Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Are they for pleasure? Do you accompany him?’

  She gave a slight snort.

  ‘A little romance, perhaps?’

  She looked disgusted.

  ‘To take a job?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Plumbing?’ Alleyn hinted, and after another fruitless pause: ‘Ah, well, at least he sends postcards. To let you know where he is to be found if anything urgent crops up, no doubt.’

  She began to count the money he had put on the table.

  ‘There is another small matter,’ he said, ‘on which I think you can help us. Will you be so kind as to carry your memory back to the day on which Dulcie Harkness was murdered.’

  She put her hands behind her back – suddenly, as if to hide them – and made to adjust her apron strings. ‘Murdered?’ she said. ‘There has been no talk of murder.’

  ‘There has, however, been talk. On that day, late in the morning, did you and your husband visit Leathers?’

  Her mouth was a tight line, locked across her face.

  ‘Madame,’ said Alleyn, ‘why are you so unwilling to speak? It may be I should not have used the word you object to. It may be that the “accident” was an accident. In order to settle it either way, we welcome any information, however trivial, about the situation at Leathers on that morning. We understand you and your husband called there. Why should you make such a great matter of this visit? Was it connected with your husband’s business activities abroad?’

  A metaphysician might, however fancifully, have said of Mrs Ferrant that her body, at this moment, “thought”, so still did she hold it and so deeply did it breathe. Alleyn saw the pulse beating at the base of her neck. He wondered if there was to be a sudden rage.

  But no: she unlocked her mouth and achieved composure.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘You will understand that I have had a shock and am, perhaps, not quite myself. It is a matter of distress to me that my husband is in trouble.’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘As for this other affair: yes, we called at Leathers on the morning you speak of. My husband had been asked to do a job there – a leaking pipe, I think he said it was – and had called to say that he could not undertake it at that time.’

  ‘You saw Mr Harkness?’

  ‘I remained in the car. My husband may have seen him. But I think not.’

  ‘Did you see Sydney Jones?’

  ‘Him! He was there. There was some talk about a quarrel between Harkness and the girl.’ Her eyes slid round at him. ‘Perhaps it is Harkness to whom you should speak.’

  ‘Do you remember if there were any horses in the stables?’

  ‘I did not see. I did not notice the stables.’

  ‘Or in the horse-paddock? Or the distant hillside?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Possibly about ten-thirty. Perhaps later.’

  ‘Had you been anywhere else that morning?’

  ‘To L’Esperance.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘I do le blanchissage de fin for the ladies, I delivered it there.’

  ‘Is that the usual procedure?’

  ‘No,’ she said composedly. ‘Usually one of their staff picks it up. As we were driving in that direction and the washing was ready, I delivered it.’

  ‘Speaking of deliveries, you do know, don’t you, that young Louis – to distinguish him,’ said Alleyn, ‘from the elder Louis – delivered a note from your husband addressed to me. At the police station? Here, very late last night? He pushed it under the door, rang the bell and ran away.’

  ‘That’s a bloody lie,’ said Mrs Ferrant. In English.

  The conversation so far had been conducted in a lofty mixture of French and English and, in both languages, at a high level of decorum. It was startling to hear Mrs Ferrant come out strongly in basic British fishwife.

  ‘But it isn’t, you know,’ Alleyn said mildly. ‘It’s what happened.’

  ‘No! I swear it. The boy has done nothing. Nothing. He was in bed and asleep by nine o’clock.’ The front door banged.

  ‘Maman! Maman!’ cried a treble voice. ‘Where are you?’

  Mrs Ferrant’s hand went to her mouth.

  They heard young Louis run down the passage and in and out of the kitchen.

  ‘Maman! Are you upstairs. Where are you?’

  ‘Ferme ton bec,’ she let out in the standard maternal screech. ‘I am busy. Stop that noise.’

  But he returned, running up the passage, and burst into the parlour.

  ‘Maman,’ he said, ‘they have nicked Papa. The boys are saying it. They nicked him last night at the house where he gave me the letter.’ He stared at Alleyn. ‘Him,’ he said, and pointed. ‘The fuzz. He’s nicked Papa.’

