Color Scheme

Chapter XII Skull

Dikon’s was the only voice lifted in praise of Mrs. Claire’s unexpected theory. Her brother, after looking at her in blank astonishment, told her roundly that she was talking nonsense. He explained, as if to a child, that a blow from a hidden assailant would not account for the displaced clod of mud and that even in a struggle, which could scarcely have taken place without Falls hearing it, the path was altogether too firm for any portion of it to give way. The Colonel supported him, saying that when the iron standards for the flags were driven in the Maoris had used a sledge-hammer. Mrs. Claire said that of course they were right, and they looked uneasily at her.

Barbara said: “Even if the police do think someone attacked him, haven’t we proved that none of us could have been there at the time?”

“Bravo!” cried Gaunt. “Of course we have.”

“As far as that goes,” said Simon, “there is one of us who could have knocked him over.” He looked at Falls.

“I?” said Falls. “Dear me, yes. So I could. So I could.”

“After all,” said Simon, “they’ll only have your word for it that you didn’t know what happened. Bell heard Questing scream and went out there. And what did he find? You. Alone.”

“I was not wearing hobnail boots, however.”

“Lucky for you, I reckon. And talking about these boots, there’s something else I’ve got to tell you. Questing owned a pair of boots with sprigs. I can prove it.”

Dikon had seen enough of Simon by this time to know that a piece of portentous information burnt holes in the pockets of his reticence. He frowned at Simon. He even tried to stave him off by an effort of the will but it was no good. Out came the story of their climb up Rangi’s Peak, out came a description of the hobnailed footprints.

“And if the police show me this clod of mud I reckon I can tell if it’s the same print. Anyway they can go up the Peak and look for themselves. With any luck the prints’ll still be there.”

With this recital he bounded into popular favour. Dr. Ackrington, after a comparatively mild blast on the danger of withholding information, declared that Simon, by his vigil on the rock, had gone far towards proving that Questing was the signaller. If Questing was the signaller it was almost certain, said Dr. Ackrington, that the prints on the ledge were his prints. If these corresponded with the impression on the detached clod then they might well prove to be a determining factor.

“You may depend upon it,” cried Dr. Ackrington, “the damned blackguard’s a hundred miles away if he hasn’t got clean out to sea, and wherever he is, he’s wearing these blasted boots.”

Steps sounded outside, followed by a muffled grumble of voices. Dikon turned to look. Through the wide windows of the dining-room the men at the table watched Webley’s three assistants cross the pumice and come towards the verandah. Dikon was visited by a sensation of unreality, a feeling that the mental and physical experiences of this interminable morning were repeating themselves exactly. For the men walked in the same order that they had adopted when he last saw them. They carried again their muddy rakes and poles, and one of them held away from him a heavy sack from which a globule of mud formed and dropped. And just as, before, his heart had jolted against his ribs, so it jolted again. As the men drew near the verandah they saw the party in the dining-room. They paused and the two groups looked at each other through the open windows. A car came down the drive. Webley and an elderly man got out. The men with the sack moved towards them and again there was a huddled inspection.

Mrs. Claire and Barbara, who sat with their backs to the windows, followed the direction of their companions’ gaze, and half turned.

“Wait a moment, Agnes,” said Dr. Ackrington loudly. “Will you attend to me? Never mind the windows now. Mind what I say. Barbara, will you listen!”

“Yes, James.”

“Yes, Uncle James.”

They turned back dutifully. Dikon, sharing Dr. Ackrington’s desire that Barbara should not see the men outside, got to his feet and moved behind her chair. Dr. Ackrington spoke loudly and rapidly. Colonel Claire and his wife and daughter looked at him. The others made no pretence of doing so, and Dikon tried to read in their faces the progress of the men beyond the window.

“… I repeat,” Dr. Ackrington was saying, “that it’s as clear as daylight. Questing, having changed into workmen’s clothes and heavy boots, stamped away the clod from the path, threw his evening clothes into the cauldron and bolted. We were meant to presume accidental death.”

“I still think it was incredibly stupid of him to forget that he would leave prints,” said Dikon. He saw Simon’s eyes widen as he watched the men beyond the windows.

“He thought the clod would fall into the cauldron, Bell. If must be by the merest fluke that it did not do so.”

Simon’s hands were clenched. Falls raised an eyebrow. Dr. Ackrington himself, looking, as they did, beyond the windows, paused and then added rapidly: “If Questing is found before he gets clean away, he will be wearing hobnail boots. I’ll stake my oath on it.”

