Last Ditch

4: Intermission

i

Miss Harkness, parcelled in canvas, lay in the ambulance, her uncle was in his office with the doctor, and Julia and Bruno had been driven home to L’Espérance by Carlotta. Ricky and Jasper still waited in the stable yard because they didn’t quite like to go away. Ricky wandered about in a desultory fashion, half looking at what there was to be seen but unable to dismiss his memory of Dulcie Harkness. He drifted into the old coach house. Beside the car, a broken-down gig, pieces of perished harness, and a heap of sacks, a coil of old and discarded wire hung from a peg. Ricky idly examined it and found that the end had recently been cut.

He could hear the sorrel mare blowing through her nostrils — she was in a loose-box with her leg bandaged, having a feed. The vet came out.

“It’s a hell of a sprain, in her near fore,” said the vet. “And a bad cut in front, halfway down the splint bone. I can’t quite understand the cut. There must have been something in the gap to cause it. I think I’ll go down and have a look at the terrain. Now they’ve taken away — now — er — it’s all clear.”

“The police sergeant’s there,” Ricky said. “He went back after he’d seen Mr. Harkness.”

“Old Joey Plank?” said the vet. “He’s all right. I’d be obliged if you’d come down with me, though. I’d like to see just where this young hopeful of yours took off when he cleared the jump. I don’t like being puzzled. Of course, anything can happen. For one thing, he’ll be very much lighter than Dulcie. She’s a big girl but all the same it’s a pretty good bet Dulcie Harkness wouldn’t go wrong over the same sticks on the same mount as a kid of thirteen. She’s — she would have been in the top class if she’d liked to go in for it. Be glad if you’d stroll down. OK?”

In one way, there was nothing in the wide world Ricky wanted to do less, and he fancied Jasper felt much the same, but they could hardly refuse and at least they would get away from the yard and the ambulance with its two men sitting in front and its closed doors with Miss Harkness behind them. Jasper did point out that they were the width of the paddock away when Bruno jumped, but Mr. Blacker paid no attention and led the way downhill.

The turf was fairly soft and copiously indented with hoof prints. When they got to within a few feet of the gap the vet held up his hand and they all stopped.

“Here you are, then,” he said. “Here’s where they took off and here’s the mark of the hind hooves, the first lot with the boy up being underneath, with the second overlapping at the edges and well dug in. Tremendous thrust, you know, when the horse takes off. See the difference between these and the prints left by the forefeet.”

Sergeant Plank, in his shirtsleeves and red with exertion, loomed up in the gap.

“This is a nasty business, Joey,” said the vet.

“Ah. Very. And a bit of a puzzle, at that. Very glad these two gentlemen have come down. If it’s all the same I’ll just get a wee statement about how the body was found, like. We have to do these things in the prescribed order, don’t we? Half a mo’.”

He didn’t climb through the gap but edged his way down the hedge to where he’d hung his tunic. From this he extracted his notebook and pencil. He joined them and fixed his gaze — his eyes were china-blue and very bright — upon Ricky.

“I understand you was the first to see deceased, sir,” he said.

Ricky experienced an assortment of frissons.

“Mrs. Pharamond was the first,” he said. “Then me.”

“Pardon me. So I understood. Could I have the name, if you please, sir?”

“Roderick Alleyn.”

A longish silence followed.

“Oh yes?” said the sergeant. “How is that spelt, if you please?”

Ricky spelled it.

“You wouldn’t,” Sergeant Plank austerely suggested, “be trying to take the Micky, would you, sir?”

“Me? Why? Oh!” said Ricky, blushing. “No, sergeant, I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m his son.”

A further silence.

“I had the pleasure,” said Sergeant Plank, clearing his throat, “of working under the Chief Superintendent on a case in the West Country. In a very minor capacity. Guard duty. He wouldn’t remember, of course.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Ricky.

“He still wouldn’t remember,” said Sergeant Plank, “but it was a pleasure, all the same.”

Yet another silence was broken by Mr. Blacker. “Quite a coincidence,” he said.

“It is that,” Sergeant Plank said warmly. And to Ricky: “Well then, sir, even if it seems a bit funny, perhaps you’ll give me a few items of information.”

“If I can, Mr. Plank, of course.”

