Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

He woke to find his window pallid in the dawn light. He was aware of muted sounds in the downstairs passage. The heavy front door was shut. Footsteps sounded on the outside path.

Wide awake, he got out of bed, went to his open window, and looked down.

Mr. Ferrant, with two suitcases, walked toward the jetty where the Island Belle was coming in. There was something unexpected, unreal even, about her, sliding alongside in the dawn light. Quiet voices sounded, and the slap of rope on the wet jetty. Mr. Ferrant was a solitary figure with his baggage and his purposeful tread. But what very grand suitcases they were: soft hide, surely, not plastic, and coming, Ricky was sure, from some very smart shop. As for Mr. Ferrant, one could hardly believe it was he, in a camel’s hair overcoat, porkpie hat, suede shoes, and beautiful gloves. He turned his head and Ricky saw that he wore dark glasses.

He watched Mr. Ferrant, the only embarking passenger, go up the gangplank and disappear. Some packages and a mailbag were taken aboard and then the Island Belle , with a slight commotion from her propeller, pulled out, her lights wan in the growing morning.

Ricky returned to bed and to sleep. When he finally awoke at nine o’clock, Mr. Ferrant’s departure seemed unreal as a dream, enclosed, like a dream, between sleep and sleep.

Three days later the inquest was held in the Cove village hall. The coroner came out from Montjoy. The jury was made up of local characters, some of whom were known to Ricky as patrons of the Cod-and-Bottle.

Julia and Ricky were called to give formal evidence as to sighting the body, and Mr. Harkness as to its identity. He was subdued and shaky and extremely lugubrious, answering in a low, uneven voice. He tried to say something about the dangerous nature of the jump and about the warnings he had given his niece and the rows this had led to.

“I allowed anger to take hold on me,” he said and looked around the assembly with washed-out eyes. “I went too far and I said too much. I may have driven her to it.” He broke down and was allowed to leave the room.

Doctor Carey gave evidence as to the nature of the injuries, which were multiple and extensive. Some of the external ones could be seen to have been caused by a horse’s hoof, others were breakages. The internal ones might have been brought about by the mare rolling on her rider. It was impossible, on the evidence, to arrive at a more precise conclusion. She was some eight or nine weeks pregnant, Dr. Carey added, and a little eddy of attention seemed to wash through the court. Superintendent Curie, from Montjoy, nominally in charge of the police investigation, was ill in hospital but, to the obvious surprise of the jury, applied through Sergeant Plank for an adjournment, which was agreed to.

Outside in the sunshine, Ricky talked to Julia and Jasper. It was his first meeting with them since the accident, although they had spoken on the telephone. Nobody could have been more simply dressed than Julia and nobody could have looked more exquisite, he thought, or more exotic in that homespun setting.

“I don’t in the least understand all this,” Julia said. “Why an adjournment? Ricky, you’re the one to explain to us.”

“Why me?”

“Because your gorgeous papa is a copper. Is he perpetually asking for adjournments when everybody longs for the whole thing to be—” She stopped, looked for a moment into his eyes, and then said rapidly, “—to be dead, buried and forgotten.”

“Honestly, I don’t know anything at all about police goings-on. He never speaks of his cases. We’ve so much else to talk about,” Ricky said simply. “I imagine they have to be almost insanely thorough and exhaustive.”

“I can’t think that it makes any difference to anyone, not even Mr. Harkness in all his righteous anguish, whether poor Dulcie fell forwards, sideways, or over the horse’s tail. Oh God, Jasper, darling, why does everything I say always have to sound so perfectly heartless and beastly!”

“Because you’re a realist, my love, and anyway it doesn’t,” said Jasper. “You’d be the most ghastly fake if you pretended to be heartbroken over the wretched girl. You had a beastly shock because you saw her. If you’d only heard she’d been killed you’d have said, ‘How awful for poor Cuth,’ and sent flowers to the funeral. Which, by the way, we ought perhaps to do. What do you think?”

But Julia paid no attention.

“Ricky,” she said. “It couldn’t be, or could it? That the police — what is it that’s always said in the papers — don’t rule out the possibility of ‘foul play’? Could it be that, Ricky?”

“I don’t know. Truly I don’t know,” Ricky said. And then, acutely conscious of their fixed regard, he blurted out what he had in fact been thinking.

“I had wondered,” said Ricky.

iii

“ ‘So I thought,’ ” Alleyn read aloud, “ ‘I’d ask you if the idea’s just plain silly. And if you don’t think it’s silly, whether you think I ought to say anything to Sergeant Plank or whether that would be behaving like the typical idiot layman. Or, finally, whether it’s a guinea to a gooseberry Sergeant Plank will have thought of it for himself.’ Which,” Alleyn said looking up from the letter, “will certainly be the case if Sergeant Plank’s worth his stripes.”

“Wouldn’t we much rather Rick kept out of it, whatever it may be, and got on with his book?” asked Ricky’s mother.

“Very much rather. Drat the boy, why does he want to go and get himself involved?” Alleyn rubbed his nose and looked sideways at his wife. “Quite neat of him to spot that bit, though, wasn’t it? ‘Obviously recent,’ he says.”

“Should we suggest he come home?” Troy wondered and then: “No. Silly of me. Why on earth, after all?”

“He may be called when the inquest is reopened, in which case he’d have to go trundling back. No, I shouldn’t worry. It’s odds on there’s nothing in it and he’s perfectly well able to cope, after all, with anything that may turn up.” Alleyn returned to the letter. “I see,” he said, “that Julia was dreadfully upset but rallied gallantly and gave her evidence quite beautifully. So that’s still on the tapis, one gathers.”

“I hope she’s not finding him a bore.”

“Does a woman ever dislike the admiration of a reasonably presentable young chap?”

“True.”

“He really does seem to have struck a rum setup one way or another,” said Alleyn, still reading. “What with his odd-jobbing plumber of a landlord dressed up like a con man at the crack of dawn and going on holiday to Saint Pierre-des-Roches.”

“It’s a pretty little peep of a place. I painted it when I was a student. The egregious Syd has made a regrettable slosh at it. But it’s hardly the spot for camel’s hair coats and zoot suits.”

“Perhaps Ferrant uses it as a jumping-off place for the sophisticated south.”

“And then there’s Louis Pharamond,” said Troy, pursuing her own thoughts, “having had some sort of affair with poor Miss Harkness, doesn’t it seem? Or does it?”

“In company with your visitor with the free paints and the dizzy spell. And listen to this,” said Alleyn. “ ‘My Mrs. Ferrant reacts very acidly to mention of Dulcie Harkness, even though she does make obligatory ‘non nisi’ noises. I can’t help wondering if Mr. Ferrant’s roving eye has lit sometime or another on Miss Harkness.’ Really!” said Alleyn, “The island jollities seem to be of a markedly uninhibited kind. And Miss Harkness of an unusually obliging disposition.”

“Bother!” said Troy.

“I know. And then, why should the egregious Jones scream with rage when Ricky trod on his vermillion? There’s plenty more where that came from, it seems. For free. And if it comes to that, why should Jones take it into his head to cut Rick? Apparently he would neither look at, nor speak to him. Not a word about having taken a luncheon off us, it appears.”