Simon was on his feet pointing. “Look!”

Now they all turned.

The group of men outside the window parted. Webley had taken something from the sack. He held it up. It was a heavy boot and it dripped mud.

They were all shown the boot. Webley brought it into the dining-room and displayed it, standing on a sheet of newspaper in the middle of the table, and exuding a strong smell of sulphur. He wiped away most of the mud. The surface of the leather was pulpy and greatly disfigured, some of the metal eyelets had fallen out and the upper had become detached in places from the sole. There were, however, still two hobnails in the heel, though the others had fallen out.

Webley wiped his large flat hands on a piece of rag and looked woodenly at his trophy.

“I’d be obliged,” he said, “if any of you ladies or gentlemen could put an owner on this. We’ve got its mate outside.”

Nobody spoke.

“We fished them out with a hay-fork,” Webley said. “Don’t any of you gentlemen recognize it?”

Dr. Ackrington made a brusque movement. “Yes, Doctor?” Webley said at once. “You were going to say something?”

“I believe — I think that quite possibly they were Questing’s.”

“His? But you told me he wore evening shoes, Doctor.”

“Yes. There’s a new development, however. My nephew — Perhaps we should explain.”

Simon cleared his throat. “I told them about it down at your show, Sergeant. It was during my investigation on the Peak.”

Dikon wondered if for a fraction of a second Webley had looked resigned, if his singularly inexpressive face had been blurred momentarily with the glaze of boredom. He passed his flat fingers over his jowl, stared at Simon and said: “Oh, yes?” Simon embarked with a great air of consequence upon an account of their visit to the Peak. He forgot to include Dikon in his recital. “The night before when I was out on the rock, I picked that Questing was signalling from this ledge on the Peak. That’s why I went straight up there yesterday morning. Soon as I got there I looked for footprints and did I find them! Two beauties. Squatting on his heels, he’d been, under the lee of the bank. Here! You let me have a look at the soles of the boots and I reckon I’ll tell you if they made these prints on the Peak. That’s a fair pop, isn’t it?”

Webley went out and returned with the second boot. It was further advanced in disintegration than its mate. He laid them on their sides with their soles towards Simon.

“Some of the sprigs are gone,” he said. “You can see where they’ve been, though. How about it?”

Simon leant forward portentously and stared at the boots. He counted under his breath and his face grew redder and redder.

“How about it?” repeated Webley.

“Give us a chance,” said Simon. He laughed uncomfortably. “I’ve just got to think. You know. You have to concentrate on a thing like this.”

“That’s right,” said Webley impassively.

Simon concentrated.

Gaunt lit a cigarette. “The young investigator seems to be going into a trance,” he said. “I don’t think I shall wait for the revelation. May I be excused?”

“Don’t you start being funny,” said Simon angrily. “This is important. You stay where you are.” Dikon took out his notebook and Simon pounced on it. “Here! Why didn’t you give me that before?” He ruffled the pages. “This is what I wanted all the time, Mr. Webley. I saw the significance of these prints right away and I got Bell to make a sketch of them. Wait till I find it.”

“Was Mr. Bell up there with you?”

“That’s right. Yes, I took him along as a witness. Here,” cried Simon in triumph, “here it is. Look at that.”

Dikon, having made the sketch, had a pretty clear recollection of the prints. He decided that they might have been made by the boots on the table. Such hobnails as remained, as well as the scars left by those that had fallen out, corresponded, he thought, with the impressions he had copied. Webley, breathing placidly through his mouth, shielded the sketch with his hand and compared it with his muddy exhibits. He looked at Dikon.

“Would you have any objection, Mr. Bell, to my taking possession of this page?”

“None.”

“That’ll be quite O.K., Mr. Webley,” said Simon magnificently.

“Much obliged, Mr. Bell,” said Webley and neatly detached the page.

Gaunt said: “And in what condition is our fugitive Questing now, Dr. Ackrington? Is he galloping away to some hide-out, dressed in dungarees and patent-leather pumps, or is he capering about in the rude nude?”

Dr. Ackrington darted a glance of loathing at Gaunt and said nothing.

Webley said: “You’ve been telling them about your theory, have you, Doctor? Disappearance, eh? You’ll find it difficult to fit in these boots, won’t you?”

“The difficulty,” said Dr. Ackrington, “is not insuperable. Isn’t it at least possible that Questing realized he had left recognizable footprints and threw the boots he had intended to wear into the cauldron?”

