Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  And indeed the populace, in the shape of one doubled-up ancient-of-days on his way to the Cod-and-Bottle and three pre-school-aged children, had paused to gape at Louis. Two windows were opened. Mr Mercer came out of his shop and went in again.

  More dramatically, the front door of the Ferrants’ house was thrown wide and out stormed Mrs Ferrant, screaming as she came: ‘Louis: assez de bruit! What are you doing! Petit méchant.’

  She came face to face with Louis Pharamond, stopped dead and shut her mouth like a trap.

  ‘Good morning, Marie,’ he said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

  Her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched. For a moment Alleyn thought she was going to have a go at Louis, but she turned instead to him. ‘Pardon, M. Alleyn,’ she said. ‘A stupid mistake. My son occasionally has the bad manners to throw stones.’ And with a certain magnificence she returned indoors.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ said Louis, ‘I am not, in that department, a popular boy.’ He looked up at Julia in the window. ‘We’ll be late for luncheon,’ he called. ‘Coming?’

  ‘Go and find Bruno, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll be down in a moment.’

  Alleyn looked at his watch. ‘I’m running shamefully late,’ he said. ‘Will you forgive me?’

  ‘For almost anything,’ Julia called, ‘except not coming to see us. Au revoir.’

  IV

  Ricky would not have chosen for Julia to see him with his black eye which was half-closed and made him look as if he lewdly winked at people. He had felt sheepish and uncomfortable when she walked into his room, but, although she did laugh, it was sympathetically, and at first she didn’t ask him to elaborate on his accident. This surprised him because after all it would have been a natural thing to do. Perversely, although relieved, he felt slightly hurt at the avoidance.

  Nor did she tease him with questions about his father’s activities, but related the Pharamonds’ London adventures, asked him about his writing and repeated her nonsense offer to help him with it. She dodged about from one topic to another. The children, she said, had become too awful. ‘They writhe and ogle and have suddenly turned just so common that I begin to think they must be changelings and not Jasper’s and mine at all.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Ricky.

  ‘I promise! Of course, I love them to distraction and put it all down to everybody but me spoiling them. We’ve decided that they shall have a tutor.’

  ‘Aren’t they rather small for that?’ Ricky ventured.

  ‘Not at all. He needn’t teach them anything: just rule them with a rod of iron and think of strenuous and exhausting games. I had rather wondered if Mr Jones might do.’

  ‘You can’t by any chance mean that?’

  ‘Not really. It did just cross my mind that perhaps he could teach them painting. Selina’s style is rather like his own. With guidance she might develop into a sort of Granddaughter Moses. Still, as you tell me he’s junketing in St Pierre-des-Roches, these ideas are only wishful thinking on my part. I merely throw them out.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Didn’t you go jaunting together in St Pierre?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said in a hurry. ‘Not together. Only, as it happened, at the same time. I was just a day-tripper.’

  ‘Well,’ said Julia, gazing at his face, ‘you certainly do seem to have tripped in a big way.’

  Ricky joined painfully in her amusement. It was at this point that Julia had walked over to the window and waved to Alleyn and Louis.

  ‘They look portentous,’ she said, and then, with an air of understatement that was not quite successful, she said: ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘I don’t understand? What isn’t?’

  ‘The two of them, down there. The “confrontation”. Isn’t that one of the in words? Oh, come off it, Ricky. You know what I mean. Diamond-cut-paste. One guess which is which.’

  This was so utterly unlike anything Julia had ever said to him in their brief acquaintanceship and, in its content, so acutely embarrassing, that he could find no reply. She had come close to him and looked into his face searchingly as if hesitating on the edge of some further extravagance or indiscretion.

  Ricky’s hands began to tingle and his heart to thump.

  ‘Poorest Ricky,’ she said, and gently laid her palm against his unbruised cheek, ‘I’ve muddled you. Never mind.’

  Ricky’s thoughts were six-deep and simultaneous. He thought: ‘That’s torn it,’ and at the same time, ‘This is it: this is Julia in my arms and these are her ribs,’ and ‘If I kiss her I’ll probably hurt my face,’ and even, bouleversé though he was, ‘What does she mean about Louis?’ And then he was kissing her.

