Last Ditch

9: Storm Over

i

Back to square one,” Alleyn thought when they brought Sydney Jones before him, once again exhibiting all the unlovely symptoms of the deprived addict. Doctor Carey had evidently not been overgenerous with the dosage.

He began at once to say he would only talk to Alleyn and wouldn’t have any witnesses in the room.

“It won’t make any difference, you silly chap,” Fox said with a low degree of accuracy. But Syd knew a thing worth two of that, and stuck to it.

In the end Fox and Alleyn exchanged glances and Fox went away.

Syd said: “You going to fix me up?”

“Not without the doctor’s approval.”

“I’ve got something I can tell you. About Dulce. It’d make a difference.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, no!” said Syd. “Oh dear me no! Fair’s fair.”

“If you can give me information that will lead substantially to a charge, the fact that you did so and did it of your own accord would be taken into consideration. If it turns out to be something that we could get from another source — Ferrant, for instance—”

Syd with a kind of febrile intensity let fling a stream of obscenities. It emerged that Syd now laid all his woes at Ferrant’s door. It was Ferrant who had introduced him to hard-line drugs, Ferrant who established Syd’s link with Jerome et Cie, Ferrant who egged him on to follow Ricky about the streets in Saint Pierre-des-Roches, Ferrant who kidnapped Ricky and brought him into the Pad.

“And this information you say you have, is about Ferrant, is it?” Alleyn asked.

“If they got on to it I’d shopped him, they’d get me.”

“Who would?”

“Them. Him. Up there.”

“Are you talking about Mr. Louis Pharamond?”

“Mister. Mister Philistine. Mister Bloody Fascist Sod Pharamond. You don’t know,” Syd said, “why I wanted that wire. Well? Do you?”

“To hang a picture.”

“That’s right. Because she said it gave her a feeling that I’ve got a strong sense of rhythm. That’s what she said.”

“This,” Alleyn thought, “is the unfairest thing that has ever happened to me.”

He said: “Get back to what you can tell me. Is it about Ferrant?”

“More or less that’s what she said,” Syd mumbled.

“Ferrant!” Alleyn insisted and could have shouted it. “What about Ferrant?”

“What’ll I get for it? For assault?”

“It depends on the magistrates. You can have a solicitor and a barrister to defend you.”

“Will he get longer? Seeing he laid it all on? Gil?”

“Possibly. If you can satisfy the court that he did.”

Syd wiped the back of his hand across his face. “Not like that,” he said, “not in front of him. In court. Not on your Nelly.”

“Why not?”

“They’d get me,” he said.

“Who would?”

“Them. The organization. That lot.”

Alleyn moved away from him. “Make up your mind,” he said and looked at his watch. “I can’t give you much longer.”

“I never wanted to do him over. I never meant to make it tough. You know? Tying him up with the wire and that. It was Gil.”

“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.”

“Am I to hear what it is?”

“It’s a picture postcard of the Montjoy hotel. Someone has written in a teeny-weeny hand: ‘Picked up in street’ and it’s very grubby. It says ‘Everything OK. Writing. L.,’ and it’s addressed, of course, to Carla: Would you like to know how we interpret it?”

“Very much.”

“We think Louis has flown to Peru. I, for one, hope he stays there and so I bet, between you and me and the gatepost, does Carlotta. He was becoming altogether too difficile. But wasn’t it kind of whoever it was to fish the card out of some gutter and pop it in the post?”

“Very kind. Can you read the postmark? The time?”

“Wait a sec. No, I can’t. There’s muddy smudge all over it.”

“Will you let me see it?”

“Not,” said Julia promptly, “if it’ll help you haul him back. But we thought it only fair to let you know about it.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said.

“So we’re all feeling relieved and in good heart for Mr. Harkness’s party tomorrow. I suppose poorest Ricky won’t attend, will he? How boring for him to be in hospital. We’re going to see him. After the party so as to tell him all about it. He’s allowed visitors, I hope?”

“Oh yes. His mother’s arriving today.”

“Troy! But how too exciting! Jasper” screamed Julia. “Troy’s coming to see Ricky.” Alleyn heard Jasper exclaiming buoyantly in the background.

“I must go, I’m afraid,” Alleyn said into the receiver. “Thank you for telling me about the postcard.”

“You aren’t at all huffy, I suppose? You sound like Ricky when he’s huffy.”

“A fat lot of good it would do me if I was. Oh, by the way, does Mrs. Ferrant do your laundry?”

“The fine things. Tarty blouses. Frills and pleats. Special undies. She’s a wizard with the iron. Like Mrs. Tiggywinkle. Why?”

