Appleby on Ararat (18 page)

Dunchue listened to a recital of these preparations with what, had he known it, Appleby analysed as a mixture of malice and genuine satisfaction. And he gave his bad news reluctantly. There it was. These noisy intruders had made their second kill. If somebody from the hotel would come along and have a look they could then arrange for bearers to bring the body in. Perhaps Appleby himself would come. At this Appleby scratched his chin and suggested that quite a number of people should go.

Things had progressed so far when a blob of variegated colour on the beach heralded the arrival of the more ponderous Hailstone and the attendant George. Both were decently subdued. One almost expected the gay umbrella to have trimmings in black crepe.

“A shocking thing,” said Hailstone. “We sympathise with you all.” He patted George. “But, of course, with Mrs Heaven first of all. I think I should go to her at once. George, come.”

It was explained that Mrs Heaven had disappeared. When this had been discovered just before dawn Jenner, with considerable gallantry, had ventured all round the environs of the hotel in search of her: with Mudge and Colonel Glover he was out on a wider sweep now. Hailstone looked anxious. “A woman!” he said; “this is more terrible still.”

Miss Busst offered an inarticulate noise; several female guests began to weep; Mr Rumsby, who had unprecedentedly got his own breakfast, called out urgently to know if anyone were preparing luncheon. And then a party was arranged to go and inspect the late proprietor of the hotel. Dunchue had a shotgun and remained to guard the majority of the agitated guests. Hailstone had an ancient and ineffective looking revolver; this he offered to Appleby, who courteously declined to relieve him of it; the two set off together with a little crowd behind them.

For once Hailstone contrived to combine pedestrianism and conversation. “I am afraid,” he said, “that we must both cry
peccavi
. I confess that over your black friend Unumunu I was sceptical; it did not appear to me that any natives in these parts were likely to commit such an act. And I think you were sceptical too. But now – well, the thing seems beyond argument.”

The blue glasses turned sharply on Appleby. And Appleby replied with faint reluctance. “Yes, there can be no doubt of it.”

“I tell you frankly that I think there is no hope for that wretched woman. A first crime was a surprise, and I think that only his being a black man brought it about. But a kill quickly influences these Polynesian people for the worse; if they taste blood in a place once they will go for it there again.”

Appleby nodded. “You speak,” he said ingenuously, “as if you had some interest in the local anthropology after all.”

Hailstone laughed a still decently-muted laugh. “Nothing but a little casual reading. Dunchue knows more than I do, and he knows little enough. Enough, perhaps, to strike up some sort of possible relations with these invaders – nothing more.”

“Ah,” said Appleby.

“Here is Heaven dead and his wife no doubt dead or next to dead too. You and I will not waste sympathy on them. Their trade with these skulkers and escapists was scarcely a noble one. What we must consider is the practical problem.”

“Exactly. In fact I have been considering it for some time.”

Again Hailstone glanced quickly at his companion. But Appleby’s eye was mildly on the dignified forward wobble of George. “All these people will almost certainly want to leave, and one can scarcely blame them. They have nothing to tie them to the island.”

“Unlike yourself, Mr Hailstone.”

“Quite so. We couldn’t, of course, leave the dig, and we must take our chance. It is a thousand pities that the wireless is out of order. Have you any skill with such things?”

“None at all, I am afraid.”

“A pity again. It really seems necessary to call for help. Fortunately Dunchue has reminded me of something I had forgotten. Our trader is not positively engaged to look in on us for some months. But now we remember that the skipper said something which makes it possible that it will be back quite soon. And it could take everybody away.”

“Well, nothing could be better than that.”

“Quite so.” Again Appleby was aware of a swift scrutiny. “Only there is one thing that troubles me, and with your acuteness you will at once guess what it is.”

Appleby shook his head. “I find any guessing peculiarly difficult here: no doubt because the environment is wholly strange to me. I must confess that my only thought at present is to get back to London and my own job.”

Hailstone nodded approvingly. “You will know that I sympathise. To be away from one’s work is wretched.”

They walked for a few moments in silence, as if digesting these improving sentiments.

“But at a venture,” continued Appleby, “I should say that, with the interests of the dig in mind, you don’t want any sort of fuss.”