“You are as nimble in the concoction of unlikelihoods,” said Gaunt, “as a Baconian nosing in the plays of Shakespeare.”

“An utter irrelevancy, Gaunt. A little while ago you supported my contention. I find your change of attitude incomprehensible.”

“I’m afraid that on consideration I find all your theories equally irrelevant and incomprehensible. I’m afraid that for me, however selfishly, the point of interest lies in the fact that whether Questing slipped, was pushed, or escaped, I cannot, in the wildest realms of conjecture, be supposed to have had anything to do with the event. If I’m wanted, Sergeant Webley, I shall be in my room.”

“That’ll be quite O.K., thank you, Mr. Gaunt,” said Webley and watched him go.

When Gaunt had gone, the meeting dissolved into a series of mumbled duologues. Dikon heard Webley say that he wanted to look through their rooms. Mrs. Claire said that he would find them dreadfully untidy. It appeared that Huia, stimulated to the point of hysteria by the events of the last twelve hours, was incapable of performing her duties. She slept over at the native village which, Mrs. Claire explained, she reported to be seething with terrified speculations.

“They get such strange ideas, you know,” said Mrs. Claire to Webley. “One tries to tell them that all their old superstitions are wrong but still they are there — underneath.”

Dikon thought that Webley pricked up his ears at this. How ever the Sergeant merely said in his sluggish way that he would rather the rooms were not touched and that he hoped nobody would object to his looking through them. He added the ominous request that they should all remain on the premises as he would like to see them again. He went off with the Colonel in the direction of the study. Mr. Falls looked after them meditatively.

Dikon went to see his employer and found him on the sofa with his eyes closed.

“Well?” said Gaunt, without opening his eyes.

“Well, sir, the meeting’s dissolved.”

“I’ve been thinking. The Maori youth must be found. The youth who saw me go up to the main road.”

“Eru Saul?”

“Yes. They must get a statement from him. It will establish my alibi.” He opened his eyes. “You’d better tell the empurpled Sergeant.”

“He’s not to be approached at the moment, I fancy,” said Dikon, who did not care at all for this suggestion.

“Well, don’t leave it too long. After all it’s of some slight importance since it protects me from a charge of homicide,” said Gaunt bitterly.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“No. I’m utterly prostrated. I want to be left alone.”

Hoping that this mood would persist, Dikon went outside. There was no one about. He crossed the pumice sweep and wandered up and down the path by the warm lake. Wai-ata-tapu was unusually silent. The familiar morning sounds of housework were not to be heard or the voices of Mrs. Claire and Barbara screeching companionably to each other from different rooms. He could see Huia moving about in the dining-room. Presently Smith and Simon walked round the house, Simon discoursing magnificently. Webley came out of the study, unlocked the door of Questing’s room and went in. Dikon was over-stimulated and so restless that he was unable to think closely about Questing’s disappearance or indeed about anything. He was conscious that he had been frustrated at the moment of departure upon an emotional journey; he was both dissatisfied and apprehensive.

Presently Barbara came out of the house. She looked about her in a desultory fashion and, after a moment, caught sight of him. He waved vigorously. She hesitated and then, with a backward glance, came to meet him.

“What have you been doing all this time?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing. I ought to be seeing about lunch but I can’t settle down.”

“Nor I. Couldn’t we sit down for a moment? I’ve been pounding to and fro like a sentry until I feel quite worn-out.”

“I feel I ought to be doing something or another,” said Barbara. “Not just sitting.”

“Well, perhaps we could march up and down together.”

“Oh, Dikon,” Barbara said, “what is it that’s waiting for us? Where are we going?”

He had no answer to this and after a moment she said: “You don’t think he’s alive, do you?”

“No.”

“Do you think somebody killed him?” She looked into his face. “Yes, that is what you think,” she said.

“Not for any logical reason. I can’t work it out. I’m like your mother, I can’t go all elaborate over it. I certainly can’t believe in Dr. Ackrington’s theory. He’s so hell-bent on making everything fit into the mould of his own idea. Intellectually he’s as obstinate as a mule, it seems to me.”

“Uncle James turns everything into a kind of argument. Even terribly serious things. He can’t help it. The most ordinary conversation with Uncle James can turn in the twinkling of an eye into a violent argument. But, though you mightn’t think it, he is open to conviction. In the end. Only by that time you’re so exhausted you’ve forgotten what it’s all about.”

“I know. The verdict goes by default.”