“Does she collect and deliver?”

“We usually drop and collect. Why?”

“I must fly. Thank you so much.”

“Wait a bit. Do you suppose Louis dropped the postcard on purpose so that we wouldn’t get it until he’d skedaddled?”

“The idea does occur, doesn’t it? Goodbye.” On the way to the cove he reflected that a great many people in the Pharamonds’ boots would be secretly enchanted to get rid of Louis but only the Pharamonds would loudly say so.

ii

“First stop, Madame Ferrant,” said Alleyn as they drove into Deep Cove. “I want you both to come in with me. I don’t fancy the lady is easily unseated but we’ll give it a go.”

She opened the door to them. Her head was neatly tied up in a black handkerchief. She was implacably aproned and her sleeves were rolled up. Her face, normally sallow, was perhaps more so than usual and this circumstance lent emphasis to her eyes.

“Good morning,” she said.

Alleyn introduced Fox and produced the ostensible reason for the call. He would pack up his son’s effects and, of course, settle his bill. Perhaps she would be kind enough to make it out.

“It is already prepared,” said Mrs. Ferrant and showed them into the parlor. She opened a drawer in a small bureau and produced her account. Alleyn paid and she receipted it.

“Madame will understand,” Alleyn said in French, “that under the circumstances it would regrettably be unsuitable for my son to remain.”

“Parfaitement,” said Mrs. Ferrant.

“Especially since the injuries from which he suffers were inflicted by madame’s husband.”

Not a muscle of her face moved.

“You have, of course,” Alleyn went on, changing to English, “been informed of his arrest. You will probably be required to come before the court on Monday.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Nevertheless, madame, you will be required to attend.”

She slightly inclined her head.

“In the meantime, if you wish to see your husband you will be permitted to do so.”

“I have no desire to see him.”

“No?”

“No.”

“I should perhaps explain that although he has been arrested on a charge of assault there may well follow a much graver accusation: trading in illicit drugs.”

“As to that, it appears to me to be absurd,” said Mrs. Ferrant.

“Oh, madame, I think not. May I remind you of your son’s errands last night? To and from the premises occupied by Sydney Jones? Where your husband and Jones handled a consignment of heroin and where, with your connivance, they planned their escape?”

“I know nothing of all this. Nothing. My boy is a mere child.”

“In years, no doubt,” said Alleyn politely.

She remained stony.

“Tell me,” Alleyn said, “how long have you known the real object of your husband’s trips to Marseilles and the Côte d’Azur?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Are they for pleasure? Do you accompany him?”

She gave a slight snort.

“A little romance, perhaps?”

She looked disgusted.

“To take a job?”

She was silent.

“Plumbing?” Alleyn hinted, and after another fruitless pause: “Ah, well, at least he sends postcards. To let you know where he is to be found if anything urgent crops up, no doubt.”

She began to count the money he had put on the table.

“There is another small matter,” he said, “on which I think you can help us. Will you be so kind as to carry your memory back to the day on which Dulcie Harkness was murdered.”

She put her hands behind her back — suddenly, as if to hide them — and made to adjust her apron strings. “Murdered?” she said. “There has been no talk of murder.”

“There has, however, been talk. On that day, late in the morning, did you and your husband visit Leathers?”

Her mouth was a tight line, locked across her face.

“Madame,” said Alleyn, “why are you so unwilling to speak? It may be I should not have used the word you object to. It may be that the ‘accident’ was an accident. In order to settle it, either way, we welcome any information, however trivial, about the situation at Leathers on that morning. We understand you and your husband called there. Why should you make such a great matter of this visit? Was it connected with your husband’s business activities abroad?”

A metaphysician might, however fancifully, have said of Mrs. Ferrant that her body, at this moment, “thought,” so still did she hold it and so deeply did it breathe. Alleyn saw the pulse beating at the base of her neck. He wondered if there was to be a sudden rage.

But no: she unlocked her mouth and achieved composure.

“I am sorry,” she said. “You will understand that I have had a shock and am, perhaps, not quite myself. It is a matter of distress to me that my husband is in trouble.”

“But of course.”

“As for this other affair: yes, we called at Leathers on the morning you speak of. My husband had been asked to do a job there — a leaking pipe I think he said it was, and had called to say that he could not undertake it at that time.”

“You saw Mr. Harkness?”

“I remained in the car. My husband may have seen him. But I think not.”

“Did you see Sydney Jones?”

“Him! He was there. There was some talk about a quarrel between Harkness and the girl.” Her eyes slid around at him. “Perhaps it is Harkness to whom you should speak.”

“Do you remember if there were any horses in the stables?”

