Last Ditch ra-29

by Ngaio Marsh

  “If it’s true,” they said together.

  “Might be the longed-for link, if it is true,” Fox said. “In any case I suppose we add him to the list.”

  “Oh yes. Yes. We prick him down. And if Rick’s got the right idea about the attack on him, I suppose we add a gloss to the name. ‘Prone to violence.’ ”

  “There is that, too,” said Fox.

  They were opposite the Ferrants’ cottage. Alleyn looked up at Ricky’s window. It was shut and there was no sign of him at his worktable.

  “I think I’ll just have a word with him,” he said. “If he’s at home. I won’t be a moment.”

  But Ricky was not at home. Mrs. Ferrant said he’d gone out about half an hour ago; she couldn’t say in what direction. He had not left a message. His bicycle was in the shed. She supposed the parcel in the hall must be his.

  “Freshening himself up with a bit of exercise, no doubt,” said Fox gravely. “Heavy work, it must be, you know, this writing. When you come to think of it.”

  “Yes, Foxkin, I expect it must,” Ricky’s father said with a friendly glance at his old colleague. “Meanwhile one must pursue the elusive ‘Fifi.’ From Rick’s story of the dead-of-night encounter between Ferrant and Louis Pharamond, it looks as if she sometimes ties up at the end of the pier. But if she anchors out in the harbor, he’ll need a dinghy. There are only four boats out there. Can you pick up the names?”

  Fox, who was long-sighted, said: “ ‘Tinker.’ ‘Marleen.’ ‘Bonny Belle.’ Wait a bit. She’s coming round. Hold on. Yes. That’s her. Second from the right, covered with a tarpaulin. ‘Fifi.’ ”

  “Damn.”

  “Could we get a dinghy and row out?”

  “With Madame Ferrant’s beady eye at the front parlor window?”

  “Do you reckon?”

  “I’d take a bet on it. Let’s trip blithely down the pier.”

  They walked down the pier and stood with their hands in their pockets, ostensibly gazing out to sea. Alleyn pointed to the distant coast of France.

  “To coin a phrase, don’t look now, but Fifi’s dinghy’s below, moored to the jetty with enough line to accommodate to the tide.”

  “Is she though? Oh, yes.” said Fox, slewing his eyes down and round. “I see. ‘Fifi’ on the stern. Would she normally be left like that, though? Wouldn’t she knock herself out against the pier?”

  “There are old tires down there for fenders. But you’d think she’d be hauled up the beach with the others. Or, of course, if the owner was aboard, tied up to ‘Fifi’.”

  “Do we get anything out of this, then?”

  “Let’s get back, shall we?”

  They returned to the front and sat on the weatherworn bench. Alleyn got out his pipe.

  “I’ve got news for you, Br’er Fox,” he said. “Last evening that dinghy was hauled up on the beach. I’m sure of it. I waited up in Rick’s room for an hour until he arrived and spent most of the time looking out of the window. There she was, half blue and half white and her name across her stern. She was just on the seaward side of the high-water mark with her anchor in the sand. She’d be afloat at high tide.”

  “Is that so? Well, well. Now, how do you read that?” asked Fox.

  “Like everything else that’s turned up — with modified rapture. Ferrant may let one of his mates in the cove have the use of his boat while he’s away.”

  “In which case, wouldn’t the mate return it to the beach?”

  “Again, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Alleyn said. And after a pause. “When I left last night, at ten o’clock, the tide was coming in. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. The dinghy wasn’t on the beach this morning.”

  He lit his pipe. They were silent for some time.

  Behind them the Ferrants’ front door banged. Alleyn turned quickly, half expecting to see Ricky, but it was only the boy, Louis, with his black hair sleeked like wet fur to his head. He was unnaturally tidy and French-looking in his matelot jersey and very short shorts.

  He stared at them, stuck his hands in his pockets, and crossed the road, whistling and strutting a little.

  “Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You’re Louis Ferrant, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. He walked over to the low wall and lounged against it as Louis Pharamond had lounged that morning: self-consciously, deliberately. Alleyn experienced the curious reaction that is induced by unexpected cross-cutting in a film, as if the figure by the wall blinked by split seconds from child to man to child again.

