Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  Round the corner in the police station, Mrs Plank, peering up and down the lane, told herself it was too late for a runaway knock. Unless, she thought, it was that young Louis from round the corner who was allowed to wait up till all hours and was not a nice type of child. Then she noticed the envelope at her feet. She picked it up. Addressed to the Super and sealed. She shut the front door, went into the kitchen and turned the envelope over and over in her hands.

  There was no telling how late it might be when they returned, all of them. Joe had been very quiet when he came in, but she knew he was gratified by the way the corners of his mouth twitched. He had told her they were going to search Syd Jones’s premises but it was not to be mentioned. He knew, thought Mrs Plank, that he could trust her.

  It had been a most irregular way of delivering the note, if it was a note. Suppose it was important? Suppose Mr Alleyn should know of it at once and suppose that by leaving it until he came in, if he did come in and not drive straight back to Montjoy, some irreparable damage was done? On the other hand Joe and Mr Alleyn and Mr Fox might be greatly displeased if she butted in at that place with a note that turned out to be some silly prank.

  She worried it over, this way and that. She examined the envelope again and again, particularly the direction, written in capital letters with some sort of crayon, it looked like: ‘MR ALLEN’. Someone who didn’t know how to spell his name.

  The flap was not all that securely gummed down.

  ‘Well, I don’t care, I will,’ she thought.

  She manœuvred it open and read the message.

  II

  Before they set out for Syd’s pad, Alleyn had held a short briefing at the station with Fox, Plank and the two constables from Montjoy: Cribbage and Moss.

  ‘We’re going into the place,’ he had told them, ‘because I think we’ve sufficient grounds to justify a search for illicit drugs. It will have to be an exhaustive search and as always in these cases it may bring us no joy. The two men we’re interested in are known to have been in St Pierre yesterday, and, as far as we’ve been able to find out, haven’t returned to the island. Certainly not by air. There has been no official passage to the Cove by sea and your chaps –’ he looked at the two constables – ‘checked the ferry at Montjoy. This doesn’t take in the possibility that they came back during the night in a French chum’s craft and were transhipped somewhere near the heads into Ferrant’s dinghy and brought ashore. We’ve no evidence –’ he hesitated for a moment and caught Fox’s eye – ‘no evidence,’ he repeated, ‘to support any such theory: it is pure speculation. If, however, it had so happened, it might mean that Ferrant as well as Jones was up at the pad and they might turn naughty. Mr Fox and Sergeant Plank are carrying handcuffs.’ He looked round at the four impassive faces. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s it. Shall we push off? Got your lamps?’

  Plank had produced two acetylene lamps in addition to five powerful hand torches because, as he said, they didn’t know but what the power might be off. He had also provided himself with a small torch with a blue light.

  They had driven along the front, past the Cod-and-Bottle, and parked their car near Fisherman’s Steps.

  Ricky had described his visit to Syd’s pad so vividly that Alleyn felt as if he himself had been there before. They didn’t say much to each other as they climbed the steps. Plank, who in the course of duty beats had become familiar with the ground, led the way and used his torch to show awkward patches.

  ‘We don’t want to advertise ourselves,’ Alleyn had said. ‘On the other hand, we’re making a routine search, not scaling the cliffs of Abraham in black-face. If there’s somebody at home and won’t answer the door we effect an entrance. If nobody’s there we still effect an entrance. And that’s it.’

  They were about half-way up the steps and had passed the last of the cottages, when Plank said: ‘The place is up on the right, sir. If there was lights in the front windows we’d see them from here.’

  ‘I can just make out the roof

  ‘Somebody might be in a back room,’ said Fox.

  ‘Of course. We’ll take it quietly from here – Plank, you’re familiar with the lie of the land. When we get there you take a man with you and move round to the back door as quietly as you can. We three will go to the front door. If there’s anybody at home he might try a break. From now on, softly’s the word. Don’t rush it and don’t use your torch unless you’ve got to and then keep it close to the ground.’

  They moved on slowly. The going became increasingly difficult, their feet slipped, they breathed hard and once the larger of the Montjoy men fell heavily, swore and said, ‘Pardon.’ Plank administered a stern rebuke. They continued uphill, still led by Plank, who turned every now and then to make sure they were all together.