“I did not see. I did not notice the stables.”

“Or in the horse paddock? Or on the distant hillside?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“What time was it?”

“Possibly about ten-thirty. Perhaps later.”

“Had you been anywhere else that morning?”

“To L’Espérance.”

“Indeed?”

“I do la blanchisserie de fin for the ladies. I deliver it there.”

“Is that the usual procedure?”

“No,” she said composedly. “Usually one of their staff picks it up. As we were driving in that direction and the washing was ready, I delivered it.”

“Speaking of deliveries, you do know, don’t you, that young Louis — to distinguish him,” said Alleyn, “from the elder Louis — delivered a note from your husband addressed to me. At the police station? Here very late last night? He pushed it under the door, rang the bell, and ran away.”

“That’s a bloody lie,” said Mrs. Ferrant. In English.

The conversation so far had been conducted in a lofty mixture of French and English and, in both languages, at a high level of decorum. It was startling to hear Mrs. Ferrant come out strongly in basic British fishwife.

“But it isn’t, you know,” Alleyn said mildly. “It’s what happened.”

“No! I swear it. The boy has done nothing. Nothing. He was in bed and asleep by nine o’clock.”

The front door banged.

“Maman! Maman!” cried a treble voice, “Where are you?”

Mrs. Ferrant’s hand went to her mouth.

They heard young Louis run down the passage and in and out of the kitchen.

“Maman! Are you upstairs? Where are you?”

“Ferme ton bec,” she let out in the standard maternal screech. “I am busy. Stop that noise.”

But he returned, running up the passage, and burst into the parlor.

“Maman,” he said, “they have nicked papa. The boys are saying it. They nicked him last night at the house where he gave me the letter.” He stared at Alleyn. “Him,” he said, and pointed. “The fuzz. He’s nicked papa.”

Mrs. Ferrant raised her formidable right arm in what no doubt was a familiar gesture.

Louis said, “No, Maman!” and cringed.

Alleyn said: “Do you often give Louis a coup for speaking the truth, Mrs. Ferrant?”

She thrust the receipted bill at him. “Take it and remove yourself,” she said. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

“I shall do so. With the fondest remembrances of your sole à la Dieppoise.”

Upstairs, in Ricky’s room Fox said: “What do we get out of that lot?”

“Apart from confirmation of various bits of surmise and conjecture I should say damnall, or very nearly so. If it’s of interest, I think she’s jealous of her husband and completely under his thumb. I think she hates his guts and would go to almost any length to obey his orders. Otherwise, damnall.”

They packed up Ricky’s belongings. The morning had turned sunny and the view from the window, described with affection in his letters, was at its best. The harbor was spangled, seagulls swooped and coasted, and down on the front, a covey of small boys frisked and skittered. Louis was not among them.

Alleyn laid his hand on the stack of paper that was Ricky’s manuscript and wondered how long the view from the window would remain vivid in his son’s memory. All his life, perhaps, if anything came of the book. He covered the pile with a sheet of plain paper and put it into an attaché case, together with a quantity of loose notes. Fox packed the clothes. In a drawer of the wardrobe he found letters Ricky had received from his parents.

“Mrs. F. will have enjoyed a good read,” said Alleyn grimly.

When everything was ready and the room had taken on that blank, unoccupied look, they put Ricky’s baggage in the car. Alleyn, for motives he would have found hard to define but suspected to be less than noble, left five pounds on the dressing table.

Before they shut the front door they heard her cross the passage and mount the stairs.

“She’ll chuck it after you,” predicted Fox.

“What’s the betting? Give her a chance.”

They waited. Mrs. Ferrant did not throw the five pounds after them. She snapped the window curtains across the upstairs room. A faint tremor seemed to suggest that she watched them through the crack.

They returned to Montjoy after a brief visit to Syd’s Pad, where they found Moss and Cribbage, who had completed an exhaustive search and had assembled the fruits of it on the work table: a tidy haul, Alleyn said. He pressed his thumb down on tubes of paint and felt the presence of buried capsules. He looked at the collection, still nestling under protective rows of flake white: capsules waiting to be inserted. And at a chair the legs of which were scored with wire and smudged with blood.

“You’ve done very well,” he said and turned to Plank. “Normally,” he said, “I’d have sent for Detective-Sergeant Thompson who’s my particular chap at the Yard, but seeing you’re an expert, Plank, I think we’ll ask you to take the photographs of this area for us. How do you feel about tackling the job?”

Scarlet with gratification, Plank intimated that he felt fine and was dropped at his station to collect photographic gear. Moss and Cribbage were to take alternate watches at the Pad until such time as the exhibits were removed. Fox and Alleyn returned to Montjoy.

