Appleby on Ararat

by Michael Innes

  Glover rustled the browned and brittle Times with some impatience. “My boys used to collect stamps,” he said. “But grown men–”

  “One of the finest modern collections” – and Hoppo smiled as a man who plays a trump card – “was formed by the late King George the Fifth.”

  Appleby had risen and walked to the edge of the veranda. He looked down on the boat house, the power-station, the spick-and-span outbuildings in their fresh, softly-toned paints. “All this, and Heaven too,” he murmured. And then he frowned, for before him there had risen the picture of the thick smashed skull of Unumunu. Behind him his companions were restrainedly bickering; in front, in the middle distance, the hotel folk were splashing in the swimming pool. And not many miles beyond, but made remote by more than a difficult climb, was the old encampment and the black man’s grave.

  “Comfortable and clean.” Miss Curricle had gone back on her tracks. “Nevertheless I am with Mr Hailstone and can well appreciate how he resents this intrusion. The dignity of science has always been appreciated in my family. Our dear father, though much burdened by the responsibilities of a senior civil servant, was always keenly interested. My maternal grandfather was acquainted with Lord Kelvin.”

  Glover had put the Times over his face. His spare stomach rhythmically rose and fell.

  “And so I can say with some confidence that Mr Hailstone is the type of the true scientist. And just as he is on the verge, maybe, of an important discovery, Mr Heaven arrives and builds his hotel for the convenience of pleasure-seekers and escapists – people not in a good tradition at all.”

  “Incidentally,” said Hoppo, “for the convenience of ourselves. And on credit, too, more or less.”

  “No doubt. I do not question our good fortune. I merely assert that Mr Hailstone–”

  “Hailstone seems to me an uncommonly lazy fellow.” Mr Hoppo eased a cushion behind his head.

  “I suggest that you confuse him with his dog. Of George I admit that I cannot approve. My dear mother–”

  Appleby wandered out of earshot and into the hot sun. Somewhere the gramophone was again churning out a sad exclaiming dance-music with the senseless pertinacity of some fated machine for which the magic check has been forgotten. Old music still, infinitely dolorous, about the Valley of the Moon. The vaaaley of the moooon…the vaaaaaley – Abruptly the lugubrious strains ceased, as if, after all, the sorcerer and his word had returned. For a moment there were only the squeals and yells from the bathing pool, a hullabaloo as of demoralised savages in rut, and then the gramophone, like some slick little time-machine, slipped back five years further and spoke of Valencia – spoke of Valencia over and over again. Valencia… Valencia…tum-ti tum-ti tum-ti tum…VALENCIA. Banal and calculated, the stuff trickled out of a futile past, worked on the gut, lapped up to the higher centres, sent a sticky and emotive spindrift over the very ramparts of the mind. Appleby took to his heels. There was the swimming pool to pass and then he would have a chance of setting his wits to work… Ragged, he said to himself as he ran. Ragged…no scholarly grasp. He frowned at a fat woman slopping past him in sandals. Probably a side-line, he thought. He dropped to a walk with the pool before him. Hailstone must know a lot. If he can be spurred to utter.

  Half-a-dozen people were grampusing about the pool, with more persistent activity of lungs than of limb. Until their own arrival at the hotel there could not have been many more than a dozen guests all told. But after the nightmare solitude of the ocean, the too-familiar society of the glade, the new faces had been as baffling as a stellar arithmetic. Now they had sorted themselves out. Over there by the drinks were the crafty features Appleby had recalled at once – Sir Mervyn Poulish’s, the magnate who so sensationally went to gaol after the sugar scandal. No doing of Appleby’s, so social embarrassment need not result. And the fellow beside him who was being slapped and kneaded by the handyman Mudge – Jenner, his name – might well be his twin in polished rascality. The others, though they would not be approved of by the severe and gloomy body of men who compose His Majesty’s judges, seemed not criminal in type. Appleby remembered in the old play the characters so excellently named Supervacuo and Lussurioso. That was about the size of them – as Miss Curricle said, not in a good tradition at all. But one could make a note that one might rely on Mudge…

  And there was Heaven himself, sufficiently odd to make an adequate companion piece to his grotesque wife. He was a man lank and then suddenly pudgy-faced, like a baby monstrously sprouted; filling the brief intermissions of his pretentious patter with involuntary and infantile sounds, as if he had never contrived through a long verbal development to shut down on his first efforts at speech. Appleby paused for a moment to observe him. His philately too, perhaps, was a sort of fossil from the past. But Appleby wondered.

