Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh

Other Stories

Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction. It is certainly less logical. Consider the affair of the severed hand at Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1885. Late in the afternoon of December 16th of that year, the sergeant on duty at the central police station was visited by two brothers and their respective small sons. They crowded into his office and, with an air of self-conscious achievement, slapped down a parcel, wrapped in newspaper, on his desk. Their name, they said, was Godfrey.

The sergeant unwrapped the parcel. He disclosed, nestling unattractively in folds of damp newsprint, a human hand. It was wrinkled and pallid like the hand of a laundress on washing day. On the third finger, left hand, was a gold ring.

The Godfreys, brothers and sons, made a joint announcement. “That’s Howard’s hand,” they said virtually in unison and then added, in explanation, “bit off by a shark.”

They looked significantly at a poster pasted on the wall of the police office. The poster gave a description of one Arthur Howard and offered a reward for information as to his whereabouts. The Godfreys also produced an advertisement in a daily paper of two months earlier:

The Godfreys were ready to make a statement. They had spent the day, it seemed, at Taylor’s Mistake, a lonely bay not far from the seaside resort of Sumner, where Arthur Rannage Howard had been reported drowned on October 10th. At about two o’clock in the afternoon, the Godfreys had seen the hand lying in the sand below high-water mark.

Elisha, the elder brother, begged the sergeant to examine the ring. The sergeant drew it off the cold, wrinkled finger. On the inside were the initials A. H.

The Godfreys were sent away without a reward. From that moment they were kept under constant observation by the police.

A few days later, the sergeant called upon Mrs. Sarah Howard. At sight of the severed hand, she cried out—in tears—that it was her husband’s.

Later, a coroner’s inquest was held on the hand. Three insurance companies were represented. If the hand was Howard’s hand, they were due to pay out, on three life policies, sums amounting to 2,400 pounds. The policies had all been transferred into the name of Sarah Howard.

The circumstances of what the coroner called “the alleged accident” were gone over at the inquest. On October 10, 1885, Arthur Howard, a railway workshop fitter, had walked from Christchurch to Sumner. On his way he fell in with other foot-sloggers who remembered his clothes and his silver watch on a gold chain and that he had said he meant to go for a swim at Sumner where, in those days, the waters were shark infested.

The next morning a small boy had found Howard’s clothes and watch on the end of the pier at Sumner. A few days later insurance had been applied for and refused, the advertisement had been inserted in the paper and, as if in answer to the widow’s prayer, the Godfreys, on December 16th, had discovered the hand.

But there also appeared the report of no less than ten doctors who had examined the hand. The doctors, after the manner of experts, disagreed in detail but, in substance, agreed upon three points.

1) The hand had not lain long in the sea.

2) Contrary to the suggestions of the brothers Godfrey, it had not been bitten off by a shark but had been severed by the teeth of a hacksaw.

3) The hand was that of a woman.

This damaging report was followed by a statement from an engraver. The initials A. H., on the inside of the ring, had not been made by a professional’s tool, said this report, but had been scratched by some amateur.

The brothers Godfrey were called in and asked whether, in view of the evidence, they would care to make a further statement.

Elisha Godfrey then made what must have struck the police as one of the most impertinently unlikely depositions in the annals of investigation.

Elisha said that in his former statement he had withheld certain information which he would now divulge. Elisha said that he and his brother had been sitting on the sands when from behind a boulder, there appeared a man wearing blue goggles and a red wig and saying, “Come here! There’s a man’s hand on the beach!”

This multi-colored apparition led Elisha and his brother to the hand, and Elisha had instantly declared, “That’s Howard’s hand.”

The goggles and wig had then said, “Poor fellow… poor fellow.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before about this chap in the goggles and wig?” the police asked.

“Because,” said Elisha, “he begged me to promise I wouldn’t let anyone know he was there.”

Wearily, a sergeant shoved a copy of this amazing deposition across to Elisha. “If you’ve still got the nerve, sign it.”

The Godfreys read it through and angrily signed.

The police, in the execution of their duty, made routine inquiries for information about a gentleman in blue goggles and red wig in the vicinity of Sumner and Taylor’s Mistake on the day in question.

To their intense astonishment they found what they were after.

Several persons came forward saying that they had been accosted by this bizarre figure, who excitedly showed them a paper with the Godfreys’ name and address on it and told them that the Godfreys had found Howard’s hand.

The police stepped up their inquiries and extended them the length and breadth of New Zealand. The result was a spate of information.

The wig and goggles had been seen on the night of the alleged drowning, going north in the ferry steamer. The man who wore them had been run in for insulting a woman, who had afterwards refused to press charges. He had taken jobs on various farms. Most strangely, he had appeared at dawn by the bedside of a fellow worker and had tried to persuade this man to open a grave with him. His name, he had said, was Watt. Finally, and most interesting of all, it appeared that on the 18th of December the goggles and wig had gone for a long walk with Mrs. Sarah Howard.

Upon this information, the police arrested the Godfrey brothers and Mrs. Howard on a charge of attempting to defraud the insurance companies.

But a more dramatic arrest was made in a drab suburb of the capital city. Here the police ran to earth a strange figure in clothes too big for him, wearing blue goggles and a red wig. It was the missing Arthur Howard.

At the trial, a very rattled jury found the Godfreys and Mrs. Howard “not guilty” on both counts and Howard guilty on the second count of attempting to obtain money by fraud.

So far, everything ties up quite neatly. What won’t make sense is that Howard did his best to look like a disguised man, but came up with the most eye-catching “disguise” imaginable.

No clue has ever been produced as to the owner of the hand. Of eight graves that were subsequently opened in search for the body to match the hand, none contained a dismembered body. But the hand had been hacked off by an amateur. Could Howard have bribed a dissecting-room janitor or enlisted the help of some undertaker’s assistant? And if, as seemed certain, it was a woman’s hand, where was the rest of the woman?

Then there is Howard’s extraordinary masquerade. Why make himself so grotesquely conspicuous? Why blaze a trail all over the country? Did his project go a little to his head? Was he, after all, a victim of the artistic temperament?

The late Mr. Justice Alper records that Howard’s lawyer told him he knew the answer. But, soon after this, the lawyer died.

I have often thought I would like to use this case as the basis for a detective story, but the material refuses to be tidied up into fiction form. I prefer it as it stands, with all its loose ends dangling. I am loath to concoct the answers. Let this paradoxical affair retain its incredible mystery. It is too good to be anything but true.

“Bollinger 71,” said Lord John Challis.

“Thank you, my lord,” said the wine-waiter.

He retrieved the wine-list, bowed and moved away with soft assurance. Lord John let his eyeglass fall and gave his attention to his guest. She at once wrinkled her nose and parted her sealing-wax lips in an intimate smile. It was a pleasant and flattering grimace and Lord John responded to it. He touched his little beard with a thin hand.

“You look charming,” he said, “and you dispel all unpleasant thoughts.”

“Were they unpleasant?” asked his guest.

“They were uncomplimentary to myself. I was thinking that Benito—the wine-waiter, you know—had grown old.”

“But why—?”

“I knew him when we were both young.”

The head-waiter materialised, waved away his underlings, and himself delicately served the dressed crab. Benito returned with the champagne. He held the bottle before Lord John’s eyeglass and received a nod.

“It is sufficiently iced, my lord,” said Benito.

The champagne was opened, tasted, approved, poured out, and the bottle twisted down in the ice. Benito and the head-waiter withdrew.

“They know you very well here,” remarked the guest.

“Yes. I dined here first in 1907. We drove from the station in a hansom cab.”

“We?” murmured his guest.

“She, too, was charming. It is extraordinary how like the fashions of to-day are to those of my day. Those sleeves. And she wore a veil, too, and sat under the china cupid mirror as you do now.”

“And Benito poured out the champagne?”

“And Benito poured out the champagne. He was a rather striking looking fellow in those days. Black eyes, brows that met over his nose. A temper, you’d have said.”