As their car climbed up the steep lane to the main road, Alleyn looked down on the Cove and wondered whether or not he would have occasion to return to it.

When he walked into his room at the Hotel Montjoy, he found Troy there waiting for him.

iii

Sunday came in to the promise of halcyon weather. A clear sky and a light breeze brought an air of expectation to the island.

Ricky’s progress was satisfactory, and though his face resembled, in Troy’s words, one of Turner’s more intemperate sunsets, no bones were broken and no permanent disfigurement need be expected. His ankles were still very swollen and painful but there was no sign of infection and with the aid of sticks he hoped to be able to hobble out of hospital tomorrow.

In the morning Alleyn and Fox had a session on the balcony outside the Alleyns’ room. They trudged through the body of evidence point by point in familiar pursuit of an overall pattern.

“You know,” Fox said, pushing his spectacles up his forehead when they paused for Alleyn to light his pipe, “the unusual feature of this case, as I see it, is its lack of definition. Take the homicide aspect, now. As a general rule we know who we’re after. There’s no mystery. It’s a matter of finding enough material to justify an arrest. It’s not like that, this time,” Fox said vexedly. “You may have your ideas and so may I, Mr. Alleyn. We may even think there’s only the one possibility that doesn’t present an unanswerable objection, but there’s not what I’d call a hard case to be made out. We’ve got the drug scene on the one hand and this poor girl on the other. Are they connected? Well, are they? Was she knocked off because she threatened to shop them on account of requiring a husband? And if so, which would she shop? Or all? We’ve got three names that might, as you might say, qualify — but only one available for the purpose of marriage.”

“The miserable Syd.”

“Quite so. Then there’s this uncle. There were all these scenes with him. Threats and all the rest of it. Motive, you might think. But he wasn’t drinking at that time and you can’t imagine him risking his own horseflesh. The mare he’s so keen on just as likely to be killed as the girl. And in any case he’d threatened to give her what for if she had a go. And he ordered Jones to remove the mare so’s she couldn’t try. No, I reckon we’ve got to boil it down to those three unless — by cripey, I wonder.”

“What?”

“What was it you quoted yesterday about a female informant in France? I’ve got it,” said Fox and repeated it. He thought it over, became restless, shook his head, and broke out again. “We’ve no nice, firm times for anything,” he lamented. “Mr. and Mrs. Ferrant, S. Jones, Mr. Louis Pharamond all flitting about the premises, in and out and roundabout and Mr. Harkness locking the girl up. The girl getting out and getting herself killed. Mr. Harkness writing these silly pamphlets. I don’t know,” Fox said and readjusted his glasses. “It’s mad.”

“It’s half-past eleven,” said Alleyn. “Have a drink.”

Fox looked surprised. “Really?” he said. “This is unusual, Mr. Alleyn. Well, since you’ve suggested it I’ll take a light ale.”

Alleyn joined with him. They sat on the hotel balcony and looked not toward France but westward across the Golfe to the Atlantic. They saw that battlements of cloud had built up on the horizon.

“What does that mean?” wondered Troy, who had come out to join them. “Is that the weather quarter?”

“There’s no wind to speak of,” Alleyn said.

“Very sultry,” said Fox. “Humid.”

“The cloud’s massing while you look at it,” Troy said. “Swelling up over the edge of the ocean as fast as fast can be.”

“Perhaps it’s getting ready for Mr. Harkness’s service. Flashes of lightning,” said Alleyn, “an enormous beard lolloping over the top of the biggest cloud, and a gigantic hand chucking thunderbolts. Very alarming.”

“They say it’s the season on the island for that class of weather,” Fox observed.

“And in Saint Pierre-des-Roches judging by Rick’s experience.”

“Oppressive,” sighed Fox.

The western sky slowly darkened. By the time they had finished work on the file, cloud overhung the Channel and threatened the island. After luncheon it almost filled the heavens and was so low that the church spire on the hill above Montjoy looked as if it would prick it and bring down a deluge. But still it didn’t rain. Alleyn and Troy walked to the hospital and Fox paid a routine visit to the police station.

By teatime the afternoon had so darkened that it might have been evening.

At five o’clock Julia rang up, asking Troy if they would like to be collected for what she persisted in calling “Cuth’s party.” Troy explained that she would not be attending it and that Alleyn and Fox had a car. Jasper shouted greetings down the telephone. They both seemed to be in the best of spirits. Even Carlotta joined in the fun.

Troy said to Alleyn: “You’d say they rejoiced over the bolting of egregious Louis.”

