because what I have to say, or part of it, is in the nature of a confession.”
Webley looked up quickly. He moved his chair back a little and shifted the position of his great feet.
“When I left the hall,” said Mr. Falls, “I went immediately into the thermal reserve. I have stated that I saw Questing ahead of me and recognized him by his overcoat. I have also stated that I paused and lit my pipe, that I then heard Questing scream, and that a few moments later Bell came along from the direction of the village. I had no alibi. Later, having insisted that none of us should return to the scene of the crime, I myself returned there. You saw me from the hill, did you not, Bell? I was obliged, by the nature of my errand, to use my torch. I heard you plunging down the hillside and realized that you must have seen me. On my return I informed Colonel Claire and Dr. Ackrington of my visit to the forbidden territory. Later, I believe, they told you I had given, as an excuse, a story that I had heard someone moving about on the other side of the mound. This was untrue. There was nobody there. And now,” Falls continued, “I come to the last episode in my story.” With a swift movement he thrust his hand inside his jacket.
Simon scrambled to his feet with an inarticulate cry.
“Grab him!” he shouted. “Grab him! Quick! Before he takes it! Poison!”
But it was not a phial or deadly capsule that Mr. Falls drew from the inner pocket of his coat, but a strip of semi-transparent yellow substance which he held up before Simon, who was already half-way across the floor.
“You alarm me terribly,” said Mr. Falls. “What on earth are you up to?”
“Sit down, boy,” said Dr. Ackrington, “you’re making a fool of yourself.”
“What the blazes are you gettin‘ at, Sim?” asked his father. “Plungin’ about like that?”
Gaunt laughed hysterically and Simon turned on him.
“All right, laugh! The man stands there and tells you he lied, and you think it’s funny. All along, I’ve said there was something fishy about him.” His face was scarlet. He addressed his father and uncle. “I told you. I told you he tapped out the code signal. It’s there under your noses and you won’t do anything.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Falls. “You noticed my experiment on the verandah, did you? I thought as much. You have what used to be called a speaking countenance, Claire.”
“You admit it was the code signal? You admit it?”
“Certainly. An experiment to test Questing. It had an unfortunate result. He picked up the pipe. Quite innocently, of course, but it conveyed an unhappy impression, not only to you but to someone much more closely interested. His murderer.”
“That’s right,” said Simon. “You.”
“But I see,” Mr. Falls continued urbanely, “that you are looking at this piece of yellow celluloid which I hold in my hand. I cut it off Questing’s sun-screen on his car. Its colour is important. Colour, indeed, plays a significant part in our story. If you look at a red object through this celluloid it becomes a different shade of red, but it is still red. If you look at a green object through it, a similar phenomenon occurs. A blue-green, such as one may see on a railway signal, merely becomes a slightly warmer yellowish green. If Questing said that he mistook the red signal because he saw it through this celluloid, he lied.”
“Yes, but damn it all…” Simon began, and got no further.
“Questing stated that on the occasion of his almost fatal signal to Mr. Smith at the railway bridge, Eru Saul wore a blue shirt, but we know that he wore a pink one. Did he lie again? That same evening he fell into Dr. Ackrington’s trap, and agreed that there was no bloom on the trees at Pohutukawa Bay, when, as a matter of fact, the Bay was, and still is, scarlet with blossom. Again, did he lie? Dr. Ackrington, most naturally, concluded that he had not been to the Bay, but we know now that he had. Here I should tell you, in parenthesis, that Mr. Questing’s pyjamas and ties exhibit a recurrent theme of the peculiar shade of puce which it seems he did not recognize in Eru Saul’s shirt. Now we come to the final scene.”
Webley got quickly to his feet. One of the men on the verandah opened the door and came in. He, too, moved quietly. Dikon thought that only he and Gaunt had seen him and his manoeuvre. Gaunt looked quickly from this man to Webley.