  ‘No, no,’ Julia was saying. ‘My dear boy, no. What are you up to! Ricky, please.’

  Now they stood apart. She said: ‘Bless my soul, you did take me by surprise,’ and made a shocked face at him. ‘ “Out upon you, fie upon you, bold-faced jig,” ’ she quoted.

  ‘She’s not even disconcerted,’ he thought. ‘I might be Selina for all she feels about it.’

  He said: ‘I’m sorry, but you do sort of trigger one off, you know.’

  ‘Do I? How lovely! It’s very gratifying to know one hasn’t lost the knack. I must tell Jasper, it’ll be good for him.’

  ‘How can you?’ Ricky said quietly.

  ‘My dear, I’m sorry. That was beastly of me. I won’t tell Jasper. I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  She waited for a moment and then began to make conversation as if he were an awkward visitor who had, somehow or another, to be put at his ease. He did his best to respond and in some degree succeeded, but he was humiliated and confusedly resentful.

  ‘Have you,’ she said at last, ‘had your invitation to Cuth’s party?’

  ‘His party? No.’

  ‘Not exactly a party perhaps, although it’s “ladies a basket”, we must remember. You must remember. It’s one of his services. In the Barn at Leathers on Sunday. You’re sure to be asked. Do come and bring your papa. Actually, it seems anyone is welcome. Gents fifty p. We’ve all been invited and I think we’re all going, although Louis may be away. It has “The Truth!” written by hand all over it with rows of exclamation marks and “Revelation!” in enormous capitals on the last page. You must come back to L’Esperance afterwards for supper in case the baskets are not very filling.’

  It had been at this point that Louis threw gravel at the window. When Ricky looked down and saw him there with Alleyn standing behind him, it was as if they were suddenly exhibited as an illustration to Julia’s extraordinary observations. He was given, as he afterwards thought, a new look at his father – at his quietude and his air of authority. And there was handsome Louis in the foreground, all eyes and teeth, acting his boots off. Ricky understood what Julia had meant when she said it wasn’t fair.

  In response to Louis’s gesture, he opened the window and was witness to the idiotic quotation from Romeo, Julia’s quelling of Louis and Mrs Ferrant’s eruption into the scene and departure from it.

  When Julia had dealt crisply with the remaining situation, she shut the window and returned to Ricky.

  ‘High time the Pharamonds removed themselves,’ she said. She looked directly into his eyes, broke into her laugh, kissed him rapidly on his unbruised side and was gone.

  She gave a cheerful greeting to Mrs Ferrant as she saw herself off.

  Ricky stood stock-still in his room. He heard the car start up and climb the hill to the main road. When he looked out his father had gone and the little street was deserted.

  ‘And after all that,’ he thought, ‘I suppose I’m meant to get on with my book.’

  v

  Round the corner in Sergeant Plank’s office, Alleyn talked to his contact in Marseilles: M. l’Inspecteur Dupont. They spoke in French and were listened to with painful concentration by Mr Fox. Dupont had one of those Provençal voices that can be raised to a sort of metallic clatter guaranteed to extinguish any opposition. It penetrated ev
ery corner of the little room and caused Mr Fox extreme consternation.

  At last, when Alleyn, after an exchange of compliments, hung up the receiver, Fox leant back in his chair, un-knitted his brow and sighed deeply.

  ‘It’s the pace,’ he said heavily. ‘That’s what gets you: that and the noise. I suppose,’ he added wistfully, turning to Sergeant Plank, ‘you had no difficulty?’

  ‘Me, Mr Fox? I don’t speak French. We only came here four years ago. We’ve tried to learn it, the missus and me, but we don’t seem to make much headway and in any case the lingo they use over here’s a patois. The chaps always seem to drop into it when I look in at the Cod-and-Bottle,’ said Plank in his simple way. Another symptom, Alleyn thought, of the country policeman’s loneliness.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘for what it’s worth, Ferrant has been spotted in La Tournière and in Marseilles.’

  ‘I got that all right,’ said Fox, cheering up a little.

