Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘One other thing, Mr Alleyn. Mr Harkness rang up. He’s on about this service affair tomorrow. He’s very keen on everybody attending it. There was a lot of stuff about Vengeance Is Mine says the Lord and the Book of Leviticus. He said he’s been guided to make known before the multitude the sinner in Israel.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Something about it being revealed to him in a dream. He sounded very wild.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Damn near DT’s, I reckon.’

  ‘Do you suppose there’ll be a large attendance?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Plank, ‘I do. There’s a lot of talk about it. He’s sent some dirty big announcements to the pub and the shop.’

  ‘Sent them? By whom?’

  ‘The delivery boy from the Cod-and-Bottle. Mr Harkness was very upset when I told him Jones and Ferrant wouldn’t be able to be present. He said the Lord would smite the police hip and thigh and cast them into eternal fires if Jones and Ferrant didn’t attend the meeting. Particularly Jones. He’s far gone, sir.’

  ‘So it would seem. We’ll have to go to his party, of course. But first things first, Plank, and that means Jones. Is there anything to keep you in the Cove?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve informed Mrs Ferrant her husband’s in custody and will come before the court on Monday.’

  ‘How did she take that?’

  ‘She never said a word but, my oath, she looked at me old-fashioned.’

  ‘I dare say. I’ll get down as soon as I can,’ said Alleyn, and hung up.

  When he came out of the house he found the Pharamonds still sitting round the table. They were not speaking and looked as if they had been that way ever since he left.

  He went over to them. Jasper stood up.

  ‘That was Sergeant Plank,’ Alleyn said. ‘I’m wanted. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am that things have fallen out as they have.’

  ‘Not your fault,’ said Julia. ‘Or ours if it comes to that. We’re what’s called victims of circumstance. Why’s Ricky in hospital?’

  ‘He was beaten up.’

  ‘Not –?’ Carlotta broke out.

  ‘No, no. By Gil Ferrant and Syd Jones. They come up before the beak tomorrow. Rick’s all right.’

  Julia said: ‘Poorest Ricky, what a time he’s having! Give him our love.’

  ‘I will, indeed,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Of course, if Louis should turn up, the Pharamonds, however boring the exercise, will close their ranks.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I with them. Because it behoves me so to do.’ She reached out her hand to Carlotta, who took it. ‘But then again,’ she said, ‘I’m not a Pharamond. I’m a Lamprey. I think, ages ago, you met some of my relations.’

  ‘I believe I did,’ said Alleyn.

  CHAPTER 9

  Storm Over

  ‘Back to square one,’ Alleyn thought when they brought Sydney Jones before him with once again all the unlovely symptoms of the deprived addict. Dr Carey had evidently not been over-generous with the fix.

  He began at once to say he would only talk to Alleyn and wouldn’t have any witnesses in the room.

  ‘It won’t make any difference, you silly chap,’ Fox said with a low degree of accuracy. But Syd knew a thing worth two of that, and stuck to it.

  In the end Fox and Alleyn exchanged glances and Fox went away.

  Syd said: ‘You going to fix me up?’

  ‘Not without the doctor’s approval.’

  ‘I’ve got something I can tell you. About Dulcie. It’d make a difference.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Syd. ‘Oh, dear me, no! Fair’s fair.’

  ‘If you can give me information that will lead substantially to a charge, the fact that you did so and did it of your own accord would be taken into consideration. If it turns out to be something that we could get from another source – Ferrant, for instance –’

  Syd, with a kind of febrile intensity, let fling a stream of obscenities. It emerged that Syd now laid all his woes at Ferrant’s door. It was Ferrant who had introduced him to hard-line drugs, Ferrant who established Syd’s link with Jerome et Cie, Ferrant who egged him on to follow Ricky about the streets in St Pierredes-Roches, Ferrant who kidnapped Ricky and brought him into the pad.

  ‘And this information you say you have, is about Ferrant, is it?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘If they got on to it I’d shopped him, they’d get me.’

  ‘Who would?’

  ‘Them. Him. Up there.’

  ‘Are you talking about Mr Louis Pharamond?’

