Last Ditch (9 page)

‘Bother!’ said Troy.

‘I know. And then, why should the egregious Jones scream with rage when Ricky trod on his vermilion? There’s plenty more where
that came from, it seems. For free. And if it comes to that, why should Jones take it into his head to cut Rick? Apparently he would neither look at, nor speak to him. Not a word about having taken a luncheon off us, it appears.’

‘He’s a compulsive boor, of course. Mightn’t we be making far too much of a series of unrelated and insignificant little happenings?’

‘Of course we might,’ Alleyn agreed warmly. He finished reading his son’s letter, folded it and put it down. ‘He’s taken pains over that,’ he said. ‘Very long and very detailed. He even goes to the trouble of describing the contents of the old coach-house.’

‘The whole thing’s on his mind and he thinks writing it all out may help him to get shot of it.’

‘He’s looking for a line. It’s rather like those hidden picture-games they used to put in kid’s books. A collection of numbered dots and you joined them up in the given order and found you’d got a pussy-cat or something. Only Rick’s dots aren’t numbered and he can’t find the line.’

‘If there is one.’

‘Yes. There may be no pussy-cat.’

‘It’s the sort of thing you’re doing all the time, isn’t it?’

‘More or less, my treasure. More or less.’

‘Oh!’ Troy exclaimed. ‘I do
hope
there isn’t a line and I do hope Miss Harkness wasn’t –’

‘What?’

‘Murdered,’ said Troy. ‘That, really, is what the letter’s all about, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’

The telephone rang and he answered it. It was his Assistant Commissioner. Being a polite man he made his usual token apology.

‘Oh, Rory,’ he said. ‘Sorry to disturb you at home. Did I hear you mention your boy was staying on that island where Sunniday Enterprises, if that’s what they call themselves, have set up a holiday resort of sorts?’

It pleased the AC – nobody knew why – when engaged in preliminaries, to affect a totally false vagueness about names, places and activities.

Alleyn said: ‘Yes, sir, he’s there,’ and wondered why he was not surprised. It was as if he had been waiting for this development, an absurd notion to entertain.

‘Staying at this place of theirs? What’s it called? Mount something?’

‘Hotel Montjoy. Lord, no. He’s putting up at a plumber’s cottage on the non-u side of the island.’

‘The Bay. Or Deep Bay, would that be?’

‘Deep Cove,’ Alleyn said, beginning to feel exasperated as well as apprehensive.

‘To be sure. Yes. I remember now, you did say something about a plumber and Deep Cove,’ said the bland AC.

Alleyn thought: You devious old devil, what
are
you up to? and waited.

‘Well,’ said the AC, ‘the thing is, I wondered if he might be helpful. You remember the dope case you tidied up in Rome? Some of the Ziegfeldt group?’

‘Oh
that,’
Alleyn said, greatly relieved. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, as we all know to our discomfort, Ziegfeldt himself still operates in a very big way.’

‘Quite. I understand,’ said Alleyn, ‘there have been extensive improvements to his phoney castle in the Lebanon. Loos on every landing.’

‘Sickening, isn’t it?’ said the AC. ‘Well, my dear Rory, the latest intelligence through Interpol and from chaps in our appropriate branch is that the route has been altered. From Izmir to Marseilles it still rings the changes between the Italian ports and the morphineheroin transformation is still effected in laboratories outside Marseilles. But from there on there’s a difference. Some of the heroin now gets away through a number of French seaports, some of them quite small. You can guess what I’m coming to, I dare say.’

‘Not to St Pierre-des-Roches, by any chance?’

‘And from there to this island of yours –’

‘It’s not mine. With respect,’ said Alleyn.

‘– from where it finds its way to the English market. We don’t
know
any of this,’ said the AC, ‘but it’s been suggested. There are pointers! There’s a character with a bit of a record who shows signs of unexpected affluence. That kind of thing.’

‘May I ask, sir,’ Alleyn said, ‘the name of the character who shows signs of unexpected affluence?’

‘Of course you may. He’s a plumber and odd-job man living in Deep Cove and he is called Ferrant.’

‘Fancy that,’ Alleyn said tonelessly.

‘Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’

‘Life is full of them.’

‘So I just wondered if your young man had noticed anything.’

