Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Look who’s here,’ said Jasper.

  It was Syd Jones. At first it seemed that he was going to ignore them but at the last moment he cut down his engine and skidded to a halt.

  ‘G’ day,’ he said morosely, and exclusively to Jasper. ‘How’s tricks?’

  They looked wildly at each other.

  ‘Seen Dulce?’ asked Syd.

  II

  Any number of distracted reactions tumbled about in Ricky’s head. For an infinitesimal moment he actually thought Syd wanted to know if he’d seen dead Dulce with the broken body. Then he thought ‘we’ve got to tell him,’ and then that dead Dulce might be carrying Syd’s baby and this was the first time he’d remembered about what would doubtless be referred to as her ‘condition’. He had no idea how long this state of muddled thinking persisted, but their silence or their manner must have been strange because Syd said:

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He spoke directly to Jasper and had not looked at Ricky.

  Jasper said: ‘There’s been an accident. I’m afraid this is going to be a shock.’

  ‘It’s bad news, Syd,’ Ricky said. Because he thought he ought to and because he was unexpectedly filled with a warmth of compassion for Syd, he laid a hand on his arm and was much discomforted when Syd shook him off without a glance.

  ‘It’s about Dulcie Harkness,’ Jasper said.

  ‘What about her? Did you say an accident? Here!’ Syd demanded. ‘What are you on about? Is she dead? Or what?’

  ‘I’m afraid she is, Syd.’ Ricky ventured.

  After a considerable pause he said: ‘Poor old Dulce.’ And then to Jasper: ‘What happened?’

  Jasper told him. He was, Ricky knew, a quite remarkably inex-pressive person and allowances had to be made for that. He seemed to be sobered, taken aback, even perturbed, but, quite clearly, not shattered. And still he would not look at Ricky.

  ‘You can hardly credit it,’ he mumbled.

  He seemed to turn the information over in his mind and after doing so for some time said: ‘She was pregnant. Did you know that?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Jasper said. ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘They’ll find that out, won’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I expect they will.’

  ‘Too bad,’ he said.

  Jasper caught Ricky’s eye and made a slight face at him.

  ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘is the father?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Syd, almost cheerfully. ‘And I reckon she didn’t. She was quite a girl.’

  Somebody else had used the phrase about her. Recently. It was Louis, Ricky remembered; Louis Pharamond in the Fisherman’s Rest at Bon Accord.

  ‘Where’s the old man?’ Syd asked Jasper.

  ‘In the house. The doctor’s there. And a police sergeant.’

  ‘What’s he want?’ Syd demanded.

  ‘They have to make a formal appearance at fatal accidents,’ Ricky said, and was ignored.

  ‘He’s very much upset,’ said Jasper.

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Mr Harkness.’

  ‘He warned her. Didn’t he? You heard him.’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘Fair enough, then. What’s he got to worry about?’

  ‘Good God!’ Jasper burst out and then checked himself.

  ‘My dear Jones,’ he urged. ‘The man’s had a monstrous shock. His niece has been killed. He’s had to identify her body. He’s –’

  ‘Aw,’ said Syd. ‘That, yeah.’

  And to Ricky’s bewilderment he actually turned pale.

  ‘That’s different, again,’ he said. ‘That could be grotty, all right.’

  He stood for a moment or two with his head down, looking at his boots. Then he hitched his shoulder, settled himself on his seat and revved up his engine.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jasper shouted.

  ‘Back,’ he said. ‘No sense going on, is there? It was her I wanted to see.’

  They stood and watched him. He kicked the ground, turned his machine and roared off the way he had come.

  ‘That creature’s a monster,’ said Jasper.

  ‘He may be a monster,’ Ricky said, ‘but there’s one thing we can be sure he’s not.’

  ‘Really? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose we can.’

  The sound of the motor-cycle faded.

  ‘That’s a bloody expensive machine,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘New.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jasper without interest. ‘Shall we go?’