  “Where are you off to?” he asked. “Do you ever go fishing?”

  The boy shook his head and then said: “Sometimes,” in an indifferent voice.

  “With your father, perhaps?”

  “He’s not here,” Louis said very quickly.

  “You don’t go out by yourself? In the dinghy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Or perhaps you can’t row,” Alleyn casually suggested.

  “Yes. I can. I can so row. My papa won’t let anybody but me row the dinghy. Not anybody. I can row by myself even when it’s gros temps. Round the musoir, I can, and out to the cap. Easy.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t go out on your own at night.”

  “Huh! Easy! Often! I—”

  He stopped short, looked uncomfortably at the house and turned sulky. “I can so row,” he muttered and began to walk away.

  “I’ll get you to take me out one of these nights,” Alleyn said.

  But Louis let out a small boy’s whoop and ran suddenly, down the road and around the corner.

  “Let me tell you a fairy tale, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn.

  “Any time,” said Fox.

  “It’s about a little boy who stayed up late because his mother told him to. When it was very dark and very late indeed and the tide was high, she sent him down to the strand where his papa’s dinghy was anchored and just afloat and he hauled up the anchor and rowed the dinghy out to his papa’s motorboat which was called ‘Fifi’ and he tied her up to ‘Fifi’ and waited for his papa who was not really his papa at all. Or perhaps, as it was a calm night, he rowed right out to the heads — the cap—and waited there. And presently his papa arrived in a boat from France that went back to France. So the little boy and his papa rowed all the way back to the pier and came home. And they left the dinghy tied up to the pier.”

  “And what did the papa do then?” Fox asked in falsetto.

  “That,” Alleyn said, “is the catch. He can hardly have bedded down with his lawful wedded wife and be lying doggo in the bedroom. Or can he?”

  “Possible.”

  “Yes. Or,” Alleyn said, “he may be bedded down somewhere else.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like Syd’s Pad, for example.”

  “And why’s he come back? Because things are getting too hot over there?” Fox hazarded.

  “Or, while we’re in the inventive vein, because they might be potentially even hotter over here and he wants to clean up damning evidence.”

  “Where? Don’t tell me. At Syd’s Pad. Or,” Fox said, “could it be, don’t laugh, to clean up Syd?”

  “Because, wait for it, Syd it was who made the attempt on Rick and bungled it and has become unreliable and expendable. Your turn.”

  “A digression. Reverting to the deceased. While on friendly terms with Syd at his Pad, suppose she stumbled on something,” said Fox.

  “What did she stumble on? Oh, I’m with you. On a doctored tube of emerald-oxide-of-chromium or on the basic supply of dope.”

  “And fell out with Jones on account of it being his baby and he not being prepared to take responsibility and so she threatened to grass on him,” said Fox, warming to his work. “Or alternatively, yes, by gum, for Syd read Ferrant. It was his baby and he did her in. Shall I go on?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Anyway one, or both of them, fixes up the death trap and polishes her off,” said Fox. “There you are! Bob’s your uncle.” He chuckl
ed.

  Alleyn did not reply. He got up and looked at Ricky’s window. It was still shut. The village was very quiet at this time in the afternoon.

  “I wonder where he went for his walk,” he said. “I suppose he could have come back while we were on the pier.”

  “He couldn’t have failed to see us.”

  “Yes, but he wouldn’t butt in. He’s not at his table. When he’s there you can see him very clearly from the street. Good God, I’m behaving like a clucky old hen.”

  Fox looked concerned but said nothing.

  Alleyn said: “We’re not exactly active at the moment, are we? What the hell have we got in terms of visible, tangible, put-on-table evidence? Damnall.”

  “A button.”

  “True.”

  “It wasn’t anywhere near the fence,” said Fox. “Might he just have forgotten?”