  ‘And he’s made a trip to a place outside Marseilles where one of the big boys hangs out in splendour and is strongly suspected. They haven’t been able to pin anything on him. The old, old story.’

  ‘What are they doing about it?’

  ‘A lot. Well – quite a lot. No flies, by and large, on the narcotics squad in Marseilles: they get the practice if they look for it and could be very active. But, again, it’s the old story. The French are never madly enthusiastic about something they haven’t set up themselves. Nor, between you and me and the junkie, are they as vigilant at the ports as they might be. Still, Dupont’s one of their good numbers. He’s all right as long as you don’t step on his amour propre. He says they’ve got a dossier as fat as a bible on this character – a Corsican, he is, like most of them: a qualified chemist and a near millionaire with a château half-way between Marseilles and La Tournière and within easy distance of a highly sophisticated laboratory disguised as an innocent research set-up where this expert turns morphine into heroin.’

  ‘Well!’ said Fox. ‘If they’ve got all this why don’t they pull chummie in?’

  ‘French law is very fussy about the necessity for detailed, conclusive and precise evidence before going in for a knock-off. And they haven’t got enough of that. What they have got is a definite line on Ferrant. He’s been staying off and on in an expensive hotel in La Tournière known to be a rendezvous for heroin merchants. He left there unexpectedly yesterday morning. Yes, I know. Rick’s idea. They’ve been keeping obbo on him for weeks. Apparently the tip-off came from an ex-mistress in the hell-knows-no-fury department.’

  ‘Did I catch the name Jones?’ asked Fox.

  ‘You did. Following up their line on Ferrant, they began to look out for anybody else from the island who made regular trips to St Pierre and they came up with Syd. So far they haven’t got much joy out of that, but, as you may have noticed, when I told Inspecteur Dupont that Jones is matey with Ferrant, the decibel count in his conversation rose dramatically. There’s one other factor, a characteristic of so many cases in the heroin scene: they keep getting shadowy hints of another untraced person somewhere on a higher rung in the hierarchy, who controls the island side of operations. One has to remember the rackets are highly sophisticated and organized down to the last detail. In a way they work rather like labour gangs in totalitarian countries: somebody watching and reporting and himself being watched and reported upon all the way up to the top. One would expect an intermediary between, say, an operative like Ferrant and a top figure like the millionaire in a château outside Marseilles. Dupont feels sure there is such a character.’

  ‘What do we get out of all this?’ Fox asked.

  Alleyn got up and moved restlessly about the little office. A bluebottle banged at the window-pane. In the kitchen, Mrs Plank could be heard talking to her daughter.

  ‘What I get,’ Alleyn said at last, ‘is no doubt a great slab of fantasy. It’s based on conjecture and, as such, should be dismissed.’

  ‘We might as well hear it,’ said Fox.

  ‘All right. If only to get it out of my system. It goes like this. Ferrant is in La Tournière and Syd Jones is in St Pierre, having arrived at the crack of dawn yesterday morning. Syd is now persuaded that Rick is spying on him and has followed him to St Pierre for that purpose. He has grown more and more worried and, on landing, rings up Ferrant. The conversation is guarded but they have an alarm code that means “I’ve got to talk to you.” Ferrant comes to St Pierre by the early morning plane – Dupont says there’s one leaves at seven. They are to meet in the café opposite the premises of Jerome et Cie. Rick sits in the café being a sleuth and squinting through a hole in Le Monde at Syd. At which ludicrous employment he is caught by Ferrant. Rick leaves the café. Syd, who seems to have gone to pieces and given himself a jolt of something, heroin one supposes, now tells Ferrant his story and Ferrant, having seen for himself my poor child’s antics with the paper and bearing in mind that I’m a copper, decides that Rick is highly expendable. One of the two keeps tabs on Rick, is rewarded by a thunderstorm and takes the opportunity to shove him overboard between the jetty and the ship.’ Alleyn’s eyes closed for half a second. ‘The ship,’ he repeated, ‘was rolling. Within a couple of feet of the legs of the jetty.’

  He walked over to the window and stood there with his back to the other men. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘he was saved by the turn of the bilge. If the ship had been lower in the water –’ He broke off. ‘Yes. Quite so,’ Fox said. Plank cleared his throat.