“Would that be the way the scientific mind works?”

“How should I know, my dear?”

“I should like to ask you something,” said Barbara after a silence. “It’s nothing much but it’s been worrying me. Suppose this does turn out to be — ” She hesitated.

“Murder? One feels rather shy about uttering that word, doesn’t one? Do you prefer the more classy ‘homicide’?”

“No, thank you. Suppose it is murder, then. The police will want to know every tiny little thing about last night, won’t they?”

“I suppose so. It’s what one imagines. A prolonged and dreary winnowing.”

“Yes. Well now, please don’t fly into another rage with me because I really couldn’t bear it, but ought I to tell them about my new dress?”

Dikon gaped at her. “Why on earth?”

“I mean, about him coming up to me and talking as if he’d given it to me.”

Appalled by the possible implication of this project Dikon said roughly: “Good Lord, what tomfoolery is this!”

“There!” said Barbara. “You’re livid again. I can’t think why you lose your temper every time I mention the dress. I still think he did it. He’s the only person we knew who wouldn’t see that it was an impossible sort of thing to do.”

Dikon took a deep breath. “Listen,” he said. “I told Questing the blasted clothes were almost certainly a present from your Auntie Whatnot in India. He remarked that India was a long way away and I’ve no doubt he thought he’d take a gamble and pretend he was the little fairy godfather. He was simply trying to make capital. And anyway,” Dikon added, hearing his voice turn flat, “you must see that all this can have no possible bearing on the case. You don’t want to go trotting to the police with tatty little bits of gossip about your clothes. Answer any questions that are put to you, you silly child, and don’t muddle the poor gentlemen. Barbara, will you promise?”

“I’ll think about it,” said Barbara gravely. “It’s only that I’ve got a notion in my head that somehow or another my dress does fit into the picture.”

Dikon was in a quandary. If Gaunt was forced to acknowledge the authorship of the present to Barbara, his fury against Questing would be brought out in stronger relief, an unpleasant development. Dikon scolded, ridiculed, and pleaded. Barbara listened quietly and at last promised that she would say nothing of the dress without first telling him of her intention. “Though I must say,” she added, “that I can’t see why you’re getting into such a tig over it. If, as you say, it’s completely irrelevant, it wouldn’t matter much if I did tell them.”

“You might put some damn-fool idea into their thick heads. The mere fact of you lugging the wretched afïair into the conversation would make them think there was something behind it. Let it alone, for pity’s sake. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

He kept her with him a little longer. He had an idea that she’d substituted this nonsense about the dress for a more important discussion which, at the last moment, she had funked. He saw her look unhappily at the door into Gaunt’s rooms. At last, twisting her hands together, she said very solemnly: “I suppose you’ve had a lot of experience, haven’t you?”

“I must say you do astonish me,” cried Dikon. “What sort of experience? Do you imagine I’m dyed deep in strange sins?”

“Of course not,” said Barbara turning pink. “I meant you must have had a good deal of experience of the Artistic Temperament.”

“Oh, that. Well, yes; we come at it rather strong in our line of business, you know. What about it?”

Barbara said rapidly: “People who are very sensitive — ” she corrected herself —“I mean, highly sensitized, are terribly vulnerable, aren’t they? Emotionally they’re a skin short. Sort of. Aren’t they? Things hurt them more than they hurt us.” She glanced doubtfully at Dikon. “This,” he thought, “is pure Gaunt; a paraphrase, I shouldn’t wonder, of the stuff he sold her while I was sweating up that mountain.”

“I mean,” Barbara continued, “that it would be wrong to expect them to behave like less delicately adjusted people when something emotionally disintegrating happens to them.”

“Emotionally…?”

“Disintegrating,” said Barbara hurriedly. “I mean you can’t treat porcelain like kitchen china, can you?”

“That,” said Dikon, “is the generally accepted line of chat.”

“Don’t you agree with it?”

“For the last six years,” said Dikon cautiously, “part of my job has been to act as a shock-absorber for temperaments. You can’t expect me to go all dewy-eyed over them at my time of life. But you may be right.”

“I hope I am,” said Barbara.

“The thing about actors, for instance, that makes them different from ordinary people is that they are technicians of emotion. They are trained not to suppress but to flourish their feelings. If an actor is angry, he says to himself and to everyone else, ‘My God, I am angry. This is what I’m like when I’m angry. This is how I do it.’ It doesn’t mean he’s angrier or less angry than you or I, who bite our lips and feel sick and six hours later think up all the things we might have said. He says them. If he likes someone, he lets them know it with soft music and purring chest notes. If he’s upset he puts tears in his voice. Underneath he’s as nice a fellow as the next man. He just does things more thoroughly.”