So he gave, at dictation speed, his account of what he saw when Julia called him down to the gap. He watched the sergeant laboriously begin every line of his notes close to the edge of the page and fill in to the opposite edge in the regulation manner. When that was over he took a statement from Jasper. He then said that he was sure they realized that he would, as a matter of routine, have to get statements from Julia and Bruno.

“There’ll be an inquest, sir, as I’m sure you’ll realize, and no doubt your wife will be called to give formal evidence, being the first to sight the body. And your young brother may be asked to say something about the nature of his own performance. Purely a matter of routine.”

“I suppose so,” said Jasper. “I wish it wasn’t, however. The boy’s very upset. He’s got the idea, we think, that she wouldn’t have tried to jump the gap if he hadn’t done it first. She seemed to be very excited about him doing it.”

“Is that so? Excited?”

Mr. Blacker said: “She would be. From what I can make out from Cuth Harkness, it’d been a bit of a bone of contention between them. He told her she shouldn’t try it on and she kind of defied him. Or that’s what I made out. Cuth’s in a queer sort of state.”

“Shock,” said the sergeant still writing. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Who broke the news?”

“My wife and I did,” said Jasper. “He insisted on coming down here to look for himself.”

“He’s fussed. One minute it’s the mare and the next it’s the niece. He didn’t seem,” Sergeant Plank said, “to be able to tell the difference, if you can understand.”

“Only too well.”

The vet had moved away. He was peering through the gap at the ditch and the far bank. The remains of a post-and-rail fence ran through the blackthorn hedge and was partly exposed. He put his foot on the lower rail as if to test whether it would take his weight.

“I’d be obliged, Mr. Blacker,” said the sergeant raising his china-blue gaze from his notes, “if you didn’t. Just a formality, but it’s what we’re instructed. No offense.”

“What? Oh. Oh, all right,” said Blacker. “Sorry, I’m sure.”

“That’s quite all right, sir. I wonder,” said the sergeant to Ricky, “if you’d just indicate where you and Mrs. Pharamond were when you noticed the body.”

For the life of him, Ricky could not imagine why this should be of interest but he described how Julia had called him to her and how he had dismounted, giving his horse to Bruno, and had gone to her, and how she, too, had dismounted and he had peered through the gap. He parted some branches near the end of the gap.

“Like that,” he said.

He noticed that the post at his left hand was loose in the ground. Near the top on the outer side and almost obscured by brambles was a fine scar that cut through the mossy surface and bit into the wood. The opposite post at the other end of the gap was overgrown with blackthorn. He crossed and saw broken twigs and what seemed to be a scrape up the surface of the post.

“Would you have noticed,” Sergeant Plank said behind him, making him jump, “anything about the gap, sir?”

Ricky turned to meet the sergeant’s blue regard.

“I was too rattled,” he said, “to notice anything.”

“Very natural,” Plank said, still writing. Without looking up he pointed his pencil at the vet. “And would you have formed an opinion, Mr. Blacker, as to how, exactly, the accident took place? Like — would you think that what went wrong went wrong on this side after the horse took off? Or would you say it cleared the gap and crashed on the far bank?”

“If you’d let me go and take a look,” Blacker said a trifle sourly, “I’d be better able to form an opinion, wouldn’t I?”

“Absolutely correct,” said the disconcerting sergeant. “I agree with every word of it. And if you can notice the far bank — it’s nice and clear from here — I’ve used pegs to mark out the position of the body, which was, generally speaking, eccentric, owing to the breakage of limbs, et cetera, et cetera. Not but what the impression in the mud doesn’t speak for itself quite strong. I daresay you can see the various other indications — they stand out, don’t they? Can be read like a book, I daresay, by somebody as up in the subject as yourself, Mr. Blacker.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as all that,” Blacker said, mollified. “What I would say is that the mare came down on the far bank — you can see a clear impression of a stirrup iron in the mud — and seems to have rolled on Dulcie. Whether Dulcie pitched forward over the mare’s head or fell with her isn’t so clear.”

“Very well put. And borne out by the nature of the injuries. I don’t think you’ve seen the body, have you, Mr. Blacker?”

“No.”

“No. Quite so. The head’s in a nasty mess. Kicked. Shocking state, really. You’ll have remarked the state of the face, I daresay, Mr. Alleyn.”

Ricky nodded. His mouth went dry. He had indeed remarked it.

“Yes. Well, now, I’d better go up and have a wee chat with the uncle,” said Sergeant Plank.

