Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Plank.

  ‘Where are your other chaps?’

  ‘They went in, Mr Alleyn. As far front as possible. And there’s an extra copper from the mainland, like you said. Outside the back door.’

  ‘How are your two treasures in there?’

  ‘Ferrant’s a right monkey, Mr Alleyn. Very uncooperative. He doesn’t talk except to Jones and then it’s only the odd curse. The doctor came in to see Jones before we left and gave him a reduced fix. The doctor’s here.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He says Mr Harkness called him in to give him something to steady him up, but he reckons he’d already taken something on his own account.’

  ‘Where is Dr Carey?’

  ‘In the audience. He’s just gone in. He said to tell you Mr Harkness is in a very unstable condition but not incapable.’

  ‘Thank you. We’ll get moving. Come on, Fox.’

  They joined the little stream of people who walked round the stables and along the path to the Old Barn.

  A man with a collection plate stood inside the door. Alleyn, fishing out his contribution, asked if he could by any chance have a word with Mr Harkness and was told that Brother Cuth was at prayer in the back room and could see nobody. ‘Alleluia,’ he added, apparently in acknowledgement of Alleyn’s donation.

  Alleyn and Fox found seats half-way down the barn. Extra chairs and boxes were being brought in, presumably from the house. The congregation appeared to be a cross-section of Cove and countryside in its Sunday clothes with a smattering of rather more stylish persons who might hail from Montjoy or even be tourists come out of curiosity. Alleyn recognized one or two faces he had seen at the Cod-and-Bottle. And there, stony in the fourth row with Louis beside her, sat Mrs Ferrant.

  A little further forward from Alleyn and Fox were the Pharamonds, looking like a stand of orchids in a cabbage patch and behaving beautifully.

  In the front three rows sat, or so Alleyn concluded, the hard-core brethren. They had an air of proprietorship and kept a smug eye on their books.

  The curtains were closed to exclude the stage.

  An audience, big or small, as actors know, generates its own flavour and exudes it like a pervasive scent. This one gave out the heady smell of suspense.

  The tension increased when a thin lady with a white face seated herself at the harmonium and released strangely disturbing strains of unparalleled vulgarity.

  ‘Shall we gather at the River?’ invited the harmonium. ‘The Beautiful, The Beautiful, The Ree-iv-a?’

  Under cover of this prelude Plank and his support brought in their charges. Alleyn and Fox could see them reflected in a glazed and framed scroll that hung from a beam: ‘The Chosen Brethren’, it was headed, and it set out the professions of the sect.

  Plank’s party settled themselves on a bench against the back wall.

  The harmonium achieved its ultimate fortissimo and the curtains opened jerkily to reveal six men seated behind a table on either side of a more important but empty chair. The congregation, prompted by the elect, rose.

  In the commonplace light of early evening that filled the hall and in a total silence that followed a last deafening roulade on the organ, Mr Harkness entered from the inner room at the back of the platform.

  One would have said that conditions were not propitious for dramatic climax: it had, however, been achieved.

  He was dressed in a black suit and wore a black shirt and tie. He had shaved, and his hair, cut to regimental length, was brushed. His eyes were bloodshot, his complexion was blotched and his hands unsteady, but he seemed to be more in command of himself than he had been on the occasions when Alleyn had encountered him. It was a star entrance and if Mr Harkness had been an actor he would have been accorded a round of applause.

  As it was he sat in the central chair. There he remained motionless throughout the ensuing hymn and prayers. These latter were extempore and of a highly emotional character, and were given out in turn by each of the six supporting brethren, later referred to by Plank as ‘Cuth’s side-kicks’.

  With these preliminaries accomplished and all being seated, Cuthbert Harkness rose to deliver his address. For at least a minute and in complete silence he stood with head bent and eyes closed while his lips moved, presumably in silent prayer. The wait was hard to bear.

  From the moment he began to speak he generated an almost intolerable tension. At first he was quiet but it would have come as a relief if he had spoken at the top of his voice.

  He said: ‘Brethren: This is the Day of Reckoning. We are sinners in the sight of the Great Master. Black as hell are our sins and only the Blood of Sacrifice can wash us clean. We have committed abominations. Our unrighteousness stinks in the nostrils of the All-Seeing Host. Uncleanliness, lechery and defilement stalk through our ranks. And Murder.’

  It was as if a communal nerve had been touched, causing each member of his audience to stiffen. He himself actually ‘came to attention’ like a soldier. He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, inflated his chest and directed his bloodshot gaze over the heads of his listeners. He might have been addressing a parade.

  ‘Murder,’ roared Mr Harkness. ‘You have Murder here in your midst, brethren, here in the very temple of righteousness. And I shall reveal its Name unto you. I have nursed the awful knowledge like a viper in my bosom, I have wrestled with the Angel of Darkness. I have suffered the torments of the Damned but now the Voice of Eternal Judgement has spoken unto me and all shall be made known.’

  He stopped dead and looked wildly round his audience. His gaze alighted on the row against the back wall and became fixed. He raised his right arm and pointed.