“They’ve good cause to.”

“Is he in deep trouble, RoryT

“Might well be. We don’t really know and it’s even money that we’ll never find out.”

The telephone rang again and Alleyn answered it. He held the receiver away from his ear and Troy could hear the most remarkable noises coming through, as of a voice being violently tuned in and out on a loudspeaker. Every now and then words would belch out in a roar: “Retribution” was one and “Judgment” another. Alleyn listened with his face screwed up.

“I’m coming,” he said when he got the chance. “We are all coming. It has been arranged.”

“Jones!” the voice boomed, “Jones!”

“That may be a bit difficult, but I think so.”

Expostulations rent the air.

“This is too much,” Alleyn said to Troy. He laid the receiver down and let it perform. When an opportunity presented itself he snatched it up and said: “Mr. Harkness, I am coming to your service. In the meantime, goodbye,” and hung up.

“Was that really Mr. Harkness?” asked Troy, “or was it an elemental on the rampage?”

“The former. Wait a jiffy.”

He called the office and said there seemed to be a lunatic on the line and would they be kind enough to cut him off if he rang again.

“How can he possibly hold a service?” Troy asked.

“He’s hell-bent on it. Whether he’s in a purely alcoholic frenzy or whether he really has taken leave of his senses or whether in fact he has something of moment to reveal is impossible to say.”

“But what’s he want?”

“He wants a full house. He wants Ferrant and Jones, particularly.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s going to tell us who killed his niece.”

“For crying out loud!” said Troy.

“That,” said Alleyn, “is exactly what he intends to do?”

The service was to be at six o’clock. Alleyn and Fox left Montjoy at a quarter to the hour under a pall of cloud and absolute stillness. Local sounds had become isolated and clearly defined: voices, a car engine starting up, desultory footfalls. And still it did not rain.

After a minute or two on the road a police van overtook them and sailed ahead.

“Plank,” said Alleyn, “with his boys in blue and their charges. Only they’re not in blue.”

“I suppose it’s OK,” Fox said rather apprehensively.

“It’d better be,” said Alleyn.

As they passed L’Espérance, the Pharamond’s largest car could be seen coming down the drive. And on the avenue to Leathers they passed little groups of pedestrians and fell in behind a procession of three cars.

“Looks like capacity all right,” said Fox.

Two more cars were parked in front of the house and the police van was in the stable yard. Out in the horse paddock the sorrel mare flung up her head and stared at them. The loose-boxes were empty.

“Is he looking after all this himself?” Fox wondered. “You’d hardly fancy he was up to it, would you?”

Mr. Blacker, the vet, got out of one of the cars and came to meet them.

“This is a rum go and no mistake,” he said. “I got a most peculiar letter from Cuth. Insisting I come. Not my sort of Sunday afternoon at all. Apparently he’s been canvassing the district. Are you chaps mixed up in it, or what?”

Alleyn was spared the necessity of answering by the arrival of the Pharamonds.

They collected around Alleyn and Fox, gaily chattering as if they had met in the foyer of the Paris Opéra. Julia and Carlotta wore black linen suits with white lawn blouses, exquisite tributes to Mrs. Ferrant’s art as a blanchisseuse de fin.

“Shall we go in?” Julia asked as if the bells had rung for Curtain-Up. “We mustn’t miss anything, must we?” She laid her gloved hand on Alleyn’s arm. “The baskets!” she said. “Should we take them in or leave them in the car?”

“Baskets!”

“You must remember! ‘Ladies a Basket.’ Carlotta and I have brought langouste and mayonnaise sandwiches. Do you think — suitable?”

“I’m not sure if the basket arises this time.”

“We must wait and see. If unsuitable we shall wolf them up when we get home. As a kind of hors d’oeuvre. You’re dining, aren’t you? You and Troy? And Mr. Fox, of course?”

“Julia,” Alleyn said, “Fox and I are policemen and we’re on duty and however delicious your langouste sandwiches I doubt if we can accept your kind invitation. And now, like a dear creature, go and assemble your party in the front stalls and don’t blame me for what you are about to receive. It’s through there on your right.”

“Oh dear!” said Julia. “Yes. I see. Sorry.”

He watched them go off and then looked into the police van. Plank and Moss were in the front, Cribbage and a very young constable in the back with Ferrant and Syd Jones attached to them. The police were in civilian dress.

Alleyn said: “Wait until everyone else has gone in and then sit at the back. OK? If there aren’t any seats left, stand.”

“Yes, sir,” said Plank.

“Where are your other chaps?”

“They went in, Mr. Alleyn. As far front as possible. And there’s an extra copper from the mainland like you said. Outside the back door.”

