Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  There was, however, one more surprise to come. Mr Harkness approached Julia with a curious, almost a sheepish smile, and handed up an envelope.

  ‘Just a little thing of my own,’ he said. ‘See you this evening. Have a good day.’

  When they reached the end of the drive Julia said, ‘What can it be?’

  ‘Not the bill,’ Carlotta said. ‘Not when he introduced it like that.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. The bill, after all, would be a little thing of his own.’

  Julia had drawn what appeared to be a pamphlet from the envelope. She began to read. ‘Not true!’ she said, and looked up, wideeyed, at her audience. ‘Not true,’ she repeated.

  ‘What isn’t?’ Carlotta asked crossly. ‘Don’t go on like that, Julia.’

  Julia handed the pamphlet to Ricky. ‘You read it,’ she said. ‘Aloud.’

  ‘DO YOU KNOW,’ Ricky read, ‘that you are in danger of HELLFIRE?’

  ‘DO YOU KNOW, that the DAY of JUDGEMENT is AT HAND?

  ‘WOE! WOE! WOE!!! cries the Prophet –’

  ‘Obviously,’ Julia interrupted, ‘Mr Harkness is the author.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Such very horsy language. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” ’

  ‘He seems to run on in the same vein for a long time,’ Ricky said, turning the page. ‘It’s all about the last trump and one’s sins lying bitter in one’s belly. Wait a bit. Listen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Regular gatherings of the Inner Brethren at Leathers on Sunday evenings at seven-thirty to which you are Cordially Invited. Bro. Cuthbert (“Cuth”) Harkness will lead. Discourse and Discussion. Light Supper. Gents fifty p. Ladies a basket. All welcome.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jasper after a pause, ‘that explains everything. Or does it?’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Julia doubtfully. ‘Mr Harkness, whom we must learn to call Cuth, even if it sounds as if one had lost a tooth –’

  ‘How do you mean, Julia?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. “Cuspid”,’ Julia said hurriedly. ‘Clearly, he’s a religious fanatic and that’s why he’s taken Miss Harkness’s pregnancy so hard.’

  ‘Of course. Evidently they’re extremely strict,’ Jasper agreed.

  ‘I wonder what they do at their parties. Would it be fun –’

  ‘No, Julia,’ said Louis, ‘it would not be fun; ladies a basket, or no.’

  Carlotta said, ‘Do let’s go. We can discuss Mr Harkness later. There’s a perfect green lane round the corner.’

  So all the Pharamonds and Ricky rode up the hill. They showed for some moments on the skyline, elegant against important clouds. Then the lane dipped into a valley and they followed it and disappeared.

  III

  They lunched at a little pub in Bon Accord on the extreme northern tip of the island. It was called the Fisherman’s Rest and was indeed full of guernseys, gumboots and the smell of fish. The landlord turned out to be a cousin of Bob Maistre at the Cod-and-Bottle.

  Jasper stood drinks all round and Julia captivated the men by asking about the finer points of deep-sea fishing. From here she led the conversation to Mr Harkness, evoking a good deal of what Louis afterwards referred to as bucolic merriment.

  ‘Cuth Harkness,’ the landlord said, ‘was a sensible enough chap when he first came. A riding instructor or some such in the army, he were. Then he took queer with religion.’

  ‘He were all right till he got cranky-holy,’ someone said. ‘Druv himself silly brooding on hell-fire, I reckon.’

  ‘Is Miss Harkness a member of the group?’ Louis asked, and Ricky saw that mention of Miss Harkness evoked loose-mouthed grins and sidelong looks.

  ‘Dulce?’ somebody blurted out as if the name itself was explicit. ‘Her?’ and there was a general outbreak of smothered laughter.

  ‘Reckon her’s got better things to do,’ the landlord said. This evoked a further round of stifled merriment.

  ‘Quite a girl, our Dulcie, isn’t she?’ Louis said easily. He passed a white hand over the back of his patent-leather head. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Carlotta and Julia walked out into the fresh air where Ricky joined them.

  ‘I wish he wouldn’t,’ Carlotta said.

  ‘Louis?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carlotta. ‘That’s right. Louis. My husband, you know. Shouldn’t we be moving on?’ She smiled at Ricky. ‘But we’re an ever-so-jolly family, of course,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we, Julia?’