“You do sound cold-blooded.”

“Bless me soul, I take pinches of salt whenever I enter a stage-door. Just as a precautionary measure.”

Barbara’s eyes had filled with tears. Dikon took her hand in his. “Do you know why I’ve said all this?” he asked. “If I was a noble-minded young man with gentlemanly instincts, I should go white to the lips and in a strangulated voice agree with everything you say. Since I can’t pretend we’re not talking about Gaunt I should add that it is our privilege to sacrifice ourselves to a Great Artist. Because I’m Gaunt’s secretary I should say that my lips were sealed and stand on one side like a noble-minded dumb-bell while you made yourself miserable over him. I don’t behave like this because I’m not such a fool, and also because I’m falling very deeply in love with you myself. There are Webley and your father going into a huddle on the verandah so we can’t pursue this conversation. Go back into the house. I love you. Put that on your needles and knit it.” iv

Somewhat shaken by his own boldness, Dikon watched Barbara run into the house. She had given him one bewildered and astonished glance before she turned tail and fled. “So I’ve done it,” he thought, “and how badly! No more pleasant talks with Barbara. No more arguments and confidences. After this she’ll fly before me like the wind. Or will she think it her duty to hand me a lemon on a silver salver and tell me nicely that she hopes we’ll still be friends?” The more he thought about it the more deeply convinced did he become that he had behaved like a fool. “But it’s all one,” he thought. “She’s never even looked at me. All I’ve done is to make her rather more miserable about Gaunt than she need have been.”

Webley and the Colonel were still huddled together on the verandah. They moved and Dikon saw that between them they held a curious-looking object. Seen from a distance, it resembled a gigantic wishbone adorned with a hairy crest. It was by this crest that they held it, standing well away from the two shafts, one of which was wooden while the other glinted dully in the sunlight. It was a Maori adze.

Webley looked up and saw Dikon, who instantly felt as though he had been caught spying on them. To dispel this uncomfortable illusion, he walked over and joined them.

“Hullo, Bell,” said the Colonel. “Here’s a rum go.” He looked at Webley. “Shall we tell him?” he asked.

“Just a minute, Colonel,” said Webley, “just a minute. I’d like to ask Mr. Bell if he’s ever seen this object before.”

“Never,” said Dikon. “To my knowledge, never.”

“You were in Questing’s room last night, weren’t you, Mr. Bell?”

“I glanced in to see if he was there. Yes.”

“You didn’t look in any of his boxes?”

“Why should I?” cried Dikon. “This isn’t a corpse-in-a-trunk mystery. Why on earth should I? Anyway,” he added lamely after a glance at Webley’s impassive face, “I didn’t.”

Webley, still holding the adze by its hairy crest, laid it carefully on the verandah table. The haft, intricately carved, was crowned by a grimacing manikin. The stone blade, which had been worked down to a double edge with a rounded point, projected, almost at right angles to the haft, from beneath the rump of the manikin.

“They used to dong one another with those things,” said Dikon. “Did you find it in Questing’s room?”

The Colonel glanced uncomfortably at Webley, who merely said: “I think we’ll let old Rua take a look at this, Colonel. Could you get a message over to him? My chaps are busy out there. I’d rather nobody touched this axe affair and anyway it’d be as well to get Rua away from the rest of his gang.”

“I’ll go,” Dikon offered.

Webley looked him over thoughtfully. “Well now, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Bell,” he said.

“Trophies of the chase, Sergeant?” asked Mr. Falls, suddenly thrusting his head out of his bedroom window which was above the verandah table. “Do forgive me. I couldn’t help overhearing you. You’ve found a magnificent expression of a savage art, haven’t you? And you wish for an expert opinion? May I suggest that Bell and I go hand-in-hand to the native village? We can, as it were, keep an eye on each other. A variant of the adage that one should set a thief to catch a thief. Do you follow me?”

“Well, sir,” said Webley, watching him carefully, “there’s no call to put it like that. At the same time, if you two gentlemen care to stroll over to the pa, I’m sure I’d be much obliged.”

“Splendid!” cried Mr. Falls gaily. “May we go by the short route? It will be much quicker and since, as I imagine, the cauldron is all set about with your myrmidons, neither of us will have an opportunity to add articles of evening dress to the seething mud. You could give us a chit to your men, no doubt.”