“How are your two treasures in there?”

“Ferrant’s a right monkey, Mr. Alleyn. Very uncooperative. He doesn’t talk except to Jones and then it’s only the odd curse. The doctor came in to see Jones before we left and gave him a reduced fix. The doctor’s here.”

“Good.”

“He says Mr. Harkness called him in to give him something to steady him up but he reckons he’d already taken something on his own account.”

“Where is Doctor Carey?”

“In the audience. He’s just gone in. He said to tell you Mr. Harkness is in a very unstable condition but not incapable.”

“Thank you. We’ll get moving. Come on, Fox.”

They joined the little stream of people who walked around the stables and along the path to the old barn.

A man with a collection plate stood inside the door. Alleyn, fishing out his contribution, asked if he could by any chance have a word with Mr. Harkness and was told that Brother Cuth was at prayer in the back room and could see nobody. “Alleluia,” he added, apparently in acknowledgment of Alleyn’s donation.

Alleyn and Fox found seats halfway down the barn. Extra chairs and boxes were being brought in, presumably from the house. The congregation appeared to be a cross section of Cove and countryside in its Sunday clothes with a smattering of rather more stylish persons who might hail from Montjoy or even be tourists come out of curiosity. Alleyn recognized one or two faces he had seen at the Cod-and-Bottle. And there, stony in the fourth row, with Louis beside her, sat Mrs. Ferrant.

A little farther forward from Alleyn and Fox were the Pharamonds, looking like a stand of orchids in a cabbage patch and behaving beautifully.

In the front three rows sat, or so Alleyn concluded, the hardcore Brethren. They had an air of proprietorship and kept a smug eye on their books.

The curtains were closed to exclude the stage.

An audience, big or small, as actors know, generates its own flavor and exudes it like a pervasive scent. This one gave out the heady smell of suspense.

The tension increased when a thin lady with a white face seated herself at the harmonium and released strangely disturbing strains of unparalleled vulgarity.

Under cover of this prelude Plank and his support brought in their charges. Alleyn and Fox could see them reflected in a glazed and framed scroll that hung from a beam: “The Chosen Brethren,” it was headed, and it set out the professions of the sect.

Plank’s party settled themselves on a bench against the back wall.

The harmonium achieved its ultimate fortissimo and the curtains opened jerkily to reveal six men seated behind a table on either side of a more important but empty chair. The congregation, prompted by the elect, rose.

In the commonplace light of early evening that filled the hall and in a total silence that followed a last deafening roulade on the organ, Mr. Harkness entered from the inner room at the back of the platform.

One would have said that conditions were not propitious for dramatic climax: it had, however, been achieved.

He was dressed in a black suit and wore a black shirt and tie. He had shaved and his hair, cut to regimental length, was brushed. His eyes were bloodshot, his complexion was blotched, and his hands unsteady, but he seemed to be more in command of himself than he had been on the occasions when Alleyn encountered him. It was a star entrance and if Mr. Harkness had been an actor he would have been accorded a round of applause.

As it was he sat in the central chair. There he remained motionless throughout the ensuing hymn and prayers. These latter were extemporaneous and of a highly emotional character and were given out in turn by each of the six supporting Brethren, later referred to by Plank as “Cuth’s sidekicks.”

With these preliminaries accomplished and all being seated, Cuthbert Harkness rose to deliver his address. For at least a minute and in complete silence he stood with head bent and eyes closed while his lips moved, presumably in silent prayer. The wait was hard to bear.

From the moment he began to speak he generated an almost intolerable tension. At first he was quiet but it would have come as a relief if he had spoken at the top of his voice.

He said: “Brethren: This is the Day of Reckoning. We are sinners in the sight of the Great Master. Black as hell are our sins and only the Blood of Sacrifice can wash us clean. We have committed abominations. Our unrighteousness stinks in the nostrils of the All-Seeing Host. Uncleanliness, lechery, and defilement stalk through our ranks. And Murder.”

It was as if a communal nerve had been touched, causing each member of his audience to stiffen. He himself actually “came to attention” like a soldier. He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, inflated his chest, and directed his bloodshot gaze over the heads of his listeners. He might have been addressing a parade.

“Murder,” roared Mr. Harkness. “You have Murder here in your midst, Brethren, here in the very temple of righteousness. And I shall reveal its Name unto you. I have nursed the awful knowledge like a viper in my bosom, I have wrestled with the Angel of Darkness. I have suffered the torments of the Damned but now the Voice of Eternal Judgment has spoken unto me and all shall be made known.”

