The men on the top of the mound — there were two of them now beside Falls — squatted close to each other as if they held a corroborée. One of them let go a pitchfork he held and it rattled down the path. Falls stood up. His back was towards the light but Dikon saw that his face had bleached. He said: “Come on, Bell.” Although Dikon desired most passionately to turn and escape by the path along which they had come, his muscles sent him forward.
It would have been much worse, of course, if they hadn’t covered it, but, though the sack was thick, it was wet. It followed the shape beneath it in a hard eloquent curve. Dikon’s imagination found sockets in the shadows beneath the curve. One of the men must have pushed him forward.
Falls waited for him on the far side at the foot of the mound, but as soon as Dikon reached him he turned and led the way onwards to the gap in the manuka hedge. Here a man stood on guard.
Even when they were beyond the fence he could still hear the sound of Taupo-tapu, the grotesquely enlarged domestic sound of a boiling pot.
Chapter XIII
Letter from Mr. Questing
Strangely enough the sensation that was uppermost in Dikon’s mind was one of embarrassment. He would have to speak to Falls about what they had seen, and like a man who hesitates before making a speech of condolence he did not know how to form his phrases. Should he say: “I suppose that was Questing’s head under the sack”? Or, “That settles it”? Or: “That disposes of Ackrington’s theory, doesn’t it?” It was impossible to find the right phrase. He was so occupied with his preposterous difficulty and, at the same time, suffered such a violent feeling of nausea that he didn’t notice Eru Saul and was startled when Falls spoke to him.
“Hello,” said Mr. Falls. “Can you direct me to Mr. Rua Te Kahu’s house?”
Dikon thought that Eru must have been standing in a recess in the hedge, perhaps peering through the twigs, and that he had turned quickly as they came up to him. He was coatless, and wore his puce-coloured shirt. Bits of dry manuka stuck to it and to the front of his waistcoat.
Mr. Falls pointed the ferrule of his stick at the recess. “Can you see the working party from here?” He squinted through an opening in the manuka. “Ah, yes. Quite clearly.” He picked a twig off the front of Eru’s waistcoat. “Terrible affair, isn’t it?” he said. “And now, as we have a message for Mr. Te Kahu from the police, would you mind directing us?”
Eru said: “Have they found him?”
“ ‘A part of him.’ Forgive the inadvertent quotation. His skull, to be exact.”
“ ’Struth!” Eru whispered and showed his teeth. He turned and walked quickly up the path to the marae and they followed him. Old Mrs. Te Papa sat on the verandah floor with her back against the meeting-house wall. When she saw them she shouted something in Maori and Eru replied briefly. Her response was formidable. She flung up her hands and pulled her shawl over her face.
“Aue! Aue! Aue! Te mamae i au!” wailed Mrs. Te Papa.
“Good God!” cried Mr. Falls nervously. “What’s she doing?”
“I’ve told her,” said Eru sulkily. “She’s going to tangi.”
“To wail,” Dikon translated. “To lament the dead. Think of an Irish wake.”
“Really? Extraordinarily interesting.”
Mrs. Te Papa continued to wail like a banshee while Eru led them to the largest of the cottages that stood round the marae. Like its fellows it was shabby. Its galvanized iron roof was corroded by sulphur.
“That’s it,” said Eru, and made off.
Attracted by Mrs. Te Papa’s cries, other women came out of the houses and, calling to each other, trooped towards the meeting-house. Eru was joined by three youths. They stood with their hands in their pockets, watching Mr. Falls and Dikon. Dikon still felt very sick, and hoped ardently that he would not disgrace himself before the youths.
Mr. Falls was about to tap on the door when it opened and old Rua stood upon the threshold. Mrs. Te Papa shouted agitatedly. He answered her in Maori and waited courteously for his visitors to announce their errand. Falls delivered Sergeant Webley’s message and Rua at once said that he would come with them. He shouted, and a small girl ran out of the house, bringing the grey blanket he wore on his shoulders. “It is as well,” he said tranquilly, but with a faint glint in his eyes, “to give instant obedience when it is a policeman who asks. Let us go.” He turned off as if to follow the track that led to the main road.
“We’ve got the Sergeant’s permission to cross the reserve,” said Mr. Falls.
“It will be better by the road,” said Rua.
“It’s very much further,” Falls pointed out.
“Then we should take Mrs. Te Papa’s car.” Again Rua shouted and Mrs. Te Papa broke ofif in the middle of a desolate wail to say prosaically: “All right, you take him but he won’t go.”
“We shall take him,” said Rua, “and perhaps he will go.”
“Eru can make him go,” Mrs. Te Papa remarked and she hurled an order across the marae. Eru detached himself from the group of young men and slouched off behind the houses.
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Te Papa,” said Falls, taking off his hat.
“You are very welcome,” she replied, and composed herself for a further lamentation.
Mrs. Te Papa’s car was not so much a car as a mass of wreckage. It stood in a back yard in a little pool of oil, sketchily protected by the remains of its own fabric hood. One of its peeling doors hung disconsolately from a single hinge. It was markedly bandy and had that look of battered gentility that belongs to very old-fashioned vehicles.
Rua opened the only door that was shut and said: “Do you prefer front or back?”
“I shall sit in the back with you, if I may,” said Falls.
Dikon climbed into the front. Eru wrenched at the starting handle and, as though he had dug a thumb in her ribs, the old car gave a galvanic start and set up a terrific commotion. “Ah!” Rua shouted cheerfully. “She goes, you see.” Having been left in gear, she almost ran over her driver. However, Eru flung him self in as she passed, and in a moment they were jolting up the hill. The noise was appalling.
“I see no reason,” Mr. Falls began in a stentorian voice, “why you should not be told the object of Sergeant Webley’s message.”
Dikon slewed round in his seat to gaze in consternation at Mr. Falls. He met the unwinking stare of old Rua, huddled comfortably in his blanket.
“Webley wants your opinion on a native weapon,” Falls continued. “A beautiful piece, it seems to me, a collector’s piece.” Rua said nothing. “I should call it an adze but perhaps that is incorrect. Let me describe it.”
He described it with extraordinary accuracy and in such detail that Dikon was first amazed at his faculty of observation and then extremely suspicious of it. Could Mr. Falls possibly have seen all these things through his window during the brief time that the adze was on the verandah table?
“One thing struck me very forcibly,” Mr. Falls was saying. “The figure at the head of the haft has got, not one protruding tongue, but two. Two long protruding tongues, side by side. The little god, if indeed he is a god, holds one in each of his three-fingered hands. Between the fingers there are small pieces of shell and beneath them the tongues are encircled by a narrow band.”
“You are driving too fast, Eru,” said old Rua, to Dikon’s profound relief. Mrs. Te Papa’s car, bucketing down a steep incline, had developed a curious flaunting movement which, he felt certain, its back axle could sustain no longer. Eru checked her with a jerk.
“The band itself,” Mr. Falls continued mellifluously in the comparative silence, “is most delicately carved. One marvels at the skill of your ancient craftsmen, Mr. Te Kapu. When one considers that their tools were those of a stone age — What did you say?”