Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“There’ll be an inquest, sir, as I’m sure you’ll realize, and no doubt your wife will be called to give formal evidence, being the first to sight the body. And your young brother may be asked to say something about the nature of his own performance. Purely a matter of routine.”

“I suppose so,” said Jasper. “I wish it wasn’t, however. The boy’s very upset. He’s got the idea, we think, that she wouldn’t have tried to jump the gap if he hadn’t done it first. She seemed to be very excited about him doing it.”

“Is that so? Excited?”

Mr. Blacker said: “She would be. From what I can make out from Cuth Harkness, it’d been a bit of a bone of contention between them. He told her she shouldn’t try it on and she kind of defied him. Or that’s what I made out. Cuth’s in a queer sort of state.”

“Shock,” said the sergeant still writing. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Who broke the news?”

“My wife and I did,” said Jasper. “He insisted on coming down here to look for himself.”

“He’s fussed. One minute it’s the mare and the next it’s the niece. He didn’t seem,” Sergeant Plank said, “to be able to tell the difference, if you can understand.”

“Only too well.”

The vet had moved away. He was peering through the gap at the ditch and the far bank. The remains of a post-and-rail fence ran through the blackthorn hedge and was partly exposed. He put his foot on the lower rail as if to test whether it would take his weight.

“I’d be obliged, Mr. Blacker,” said the sergeant raising his china-blue gaze from his notes, “if you didn’t. Just a formality, but it’s what we’re instructed. No offense.”

“What? Oh. Oh, all right,” said Blacker. “Sorry, I’m sure.”

“That’s quite all right, sir. I wonder,” said the sergeant to Ricky, “if you’d just indicate where you and Mrs. Pharamond were when you noticed the body.”

For the life of him, Ricky could not imagine why this should be of interest but he described how Julia had called him to her and how he had dismounted, giving his horse to Bruno, and had gone to her, and how she, too, had dismounted and he had peered through the gap. He parted some branches near the end of the gap.

“Like that,” he said.

He noticed that the post at his left hand was loose in the ground. Near the top on the outer side and almost obscured by brambles was a fine scar that cut through the mossy surface and bit into the wood. The opposite post at the other end of the gap was overgrown with blackthorn. He crossed and saw broken twigs and what seemed to be a scrape up the surface of the post.

“Would you have noticed,” Sergeant Plank said behind him, making him jump, “anything about the gap, sir?”

Ricky turned to meet the sergeant’s blue regard.

“I was too rattled,” he said, “to notice anything.”

“Very natural,” Plank said, still writing. Without looking up he pointed his pencil at the vet. “And would you have formed an opinion, Mr. Blacker, as to how, exactly, the accident took place? Like — would you think that what went wrong went wrong on this side after the horse took off? Or would you say it cleared the gap and crashed on the far bank?”

“If you’d let me go and take a look,” Blacker said a trifle sourly, “I’d be better able to form an opinion, wouldn’t I?”

“Absolutely correct,” said the disconcerting sergeant. “I agree with every word of it. And if you can notice the far bank — it’s nice and clear from here — I’ve used pegs to mark out the position of the body, which was, generally speaking, eccentric, owing to the breakage of limbs, et cetera, et cetera. Not but what the impression in the mud doesn’t speak for itself quite strong. I daresay you can see the various other indications — they stand out, don’t they? Can be read like a book, I daresay, by somebody as up in the subject as yourself, Mr. Blacker.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as all that,” Blacker said, mollified. “What I would say is that the mare came down on the far bank — you can see a clear impression of a stirrup iron in the mud — and seems to have rolled on Dulcie. Whether Dulcie pitched forward over the mare’s head or fell with her isn’t so clear.”

“Very well put. And borne out by the nature of the injuries. I don’t think you’ve seen the body, have you, Mr. Blacker?”

“No.”

“No. Quite so. The head’s in a nasty mess. Kicked. Shocking state, really. You’ll have remarked the state of the face, I daresay, Mr. Alleyn.”

Ricky nodded. His mouth went dry. He had indeed remarked it.

“Yes. Well, now, I’d better go up and have a wee chat with the uncle,” said Sergeant Plank.

“You won’t find that any too easy,” Jasper said.

Sergeant Plank made clucking noises. He struggled into his tunic, buttoned up his notebook, and led the way back to the house. “Very understandable, I’m sure,” he threw out rather vaguely. “There’ll be the little matter of identification. By the next of kin, you know.”

“Oh God!” Ricky said. “You can’t do that to him.”

“We’ll make it as comfortable as we can.”

“Comfortable!”

“I’ll just have a wee chat with him first.”

“You don’t want us any more, do you?” Jasper asked him.

“No, no, no,” he said. “We know where to find you, don’t we? I’ll drop in at L’Espérance if you don’t object, sir, and just pick up a little signed statement from your good lady and maybe have a word with this young show-jumper of yours. Later on, this evening, if it suits.”

“It’ll have to, won’t it, sergeant? But I can’t pretend,” Jasper said with great charm, “that I hadn’t hoped that they’d be let off any more upsets for today at least.”

“That’s right,” said Sergeant Plank cordially. “You would, too. We can’t help it, though, can we, sir! So if you’ll excuse me, I ought to give Superintendent Curie at Montjoy a tinkle about this. It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Alleyn. Quite a coincidence. A ce soir ,” added the sergeant.

He smiled upon them, crossed over to the ambulance and spoke to the men, one of whom got out and went around to the rear doors. He opened them and disappeared inside. The doors clicked to. Sergeant Plank nodded in a reassuring manner to Jasper and Ricky and walked into the house.

“Would you say,” Jasper asked Ricky, “that Sergeant Plankses abound in our police force?”

“Not as prolifically as they used to, I fancy.”

“Well, my dear Ricky, I suppose we now take our bracing walk to L’Espérance.”

“You don’t think—”

“What?”

“We ought to stay until he’s — done it? Looked.”

“The doctor’s with him.”

“Yes. So he is.”

“Well, then—”

But as if the ambulance and its passenger had laid some kind of compulsion on them, they still hesitated. Jasper lit a cigarette. Ricky produced his pipe but did nothing with it.

“The day,” said Jasper, “has not been without incident.”

“No.”

They began to move away.

“I’m afraid you have been distressed by it,” said Jasper. “Like my poorest Julia and, for a different reason, my tiresome baby brother.”

“Haven’t you ?” Ricky asked. Jasper came to a halt.

“Been distressed? Not profoundly, I’m afraid. I didn’t see her, you know. I have a theory that the full shock and horror of a death is only experienced when it has been seen. I must, however, confess to a reaction in myself at one point of which I daresay I should be ashamed. I don’t know that I am, however.”

“Am I to hear what it was?”

“Why not? It happened when the ambulance men came into the yard here, carrying Miss Harkness on their covered stretcher. I had been thinking: thank God I wasn’t the one to find them. The remains, as of course they will be labeled. And then, without warning, there came upon me a — really a quite horribly strong impulse to go up to the stretcher and uncover it. I almost believe that if it could have been accomplished in a flash with a single flourish I would have done it — like Antony revealing Caesar’s body to the Romans. But of course the cover was fastened down and it would have been a fiddling, silly business and they would have stopped me. But why on earth should such a notion come upon me? Really, we do not know ourselves, do we?”