Last Ditch

by Ngaio Marsh

  Alleyn stopped. He looked at his son and saw a familiar glaze of incredulity and interest on his open countenance.

  ‘Don’t get it wrong,’ he said. ‘That may be all my eye. Mr Jones may be as pure as the driven snow. But if you can find another reason for him taking such a scunner to you, let’s have it. Rick, consider. You visit his pad and show an interest in his Jerome et Cie paint. A few days later you tread on his vermilion and try to pick up the tube. You send him to us and when he gets there he’s asked if he’s messing about with drugs. On top of that he learns that your pop’s a cop. He sets out on a business trip to headquarters and who does he find dodging about among the cargo? You, chummy. He’s rattled and lets fly, accusing you of the first offence he can think of that doesn’t bear any relation to his actual on-goings. And to put the lid on it you dog his footsteps almost to the very threshold of Messrs Jerome et Cie. And don’t forget, all this may be a farrago of utter nonsense.’

  ‘It adds up, I suppose. Or does it?’

  ‘If you know a better “ole” –’

  ‘What about Ferrant, then? Are they in cahoots over the drug racket?’

  ‘It could be. It looks a bit like it. And Ferrant it is who finds you – What exactly were you doing? Show me.’

  ‘Have a heart.’

  ‘Come on.’ Alleyn picked up a copy of yesterday’s Times. ‘Show me.’ Ricky opened it and tore a hole in the centre fold. He then advanced his eye to the hole, screwed up his face and peered through.

  Alleyn looked over the top of The Times. ‘Boh!’ he said.

  Mrs Ferrant came in.

  ‘Your bit of supper’s ready,’ she said, regarding them with surprise. ‘In the parlour.’

  Self-conscious, they followed her downstairs.

  The aroma – delicate, pervasive and yet discreet – welcomed them into the parlour. The dish, elegantly presented, was on the table. The final assembly had been completed, the garniture was in place. Mrs Ferrant, saucepan in hand, spooned the shell-fish sauce over hot fillets of sole.

  ‘My God!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘Sole à la Dieppoise!’

  His success with the cook could only be compared with that of her masterpiece with him. Ricky observed, with mounting wonderment and small understanding, since the conversation was in French, the rapport his father instantly established with Mrs Ferrant. He questioned her about the sole, the shrimps, the mussels. In a matter of minutes he had elicited the information that Madame (as he was careful to call her) had a maman who actually came from Dieppe and from whom she inherited her art. He was about to send Ricky out at the gallop to purchase a bottle of white Burgundy, when Mrs Ferrant, a gratified smirk twitching at her lips, produced one. He kissed her hand and begged her to join them. She consented. Ricky’s eyes opened wider and wider.

  As the strange little feast progressed he became at least partially tuned in. He gathered that his father had steered the conversation round to the Pharamonds and the days of her service up at L’Esperance. ‘Monsieur Louis’ came up once or twice. He was sophisticated. A very mondain type, was he not? One might say so, said Mrs Ferrant with a shrug. It was her turn to ask questions. Monsieur Alleyn was well acquainted with the family, for example? Not to say ‘well’. They had been fellow-passengers on an ocean voyage. Monsieur’s visit was unanticipated by his son, was it not? But entirely so. It had been pleasant to surprise him. So droll the expression, when he walked in. Jaw dropped, eyes bulging, Alleyn gave a lively imitation and slapped his son jovially on the shoulder. Ah yes, for example, his black eye, Mrs Ferrant enquired, and switching to English asked Ricky what he’d been doing with himself, then, in St Pierre. Had he got into bad company? Ricky offered the fable of the iron stanchion. Her stewed prune eyes glittered and she said something in French that sounded like à d’autres: Ricky wondered whether it was the equivalent of ‘tell us another’.

  ‘You got yourself in a proper mess,’ she pointed out. ‘Dripping wet those things are in your rucksack.’

  ‘I got caught in the thunderstorm.’

  ‘Did it rain seaweed, then?’ asked Mrs Ferrant, and for the first time in their acquaintance gave out a cackle of amusement in which, to Ricky’s fury, his father joined.

  ‘Ah, madame!’ said Alleyn with a comradely look at Mrs Ferrant. ‘Les jeunes hommes!’