  ‘Guilt!’ he shouted. ‘Guilt encompasseth us on every hand. The serpent is coiled in divers bosoms. I accuse! Sydney Jones –’

  ‘You lay off me,’ Syd screamed out, ‘you shut up.’

  Heads were turned. Sergeant Plank could be heard expostulating. Harkness, raising his voice, roared out a sequence of anathemas, but no specific accusation. The accusing finger shifted.

  ‘Gilbert Ferrant! Woe unto you Gilbert Ferrant –’

  By now half the audience had turned in their seats. Gilbert Ferrant, tallow-faced, stared at Harkness.

  ‘Woe unto you, Gilbert Ferrant. Adulterer! Trader in forbidden fruits!’

  It went on. Now only the inner brethren maintained an eyes-front demeanour. Consternation mounted in the rest of the congregation. Mr Harkness now pointed at Mrs Ferrant. He accused her of stony-heartedness and avarice. He moved on to Bob Maistre (wine-bibbing) and several fishermen unknown to Alleyn (blasphemy).

  He paused. His roving and ensanguined gaze alighted on the Pharamonds. He pointed: ‘And ye,’ he apostrophized them, ‘wallowers in the flesh-pots…’

  He rambled on at the top of his voice. They were motionless throughout. At last he stopped, glared, and seemed to prepare himself for some final and stupendous effort. Into the silence desultory sounds intruded. It was as if somebody outside the barn had begun to pepper the iron roof with pellets, only a few at first but increasing. At last the clouds had broken and it had begun to rain.

  One might be forgiven, Alleyn thought afterwards, for supposing that some celestial stage-management had taken charge, decided to give Mr Harkness the full treatment, and grossly overdone it. Mr Harkness himself seemed to be unaware of the mounting fusilade on the roof. As the din increased he broke out anew. He stepped up his parade-ground delivery. He shouted anathemas: on his niece and her sins, citing predictable Biblical comparisons, notably Jezebel and the whore of Babylon. He referred to Leviticus 20.6 and to the Cities of the Plains. He began to describe the circumstances of her death. He was now very difficult to hear, for the downpour on the iron roof was all-obliterating.

  ‘And the Sinner…’ could be made out ‘…Mark of Cain…before you all…now proclaim…Behold the man…’

  He raised his right arm to the all-too-appropriate accompaniment of a stupendous thunder-clap and t
urned himself into a latter-day Lear. He beat his bosom and seemed at last to become aware of the storm.

  An expression of bewilderment and frustration appeared. He stared wildly about him, gestured, clasped his hands and looked beseechingly round his audience.

  Then he covered his face with his hands and bolted into the inner room. The door shut behind him with such violence that the framed legend above it crashed to the floor. Still the rain hammered on the iron roof.

  Alleyn and Fox were on the stage with Plank hard at their heels. Nothing they said could be heard. Alleyn was at the door. It was locked. He and Fox stood back from it, collected themselves and shoulder-charged it. It resisted but Plank was there and joined in the next assault. It burst open and they plunged into the room.

  Brother Cuth hung from a beam above the chair he had kicked away. His confession was pinned to his coat. He had used a length of wire from the coil in the old coach-house.

  IV

  Alleyn pushed the confession across the table to Fox. ‘It’s all there,’ he said. ‘He may have written it days ago or whenever he first made up his mind.

  ‘He was determined to destroy the author, as he saw her, of his damnation, and then himself. The method only presented itself after their row about Dulcie jumping the gap. He seems to have found some sort of satisfaction, some sense of justice in the act of her disobedience being the cause of her death. He must have…made his final preparations during the time he was locked up in the back room before the service began. If we’d broken in the door on the first charge we might just have saved him. He wouldn’t have thanked us for it.’

  ‘I don’t get it, sir,’ Plank said. ‘Him risking the sorrel mare. It seems all out of character.’

  ‘He didn’t think he was risking the mare. He’d ordered Jones to take her to the smith and he counted on Dulcie trying the jump with Mungo, the outlaw, the horse he wanted to destroy. In the verbal battle they exchanged, he told her the mare had gone to the smith and she said she’d do it on Mungo. It’s there, in the confession. He’s been very thorough.’

  ‘When did he rig the wire in the gap?’ Fox asked. He was reading the confession. ‘Oh, yes. I see. As soon as Jones went to the corn-chandler’s, believing that on his return he would remove the sorrel mare to the blacksmith’s.’

  ‘And unrigged it after the Ferrants left when Jones was sleeping it off in the loose-box.’

  Fox said: ‘And that girl lying in full view there in the ditch, looking the way she did! You can’t wonder he went off the rails.’ He read on.

  Plank said: ‘And yet, Mr Alleyn, by all accounts he used to be fond of her, too. She was his niece. He’d adopted her.’

  ‘What’s all this he’s on about? Leviticus 20.6,’ Fox asked.

  ‘Look it up in the Bible they so thoughtfully provide in your room, Br’er Fox. I did. It says: “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness.” ’

  Fox thought it over and was scandalized. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘To him,’ Alleyn said, ‘she was the eternal temptress. The Scarlet Woman. The cause of his undoing. In a way, I suppose, he thought he was handing over the outcome to the Almighty. If she obeyed him and stayed in her room, nothing would happen. If she defied him, everything would. Either way the decision came from on high.’