‘He’s noticed his landlord, who is called Ferrant and is a plumber, leaving at dawn by a channel packet, if that’s what it is, dressed up to kill with leather suitcases and bound for St Pierre-des-Roches.’

‘There now!’ cried the AC. ‘Splendid fellow, your son. Jolly good! Super!’ He occasionally adopted the mannerisms of an effusive scout-master.

‘Has anything been said by the appropriate branch about a painter called Jones?’ Alleyn asked.

‘A house-painter?’

‘No, though you might make the mistake. A picture painter.’

‘Jones. Jones. Jones. No. No Joneses. Why?’

‘He travels in artists’ materials for a firm called Jerome et Cie with a factory in St Pierre-des-Roches. Makes frequent visits to London.’

‘Artists’ materials?’

‘In half-pound tubes. Oil colours.’

There was a longish silence.

‘Oh yes?’ said the AC in a new voice. The strange preliminaries evidently were over and they were down to the hard stuff.

‘First name?’ snapped the AC.

‘Sydney.’

‘Living?’

‘In Deep Cove. The firm’s handing out free colour to one or two leading painters, including Troy. He called on us here, with an introduction from Rick. I’d say he was getting over a hang-up.’

‘They don’t like that. The bosses. It doesn’t work out – pusher into customer.’

‘Of course not. But I wouldn’t think he was a habitual. There’d been a party the night before. My guess would be that he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms, but on what Ricky says of him, he doesn’t seem to be hooked. Yet. It may amount to nothing.’

‘Anything else about him?’

Alleyn told him about the roadside incident when Ricky trod on the vermilion.

‘Got into a stink, did he?’

‘Apparently.’

‘It’s worth watching.’

‘I wondered.’

‘We haven’t got anyone on the island so far. The lead on St Pierre’s only just come through. What’s the young chap doing there, Rory?’

Alleyn said very firmly: ‘He’s writing a book, sir. He went over there to put himself out of the way of distraction and has set himself a time limit.’

‘Writing!’ repeated the AC discontentedly. ‘A book!’ And he added: ‘Extraordinary what they get up to nowadays, isn’t it? One of mine runs a discotheque.’

Alleyn was silent.

‘Nothing official, of course, but you might suggest he keeps his eyes open,’ said the AC.

‘They’ll be down on his book, I hope.’

‘All right. All right. Oh, by the way, there’s something else come through. About an hour ago. Another coincidence in a way, I suppose one might call it. From this island of yours.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. The sergeant at Montjoy rang up. Sergeant Plank he is. There’s been a riding fatality. A fortnight ago. Looked like a straight-forward accident but they’re not satisfied. Inquest adjourned. Thing is: his Super’s been inconsiderate enough to perforate his appendix and they want us to move in. Did you say anything?’

‘No.’

‘There’s a funny noise.’

‘It may be my teeth. Grinding.’

The AC gave a high whinnying laugh.

‘You can take Fox with you, of course,’ he said. ‘And while you’re at it you may find –’

His voice, edgy and decisive, continued to issue unpalatable instructions.

After posting his long letter to his parents, Ricky thought that now, perhaps, he could push the whole business of Dulcie Harkness into
the background and get on with his work. The answer couldn’t reach him for at least three days, and when it came it might well give half a dozen good suggestions why there should be fresh scars, as of wire, on the posts of the broken-down fence and why the wire that might have made them had been removed and why there was a gash that the vet couldn’t explain on a sorrel mare’s near foreleg and why there was a new-looking cut end to a coil of old wire in the coach-house. And perhaps his father would advise him to refrain from teaching his grandmother, in the unlikely person of Sergeant Plank, to suck eggs.

Tomorrow was the day when the
Island Belle
made her dawn call at the Cove. There was a three-day-a-week air service but Ricky liked the idea of the little ship. He came to a sudden decision. If the day was fine he would go to St Pierre-des-Roches, return in the evening to Montjoy, and either walk the eight miles or so to the Cove or stand himself a taxi. The break might help him to get things into perspective. He wondered if he was merely concocting an elaborate excuse for not getting on with his work.

‘I may run into Mr Ferrant,’ he thought, ‘taking his ease at his inn. I might even have a look at Jerome et Cie’s factory. Anyway, I’ll go.’