“Exactly,” said Hailstone, and paused for a breather. George, pausing too, wagged his tail. Things were going with a wonderful unanimity. “Exactly. But it cannot be denied that from an official point of view something very serious has occurred. And when our friends start spreading it about–”

“I think they will be discreet. After all, their position is rather delicate – ridiculous, indeed. They are pitched with their stamps and diamonds out of their earthly paradise and back into a jarring world. I don’t think they’ll talk.”

“But,” said Hailstone – and he resumed his walk – “there are your companions and yourself.”

Appleby appeared to consider. “I believe that Colonel Glover and I could use a little influence which would ensure that the island should not be publicised. Of course we couldn’t prevent an enquiry – at least I don’t
think
we could – but we could see that it would not go beyond official circles. I think I can undertake that, even if the jurisdiction here should prove to be American. If you feel it would help, that is.”

“My dear sir, I am exceedingly grateful. Perhaps we are discussing the matter prematurely. But you know how afraid I am of unwelcome notoriety.”

“I do, indeed.”

They walked on in silence. Appleby glanced at their two shortening shadows on the sand. Neither at all knowing where he had the other. Bluff? Double bluff? It was like a sort of peripatetic poker.

“The body is round this hummock,” said Hailstone. “One of my boys is with it, though I fear sadly scared. Ah! I hadn’t thought the ants would be so quick.”

Heaven’s body sprawled on its face. A spear had been thrust through his back and still stuck there. All his clothes had been wrenched off and had vanished. As he had lain dying or dead there had been some ugly writhing at his neck and limbs. Now the ants were eating him. It was, in its comparatively simple way, a peculiarly horrible death.

Appleby looked at the body with a sort of mild attention, undisturbed by the exclamations of the men behind him. He turned to Hailstone. “I wonder how they got him? I last saw him at the hotel not very long before the raid. We had a conversation – it seems oddly inappropriate now – about gold and lead. Dear, dear.”

“Gold and lead?” Hailstone was startled.

“A futile literary conversation,” said Appleby easily. “He was, you know, by way of being aesthetically inclined. Yes, about the golden and leaden caskets in
The Merchant of Venice
. And now, what with all these ants, he could do with a leaden casket himself. Is Hoppo with us? Ah, yes. Well, I suggest that a quick burial will be the decent and least troublesome thing. Our efforts should be directed to making sure about his wife. They may have carried her off – perhaps only to some other part of the island. With at least a couple of firearms I think we might risk a search-party. Don’t you think?” And Appleby, practical and level-headed, but neither very forceful nor very concerned, looked enquiringly at Hailstone.

“I think you are quite right.” Hailstone nodded almost briskly. “It is a great comfort to have someone who always gets an accurate grasp of an affair.” He turned and spoke to the waiting boy.

They buried Heaven. In half-an-hour he had vanished. The pace of things, Appleby thought, was improving…if it could be put that way. He walked down to the sea. Here within the reefs the waves were very small and lapping, they followed one another almost secretly to the shore. Fish darted – so tiny that they could loop and wheel in the utmost shallows; a crab, like some magically liberated shadow, scuttled from stone to sheltering stone. The tiny drag of the receding wavelets shifted the sand, raised and caught into its gyres a myriad all-but-ultimate particles of matter, lost itself in contrary or transverse impulsions which carried on the ceaseless motion. It was like a reading in Bergson: change and again change, without anything that did the changing. Heaven, Hailstone and Heraclitus, Appleby said to himself – and looked up to see this world of continual flux declaring and intensifying itself on the beaches. He watched idly, his mind a thin trickle of philosophers’ clichés, unaware of any practical significance in what he saw. The air was still about him but in the middle-distance Hailstone’s trousers, George’s fleece were faintly stirring, a breeze more stealthy than the lapping, secret waves was scurrying over the sands, a slurring movement as swift and close-gliding as a furtive caress. And on the sands those strange fibrous balls with which Diana played had still been piling; they were there in thousands and millions now, as if all the Sirens had played at tip-and-run through all the ages and every hit had been out of bounds. And the low-creeping wind thrust at them with exploratory fingers, turned them over, rolled them one against another in an endless complication of cannons, tentatively tossed them a few inches in air. The smaller of the light, dun spheres began to hop on the beach – clumsily, like sand-lice or like tiddlywinks inexpertly flipped. And far down the beach something which Appleby had taken for a boulder stirred and fluttered, raised a sudden dark pennon which flapped in air. He shouted. And everyone was hurrying that way.