  ‘Come on,’ Julia said. ‘Let’s get the fiery steeds. Where’s Bruno?’

  ‘With them, I expect. Still a bit huffy.’

  But Bruno left off being huffy when they all rode a fine race across a stretch of open turf. Ricky’s blood tingled in his ears and his bottom began to be sore.

  When they had pulled up Louis gave a cry. He dismounted and hopped about on his elegant left foot.

  ‘Cramp?’ asked Jasper.

  ‘What do you suppose it is, love, hopscotch? Blast and hell, I’ll have to get this boot off,’ groaned Louis. ‘Here. Bruno!’

  Bruno very efficiently pulled off the boot. Louis wrenched at his foot, hissing with pain. He stood up, stamped and limped.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to go back.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, darling,’ his wife offered.

  ‘No, you won’t, damn it,’ he said. He mounted, holding the boot in his right hand. He flexed his right foot, keeping it out of the iron and checking his horse’s obvious desire to break away.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ asked Jasper.

  ‘I will if you’ll all be good enough to move off,’ he said. He turned his horse and began to walk it back along the turf.

  ‘Leave it,’ Carlotta said. ‘He’ll be cross if we don’t. He knows what he’s doing.’

  In spite of a marked increase in his saddle-soreness, Ricky enjoyed the rest of the day’s outing. They took roundabout lanes back to the Cove and the sun was far in the west when, over a rise in the road, L’Esperance came unexpectedly into view, a romantic silhouette, distant and very lonely against a glowing sky.

  ‘Look at our lovely house!’ cried Julia. She began to sing a Spanish song and the other Pharamonds joined in. They sang, off and on, all the way to Leathers and up the drive.

  ‘Will Louis have taken the car or is he waiting for us?’ Bruno wondered.

  ‘It’d be a hell of a long wait,’ said Jasper.

  ‘I fancy he’ll be walking home,’ Carlotta said. ‘It’s good for his cramp to walk.’

  As they turned the corner of the house into the stable yard, they saw the car where Louis had left it. It was unoccupied.

  ‘Yes, he’s walking,’ said Jasper. ‘We’ll catch up with him.’

  There was nobody about in the yard. Everything seemed very quiet.

  ‘I’ll dig someone up,’ Jasper said. He turned his hack into a loose-box and walked off.

  Bruno, who had recovered from the effects of his wigging and showed signs of wanting to brag about his exploit, said: ‘Julia, come down and look at my jump. Ricky, will you come? Carlotta, come and look. Come on.’

  ‘If we do, it doesn’t mean to say we approve,’ Julia said sternly. ‘Shall we?’ she asked Ricky and Carlotta. ‘I’d rather like to.’

  They rode their bored horses into the paddock and down the hill. A long shadow from the blackthorn hedge reached towards them and the air struck cold as they entered it.

  Ricky felt his horse’s barrel expand between his knees. It lifted its head, neighed and reared on its hind legs.

  ‘Here!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s all this!’ It dropped back on its forefeet and danced. From far beyond the hedge, on the distant hillside, there came an answering scream.

  Julia crammed her own now agitated mount up to the gap in the hedge where Bruno had jumped. Ricky watched her bring the horse round and heard it snort. It stood and trembled. Julia leant forward in the saddle and patted its neck. She looked over the gap
and down. Ricky saw her gloved hand clench. For a moment she was perfectly still. Then she turned towards him and he thought he had never seen absolute pallor in a face until now.

  Behind him Carlotta said: ‘What’s possessing the animals?’ and then: ‘Julia, what is it?’

  ‘Ricky,’ Julia said in somebody else’s voice, ‘let Bruno take your horse and come here. Bruno, take Carlotta and the horses back to the yard and stay there. Do what I tell you, Carlotta. Do it at once. And find Jasper. Send him down here.’

  They did what she told them. Ricky walked down the slope to Julia, who dismounted.

  ‘You’d better look,’ she said. ‘Down there. Down.’

  Ricky looked through the gap. Water glinted below in the shadows. Trampled mud stank and glistened. Deep scars and slides ploughed the bank. Everything was dead still down there. Particularly the interloper, who lay smashed and discarded, face upwards, in the puddled ditch, her limbs all higgledy-piggledy at impossible angles, her mouth awash with muddy water, and her foolish eyes wide open and staring at nothing at all. On the hillside the sorrel mare, saddled, bridled and dead lame, limped here and there, snatching inconsequently at the short grass. Sometimes she threw up her head and whinnied. She was answered from the hilltop by Mungo, the wall-eyed bay.