“You seem to have looked carefully at him,” said the guest lightly.

“I had reason to.”

“Come,” said the guest with a smile, “I know you have a story to tell and I am longing to hear it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Very well, then.”

Lord John leant forward a little in his chair.

“At the table where that solitary lady sits—yes—the table behind me—I am looking at it now in the cupid mirror —there sat in those days an elderly woman who was a devil. She had come for the cure and had brought with her a miserable niece whom she underpaid and bullied and humiliated after the manner of old devils all the world over. The girl might have been a pretty girl, but all the spirit was scared out of her. Or so it seemed to me. There were atrocious scenes. On the third evening—”

“The third?” murmured the guest, raising her thinned eyebrows.

“We stayed a week,” explained Lord John. “At every meal that dreadful old woman, brandishing a repulsive ear-trumpet, would hector and storm. The girl’s nerves had gone, and sometimes from sheer fright she was clumsy. Her mistakes were anathematised before the entire dining-room. She was reminded of her dependence and constantly of the circumstance of her being a beneficiary under the aunt’s will. It was disgusting—abominable. They never sat through a meal without the aunt sending the niece on some errand, so that people began to wait for the moment when the girl, miserable and embarrassed, would rise and walk through the tables, pursued by that voice. I don’t suppose that the other guests meant to be unkind but many of them were ill-mannered enough to stare at her and wait for her reappearance with shawl, or coat, or book, or bag, or medicine. She used to come back through the tables with increased gaucherie. Every step was an agony and then, when she was seated, there would be merciless criticism of her walk, her elbows, her colour, her pallor. I saw it all in the little cupid mirror. Benito came in for his share too. That atrocious woman would order her wine, change her mind, order again, say it was corked, not the vintage she ordered, complain to the head-waiter—I can’t tell you what else. Benito was magnificent. Never by a hairsbreadth did he vary his courtesy.”

“I suppose it is all in their day’s work,” said the guest.

“I suppose so. Let us hope there are not many cases as advanced as that harridan’s. Once I saw him glance with a sort of compassion at the niece. I mean, I saw his image in the cupid mirror.”

Lord John filled his guest’s glass and his own.

“There was also,” he continued, “her doctor. I indulge my hobby of speaking ill of the dead and confess that I did not like him. He was the local fashionable doctor of those days; a soi-disant gentleman with a heavy moustache and clothes that were just a little too immaculate. I was, and still am, a snob. He managed to establish himself in the good graces of the aunt. She left him the greater part of her very considerable fortune. More than she left the girl. There was never any proof that he was aware of this circumstance but I can find no other explanation for his extraordinary forbearance. He prescribed for her, sympathised, visited, agreed, flattered. God knows what he didn’t do. And he dined. He dined on the night she died.”

“Oh,” said the guest lifting her glass in both hands, and staring at her lacquered fingertips, “she died, did she?”

“Yes. She died in the chair occupied at this moment by the middle-aged lady with nervous hands.”

“You are very observant,” remarked his companion.

“Otherwise I should not be here again in such delightful circumstances. I can see the lady with nervous hands in the cupid mirror, just as I could see that hateful old woman. She had been at her worst all day, and at luncheon the niece had been sent on three errands. From the third she returned in tears with the aunt’s sleeping tablets. She always took one before her afternoon nap. The wretched girl had forgotten them and on her return must needs spill them all over the carpet. She and Benito scrambled about under the table, retrieving the little tablets, while the old woman gibed at the girl’s clumsiness. She then refused to take one at all and the girl was sent off lunchless and in disgrace.”

Lord John touched his beard with his napkin, inspected his half bird, and smiled reminiscently.

“The auguries for dinner were inauspicious. It began badly. The doctor heard of the luncheon disaster. The first dish was sent away with the customary threat of complaint to the manager. However, the doctor succeeded in pouring oil, of which he commanded a great quantity, on the troubled waters. He told her that she must not tire herself, patted her claw with his large white hand, and bullied the waiters on her behalf. He had brought her some new medicine which she was to take after dinner, and he laid the little packet of powder by her plate. It was to replace the stuff she had been taking for some time.”

“How did you know all this?”

“Have I forgotten to say she was deaf? Not the least of that unfortunate girl’s ordeals was occasioned by the necessity to shout all her answers down an ear-trumpet. The aunt had the deaf person’s trick of speaking in a toneless yell. One lost nothing of their conversation. That dinner was quite frightful. I still see and hear it. The little white packet lying on the right of the aunt’s plate. The niece nervously crumbling her bread with trembling fingers and eating nothing. The medical feller talking, talking, talking. They drank red wine with their soup and then Benito brought champagne. Veuve Clicquot, it was. He said, as he did a moment ago, ‘It is sufficiently iced,’ and poured a little into the aunt’s glass. She sipped it and said it was not cold enough. In a second there was another formidible scene. The aunt screamed abuse, the doctor supported and soothed her, another bottle was brought and put in the cooler. Finally Benito gave them their Clicquot. The girl scarcely touched hers, and was asked if she thought the aunt had ordered champagne at thirty shillings a bottle for the amusement of seeing her niece turn up her nose at it. The girl suddenly drank half a glass at one gulp. They all drank. The Clicquot seemed to work its magic even on that appalling woman. She became quieter. I no longer looked into the cupid mirror but rather into the eyes of my vis-à-vis.”

Lord John’s guest looked into his tired amused old face and smiled faintly.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No. When I next watched the party at that table a waiter had brought their coffee. The doctor feller emptied the powder from the packet into the aunt’s cup. She drank it and made a great fuss about the taste. It looked as though we were in for another scene when she fell sound asleep.”

“What!” exclaimed the guest.

“She fell into a deep sleep,” said Lord John. “And died.”

The lady with the nervous hands rose from her table and walked slowly past them out of the dining-room.

“Not immediately,” continued Lord John, “but about two hours later in her room upstairs. Three waiters carried her out of the dining-room. Her mouth was open, I remember, and her face was puffy and had reddish-violet spots on it.”

“What killed her?”

“The medical gentleman explained at the inquest that her heart had always been weak.”

“But — you didn’t believe that? You think, don’t you, that the doctor poisoned her coffee?”

“Oh, no. In his own interest he asked that the coffee and the remaining powder in the paper should be analysed. They were found to contain nothing more dangerous than a very mild bromide.”

“Then—? You suspected something I am sure. Was it the niece? The champagne—?”

“The doctor was between them. No. I remembered, however, the luncheon incident. The sleeping tablets rolling under the table.”

“And the girl picked them up?”

“Assisted by Benito. During the dispute at dinner over the champagne, Benito filled the glasses. His napkin hid the aunt’s glass from her eyes. Not from mine, however. You see, I saw his hand reflected from above in the little cupid mirror.”

There was a long silence.

“Exasperation,” said Lord John, “may be the motive of many unsolved crimes. By the way I was reminded of this story by the lady with the nervous hands. She has changed a good deal of course, but she still has that trick of crumbling her bread with her fingers.”

The guest stared at him.

“Have we finished?” asked Lord John. “Shall we go?” They rose. Benito, bowing, held open the dining-room door.

“Good evening, Benito,” said Lord John.

“Good evening, my lord,” said Benito.

“Where money is concerned,” Harold Hancock told his audience at the enormous cocktail party, “my poor Hersey — and she won’t mind my saying so, will you, darling? — is the original dumbbell. Did I ever tell you about her trip to Dunedin?”

Did he ever tell them? Hersey thought. Wherever two or three were gathered did he ever fail to tell them? The predictable laugh, the lovingly coddled pause, and the punchline led into and delivered like an act of God—did he, for pity’s sake, ever tell them!

Away he went, mock-serious, empurpled, expansive, and Hersey put on the comic baby face he expected of her. Poor Hersey, they would say, such a goose about money. It’s a shame to laugh.