  It was an opulent evening, as if gold dust had been shaken out of some heavenly sifter, laying a spell over an unspectacular landscape. Even the effects of chiaroscuro were changed, so that details normally close-at-hand were set at a golden remove. L’Esperance itself was enskied by inconsequent drifts of cloud at its base. The transformation would have been a bit too much of a good thing, Ricky thought, if its impermanence had not lent it a sort of austerity. Even as they saw the glow on each other’s faces, it faded and the evening was cold.

  ‘Ricky,’ Jasper said, ‘come up and have a drink and supper with us. We would like you to come.’

  But Ricky thought it best to say no and they parted at the entrance to the drive. He mounted his bicycle and was sharply reminded of his saddle-soreness.

  When he got back to the Cove it was to find that news of the accident was already broadcast. Mrs Ferrant met him in the passage.

  ‘This is a terrible business, then,’ she said, without any preliminaries and stared at Ricky out of her stewed-prune eyes. He had no mind to discuss it with her, anticipating a series of greedy questions. He remembered Mrs Ferrant’s former reactions to mention of Dulcie Harkness.

  ‘They’re saying it was a horse-riding accident,’ she probed. ‘That’s correct, is it? They’re. saying there was arguments with the uncle, upalong, over her being too bold with her jumping. Is it true, then, what they’re saying, that you was a witness to the accident? Was it you that found her, then? There’s a terrible retribution for you, isn’t it, whatever she may have been in the past?’

  Ricky staved her off as best he could but she served his supper – one of her excellent omelettes – with a new batch of questions at each re-appearance, and he fought a losing battle. In the end he was obliged to give an account of the accident.

  While this was going on he became aware of sundry bumps and shufflings in the passage outside.

  ‘That’s him,’ Mrs Ferrant threw out. ‘He’s going on one of his holidays over to St Pierre-des-Roches by the morning boat.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was one.’

  ‘The Island Belle. She calls once a week on her way from Montjoy.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ricky, glad to steer Mrs Ferrant herself into different waters. ‘I might take the trip one of these days.’

  ‘It’s an early start. Five a.m.’

  She had left the door ajar. From close on the other side, but without showing himself, Ferrant called peremptorily: ‘Marie! He!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quickly and went out, shutting the door.

  Ricky heard them walk down the passage.

  He finished his supper and climbed up to his room, suddenly very tired; too tired and too sore and becoming too stiff to go along to the Cod-and-Bottle, where in any case he would be avidly questioned about the accident. And much too tired to write. He had a hot bath, restraining a yelp when he got into it, applied with difficulty first-aid plasters to the raw discs on his bottom and went to bed, where he fell at once into a heavy sleep.

  He woke to find his window pallid in the dawnlight. He was aware of muted sounds in the downstairs passage. The heavy front door was shut. Footsteps sounded on the outside path.

  Wide awake, he got out of bed, went to his open window and looked down.

  Mr Ferrant, with two suitcases, walked towards the jetty where the Island Belle was coming in. There was something unexpected, unreal even, about her, sliding alongside in the dawnlight. Quiet voices sounded and the s
lap of rope on the wet jetty. Mr Ferrant was a solitary figure with his baggage and his purposeful tread. But what very grand suitcases they were: soft hide, surely, not plastic, and coming, Ricky was sure, from some very smart shop. As for Mr Ferrant, one could hardly believe it was he, in a camel-hair overcoat, pork-pie hat, suede shoes and beautiful gloves. He turned his head and Ricky saw that he wore dark glasses.

  He watched Mr Ferrant, the only embarking passenger, go up the gangplank and disappear. Some packages and a mailbag were taken aboard, and then the Island Belle, with a slight commotion from her propeller, pulled out, her lights wan in the growing morning.

  Ricky returned to bed and to sleep. When he finally awoke at nine o’clock, Mr Ferrant’s departure seemed unreal as a dream and enclosed, like a dream, between sleep and sleep.

  Three days later the inquest was held in the Cove village hall. The coroner came out from Montjoy. The jury was made up of local characters, some of whom were known to Ricky as patrons of the Cod-and-Bottle.

  Julia and Ricky were called to give formal evidence as to sighting the body, and Mr Harkness as to its identity. He was subdued and shaky and extremely lugubrious, answering in a low, uneven voice. He tried to say something about the dangerous nature of the jump and about the warning? he had given his niece and the rows this had led to.

