Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“To get yourself a fix?”

“Yeah. OK. Yeah.”

For the twentieth time he got up and shambled about the room, stamping and grabbing at the calf of his leg. “I got cramp,” he said. He fetched up in front of Fox. “I’ll have it in for you lot the way you’re treating me. Sadists. Fascist pigs.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Fox.

Syd appealed to Dr. Carey. “Doc,” he said. “You’ll look after me. Won’t you, doc? You got to, haven’t you? For Christ’s sake, doc.”

“You’ll have to hang on a bit longer,” said Dr. Carey and glanced at Alleyn. Syd broke down completely and wept.

Alleyn said: “Give him what he needs.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Doctor Carey went out of the room.

Syd, fingering his beard and biting his dirty fingers, let out a kind of laugh. “I couldn’t help it, could I?” he gabbled and looked sideways at Alleyn who had turned away from him and didn’t reply.

“It was Gil used the wire on him, not me,” Syd said to Alleyn’s back.

Fox walked over to Plank who throughout the long hours had taken notes. Fox leaned over him and turned the pages back.

“Is this correct?” he asked Syd. “What you’ve deposed about the wire? Where you got it and what you wanted it for?”

“I’ve said so, haven’t I? Yes. Yes. Yes. For the picture.”

“Why won’t you talk about Mr. Louis Pharamond?”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Who’s the next above Ferrant? Who gives the orders?”

“I don’t know. I’ve told you. Where’s the doc? Where’s he gone?”

“He’ll be here,” said Fox. “You’ll get your fix if you’ll talk about your boss. And I don’t mean Harkness. I mean who gives the orders. Is it Louis Pharamond?”

“I can’t. I can’t. They’d knock me off. I would if I could. They’d get me. Honest. I can’t.” Syd returned to his chair and wept.

Without turning around Alleyn said: “Let it be, Fox.”

Doctor Carey came back with a prepared syringe and a swab. Syd with a trembling hand pushed up his sleeve.

“Good God,” said the doctor, “you’ve been making a mess of yourself, haven’t you?” He gave the injection.

The reaction was instantaneous. It was a metamorphosis — as if Syd’s entire person thawed and re-formed into a blissful transfiguration of itself. He lolled back in his chair and giggled. “Fantastic,” he said.

Doctor Carey watched him for a moment and then joined Alleyn at the far end of the room.

“He’s well away,” he said. “He’s had ten milligrams and he’s full of well-being: the classic euphoria. You’ve seen for yourselves what the withdrawal symptoms can be like.”

Alleyn said: “May I put a hypothetical case to you? There may be no answer to it. It may be just plain silly.”

“We can give it a go,” said Dr. Carey.

“Suppose, on the afternoon of Dulcie Harkness’s death, having taken himself off to his Pad he treated himself to an injection of heroin. Is it within the bounds of possibility that he could return on his motorbike to Leathers, help himself to a length of wire from the stables, rig it across the gap in the fence, wait until Dulcie Harkness was dying or dead, remove the wire, and return to his Pad? To reappear on his bike, apparently in full control of himself, later on in the evening?”

Doctor Carey was silent for some time. Syd Jones had begun to hum, tunelessly, under his breath.

Carey said at last, “Frankly I don’t know how to answer you. Since my time in the casualty ward at Saint Luke’s I’ve had no experience of drug addiction. I know symptoms vary widely from case to case. You’d do better to consult a specialist.”

“You wouldn’t rule it out altogether?”

“For what it’s worth — I don’t think I’d do that. Quite.”

“I’ll get that bugger,” Syd Jones announced happily. “I’ll bloody well get him.”

“What bugger?” Fox asked.

“That’d be telling. Think I’d let you in? You got to be joking, Big Fuzz.”

“About my son?” Alleyn asked Dr. Carey.

“Ah yes, of course. He’s settled down nicely.”

“Yes?”

“He’ll be all right. There’s been quite a bit of pain and considerable shock. He’s had something that’ll help him sleep. And routine injections against tetanus and so on. The cuts around the ankles were nasty. We’d like to keep him under observation.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “I’ll tell his mother.”

“Of course I’m completely in the dark,” said Dr. Carey. “Or nearly so. But, damn it all, I am supposed to be the police surgeon round here. And there is an adjourned inquest coming up.”

“My dear chap,” said Alleyn, “I know, and I’m sorry. You shall hear all. In the meantime what shall we do with this specimen?”

Syd Jones, gloomily surveyed by Fox, laughed, talked incomprehensibly, and drifted into song.

“You won’t get any sense out of him. I’d put him in the cells and have him supervised. He’ll go to sleep sooner or later,” said Dr. Carey.

Syd was removed, laughing heartily as he went. Fox went out to arrange for a constable to sit in his cell until he fell asleep, and Alleyn, who now felt as if he’d been hauled through a mangle, pulled himself together and gave Dr. Carey a succinct account of the case as it had developed. They sat on the hideously uncomfortable wall bench. It was now ten minutes past three in the morning. The station sergeant came in with cups of strong tea: the third brew since they’d arrived, five hours ago.

Doctor Carey said: “No thanks, I’m for my bed.” He stood up, stretched, held out his hand, and was professionally alerted. “You look done up,” he said. “Not surprising. Will you get off now?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I expect so.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Montjoy.”

“Like anything to help you sleep?”

“Lord, no,” said Alleyn, “I’d drop off in a gravel pit. Nice of you to offer, though. Good night.”

He went to bed at his hotel, fell instantly and profoundly asleep and, having ordered breakfast in his room at seven-thirty and arranged with himself to wake at seven, did so and put in a call to his wife. It went through at once.

“That’s your waking-up voice,” he said.

“Never mind. Is anything the matter?”

“There was but it’s all right now.”

“Ricky?”

“Need you ask? But darling, repeat, it’s all right now. I promise.”

“Tell me.”

He told her.

“When’s the first plane?” Troy asked.

“Nine-twenty from Heathrow. You transfer at Saint Pierre-des-Roches.”

“Right.”

“Hotel Montjoy and George VI Hospital.”

“Rory, say if you’d rather I didn’t. You will, won’t you?”

“I’d rather you did but God knows where I’ll be when you get here. We may well blow up for a crisis.”

“Could you book a room?”

“I could. This one.”

“Right. I’ll be in it.”

Troy hung up. Alleyn rang up the hospital and was told Ricky had enjoyed a fairly comfortable night and was improving. He bathed, dressed, ate his breakfast, and was about to call the hotel office when the telephone rang again. He expected it would be Fox and was surprised and not overjoyed to hear Julia Pharamond’s voice.

“Good morning,” said Julia. She spoke very quietly and sounded harried and unlike herself. “I’m very sorry indeed to bother you and at such a ghastly hour. I wouldn’t have, only we’re in trouble and I — well, Jasper and I — thought we’d better.”

“What’s the matter?”

“And Carlotta agrees.”

“Carlotta does?”

“Yes. I don’t want,” Julia whispered piercingly into the mouthpiece, “to talk down the telephone. A cause des domestiques . Damn, I’d forgotten they speak French.”