Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“Let’s get back, shall we?”

They returned to the front and sat on the weatherworn bench. Alleyn got out his pipe.

“I’ve got news for you, Br’er Fox,” he said. “Last evening that dinghy was hauled up on the beach. I’m sure of it. I waited up in Rick’s room for an hour until he arrived and spent most of the time looking out of the window. There she was, half blue and half white and her name across her stern. She was just on the seaward side of the high-water mark with her anchor in the sand. She’d be afloat at high tide.”

“Is that so? Well, well. Now, how do you read that?” asked Fox.

“Like everything else that’s turned up — with modified rapture. Ferrant may let one of his mates in the cove have the use of his boat while he’s away.”

“In which case, wouldn’t the mate return it to the beach?”

“Again, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Alleyn said. And after a pause. “When I left last night, at ten o’clock, the tide was coming in. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. The dinghy wasn’t on the beach this morning.”

He lit his pipe. They were silent for some time.

Behind them the Ferrants’ front door banged. Alleyn turned quickly, half expecting to see Ricky, but it was only the boy, Louis, with his black hair sleeked like wet fur to his head. He was unnaturally tidy and French-looking in his matelot jersey and very short shorts.

He stared at them, stuck his hands in his pockets, and crossed the road, whistling and strutting a little.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You’re Louis Ferrant, aren’t you?”

He nodded. He walked over to the low wall and lounged against it as Louis Pharamond had lounged that morning: self-consciously, deliberately. Alleyn experienced the curious reaction that is induced by unexpected cross-cutting in a film, as if the figure by the wall blinked by split seconds from child to man to child again.

“Where are you off to?” he asked. “Do you ever go fishing?”

The boy shook his head and then said: “Sometimes,” in an indifferent voice.

“With your father, perhaps?”

“He’s not here,” Louis said very quickly.

“You don’t go out by yourself? In the dinghy?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Or perhaps you can’t row,” Alleyn casually suggested.

“Yes. I can. I can so row. My papa won’t let anybody but me row the dinghy. Not anybody. I can row by myself even when it’s gros temps . Round the musoir , I can, and out to the cap . Easy.”

“I bet you wouldn’t go out on your own at night.”

“Huh! Easy! Often! I—”

He stopped short, looked uncomfortably at the house and turned sulky. “I can so row,” he muttered and began to walk away.

“I’ll get you to take me out one of these nights,” Alleyn said.

But Louis let out a small boy’s whoop and ran suddenly, down the road and around the corner.

“Let me tell you a fairy tale, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn.

“Any time,” said Fox.

“It’s about a little boy who stayed up late because his mother told him to. When it was very dark and very late indeed and the tide was high, she sent him down to the strand where his papa’s dinghy was anchored and just afloat and he hauled up the anchor and rowed the dinghy out to his papa’s motorboat which was called ‘Fifi’ and he tied her up to ‘Fifi’ and waited for his papa who was not really his papa at all. Or perhaps , as it was a calm night, he rowed right out to the heads — the cap— and waited there. And presently his papa arrived in a boat from France that went back to France. So the little boy and his papa rowed all the way back to the pier and came home. And they left the dinghy tied up to the pier.”

“And what did the papa do then?” Fox asked in falsetto.

“That,” Alleyn said, “is the catch. He can hardly have bedded down with his lawful wedded wife and be lying doggo in the bedroom. Or can he?”

“Possible.”

“Yes. Or,” Alleyn said, “he may be bedded down somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Like Syd’s Pad, for example.”

“And why’s he come back? Because things are getting too hot over there?” Fox hazarded.

“Or, while we’re in the inventive vein, because they might be potentially even hotter over here and he wants to clean up damning evidence.”

“Where? Don’t tell me. At Syd’s Pad. Or,” Fox said, “could it be, don’t laugh, to clean up Syd?”

“Because, wait for it, Syd it was who made the attempt on Rick and bungled it and has become unreliable and expendable. Your turn.”

“A digression. Reverting to the deceased. While on friendly terms with Syd at his Pad, suppose she stumbled on something,” said Fox.

“What did she stumble on? Oh, I’m with you. On a doctored tube of emerald-oxide-of-chromium or on the basic supply of dope.”

“And fell out with Jones on account of it being his baby and he not being prepared to take responsibility and so she threatened to grass on him,” said Fox, warming to his work. “Or alternatively, yes, by gum, for Syd read Ferrant. It was his baby and he did her in. Shall I go on?”

“Be my guest.”

“Anyway one, or both of them, fixes up the death trap and polishes her off,” said Fox. “There you are! Bob’s your uncle.” He chuckled.

Alleyn did not reply. He got up and looked at Ricky’s window. It was still shut. The village was very quiet at this time in the afternoon.

“I wonder where he went for his walk,” he said. “I suppose he could have come back while we were on the pier.”

“He couldn’t have failed to see us.”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t butt in. He’s not at his table. When he’s there you can see him very clearly from the street. Good God, I’m behaving like a clucky old hen.”

Fox looked concerned but said nothing.

Alleyn said: “We’re not exactly active at the moment, are we? What the hell have we got in terms of visible, tangible, put-on-table evidence? Damnall.”

“A button.”

“True.”

“It wasn’t anywhere near the fence,” said Fox. “Might he just have forgotten?”

“He might, but I don’t think so. Fox, I’m going to get a search warrant for Syd’s Pad.”

“You are?”

“Yes. We can’t leave it any longer. Even if we’ve done no better than concoct a fairy tale, Jones does stand not only as an extremely dubious character but as a kind of link between the two crackpot cases we’re supposed to be handling. I’ve been hoping Dupont at his end might turn up something definite and in consequence haven’t taken any action with the sprats that might scare off the mackerel. But there’s a limit to masterly inactivity and we’ve reached it.”

“So we search,” Fox said. He fixed his gaze upon the distant coast of France. “What d’you reckon, Mr. Alleyn?” he asked. “Has he got back? Have they both got back? Jones and Ferrant?”

“Not according to the airport people.”

“By boat, then, like we fancied. In the night?”

“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Here comes a copper in the Super’s car. It’s ho for the nearest beak and a search warrant.”

“It’ll be a pity,” Fox remarked, “if nobody’s there after all. Bang goes the fairy tale. Back to square one.” He considered this possibility for a moment. “All the same,” he said, “although I don’t usually place any reliance on hunches I’ve got a funny kind of feeling there’s somebody in Syd’s Pad.”

iii

The really extraordinary feature of Ricky’s situation was his inability to believe in it. He had to keep reminding himself that Ferrant had a real gun of sorts and was pointing it into the small of his back. Ferrant had shown it to him and said it was real and that he would use it if Ricky did not do as he was told. Even then Ricky’s incredulity nearly got the better of him and he actually had to pull himself together and stop himself calling the bluff and suddenly bolting down the hill.