“You won’t find that any too easy,” Jasper said.

Sergeant Plank made clucking noises. He struggled into his tunic, buttoned up his notebook, and led the way back to the house. “Very understandable, I’m sure,” he threw out rather vaguely. “There’ll be the little matter of identification. By the next of kin, you know.”

“Oh God!” Ricky said. “You can’t do that to him.”

“We’ll make it as comfortable as we can.”

“Comfortable!”

“I’ll just have a wee chat with him first.”

“You don’t want us any more, do you?” Jasper asked him.

“No, no, no,” he said. “We know where to find you, don’t we? I’ll drop in at L’Espérance if you don’t object, sir, and just pick up a little signed statement from your good lady and maybe have a word with this young show-jumper of yours. Later on, this evening, if it suits.”

“It’ll have to, won’t it, sergeant? But I can’t pretend,” Jasper said with great charm, “that I hadn’t hoped that they’d be let off any more upsets for today at least.”

“That’s right,” said Sergeant Plank cordially. “You would, too. We can’t help it, though, can we, sir! So if you’ll excuse me, I ought to give Superintendent Curie at Montjoy a tinkle about this. It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Alleyn. Quite a coincidence. A ce soir,” added the sergeant.

He smiled upon them, crossed over to the ambulance and spoke to the men, one of whom got out and went around to the rear doors. He opened them and disappeared inside. The doors clicked to. Sergeant Plank nodded in a reassuring manner to Jasper and Ricky and walked into the house.

“Would you say,” Jasper asked Ricky, “that Sergeant Plankses abound in our police force?”

“Not as prolifically as they used to, I fancy.”

“Well, my dear Ricky, I suppose we now take our bracing walk to L’Espérance.”

“You don’t think—”

“What?”

“We ought to stay until he’s — done it? Looked.”

“The doctor’s with him.”

“Yes. So he is.”

“Well, then—”

But as if the ambulance and its passenger had laid some kind of compulsion on them, they still hesitated. Jasper lit a cigarette. Ricky produced his pipe but did nothing with it.

“The day,” said Jasper, “has not been without incident.”

“No.”

They began to move away.

“I’m afraid you have been distressed by it,” said Jasper. “Like my poorest Julia and, for a different reason, my tiresome baby brother.”

“Haven’t you?” Ricky asked. Jasper came to a halt.

“Been distressed? Not profoundly, I’m afraid. I didn’t see her, you know. I have a theory that the full shock and horror of a death is only experienced when it has been seen. I must, however, confess to a reaction in myself at one point of which I daresay I should be ashamed. I don’t know that I am, however.”

“Am I to hear what it was?”

“Why not? It happened when the ambulance men came into the yard here, carrying Miss Harkness on their covered stretcher. I had been thinking: thank God I wasn’t the one to find them. The remains, as of course they will be labeled. And then, without warning, there came upon me a — really a quite horribly strong impulse to go up to the stretcher and uncover it. I almost believe that if it could have been accomplished in a flash with a single flourish I would have done it — like Antony revealing Caesar’s body to the Romans. But of course the cover was fastened down and it would have been a fiddling, silly business and they would have stopped me. But why on earth should such a notion come upon me? Really, we do not know ourselves, do we?”

“It looks like it.”

“Confession may be good for the soul,” Jasper said lightly, “but I must say I find it a profoundly embarrassing exercise.”

“He’s coming.”

Mr. Harkness came out of the house under escort, like the victim of an accident. Doctor Carey and Sergeant Plank had him between them, their hands under his arms. The driver got down and opened the rear doors. His colleague looked out.

“It’ll only take a moment,” they heard Dr. Carey say.

On one impulse they turned and walked away, around the house and down the drive, not speaking to each other. A motorcycle roared down the cliff road, turned in at the gates, and, with little or no diminution of speed, bore down upon them.

“Look who’s here,” said Jasper.

It was Syd Jones. At first it seemed that he was going to ignore them but at the last moment he cut down his engine and skidded to a halt.

“G’ day,” he said morosely and exclusively to Jasper. “How’s tricks?”

They looked wildly at each other.