  On the last of these occasions he put out his hand and touched Alleyn.

  ‘Sir,’ Plank breathed, ‘has someone fallen back?’

  No, they were all there.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re being followed.’

  Alleyn turned. Some way below them a torchlight darted momentarily about the steps, blacked out and re-appeared, nearer.

  ‘One of the locals? Coming home?’ Fox speculated.

  ‘Wait.’

  No. It showed again for a fraction of a second and was much nearer. They could hear uneven footfalls and laboured breathing. Whoever it was must be scrambling, almost running up the steps.

  ‘Christ!’ Plank broke out. ‘It’s the missus.’

  It was Mrs Plank, so out of breath that she clung to Alleyn with one hand and, with the other, shoved the paper at him.

  ‘Sh-sh!’ she panted. ‘Don’t speak. Don’t say anything. Read it.’

  Alleyn opened his jacket as a shield to her torch, and read.

  Fox, who was at his elbow, saw the paper quiver in his hand. The little group was very still. Voices of patrons leaving the Cod-and-Bottle broke the silence and even the slap of the incoming tide along the front. Alleyn motioned with his head. The others closed about him, bent over and formed a sort of massive scrum round the torch-lit paper. Fox was the first to break the silence.

  ‘Signed P.A.D.?’ Fox said. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s his writing. Weak. But his. It’s a tip-off. “Pad”. They didn’t drop to it or they’d have cut it out.’

  ‘Practical,’ said Fox unevenly. And then: ‘What do we do?’

  Alleyn read the message again, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Mrs Plank switched off her torch. The others waited.

  ‘Mrs Plank,’ Alleyn said, ‘you don’t know how grateful I am to you. How did this reach you?’

  She told him. ‘I got the notion,’ she ended, ‘that it might be that young Louis Ferrant. I suppose because he’s a one for runaway knocks.’

  ‘Is he, indeed? Now, please, you must go back. Go carefully and thank you.’

  ‘Will it – they won’t? – will it be all right?’

  ‘You cut along, Mother,’ said her husband. ‘’Course it will.’

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ she said, and was gone.

  Fox said: ‘She’s not using her torch.’

  ‘She’s good on her feet,’ said Plank.

  Throughout, they had spoken just above a whisper. When Alleyn talked now it was more slowly and unevenly than was his custom, but in a level voice.

  ‘It’s a question, I think, of whether we declare ourselves and talk to them from outside the house or risk an unheard approach and a break-in. I don’t think – ‘ he stopped for a moment – ‘I don’t think I dare do that.’

  ‘No,’ said Fox. ‘No. Not that way. Too risky.’

  ‘Yes. It seems clear that already they’ve…given him a bad time – the writing’s very shaky.’

  ‘It does say “OK”, though. Meaning he is.’

  ‘It says that. There’s a third possibility. He says “till they’ve gone”, and I can’t think of them making a getaway by any means other than the way we discussed, Fox. If so, they
’ll come out at some time during the night, carrying their stuff. With Ricky between them. They’ve worked it out that we won’t try anything because of the threat to Rick. We carry on now, with the old plan. We don’t know which door they’ll use so we’ll have two at the back and three at the front. And wait for them to emerge.’

  ‘And jump them?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘And jump them.’

  ‘Hard and quick?’

  ‘Yes. They’ll be armed.’

  ‘It’s good enough,’ Fox said, and there were satisfied noises from the other three men.

  ‘I think it’s the best we can do. It may be –’ for the first time Alleyn’s voice faltered – ‘a long wait. That won’t – be easy.’

  It was not easy. As they drew near the house they could make it out in a faint diffusion of light from the village below. They moved very slowly now, over soft, uneven ground, Plank leading them. He would stop and put back a warning hand when they drew near an obstacle, such as the bramble bush where Miss Harkness had tethered her horse and Ricky had so ostentatiously lit his pipe. No chink of light showed from window or door.