“It was like this—” Harold began…

It had happened twelve years ago when they were first in New Zealand. Harold was occupied with a conference in Christchurch and Hersey was to stay with a friend in Dunedin. He had arranged that she would draw on his firm’s Dunedin branch for money and take in her handbag no more than what she needed for the journey. “You know how you are,” Harold said.

He arranged for her taxi, made her check that she had her ticket and reservation for the train, and reminded her that if on the journey she wanted cups of tea or synthetic coffee or a cooked lunch, she would have to take to her heels at the appropriate stations and vie with the competitive male. At this point her taxi was announced and Harold was summoned to a long-distance call from London.

“You push off,” he said. “Don’t forget that fiver on the dressing table. You won’t need it but you’d better have it. Keep your wits about you. ’Bye, dear.”

He was still shouting into the telephone when she left.

She had enjoyed the adventurous feeling of being on her own. Although Harold had said you didn’t in New Zealand, she tipped the taxi driver and he carried her suitcase to the train and found her seat, a single one just inside the door of a Pullman car.

A lady was occupying the seat facing hers and next to the window.

She was well-dressed, middle-aged and of a sandy complexion with noticeably light eyes. She had put a snakeskin dressing case on the empty seat beside her.

“It doesn’t seem to be taken,” she said, smiling at Hersey.

They socialized—tentatively at first and, as the journey progressed, more freely. The lady (in his version Harold always called her Mrs. X) confided that she was going all the way to Dunedin to visit her daughter. Hersey offered reciprocative information. In the world outside, plains and mountains performed a grandiose kind of measure and telegraph wires leaped and looped with frantic precision.

An hour passed. The lady extracted a novel from her dressing case and Hersey, impressed by the handsome appointments and immaculate order, had a good look inside the case.

The conductor came through the car intoning, “Ten minutes for refreshments at Ashburton.”

“Shall you join in the onslaught?” asked the lady. “It’s a free-for-all.”

“Shall you?”

“Well—I might. When I travel with my daughter we take turns. I get the morning coffee and she gets the afternoon. I’m a bit slow on my pins, actually.”

She made very free use of the word “actually.”

Hersey instantly offered to get their coffee at Ashburton and her companion, after a proper show of diffidence, gaily agreed. They explored their handbags for the correct amount. The train uttered a warning scream and everybody crowded into the corridor as it drew up to the platform.

Hersey left her handbag with the lady (an indiscretion heavily emphasized by Harold) and sprinted to the refreshment counter where she was blocked off by a phalanx of men. Train fever was running high by the time she was served and her return trip with brimming cups was hazardous indeed.

The lady was holding both their handbags as if she hadn’t stirred an inch.

Between Ashburton and Oamaru, a long stretch, they developed their acquaintanceship further, discovered many tastes in common, and exchanged confidences and names. The lady was called Mrs. Fortescue. Sometimes they dozed. Together, at Oamaru, they joined in an assault on the dining room and together they returned to the carriage where Hersey scuffled in her stuffed handbag for a powder-compact. As usual it was in a muddle.

Suddenly a thought struck her like a blow in the wind and a lump of ice ran down her gullet into her stomach. She made an exhaustive search but there was no doubt about it.

Harold’s fiver was gone.

Hersey let the handbag fall in her lap, raised her head, and found that her companion was staring at her with a very curious expression on her face. Hersey had been about to confide her awful intelligence but the lump of ice was exchanged for a coal of fire. She was racked by a terrible suspicion.

“Anything wrong?” asked Mrs. Fortescue in an artificial voice.

Hersey heard herself say, “No. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said rather hurriedly. “I thought— perhaps—like me, actually, you have bag trouble.”

“I do, rather,” Hersey said.

They laughed uncomfortably.

The next hour passed in mounting tension. Both ladies affected to read their novels. Occasionally one of them would look up to find the other one staring at her. Hersey’s suspicions increased rampantly.

“Ten minutes for refreshments at Palmerston South,” said the conductor, lurching through the car.

Hersey had made up her mind. “Your turn!” she cried brightly.

“Is it? Oh. Yes.”

“I think I’ll have tea. The coffee was awful.”

“So’s the tea actually. Always. Do we,” Mrs. Fortescue swallowed, “do we really want anything?”

“I do,” said Hersey very firmly and opened her handbag. She fished out her purse and took out the correct amount. “And a bun,” she said. There was no gainsaying her. “I’ve got a headache,” she lied. “I’ll be glad of a cuppa.”

When they arrived at Palmerston South, Hersey said, “Shall I?” and reached for Mrs. Fortescue’s handbag. But Mrs. Fortescue muttered something about requiring it for change and almost literally bolted. “All that for nothing!” thought Hersey in despair. And then, seeing the elegant dressing case still on the square seat, she suddenly reached out and opened it.

On top of the neatly arranged contents lay a crumpled five-pound note.

At the beginning of the journey when Mrs. Fortescue had opened the case, there had, positively, been no fiver stuffed in it. Hersey snatched the banknote, stuffed it into her handbag, shut the dressing case, and leaned back, breathing short with her eyes shut.

When Mrs. Fortescue returned she was scarlet in the face and trembling. She looked continuously at her dressing case and seemed to be in two minds whether or not to open it. Hersey died a thousand deaths.

The remainder of the journey was a nightmare. Both ladies pretended to read and to sleep. If ever Hersey had read guilt in a human countenance it was in Mrs. Fortescue’s.

“I ought to challenge her,” Hersey thought. “But I won’t. I’m a moral coward and I’ve got back my fiver.”

The train was already drawing into Dunedin station and Hersey had gathered herself and her belongings when Mrs. Fortescue suddenly opened her dressing case. For a second or two she stared into it. Then she stared at Hersey. She opened and shut her mouth three times. The train jerked to a halt and Hersey fled.

Her friend greeted her warmly. When they were in the car she said, “Oh, before I forget! There’s a telegram for you.”

It was from Harold.

It said:

Harold had delivered the punchline. His listeners had broken into predictable guffaws. He had added the customary coda: “And she didn’t know Mrs. X’s address, so she couldn’t do a thing about it. So of course to this day Mrs. X thinks Hersey pinched her fiver.”

Hersey, inwardly seething, had reacted in the sheepish manner Harold expected of her when from somewhere at the back of the group a wailing broke out.

A lady erupted as if from a football scrimmage. She looked wildly about her, spotted Hersey, and made for her.

“At last, at last!” cried the lady. “After all these years!”

It was Mrs. Fortescue.

“It was your fiver!” she gabbled. “It happened at Ashburton when I minded your bag. It was, it was!”

She turned on Harold. “It’s all your fault,” she amazingly announced. “And mine of course.” She returned to Hersey. “I’m dreadfully inquisitive. It’s a compulsion. I—I —couldn’t resist. I looked at your passport. I looked at everything. And my own handbag was open on my lap. And the train gave one of those recoupling jerks and both our handbags were upset. And I could see you,” she chattered breathlessly to Hersey, “coming back with that ghastly coffee.”

“So I shoveled things back and there was the fiver on the floor. Well, I had one and I thought it was mine and there wasn’t time to put it in my bag, so I slapped it into my dressing case. And then, when I paid my luncheon bill at Oamaru, I found my own fiver in a pocket of my bag.”

“Oh, my God!” said Hersey.

“Yes. And I couldn’t bring myself to confess. I thought you might leave your bag with me if you went to the loo and I could put it back. But you didn’t. And then, at Dunedin, I looked in my dressing case and the fiver was gone. So I thought you knew I knew.” She turned on Harold.

“You must have left two fivers on the dressing table,” she accused.

“Yes!” Hersey shouted. “You did, you did! There were two. You put a second one out to get change.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so!” Harold roared.

“I’d forgotten. You know yourself,” Hersey said with the glint of victory in her eye, “it’s like you always say, darling, I’m such a fool about money.”