  ‘Mister. Mister Philistine. Mister Bloody Fascist Sod Pharamond. You don’t know,’ Syd said, ‘why I wanted that wire. Well? Do you?’

  ‘To hang a picture.’

  ‘That’s right. Because she said it gave her a feeling that I’ve got a strong sense of rhythm. That’s what she said.’

  ‘This,’ Alleyn thought, ‘is the unfairest thing that has ever happened to me.’

  He said: ‘Get back to what you can tell me. Is it about Ferrant?’

  ‘More or less that’s what she said,’ Syd mumbled.

  ‘Ferrant!’ Alleyn insisted, and could have shouted it. ‘What about Ferrant?’

  ‘What’ll I get for it? For assault?’

  ‘It depends on the magistrates. You can have a solicitor and a barrister to defend you.’

  ‘Will he get longer? Seeing he laid it all on? Gil?’

  ‘Possibly. If you can satisfy the court that he did.’

  Syd wiped the back of his hand across his face. ‘Not like that,’ he said, ‘not in front of him. In court. Not on your Nelly.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’d get me,’ he said.

  ‘Who would?’

  ‘Them. The organization. That lot.’

  Alleyn moved away from him. ‘Make up your mind,’ he said, and looked at his watch. ‘I can’t give you much longer.’

  ‘I never wanted to do him over. I never meant to make it tough. You know? Tying him up with the wire and that. It was Gil.’

  ‘For the last time: if you have something to say about Ferrant, say it.’

  ‘I want a fix.’

  ‘Say it.’

  Syd bit his fingers, wiped his nose, blinked, and with a travesty of pulling himself together, cleared his throat and whispered: ‘Gil did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Did her. Dulcie.’

  And then, as if he’d turned himself on like a tap, he poured out his story.

  Dulcie Harkness, he said, had found out about the capsules in the paint tubes. It had happened one night when she was ‘going with’ Syd. It might have been the night he took Ricky to the pad. Yes – it was that night. Before they arrived she had taken it into her head to tidy up the paint-table and had come across a tube that was open at the wrong end. When Ricky had gone she had pointed it out to Syd. Alleyn gathered that this rattled Syd. He told her it was because the cap had jammed. Dulcie had unscrewed the cap with ease and ‘got nosy’. Syd had lost his temper – he was, he said, by that time ‘high’ on grass. There was a fine old scene between them and she’d left the pad saying she expected to be made an honest woman by him. Or else.

  After that she kept on at him both before and after his trip to London. Her uncle was giving her hell and she wanted to cut loose and the shortest route to that desired end, she argued, was a visit to the registry office with Syd. By this time, it emerged, she was ‘going with somebody else’ and threatened to talk.

  ‘Do you mean to Louis Pharamond?’

  Never mind who. She got Syd so worried he’d confided in Gil Ferrant and Gil had gone crook, Syd said, revealing his antipodean origin. Gil had taken it very seriously indeed. He’d tackled Dulcie, tried to scare her with threats about what would happen to her if she talked, but she laughed at him and said two could play at that game.

  That was the situation on the morning before
the accident. When he returned from his trip to the corn-chandler Syd found Ferrant lurking round the stables. He had driven up in his car. Alleyn heard with surprise that Mrs Ferrant was with him. It appeared that she did the fine laundering for L’Esperance and they had called there to deliver it. Ferrant said that within the next few days he was going over to St Pierre under orders from above and Syd was to hold himself in readiness to follow, to collect a consignment. Ferrant wanted to know how Dulcie was behaving herself. Syd gave him an account of the fence-jumping incident, her threat to try it herself and the subsequent row with her uncle.

  Ferrant had asked where she was and Syd had said up in her room but that wouldn’t be for long. She’d broken out before and she would again and if he knew anything about her she’d take the mare over the jump.

  ‘Where,’ Alleyn asked, ‘was her uncle at this time?’

  In his office, writing hell-fire pamphlets, Syd supposed. And where was the sorrel mare? In her loose-box. And Mrs Ferrant? She remained in the car.

  ‘Go on.’

  Well, Ferrant supplied Syd’s stuff and he’d brought a packet and he said why didn’t Syd doss down somewhere and do himself a favour. He was friendlier than Syd had known him since the row over Dulcie. They were in the old coach-house at the time and Syd noticed how Ferrant looked round at everything.