  ‘I allowed anger to take hold of me,’ he said, and looked round the assembly with washed-out eyes. ‘I went too far and I said too much. I may have driven her to it.’ He broke down and was allowed to leave the room.

  Dr Carey gave evidence as to the nature of the injuries, which were multiple and extensive. Some of the external ones could be seen to have been caused by a horse’s hoof, others were breakages. The internal ones might have been brought about by the mare rolling on her rider. It was impossible, on the evidence, to arrive at a more precise conclusion. She was some eight or nine weeks pregnant, Dr Carey added, and a little eddy of attention seemed to wash through the court. Superintendent Curie, from Montjoy, nominally in charge of the police investigation, was ill in hospital, but to the obvious surprise of the jury, applied, through Sergeant Plank, for an adjournment, which was agreed to.

  Outside in the sunshine Ricky talked to Julia and Jasper. It was his first meeting with them since the accident although they had spoken on the telephone. Nobody could have been more simply dressed than Julia and nobody could have looked more exquisite, he thought, or more exotic in that homespun setting.

  ‘I don’t in the least understand all this,’ Julia said. ‘Why an adjournment? Ricky, you’re the one to explain to us.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because your gorgeous papa is a copper. Is he perpetually asking for adjournments when everyone longs for the whole thing to be –’ she stopped, looked for a moment into his eyes and then said rapidly – ‘to be dead, buried and forgotten?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know anything at all about police goings-on. He never speaks of his cases. We’ve so much else to talk about,’ Ricky said simply. ‘I imagine they have to be almost insanely thorough and exhaustive.’

  ‘I can’t think that it makes any difference to anyone, not even Mr Harkness in all his righteous anguish, whether poor Dulcie fell forwards, sideways or over the horse’s tail. Oh God, Jasper darling, why does everything I say always have to sound so perfectly heartless and beastly.’

  ‘Because you’re a realist, my love, and anyway it doesn’t,’ said Jasper. ‘You’d be the most ghastly fake if you pretended to be heartbroken over the wretched girl. You had a beastly shock because you saw her. If you’d only heard she’d been killed you’d have said: “How awful for poor Cuth,” and sent flowers to the funeral. Which, by the way, we ought perhaps to do. What do you think?’

  But Julia paid no attention.

  ‘Ricky,’ she said. ‘It couldn’t be – or could it? – that the police – what is it that’s always said in the papers – don’t rule out the possibility of “foul play”? Could it be that, Ricky?’

  ‘I don’t know. Truly I don’t know,’ Ricky said. And then, acutely conscious of their fixed regard, he blurted out what he had in fact been thinking.

  ‘I had wondered,’ said Ricky.

  III

  ‘ “So I thought,” ’ Alleyn read aloud, ‘ “I’d ask you if the idea’s just plain silly. And if you don’t think it’s silly, whether you think I ought to say anything to Sergeant Plank or whether that would be behaving like the typical idiot layman. Or, finally, whether it’s a guinea to a gooseberry, Sergeant Plank will have thought of it for himself –” which,’ Alleyn said, looking up from the letter, ‘will certainly be the case if Sergeant Plank’s worth his stripes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t we much rather Rick kept out of it, whatever it may be, and got on with his book?’ asked Ricky’s mother.

  ‘Very much rather. Drat the boy, why does he want to go and get himself involved?’ Alleyn rubbed his nose and looked sideways at his wife. ‘Quite neat of him to spot that bit, though, wasn’t it? “Obviously recent,” he says.’

  ‘Should we suggest he comes home?’ Troy wondered, and then: ‘No. Silly of me. Why on earth, after all?’

  ‘He may be called when the inquest is re-opened, in which case he’d have to go trundling back. No, I shouldn’t worry. It’s odds on there’s nothing in it, and he’s perfectly well able to cope, after all, with anything that may turn up.’ Alleyn returned to the letter. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that Julia was dreadfully upset but rallied gallantly and gave her evidence quite beautifully. So that’s still on the tapis, one gathers.’

  ‘I hope she’s not finding him a bore.’

