Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  This didn’t look like Syd Jones’s scene, Ricky thought, still less like Mr Ferrant with his camel-hair coat and pork-pie hat. Days rather than hours might have passed since he sailed away from the Cove: it was a new world.

  He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, left his rucksack in his room and went out to explore. First, he would go uphill. The little town soon petered out. Some precipitous gardens, a flight of steps and a road to a cemetery led to the church, not surprisingly dedicated to St Pierre-des-Roches. It turned out to be rather commonplace except perhaps for a statue of the Saint himself in pastel colours wearing his custodial keys and stationed precariously on an unconvincing rock. ‘Tu es Pierre,’ said a legend, ‘et sur cette pierre Je bâtitrai Mon èglise.’

  One could, for a small sum, climb the tower. Ricky did so and was rewarded by a panorama of the town, its environs, the sparkling sea and a fragile shadow that was his own island out there in the Channel.

  And there quite near at hand, were the premises of Jerome et Cie with their own legend in electric lights garnished with the image of a tube from which erupted a sausage of paint. At night, this, by a quaint device, would seem to gush busily. It reminded Ricky of the morning when he trod on Syd’s vermilion. Perhaps Syd had come over to St Pierre to renew his stocks of samples and to this end would be calling on Messrs Jerome et Cie. Ricky rested his arms on the balustrade and watched the humanoids moving about in the street below: all heads and shoulders. A funeral crawled up the road. He looked down into a wreath of lilies on top of the hearse. The cortège turned into the cemetery and presently there was a procession with a priest, a boy swinging a censer and a following of black midgets. He imagined he could catch a whiff of incense. The cortège disappeared behind a large monument.

  Ricky, caught in a kind of indolence, couldn’t make up his mind to leave the balcony. He still lounged on the balustrade and stared down at the scene below. Into a straggle of pedestrians there emerged from beneath him someone who seemed to have come out of the church itself; a figure with a purplish-red cap. It wore a belted coat and something square hung from its shoulder.

  Ricky was not really at all surprised.

  A frightful rumpus outraged his eardrums and upheaved his diaphragm. The church clock, under his feet, was striking ten.

  CHAPTER 5

  Intermezzo With Storm

  The last stroke of ten still rumbled on the air as Ricky watched the midget that was Syd walk up the street and, sure enough, turn in at the gateway to Jerome et Cie’s factory. Had he come out of the church? Had he already been lurking in some dark corner when Ricky came in? Or had he followed Ricky? Why had he gone there? To say his prayers? To look for something to paint? To rest his legs? The box, loaded as it always seemed to be with large tubes of paint, must be extremely heavy. And yet he had shifted it casually from one shoulder to the other and there was nothing in the movement to suggest weight. Perhaps it was empty and he was going to get a load of free paints from Jerome et Cie.

  Ricky was visited by a sequence of disturbing notions. Did Sydney Jones really think that he, Ricky, was following him round, spying on him or – unspeakable thought – lustfully pursuing him? Or was the boot on the other foot? Was Syd, in fact, keeping observation on Ricky? Had Syd, for some unguessable reason, followed him on board the Island Belle? Into the bistro? Up the hill to the church? When cornered, were the abuse and insults a shambling attempt to throw him off the scent? Which was the hunter and which the hunted?

  It had been after Syd’s return from London and after Dulcie’s death that he had, definitely, turned hostile. Why? Had anything happened when he lunched with Ricky’s parents to make him so peculiar? Was it because Troy had not thought well of his paintings? Or had asked if he was messing about with drugs?

  And here Ricky suddenly remembered Syd’s face, six inches from his own, when they were vis-à-vis across the fish crate and Syd’s dark glasses had slid down his nose. Were his eyes not pin-pupilled? And did he not habitually snuffle and sweat? And what about the night at Syd’s pad when he asked if Ricky had ever taken a trip? And behaved very much as if he’d taken something-or-another himself? Could drugs in fact be the explanation? Of everything? The scene he made when vermilion paint burst out of the wrong end of the tube? The sulks? The silly violence? Everything?

