Appleby on Ararat (12 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s wounded!” said Diana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty,” said Diana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No good cutting out. The idea’s too fascinating. And I believe myself, fantastic though it seems, that Hailstone’s right. Of course you know that he’s absolutely first-class” – Dunchue squared himself, suddenly the eternal assistant – “and, in fact, nobody can touch him since old Sempel died. So it seems worth hanging on. But he’s a rum chap – genius often is.” He reached for the decanter and drank again. “I sometimes think it’s not just natural laziness with him, nor yet the climate. Look how he makes these black cattle keep this place. His idleness is an inhibition of some sort – psychologist’s stuff.” He drained his glass. “Like drink; something to do with your mother or your nurse.”

Again there was a silence. Appleby, staring into the jungle, chose between a number of feelers he wished to put out. “Those black cattle,” he said; “you don’t seem to care for them?”

“Hate all blacks – intensely boring. Hate the tropics – intensely boring too.”

“But surely–” Appleby checked himself. “And Hailstone?”

“Same. Hates natives. Odd that he can manage them.”

“Would you say that he hates blacks – of any sort – enough to hit a stray one on the head?”

“Might kick him on the – on the behind.” Dunchue looked puzzled, and Appleby wondered if the Unumunu affair had not yet pierced the alcoholic fog around him. “And I daresay might kill a man, might Hailstone. Has claws, you know, great Tabby that he seems. Absolutely first-class.” Dunchue was becoming discernibly drunker.

“Kill a man over what? Money, women, political passion?”

“Good lord, no.” Dunchue laughed the high, strained laugh of a man with a dry tongue and throat. “You don’t know the old boy at all.” He stopped laughing and his face clouded with a sort of dull suspicion. “What’s all this, anyway? You talk like a damned policeman.”

“As it happens, I am. And a man has been killed on the island. I’m going to find out how, even if it means stretching my warrant to cover a Crown Colony.”

“Crown Colony? I’m not sure the island isn’t American.” Dunchue’s interest was now perfunctory. “There’s a British Governor somewhere about, I believe, but I’m not sure if he asks us to his levees. A man killed? Likely enough. Filthy place all round.”

Diana was leaning over the veranda rail, as if scarcely listening to the talk. But now she turned round and looked full at Dunchue. “Did you know Sir Ponto Unumunu?” she asked gravely. “He was an – an anthropologist too.”

“I’m not an anthropologist. I’m an archaeologist. There’s a difference.” He scrubbed at his eyes, seemed to look at Diana for the first time. “Hullo! I say, will you have a drink? Got one? Don’t think me meaning to be rude. Touch of fever the other day – leaves one a bit vague. Is that the man they’ve killed – Sir–?”

“Ponto Unumunu.”

“No, never heard of him. Anthropologist? Sounds queer.” Dunchue picked up the decanter and then thought better of it. “Hope you’ll stay and lunch.”

Appleby nodded cheerfully. “May we – and ask questions? I would like to know a lot about Heaven and his pub.”

“Nasty chap.” Dunchue stared inattentively at his visitors for some seconds. “But I
have
heard of him – Unumunu, I mean. Not as any sort of scientist, though, and that put me off. Heaven, of course – we can tell you something about him. Only I have heard of this Unumunu, but I can’t think where.” He set down his glass, and with the action turned instantaneously glum. “Not long ago.” With his hair falling over one eye he stared at them in lethargic misery. “My mind’s going.” He began to cry.

Diana looked uncomfortable; Appleby, whom, of professional habit, the vagaries of human conduct had little power to disconcert, looked placidly into distance. And from somewhere in the interior of the bungalow came an ironical snuffle which was undoubtedly made by George.

“John” – Diana spoke cautiously across the blubbering man – “ought we just to drift off?”

He shook his head and waited. “Unumunu,” he said presently. “An odd name. One would hardly forget it.” He paused again. “And he was an odd chap too.” He continued to talk placidly.

Below them blue sea lapped a beach which shimmered and vibrated in the sun; George had reappeared and sunk, all tongue and pant, beneath a chair; from inside came a slow chink of silver, as of a table being very slowly laid. Dunchue’s eyes, still wet with tears, closed; his mouth fell open with a sudden, helpless, repulsive jerk; his body slumped as he sat. For some moments Appleby talked softly on; then he stood up. “I’m going to have a look round. Just mind the cradle.” He slipped from the veranda into the half-light of the house.

Two native boys were working in a long narrow living room which ran the length of the bungalow; they looked at him incuriously and without interrupting the slow and graceful rhythm with which they were preparing for a meal. The scanty furniture was of laminated and cellulosed wood: pleasing stuff from Finland or Sweden which would unscrew and pack into a small crate; there was a gramophone with a bust of Beethoven; the only other ornament stood on a desk and was a great bronze bowl of evident antiquity, embossed with dragons in a swirl of foliage. Appleby collated this mentally with remembered exhibits in the British Museum and turned to the books which covered one of the end walls. Most were in German but many were in English; there were others in what was discernibly a variety of Scandinavian languages; there was a big collection of scientific papers in Dutch. Everything spoke of cultures thousands of miles away; the room was an enigma public and exposed; all this would have been evident the moment he was invited inside.

The boys, chattering softly, had left the room and Appleby risked a rapid rummage at the desk. One deep drawer held a series of bound notebooks, and every one appeared filled from cover to cover with neat archaeological notes and sketches. These Appleby examined at dangerous length, though a glance was sufficient to show that they answered to the general atmosphere of the room. The story was Nordic all the way. It was the world of the Sagas that had been transported to this lazy, faintly sticky tropical isle.

The other drawers were locked – all save a shallow one at the top. Here he paused over a curiously shaped pipe and a plain hermetically-sealed tin. There was a slither behind him and he slid the drawer back just as one of the boys returned to the room. A banal, too familiar business this of furtive search; he slipped back to the veranda and took a deep breath of hot, still air.

Dunchue was still a comatose mess; Diana was a sort of answering study in healthy sleepiness; only George had revived – his chin a good inch from the floor and his moist nose, while twitching distaste of a fly, steadily directed down the bungalow path with its little bed of flowers. And presently round a corner came Mr Hailstone’s comfortable umbrella, tortoise-like as before and the focus for a swirling coronal of minute, brilliantly plumaged birds. The native boys ran out and took the umbrella exactly as Hailstone passed into the shade. He removed his blue-tinted glasses; caught sight of the visitors and returned them to his nose as if for more careful scrutiny; removed the spotless panama instead. “How do you do?” he said. “I hope George has been doing the honours of this simple place.” He glanced at his assistant. “And, of course, Dunchue too.”