On the morning before he died, Caley Bridgeman woke to the smell of canvas and the promise of a warm day. Bell-birds had begun to drop their two dawn notes into the cool air and a native wood pigeon flopped onto the ridgepole of his tent. He got up and went outside. Beech bush, emerging from the night, was threaded with mist. The voices of the nearby creek and the more distant Wainui River, in endless colloquy with stones and boulders, filled the intervals between bird song. Down beyond the river he glimpsed, through shadowy trees, the two Land-Rovers and the other tents: his wife’s; his stepson’s; David Wingfield’s, the taxidermist’s. And Solomon Gosse’s. Gosse, with whom he had fallen out.

If it came to that, he had fallen out, more or less, with all of them, but he attached little importance to the circumstance. His wife he had long ago written off as an unintelligent woman. They had nothing in common. She was not interested in bird song.

“Tint Ding,” chimed the bellbirds.

Tonight, if all went well, they would be joined on tape with the little night owl—Ninox novaeseelandiae, the ruru, the morepork.

He looked across the gully to where, on the lip of a cliff, a black beech rose high against paling stars. His gear was stowed away at its foot, well hidden, ready to be installed, and now, two hours at least before the campers stirred, was the time to do it.

He slipped down between fern, scrub and thorny undergrowth to where he had laid a rough bridge above a very deep and narrow channel. Through this channel flowed a creek which joined the Wainui below the tents. At that point the campers had dammed it up to make a swimming pool. He had not cared to join in their enterprise.

The bridge had little more than a four-foot span. It consisted of two beech logs resting on the verges and overlaid by split branches nailed across them. Twenty feet below, the creek glinted and prattled. The others had jumped the gap and goaded him into doing it himself. If they tried, he thought sourly, to do it with twenty-odd pounds of gear on their backs, they’d sing a different song.

He arrived at the tree. Everything was in order, packed in green waterproof bags and stowed in a hollow under the roots.

When he climbed the tree to place his parabolic microphone, he found bird droppings, fresh from the night visit of the morepork.

He set to work.

At half-past eleven that morning, Bridgeman came down from an exploratory visit to a patch of beech forest at the edge of the Bald Hill. A tui sang the opening phrase of “Home to Our Mountains,” finishing with a consequential splutter and a sound like that made by someone climbing through a wire fence. Close at hand, there was a sudden flutter and a minuscule shriek. Bridgeman moved with the habitual quiet of the bird watcher into a patch of scrub and pulled up short.

He was on the lip of a bank. Below him was the blond poll of David Wingfield.

“What have you done?” Bridgeman said.

The head moved slowly and tilted. They stared at each other. “What have you got in your hands?” Bridgeman said. “Open your hands.”

The taxidermist’s clever hands opened. A feathered morsel lay in his palm. Legs like twigs stuck up their clenched feet. The head dangled. It was a rifleman, tiniest and friendliest of all New Zealand birds.

“Plenty more where this came from,” said David Wingfield. “I wanted it to complete a group. No call to look like that.”

“I’ll report you.”

“Balls.”

“Think so? By God, you’re wrong. I’ll ruin you.”

“Ah, stuff it!” Wingfield got to his feet, a giant of a man.

For a moment it looked as if Bridgeman would leap down on him.

“Cut it out,” Wingfield said. “I could do you with one hand.”

He took a small box from his pocket, put the strangled rifleman in it and closed the lid.

“Gidday,” he said. He picked up his shotgun and walked away—slowly.

At noon the campers had lunch, cooked by Susan Bridgeman over the campfire. They had completed the dam, building it up with enormous turfs backed by boulders. Already the creek overflowed above its juncture with the Wainui. They had built up to the top of the banks on either side, because if snow in the back country should melt or torrential rain come over from the west coast, all the creeks and rivers would become torrents and burst through the foothills. “Isn’t he coming in for tucker?” Clive Grey asked his mother. He never used his stepfather’s name if he could avoid it.

“I imagine not,” she said. “He took enough to last a week.”

“I saw him,” Wingfield offered.

“Where?” Solomon Gosse asked.

“In the bush below the Bald Hill.”

“Good patch for tuis. Was he putting out his honey pots?”

“I didn’t ask,” Wingfield said, and laughed shortly.

Gosse looked curiously at him. “Like that, was it?” he said softly.

“Very like that,” Wingfield agreed, glancing at Susan. “I imagine he won’t be visiting us today,” he said. “Or tonight, of course.”

“Good,” said Bridgeman’s stepson loudly.

“Don’t talk like that, Clive,” said his mother automatically.

“Why not?” he asked, and glowered at her.

Solomon Gosse pulled a deprecating grimace. “This is the hottest day we’ve had,” he said. “Shan’t we be pleased with our pool!”

“I wouldn’t back the weather to last, though,” Wingfield said.

Solomon speared a sausage and quizzed it thoughtfully. “I hope it lasts,” he said.

It lasted for the rest of that day and through the following night up to eleven o’clock, when Susan Bridgeman and her lover left their secret meeting place in the bush and returned to the sleeping camp. Before they parted she said, “He wouldn’t divorce me. Not if we yelled it from the mountaintop, he wouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

The night owl, ruru, called persistently from his station in the tall beech tree. “More-pork! More-pork!”

Towards midnight came a soughing rumour through the bush. The campers woke in their sleeping bags and felt cold on their faces. They heard the tap of rain on canvas grow to a downpour. David Wingfield pulled on his gum boots and waterproof. He took a torch and went round the tents, adjusting guy ropes and making sure the drains were clear. He was a conscientious camper. His torchlight bobbed over Susan’s tent and she called out, “Is that you? Is everything O.K.?”

“Good as gold,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

Solomon Gosse stuck his head out from under his tent flap. “What a bloody bore,” he shouted, and drew it in again.

Clive Grey was the last to wake. He had suffered a recurrent nightmare concerning his mother and his stepfather. It had been more explicit than usual. His body leapt, his mouth was dry and he had what he thought of as a “fit of the jimjams.” Half a minute went by to the sound of water —streaming, he thought, out of his dream. Then he recognized it as the voice of the river, swollen so loud that it might be flowing past his tent.

Towards daybreak the rain stopped. Water dripped from the trees, clouds rolled away to the south and the dawn chorus began. Soon after nine there came tentative glimpses of the sun. David Wingfield was first up. He squelched about in gum boots and got a fire going. Soon the incense of wood smoke rose through the trees with the smell of fresh fried bacon.

After breakfast they went to look at the dam. Their pool had swollen up to the top of both banks, but the construction held. A half-grown sapling, torn from its stand, swept downstream, turning and seeming to gesticulate. Beyond their confluence the Wainui, augmented by the creek, thundered down its gorge. The campers were obliged to shout.

“Good thing,” Clive mouthed, “we don’t want to get out. Couldn’t. Marooned. Aren’t we?” He appealed to Wingfield and pointed to the waters. Wingfield made a dismissive gesture. “Not a hope,” he signalled.

“How long?” Susan asked, peering into Wingfield’s face. He shrugged and held up three and then five fingers. “My God!” she was seen to say.

Solomon Gosse patted her arm. “Doesn’t matter. Plenty of grub,” he shouted.

Susan looked at the dam where the sapling had jammed. Its limbs quivered. It rolled, heaved, thrust up a limb, dragged it under and thrust it up again.

It was a human arm with a splayed hand. Stiff as iron, it swung from side to side and pointed at nothing or everything.

Susan Bridgeman screamed. There she stood, with her eyes and mouth open. “Caley!” she screamed. “It’s Caley!”

Wingfield put his arm round her. He and Solomon Gosse stared at each other over her head.

Clive could be heard to say: “It is him, isn’t it? That’s his shirt, isn’t it? He’s drowned, isn’t he?”

As if in affirmation, Caley Bridgeman’s face, foaming and sightless, rose and sank and rose again.

Susan turned to Solomon as if to ask him if it was true. Her knees gave way and she slid to the ground. He knelt and raised her head and shoulders.

