Colour Scheme. Ngaio Marsh

But I thought …’

      ‘He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However.’

      Dr Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.

      ‘Since we have mentioned him,’ Dikon began nervously, ‘I confess I’m in a state of some confusion about Mr Questing. May I ask if he is actually the – if Wai-ata-tapu Springs is his property?’

      ‘No,’ said Dr Ackrington.

      ‘I only ask,’ Dikon continued in a hurry, ‘because you see I was approached in the first instance by Mr Questing. Although I’ve warned him that Gaunt may decide against the Springs, he has been at extraordinary pains and really very considerable expense to – to alter existing arrangements and so on. And I mean – well, Dr Forster’s note suggested that it was to Colonel and Mrs Claire that we should apply.’

      ‘So it is.’

      ‘I see. But – Questing?’

      ‘If you decide against the Springs,’ said Dr Ackrington, ‘you should convey your decision to my sister.’

      ‘But,’ Dikon repeated obstinately, ‘Questing?’

      ‘Ignore him.’

      ‘Oh.’

      Steps sounded outside the window, and voices: Smith’s voice slurred but vicious; Colonel Claire’s high-pitched, perhaps a little hysterical; and Questing’s the voice of a bully. As they came nearer, odd sentences separated out from the general rumpus.

      ‘… if the Colonel’s satisfied – it’s not a fair pop.’

      ‘… never mind that. You’ve been asking for it and you’ll get it.’

      ‘… sack me and see what you get, you –’

      ‘… most disgraceful scene – force my hand …’

      ‘… kick you out tomorrow.’

      ‘This is too much,’ Colonel Claire cried out. ‘I’ve stood a great deal, Questing, but I must remind you that I still have some authority here.’

      ‘Is that so? Where do you get it from? You’d better watch your step, Claire.’

      ‘By God,’ Smith roared out suddenly, ‘you’d better watch yours.’

      Dr Ackrington opened the door and stood on the threshold. Complete silence followed this move. Through the open door came a particularly strong wave of sulphurous air.

      ‘I suggest, Edward,’ Dr Ackrington said, ‘that you continue your conversation in the laundry. Mr Bell has no doubt formed the opinion that we do not possess one.’

      He shut the door. ‘Let me give you another drink,’ he said courteously.

       CHAPTER THREE

       Gaunt at the Springs

      ‘Five days ago,’ said Gaunt, ‘you dangled this place before me like some atrocious bait. Now you do nothing but bemoan its miseries. You are strangely inconsistent.’

      ‘In the interval,’ said Dikon, wrenching the car out of a pot hole, and changing down, ‘I have seen the place. I implore you to remember, sir, that you have been warned.’

      ‘You overdid it. You painted it in macabre colours. My curiosity was stimulated. For pity’s sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat track possibly be the main road?’

      ‘It’s the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know, and these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South.’

      ‘I’m afraid you’re a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand. There’s a most unpleasant smell about this place.’

      ‘It’s the thermal smell. People are said to get to like it.’

      ‘Nonsense. How are you travelling, Colly?’

      Fenced in by luggage in the back seat, Colly replied that he kept his eyes closed at the curves. ‘I didn’t seem to notice it so much this morning in them forests,’ he added. ‘It’s dynamite in the open.’

      The road corkscrewed its way in and out of a gully and along a barren stretch of downland. On its left the coast ran freely northwards in a chain of scrolls, last interruptions in its firm line before it tightened into the Ninety Mile Beach. The thunder of the Tasman Sea hung like a vast rumour on the freshening air, and above the margin of the downs Rangi’s Peak was slowly erected.

      ‘That’s an ominous-looking affair,’ said Gaunt. ‘What is it about these hills that gives them an air of the fabulous? They are not so very odd in shape, not incredible like the Dolomites or imposing like the Rockies – not, as you point out in your superior way, Dikon, really mountains at all. Yet they seem to be pregnant with some tiresome secret. What is it?’

      ‘Perhaps it’s something to do with the volcanic silhouette. If there’s a secret the answer’s in the Maori language. I’m afraid you’ll get very tired of that cone, sir. It looks over the hills round the Springs.’ Dikon waited for a moment. Gaunt had a trick of showing a fugitive interest in places, of asking for expositions, and of growing restless when they were given to him.

      ‘Why is the answer in Maori?’ he said.

      ‘It was a native burial ground in the old days. They tipped the bodies into the crater. It’s extinct, you know. Supposed to be full of them.’

      ‘Good Lord!’ said Gaunt softly.

      The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. ‘You can see quite clearly,’ Dikon said, ‘the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.’

      ‘Gawd!’ said Colly.

      ‘Can you look into the crater and see …?’

      ‘I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu, of course.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.’

      ‘How far away is it?’

      ‘About eight miles.’

      ‘It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.’