“Questing,” said Mr. Falls, “carried a torch when he crossed the thermal reserve. The moon was not yet up and he flashed his torch-light on the white flags that marked the path he must follow. When he reached the mound above Taupo-tapu, over which the track passes, he would see no white flags ahead of him for the one on the top had been displaced. He would, however, see the faded red flags marking the old path on which Taupo-tapu has now encroached. There are several mounds on both sides of Taupo-tapu and they look much alike by torch-light.
“My contention is that Questing followed the red flags and so came by his death. My contention is that Questing’s murderer is the man who knew that he was colour-blind.”
A sharp flick to that fascinating toy, the kaleidoscope, will transfer a jumble of fragments into a symmetrical design. To Dikon, it seemed that Mr. Falls had administered just such a flick to the confused scraps of evidence that had collected about the death of Maurice Questing. If the completed pattern was not yet fully visible it was because there was some defect, not in the design but in Dikon’s faculty of observation. The central motif, the pivot of the system, was still hidden from him but it began to emerge as Falls, disregarding the sharp exclamations that broke from his listeners, and the emphatic slap with which Dr. Ackrington brought his palm down on the table, went on steadily with his exposition. The affectations, and the excessive urbanity of manner, were no longer noticeable in his speech. He was grave and relentlessly methodical.
“Now, it is a characteristic of persons afflicted with colour-blindness that they are most reluctant to admit to this defect. The great Hans Gross has noted this curious attitude and says that a colour-blind person, if he is forced to confess to his affliction, will behave as if he was guilty of some crime. Questing, when challenged by Dr. Ackrington with an attempt to cause the death of Mr. Smith, instead of admitting that he could not distinguish the red signal from the green, said that the signal was not working. Mr. Smith fold you that, later on, Questing gave him the story of the celluloid sun-screen.”
“Yes, but look here…” Simon began and stopped short. “On your way,” he said.
“Thank you. It is also characteristic of these people that they confuse green with red and they have a predilection for that peculiar shade of pink, kaffir pink or puce as it is sometimes called, which, apparently, seems to them to be blue. A patch of red if seen by green torch-light might appear to these people to be colourless. At any rate, with the white flag removed, Questing, if colour-blind, would have no standard of comparison and would most certainly expect the red flag to be white and accept it as such. Accepting for the moment my theory of Questing’s colour-blindness, let us see how it squares up with the evidence of the track. Sergeant Webley,” said Mr. Falls with a slight return to his old mellifluous style, “will correct me if I am wrong. My own investigation took place by torch-light, remember.”
He smiled apologetically and took the tip of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I saw,” he said, “that the clod of displaced earth, or solidified mud as I believe it to be, had split away from the iron flag standard. I could see the groove made by the standard in the broken section of the bank. The heel marks made by the famous nailed boot were immediately behind it, as well as on the clod itself. These suggested a possibility that the heel stabs had been used with the object of loosening the standard rather than dislodging the clod. If one kicked at such a standard in the dark one would make a few dud shots. The st
andard itself lay a little distance away from the clod. They had both fallen on a narrow shelf of firm ground at the edge of the cauldron.
“Both flag and path were intact when we went to the concert. Of the returning party nobody remembers seeing the flag but, on the other hand, nobody remembers seeing the gap in the path.
But Colonel Claire, who was the last to go through before the tragedy, tells us he fell when he reached the top of the mound.”
“Eh?” said the Colonel with one of his galvanic starts. “Fell? Yes. Yes, I fell.”
“Is it possible, Colonel, that you trod on the clod already loosened by the removal of the flag and that it gave way beneath you, causing you to stumble forward?”
“Wait a bit,” said the Colonel. “Let’s think.”
He shut his eyes and screwed up his face. His moustache twitched busily.
“While Edward is lost in contemplation,” said Dr. Ackrington, “I should like to point out to you, Falls, that if your theory is correct, the flag was removed after we had entered the hall.”
“Yes.”
“And it was intended, originally, that we should all crowd into Gaunt’s car for the return journey.”
