Colour Scheme (32 page)

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 standard 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.”

“A point well taken,” said Mr. Falls.

“And that the half-caste fellow left the hall during the performance.”

“Returning in time to hear Mr. Gaunt’s masterly presentation of the Saint Crispin’s Eve speech.”

“The speech before Agincourt, wasn’t it?”

“We shall see. Yes, Colonel?”

The Colonel had opened his eyes and relaxed his moustache. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what it was. Astonishin’ I didn’t think of it before. The ground gave way. By George, I might have gone over, you know. What?”

“A most fortunate escape,” said Mr. Falls gravely. “Well now, gentlemen — I have almost done. It seems to me that only one explanation will agree with all the facts I have mentioned. Questing’s murderer was a man with hobnailed boots. He threw the boots into Taupo-tapu. He had visited the Peak, for the boots correspond with Bell’s sketch of the prints. He had access to the reserve during the concert. He knew Questing was colour-blind, and was most anxious that we should not discover this fact. He was an enemy agent and Questing knew it. Now what figure in our cast fits all these conditions?”

“Eru Saul,” said Dr. Ackrington.

“No,” said Falls. “Herbert Smith.”
iv

It was Simon who was making the greatest outcry: Simon protesting that Bert Smith wouldn’t hurt a fly, that he couldn’t have done it, that he had tried to join up, that he was all right as long as he kept off the liquor. It was Simon who, with a helpless slackening of his voice, repeated that Falls had no right to bring this accusation and, finally, that Falls did it to protect himself. The Colonel and Dr. Ackrington tried to silence him, Webley attempted to get him out of the room, but he held his ground and in the end he talked himself to a standstill. His lips trembled, he made a gesture of relinquishment. Like an exhausted child, he stumbled clumsily to a seat, beat on the table with his fists, and at last was silent.

“Smith!” said Gaunt. “Lord, what an anticlimax! They must be hard-up for cogs in the fifth-column set-up in this country if they found a job for Smith.”

“I’m afraid he is a very small cog,” replied Falls.

The Colonel said: “He’s been with us for years.”

“I am not entirely convinced,” said Dr. Ackrington importantly. “How are you so damned positive that Smith knew Questing was colour-blind? He may have
believed
the story of the sun-screen.”

“He was never told that story. According to Smith, Questing drove him to the crossing and showed him the light through the screen, which Smith said was green but which, as you see, is yellow.
He’s
not colour-blind, you know; he knew Questing wrote with green ink. The sun-screen story was invented after the murder, for our benefit. He had to explain why he had suddenly become friendly with Questing. He had to produce his precious letter. Above all things, we mustn’t know of Questing’s defective sight. His insistence, this morning, that Questing must have been right about the colour of Eru Saul’s shirt is only ex plicable in that light. Of course Questing gave Smith the real explanation of his failure to see the signal. Questing agreed to keep him quiet, and incidentally used him as a go-between in his curio hunts. All went well until Questing discovered him on the Peak and accused him of espionage. The goose that laid the golden eggs had to be killed.”

“Then the Maori theme,” said Dikon. “Eru Saul, the stolen adze, and the violation of tapu, were all subsidiary factors?”

“In a way, yes. Eru Saul told me that when he returned to the concert, after going for a drink with Smith, he heard Mr. Gaunt recite a speech about ‘
old dug-outs being asleep while him and the boys waited for the balloon to go up
.’ This seemed to me to be a recognizable paraphrase of ‘
gentlemen in England now a-bed
,’ which is part of the Saint Crispin speech. But Smith told us that as he returned to the hall he heard Mr. Gaunt shout a sentence which he rendered as: ‘
Once more into the blasted breeches, pals
.’ Unmistakably the opening line of the Agincourt speech, the last item in Mr. Gaunt’s recital, which he gave only after prolonged and enthusiastic demands for an encore.”

“Bert wouldn’t know,” Simon said. “He wouldn’t know. It’s all one to Bert.”

“There is a time lag of some five or six minutes between the beginning of the Crispian speech and the beginning of the Agincourt speech. Would you put it at that, Gaunt?”

“I think so,” said Gaunt automatically.