  For a moment or two none of them spoke. Mrs Plank in her kitchen sang mutedly and the little girl kept up what seemed to be a barrage of questions.

  Alleyn turned back into the room.

  ‘He thought it was Ferrant,’ he said. ‘I don’t know quite why; apart from the conjectural motive.’

  ‘How doped up was this other type – Jones?’

  ‘Exactly, Br’er Fox. We don’t know.’

  ‘If he’s on the mainline racket – and it seems he is –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And under this Ferrant’s influence –’

  ‘It’s a thought, isn’t it? Well, there you are,’ Alleyn said. ‘A slice of confectionery from a plain cook and you don’t have to swallow it.’

  There was a long pause which Fox broke by saying, ‘It fits.’

  Plank made a confirmatory noise in his throat.

  ‘So what happens next?’ asked Fox. ‘Supposing this is the case?’

  Alleyn said: ‘All right. For the hell of it – supposing. What does Ferrant do? Hang about St Pierre waiting,’ Alleyn said rapidly, ‘for news of a body found floating under the jetty? Does he go back to La Tournière and report? If so, to whom? And what is Syd Jones up to? Supposing that he’s got his next quota of injected paint tubes, if in fact they are injected, does he hang about St Pierre? Or does he lose his nerve and make a break for Lord knows where?’

  ‘If he’s hooked on dope,’ Fox said, ‘he’s had it.’

  Plank said: ‘Excuse me, Mr Fox. Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning as far as his employers are concerned.’

  Alleyn said: ‘Drug merchants don’t use heavy consumers inside the organization, Plank. Beyond a certain point they become unpredictable and much too dangerous. If Jones is in process of becoming a junkie, he’s out automatically, and if his bosses think he’s a risk he might very easily be out altogether.’

  ‘Would he go to earth somewhere over there in France?’ Fox wondered. And then: ‘Never mind that for the moment, Mr Alleyn. True or not, and I’d take long odds on your theory being the case, I don’t at all fancy the position our young man has got himself into. And I don’t suppose you do either.’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Alleyn said, with a violence that made Sergeant Plank blink. ‘I’m in two minds whether to pack him off home or what the devil to do about him. He’s hell-bent on sticking round here and I’m not sure I don’t sympathize with him.’

  Fox said: ‘And yet, wouldn’t you say that when they do find out he esc
aped and came back here, they’ll realize that anything he knows he’ll have already handed on to you so there won’t be the same reason for getting rid of him? The beans, as you might say, are spilt.’

  ‘I’d thought of that too, Br’er Fox. These people are far too sophisticated to go about indulging in unnecessary liquidations. All the same –’

  He broke off, and glanced at Sergeant Plank, whose air of deference was heavily laced with devouring curiosity. ‘The fact of the matter is,’ Alleyn said quickly, ‘I find it difficult to look objectively at the position, which is a terrible confession from a senior cop. I don’t know what the drill ought to be. Should I ask to be relieved from the case because of personal involvement?’

  ‘Joey,’ Mrs Plank called from the kitchen, and her husband excused himself.

  ‘Fox,’ Alleyn said, ‘what the hell should a self-respecting copper do when his boy gets himself bogged down, and dangerously so, in a case like this? Send him abroad somewhere? If they are laying for him that’d be no solution. This lot is one of the big ones with fingers everywhere. And I can’t treat Rick like a kid. He’s a man, and what’s more, I don’t think he’d take it if I did and, by God, I wouldn’t want him to take it.’

  Fox, after some consideration, said it was an unusual situation. ‘I can’t say,’ he admitted, ‘that I can recollect anything of the sort occurring in my experience, or yours either, Mr Alleyn, I dare say. Very unusual. You could think, if you weren’t personally concerned, that there’s a piquant element.’

  ‘For the love of Mike, Fox!’

  ‘It was only a passing fancy. You were wondering what would be the correct line to take?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘With respect, then, I reckon he should do as I think he wants to do. Stay put and act under your orders.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘If Ferrant comes back? Or Jones?’

  ‘It would be interesting to see the reaction when they met.’

  ‘Always supposing Ferrant’s the man. Or Jones.’