Greatly to Dikon’s astonishment, and somewhat to his dismay, Webley raised no objection to this project. Dikon and Mr. Falls set out, by the all too familiar path, for the native reserve. Mr. Falls led the way, limping a little it is true, but not, it seemed, greatly inconvenienced this morning by his lumbago.

“I must congratulate you,” he said pleasantly, “on the attitude you adopted at our rather abortive conference. You felt that our anatomist’s flights into the realms of conjecture were becoming fantastic. So, I must confess, did I.”

“You did!” Dikon ejaculated. “Then, I must say…” He stopped short.

“You were about to say that I didn’t contradict him. My dear sir, you saved me the trouble. You propounded my views to a nicety.”

“I’m afraid I find that difficult to believe,” said Dikon dryly.

“You do? Ah, yes, of course. You regard me as the prime suspect. Very naturally. Do you realize, Mr. Bell, that if I’m tried for murder, you will be the chief witness for the prosecution? Why, bless my soul, you almost caught me red-handed. Always presuming that my hands were red.”

Mr. Falls’s face was habitually inscrutable and naturally the back of his head was entirely so. Dikon was walking behind him and felt himself to be at a loss. He tried to keep his voice as colourless as Mr. Falls’s own. “Quite so,” he said. “But I tell myself that as guilty person you might have shown more enthusiasm for Dr. Ackrington’s theory. No murder, no murderer.”

“Unbounded enthusiasm would hint at a lack of artistry, don’t you feel?”

“The others exhibited it,” said Dikon. Mr. Falls gave a little chuckle. “Yes,” he agreed, “their relief was almost tangible, wasn’t it? Now you, as the only one of the men with a really formidable alibi, were also the only man to exhibit scepticism.”

“Mr. Falls,” said Dikon loudly, “what’s your idea? Do you think he’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“Murdered?”

“Oh, yes. Rather. Don’t you?”

By this time they had reached the borders of the thermal region. Remembering the lunar landscape of last night Dikon thought that by day it looked only less strange. There, in the distance, the geyser’s jet was, for a flash of time, erected like a plume in the air. Here, the path threaded its way between quaking ulcers; there, the white flags drooped from their iron standards. There, too, on the crest of the mound above Taupo-tapu, were Mr. Webley’s men, black figures against a sombre background, figures that stooped, thrust downwards, and then laboriously lifted.

“One can’t believe in things like this,” said Dikon under his breath.

Mr. Falls had very sharp ears. “Horrible, isn’t it?” he said. And again it was impossible to find in his voice the colour of his thoughts. He waved his stick. “The whole place,” he said, “is impossibly Doré-esque, don’t you feel?”

“I find it so difficult to believe that it’s entirely impersonal.”

“The Maori people make no attempt to do so, I understand.”

Now they had drawn close to the mound. Dikon said to himself: “It is nothing. Falls will hand over Webley’s authority and we shall walk quickly over the mound. I shall look at the path between Falls’s feet and my feet and in a moment it will begin to lead downhill. And then I shall know that my back is turned to Taupo-tapu. It is nothing.”

But as they climbed the mound the distance between them widened and Dikon didn’t hear what Falls said to the men. Why were they waiting? Why this long mumbled colloquy? He looked up. The path was steep on that side of the mound and his eyes were on a level with the men’s knees.

“Can’t we get on with it?” he heard himself say angrily.

One of the men pushed past him and stumbled down the path.

Falls said: “Wait a moment, Bell.” The man who had blundered down the path began to make retching noises.

The men on the top of the mound — there were two of them now beside Falls — squatted close to each other as if they held a corroborée. One of them let go a pitchfork he held and it rattled down the path. Falls stood up. His back was towards the light but Dikon saw that his face had bleached. He said: “Come on, Bell.” Although Dikon desired most passionately to turn and escape by the path along which they had come, his muscles sent him forward.

It would have been much worse, of course, if they hadn’t covered it, but, though the sack was thick, it was wet. It followed the shape beneath it in a hard eloquent curve. Dikon’s imagination found sockets in the shadows beneath the curve. One of the men must have pushed him forward.

Falls waited for him on the far side at the foot of the mound, but as soon as Dikon reached him he turned and led the way onwards to the gap in the manuka hedge. Here a man stood on guard.

Even when they were beyond the fence he could still hear the sound of Taupo-tapu, the grotesquely enlarged domestic sound of a boiling pot.