Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“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 around to Miss Harkness and to what Alleyn, with, as his son felt, indecent understatement, referred to as son contretemps équestre .

Mrs. Ferrant put on an air of grandeur, of somber 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 sidestep the barrage, but no, he said cheerfully that he was a policeman. She offered a number of exclamations. She would never have dreamed 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 undergoing a rapid transformation, due in part, he thought, to her command of French. He cpuldn’t follow much of what she said but the sound of it lent a gloss of sophistication to her general demeanor. 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 Saint 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 leaned 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 practice 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, 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 inquiries, 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 at remembering names at first hearing, performed introductions, and Alleyn shook hands all round. Throats were cleared arid 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 Saint 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 and, easing around 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.”