  She nodded her head up and down. Ricky wondered what the hell she supposed he’d been up to.

  The sole à la Dieppoise was followed by the lightest of sorbets, a cheese board, coffee and cognac.

  ‘I have not eaten so well,’ Alleyn said, ‘since I was last in Paris. You are superb, madame.’

  The conversation proceeded bilingually and drifted round to Miss Harkness and what Alleyn, with, as his son felt, indecent understatement, referred to as son contretemps équestre.

  Mrs Ferrant put on an air of grandeur, of sombre loftiness. It had been unfortunate, she conceded. Miss Harkness’s awful face and sightless glare flashed up in Ricky’s remembrance.

  She had perhaps been of a reckless disposition, Alleyn hinted. In more ways than one, Mrs Ferrant agreed, and sniffed very slightly.

  ‘By the way, Rick,’ Alleyn said. ‘Did I forget to say? Your Mr Jones called on us in London.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ricky, managing to sound surprised. ‘What on earth for? Selling Mummy his paints?’

  ‘Well – advertising them, shall we say. He showed your mother some of his work.’

  ‘What did she think?’

  ‘I’m afraid, not a great deal.’

  It was Mrs Ferrant’s turn again. Was Mrs Alleyn, then, an artist? An artist of great distinction, perhaps? And Alleyn himself? He was on holiday, no doubt? No, no, Alleyn said. It was a business trip. He would be staying in Montjoy for a few days but had taken the opportunity to visit his son. Quite a coincidence, was it not, that Ricky should be staying at the Cove. Lucky fellow! Alleyn cried, catching him another buffet and bowing at the empty dishes.

  Mrs Ferrant didn’t in so many words ask Alleyn what his job was, but she came indecently close to it. Ricky wondered if his father would side-step the barrage, but no, he said cheerfully that he was a policeman. She offered a number of exclamations. She would never have dreamt of it! A policeman! In English she accused him of ‘having her on’, and in French of not being the type. It was all very vivacious and Ricky didn’t believe a word of it. His ideas on Mrs Ferrant were under-going a rapid transformation, due in part, he thought, to her command of French. He couldn’t follow much of what she said, but the sound of it lent a gloss of sophistication to her general demeanour. It put her into a new category. She had become more formidable. As for his father: it was as if some frisky stranger laughed and flattered and almost flirted. Was this The Cid? What were they talking about now? About Mr Ferrant and his trips to St Pierre and how he would never eat as well abroad as he did at home. He had business connections in France perhaps? No. Merely family ones. He liked to keep up with his aunts…

  Ricky had had a long, painful and distracting day of it. Impossible to believe that only this morning he and Sydney Jones had leant nose-to-nose across a crate of fish on a pitching deck. And how odd those people looked, scuttling about so far below. Like woodlice. Awful to fall from the balcony among them. But he was falling: down, down into the disgusting sea.

  ‘Arrrach!’ he tried to shout, and looked into his father’s face and felt his hands on his shoulders. Mrs Ferrant had gone.

  ‘Come along, old son,’ Alleyn said, and his deep voice was very satisfactory. ‘Bed. Call it a day.’

  V

  Inspector Fox was discussing a pint of mild-and-bitter when Alleyn walked into the bar at the Cod-and-Bottle. He was engaged in dignified conversation with the landlord, three of the habituals and Sergeant Plank. Alleyn saw that he was enjoying his usual success. They hung upon his words. His massive back was turned to the door and Alleyn approached him unobserved.

  ‘That’s where you hit the nail smack on the head, Sergeant,’ he was saying. �
��Calm, cool and collected. You’ve had the experience of working with him?’

  ‘Well,’ said Sergeant Plank, clearing his throat, ‘in a very subsidiary position, Mr Fox. But I remarked upon it.’

  ‘You remarked upon it. Exactly. So’ve I. For longer than you might think, Mr Maistre,’ said Fox, drawing the landlord into closer communion. ‘And a gratifying experience it’s been. However,’ said Mr Fox, who had suddenly become aware of Alleyn’s approach, ‘Quoi qu’il en soit.’

