Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“One of the locals? Coming home?” Fox speculated.

“Wait.”

No. It showed again for a fraction of a second and was much nearer. They could hear uneven footfalls and labored breathing. Whoever it was must be scrambling, almost running up the steps.

“Christ!” Plank broke out. “It’s the Missus.”

It was Mrs. Plank, so out of breath that she clung to Alleyn with one hand and with the other shoved the paper at him.

“Sh-sh!” she panted. “Don’t speak. Don’t say anything. Read it.”

Alleyn opened his jacket as a shield to her torch and read.

Fox, who was at his elbow, saw the paper quiver in his hand. The little group was very still. Voices of patrons leaving the Cod-and-Bottle broke the silence and even the slap of the incoming tide along the front. Alleyn motioned with his head. The others closed about him, bent over and formed a sort of massive huddle around the torchlit paper. Fox was the first to break the silence.

“Signed P.A.D.?” Fox said. “Why?”

“It’s his writing. Weak. But his. It’s a tip-off. ‘ Pad .’ They didn’t drop to it or they’d have cut it out.”

“Practical,” said Fox unevenly. And then: “What do we do?”

Alleyn read the message again, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Mrs. Plank switched off her torch. The others waited.

“Mrs. Plank,” Alleyn said, “you don’t know how grateful I am to you. How did this reach you?”

She told him. “I got the notion,” she ended, “that it might be that young Louis Ferrant. I suppose because he’s a one for runaway knocks.”

“Is he, indeed? Now, please, you must go back. Go carefully and thank you.”

“Will it — they won’t? — will it be all right?”

“You cut along, Mother,” said her husband. “ ’Course it will.”

“Goodnight, then,” she said and was gone.

Fox said: “She’s not using her torch.”

“She’s good on her feet,” said Plank.

Throughout, they had spoken just above a whisper. When Alleyn talked now it was more slowly and unevenly than was his custom but in a level voice.

“It’s a question, I think, of whether we declare ourselves and talk to them from outside the house or risk an unheard approach and a break-in. I don’t think,” he stopped for a moment, “I don’t think I dare do that.”

“No,” said Fox. “No. Not that way. Too risky.”

“Yes. It seems clear that already they’ve… given him a bad time — the writing’s very shaky.”

“It does say ‘OK,’ though. Meaning he is.”

“It says that. There’s a third possibility. He says ‘till they’ve gone’ and I can’t think of them making a getaway by any means other than the way we discussed, Fox. If so they’ll come out at some time during the night, carrying their stuff. With Rick between them. They’ve worked it out that we won’t try anything because of the threat to Rick. We carry on now, with the old plan. We don’t know which door they’ll use so we’ll have two at the back and three at the front. And wait for them to emerge.”

“And jump them?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “And jump them.”

“Hard and quick?”

“Yes. They’ll be armed.”

“It’s good enough,” Fox said and there were satisfied noises from the other three men.

“I think it’s the best we can do. It may be—” for the first time Alleyn’s voice faltered, “a long wait. That won’t — be easy.”

It was not easy. As they drew near the house they could make it out in a faint diffusion of light from the village below. They moved very slowly now, over soft, uneven ground, Plank leading them. He would stop and put back a warning hand when they drew near an obstacle, such as the bramble bush where Miss Harkness had tethered her horse and Ricky had so ostentatiously lit his pipe. No chink of light showed from window or door.

They inched forward with frequent stops to listen and grope about them. A breeze had sprung up. There were rustlings, small indeterminate sounds and from the pinegrove further up the hill, a vague soughing. This favored their approach.

It was always possible, Alleyn thought, that they were being watched, that the lights had been put out and a chink opened at one of the windows. What would the men inside do then? And there was, he supposed, another possibility — that Ricky was being held somewhere else, in one of the deserted cottages, for instance, or even gagged and out in the open. But no. Why “Pad” in the message? Unless they’d moved after sending the message. Should Fox return and try to screw a statement out of Mrs. Ferrant? But then the emergence from the Pad might happen and they would be a man short.

They had come to the place where a rough path branched off, leading around to the back of the house. Plank breathed this information in Alleyn’s ear: “We’ll get back to you double quick, sir, if it’s the front. Can you make out the door?” Alleyn squeezed his elbow and sensed rather than saw Plank’s withdrawal with P.C. Moss.

There was the door. They crept up to it, Alleyn and Fox on either side with P.C. Cribbage behind Fox. There was a sharp crackle as Cribbage fell foul of some bush or dry stick. They froze and waited. The breeze carried a moisture with it that tasted salt on Alleyn’s lips. Nothing untoward happened.

Alleyn began to explore with his fingers the wall, the door and a step leading up to it. He sensed that Fox, on his side, was doing much the same thing.

The door was weatherworn and opened inward. The handle was on Alleyn’s side. He found the keyhole, knelt and put his eye to it, but could see nothing. The key was in the lock, evidently. Or hadn’t Ricky, describing the Pad, talked about a heavy curtain masking the door? Alleyn thought he had.

He explored the bottom of the door. There was very little gap between it and the floor, but as he stared fixedly at the place where his finger rested he became aware of a lesser darkness, of the faintest possible thinning out of nonvisibility that increased, infinitesimally, when he withdrew his hand.

Light, as faint as light could be, filtered through the gap between the door and the floor.

He slid his finger away from him along the gap and ran into something alive. Fox’s finger. Alleyn closed his hand around Fox’s and then traced on its hairy back the word light . Fox reversed the process. Yes .

Alleyn knelt. He laid his right ear to the door and stopped up the left one.

There was sound. Something being moved. The thud of stockinged or soft-shod feet and then, only just perceptibly, voices.

He listened and listened, unconscious of aching knees, as if all his other faculties had been absorbed by the sense of hearing. The sounds continued. Once, one of the voices was raised. Of one thing he was certain — neither of them belonged to Ricky.

To Ricky, on the other side of the door. Quite close? Or locked up in some back room? Gagged? What had they done to him to turn his incisive Italianate script into the writing of an old man?

Monstrous it was, to wait and to do nothing. Should he, after all, have decided to break in? Suppose they shot him and Fox before the others could jump on them, what would they do to Ricky?

The sounds were so faint that the men must be at the end of the room farthest from the door. He wondered if Fox had heard them, or Cribbage.

He got to his feet surprised to find how stiff he was. He waited for a minute or two and then eased across until he found Fox who was leaning with his back to the wall and whispered:

“Hear them?”

“Yes.”

“At least we’ve come to the right place.”

“Yes.”

Alleyn returned to his side of the door.

The minutes dragged into an hour. The noises continued intermittently and, after a time, became more distant, as if the men had moved to another room. They changed in character. There was a scraping metallic sound, only just detectable, and then silence.