  ‘Not my idea of Christianity,’ Plank muttered. ‘The missus and I are C of E,’ he added.

  ‘You know,’ Alleyn said to Fox, ‘one might almost say Harkness was a sort of cross between Adam and the Ancient Mariner. “The woman tempted me”, you know. And the subsequent revulsion followed by the awful necessity to talk about it, to make a proclamation before all the world and then to die.’

  They said nothing for some time. At last Fox cleared his throat.

  ‘What about the button?’ he asked.

  ‘In the absence of its owner, my guess would be that he went into the horse-paddock out of curiosity to inspect Bruno’s jump and saw dead Dulcie – Dulcie who’d been threatening to shop her drug-running boyfriends; that, true to his practice of a strictly background figure of considerable importance, Louis decided to have seen nothing and removed himself from the terrain. Too bad he dropped a button.’

  ‘Well,’ Fox said, after a further pause, ‘we haven’t had what you’d call a resounding success. Missed out with our homicide by seconds, lost a big fish on the drug scene and ended up with a couple of tiddlers. And we’ve seen the young chap turn into a casualty on the way. How is he, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘We’ve finished for the time being. Come and see,’ said Alleyn.

  Ricky had been discharged from hospital and was receiving in his bedroom at the hotel. Julia, Jasper and Troy were all in attendance. The Pharamonds had brought grapes, books, champagne and some more langouste sandwiches because the others had been a success. They had been describing, from their point of view, Cuth’s Party, as Julia only just continued not to call it.

  ‘Darling,’ she said to Ricky, ‘your papa was quite wonderful.’ And to Troy, ‘No, but I promise. Superb.’ She appealed to Fox. ‘You’ll bear me out, Mr Fox.’ Rather to his relief she did not wait for Fox to do so. ‘There we all were,’ Julia continued at large. ‘I can’t tell you – the noise! And poor, poorest Cuth, trying with all his might to compete, rather, one couldn’t help thinking, like Mr Noah in the deluge. I don’t mean to be funny but it did come into one’s head at the time. And really, you know, it was rather impressive. Especially when he pointed us out and said we were wallowers in the flesh-pots of Egypt, though why Egypt, one asks oneself. And then all those…“effects” don’t they call them – and – and –’

  Julia stopped short. ‘Would you agree,’ she said, appealing to Alleyn, ‘that when something really awful happens it’s terribly important not to work up a sort of phoney reaction? You know? Making out you’re more upset than you really are. Would you say that?’

  Alleyn said: ‘In terms of self-respect I think I would.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Julia. ‘It’s like using a special sort of pious voice about somebody that’s dead when you don’t really mind all that much.’ She turned to Ricky and presented him with one of her most dazzling smiles. ‘But then you see,’ she said, ‘thanks to your papa we only saw the storm scene, as I expect it would be called in Shakespeare. Because after they broke in the door a large man pulled the stage curtains across and then your papa came through, like men in dinner-jackets do in the theatre, and asked for a doctor and told us there’s been an accident and would we leave quietly. So we did. Of course if we’d –’ Julia stopped. Her face had gone blank. ‘If we’d seen,’ she said rapidly, ‘it would have been different.’

  Ricky remembered what she had been like after she had seen Dulcie Harkness. And then he remembered Jasper saying: ‘The full shock and horror of a death is only experienced when it has been seen.’

  Julia and Jasper said they must go and Alleyn went down with them to their car. Jasper touched Alleyn’s arm and they let Julia go ahead and get into the driver’s seat.

  ‘About Louis,’ Jasper said. ‘Is it to do with drugs?’

  ‘We think it may be.’

  ‘I’ve thought from time to time that something like that might be going on. But it all seemed unreal. We’ve never known anybody who was hooked.’

  Alleyn echoed Julia. ‘If you had,’ he said, ‘it would have been different.’

  When he returned, it was to find Fox and Troy and Ricky quietly contented with each other’s company.

  Alleyn put his arm round Troy.

  ‘Well, Br’er Fox,’ he said, ‘tomorrow is another day.’

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  A Man Lay Dead

  Enter a Murderer

  The Nursing Home Murder

  Death in Ecstasy

  Vintage Murder

  Artists in Crime

  Death in a White Tie

  Overture to

  DeathDeath at the Bar

 
Surfeit of Lampreys

  Death and the Dancing Footman

  Colour Scheme

  Died in the Wool

  Final Curtain

  Swing, Brother, Swing

  Opening Night

  Spinsters in Jeopardy

  Scales of Justice

  Off With His Head

  Singing in the Shrouds

  False Scent

  Hand in Glove

  Dead Water

  Death at the Dolphin

  Clutch of Constables

  When in Rome

  Tied up in Tinsel

  Black As He’s Painted

  Last Ditch

  Grave Mistake

  Photo-Finish

  Light Thickens

  Black Beech and Honeydew (autobiography)

  Copyright

  HARPER

  an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 20091

  FIRST EDITION

  Last Ditch first published in Great Britain by Collins 1977

  Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

  Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1977

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