  “He might, but I don’t think so. Fox, I’m going to get a search warrant for Syd’s Pad.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. We can’t leave it any longer. Even if we’ve done no better than concoct a fairy tale, Jones does stand not only as an extremely dubious character but as a kind of link between the two crackpot cases we’re supposed to be handling. I’ve been hoping Dupont at his end might turn up something definite and in consequence haven’t taken any action with the sprats that might scare off the mackerel. But there’s a limit to masterly inactivity and we’ve reached it.”

  “So we search,” Fox said. He fixed his gaze upon the distant coast of France. “What d’you reckon, Mr. Alleyn?” he asked. “Has he got back? Have they both got back? Jones and Ferrant?”

  “Not according to the airport people.”

  “By boat, then, like we fancied. In the night?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Here comes a copper in the Super’s car. It’s ho for the nearest beak and a search warrant.”

  “It’ll be a pity,” Fox remarked, “if nobody’s there after all. Bang goes the fairy tale. Back to square one.” He considered this possibility for a moment. “All the same,” he said, “although I don’t usually place any reliance on hunches I’ve got a funny kind of feeling there’s somebody in Syd’s Pad.”

  iii

  The really extraordinary feature of Ricky’s situation was his inability to believe in it. He had to keep reminding himself that Ferrant had a real gun of sorts and was pointing it into the small of his back. Ferrant had shown it to him and said it was real and that he would use it if Ricky did not do as he was told. Even then Ricky’s incredulity nearly got the better of him and he actually had to pull himself together and stop himself calling the bluff and suddenly bolting down the hill.

  The situation was embarrassing rather than alarming. When Syd Jones slouched out of the Pad and met them and fastened his arms behind his back with a strap, Ricky thought that all three of them looked silly and not able to carry the scene off with style. This reaction was the more singular in that, at the same time, he knew they meant business and that he ought to be deeply alarmed.

  And now, here he was, back in Syd’s Pad and in the broken-down chair he had occupied on his former visit, very uncomfortable because of his pinioned arms. The room smelled and looked as it had before and was in the same state of squalor. He saw that blankets had been rigged up over the windows. A solitary shaded lamp on the worktable gave all the light there was. His arms hurt him and broken springs dug into his bottom.

  There was one new feature, apart from the blankets. Where there had been sketches drawing-pinned to the wall there now hung a roughly framed canvas. He recognized Leda and the Swan.

  Ferrant lounged against the table with unconvincing insolence. Syd lay on his bed and looked seldom and furtively at Ricky. Nothing was said and, grotesquely, this silence had the character of a social hiatus. Ricky had some difficulty in breaking it.

  “What is all this?” he asked, his voice sounding like somebody else’s. “Am I kidnapped or what?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Alleyn,” Ferrant said. “That’s correct. You are our hostage, Mr. Alleyn.”

  He was smoking. He inhaled and blew smoke out his nostrils. “What an act!” Ricky thought.

  “Do you mind telling me why?” he asked.

  “A pleasure, Mr. Alleyn. A great pleasure.”

  Ricky thought: “If this were fiction it would be terrible stuff. One would write things like ‘sneered Ferrant’ and ‘said young Alleyn, very quietly.’ ”

  He said: “Well, come on, then. Let’s have it.”

  “You’re going to write a little note to your papa, Mr. Alleyn.”

  For the first time an authentic cold trickle ran down Ricky’s spine. “To say what?” he asked.

  Ferrant elaborated with all the panache of a grade-B film gangster. The message Ricky was to write would be delivered to the Cove police station — never mind by whom. Ricky, said tartly that he couldn’t care less by whom; what was he expected to say?

  “Take it easy, take it easy,” Ferrant snarled out of the corner of his mouth. He moved around the table and sat down at it. He cocked up his feet in their corespondent shoes on the table and leveled his gun between his knees at Ricky. It was not a pose that Ricky, himself in acute discomfort, thought that Ferrant would find easy or pleasant to sustain.

  He noticed that among the litter on the table were the remains of a meal: an open jackknife, cups, and a half-empty bottle of cognac. A piece of drawing paper lay near the lamp with an artist’s conté pencil beside it. There was a chair on that side of the table, opposite Ferrant.

  “That’s the idea,” said Ferrant (“purred,” no doubt would be the chosen verb, thought Ricky). “We’ll have a little action, shall we?”