  “John!” It was Diana panting behind him. “Take me.”

  “I’m going away to think.”

  “I’ll help. I did once, didn’t I? When you said perhaps you ought to have taken out classes too?”

  “You helped. It was a first gleam of light – or thereabouts. And we need more.”

  “It’s all so vague, isn’t it?” She had fallen into step by his side.

  He smiled. “A general lack of definition is at present the keynote of the whole affair. But do you want to come? I thought that now you had the run of a soda fountain–”

  “Listen.” They stopped, and the throb of the gramophone faintly reached them. “Something about a little jacket of blue. That all the sailors knew. It was going about five years ago when I was nineteen. When I got married. I can’t bear it.”

  He looked at her curiously, careful still to know nothing of her history. “They’re certainly mournful, old popular tunes.”

  “I feel blue again, John, myself. Just like on the liner.” She surveyed the beach, the seeping sunshine, the water, the people idling – surveyed its familiarity, puzzled. “It ought to be alright – all right, I mean. It’s like a little bit of Bondi. But I hate it.”

  “The war–”

  “Yes, I know. And it’s worse for a man.” She looked at the person called Jenner who was being pounded by Mudge. “For a real man. But just the – the white man in the tropics is a bit blue. An island like this is for Ponto – for Ham. And now Ponto’s not here. Only all these – these–”

  “Japhets.”

  “Yes. And then–” She stopped. “But I’m getting in the way of your think. Is it about Ponto and the savages?”

  “Certainly not about the savages.”

  “There’s George.” She pointed to an eminence on their right. And there certainly was George. In a patch of shade, and from his favourite position of calculated repose, he was surveying the pool with an extreme of gloom. But now he rose and came forward, his large black nose minutely working and his paws exactly clearing the ground as he moved. Diana fussed over him and he responded with the economical graciousness of royalty at a party. It was clear that George regarded the newcomers as distinct from the general run of hotel folk. All three moved on together.

  “John” – Diana spoke with unusual deliberation – “there weren’t any savages, were there?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “How do you know that?”

  “Just because of that time when I said there was a – a discrepancy. We thought of savages and cooking pots, and that might be right or wrong. But savages smuggling a body into the sea–”

  “Quite so. Unumunu was killed in the jungle and his body hauled laboriously through its cover until just opposite the spot where a current would carry it right away. It didn’t look like savages. Still, I wasn’t at all sure. Natives in some stage of demoralisation or tribal disintegration might behave in that way – gratifying the instinct to kill on the quiet. But I doubted it, and was impressed when Hailstone in his lackadaisical way plainly doubted it too. But there was another and much m
ore conclusive fact. You remember the spear that landed in our table?”

  “Yes. We all looked at it.”

  Appleby grinned. “But nobody smelt it but me. And I discovered that the flaming effect was secured with petrol – nothing less. And savages haven’t the knack of refining petroleum, as far as I know. I don’t doubt that there are savages and that we may come on them yet. But everything that we encountered was a put-up job. No wonder we weren’t all slaughtered.”

  From George, who had ambled into the undergrowth, there came an obscure noise. It sounded not unlike a chuckle. But perhaps it was a perfunctory display of belligerence against a lizard.

  “I don’t at all see that it’s no wonder. Why should it be just Ponto that was to be slaughtered?”