  Mrs Ferrant raised her formidable right arm in what no doubt was a familiar gesture.

  Louis said: ‘No, Maman!’ and cringed.

  Alleyn said: ‘Do you often give Louis a coup for speaking the truth, Mrs Ferrant?’

  She thrust the receipted bill at him. ‘Take it and remove yourself,’ she said. ‘I have nothing more to say to you.’

  ‘I shall do so. With the fondest remembrances of your Sole à la Dieppoise.’

  Upstairs in Ricky’s room Fox said: ‘What do we get out of that lot?’

  ‘Apart from confirmation of various bits of surmise and conjecture, I should say damn all, or very nearly so. If it’s of interest, I think she’s jealous of her husband and completely under his thumb. I think she hates his guts and would go to almost any length to obey his orders. Otherwise, damn all.’

  They packed up Ricky’s belongings. The morning had turned sunny and the view from the window, described with affection in his letters, was at its best. The harbour was spangled, seagulls stooped and coasted, and down on the front a covey of small boys frisked and skittered. Louis was not among them.

  Alleyn laid his hand on the stack of paper that was Ricky’s manuscript and wondered how long the view from the window would remain vivid in his son’s memory, All his life, perhaps, if anything came of the book. He covered the pile with a sheet of plain paper and put it into an attaché case, together with a quantity of loose notes. Fox packed the clothes. In a drawer of the wardrobe he found letters Ricky had received from his parents.

  ‘Mrs F. will have enjoyed a good read,’ said Alleyn grimly.

  When everything was ready and the room had taken on the blank look of unoccupation, they put Ricky’s baggage in the car. Alleyn, for motives he would have found hard to define but suspected to be less than noble, left five pounds on the dressing-table.

  Before they shut the front door they heard her cross the passage and mount the stairs.

  ‘She’ll chuck it after you,’ predicted Fox.

  ‘What’s the betting? Give her a chance.’

  They waited. Mrs Ferrant did not throw the five pounds after them. She snapped the window curtains across the upstairs room. A faint tremor seemed to suggest that she watched them through the crack.

  They returned to Montjoy, after a brief visit to Syd’s pad where they found Moss and Cribbage, who had completed an exhaustive search and had assembled the fruits of it on the work table: a tidy haul, Alleyn said. He pressed his thumb down on tubes of paint and felt the presence of buried capsules. He looked at the collection, still nestling under protective rows of flake white: capsules waiting to be inserted, and at a chair, the legs of which were scored with wire and smudged with blood.

  ‘You’ve done very well,’ he said, and turned to Plank. ‘Normally,’ he said, ‘I’d have sent for Detective-Sergeant Thompson, who’s my particular chap at the Yard, but seeing you’re an expert, Plank, I think we’ll ask you to take the photographs of this area for us. How do you feel about tackling the job?’

  Scarlet with gratification, Plank intimated that he felt fine and was dropped at his station to collect photographic gear. Moss and Cr
ibbage were to take alternate watches at the pad until the exhibits were removed. Fox and Alleyn returned to Montjoy.

  As their car climbed up the steep lane to the main road, Alleyn looked down on the Cove and wondered whether or not he would have occasion to return to it.

  When he walked into his room at the Hotel Montjoy, he found Troy there waiting for him.

  III

  Sunday came in to the promise of halcyon weather. A clear sky and a light breeze brought an air of expectation to the island.

  Ricky’s progress was satisfactory and though his face resembled, in Troy’s words, one of Turner’s more intemperate sunsets, no bones were broken and no permanent disfigurement need be expected. His ankles were still very swollen and painful but there was no sign of infection and with the aid of sticks he hoped to be able to hobble out of hospital tomorrow.

  In the morning Alleyn and Fox had a session on the balcony outside the Alleyns’ room. They trudged through the body of evidence point by point, in familiar pursuit of an overall pattern.