  They inched forward with frequent stops to listen and grope about them. A breeze had sprung up. There were rustlings, small indeterminate sounds, and from the pine-grove further up the hill, a vague soughing. This favoured their approach.

  It was always possible, Alleyn thought, that they were being watched, that the lights had been put out and a chink opened at one of the windows. What would the men inside do then? And there was, he supposed, another possibility – that Ricky was being held somewhere else – in one of the deserted cottages, for instance, or even gagged and out in the open. But no. Why ‘Pad’ in the message? Unless they’d moved after sending the message. Should Fox return and try to screw a statement out of Mrs Ferrant? But then the emergence from the pad might happen and they would be a man short.

  They had come to the place where a rough path branched off, leading round to the back of the house. Plank breathed this information in Alleyn’s ear: ‘We’ll get back to you double-quick, sir, if it’s the front. Can you make out the door?’ Alleyn squeezed his elbow and sensed rather than saw Plank’s withdrawal with PC Moss.

  There was the door. They crept up to it, Alleyn and Fox on either side, with PC Cribbage behind Fox. There was a sharp crackle as Cribbage fell foul of some bush or dry stick. They froze and waited. The breeze carried a moisture with it that tasted salt on Alleyn’s lips. Nothing untoward happened.

  Alleyn began to explore with his fingers the wall, the door and a step leading up to it. He sensed that Fox, on his side, was doing much the same thing.

  The door was weather-worn and opened inwards. The handle was on Alleyn’s side. He found the keyhole, knelt and put his eye to it but could see nothing. The key was in the lock, evidently. Or had-n’t Ricky, describing the pad, talked about a heavy curtain masking the door? Alleyn thought he had.

  He explored the bottom of the door. There was very little gap between it and the floor, but as he stared fixedly at the place where his finger rested he became aware of a lesser darkness, of the faintest possible thinning out of non-visibility that increased, infinitesimally, when he withdrew his hand.

  Light, as faint as light could be, filtered through the gap between the door and the floor.

  He slid his finger away from him along the gap and ran into something alive. Fox’s finger. Alleyn closed his hand round Fox’s and then traced on its hairy back the word LIGHT. Fox reversed the process. YES.

  Alleyn knelt. He laid his right ear to the door and stopped up the left one.

  There was sound. Something being moved. The thud of stockinged or soft-shod feet and then, only just perceptibly, voices.

  He listened and listened, unconscious of aching knees, as if all his other faculties had been absorbed by the sense of hearing. The sounds continued. Once, one of the voices was raised. Of one thing he was certain – neither of them belonged to Ricky.

  To Ricky, on the other side of the door. Quite close? Or locked up in some back room? Gagged? What had they done to him to turn his incisive Italianate script into the writing of an old man?

  Monstrous it was, to wait and to do nothing. Should he, after all, have decided to break in? Suppose they shot him and Fox before the others could jump on them, what would they do to Ricky?

  The sounds were so faint that the men must be at the end of the room farthest from the door. He wondered if Fox had heard them, or Cribbage.

  He got to his feet, surprised to find how stiff he was. He waited for a minute or two and then eased across until he found Fox, who was leaning with his back to the wall, and whispered: ‘Hear them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At least we’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Alleyn returned to his side of the door.

  The minutes dragged into an hour. The noises continued intermittently, and, after a time, became more distant as if the men had moved to another room. They changed in character. There was a scraping metallic sound, only just detectable, and then silence.

  It was no longer pitch dark. Shapes had begun to appear, shadows of definite form and patches of light. The moon, in its last quarter, had risen behind the pine-grove and soon would shine full upon them. Already he could see Fox and beyond him PC Cribbage, propped against the wall, his head drooping, his helmet inclined forward above his nose. He was asleep.

  Even as Alleyn reached out to draw Fox’s attention to his neighbour, Cribbage’s knees bent. He slid down the wall and fell heavily to the ground, kicking the acetylene lamp. Wakened, he began to scramble to his feet and was kicked by Fox. He rose with abject caution.

  Absolute silence had fallen inside the house.

  Alleyn motioned to Fox, and Fox, with awful grandeur, motioned to the stricken Cribbage. They cat-walked across to Alleyn’s side of the door and stood behind him, all three of them pressed back against the wall.