He stopped dead and looked wildly around his audience. His gaze alighted on the row against the back wall and became fixed. He raised his right arm and pointed.

“Guilt!” he shouted. “Guilt encompasseth us on every hand. The Serpent is coiled in divers bosoms. I accuse! Sydney Jones—”

“You lay off me,” Syd screamed out, “you shut up.”

Heads were turned. Sergeant Plank could be heard expostulating. Harkness, raising his voice, roared out a sequence of anathemas, but no specific accusation. The accusing finger shifted.

“Gilbert Ferrant! Woe unto you Gilbert Ferrant—”

By now half the audience had turned in their seats. Gilbert Ferrant, tallow-faced, stared at Harkness.

“Woe unto you, Gilbert Ferrant. Adulterer! Trader in forbidden fruits!”

It went on. Now, only the Inner Brethren maintained an eyes-front demeanor. Consternation mounted in the rest of the congregation. Mr. Harkness now pointed at Mrs. Ferrant. He accused her of stony-heartedness and avarice. He moved on to Bob Maistre (wine-bibbing) and several fishermen unknown to Alleyn (blasphemy).

He paused. His roving and ensanguined gaze alighted on the Pharamonds. He pointed: “And ye,” he apostrophized them: “Wallowers in the fleshpots…”

He rambled on at the top of his voice. They were motionless throughout. At last he stopped, glared, and seemed to prepare himself for some final and stupendous effort. Into the silence desultory sounds intruded. It was as if somebody outside the barn had begun to pepper the iron roof with pellets, only a few at first but increasing. At last the clouds had broken and it had begun to rain.

One might be forgiven, Alleyn thought afterwards, for supposing that some celestial stage manager had taken charge, decided to give Mr. Harkness the full treatment, and grossly overdone it. Mr. Harkness himself seemed to be unaware of the mounting fusillade on the roof. As the din increased he broke out anew. He stepped up his parade-ground delivery. He shouted anathemas: on his niece and her sins, citing predictable biblical comparisons, notably Jezebel and the Whore of Babylon. He referred to Leviticus 20:6 and to the Cities of the Plains. He began to describe the circumstances of her death. He was now very difficult to hear, for the downpour on the iron roof was all-obliterating.

“And the Sinner…” could be made out, “… Mark of Cain… before you all… now proclaim… Behold the man…”

He raised his right arm to the all-too-appropriate accompaniment of a stupendous thunderclap and turned himself into a latterday Lear. He beat his bosom and seemed at last to become aware of the storm.

An expression of bewilderment and frustration appeared. He stared wildly about him, gestured incomprehensively, clasped his hands, and looked beseechingly around his audience.

Then he covered his face with his hands and bolted into the inner room. The door shut behind him with such violence that the framed legend above it crashed to the floor. Still the rain hammered on the iron roof.

Alleyn and Fox were on the stage with Plank hard at their heels. Nothing they said could be heard. Alleyn was at the door. It was locked. He and Fox stood back from it, collected themselves and shoulder-charged it. It resisted but Plank was there and joined in the next assault. It burst open and they plunged into the room.

Brother Cuth hung from a beam above the chair he had kicked away. His confession was pinned to his coat. He had used a length of wire from the coil in the old coach house.

iv

Alleyn pushed the confession across the table at Fox. “It’s all there,” he said. “He may have written it days ago or whenever he first made up his mind.

“He was determined to destroy the author of his damnation, as he saw her, and then himself. The method only presented itself after their row about Dulcie jumping the gap. He seems to have found some sort of satisfaction, some sense of justice in the act of her disobedience being the cause of her death. He must have… made his final preparations… during the time he was locked up in the back room before the service began. If we’d broken in the door on the first charge we might just have saved him. He wouldn’t have thanked us for it.”

“I don’t get it, sir,” Plank said. “Him risking the sorrel mare. It seems all out of character.”

“He didn’t think he was risking the mare. He’d ordered Jones to take her to the smith and he counted on Dulcie trying the jump with Mungo, the outlaw, the horse he wanted to destroy. In the verbal battle they exchanged, he told her the mare had gone to the smith and she said she’d do it on Mungo. It’s there, in the confession. He’s been very thorough.”

“When did he rig the wire in the gap?” Fox asked. He was reading the confession. “Oh yes. I see. As soon as Jones went to the corn chandlers, believing that on his return he would remove the sorrel mare to the blacksmith’s.”

“And unrigged it after the Ferrants left, when Jones was sleeping off his drugs in the loose-box.”

Fox said: “And that girl lying in full view there in the ditch, looking the way she did! You can’t wonder he went off the rails.” He read on.