Clive made some sort of attempt to replace Solomon, but David Wingfield came across and used the authority of the physically fit. “Better out of this,” he could be heard to say. “I’ll take her.”

He lifted Susan and carried her up to her tent.

Young Clive made an uncertain attempt to follow. Solomon Gosse took him by the arm and walked him away from the river into a clearing in the bush where they could make themselves heard, but when they got there found nothing to say. Clive, looking deadly sick, trembled like a wet dog.

At last Solomon said, “I can’t b-believe this. It simply isn’t true.”

“I ought to go to her. To Mum. It ought to be me with her.”

“David will cope.”

“It ought to be me,” Clive repeated, but made no move.

Presently he said, “It can’t be left there.”

“David will cope,” Solomon repeated. It sounded like a slogan.

“David can’t walk on the troubled waters,” Clive returned on a note of hysteria. He began to laugh.

“Shut up, for God’s sake.”

“Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s so grotesque.”

“Listen.”

Voices could be heard, the snap of twigs broken underfoot and the thud of boots on soft ground. Into the clearing walked four men in single file. They had packs on their backs and guns under their arms and an air of fitting into their landscape. One was bearded, two clean-shaven, and the last had a couple of days’ growth. When they saw Solomon and Clive they all stopped.

“Hullo, there! Good morning to you,” said the leader. “We saw your tents.” He had an English voice. His clothes, well-worn, had a distinctive look which they would have retained if they had been in rags.

Solomon and Clive made some sort of response. The man looked hard at them. “Hope you don’t mind if we walk through your camp,” he said. “We’ve been deer-stalking up at the head of Welshman’s Creek but looked like getting drowned. So we’ve walked out.”

Solomon said. “He’s—we’ve both had a shock.”

Clive slid to the ground and sat doubled up, his face on his arms.

The second man went to him. The first said, “If it’s illness—I mean, this is Dr. Mark, if we can do anything.”

Solomon said, “I’ll tell you.” And did.

They did not exclaim or overreact. The least talkative of them, the one with the incipient beard, seemed to be regarded by the others as some sort of authority and it turned out, subsequently, that he was their guide: Bob Johnson, a high-country man. When Solomon had finished, this Bob, with a slight jerk of his head, invited him to move away. The doctor had sat down beside Clive, but the others formed a sort of conclave round Solomon, out of Clive’s hearing.

“What about it, Bob?” the Englishman said.

Solomon, too, appealed to the guide. “What’s so appalling,” he said, “is that it’s there. Caught up. Pinned against the dam. The arm jerking to and fro. We don’t know if we can get to it.”

“Better take a look,” said Bob Johnson.

“It’s down there, through the b-bush. If you don’t mind,” said Solomon, “I’d—I’d be glad not to go b-back just yet.”

“She’ll be right,” said Bob Johnson. “Stay where you are.”

He walked off unostentatiously, a person of authority, followed by the Englishman and their bearded mate. The Englishman’s name, they were to learn, was Miles Curtis-Vane. The other was called McHaffey. He was the local schoolmaster in the nearest township downcountry and was of a superior and, it would emerge, cantankerous disposition.

Dr. Mark came over to Solomon. “Your young friend’s pretty badly shocked,” he said. “Were they related?”

“No. It’s his stepfather. His mother’s up at the camp. She fainted.”

“Alone?”

“Dave Wingfield’s with her. He’s the other member of our lot.”

“The boy wants to go to her.”

“So do I, if she’ll see me. I wonder—would you mind taking charge? Professionally, I mean.”

“If there’s anything I can do. I think perhaps I should join the others now. Will you take the boy up? If his mother would like to see me, I’ll come.”

“Yes. All right. Yes, of course.”

“Were they very close?” Dr. Mark asked. “He and his stepfather?”

There was a longish pause. “Not very,” Solomon said. “It’s more the shock. He’s very devoted to his mother. We all are. If you don’t mind, I’ll—”

“No, of course.”

So Solomon went to Clive and they walked together to the camp.

“I reckon,” Bob Johnson said, after a hard stare at the dam, “it can be done.”

Curtis-Vane said, “They seem to have taken it for granted it’s impossible.”

“They may not have the rope for it.”

“We have.”

“That’s right.”

“By Cripie,” said Bob Johnson, “it’d give you the willies, wouldn’t it? That arm. Like a bloody semaphore.”

“Well,” said Dr. Mark, “what’s the drill, then, Bob? Do we make the offer?”

“Here’s their other bloke,” said Bob Johnson.

David Wingfield came down the bank sideways. He acknowledged Curtis-Vane’s introductions with guarded nods.

“If we can be of any use,” said Curtis-Vane, “just say the word.”

Wingfield said, “It’s going to be tough.” He had not looked at the dam but he jerked his head in that direction.

“What’s the depth?” Bob Johnson asked.

“Near enough five foot.”

“We carry rope.”

“That’ll be good.”

Some kind of reciprocity had been established. The two men withdrew together.

“What would you reckon?” Wingfield asked. “How many on the rope?”

“Five,” Bob Johnson said, “if they’re good. She’s coming down solid.”

“Sol Gosse isn’t all that fit. He’s got a crook knee.”

“The bloke with the stammer?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the young chap?”

“All right normally, but he’s — you know — shaken up.”

“Yeah,” said Bob. “Our mob’s O.K.”

“Including the pom?”

“He’s all right. Very experienced.”

“With me, we’d be five,” Wingfield said.

“For you to say.”

“She’ll be right, then.”

“One more thing,” said Bob. “What’s the action when we get him out? What do we do with him?”

They debated this. It was decided, subject to Solomon Gosse’s and Clive’s agreement, that the body should be carried to a clearing near the big beech and left there in a ground sheet from his tent. It would be a decent distance from the camp.

“We could build a bit of a windbreak round it,” Bob said.

“Sure.”

“That’s his tent, is it? Other side of the creek?”

“Yeah. Beyond the bridge.”

“I didn’t see any bridge.”

“You must have,” said Wingfield, “if you came that way. It’s where the creek runs through a twenty-foot-deep gutter. Couldn’t miss it.”

“Got swept away, it might have.”

“Has the creek flooded its banks, then? Up there?”

“No. No, that’s right. It couldn’t have carried away. What sort of bridge is it?”

Wingfield described the bridge. “Light but solid,” he said. “He made a job of it.”

“Funny,” said Bob.

“Yeah. I’ll go up and collect the ground sheet from his tent. And take a look.”

“We’d better get this job over, hadn’t we? What about the wife?”

“Sol Gosse and the boy are with her. She’s O.K.”

“Not likely to come out?”

“Not a chance.”

“Fair enough,” said Bob.

So Wingfield walked up to Caley Bridgeman’s tent to collect his ground sheet.

When he returned, the others had taken off their packs and laid out a coil of climbers’ rope. They gathered round Bob, who gave the instructions. Presently the line of five men was ready to move out into the sliding flood above the dam.

Solomon Gosse appeared. Bob suggested that he take the end of the rope, turn it round a tree trunk and stand by to pay it out or take it up as needed.

And in this way and with great difficulty Caley Bridgeman’s body was brought ashore, where Dr. Mark examined it. It was much battered. They wrapped it in the ground sheet and tied it round with twine. Solomon Gosse stood guard over it while the others changed into dry clothes.

The morning was well advanced and sunny when they carried Bridgeman through the bush to the foot of the bank below that tree which was visited nightly by a more-pork. Then they cut manuka scrub.

It was now that Bob Johnson, chopping through a stand of brushwood, came upon the wire, an insulated line, newly laid, running underneath the manuka and well hidden. They traced its course: up the bank under hanging creeper to the tree, up the tree to the tape recorder. They could see the parabolic microphone much farther up.

Wingfield said, “So that’s what he was up to.”

