Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“Of course I don’t,” Alleyn said with a violence that made Sergeant Plank blink. “I’m in two minds whether to pack him off home or what the devil to do about him. He’s hell-bent on sticking round here and I’m not sure I don’t sympathize with him.”

Fox said: “And yet, wouldn’t you say that when they do find out he escaped and came back here, they’ll realize that anything he knows he’ll have already handed on to you? So there won’t be the same reason for getting rid of him. The beans, as you might say, are spilled.”

“I’d thought of that too, Br’er Fox. These people are far too sophisticated to go about indulging in unnecessary liquidations. All the same—”

He broke off and glanced at Sergeant Plank whose air of deference was heavily laced with devouring curiosity. “The fact of the matter is,” Alleyn said quickly, “I find it difficult to look objectively at the position, which is a terrible confession from a senior cop. I don’t know what the drill ought to be. Should I ask to be relieved from the case because of personal involvement?”

“Joey,” Mrs. Plank called from the kitchen and her husband excused himself.

“Fox,” Alleyn said, “what the hell should a self-respecting copper do when his boy gets himself bogged down, and dangerously so, in a case like this? Send him abroad somewhere? If they are laying for him that’d be no solution. This lot is one of the big ones with fingers everywhere. And I can’t treat Rick like a kid. He’s a man and what’s more I don’t think he’d take it if I did and, by God, I wouldn’t want him to take it.”

Fox, after some consideration, said it was an unusual situation. “I can’t say,” he admitted, “that I can recollect anything of the sort occurring in my experience. Or yours either, Mr. Alleyn, I daresay. Very unusual. You could think, if you weren’t personally concerned, that there’s a piquant element.”

“For the love of Mike, Fox!”

“It was only a passing fancy. You were wondering what would be the correct line to take?”

“I was.”

“With respect, then, I reckon he should do as I think he wants to do. Stay put and act under your orders.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“If Ferrant comes back? Or Jones?”

“It would be interesting to see the reaction when they met.”

“Always supposing Ferrant’s the man. Or Jones.”

“That’s right. It’s possible that Ferrant may still be waiting for the body, you’ll excuse me won’t you, Mr. Alleyn, to rise. He may think it’s caught up under the pier. Unless, of course, the chap in the ship has talked.”

“The ship doesn’t return to Saint Pierre for some days. And Ricky got the man to promise he wouldn’t talk. He thinks he’ll stick to his word.”

“Yerse,” said Fox. “But we all know what a few drinks will do.”

“Anyway, Ferrant has probably telephoned his wife and heard that Rick’s home and dry. I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if he’s in the habit of sending her postcards with no message.”

“Just to let her know where he is?”

“And I wonder — I do very much wonder — how far, if any distance at all, that excellent cook is wise to her husband’s proceedings.”

Sergeant Plank returned with a plateload of enormous cheese and pickle sandwiches and a jug of beer.

“It’s getting on for three o’clock,” he said, “and the Missus reckons you must be fair clemmed for a snack, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Your Missus, Sergeant Plank,” said Alleyn, “is a pearl among ladies and you may tell her so with our grateful compliments.”

i

When Ricky had eaten his solitary lunch he was unable to settle to anything. He had had a most disturbing morning and himself could hardly believe in it. The memory of Julia’s blouse creasing under the pressure of his fingers and of herself warm beneath it, her scent, and the smooth resilience of her cheek were at once extraordinarily vivid yet scarcely to be believed. Much more credible was the ease with which she had dealt with him.

“She stopped my nonsense,” he thought, “with one arm tied behind her back. I suppose she’s a dab hand at disposing of excitable young males.” For the first time he was acutely aware of the difference in their ages and began to wonder uncomfortably how old Julia, in fact, might be.

Mixed up with all this and in a different though equally disturbing key was his father’s suggestion that he, Ricky, should take himself off. This he found completely unacceptable and wondered unhappily if they were about to have a family row about it. He was much attached to his father.

And then there was the case itself, muddling to a degree with its shifting focus, its inconsistencies and lack of perceptible design. He thought he would write a kind of résumé and did so and was, he felt, none the wiser for it. Turn to his work he could not.

The harbor glittered under an early afternoon sun and beyond the heads there was a lovely blue and white channel. He decided to take a walk, first looking in his glass to discover, he thought, a slightly less grotesque face. His eye, at least, no longer leered, although the area beneath it still resembled an overripe plum.

Since his return he had felt that Mrs. Ferrant not perhaps spied upon him, but kept an eye on him. He had an impression of doors being shut a fraction of a second after he left or returned to his room. As he stepped down into the street he was almost sure one of the parlor curtains moved slightly. This was disagreeable.

He went into Mr. Mercer’s shop to replace his lost espadrilles with a pair from a hanging cluster inside the door. Mr. Mercer, in his dual role of postmaster, was in the tiny office reserved for Her Majesty’s Mail. On seeing Ricky he hurried out carrying an airletter and a postcard.

“ Good afternoon, sir,” said Mr. Mercer winningly after a startled look at the eye. “ Can I have the pleasure of helping you? And may I impose upon your kindness? Today’s post was a little delayed and the boy had started on his rounds. If you would — You would ! Much obliged I’m sure.”

The letter was from Ricky’s mother and the postcard he saw at a glance was from Saint Pierre-des-Roches with a view of that fateful jetty. For Mrs. Ferrant.

When he was out in the street he examined the card. Ferrant’s writing again, and again no message. He turned back to the house and pushed the card and the espadrilles through the letter flap. He put his mother’s letter in his pocket, and walked briskly down the front toward the Cod-and-Bottle and past it.

Here was the lane, surely, that he had taken that dark night when he visited Syd’s Pad — a long time ago as it now seemed. The name, roughly painted on a decrepit board, hung lopsided from its signpost. “Fisherman’s Steps.”

“Blow me down flat,” thought Ricky, “if I don’t case the joint.”

In the dark he had scarcely been aware of the steps, so worn, flattened, and uneven had they become, but had stumbled after Syd like a blind man only dimly conscious of the two or three cottages on either side. He saw, now, that they were unoccupied and falling into ruin. Clear of them the steps turned into a steep and sleazy path that separated areas of rank weeds littered with rusting tins. The path was heavily indented with hoofprints. “How strange,” he thought. “Those were left I suppose by Dulcie’s horse Mungo: ‘put down’ now, dead and buried, like its rider.”

And here was Syd’s Pad.

It must originally have been a conventional T-plan cottage with rooms on either side of a central passage. At some stage of its decline the two front rooms had been knocked into one, making the long disjointed apartment he had visited that night. The house was in a state of dismal neglect. At the back an isolated privy faced a desolation of weeds.