  The islanders were bilingual, and Mr Fox never let slip an opportunity to practise his French or to brag, in a calm and stately manner, of the excellencies of his superior officer. It was seldom that Alleyn caught him at this exercise and when he did, he gave him fits. But that made little difference to Fox, who merely pointed out that the technique had proved a useful approach to establishing comfortable relations with persons from whom Alleyn hoped to obtain information.

  ‘By and large,’ Mr Fox had said, ‘people like to know about personalities in the Force so long as they’re in the clear themselves. They get quite curious to meet you, Mr Alleyn, when they hear about your little idiosyncrasies: it takes the stiffness out of the first enquiries, if you see what I mean. In theatrical parlance,’ Fox had added, ‘they call it building up an entrance.’

  ‘In common-or-garden parlance,’ Alleyn said warmly, ‘it makes a bloody great fool out of me.’ Fox had smiled slightly.

  On this occasion it was clear that the Foxian method had been engaged and, it was pretty obvious, abetted, by Sergeant Plank. Alleyn found himself the object of fixed and silent attention in the bar of the Cod-and-Bottle and the evident subject of intense speculation.

  Mr Fox, who was infallible in remembering names at first hearing, performed introductions and Alleyn shook hands all round. Throats were cleared and boots were shuffled. Bob Maistre deployed his own technique as host and asked Alleyn how he’d found the young chap, then, and what was all this they’d heard about him getting himself into trouble over to St Pierre? Alleyn gave a lively account of his son losing his footing on the wet jetty, hitting his jaw on an iron stanchion and falling between the jetty and the Island Belle.

  ‘Could have been a serious business,’ he said, ‘as far as I can make out. No knowing what might have happened if it hadn’t been for this chap aboard the ship – Jim le Compte, isn’t it?’

  It emerged that Jim le Compte was a Cove man and this led easily to the introduction of local gossip, easing round under Plank’s pilotage, to Mr Ferrant and to wags of the head and knowing grins suggesting that Gil Ferrant was a character, a one, a bit of a lad.

  ‘He’s lucky,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘to be able to afford jaunts in France, I wish I could.’

  This drew forth confused speculations as to Gil Ferrant’s resources: his rich aunties in Brittany, his phenomenal luck on the French lotteries, his being, in general, a pretty warm customer.

  This turn of conversation was, to Alleyn’s hidden fury, interrupted by Sergeant Plank, who offered the suggestion that no doubt the Chief Super’s professional duties sometimes took him across the Channel. Seeing it was expected of him, Alleyn responded with an anecdote or two about a sensational case involving the pursuit and arrest in Marseilles, with the assistance of the French force, of a notable child-killer. This, as Fox said afterwards, went down like a nice long drink, but, as he pointed out to Sergeant Plank, had the undesirable effect of cutting off any further local gossip. ‘It was well-meant on your part, Sarge,’ Mr Fox conceded, ‘but it broke the thread. It stopped the flow of info.’

  ‘I’m a source of local info myself, Mr Fox,’ Sergeant Plank ventured. ‘In my own person, I am.’

  ‘True enough as far as it goes, Sarge, but you’re overlooking a salient factor. As the Chief Super has frequently remarked, ours is a solitary class of employment. We can, and in your own type of patch, the village community, we often do, establish friendly relations. Trespassing, local vandalism, creating nuisances, trouble with neighbours and they’re all over you, but let something big turn up and you’ll find yourself out on your own. They’ll herd together like sheep and you won’t be included in the flock. It can be uncomfortable till you get used to it.’

  Fox left a moment or two for this to sink in. He then cleared his throat and continued. ‘The effect of the diversion,’ he said, ‘was this. The thread of local gossip being broken, what did they do? They got all curious about the Chief. What’s he here for? Is it the Harkness fatality, and if not, what is it? And if it is, why is it? Enough to create the wrong atmosphere at the site of investigation.’

  Whether or not these pronouncements were correct, the atmosphere at Leathers the next morning, as disseminated by Mr Harkness, the sole occupant, was far from comfortable. Alleyn, Fox and Plank arrived at eight-thirty to find shuttered windows and a notice pinned to the front door: ‘Stables Closed till Further Notice.’ They knocked and rang to no effect.

  ‘He’ll be round at the back,’ Plank said, and led the way to the stables.