Plank said: “And yet, Mr. Alleyn, by all accounts he used to be fond of her, too. She was his niece. He’d adopted her.”

“What’s all this he’s on about? Leviticus twenty, verse six,” Fox asked.

“Look it up in the Bible they so thoughtfully provide in your room, Br’er Fox. I did. It says: ‘None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness.’ ”

Fox thought it over and was scandalized. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”

“To him,” Alleyn said, “she was the eternal temptress. The Scarlet Woman. The cause of his undoing. In a way, I suppose, he thought he was handing over the outcome to the Almighty. If she obeyed him and stayed in her room, nothing would happen. If she defied him, everthing would. Either way the decision came from on High.”

“Not my idea of Christianity,” Plank muttered. “The Missus and I are C of E,” he added.

“You know,” Alleyn said to Fox, “one might almost say Harkness was a sort of cross between Adam and the Ancient Mariner. ‘The woman tempted me,’ you know. And the subsequent revulsion followed by the awful necessity to talk about it, to make a proclamation before all the world and then to die.”

They said nothing for some time. At last Fox cleared his throat.

“What about the button?” he asked.

“In the absence of its owner, my guess would be that he went into the horse paddock out of curiosity to inspect Bruno’s jump and saw dead Dulcie. Dulcie who’d been threatening to shop her drug-running boyfriends. That, true to his practice as a strictly background figure of considerable importance, Louis decided to have seen nothing and removed himself from the terrain. Too bad he dropped a button.”

“Well,” Fox said after a further pause. “We haven’t had what you’d call a resounding success. Missed out with our homicide by seconds, lost a big fish on the drug scene, and ended up with a couple of tiddlers. And we’ve seen the young chap turn into a casualty on the way. How is he, Mr. Alleyn?”

“We’ve finished for the time being. Come and see,” said Alleyn.

Ricky had been discharged from hospital and was receiving in his bedroom at the hotel. Julia, Jasper, and Troy were all in attendance. The Pharamonds had brought grapes, books, champagne, and some more langouste sandwiches because the others had been a success. They had been describing, from their point of view, Cuth’s party as Julia only just continued not to call it.

“Darling,” she said to Ricky, “your papa was quite wonderful.” And to Troy, “No, but I promise. Superb.” She appealed to Fox. “You’ll bear me out, Mr. Fox.” Rather to his relief she did not wait for Fox to do so. “There we all were,” Julia continued at large. “I can’t tell you — the noise! And poor, poorest Cuth, trying with all his might to compete, rather, one couldn’t help thinking, like Mr. Noah in the deluge. I don’t mean to be funny but it did come into one’s head at the time. And really, you know, it was rather impressive. Especially when he pointed us out and said we were wallowers in the fleshpots of Egypt, though why Egypt, one asks oneself. And then all those—‘effects,’ don’t they call them? — and — and—”

Julia stopped short. “Would you agree,” she said, appealing to Alleyn, “that when something really awful happens it’s terribly important not to work up a sort of phony reaction? You know? Making out you’re more upset than you really are. Would you say that?”

Alleyn said: “In terms of self-respect I think I would.”

“Exactly,” said Julia. “It’s like using a special sort of pious voice about somebody who’s dead when you don’t really mind all that much.” She turned to Ricky and presented him with one of her most dazzling smiles. “But then you see,” she said, “thanks to your papa we only saw the storm scene, as I expect it would be called in Shakespeare. Because after they broke in the door a large man pulled the stage curtains across and then your papa came through like men in dinner jackets do in the theater and asked for a doctor and told us there’d been an accident and would we leave quietly. So we did. Of course if we’d—” Julia stopped. Her face had gone blank. “If we’d seen,” she said rapidly, “it would have been different.”

Ricky remembered what she had been like after she had seen Dulcie Harkness. And then he remembered Jasper saying: “The full shock and horror of a death is only experienced when it has been seen.”

Julia and Jasper said they must go and Alleyn went down with them to their car. Jasper touched Alleyn’s arm and they let Julia go ahead and get into the driver’s seat.

“About Louis,” Jasper said. “Is it to do with drugs?”

“We think it may be.”

“I’ve thought from time to time that something like that might be going on. But it all seemed unreal. We’ve never known anybody who was hooked.”

Alleyn echoed Julia. “If you had,” he said, “it would have been different.”

When he returned, it was to find Fox and Troy and Ricky quietly contented with each other’s company.

Alleyn put his arm round Troy.

‘“And so we say farewell,’ ” he said, ‘“to the Pharamonds and their Wonderful Island.’ Pack up your bags, chaps. We’re going home.”

The End