Solomon Gosse didn’t answer at once, and when he did, spoke more to himself than to Wingfield. “What a weird bloke he was,” he said.

“Recording bird song, was he?” asked Dr. Mark.

“That’s right.”

“A hobby?” said Curtis-Vane.

“Passion, more like. He’s got quite a reputation for it.”

Bob Johnson said, “Will we dismantle it?”

“I think perhaps we should,” said Wingfield. “It was up there through the storm. It’s a very high-class job—cost the earth. We could dry it off.”

So they climbed the tree, in single file, dismantled the microphone and recorder and handed them down from one to another. Dr. Mark, who seemed to know, said he did not think much damage had been done.

And then they laid a rough barrier of brushwood over the body and came away. When they returned to camp, Wingfield produced a bottle of whisky and enamel mugs.

They moved down to the Land-Rovers and sat on their heels, letting the whiskey glow through them.

There had been no sign of Clive or his mother.

Curtis-Vane asked if there was any guessing how long it would take for the rivers to go down and the New Zealanders said, “No way.” It could be up for days. A week, even.

“And there’s no way out?” Curtis-Vane asked. “Not if you followed down the Wainui on this side, till it empties into the Rangitata?”

“The going’s too tough. Even for one of these jobs.” Bob indicated the Land-Rovers. “You’d never make it.”

There was a long pause.

“Unpleasant,” said Curtis-Vane. “Especially for Mrs. Bridgeman.”

Another pause. “It is, indeed,” said Solomon Gosse.

“Well,” said McHaffey, seeming to relish the idea. “If it does last hot, it won’t be very nice.”

“Cut it out, Mac,” said Bob.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

Curtis-Vane said, “I’ve no idea of the required procedure in New Zealand for accidents of this sort.”

“Same as in England, I believe,” said Solomon. “Report to the police as soon as possible.”

“Inquest?”

“That’s right.”

“Yes. You’re one of us, aren’t you? A barrister?” asked Curtis-Vane.

“And solicitor. We’re both in this country.”

“Yes, I know.”

A shadow fell across the group. Young Clive had come down from the camp.

“How is she?” Wingfield and Gosse said together.

“O.K.,” said Clive. “She wants to be left. She wants me to thank you,” he said awkwardly, and glanced at Curtis-Vane, “for helping.”

“Not a bit. We were glad to do what we could.”

Another pause.

“There’s a matter,” Bob Johnson said, “that I reckon ought to be considered.”

He stood up.

Neither he nor Wingfield had spoken beyond the obligatory mutter over the first drink. Now there was in his manner something that caught them up in a stillness. He did not look at any of them but straight in front of him and at nothing.

“After we’d finished up there I went over,” he said, “to the place where the bridge had been. The bridge that you” — he indicated Wingfield — “talked about. It’s down below, jammed between rocks, half out of the stream.”

He waited. Wingfield said, “I saw it. When I collected the gear.” And he, too, got to his feet.

“Did you notice the banks? Where the ends of the bridge had rested?”

“Yes.”

Solomon Gosse scrambled up awkwardly. “Look here,” he said. “What is all this?”

“They’d overlaid the bank by a good two feet at either end. They’ve left deep ruts,” said Bob.

Dr. Mark said, “What about it, Bob? What are you trying to tell us?”

For the first time Bob looked directly at Wingfield.

“Yes,” Wingfield said. “I noticed.”

“Noticed what, for God’s sake!” Dr. Mark demanded. He had been sitting by Solomon, but now moved over to Bob Johnson. “Come on, Bob,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’d been shifted. Pushed or hauled,” said Bob. “So that the end on this bank of the creek rested on the extreme edge. It’s carried away taking some of the bank with it and scraping down the face of the gulch. You can’t miss it.”

Clive broke the long silence. “You mean — he stepped on the bridge and fell with it into the gorge? And was washed down by the flood? Is that what you mean?”

“That’s what it looks like,” said Bob Johnson.

Not deliberately, but as if by some kind of instinctive compulsion, the men had moved into their original groups. The campers: Wingfield, Gosse and Clive; the deer-stalkers: Bob, Curtis-Vane, Dr. Mark and McHaffey.

Clive suddenly shouted at Wingfield, “What are you getting at! You’re suggesting there’s something crook about this? What the hell do you mean?”

“Shut up, Clive,” said Solomon mildly.

“I won’t bloody shut up. If there’s something wrong I’ve a right to know what it is. She’s my mother and he was—” He caught himself. “If there’s something funny about this,” he said, “we’ve a right to know. Is there something funny?” he demanded. “Come on. Is there?”

Wingfield said, “O.K. You’ve heard what’s been suggested. If the bridge was deliberately moved—manhandled —the police will want to know who did it and why. And I’d have thought,” added Wingfield, “you’d want to know yourself.”

Clive glared at him. His face reddened and his mouth trembled. He broke out again: “Want to know! Haven’t I said I want to know! What the hell are you trying to get at!”

Dr. Mark said, “The truth, presumably.”

“Exactly,” said Wingfield.

“Ah, stuff it,” said Clive. “Like your bloody birds,” he added, and gave a snort of miserable laughter.

“What can you mean?” Curtis-Vane wondered.

“I’m a taxidermist,” said Wingfield.

“It was a flash of wit,” said Dr. Mark.

“I see.”

“You all think you’re bloody clever,” Clive began at the top of his voice, and stopped short. His mother had come through the trees and into the clearing.

She was lovely enough, always, to make an impressive entrance and would have been in sackcloth and ashes if she had taken it into her head to wear them. Now, in her camper’s gear with a scarf round her head, she might have been ready for some lucky press photographer.

“Clive darling,” she said, “what’s the matter? I heard you shouting.” Without waiting for his answer, she looked at the deer-stalkers, seemed to settle for Curtis-Vane, and offered her hand. “You’ve been very kind,” she said. “All of you.”

“We’re all very sorry,” he said.

“There’s something more, isn’t there? What is it?”

Her own men were tongue-tied. Clive, still fuming, merely glowered. Wingfield looked uncomfortable and Solomon Gosse seemed to hover on the edge of utterance and then draw back.

“Please tell me,” she said, and turned to Dr. Mark. “Are you the doctor?” she asked.

Somehow, among them, they did tell her. She turned very white but was perfectly composed.

“I see,” she said. “You think one of us laid a trap for my husband. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Curtis-Vane said, “Not exactly that.”

“No?”

“No. It’s just that Bob Johnson here and Wingfield do think there’s been some interference.”

“That sounds like another way of saying the same thing.”

Solomon Gosse said. “Sue, if it has happened—”

“And it has,” said Wingfield.

“—it may well have b-been some gang of yobs. They do get out into the hills, you know. Shooting the b-birds. Wounding deer. Vandals.”

“That’s right,” said Bob Johnson.

“Yes,” she said, grasping at it. “Yes, of course. It may be that.”

“The point is,” said Bob, “whether something ought to be done about it.”

“Like?”

“Reporting it, Mrs. Bridgeman.”

“Who to?” Nobody answered. “Report it where?”

“To the police,” said Bob Johnson flatly.

“Oh no! No!”

“It needn’t worry you, Mrs. Bridgeman. This is a national park. A reserve. We want to crack down on these characters.”

Dr. Mark said, “Did any of you see or hear anybody about the place?” Nobody answered.

“They’d keep clear of the tents,” said Clive at last. “Those blokes would.”

“You know,” Curtis-Vane said, “I don’t think this is any of our business. I think we’d better take ourselves off.”

“No!” Susan Bridgeman said. “I want to know if you believe this about vandals.” She looked at the deer-stalkers. “Or will you go away thinking one of us laid a trap for my husband? Might one of you go to the police and say so? Does it mean that?” She turned on Dr. Mark. “Does it?”

Solomon said, “Susan, my dear, no,” and took her arm.

“I want an answer.”

Dr. Mark looked at his hands. “I can only speak for myself,” he said. “I would need to have something much more positive before coming to any decision.”