“Time enough for Smith to re-enter the doorway with his companions and, while all eyes were focussed on you, to slip out again and run to the reserve. Time enough, when he could not wrench it out, for him to kick the standard until it was loosened, and then drop it over the edge. Time enough to think of the evidence left by his boots and throw them overboard. Time enough to run back to the hall and be standing there, close by his friends, when the lights went up.” He turned to Simon. “You were with him after the concert?” Simon nodded. “Did you notice his feet?” Simon shook his head.

“Mr. Gaunt’s man was with you, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Could we speak to him, I wonder?”

Webley nodded to the man at the door. He went out and returned with Colly.

“Colly,” said Mr. Falls. “What sort of boots was Mr. Smith wearing when you went home last night?”

“Not boots at all, sir,” said Colly instantly. “Soft shoes.”

“Did you walk over to the hall with him before the concert?”

“Yessir. We went over early with extra chairs.”

“Was he wearing shoes then?” Webley demanded.

Colly jumped and said: “You’re that small, Inspector, I never see you. No, he was wearing boots then. ’E took ’is shoes in ’is pocket, ’case we finished up with a dance.”

“Did he carry his boots home?” asked Webley.

“I never see them,” said Colly, and looked uneasy.

“O.K.”

Colly glanced unhappily at Simon and went out.

Webley walked over to the man at the door.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“In his room, Mr. Webley. We’re watching it.”

“Come on, then,” said Webley, and they went out, their boots making a heavy trampling sound that died away in the direction of Smith’s room.

“It’s no good asking me to work up a grain of sympathy for him,” said Dikon. “There’s no capital punishment in this country now. He’ll spend the rest of his life in gaol, and a damned lucky let-off it is for him. He’s a dirty little spy and a still dirtier murderer. It’s poor old Questing I can’t bear to think about.”

“Oh,
don’t
.”

“I’m sorry, Barbara darling. No, I won’t call you ‘Barbara darling.’ In our giddy theatrical circles we call people ‘darling’ when we can’t remember their names. I shall call you something calmly Victorian. Barbara, love. Barbara, my dear. Now, don’t take umbrage. It doesn’t hurt you, and it gives me a certain hollow satisfaction. How far shall we walk?”

“To the sea?”

“My feet will turn into smouldering sponges, but I’m game. Come on.”

They walked on in silence under a pontifical sky.

“It seems more like a week ago than two days,” said Barbara at last.

“I know. Exit Smith in custody. Exit Mr. Septimus Falls in a trail of glory and soon, alas, exit us.‘”

“How soon?”

“He talks about next week. We’ve got to stay for the inquest. He’s much better, you know. Your anatomical uncle says he doesn’t think there will be a recrudescence of the fibrositis, which is, I consider, a magic phrase.”

“Where will he go?” asked Barbara in a flat voice.

“To London. He wants to take a company out on tour. The Bard in the blitz. Fit-ups. Play anywhere. It’s a grand idea,” said Dikon and added, “I’m leaving him.”

“
Leaving
him? But why?”

“To have one more shot at enlisting. If they won’t like me any better here than they did in Australia I shall return with Gaunt. There must be
something
for a blind bat to do. They say they use everybody at Home. I shall wear battle-dress, and sit in a black little cellar at the end of the longest passage of an obscure building, typewriting memoranda for a Minor Blimp. Will you write to me?”

Barbara didn’t answer. “Will you?” he insisted and she nodded.

“Fancy!” Dikon said after a moment. “There are tears in your eyes because he’s going and here am I, ready to howl like a banshee at the notion of leaving you. There’s no sense in it.”

Barbara stopped short and glared at him. “It’s not for that,” she said. “You’re not as sharp as I thought you were. It’s because— well, it’s partly because I’ve been living in a
hollow mockery
.” She brought this out in her old style, turning her eyes up and the corners of her mouth down.

“Don’t do that to your nice face,” said Dikon.

“I’ll do what I like with my face,” said Barbara with spirit. “If my face irritates you, you needn’t look at it. You talk about being fond of me but all you want to do is fiddle about with me until you’ve made me into a bad imitation of some beastly glamour girl.”