  “Perhaps it was to be all of us. Perhaps Unumunu was just dealt with first. But, you see, it became known that we were on the island, and a general slaughter – even if put down to visiting natives – might have been reckoned to produce an undesirable sensation or panic.” He paused. “Take it in this order. You kill Unumunu and so arrange things that his body, forty to one, will float out to sea. Well, the disappearance of one odd black man may not create much fuss. But the body is found and it is evident he has been murdered; soon everyone will know. What, in a tiny community like this, is the best way to huddle the matter up? Somewhere within reach there are natives of doubtful habits. So make out that the black man was killed by them. Support this by the alarming but harmless nocturnal raid to which we were subjected. The story then is that some copper-coloured savages have killed a nigger and brandished a spear or two before decamping. Still no great cause for alarm – or even for curiosity in a lethargic place like this – but, at the same time, any wholesale elimination of us newcomers is no longer practicable at the moment… Grant some motive for extreme measures at the beginning and it is all coherent enough.”

  Diana stooped to pluck an orchid. “I love the way you talk,” she said. “The – the way your mind goes. It’s like watching Don Bradman bat.”

  He was startled at the enormousness of the compliment. And he was suddenly aware of how far he was from home. The assistant-commissioner, restless and gloomy behind his desk, would not equate the elements of logic with the strokes of Hammond or Jack Hobbs. “And now consider this. Was Unumunu just a beginning and the sequel abortive because the killer learnt that our existence had become generally known? Or was it just Unumunu whom it was necessary to despatch? Do you collect Moldavian Bulls, or Hoppo’s Inverted Hippos?” He grinned at her, pleased with this sudden transition to obscurity.

  But Diana remained grave. “The stamp collecting really means something? It’s – it’s relevant? You’re not just throwing it in as trimmings?”

  George had expended sufficient effort to get some way in front; he had turned and, planted on the path, was fixing Appleby with a censorious eye.

  “I believe the stamps really to be an obscure sort of pointer. Not directly towards Unumunu but towards a general situation in terms of which his death may be explained. Have you noticed how slowly we learn any sort of why and wherefore about this island? How cut off are we; how often and how freely can people come and go; what has brought them here in their several groups; what is the past of each?” He peered into the impenetrable jungle. “All that.”

  “It’s nice to think we’re going to be busy. Groups? I suppose we’re a group ourselves.”

  “Assuredly. It is still theoretically possible that we have brought our own serpent into Eden – or out of the Ark. Each of us had done a certain amount of solitary wandering. Think of Miss Curricle. She was away for the whole of the day on which Unumunu died, and she was still away when the savages appeared. What about her stage-managing it all? She has the instinct of showmanship; whatever happens there is a faint suggestion that she is pulling the wires.”

  “But the savages weren’t – weren’t puppets. She couldn’t have been pulling their wires.”

  “The hotel has native servants of some sort, and so probably has Hailstone. She might have bribed them and worked the thing up. Any of us might.”

  “You’re very” – Diana bent down and pulled George by the ear, rather as if he might prove to be a big woolly dictionary – “theoretical.”

  “I admit that the suggestion is probably quite academic. Still, we are Group One. And Group Two we are approaching now: Hailstone and his fellow diggers – and, of course, George.”

  “Diggers?” said Diana, for whom the words held another and national connotation. “Oh, I see. And Group Three is all the people at the hotel.”

  “Group Three is Heaven, whom we have hardly contacted yet, and Mrs Heaven, and perhaps the organisation of the place generally. And the dozen or so people at the hotel may be one group or several… There’s somebody coming.”

  George had stopped and was growling with force and conviction. And down the faintly marked path towards them came a lean figure in dirty ducks.

  “He’s wounded!” said Diana.

  Appleby shook his head. “He’s very drunk.”

  12

  Against a background of wheeling parakeets the stranger lurched, halted, fixed upon them a bloodshot eye. His hands fumbled for his trousers pockets, shot futilely down his thighs, tried again, succeeded and disappeared. The new posture steadied him; he advanced again in a tolerably straight line. “Have a drink,” he said.

  They looked at him in silence as one looks at something inevitable in a film. He was unshaven and his hair hung lank down to his eyes; and as they looked he kicked suddenly at air – kicked, perhaps, at some hallucinatory George immediately before him.

