Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

He and Plank wrapped handkerchiefs around their hands and held back obstructing brambles. Alleyn cupped his scratched left hand under one of the grooves and with his right finger and thumb insinuated his piece of wire into it. It fitted snugly.

“Bob’s your uncle,” said Fox.

“A near relation at least. Let’s try elsewhere.”

They did so with the same result on both posts.

“Well, Plank,” Alleyn said, sucking the back of his hand, “how do you read the evidence?”

“Sir, like I did before, if you’ll excuse my saying so, though I hadn’t linked it up with that coil in the coach house. Should have done, of course, but I missed it.”

“Well?”

“It looks like there was this wire, strained between the posts. It’d been there a long time because coming as we now know from the lot in the coach house it must have been rusty.” Plank caught himself up.‘ “Here. Wait a mo,” he said. “Forget that. That was silly.”

“Take your time.”

“Ta. No. Wipe that. Excuse me, sir. But it had been there a long time because the wire marks are overgrown by thorn.”

Fox cleared his throat.

“What about that one, Fox?” Alleyn said.

“It doesn’t follow. Not for sure. It wants closer examination,” Fox said. “It could have been rigged from the far side.”

“I think so. Don’t you, Plank?”

“Sir,” said Plank, chastened.

“Go on, though. When was it removed from the barn?”

“Recently. Recently it was, sir. Because the cut end was fresh.”

“Where is it?”

“We don’t know that, do we, sir?”

“Not on the peg in the coach house, at least. That lot’s in one piece. What does all this seem to indicate?”

“I’d kind of thought,” said Plank carefully, “it pointed to her having cut it away before she attempted the jump. It’s very dangerous, sir, isn’t it, in horse jumping — wire is. Hidden wire.”

“Very.”

“Would the young chap,” Fox asked, “have noticed it if it was in place when he jumped?”

Alleyn walked back to the prints of the sorrel mare’s takeoff and looked at the gap.

“Old wire. It wouldn’t catch the light, would it? We’ll have to ask the young chap.”

Plank cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I did carry out a wee routine check along the hedgerow, and there’s no wire there. I’d say never has been.”

“Right.” Alleyn hesitated for a moment. “Plank,” he said, “I can’t talk to your Super till he’s off the danger list so I’ll be asking you about matters I’d normally discuss with him.”

“Sir,” said Plank, fighting down any overt signs of gratification.

“Why was it decided to keep the case open?”

“Well, sir, on account really of the wire. I reported what I could make out of the marks on the posts and the Super had a wee look-see. That was the day he took bad with the pain, like. It were that evening his appendix bust and they operated on him and his last instructions to me was: ‘Apply for an adjournment and keep your trap shut. It’ll have to be the Yard.’ ”

“I see. Has anything been said to Mr. Harkness about the wire?”

“There has but bloody-all come of it. Far’s I could make out it’s been there so long he’d forgotten about it. Was there, in fact before he bought the place. He reckons Dulcie went down and cut it away before she jumped, which is what I thought seemed to make sense if anything he says can be so classed. But Gawd knows,” said Plank removing his helmet and looking inside it as if for an answer, “he was that put about there was no coming to grips with the man. Would you care to take a look at the far bank, sir? Where she lay?”

They took a look at it and the horses in the field came and took a look at them, blowing contemptuously through their nostrils. Plank removed his tent and disclosed the pegs he had driven into the ground around dead Dulcie Harkness.

“And you took photographs, did you?” Alleyn asked.

“It’s a bit of a hobby with me,” Plank said and drew them from a pocket in his tunic. “I carry a camera round with me,” he said. “On the off-chance of a nice picture.”

Fox placed his glasses, looked, and clicked his tongue. “Very nasty,” he said. “Very unpleasant. Poor girl.”

Plank, who contemplated his handiwork with a proprietary air, his head slightly tilted, said absently: “You wouldn’t hardly recognize her if it wasn’t for the shirt. I used a sharper aperture for this one,” and he gave technical details.

Alleyn thought of the picture in the office of a big blowsy girl in a check shirt, exhibiting the sorrel mare. He returned the photographs to their envelope and put them in his pocket. Plank replaced the tent.

Alleyn said: “From the time the riding party left until she was found, who was here? On the premises?”

“There again!” Plank cried out in vexation. “What’ve we got? Sir, we’ve got Cuth Harkness and that’s it. Now then!” He produced his notebook, wetted his thumb, and turned pages. “Harkness. Cuthbert,” he said and changed to his police-court voice.

“I asked Mr. Harkness where he and Miss Harkness and Mr. Sydney Jones were situated and how employed subsequent to the departure of the riding party. Mr. Harkness replied that he instructed Jones to drive into Montjoy and collect horse fodder, which he later did. At this point Mr. Harkness broke down and spoke very confusedly about Mr. Jones — something about him not having got the mare reshod as ordered. He shed tears considerably. Mr. Jones, on being interviewed, testified that Mr. Harkness had words with the deceased who was in her room but who looked out of her window and spoke to him, he being at that time in the stable yard. I asked Mr. Harkness ‘Was she locked in her room?’ He said she had carried on to that extent that he went quietly upstairs and turned the key in her door, which at this point was in the outside lock. When I examined the door, the key was in the inside lock and was in the unlocked position. I noted a gap of three-quarters of an inch between door and floor. I noted a thin rug laying in the gap. I pointed this out to Mr. Harkness who told me that he had left the key in the outside lock. I examined the rug and the area where it lay and formed the opinion it had been dragged into the room. The displacement of dust on the floor caused me to form this opinion, which was supported by Mr. Harkness to the extent that the deceased had effected an escape in this manner when a schoolgirl.”

Plank looked up. “I have the key, sir,” he said.

“Right. So your reading is that she waited until her uncle was gone and then poked the key onto the mat. With what?”

“She carried one of those old-time pocket knives with a spike for getting stones out of hooves. It was in her breeches pocket.”

“ ‘ First Steps in Easy Detection, ’ ” Alleyn murmured.

“Sir?”

“Yes, all right. Could be. So you read it that at some stage after this performance she let herself out, went downstairs, cut away the wire and dumped it we don’t know where. But replaced the cutters—”

Fox said: “Ah. Yes. There’s that.”

“—and then saddled up the mare and rode to her death. I can’t,” said Alleyn, rubbing his nose, “get it to run smoothly. It’s got a spurious feel about it. But then, of course, one hasn’t known that poor creature. What was she like , Plank?”

After a considerable pause Plank said: “Big.”

“One could see that. As a character? Come on, Plank.”

“Well,” said Plank, a countryman, “if she’d been a mare you’d of said she was always in season.”

“That’s a peculiar way of expressing yourself, Sergeant Plank,” Fox observed austerely.