  ‘You know,’ Fox said, pushing his spectacles up his forehead, when they paused for Alleyn to light his pipe, ‘the unusual feature of this case, as I see it, is its lack of definition. Take the homicide aspect, now. As a general rule we know who we’re after. There’s no mystery. It’s a matter of finding enough material to justify an arrest. It’s not like that this time,’ Fox said vexedly. ‘You may have your ideas and so may I, Mr Alleyn. We may even think there’s only the one possibility that doesn’t present an unanswerable objection, but there’s not what I’d call a hard case to be made out. We’ve got the drug scene on the one hand and this poor girl on the other. Are they connected? Well, are they? Was she knocked off because she threatened to shop them on account of requiring a husband? And if so, which would she shop? Or all? We’ve got three names which could, as you might say, qualify – but only one available for the purpose of marriage.’

  ‘The miserable Syd.’

  ‘Quite so. Then there’s this uncle. There were all these scenes with him. Threats and all the rest of it. Motive, you might think. But he wasn’t drinking at that time and you can’t imagine him risking his own horseflesh. The mare he’s so keen on was just as likely to be killed as the girl. And in any case he’d threatened to give her what for if she had a go. And he ordered Jones to remove the mare so’s she couldn’t try. No, I reckon we’ve got to boil it down to those three unless – by crikey, I wonder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What was it you quoted yesterday about a female informant in France? I’ve got it,’ said Fox, and repeated it. He thought it over, became restless, shook his head and broke out again. ‘We’ve no nice, firm times for anything,’ he lamented. ‘Mr and Mrs Ferrant, S. Jones, Mr Louis Pharamond all flitting about the premises, in and out and round about, and Mr Harkness locking the girl up. The girl getting out and getting herself killed. Mr Harkness writing these silly pamphlets, I don’t know,’ Fox said, and readjusted his glasses. ‘It’s mad.’

  ‘It’s half past eleven,’ said Alleyn. ‘Have a drink.’

  Fox looked surprised. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘This is unusual, Mr Alleyn. Well, since you’ve suggested it I’ll take a light ale.’

  Alleyn joined him. They sat on the hotel balcony and looked not towards France but westwards across the Golfe to the Atlantic. They saw that battlements of cloud had built up on the horizon.

  ‘What does that mean?’ wondered Troy, who had come out to join them. ‘Is that the weather quarter?’

  ‘There’s no wind to speak of,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘Very sultry,’ said Fox. ‘Humid.’

  ‘The cloud’s massing while you look at it,’ Troy said. ‘Swelling up over the edge of the ocean as fast as fast can be.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s getting ready for Mr Harkness’s service. Flashes of lightning,’ said Alleyn. ‘An enormous beard lolloping over the top of the biggest cloud and a gigantic hand chucking thunderbolts. Very alarming.’

  ‘They say it’s the season on the island, for that class of weather,’ Fox observed.

  ‘And in St Pierre-des-Roches, judging by Rick’s experience.’

  ‘Oppressive,’ sighed Fox.

  The western sky slowly darkened. By the time they had finished work on the file, cloud overhung the Channel and threatened the island. After luncheon it almost filled the heavens and was so low that the church spire on the hill above Montjoy looked as if it would prick it and bring down a deluge. But still it didn’t rain. Alleyn and Troy walked to the hospital and Fox paid a routine visit to the police station.

  By tea-time the afternoon had so darkened that it might have been evening.

  At five o’clock Julia rang up, asking Troy if they would like to be collected for what she persisted in calling ‘Cuth’s Party’. Troy explained that she would not be attending it and that Alleyn and Fox had a car. Jasper shouted greetings down the telephone. They both seemed to be in the best of spirits. Even Carlotta joined in the fun.

  Troy said to Alleyn: ‘You’d say they rejoiced over the bolting of the egregious Louis.’

  ‘They’ve good cause to.’

  ‘Is he in deep trouble, Rory?’

  ‘Might well be. We don’t really know and it’s even money that we’ll never find out.’

  The telephone rang again and Alleyn answered it. He held the receiver away from his ear and Troy could hear the most remarkable noises coming through as of a voice being violently tuned in and out on a loud-speaker. Every now and then words would belch out in a roar: ‘Retribution’ was one and ‘Judgement’ another. Alleyn listened with his face screwed up.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he said, when he got the chance. ‘We are all coming. It has been arranged.’

  ‘Jones!’ the voice boomed. ‘Jones!’