  “Have a drink,” he repeated. And as he spoke – challengingly, this time – he half turned as if the means of implementing the offer must be at his shoulder. The jungle baffled him; he scowled at it, seemingly flogging on his brain to work the thing out. “At the bungalow,” he said. “That’s it. Come along.” He turned about – it was another effort of the intellect – and moved in the direction from which he had come, steadying himself to look elaborately over his shoulder every few yards. They followed, Diana pleased, Appleby as if with the pages of forgotten Conrads flicking over uncomfortably in his brain. And George came discreetly in the rear.

  “A sample of Group Two,” Appleby murmured. “Another demoralised Japhet. No wonder they don’t get much done. Good Lord!”

  They had come abruptly into a clearing, and what the staggering figure before them had called the bungalow was revealed. More temporary-seeming than the hotel, it was also more pleasing to the eye. Light and shade flowed over it at the waving of palm tops high above; there was a small, carefully screened bed of English flowers in colours that were quaintly answered in trim and spotless veranda blinds. The whole thing was tiny – something to be carted round in sections – but it was decently proportioned and solidly made.

  “Pretty,” said Diana.

  “Efficient. Aluminium paint on the roof. That glass cuts out heat. And look at the tanks. Traps to catch and reject the first flow from the catchment. Simple and means no dust in your water. But something I didn’t see in–”

  “No doubt. And we eat soap. Are we really going to pay a visit?”

  “Certainly. This specimen must share with Hailstone. Up we go.”

  They climbed the veranda steps and found their host stumbling among wicker chairs. He grabbed one of these. “Will you all” – he paused, and his brows contracted in an effort of calculation – “will you both sit down? Hailstone’s rather been expecting some of you. My name’s Dunchue.” He paused again and looked wearily amused. “Dunchue. At school they called me–” His wandering eye happened on Diana. “Get drinks,” he said and disappeared.

  Appleby laughed. “A poser for the Curricle. Not gentlemanlike, but a gentleman. I wonder what they do about gentlemen’s gentlemen? Ah! What are called soft-footed nati
ve boys.” From the darkness of the bungalow a youth – coppery, slim, timid-eyed – came gliding out with a tray. “I wonder if this lad pitched one of those spears? Never cease suspecting, Diana. It’s our job… You have a lovely view.”

  Dunchue had returned and was painfully unstoppering a decanter. “View? Only distance could give any enchantment to a view of this blud – this blasted island. That or a good, honest-to-God dig. I’m beginning to think we’ll never begin. Bad enough before that filthy hotel. Those brats” – he jerked a trembling thumb in the direction in which the boy had vanished – “could be organised for any bit of futile devilry. But set them to dig our site and they bolt. Place is taboo – that sort of thing. And now that they can get tucker out of Heaven and his beastly pub there’s no ordering them.” He poured three glasses brim full and handed them round. “I used to blame Hailstone for not being in earnest. But I suppose the old bast – boy has tried his best. Only I feel” – and Dunchue sat down, his face suddenly oddly haunted – “I feel the place may get on top of us if we hang about much longer.”

  “It must be trying,” Appleby said vaguely. He had taken a sip from his glass and was staring at it with puzzled distaste.

  “I sometimes feel–” Dunchue paused and looked at them suspiciously – a man who wonders how much is apparent or guessed. “I sometimes feel as if I might lose my form altogether. Go – go to the devil.”

  “Yes, I see. Of course, even so, it might only be a visit. You’d be all right in another environment.”

  “All right – what the hell do you mean, all right? Is there anything wrong with me now?” Dunchue had jumped up, splashing himself. He stood trembling; he gulped down the remains of his drink and paced up and down the veranda, an incongruous figure amid its neatness. Suddenly he stopped. “My God!” he said, “I’m tight.” His voice held just the surprise of a man who, in the heat of a battle, discovers that he has been wounded to the death.

  There was an embarrassed silence. Diana had set down her drink; her mind was plainly turning to the soda fountain she had abandoned. George was wandering about the veranda sniffing, rather as if puzzled by those other and hallucinatory Georges with which the bungalow was tenanted. From some outhouse at the back came the murmur of a native speech, soft, unaccented, ceaseless. It was Dunchue who spoke again.