  A squalid, boring explanation, he thought, and one that didn’t really satisfy him. There was something else. It came to him that he would very much like to rake the whole thing over with his father.

  He descended the church tower and went out to the street. Which way? On up the hill to Jerome et Cie or back to the town? Without consciously coming to a decision he found he had turned to the right and was approaching the entrance to the factory.

  Opposite to it was a café with chairs and tables set out under an awning. The day was beginning to be hot. He had walked quite a long way and climbed a tower. He chose a table beside a potted rubber plant whose leaves shielded him from the factory entrance but were not dense enough to prevent him watching it. He ordered beer and a roll and began to feel like a character in a roman policier. He supposed his father had often done this sort of thing and tried to imagine him, with his air of casual elegance, ‘keeping observation’ hour after hour with a pile of saucers mounting on the table. ‘At a certain little café in the suburbs of St Pierre-des-Roches,’ thought Ricky. That was how they began romans policiers in the salad days of the genre.

  The beer was cold and delicious. It was fun to be keeping his own spot of observation, however pointless it might turn out to be.

  Someone had left a copy of Le Monde on the table. He picked it up and began laboriously to read it, maintaining through the rubber plant leaves a pretty constant watch on the factory gates.

  Feeling as if the waiters and every customer in the café observed him with astonishment, he contrived to make a hole in the paper which might be useful if, by some freakish chance, Syd should take it into his head to refresh himself when he emerged from the factory. Time went by slowly. It really was getting awfully hot. The newspaper tipped forward. He gave a galvanic jerk, opened his eyes and found himself looking through the rubber plant leaves at Syd Jones, crossing the street towards him.

  Ricky whipped the paper up in front of his face and found that the peephole he had made was virtually useless. He stole a quick look over the top and there was Syd, sure enough, seating himself at a distant table with his back to Ricky. He dumped his paintbox on the unoccupied seat. There was no doubt that now it was extremely heavy.

  Ricky asked himself what the devil he thought he was up to and why it had become so important to find a reason for Syd Jones taking a scunner to him. And why was he so concerned to find out if Syd doped himself? Was it because these were details in a pattern that refused to emerge and somehow or another – yes, that, absurdly, was it – could be associated with the death of Dulcie Harkness?

  Having arrived at this preposterous conclusion, what was he going to do about it? Waste his little holiday by playing an inane game of hide-and-seek with Syd Jones and return to the Island no wiser than when he left it?

  There were no looking-glasses in this café and Syd had his back to Ricky, who had widened the hole in Le Monde. He was assured that his legs were unrecognizable since he had changed into jeans and espadrilles.

  The waiter took an order from Syd and came back with café-nature and a glass of water.

  And now Ricky became riveted to the hole in his paper. Syd looked round furtively. There were only four other people including Ricky in the café and he had chosen a table far removed from any of them. Suddenly, as far as Ricky could make out, he put the glass on the seat of his chair, between his thighs. He then appeared to take something out of the breast pocket of his shirt. His head was sunk on his chest and he leant forward as if to rest his left forearm on his knee and seemed intent on some hidden object. He became very still. After a few seconds his right arm jerked slightly, there was a further manipulation of some sort, he raised
his head and his body seemed to relax as if in the gift of the sun.

  ‘That settles the drug question, poor sod,’ thought Ricky.

  But he didn’t think it settled anything else.

  Syd began to tap the ground with his foot as though keeping time with an invisible band. With the fingers of his right hand he beat a tattoo on the lid of his paintbox. Ricky heard him laugh contentedly. The waiter walked over to his table and looked at him. Syd groped in his pocket and dropped quite a little handful of coins on the table. The waiter picked up what was owing and waited for his tip. Syd made a wide extravagant gesture. ‘Help yourself,’ Ricky heard him say. ‘Servez-vous, mon vieux,’ in execrable French. ‘Prenez le tout.’ The man bowed and swept up the coins. He turned away, and for the benefit of his fellow-waiter, lifted his shoulders and rolled his head. Syd had not touched his coffee.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Alleyn.’