“No, honestly. Honestly not. I wouldn’t mind if you screamed at me because I sniff when I read and bite my nails. You can make one face after another with the virtuosity of a Saint Vitus and I shall still love you. Why have you been living in your ‘hollow mockery’?”

“I’ve been such a frightful fool. Slopping all over him because I thought he was like Mr. Rochester and all the time he’s just vain and selfish and rather common. Pretending his soul was lacerated by what happened and all the time he was just afraid he’d be mixed up in it. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

“Oh,” said Dikon.

“And for him to give me those things. And look at me as if I was a
cheap plaything
— I didn’t make a face. You can’t say I made a face.”

“You never batted an eyelash. But you’re too hard on him. He’s kind-hearted, and he gives presents like you’d shell peas. Model dresses are no more than a couple of rosebuds to him.”

“And when Daddy told him, very nicely, that I couldn’t possibly accept them he behaved
frightfully
. He said: ‘She can etc. well turn an etc. nudist if it amuses her.’ Sim heard him.”

“That,” said Dikon, controlling his voice, “is because he’d been dealt rather a stiff smack in the pride. It’s a bit galling to have your presents returned with quiet dignity. He felt like two-penn’orth of dirt and that made him angry and bewildered.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but he really ought to have known better. And don’t let’s talk any more about the things because, however much I try, I can’t pretend I didn’t like them.” Barbara looked at Dikon. “Which makes the whole thing rather comic, I suppose.”

“Bravo, Miss Claire,” said Dikon. He took her arm and to his great astonishment felt her hand slip into his own.

“You will write to me, won’t you?” said Dikon. “If the war lasts a long time you will forget what I’m like, but I shall come back.”

“Yes,” said Barbara. “Come back.”

“That,” said Mr. Falls, “is about all, I fancy. I’m going down to Wellington as soon as the inquest’s over. Hush-hush conversations with the P.M. and the Commissioner and so on. I’m afraid we’ve only caught a sprat, but at least it will show the seriousness of the position.”

“Yes,” said the Superintendent. “We’d got into the way of thinking these things don’t reach us down here. The boys go away, reinforcement after reinforcement, and then it gets a bit closer and we begin building up our home forces, but we don’t somehow think in terms of fifth columnists. Or the general public don’t. We’ve been very fortunate to have you.”

“I’ll say!” said Mr. Webley. “You know, sir, there was the old doctor writing in and writing in and yet the thing looked somehow ridiculous. He had hold of the wrong end of the stick, of course, but the idea was right.”

“Yes,” said the Superintendent heavily, “the idea was right.”

Mr. Falls said: “Dr. Ackrington behaved very well. As you know I got him to come and see me in Auckland. That was after I’d had his letter. But I didn’t decide to go to Wai-ata-tapu until the next day when you people suggested it. There was no time to warn him and we met face to face on the verandah while I was doing my decrepit dilettante stuff. He didn’t turn a hair. He backed me up nobly. We had to take the Colonel into our confidence, of course, and that
was
a bit tricky. And while I’m handing out bouquets I should like to say how very grateful I am to Webley. He was extraordinarily good over the whole show.”

“There you are, Sergeant!” said the Superintendent.

“He insisted on my doing the summing-up business. We both thought that as the espionage aspect of the thing was an open secret among them, it was best to let them know the truth. Simon Claire, for one, would have raised a hell of a dust if there had been any doubt left in his mind. As it is, they have all undertaken to say nothing. If you can adjourn the inquest and hold things over for a little it will give me a chance to dig a bit deeper before the principals realize quite how much we know.”

“You don’t want to appear at all, I gather?”

“Mr. Septimus Falls will have to give evidence, I’m afraid, but he will not return to Wai-ata-tapu.”

Sergeant Webley passed his hand over his face and gave a low chuckle.

They all stood up and the Superintendent held out his hand. “It’s been a real privilege,” he said. “I’m sure Webley has felt like that about it.”

“I’ll say! A great day for me, sir.”

“We’ll meet again, I hope, with a bigger catch.”

They shook hands. “I’ll warrant we do,” said the Superintendent, “with you on the job. Good-bye, Mr. Alleyn. Goodbye.”

The End