Colour blindness

Colour blindness is a specific perceptual limitation attributed to Emlyn Price in the investigation into Elizabeth Temple’s death. It first appears as a personal embarrassment, but becomes materially important when witnesses try to identify a figure in a red-and-black checked polo-neck pullover near the boulders above the path. Because Emlyn cannot reliably distinguish colours, the apparently vivid garment cannot function as a secure identifying clue for him, exposing the fragility of visual testimony on which the inquiry depends.

Emlyn Price’s Condition

Emlyn Price acknowledges that he does not always know red from green. When questioned about the pullover seen on the hillside, he can report only that it was a bright colour, not that it was specifically red and black. His uncertainty is not a general refusal to cooperate: it arises from a concrete difficulty in perceiving and naming colours accurately.

Joanna Crawford identifies the condition from an earlier incident involving her red scarf. She had asked Emlyn whether he had seen it, and he recalled seeing a green scarf somewhere before bringing her the red one from the dining-room. The episode demonstrates the practical nature of his colour blindness: the problem affects ordinary recognition, not merely the precise description of an unusual garment.

The Pullover and the Witness Evidence

The condition becomes significant because Joanna Crawford’s account places a person above the path, among the boulders, apparently pushing a rocking stone until it rolled down the hillside toward Elizabeth Temple. The figure wore trousers and a polo-neck pullover with bright red-and-black checks, though Joanna could not determine whether the person was a man or a woman. Her description of the clothing therefore carries more certainty than her description of the figure’s identity.

Emlyn confirms that he saw someone near the boulders, but his colour blindness weakens the garment clue when he gives his own account. Joanna presses him on whether the pullover was black and scarlet; Emlyn retreats to the less specific description of a bright colour. His testimony practically replicates Joanna’s in its broad outline, yet the difference over colour shows how two witnesses can share an observation while possessing unequal powers of visual discrimination.

Personal Stigma and Investigative Consequences

Emlyn dislikes being identified publicly as colour blind and tells Joanna not to go about saying so because it puts people off. The exchange gives the condition a social dimension: it is not presented only as a medical fact, but as something Emlyn fears may alter how others judge his reliability or competence. Joanna responds with a brief explanation that colour blindness occurs more often in men and is sex-linked, treating the condition as an inherited trait even while Emlyn remains uncomfortable with its disclosure.

The police search of the young people’s hotel rooms illustrates how the pullover has become an investigative object. They have a search warrant and appear to be looking for the described check pullover, but find nothing resembling it among the travellers’ belongings. Emlyn’s inability to distinguish red from green makes his colour evidence particularly vulnerable to suggestion, while Joanna’s more confident colour description remains only one part of a testimony already marked by uncertainty about gender, distance, concealment, and the rapidly unfolding accident.

Narrative Significance

Colour blindness turns a vivid visual clue into an unstable one. The suspected figure’s red-and-black clothing seems at first to offer a distinctive signature, yet Emlyn’s testimony demonstrates that even a striking colour may not be equally available to every observer. The inquiry must therefore separate what was actually seen from what was inferred or named afterward.

The condition also contributes to the delayed determination of Elizabeth Temple’s death. Joanna and Emlyn agree that someone was above the path and that the figure may have deliberately set the boulder in motion, but neither can identify the person, and Emlyn cannot securely confirm the pullover’s colours. After Emlyn’s evidence, which is described as practically a replica of Joanna’s, the Coroner concludes that there is insufficient evidence to establish how Elizabeth Temple died and adjourns the inquest for a fortnight. Colour blindness thus operates not as a decorative character detail but as part of the novel’s wider examination of perception, memory, and the limits of apparently corroborating witness accounts.