  Every nerve in Ricky’s body seemed to leap. He let out an exclamation, dropped the newspaper and turned to find Mr Ferrant smiling down at him.

  II

  After the initial shock, Ricky’s reaction was one of hideous embarrassment joined to fury. He sat there with a flaming face knowing himself to look the last word in abysmal foolishness. How long, Oh God, how long had Mr Ferrant stood behind him and watched him squint with screwed-up countenance through a hole in a newspaper at Syd Jones? Mr Ferrant, togged out in skin-tight modishly flared white trousers, a pink striped T-shirt, white buckskin sandals and a medallion on a silver chain. Mr Ferrant of the clustering curls and impertinent smile. Mr Ferrant, incongruously enough, the plumber and odd-job man.

  ‘You made me jump,’ Ricky said. ‘Hullo. Mrs Ferrant said you might be here.’

  Mr Ferrant snapped his fingers at the waiter.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked Ricky.

  ‘No. Please do. What,’ Ricky invited in a strange voice, ‘will you have?’

  He would have beer. Ricky ordered two beers and felt that he himself would be awash with it.

  Ferrant, whose every move seemed to Ricky to express a veiled insolence, slid into a chair and stretched himself. ‘When did you come over, then?’ he asked.

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he said easily. ‘So did he,’ and nodded across at Syd, who now fidgeted and looked at his watch. At any moment, Ricky thought, he might turn round and see them and what could that not lead to?

  The waiter brought their beer. Ferrant lit a cigarette. He blew out smoke and wafted it away with a workman’s hand. ‘And what brought you over, anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘Curiosity,’ said Ricky, and then hurriedly: ‘To make a change from work.’

  ‘Work? That’d be writing, wouldn’t it?’ he said, as if there was something suspect in the notion. ‘Where you staying?’ Ricky told him.

  ‘That’s a crummy little old place, that is,’ he said. ‘I go to Le Beau Rivage myself.’

  He took the copy of Le Monde out of Ricky’s nerveless grasp and stuck his blunt forefinger through the hole. ‘Quite fascinating what you was reading, seemingly. Couldn’t take your eyes off of it, could you, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘Look here,’ Ricky said. He put his hand up to his face and felt its heat. ‘I expect you think there was something a bit off about – about – my looking – about – But there wasn’t. I can’t explain but –’

  ‘Me!’ said Ferrant. ‘Think! I don’t think nothing.’

  He drained his glass and clapped it down on the table. ‘We all get our little fancies, like,’ he said. ‘Right? And why not? Nice drop of ale, that.’ He was on his feet. ‘Reckon I’ll have a word with Syd,’ he said. ‘Quite a coincidence. He came in the morning boat, too. Lovely weather, isn’t it? Might turn to thunder later on.’

  He strolled across between the empty tables with slight but ineffable shifts of his vulgar little stern. Ricky could have kicked him but he could have kicked himself still harder.

  It seemed an eternity before Ferrant reached Syd, who appeared to have dozed off. Ricky, held in a nightmarish inertia, could not take his eyes off them. Ferrant laid his hand on Syd’s head and rocked it, not very gently, to and fro.

  Syd opened his eyes. Ferrant twisted the head towards Ricky. He said something that didn’t seem to register. Syd blinked and frowned as if unable to focus his eyes, but he made a feeble attempt to shake Ferrant off. Ferrant released him with a bully’s playful buffet. Ricky saw awareness dawn on Syd’s face and a mounting anger.

  Ferrant shifted the paintbox to the ground and sat down. He put his hand on Syd’s knee and leant towards him. He might have been giving him some important advice. The waiter strolled towards Ricky, who paid and tipped him. He said something about, ‘Un dràle de type, celui-là’, meaning Ferrant.

  Ricky left the café. On his way out Ferrant waved to him.

  He walked back into the town, chastened.

  Perhaps the circumstance that most mortified him was the certainty that Ferrant by this time had told Syd about the hole in the newspaper.

  The day had turned into a scorcher and the soles of his feet were cobbled with red-hot marbles. He reached the front and sought the shade of a wooden pavilion facing the sea. He shuffled out of his espadrilles, lit his pipe and began to feel a little better.