  Well. So Syd had said he didn’t mind if he did. He went into one of the unoccupied loose-boxes where he settled himself down on the clean straw and gave himself a fix.

  The next thing he could be sure about was that it was quite a lot later in the afternoon. He pulled himself together and went into the coach-house where he had parked his bike. It was then that he noticed the length of wire that had been newly cut off from the main coil. He thought it would do to hang his picture and he took it. He then remembered he was supposed to take the sorrel mare to the smith. He looked in her loose-box but she wasn’t there. It was too late to do anything about it now so he biked down to the cliffs and had another fix. After a time he got round to wondering what had gone on at Leathers. He returned there and met Ricky and Jasper Pharamond who told him about Dulcie.

  Here Syd came to a stop. He gazed at Alleyn and pulled at his beard.

  ‘Well,’ Alleyn said, ‘is that all?’

  ‘All! God, it’s everything. He did it. I know. I could tell, the way he carried on afterwards when I talked about it. He was pleased with himself. You could tell.’

  At this point Syd became hysterical. He swore that if they put him in the witness-box he wouldn’t say a word about heroin or against Ferrant because if he did he’d ‘be in for it’. It was for Alleyn to follow up the information he’d given him, but he, Syd, wasn’t going to be made a monkey of. It was remarkable that however frantic he became he never mentioned Ferrant’s name or alluded to him in any way without lowering his voice, as if Ferrant might overhear him. But when he pleaded for his fix he became vociferous and at last began to scream.

  Alleyn said he’d ask Dr Carey to look at Syd and saw him taken back to his cell. He and Fox then called on Gil Ferrant and were received with a great show of insolence. Ferrant lounged on his bed. He still wore his sharp French suit and pink shirt but they were greatly dishevelled and he had an overnight beard. He chewed gum with his mouth open and looked them up and down through halfshut eyes. Almost, Alleyn thought, he preferred Syd.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  Ferrant raised his eyebrows, stretched elaborately and yawned.

  ‘No doubt,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s been explained to you that you haven’t much hope of avoiding a conviction and the maximum sentence. If you plead guilty you may get off with less. Do you want to make a statement?’

  Ferrant shook his head slowly from side to side and made a great thing of shifting the wad of gum.

  ‘Advised not to,’ he drawled.

  Alleyn said: ‘We’ve found enough heroin at Jones’s place to send you up for years.’

  Ferrant said, ‘That’s his affair.’

  ‘And yours. Believe me, yours.’

  ‘No comment,’ he said, and shut his eyes.

  ‘You’re out on a limb,’ said Alleyn. ‘Your master’s cleared off. Did you know that?’

  Ferrant didn’t open his eyes but the lids quivered.

  ‘You’d do better to co-operate,’ Fox advised.

  Ferrant, still lolling on the bed, opened his eyes and looked at Alleyn. ‘And how’s Daddy’s Baby-boy this morning?’ he asked, and smiled as he chewed.

  In the silence that followed this quip, Alleyn, as if desire could actually change places with action, saw – almost felt – his fist drive into the bristled chin. His fingernails bit into his palm. He looked at Fox, whose neck seemed to have swollen and whose face was red.

  A long-forgotten phrase from Little Dorrit came into Alleyn’s mind: ‘Count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.’ He had actually begun to count the seconds in his head when Plank came in to say he was wanted on the telephone by Mrs Pharamond. In the passage he said to Plank, ‘Ferrant won’t talk. Mr Fox is having a go. Take your notebook.’

  Plank, after a startled glance at him, went off.

  When Alleyn spoke to Julia she sounded much more like her usual self.

  ‘What luck!’ said Julia. ‘I rang the Cove station and a nice lady said you might be where you are. It’s to tell you Carlotta’s had a message from Louis. Are you pleased? We are.’

  ‘Am I to hear what it is?’