Mrs Heaven’s dark skirt, water-stained, lay on the sand; in a drained rock pool was a soggy shift; yards out on the almost calm but obscurely hurrying water a boot grotesquely floated. Hailstone lumbered up, pointed, exclaimed. In the sand close by was a great bold gash such as the blunt knife of a giant might have made. Appleby stared, momentarily puzzled. Hailstone turned to him. “Canoe.” He measured the gash with his eye. “A big one.”

Appleby nodded. “It must be big if they think nothing of covering a hundred miles.” He looked up at the sky, where a hue of copper was spreading out mysteriously from the zenith. “Poor lady; she’s going to have a rough voyage, too. A pity she couldn’t have had Miss Busst to keep her company.” He looked out to sea, decently troubled. “The sooner your trader arrives the better. And it rather complicates things, does it not, if she has been carried away alive. We can’t just try to hush up the whole thing. She must be hunted for.”

Hailstone nodded – a shade reluctantly, as if this aspect of the matter had not struck him. “Of course.” He looked at his watch. “Would it be any use asking you back to lunch?”

“I think not; I must try to get things better organised at the hotel. But this afternoon – and if this coming storm doesn’t prevent me – I shall stroll over.” Appleby paused – paused until Hailstone’s eye was drawn to him. Then he smiled a deliberately enigmatic smile. “Because you and I must have another little talk.”

“By all means.” The man was startled.

“They won’t keep her alive long, I imagine. Live-stock for the voyage, as likely as not.”

Hailstone nodded, looking slightly shocked.

“So why, after all, make a fuss? I think we can arrange something together.” And Appleby gave a little grin – as vicious as he could manage – and turned back towards the hotel.

Colonel Glover put down his glass of lemon water. “How did you begin to suspect the truth?”

Appleby and his companions, together with Sir Mervyn Poulish, were eating a scrap luncheon on a corner of the veranda. Mudge was waiting on them. And from within came the agitated and querulous voices of the other guests.

“The truth? I haven’t arrived there yet.” Appleby smiled grimly. “And we may all be dead – and in the tummies of Dunchue’s imaginary cannibals – before I do.”

Mr Hoppo took a very deliberate bite at a sandwich. He munched. “Dunchue?” he said. “Dunchue rather than Hailstone?”

“Decidedly. Dunchue is the leader. Hailstone, you know, is a Eurasian; and Dunchue regards him as of an inferior race. He told him so more or less to my face. They’re a good team, but that they love each other I wouldn’t be prepared to say.”

Glover was looking doubtful. “A Eurasian? I can hardly believe–”

“He never takes those blue glasses off. Once he began to do so when Diana and I were at the bungalow, but when he saw us he just took off his panama instead. But he
did
take them off right at the beginning and to get a good look at me on the beach. I was puzzled at once. There was a sort of betwixt-and-betweenness about him, if you know what I mean. And then I rifled his desk and found an opium pipe and what was almost certainly a tin of opium. That settled it. He must have lived in England for years, but a Eurasian he is. That, however, is a detail. I got on the right trail when we first met, and in the simplest way. It has been among my chief anxieties to reflect that he must have reckoned on my doing so. You see, on an island in the middle of nowhere an anthropologist is murdered, and the next thing that happens is that a fellow of the same or kindred species turns up. It is an amazing coincidence, and perhaps our bungalow friends showed a poor judgment in trying, with their savages and whatnot, to carry it off.”

Miss Curricle turned a faintly disapproving eye from Diana’s coco-cola to Appleby. “Now that you make the point–”

“Exactly. It often takes a professional to realise the force of a coincidence. Well, what was the real connection between those scientists: Hailstone and Dunchue on the one hand and Unumunu on the other? It could hardly be one of close anterior association; after all, we had been cast up on this island absolutely at random. But a negro anthropologist must be something of a rarity, and they may have known him and recognised him. Or – more likely, this, because our friends may not be archaeologists at all – they met him on the morning of his death and among his explanations was some account of his profession. Whereupon he died. Why? Presumably because they at once feared that he would show them up. Their activities were not such as to stand the scrutiny of a mind trained in the branch of science they professed. I had that as the most likely run of the thing from the first.”