  The Island Belle was still at her berth. After the upset with Syd Jones on the way over, Ricky hadn’t thought of finding out when she sailed for Montjoy. He wondered whether he should call it a day, sail with her and retire upon his proper occupation of writing a book and perhaps licking the wounds in his self-esteem.

  He was unable to make up his mind. French holiday-makers came and went, with the approach of noon the day grew hotter and the little pavilion less endurable. Ricky left it and walked painfully along the front to a group of three hotels, each of which had private access to a beach. He went into the first, Le Beau Rivage, hired bathing drawers and a towel and swam about among the decorous bourgeoisie hoping to become refreshed and in better heart.

  What he did become was hungry. Unable to face the walk along scorching pavements, he took a taxi to his hotel, lunched there in a dark little salon à manger and retired to his room, where he fell into a very heavy sleep.

  He woke, feeling awful, at three o’clock. The room had darkened. When he looked out of his window it was to the ominous rumble of thunder and at steely clouds rolling in from the north. The harbour had turned grey and choppy and the Island Belle jounced at her moorings. There were very few people about in the town and those that were to be seen walked quickly, seeking shelter.

  Ricky was one of those beings who respond uncomfortably to electric storms. They produced a nervous tingling in his arms and legs and a sense of impending disaster. As a small boy they had aroused a febrile excitement, so that at one moment he wanted to hide and at the next to stand at the window or even go out of doors for the sheer terror of doing so. Although he had learned to control these reactions and to give little outward sign of them, the restlessness they induced even now was almost unbearable.

  The room flashed up and out. Ricky counted the seconds automatically, scarcely knowing that he did so. ‘One – a – b, Two – a – b –’ up to seven when the thunder broke. That meant, or so he had always believed, that the core of the storm was seven miles away and might or might not come nearer.

  The sky behaved in the manner of a Gustave Doré engraving. A crack opened and a shaft of vivid sunlight darted down like God’s vengeance upon the offending sea.

  Ricky tingled from head to foot. The room had stealthily become much too small. He was invaded by an urge to prove himself to himself. ‘I may have made a muck of my espionage,’ he thought, ‘but, by gum, I’m not going to stay in my bedroom with pins and needles because a couple of clouds are having it off up there. To hell with them.’

  He fished a light raincoat out of his rucksack and ran downstairs, pulling it on as he went. The elderly clerk was asleep behind his desk.

  Outside there was a stif
led feeling in the air as if the town held its breath. Sounds – isolated footsteps, desultory voices and the hiss of tyres on the road – were all exaggerated. The sky was now so black that twilight seemed to have fallen on St Pierre-des-Roches.

  Forked lightning wrote itself with a flourish across the Heavens and almost simultaneously a gigantic tin tray banged overhead. A woman in the street crossed herself and broke into a shuffle. Ricky thought: ‘If I combed my hair it would crackle.’

  A few big drops fell like bullets in the dust and then, tremendously, the rain came down.

  It was a really ferocious storm. The streets were running streams, lightning whiplashed almost continuously, thunder mingled with the din made by rain on roofs, sea and stone. Ricky’s espadrilles felt as if they dissolved on his feet.

  But he went on downhill to the sea, taking a kind of satisfaction in pandemonium. Here was the bistro where he had breakfasted, here the first group of shops. And here the deserted front, not a soul on it, pounded by the deluge and beyond it the high tide pocked all over with rain. Le Beau Rivage overlooked this scene. Ricky could see a number of people staring out from its glassed-in portico and wondered if Ferrant was among them.

  The Island Belle rocked at her moorings. Her gangway grated on the wharf.

  Ricky saw that the administrative offices were shut, but a goods shed, in which three cars were parked, was open. He sheltered there. It was very dark. The rain drummed remorselessly on the roof. He got an impression of somebody else being in the shed: an impression so strong that he called out, ‘Hullo! Anyone at home?’ but there was no answer. He shook the rain from his mackintosh and hood and fished out his handkerchief to wipe his face. ‘This has been a rum sort of a day,’ he thought, and wondered how best to wind it up.