“And if you go away, what will you all do? I can tell you. Talk and talk and talk.” She turned on her own men. “And so, I suppose, will we. Or won’t we? And if we’re penned up here for days and days and he’s up there, wherever you’ve put him, not buried, not—”

She clenched her hands and jerked to and fro, beating the ground with her foot like a performer in a rock group. Her face crumpled. She turned blindly to Clive.

“I won’t,” she said. “I won’t break down. Why should I? I won’t.”

He put his arms round her. “Don’t you, Mum,” he muttered. “You’ll be all right. It’s going to be all right.”

Curtis-Vane said, “How about it?” and the deer-stalkers began to collect their gear.

“No!” said David Wingfield loudly. “No! I reckon we’ve got to thrash it out and you lot had better hear it.”

“We’ll only b-bitch it all up and it’ll get out of hand,” Solomon objected.

“No, it won’t,” Clive shouted. “Dave’s right. Get it sorted out like they would at an inquest. Yeah! That’s right. Make it an inquest. We’ve got a couple of lawyers, haven’t we? They can keep it in order, can’t they? Well, can’t they?”

Solomon and Curtis-Vane exchanged glances. “I really don’t think—” Curtis-Vane began, when unexpectedly McHaffey cut in.

“I’m in favour,” he said importantly. “We’ll be called on to give an account of the recovery of the body and that could lead to quite a lot of questions. How I look at it.”

“Use your loaf, Mac,” said Bob. “All you have to say is what you know. Facts. All the same,” he said, “if it’ll help to clear up the picture, I’m not against the suggestion. What about you, Doc?”

“At the inquest I’ll be asked to speak as to” — Dr. Mark glanced at Susan — “as to the medical findings. I’ve no objection to giving them now, but I can’t think that it can help in any way.”

“Well,” said Bob Johnson, “it looks like there’s no objections. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of talk and it might as well be kept in order.” He looked round. “Are there any objections?” he asked. “Mrs. Bridgeman?”

She had got herself under control. She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and said, “None.”

“Fair enough,” said Bob. “All right. I propose we appoint Mr. Curtis-Vane as—I don’t know whether chairman’s the right thing, but — well—”

“How about coroner?” Solomon suggested, and it would have been hard to say whether he spoke ironically or not.

“Well, C.-V.,” said Dr. Mark, “what do you say about it?”

“I don’t know what to say, and that’s the truth. I — it’s an extraordinary suggestion,” said Curtis-Vane, and rubbed his head. “Your findings, if indeed you arrive at any, would, of course, have no relevance in any legal proceedings that might follow.”

“Precisely,” said Solomon.

“We appreciate that,” said Bob.

McHaffey had gone into a sulk and said nothing.

“I second the proposal,” said Wingfield.

“Any further objections?” asked Bob.

None, it appeared.

“Good. It’s over to Mr. Curtis-Vane.”

“My dear Bob,” said Curtis-Vane, “what’s over to me, for pity’s sake?”

“Set up the program. How we function, like.”

Curtis-Vane and Solomon Gosse stared at each other. “Rather you than me,” said Solomon dryly.

“I suppose,” Curtis-Vane said dubiously, “if it meets with general approval, we could consult about procedure?”

“Fair go,” said Bob and Wingfield together, and Dr. Mark said, “By all means. Leave it to the legal minds.”

McHaffey raised his eyebrows and continued to huff.

It was agreed that they should break up: the deer-stalkers would move downstream to a sheltered glade, where they would get their own food and spend the night in pup tents; Susan Bridgeman and her three would return to camp. They would all meet again, in the campers’ large communal tent, after an early meal.

When they had withdrawn, Curtis-Vane said, “That young man — the son — is behaving very oddly.”

Dr. Mark said, “Oedipus complex, if ever I saw it. Or Hamlet, which is much the same thing.”

There was a trestle table in the tent and on either side of it the campers had knocked together two green-wood benches of great discomfort. These were made more tolerable by the introduction of bush mattresses—scrim ticking filled with brushwood and dry fern.

An acetylene lamp had been placed in readiness halfway down the table, but at the time the company assembled there was still enough daylight to serve.

At the head of the table was a folding camp stool for Curtis-Vane, and at the foot, a canvas chair for Susan Bridgeman. Without any discussion, the rest seated themselves in their groups: Wingfield, Clive and Solomon on one side; Bob Johnson, Dr. Mark and McHaffey on the other.

There was no pretence at conversation. They waited for Curtis-Vane.

He said, “Yes, well. Gosse and I have talked this over. It seemed to us that the first thing we must do is to define the purpose of the discussion. We have arrived at this conclusion: We hope to determine whether Mr. Caley Bridgeman’s death was brought about by accident or by malpractice. To this end we propose to examine the circumstances preceding his death. In order to keep the proceedings as orderly as possible, Gosse suggests that I lead the inquiry. He also feels that as a member of the camping party, he himself cannot, with propriety, act with me. We both think that statements should be given without interruption and that questions arising out of them should be put with the same decorum. Are there any objections?” He waited. “No?” he said. “Then I’ll proceed.”

He took a pad of writing paper from his pocket, laid a pen beside it and put on his spectacles. It was remarkable how vividly he had established a courtroom atmosphere. One almost saw a wig on his neatly groomed head.

“I would suggest,” he said, “that the members of my own party”—he turned to his left—“may be said to enact, however informally, the function of a coroner’s jury.”

Dr. Mark pulled a deprecating grimace, Bob Johnson looked wooden and McHaffey self-important.

“And I, if you like, an ersatz coroner,” Curtis-Vane concluded. “In which capacity I put my first question. When was Mr. Bridgeman last seen by his fellow campers? Mrs. Bridgeman? Would you tell us?”

“I’m not sure, exactly,” she said. “The day he moved to his tent—that was three days ago—I saw him leave the camp. It was in the morning.”

“Thank you. Why did he make this move?”

“To record native bird song. He said it was too noisy down here.”

“Ah, yes. And was it after he moved that he rigged the recording gear in the tree?”

She stared at him. “Which tree?” she said at last.

Solomon Gosse said, “Across the creek from his tent, Sue. The big beech tree.”

“Oh. I didn’t know,” she said faintly.

Wingfield cut in. “Can I say something? Bridgeman was very cagey about recording. Because of people getting curious and butting in. It’d got to be a bit of an obsession.”

“Ah, yes. Mrs. Bridgeman, are you sure you’re up to this? I’m afraid—”

“Perfectly sure,” she said loudly. She was ashen white.

Curtis-Vane glanced at Dr. Mark. “If you’re quite sure. Shall we go on, then?” he said. “Mr. Gosse?”

Solomon said he, too, had watched Bridgeman take his final load away from the camp and had not seen him again. Clive, in turn, gave a similar account.

Curtis-Vane asked, “Did he give any indication of his plans?”

“Not to me,” said Gosse. “I wasn’t in his good b-books, I’m afraid.”

“No?”

“No. He’d left some of his gear on the ground and I stumbled over it. I’ve got a dicky knee. I didn’t do any harm, b-but he wasn’t amused.”

David Wingfield said, “He was like that. It didn’t amount to anything.”

“What about you, Mr. Wingfield? You saw him leave, did you?”

“Yes. Without comment.”

Curtis-Vane was writing. “So you are all agreed that this was the last time any of you saw him?”

Clive said, “Here! Hold on. You saw him again, Dave. You know. Yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Solomon agreed. “You told us at lunch, Dave.”

“So I did. I’d forgotten. I ran across him—or rather he ran across me—below the Bald Hill.”

“What were you doing up there?” Curtis-Vane asked pleasantly.

“My own brand of bird-watching. As I told you, I’m a taxidermist.”

“And did you have any talk with him?”

“Not to mention. It didn’t amount to anything.”

His friends shifted slightly on their uneasy bench.

“Any questions?” asked Curtis-Vane.