  ‘It’s a picture postcard of the Montjoy Hotel. Someone has written in a teeny-weeny hand: ‘Picked up in street’ and it’s very grubby. It says, “Everything OK. Writing. L.” and it’s addressed, of course, to Carla. Would you like to know how we interpret it?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘We think Louis has flown to Brazil. I, for one, hope he stays there and so I bet, between you and me and the gatepost, does Carlotta. He was becoming altogether too difficile. But wasn’t it kind of whoever it was to fish the card out of some gutter and pop it in the post?’

  ‘Very kind. Can you read the postmark? The time?’

  ‘Wait a sec. No, I can’t. There’s a muddy smudge all over it.’

  ‘Will you let me see it?’

  ‘Not,’ said Julia promptly, ‘if it’ll help you haul him back. But we thought it only fair to let you know about it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘So we’re all feeling relieved and in good heart for Mr Harkness’s party tomorrow. I suppose poorest Ricky won’t attend, will he? How boring for him to be in hospital. We’re going to see him. After the party, so as to tell him all about it. He’s allowed visitors I hope?’

  ‘Oh, yes. His mother’s arriving today.’

  ‘Troy! But how too exciting! Jasper,’ screamed Julia. ‘Troy’s coming to see Ricky.’

  Alleyn heard Jasper exclaiming buoyantly in the background.

  ‘I must go, I’m afraid,’ he said into the receiver. ‘Thank you for telling me about the postcard.’

  ‘You aren’t at all huffy, I suppose? You sound like Ricky when he’s huffy.’

  ‘A fat lot of good it would do me if I was. Oh, by the way, does Mrs Ferrant do your laundry?’

  ‘The fine things. Tarty blouses. Frills and pleats. Special undies. She’s a wizard with the iron. Like Mrs Tiggywinkle. Why?’

  ‘Does she collect and deliver?’

  ‘We usually drop and collect. Why?’

  ‘I must fly. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Wait a bit. Do you suppose Louis dropped the postcard on purpose so that we wouldn’t get it until he’d skedaddled?’

  ‘The idea does occur, doesn’t it? Goodbye.’

  On the way to the Cove he reflected that a great many people in the Pharamonds’ boots would be secretly enchanted to get rid of Louis but only the Pharamonds would loudly say so.

  II

  ‘First stop, Madame Ferrant,’ said Alleyn as they drove into Deep Cove. ‘I want you both to come in with me. I don’t fancy the lad
y is easily unseated but we’ll give it ago.’

  She opened the door to them. Her head was neatly tied up in a black handkerchief. She was implacably aproned and her sleeves were rolled up. Her face, normally sallow, was perhaps more so than usual and this circumstance lent emphasis to her eyes.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  Alleyn introduced Fox and produced the ostensible reason for the call. He would pack up his son’s effects and, of course, settle his bill. Perhaps she would be kind enough to make it out.

  ‘It is already prepared,’ said Mrs Ferrant, and showed them into the parlour. She opened a drawer in a small bureau and produced her account. Alleyn paid and she receipted it.

  ‘Madame will understand,’ Alleyn said in French, ‘that under the circumstances it would regrettably be unsuitable for my son to remain.’

  ‘Parfaitement,’ said Mrs Ferrant.

  ‘Especially since the injuries from which he suffers were inflicted by Madame’s husband.’

  Not a muscle of her face moved.

  ‘You have, of course,’ Alleyn went on, changing to English, ‘been informed of his arrest. You will probably be required to come before the court on Monday.’

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Madame, you will be required to attend.’ She slightly inclined her head.

  ‘In the meantime, if you wish to see your husband you will be permitted to do so.’

  ‘I have no desire to see him.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I should perhaps explain that although he has been arrested on a charge of assault there may well follow a much graver accusation: trading in illicit drugs.’

  ‘As to that, it appears to me to be absurd,’ said Mrs Ferrant.

  ‘Oh, Madame, I think not. May I remind you of your son’s errands last night to and from the premises occupied by Sydney Jones? Where your husband and Jones handled a consignment of heroin and where, with your connivance, they planned their escape?’

  ‘I know nothing of all this. Nothing. My boy is a mere child.’

  ‘In years, no doubt,’ said Alleyn politely.

  She remained stoney.

  ‘Tell me,’ Alleyn said. ‘How long have you known the real object of your husband’s trips to Marseilles and the Càte d’Azur?’