  ‘That may be a bit difficult, but I think so.’

  Expostulations rent the air.

  ‘This is too much,’ Alleyn said to Troy. He laid the receiver down and let it perform. When an opportunity presented itself he snatched it up and said: ‘Mr Harkness, I am coming to your service. In the meantime, goodbye,’ and hung up.

  ‘Was that really Mr Harkness?’ asked Troy, ‘or was it an elemental on the rampage?’

  ‘The former. Wait a jiffy.’

  He called the office and said there seemed to be a lunatic on the line and would they be kind enough to cut him off if he rang again.

  ‘How can he possibly hold a service?’ Troy asked.

  ‘He’s hell-bent on it. Whether he’s in a purely alcoholic frenzy or whether he really has taken leave of his senses or whether in fact he has something of moment to reveal, it’s impossible to say.’

  ‘But what’s he want?’

  ‘He wants a full house. He wants Ferrant and Jones, particularly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s going to tell us who killed his niece.’

  ‘For crying out loud!’ said Troy.

  ‘That,’ said Alleyn, ‘is exactly what he intends to do.’

  The service was to be at six o’clock. Alleyn and Fox left Montjoy at a quarter to the hour under a pall of cloud and absolute stillness. Local sounds had become isolated and clearly defined: voices, a car engine starting up, desultory footfalls. And still it did not rain.

  After a minute or two on the road a police van overtook them and sailed ahead.

  ‘Plank,’ said Alleyn, ‘with his boys in blue and their charges. Only they’re not in blue.’

  ‘I suppose it’s OK,’ Fox said, rather apprehensively.

  ‘It’d better be,’ said Alleyn.

  As they passed L’Esperance, the Pharamonds’ largest car could be seen coming down the drive. And on the avenue to Leathers they passed little groups of pedestrians and fell in behind a procession of three cars.

  ‘Looks like capacity all right,’ said Fox.

  Two more cars were parked in front of the house and the police van was in the stable yard. Out in the horse-paddock the sorrel mare flung
up her head and stared at them. The loose-boxes were empty.

  ‘Is he looking after all this himself?’ Fox wondered. ‘You’d hardly fancy he was up to it, would you?’

  Mr Blacker, the vet, got out of one of the cars and came to meet them.

  ‘This is a rum go and no mistake,’ he said. ‘I got the most peculiar letter from Cuth. Insisting I come. Not my sort of Sunday afternoon at all. Apparently he’s been canvassing the district. Are you chaps mixed up in it, or what?’

  Alleyn was spared the necessity of answering by the arrival of the Pharamonds.

  They collected round Alleyn and Fox, gaily chattering as if they had met in the foyer of the Paris Opera. Julia and Carlotta wore black linen suits with white lawn blouses: exquisite tributes to Mrs Ferrant’s art as a blanchisseuse de fin.

  ‘Shall we go in?’ Julia asked as if the bells had rung for curtainup. ‘We mustn’t miss anything, must we?’ She laid her gloved hand on Alleyn’s arm. ‘The baskets!’ she said. ‘Should we take them in or leave them in the car?’

  ‘Baskets?’

  ‘You must remember? “Ladies a Basket”. Carlotta and I have brought langouste and mayonnaise sandwiches. Do you think – suitable?’

  ‘I’m not sure if the basket arises this time.’

  ‘We must wait and see. If unsuitable we shall wolf them up when we get home. As a kind of hors d’oevre. You’re dining, aren’t you? You and Troy? And Mr Fox, of course?’

  ‘Julia,’ Alleyn said, ‘Fox and I are policemen and we’re on duty and however delicious your langouste sandwiches, I doubt if we can accept your kind invitation. And now, like a dear creature, go and assemble your party in the front stalls and don’t blame me for what you are about to receive. It’s through there on your right.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Julia. ‘Yes. I see. Sorry.’

  He watched them go off and then looked into the police van. Plank and Moss were in the front, Cribbage and a very young constable in the back, with Ferrant and Syd Jones attached to them. The police were in civilian dress

  Alleyn said: ‘Wait until everyone else has gone in and then sit at the back. OK? If there aren’t any seats left, stand.’