  IV

  ‘I told her,’ Mr Harkness sobbed. ‘I told her over and over again not to. I reasoned with her. I even chastised her for her soul’s sake, but she would! She was consumed with pride and she would do it and the Lord has smitten her down in the midst of her sin.’ He knuckled his eyes like a child, gazed balefully about him and suddenly roared out: ‘Where’s Jones?’

  ‘Not here, it seems,’ Julia ventured.

  ‘I’ll have the hide off him. He’s responsible. He’s as good as murdered her.’

  ‘Jones!’ Carlotta exclaimed. ‘Murdered!’

  ‘Orders! He was ordered to take her to the smith. To be re-shod on the off-fore. If he’d done that she wouldn’t have been here. I ordered him on purpose to get her out of the way.’

  Julia and Carlotta made helpless noises. Bruno kicked at a loose-box door. Ricky felt sick. Inside the house Jasper could be heard talking on the telephone.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Mr Harkness demanded hopelessly. ‘Who’s he talking to? What’s he saying!’?

  ‘He’s getting a doctor,’ Julia said, ‘and an ambulance.’

  ‘And the vet?’ Mr Harkness demanded. ‘Is he getting the vet? Is he getting Bob Blacker, the vet? She may have broken her leg, you know. She may have to be destroyed. Have you thought of that? And there she lies looking so awful. Somebody ought to close the eyes. I can’t, but somebody ought to.’

  Ricky, to his great horror, felt hysteria rise in his throat. Mr Harkness rambled on, his voice clotted with tears. It was almost impossible to determine when he spoke of his niece and when of his sorrel mare. ‘And what about the hacks?’ he asked. ‘They ought to be unsaddled and rubbed down and fed. She ought to be seeing to them. She sinned. She sinned in the sight of the Lord! It may have led to hell-fire. More than probable. What about the hacks?’

  ‘Bruno,’ Julia said. ‘Could you?’

  Bruno, with evident relief, went into the nearest loose-box. Characteristic sounds – snorts, occasional stamping, the clump of a saddle dumped across the half-door and the bang of an iron against wood – lent an air of normality to the stable yard.

  Mr Harkness dived into the next-door box so suddenly that he raised a clatter of hooves.

  He could be heard soothing the grey hack: ‘Steady girl. Stand over,’ and interrupting himself with an occasional sob.

  ‘This is too awful,’ Julia breathed. ‘What can one do?’

  Carlotta said: ‘Nothing.’

  Ricky said: ‘Shall I see if I can get him a drink?’

  ‘Brandy? Or something?’

  ‘He may have given it up because of hell-fire,’ Julia suggested. ‘It might send him completely bonkers.’

  ‘I can but try.’

  He went into the house by the back-door, and following the sound of Jasper’s voice, found him at the telephone in an office where Mr Harkness evidently did his bookkeeping.

  Jasper said: ‘Yes. Thank you. As quick as you can, won’t you?’ and hung up the receiver. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘How is he?’

  ‘As near as damn it off his head. But he’s doing stables at the moment. The girls thought, perhaps a drink.’

  ‘I doubt if we’ll find any.’

  ‘Should we look?’

  ‘I don’t know. Should we? Might it send him utterly cuckoo?’

  ‘That’s what we wondered,’ said Ricky.

  Jasper looked round the room and spotted a little corner cupboard. After a moment’s hesitation he opened the door and was confronted with a skull-and-crossbones badly drawn in red ink and supported by a legend:

  BEWARE! This Way Lies Damnation!!!

  The card on which this information was inscribed had been hung round the neck of a whisky bottle.

  ‘In the face of that,’ Ricky said, ‘what should we do?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I know what I’m going to do,’ said Jasper warmly. He unscrewed the cap and took a fairly generous pull at the bottle. ‘I needed that,’ he gasped and offered it to Ricky.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Ricky said. ‘I feel sick already.’

  ‘It takes all sorts,’ Jasper observed, wiping his mouth and returning the bottle to the cupboard. ‘The doctor’s coming,’ he said. ‘And so’s the vet.’ He indicated a list of numbers above the telephone. ‘And the ambulance.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ricky.

