Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“Would you, Fox? We’ll call out if we need you.”

Fox rose. “A very enjoyable cup of coffee,” he said with a slight bow in Julia’s direction and descended the steps to the lower terrace where the car was parked. It was just as well, thought Alleyn, that it was out of sight.

“Not true!” said Julia with wide-open eyes. “My dear! The tact! Have you many like that?”

“We have a finishing school,” said Alleyn, “at the C.I.D.”

Jasper said: “Answering your question. No, Louis, as Julia said, always lets us know if he’s going to be away unexpectedly.”

“Is he often away? ‘Unexpectedly’?”

“Well—”

Julia burst out. “Oh let’s not be cagey and difficult, darling. After all we asked the poor man to come so why shuffle and snuffle when he wants to know about things? Yes, Louis does quite often leave us for reasons undisclosed and probably not very respectable. He can’t keep his hands off the ladies.”

“Julia! Darling !”

“And what ladies some of them are. But then, it appears that Louis bowls them over like ninepins and has only to show himself at a casino in Lima for them to swarm. This we find puzzling. Perhaps he’s been hijacked and taken away for a sort of gentlemanly white-slave trade, to be offered to sex-starved señoritas. Which would really suit him very well as he could combine their pleasure with his business.”

“No, honestly,” Jasper protested and giggled.

“Darling, admit. You’re not all that keen on him yourself. But we do love Carlotta, very dearly,” said Julia, “and we’ve got sort of inoculated to Louis like one does with sandflies, blood being thicker than water as far as Jasper is concerned.”

Jasper said: “What steps do you think we should take?”

Alleyn found it odd to repeat the advice that he and Fox had offered each other yesterday. He said they could report Louis’s disappearance to the police now or wait a little longer. He thought he would advise the latter course.

“Have you,” he said, “looked to see if his papers — passport and medical certificates and so on — are in his room? You say he often makes business trips to Peru. Isn’t it just possible that something cropped up — say a cable — calling him there on urgent business and that you’ll get a radiogram to this effect?”

Jasper and Julia looked at each other and shook their heads. Alleyn was trying to remember in which South American countries extradition orders could be operated.

“Speaking as a policeman,” said Julia, “which it’s so difficult to remember you are, would the Force be very bored if asked to take a hand? I mean, busy as you all seem to be over the Harness affair? Wouldn’t they think Louis’s ongoings of no account?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “They wouldn’t think that.”

A stillness came over the three. Jasper, who had reached out to the coffeepot, withdrew his hand. He looked very hard at Alleyn and then at his wife.

Julia said: “Is there something you know and we don’t? About Louis?”

Carlotta came out of the house and down the steps. She was very pale, even for a Pharamond. She came to the table and sat down as if she needed to.

“I’ve made a discovery,” she said. “Louis’s passport and his attaché case and the file he always takes when he goes to Lima are missing. I forced open the drawer in his desk. So I imagine, don’t you,” said Carlotta, “that he’s walked out on me?”

“You sound as if you’re not surprised,” said Julia.

“Nor am I. He’s been precarious for quite a time. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You must have.” They were silent. “I always knew, of course,” Carlotta said, “that by and large you thought him pretty ghastly. But there you are. I have a theory that quite a lot of women require a touch of the bounder in their man. I’m one of them. So, true to type, he’s bounded away.”

Jasper said: “Carla, darling, aren’t you rushing your fences a bit? After all, we don’t know why he’s gone. If he’s gone.”

Julia said: “I’ve got a feeling that Roderick, if we’re still allowed to call him that, knows. And I don’t believe he thinks it’s anything to do with you, Carla.” She turned to Alleyn. “Am I right?” she asked.

Alleyn said slowly: “If you mean do I know definitely he’s gone, I don’t. I’ve no information at all as to his recent movements.”

“He’s in trouble, though. Isn’t he? It’s best we should all realize. Really.”

“What’s he done?” Carlotta demanded. “He has done something, hasn’t he? I’ve known he was up to something. I can always tell.”

Jasper said with an unfamiliar note in his voice: “I think we’d better remember, girls, that we are talking, however much we may like him, to a policeman.”

“Oh dear. I suppose we should,” Julia agreed and sounded vexed rather than alarmed. “I suppose we must turn cagey and evasive and he’ll set traps for us and when we fall into them he’ll say things like ‘I didn’t know but you’ve just told me.’ They always do that. Don’t you?” she asked Alleyn.

“I don’t fancy it’s going to be my morning for aphorisms,” he said.

“Somehow,” Julia mused, “I’ve always thought — you won’t mind my saying, Carla darling? I prefer to be open — I’ve always thought Louis was a tiny bit the absconding type.”

Carlotta looked thoughtfully at her. “Have you?” she said as if her attention had been momentarily caught. “Well, it looks as though you’re right. Or doesn’t it?” she added turning to Alleyn.

He stood up. The three of them contemplated him with an air of — what? Polite interest? Concern? One would have said no more than that, if it had not been for Carlotta’s pallor, the slightest tremor in Jasper’s hand as he put down his coffee cup, and — in Julia? — the disappearance, as if by magic, of her immense vitality.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that in a situation which for me, if not for you, poses a problem, I’ll have to spill the beans. The not very delicious beans. As you say, I’m a policeman. I’m what is known as an ‘investigating officer’ and if something dubious crops up I’ve got to investigate it. That is why I’m here, on the island. Now, such is the nature of the investigation that anybody doing a bolt for no discernible reason becomes somebody the police want to see. Your cousin is now somebody I want to see.”

After a long silence Jasper said: “I don’t like your chances.”

“Nor do I, much.”

“I suppose we aren’t to know what you want to see him about?”

“I’ve gone further than I should already.”

Carlotta said: “It’s not about that girl, is it? Oh God, it’s not about her?”

“It’s no good, Carla,” Julia said and put her arm round Carlotta. “Obviously, he’s not going to tell you.” She looked at Alleyn and the ghost of her dottiness revisited her. “And we actually asked you to come and help us,” she said. “It’s like the flies asking the spider to walk into their parlor, isn’t it?”

“Alas!” said Alleyn. “It is, a bit. I’m sorry.”

The child Selina appeared on the steps from the house. She descended them in jumps with her feet together.

“Run away, darling,” her parents said in unison.

Selina continued to jump.

“Selina,” said her father. “What did we tell you?”

She accomplished the final jump. “I can’t,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said her mother. “Why can’t you?”

“I got a message.”

“A message? What message? Tell us later and run away now.”

“It’s on the telephone. I answered it.”

“Why on earth couldn’t you say so?”