  ‘If – ‘ Alleyn breathed, ‘we act.’

  ‘Right.’

  They moved a little apart and waited, Alleyn with his ear to the door. The light that had shown so faintly across the threshold went out. He drew back and signalled to Fox. After a further eternal interval they all heard a rustle and clink as of a curtain being drawn.

  The key was turned in the lock.

  The deep framework surrounding the door prevented Alleyn from seeing it open, but he knew it had opened, very slightly. He knew that the man inside now looked out and saw nothing untoward where Fox and Cribbage had been. To see them, he would have to open up wide enough to push his head through and look to his right.

  The door creaked.

  In slow motion a black beret began to appear. An ear, a temple, the flat of a cheek and then, suddenly, the point of a jaw and an eye. The eye looked into his. It opened wide and he drove his fist hard at the jaw.

  Ferrant pitched forward. Fox caught him under the arms and Cribbage took him by the knees. Alleyn closed the door.

  Ferrant’s right hand opened and Alleyn caught the gun that fell from it. ‘Lose him. Quick,’ he said. Fox and Cribbage carried Ferrant, head lolling and arms dangling, round the corner of the house. The operation had been virtually soundless and occupied a matter of seconds.

  Alleyn moved back to his place by the door. There was still no sound from inside the house. Fox and Cribbage returned.

  ‘Still out,’ Fox muttered, and intimated that Ferrant was handcuffed to a small tree with his mouth stopped.

  They took up their former positions, Alleyn with Ferrant’s gun – a French army automatic – in his hand. This one, he thought, was going to be simpler.

  Two loud thumps came from within the house, followed by an exclamation that sounded like an oath. Then, soft but unmistakable, approaching footsteps and again the creak of the opening door.

  ‘Gil!’ Syd Jones whispered into the night. ‘What’s up? Where are you? Are you there, Gil?’

  Like Ferrant, he wid
ened the door-opening and like Ferrant, thrust his head out.

  They used their high-powered torches. Syd’s face, a bearded mask, started up, blinking and expressionless. He found himself looking into the barrel of the automatic. ‘Hands up and into the room,’ Alleyn said. Fox kicked the door wide open, entered the house and switched on the light. Alleyn followed Syd, with Cribbage behind him.

  At the far end of the room, face to wall, gagged and bound in his chair, was Ricky.

  ‘Fox,’ Alleyn said. Fox took the automatic and began the obligatory chant – ‘Sydney Jones, I arrest…’ Plank arrived and put on the handcuffs.

  Alleyn, stooping over his son, was saying: ‘It’s me, old boy. You’ll be all right. It’s me.’ He removed the bloodied gag. Ricky’s mouth hung open. His tongue moved and he made a sound. Alleyn took his head carefully between his hands.

  Ricky contrived to speak. ‘Oh, golly, Cid,’ he said. ‘Oh, golly!’

  ‘I know. Never mind. Won’t be long now. Hold on.’

  He unstrapped the arms and they fell forward. He knelt to release the ankles.

  Ricky’s white socks were bloodied and overhung his shoes. Alleyn turned the socks back and exposed wet ridges that had closed over the bonds.

  From between the ridges protruded a twist of wire and two venomous little prongs.

  III

  Ricky lay on the bed. In the filthy little kitchen, PC Moss boiled up a saucepan of water and tore a sheet into strips. Sergeant Plank was at the station, telephoning for a doctor and ambulance.

  Ferrant and Syd Jones, handcuffed together, sat side by side facing the table. Opposite them Alleyn stood with Fox beside him and Cribbage modestly in the background. The angled lamp had been directed to shine full in the prisoners’ faces.

  On the table, stretched out to its full length on a sheet of paper, lay the wire that had bound Ricky’s ankles and cut into them. It left a trace of red on the paper.

  To Ricky himself, lying in the shadow, his injuries thrumming through his nerves like music, the scene was familiar. It was an interrogation scene with obviously dramatic lighting, barked questions, mulish answers, suggested threats. It looked like a standard offering from a police story on television.