None. They discussed the bridge. It had been built some three weeks before and was light but strong. It was agreed among the men that it had been shifted and that it would be just possible for one man to lever or push it into the lethal position that was indicated by the state of the ground. Bob Johnson added that he thought the bank might have been dug back underneath the bridge. At this point McHaffey was aroused. He said loftily, “I am not prepared to give an opinion. I should require a closer inspection. But there’s a point that has been overlooked, Mr. Chairman,” he added with considerable relish. “Has anything been done about footprints?”

They gazed at him.

“About footprints?” Curtis-Vane wondered. “There’s scarcely been time, has there?”

“I’m not conversant with the correct procedure,” McHaffey haughtily acknowledged. “I should have to look it up. But I do know they come into it early on or they go off colour. It requires plaster of Paris.”

Dr. Mark coughed. Curtis-Vane’s hand trembled. He blew his nose. Gosse and Wingfield gazed resignedly at McHaffey. Bob Johnson turned upon him. “Cut it out, Mac,” he said wearily, and cast up his eyes.

Curtis-Vane said insecurely, “I’m afraid plaster of Paris is not at the moment available. Mr. Wingfield, on your return to camp, did you cross by the bridge?”

“I didn’t use the bridge. You can take it on a jump. He built it because of carrying his gear to and fro. It was in place.”

“Anybody else see it later in the day?”

“I did,” said Clive loudly. As usual, his manner was hostile and he seemed to be on the edge of some sort of demonstration. He looked miserable. He said that yesterday morning he had gone for a walk through the bush and up the creek without crossing it. The bridge had been in position. He had returned at midday, passing through a patch of bush close to the giant beech. He had not noticed the recording gear in the tree.

“I looked down at the ground,” he said, and stared at his mother, “not up.”

This was said in such an odd manner that it seemed to invite comment. Curtis-Vane asked casually, as a barrister might at a tricky point of cross-examination: “Was there something remarkable about the ground?”

Silence. Curtis-Vane looked up. Clive’s hand was in his pocket. He withdrew it. The gesture was reminiscent of a conjurer’s: a square of magenta-and-green silk had been produced.

“Only this,” Clive said, as if the words choked him. “On the ground. In the bush behind the tree.”

His mother’s hand had moved, but she checked it and an uneven blush flooded her face. “Is that where it was!” she said. “It must have caught in the bushes when I walked up there the other day. Thank you, Clive.”

He opened his hand and the scarf dropped on the table. “It was on the ground,” he said, “on a bed of cut fern.”

“It would be right, then,” Curtis-Vane asked, “to say that yesterday morning when Mr. Wingfield met Mr. Bridgeman below the Bald Hill, you were taking your walk through the bush?”

“Yes,” said Clive.

“How d’you know that?” Wingfield demanded.

“I heard you. I was quite close.”

“Rot.”

“Well—not you so much as him. Shouting. He said he’d ruin you,” said Clive.

Solomon Gosse intervened. “May I speak? Only to say that it’s important for you all to know that B-B-Bridgeman habitually b-behaved in a most intemperate manner. He would fly into a rage over a chipped saucer.”

“Thank you,” said Wingfield.

Curtis-Vane said, “Why was he cross with you, Mr. Wingfield?”

“He took exception to my work.”

“Taxidermy?” asked Dr. Mark.

“Yes. The bird aspect.”

“I may be wrong,” McHaffey said, and clearly considered it unlikely, “but I thought we’d met to determine when the deceased was last seen alive.”

“And you are perfectly right,” Curtis-Vane assured him. “I’ll put the question. Did any of you see Mr. Bridgeman after noon yesterday?” He waited and had no reply. “Then I’ve a suggestion to make. If he was alive last evening there’s a chance of proving it. You said when we found the apparatus in the tree that he was determined to record the call of the morepork. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Solomon. “It comes to that tree every night.”

“If, then, there is a recording of the morepork, he had switched the recorder on. If there is no recording, of course nothing is proved. It might simply mean that for some reason he didn’t make one. Can any of you remember if the morepork called last night? And when?”

“I do. I heard it. Before the storm blew up,” said Clive. “I was reading in bed by torchlight. It was about ten o’clock. It went on for some time and another one, further away, answered it.”

“In your opinion,” Curtis-Vane asked the deer-stalkers, “should we hear the recording—if there is one?”

Susan Bridgeman said, “I would rather it wasn’t played.’

“But why?”

“It — it would be — painful. He always announced his recordings. He gave the date and place and the scientific name. He did that before he set the thing up. To hear his voice — I — I couldn’t bear it.”

“You needn’t listen,” said her son brutally.

Solomon Gosse said, “If Susan feels like that about it, I don’t think we should play it.”

Wingfield said, “But I don’t see—” and stopped short. “All right, then,” he said. “You needn’t listen, Sue. You can go along to your tent, can’t you?” And to Curtis-Vane: “I’ll get the recorder.”

McHaffey said, “Point of order, Mr. Chairman. The equipment should be handled by a neutral agent.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Wingfield exclaimed.

“I reckon he’s right, though,” said Bob Johnson.

Curtis-Vane asked Susan Bridgeman, very formally, if she would prefer to leave them.

“No. I don’t know. If you must do it—” she said, and made no move.

“I don’t think we’ve any right to play it if you don’t want us to,” Solomon said.

“That,” said McHaffey pleasurably, “is a legal point. I should have to—”

“Mr. McHaffey,” said Curtis-Vane, “there’s nothing ‘legal’ about these proceedings. They are completely informal. If Mrs. Bridgeman does not wish us to play the record, we shall, of course, not play it.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” said McHaffey, in high dudgeon. “That is your ruling. We shall draw our own conclusions. Personally, I consider Mrs. Bridgeman’s attitude surprising. However—”

“Oh!” she burst out. “Play it, play it, play it. Who cares! I don’t. Play it.”

So Bob Johnson fetched the tape recorder. He put it on the table. “It may have got damaged in the storm,” he said. “But it looks O.K. He’d rigged a bit of a waterproof shelter over it. Anyone familiar with the type?”

Dr. Mark said, “It’s a superb model. With that parabolic mike, it’d pick up a whisper at ten yards. More than I could ever afford, but I think I understand it.”

“Over to you, then, Doc.”

It was remarkable how the tension following Susan Bridgeman’s behaviour was relaxed by the male homage paid to a complicated mechanism. Even Clive, in his private fury, whatever it was, watched the opening up of the recorder. Wingfield leaned over the table to get a better view. Only Solomon remembered the woman and went to sit beside her. She paid no attention.

“The tape’s run out,” said Dr. Mark. “That looks promising. One moment; I’ll rewind it.”

There broke out the manic gibber of a reversed tape played at speed. This was followed by intervals punctuated with sharp dots of sound and another outburst of gibberish.

“Now,” said Dr. Mark.

And Caley Bridgeman’s voice, loud and pedantic, filled the tent.

“Ninox novaeseelandiae. Ruru. Commonly known as Morepork. Tenth January, 1977. Ten-twelve p.m. Beech bush. Parson’s Nose Range. Southern Alps. Regarded by the Maori people as a harbinger of death.”

A pause. The tape slipped quietly from one spool to the other.

“More-pork!”

Startling and clear as if the owl called from the ridgepole, the second note a minor step up from the first. Then a distant answer. The call and answer were repeated at irregular intervals and then ceased. The listeners waited for perhaps half a minute and then stirred.

“Very successful,” said Dr. Mark. “Lovely sound.”

“But are you sure? Darling, you swear you’re sure?”

It was Susan Bridgeman. They turned, startled, to look at her. She had got to her feet. Her teeth were closed over the knuckles of her right hand. “No!” she whispered. “No, no.”

Solomon Gosse lunged across the table, but the tape was out of his reach and his own voice mocked him.

“Of course I’m sure, my darling. It’s foolproof. He’ll go down with the b-b-b-bridge.”