  At first they seemed to be deserted. A smell of straw and horse-droppings hung on the air, flies buzzed, and in the old open coach-house a couple of pigeons waddled about the floor, pecked here and there and flew up to the rafters where they defecated off-handedly on the roof of the battered car. In the end loose-box the sorrel mare reversed herself, looked out, rolled her eyes, pricked her ears at them and trembled her nostrils in an all but inaudible whinny.

  ‘Will I see if I can knock Cuth Harkness up, sir?’ offered Plank.

  ‘Wait a bit, Plank. Don’t rush it.’

  Alleyn strolled over to the loose-box. ‘Hullo, old girl,’ he said, ‘how goes it?’ He leant on the half-door and looked her over. The near foreleg was still bandaged. She nibbled his ear with velvet lips. ‘Feeling bored, are you?’ he said, and moved down the row of empty loose-boxes to the coach-house.

  There was the coil of old wire where Ricky had seen it, hanging from a peg above a pile of empty sacks. It was rather heavier than picture-hanging wire and looked as if it had been there for a long time. But as Ricky had noticed, there was a freshly-cut end. Alleyn called Fox and the sergeant over. Plank’s boots, being of the regulation sort, loudly announced his passage across the yard. He changed to tip-toe and an unnerving squeak.

  ‘Take a look,’ Alleyn murmured.

  ‘I reckon,’ Plank said after a heavy-breathed examination, ‘that could be it, Mr Alleyn. I reckon that would fit.’

  ‘Do you, by George,’ Alleyn said.

  There was an open box in the corner filled with a jumble of odds-and-ends and a number of tools, among them a pair of wire-cutters. With uncanny speed Alleyn used them to nip off three inches of wire from the reverse end.

  ‘That, Sergeant Plank,’ he said, as he replaced the cutters, ‘is something we must never, never do.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember, sir,’ said Sergeant Plank demurely.

  ‘Mr Harkness,’ Fox said, ‘seems to be coming, Mr Alleyn.’

  And indeed he could be heard coughing hideously inside the house. Alleyn reached the door in a breath and the other two stood behind him. He knocked briskly.

  Footsteps sounded in the passage and an indistinguishable grumbling. A lock was turned and the door dragged open a few inches. Mr Harkness, blinking and unshaven, peered out at them through a little gale of Scotch whisky.

  ‘The stables are closed,’ he said thickly, and made as if to shut the door. Alleyn’s foot was across the threshold.

  ‘Mr Harkness?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. We’re police officers. Could you give us a moment?’

  For a second or two he neither spoke nor moved. Then he pulled the door wide open.

  ‘Police, are you?’ Mr Harkness said. ‘What for? Is it about my poor sinful niece again, God forgive her, but that’s asking too much of Him? Come in.’

  He showed them into his office and gave them chairs and seemed to become aware, for the first time, of Sergeant Plank.

  ‘Joey
Plank,’ he said. ‘You again. Can’t you let it alone? What’s the good? It won’t bring her back. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and she’s finding that out for herself where she’s gone. Who are these gentlemen?’

  Plank introduced them: ‘The Chief Superintendent is on an administrative visit to the island, Mr Harkness,’ he said, ‘and has kindly offered to take a wee look-see at our little trouble.’

  ‘Why do you talk in that silly way about it?’ Mr Harkness asked fretfully. ‘It’s not a little trouble, it’s hell and damnation and she’s brought it on herself and I’m the cause of it. I’m sorry,’ he said, and turned to Alleyn with a startling change to normality. ‘You’ll think me awfully rude but I dare say you’ll understand what a shock this has been.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’re sorry to break in on you like this, but Superintendent Curie in Montjoy suggested it.’

  ‘I suppose he thinks he knows what he’s talking about,’ Mr Harkness grumbled. His manner now suggested a mixture of hope-lessness and irritation. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands unsteady and his breath was dreadful. ‘What’s this about the possibility of foul play? What do they think I am, then? If there was any chance of foul play, wouldn’t I be zealous in the pursuit of unrighteousness? Wouldn’t I be sleepless night and day as the hound of Heaven until the awful truth was hunted down?’ He glared moistly at Alleyn. ‘Well, ‘he shouted. ‘Come on! Wouldn’t I?’