  ‘Does a woman ever dislike the admiration of a reasonably presentable young chap?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘He really does seem to have struck a rum set-up one way or another,’ said Alleyn, still reading. ‘What with his odd-jobbing plumber of a landlord dressed up like a con man at the crack of dawn and going on holiday to St Pierre-des-Roches.’

  ‘It’s a pretty little peep of a place. I painted it when I was a stu-dent. The egregious Syd has made a regrettable slosh at it. But it’s hardly the spot for camel-hair coats and zoot-suits.’

  ‘Perhaps Ferrant uses it as a jumping-off place for the sophisticated south.’

  ‘And then there’s Louis Pharamond,’ said Troy, pursuing her own thoughts, ‘having had some sort of affair with poor Miss Harkness, doesn’t it seem? Or does it?’

  ‘In company with your visitor with the free paints and the dizzy spell. And listen to this,’ said Alleyn. ‘ “My Mrs Ferrant reacts very acidly to mention of Dulcie Harkness, even though she does make obligatory non nisi noises. I can’t help wondering if Mr Ferrant’s roving eye has lit some time or another on Miss Harkness.” Really!’ said Alleyn, ‘The Island jollities seem to be of a markedly uninhibited kind. And Miss Harkness of an unusually obliging disposition.’

  ‘Bother!’ said Troy.

  ‘I know. And then, why should the egregious Jones scream with rage when Ricky trod on his vermilion? There’s plenty more where that came from, it seems. For free. And if it comes to that, why should Jones take it into his head to cut Rick? Apparently he would neither look at, nor speak to him. Not a word about having taken a luncheon off us, it appears.’

  ‘He’s a compulsive boor, of course. Mightn’t we be making far too much of a series of unrelated and insignificant little happenings?’

  ‘Of course we might,’ Alleyn agreed warmly. He finished reading his son’s letter, folded it and put it down. ‘He’s taken pains over that,’ he said. ‘Very long and very detailed. He even goes to the trouble of describing the contents of the old coach-house.’

  ‘The whole thing’s on his mind and he thinks writing it all out may help him to get shot of it.’

  ‘He’s looking for a line. It’s rather like those hidden picture-games they used to put in kid’s books. A collection of numbered dots and you joined them up in the given order and found you’d got a pussy-cat or some
thing. Only Rick’s dots aren’t numbered and he can’t find the line.’

  ‘If there is one.’

  ‘Yes. There may be no pussy-cat.’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing you’re doing all the time, isn’t it?’

  ‘More or less, my treasure. More or less.’

  ‘Oh!’ Troy exclaimed. ‘I do hope there isn’t a line and I do hope Miss Harkness wasn’t –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Murdered,’ said Troy. ‘That, really, is what the letter’s all about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’

  The telephone rang and he answered it. It was his Assistant Commissioner. Being a polite man he made his usual token apology.

  ‘Oh, Rory,’ he said. ‘Sorry to disturb you at home. Did I hear you mention your boy was staying on that island where Sunniday Enterprises, if that’s what they call themselves, have set up a holiday resort of sorts?’

  It pleased the AC – nobody knew why – when engaged in preliminaries, to affect a totally false vagueness about names, places and activities.

  Alleyn said: ‘Yes, sir, he’s there,’ and wondered why he was not surprised. It was as if he had been waiting for this development, an absurd notion to entertain.

  ‘Staying at this place of theirs? What’s it called? Mount something?’

  ‘Hotel Montjoy. Lord, no. He’s putting up at a plumber’s cottage on the non-u side of the island.’

  ‘The Bay. Or Deep Bay, would that be?’

  ‘Deep Cove,’ Alleyn said, beginning to feel exasperated as well as apprehensive.

  ‘To be sure. Yes. I remember now, you did say something about a plumber and Deep Cove,’ said the bland AC.

  Alleyn thought: You devious old devil, what are you up to? and waited.

  ‘Well,’ said the AC, ‘the thing is, I wondered if he might be helpful. You remember the dope case you tidied up in Rome? Some of the Ziegfeldt group?’

  ‘Oh that,’ Alleyn said, greatly relieved. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, as we all know to our discomfort, Ziegfeldt himself still operates in a very big way.’