He told Mrs Ferrant of his intention and that disconcerting woman bestowed one of her protracted stares upon him and then said she’d give him something to eat at half past four in the morning. He implored her to do no such thing but merely fill his Thermos flask overnight with her excellent coffee and allow him to cut himself a ‘piece’.

She said, ‘I don’t know why you want to go over there; it’s no great masterpiece, that place.’

‘Mr Ferrant likes it, doesn’t he?’

‘Him.’

‘If there’s anything you want to send him, Mrs Ferrant, I’ll take it with pleasure.’

She gave a short laugh that might as well have been a snort.

‘He’s got everything
he
wants,’ she said, and turned away. Ricky thought that on her way downstairs she said something about the unlikelihood of his encountering Mr Ferrant but he couldn’t be sure of this.

He woke himself up at four to a clear sky and a waning moon. The harbour was stretched like silk between its confines, with the inverted village for a pattern. A party of gulls sat motionless on their upside-down images and the jetty was deserted.

When he was dressed and shaved he stole down to the kitchen. It was much the biggest room in the house and the Ferrants used it as a living-room. It had television and radio, armchairs and a hideous dresser with a great array of china. Holy oleographs abounded. The stove and refrigerator looked brand new and so did an array of pots and pans. Ricky felt as if he had disturbed the kitchen in a night-life of its own.

It was warm and smelt of recent cooking. His Thermos stood in the middle of the table and, beside it, a message on the back of an envelope: ‘Mr Allen. Food in warm drawer.’

When he opened the drawer he found a dish of toasted bacon sandwiches. She must have come down and prepared them while he was getting up. They were delicious. When he had finished them and drunk his coffee he washed up in a gingerly fashion. It was now twenty to five. Ricky felt adventurous. He wondered if perhaps he would want to stay in St Pierre-des-Roches, and on an impulse returned to his room and pushed overnight gear and an extra shirt and jeans into his rucksack.

And now, there was the
Island Belle
coming quietly into harbour with not a living soul to see her, it seemed, but Ricky.

He went downstairs and wrote on the envelope: ‘Thank you. Delicious. May stay a day or two, but more likely back tonight.’

Then he let himself out and walked down the empty street to the jetty. The sleeping houses in the Cove looked pallid and withdrawn. He felt as if he saw them for the first time.

The
Island Belle
was already alongside. Two local men, known to Ricky at the pub, were putting a few crates on board. He exchanged a word with them and then followed them up the gangway. A sailor took charge of the crates and wished him good morning.

The
Belle
was a small craft, not more than five hundred tons. She did not make regular trips to the Devon and Cornwall coast, but generally confined herself to trading between the islands and nearby French ports. The captain was on the bridge, an elderly bearded man, who gave Ricky an informal salute. A bell rang. The gangway
was hauled up, and one of the Cove men freed the mooring-ropes. The
Belle
slid out into the harbour.

Ricky watched the village shift back, rearrange itself and become a picture rather than a reality. He went indoors and found a little box of a purser’s office where a man in a peaked cap sold him a return ticket. He looked into the empty saloon with its three tables, wall benches and shuttered miniature bar.

When he returned on deck they were already outside the heads and responding, he found with misgiving, to a considerable swell. The chilly dawn breeze caught him, and he began to walk briskly along the starboard side, past the wheel-house and towards the forward hatch.

Cargo, including crates of fish covered with tarpaulins, was lashed together on the deck. Ricky stopped short of it. Someone was standing motionless on the far side of the crates with his back turned. This person wore a magenta woollen cap, pulled down over his ears, with the collar of his coat turned up to meet it. A sailor, Ricky supposed.

Conscious of a feeling of inward uneasiness, he moved forward, seeking a passageway round the cargo, and had found one when the man in the magenta cap turned. It was Sydney Jones.

Ricky hadn’t seen him since they met in the drive to Leathers on the day of the accident. On that occasion, Syd’s inexplicable refusal to speak to or look at him seemed to put a stop to any further exchanges. Ricky’s mother had written a brief account of his visit. ‘When he dropped to it that your poor papa was a policeman,’ she wrote, ‘which was just before he went back to the Yard, Jones lost not a second in shaking our dust off his sandals. Truly, we
were
nice to him. Daddy thinks he was suffering from a hangover. I’m afraid his work isn’t much cop, poor chap. Sorry, darling.’