  He nodded magnificently at Syd, who got off the bed and moved to Ricky. He bent over him, not looking in his face.

  “Your breath stinks, Syd,” said Ricky.

  Syd made a very raw reply. It was the first time he had spoken. He hauled ineffectually at Ricky and they floundered about aimlessly before Ricky got his balance. It was true that Syd smelled awful.

  Obviously they wanted him on the chair, facing Ferrant. He managed to shoulder Syd off and sit on it.

  “Now then,” he said. “What’s the drill?”

  “We’ll take it ve-ry nice and slow,” said Ferrant and Ricky thought he’d been wanting to get the phrase off his chest, appropriate or not, as the situation developed. He repeated it: “Ni-ce and slow.”

  “If you want me to write you’ll have to untruss me, won’t you?” Ricky pointed out.

  “I’m giving the orders in this scene, mate, do you mind?” said Ferrant. He nodded again to Syd, who moved behind Ricky but did not release him.

  Ricky had pins and needles in his forearms. It was difficult to move them. His upper arms, still pinioned, had gone numb. Ferrant raised the gun slightly.

  “And we won’t try any funny business, will we?” he said. “We’ll listen carefully and do what we’re told like a good boy. Right?”

  He waited for an answer and getting none began to lay down the law.

  He said Ricky was to write a message in his own words and if he tried anything on he’d have to start again. He was to say that he was being held hostage and the price of his release was absolute inactivity on the part of the police until Ferrant and Syd had gone.

  “Say,” Ferrant ordered, “that if they start anything you’ll be fixed. For keeps.”

  That was to be the message.

  How many strata of thought are there at any given moment in a human brain? In Ricky’s there was a kind of lethargy, a profound unbelief in the situation, a sense of nonreality, as if, in an approaching moment, he would find himself elsewhere and unmolested. With this there was a rising dry terror and an awareness of the necessity to think clearly about the immediate threat. And, overall, a desolate longing for his father.

  “Suppose I won’t write it,” he said. “What about that?”

  “Something not very nice about that. Somethi
ng we don’t want to do.”

  “If you mean you’ll shoot me you must be out of your mind. Where would that get you?” Ricky asked, forcing himself (and it cost him an enormous effort) to take hold of what he supposed must be reality. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “What do you want? To do a bolt because you’re up to your eyebrows in trouble? The hostage ploy’s exploded, you ought to know that. They’ll call your bluff. You’re not going to shoot me.”

  Syd Jones mumbled, “You ought to know we mean business. What about yesterday? What about—”

  “Shut up,” said Ferrant.

  “All right,” said Ricky. “Yesterday. What about it? A footling attempt to do me in and a dead failure at that.”

  To his own surprise he suddenly lost his temper with Syd. “You’ve been a bloody fool all along,” he shouted. “You thought I was on to whatever your game is with drugs, didn’t you? It wouldn’t have entered my head if you hadn’t made such an ass of yourself. You thought I sent you to see my parents because my father’s a cop. I sent you out of bloody kindness. You thought I was spying on you and tailed you over to Saint Pierre. You were dead wrong all along the line and did yourself a lot of harm. Now, God save the mark, you’re trying to play at kidnappers. You fool, Syd. If you shot me, here, it’d be the end of you. What do you think my father’d do about that one? He’d hunt you both down with the police of two nations to help him. You don’t mean business. Ferrant’s making a monkey of you and you’re too bloody dumb or too bloody doped to see it. Call yourself a painter. You’re a dirty little drug-runner’s sidekick and a failure at that.”

  Syd hit him across the mouth. His upper lip banged against his teeth. Tears ran down his face. He lashed out with his foot. Syd fell backwards and sat on the floor. Ricky saw through his tears that Syd had the jackknife in his hand.

  Ferrant, in command of a stream of whispered indecencies, rose and was frightening. He came around the table and winded Ricky with a savage jab under the ribs. Ricky doubled up in his chair and through the pain felt them lash his ankles together. Ferrant took his shoulders and jerked him upright. He began to hit him methodically with hard, openhanded slaps on his bruised face. “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” Ricky thought.