Ngaio Marsh - Last Ditch

“For the last time: if you have something to say about Ferrant, say it.”

“I want a fix.”

“Say it.”

Syd bit his fingers, wiped his nose, blinked, and with a travesty of pulling himself together cleared his throat and whispered:

“Gil did it.”

“Did what?”

“Did her. Dulce.”

And then as if he’d turned himself on like a tap he poured out his story.

Dulcie Harkness, he said, had found out about the capsules in the paint tubes. It had happened one night when she was “going with” Syd. It might have been the night he took Ricky to the Pad. Yes — it was that night. Before they arrived she had taken it into her head to tidy up the paint table and had come across a tube that was open at the wrong end. When Ricky had gone she had pointed it out to Syd. Alleyn gathered that this rattled Syd. He told her it was because the cap had jammed. Dulcie had unscrewed the cap with ease and “got nosey.” Syd had lost his temper — he was, he said, by that time high on grass. There was a fine old scene between them and she’d left the Pad saying she expected to be made an honest woman by him. Or else.

After that she kept on at him both before and after his trip to London. Her uncle was giving her hell and she wanted to cut loose and the shortest route to that desired end, she argued, was a visit to the registry office with Syd. By this time, it emerged, she was “going with somebody else” and threatened to talk.

“Do you mean to Louis Pharamond?”

Never mind who. She got Syd so worried he’d confided in Gil Ferrant and Gil had gone crook, Syd said, revealing his antipodean origin. Gil had taken it very seriously indeed. He’d tackled Dulcie, trying to scare her with threats about what would happen to her if she talked, but she laughed at him and said two could play at that game.

That was the situation on the morning before the accident. When he returned from his trip to the corn chandler Syd found Ferrant lurking around the stables. He had driven up in his car. Alleyn heard with surprise that Mrs. Ferrant had been with him. It appeared that she did the fine laundering for L’Espérance and they had called there to deliver it. Ferrant said that within the next few days he was going over to Saint Pierre under orders from above and Syd was to hold himself in readiness to follow. To collect a consignment. Ferrant wanted to know how Dulcie was behaving herself. Syd gave him an account of the fence-jumping incident, her threat to try it herself, and the subsequent row with her uncle.

Ferrant had asked where she was and Syd had said up in her room but that wouldn’t be for long. She’d broken out before and she would again and if he knew anything about her she’d take the mare over the jump.

“Where,” Alleyn asked, “was her uncle at this time?”

In his office, writing hellfire pamphlets, Syd supposed. And where was the sorrel mare? In her loose-box. And Mrs. Ferrant? She remained in the car.

“Go on.”

Well, Ferrant supplied Syd with dope, and he’d brought a packet, and he said why didn’t Syd doss down somewhere and do himself a favor. He was friendlier than Syd had known him since the row over Dulcie. They were in the old coach house at the time and Syd noticed how Ferrant looked around at everything.

Well. So Syd had said he didn’t mind if he did. He went into one of the unoccupied loose-boxes where he settled himself down on the clean straw and shot up.

The next thing he could be sure about was that it was quite a lot later in the afternoon. He pulled himself together and went into the coach house where he had parked his bike. It was then that he noticed the length of wire that had been newly cut from the main coil. He thought it would do for hanging pictures and he took it. He then remembered he was supposed to take the sorrel mare to the smith. He looked in her loose-box but she wasn’t there. It was too late to do anything about it now so he biked down to the cliffs. After a time he got around to wondering what had gone on at Leathers. He returned there and met Ricky and Jasper Pharamond who told him about Dulcie.

Here Syd came to a stop. He gazed at Alleyn and pulled at his beard.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “is that all?”

“All! God, it’s everything. He did it. I know. I could tell, the way he carried on afterward when I talked about it. He was pleased with himself. You could tell.”

At this point Syd became hysterical. He swore that if they put him in the witness-box he wouldn’t say a word about heroin or against Ferrant because if he did he’d “be in for it.” It was for Alleyn to follow up the information he’d given him but he, Syd, wasn’t going to be made a monkey of. It was remarkable that however frantic he became he never mentioned Ferrant’s name or alluded to him in any way without lowering his voice, as if Ferrant might overhear him. But when he pleaded for his fix he became vociferous and at last began to scream.

Alleyn said he’d ask Dr. Carey to look at Syd and saw him taken back to his cell.

Fox came back into the room. “What d’you make of all that, Mr. Alleyn?” he asked. “Cooked up, would you say, to incriminate Ferrant?”

“Hard to tell, but I wouldn’t think entirely cooked up.”

“All this stuff about Ferrant being nicer to him?”

“He would be nicer, Br’er Fox, if he needed Syd to pick up a consignment. He wouldn’t want to goad him to a point where he refused to cooperate.”

“I suppose not,” Fox grunted, discontentedly.

He and Alleyn then called on Gil Ferrant and were received with a great show of insolence. Ferrant lounged on his bed. He still wore his sharp French suit and pink shirt but they were greatly disheveled and he had an overnight beard. He chewed gum with his mouth open and looked them up and down through half-shut eyes. Almost, Alleyn thought, he preferred Syd.

“Good morning,” he said.

Ferrant raised his eyebrows, stretched elaborately, and yawned.

“No doubt,” Alleyn said, “it’s been explained to you that you haven’t much hope of avoiding a conviction and the maximum sentence. If you plead guilty you may get off with less. Do you want to make a statement?”

Ferrant shook his head slowly from side to side and made a great thing of shifting the wad of gum.

“Advised not to,” he drawled.

Alleyn said: “We’ve found enough heroin at Jones’s place to send you up for years.”

Ferrant said, “That’s his affair.”

“And yours. Believe me, yours.”

“No comment,” he said and shut his eyes.

“You’re out on a limb,” said Alleyn. “Your master’s cleared off. Did you know that?”

Ferrant didn’t open his eyes but the lids quivered.

“You’d do better to cooperate,” Fox advised.

Ferrant, still lolling on the bed, opened his eyes and looked at Alleyn. “And how’s Daddy’s Baby Boy this morning?” he asked and smiled as he chewed.

In the silence that followed this quip Alleyn, as if desire could actually change place with action, saw — almost felt — his fist drive into the bristled chin. His fingernails bit into his palm. He looked at Fox, whose neck seemed to have swollen and whose face was red.

A long-forgotten phrase from Little Dorrit came into Alleyn’s mind: “Count five-and twenty, Tattycoram.” He had actually begun to count the seconds in his head when Plank came in to say he was wanted on the telephone by Mrs. Pharamond. In the passage he said to Plank, “Ferrant won’t talk. Mr. Fox is having a go. Take your notebook.”

Plank, after a startled glance at him, went off.

When Alleyn spoke to Julia she sounded much more like her usual self.

“What luck!” said Julia. “I rang the Cove station and a nice lady said you might be where you are. It’s to tell you Carlotta’s had a message from Louis. Are you pleased? We are.”