  ‘They all said: “Don’t move her.” ’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The vet meant the mare.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘God,’ said Jasper. ‘This is awful.’

  ‘Yes. Awful.’

  ‘Shall we go out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They returned to the stable yard. Bruno and Mr Harkness were still in the loose-boxes. There was a sound of munching and an occasional snort.

  Jasper put his arm round his wife. ‘OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s Bruno?’

  Julia jerked her head at the loose-boxes. ‘Come over here,’ she said, and drew the two men towards the car. Carlotta was in the driver’s seat, smoking.

  ‘Listen,’ Julia said. ‘About Bruno. You know what he’s thinking, of course?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s thinking it’s his fault. Because he jumped the gap first. So she thought she could.’

  ‘Not his fault if she did.’

  ‘That’s what I say,’ said Carlotta.

  ‘Try and persuade Bruno of it! He was told not to and now see what’s come of it. That’s the way he’s thinking.’

  ‘Silly little bastard,’ said his brother uneasily.

  Ricky said: ‘She’d made up her mind to do it before we got here. She’d have done it if Bruno had never appeared on the scene.’

  ‘Yes, Ricky,’ Julia said eagerly. ‘That’s just it. That’s the line we must take with Bruno. Do say all that to him, won’t you? How right you are.’

  ‘There’ll be an inquest, of course, and it’ll come out,’ Jasper said. ‘Bruno’s bit’ll come out.’

  ‘Hell,’ said Carlotta.

  A car appeared, rounded the corner of the house and pulled up. The driver, a man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag, got out.

  ‘Dr Carey?’ Jasper asked.

  ‘Blacker’s the name. I’m the vet. Where’s Cuth? What’s up, anyway?’

  ‘I should explain,’ Jasper said, and was doing so when a second car arrived with a second man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag. This was Dr Carey. Jasper began again. When he had finished Dr Carey said: ‘Where is she, then?’ and, being told, walked off down the horse-paddock. ‘When the ambulance comes – ‘
he threw over his shoulder – ‘will you show them where? I’ll see her uncle when I get back.’

  ‘I’d better talk to Cuth,’ said the vet. ‘This is a terrible thing. Where is he?’

  As if in answer to a summons, Mr Harkness appeared, like a woebegone Mr Punch, over the half-door of a loose-box.

  ‘Bob,’ he said. ‘Bob, she’s dead lame. The sorrel mare, Bob. Bob, she’s dead lame and she’s killed Dulcie.’

  And then the ambulance arrived.

  Ricky stood in a corner of the yard feeling extraneous to the scenes that followed. He saw the vet move off and Mr Harkness, talking pretty wildly, make a distracted attempt to follow him and then stand wiping his mouth and looking from one to the other of the two retreating figures, each with its professional bag, rather like items in a surrealistic landscape.

  Then Mr Harkness ran across the yard and bailed up the two ambulance men who were taking out a stretcher and canvas cover. Lamentations rolled out of him like sludge. The men seemed to calm him after a fashion and they listened to Jasper when he pointed the way. But Mr Harkness kept interrupting and issuing his own instructions: ‘You can’t miss it,’ he kept saying. ‘Straight across there. Where there’s the gap in the hedge. I’ll show you. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘We’ve got it, thank you, sir,’ they said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. Take it easy.’

  They walked away, carrying the stretcher between them. He watched them and pulled at his underlip and gabbled under his breath. Julia went to him. She was still very white and Ricky saw that her hand trembled. She spoke with her usual quick incisiveness.

  ‘Mr Harkness,’ Julia said, ‘I’m going to take you indoors and give you some very strong black coffee and you’re going to sit down and drink it. Please don’t interrupt because it won’t make the smallest difference. Come along.’

  She put her hand under his elbow and, still talking, he suffered himself to be led indoors.

  Carlotta remained in the car. Jasper went over to talk to her. Bruno was nowhere to be seen.

  It occurred to Ricky that this was a situation with which his father was entirely familiar. It would be at about this stage, he supposed, that the police car would arrive and his father would stoop over death in the form it had taken with Miss Harkness and would dwell upon that which Ricky turned sick to remember. Alleyn did not discuss his cases with his family but Ricky, who loved him, often wondered how so fastidious a man could have chosen such work. And here he pulled up. I must be barmy, he told himself. I’m thinking about it as if it were not a bloody accident but a crime.