“Seen Dulce?” asked Syd.

ii

Any number of distracted reactions tumbled about in Ricky’s head. For an infinitesimal moment he actually thought Syd wanted to know if he’d seen dead Dulce with the broken body. Then he thought “we’ve got to tell him” and then that dead Dulce might be carrying Syd’s baby (this was the first time he’d remembered about what would doubtless be referred to as her “condition”). He had no idea how long this state of muddled thinking persisted, but their silence or their manner must have been strange because Syd said, “What’s wrong?” He spoke directly to Jasper and had not looked at Ricky.

Jasper said: “There’s been an accident. I’m afraid this is going to be a shock.”

“It’s bad news, Syd,” Ricky said. Because he thought he ought to and because he was unexpectedly filled with a warmth of compassion for Syd, he laid a hand on his arm and was much discomforted when Syd shook him off without a glance.

“It’s about Dulcie Harkness,” Jasper said.

“What about her? Did you say an accident? Here!” Syd demanded. “What are you on about? Is she dead? Or what?”

“I’m afraid she is, Syd,” Ricky ventured.

After a considerable pause he said, “Poor old Dulce.” And then to Jasper: “What happened?”

Jasper told him. Syd was, Ricky knew, a quite remarkably inexpressive person and allowances had to be made for that. He seemed to be sobered, taken aback, even perturbed, but, quite clearly, not shattered. And still he would not look at Ricky.

“You can hardly credit it,” he mumbled.

He seemed to turn the information over in his mind and after doing so for some time said: “She was pregnant. Did you know that?”

“Well, yes,” Jasper said. “Yes, we did.”

“They’ll find that out, won’t they?”

“Yes, I expect they will.”

“Too bad,” he said.

Jasper caught Ricky’s eye and made a slight face at him.

“Who,” he asked, “is the father?”

“I dunno,” said Syd, almost cheerfully. “And I reckon she didn’t. She was quite a girl.”

Somebody else had used the phrase about her. Recently. It was Louis, Ricky remembered, Louis Pharamond in the Fisherman’s Rest at Bon Accord.

“Where’s the old man?” Syd asked Jasper.

“In the house. The doctor’s there. And a police sergeant.”

“What’s he want?” Syd demanded.

“They have to make a formal appearance at fatal accidents,” Ricky said and was ignored.

“He’s very much upset,” said Jasper.

“Who is?”

“Mr. Harkness.”

“He warned her, didn’t he? You heard him.”

“Of course he did.”

“Fair enough, then. What’s he got to worry about?”

“Good God!” Jasper burst out and then checked himself.

“My dear Jones,” he urged. “The man’s had a monstrous shock. His niece has been killed. He’s had to identify her body. He’s—”

“Aw,” said Syd. “That, yeah.”

And to Ricky’s bewilderment he actually turned pale.

“That’s different again,” he said. “That could be grotty, all right.”

He stood for a moment or two with his head down, looking at his boots. Then he hitched his shoulder, settled himself on his seat, and revved up his engine.

“Where are you going?” Jasper shouted.

“Back,” he said. “No sense going on, is there? It was her I wanted to see.”

They stood and watched him. He kicked the ground, turned his machine, and roared off the way he had come.

“That creature’s a monster,” said Jasper.

“He may be a monster,” Ricky said, “but there’s one thing we can be sure he’s not.”

“Really? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I suppose we can.”

The sound of the motorcycle faded.

“That’s a bloody expensive machine,” Ricky said.

“Oh?”

“New.”

“Really?” said Jasper without interest. “Shall we shog?”

It was an opulent evening, as if gold dust had been shaken out of some heavenly sifter, laying a spell over an unspectacular landscape. Even the effects of chiaroscuro were changed so that details, normally close at hand, were set at a golden remove. L’Espérance itself was enskied by inconsequent drifts of cloud at its base. The transformation would have been a bit too much of a good thing, Ricky thought, if its impermanence had not lent it a sort of austerity. Even as they saw the glow on each other’s face, it faded and the evening was cold.

“Ricky,” Jasper said, “come up and have a drink and supper with us. We would like you to come.”

But Ricky thought it best to say no and they parted at the entrance to the drive. He mounted his bicycle and was sharply reminded of his saddle-soreness.

When he got back to the cove it was to find that news of the accident was already broadcast. Mrs. Ferrant met him in the passage.

“This is a terrible business, then,” she said without any preliminaries and stared at Ricky out of her stewed-prune eyes. He had no mind to discuss it with her, anticipating a series of greedy questions. He remembered Mrs. Ferrant’s former reactions to mention of Dulcie Harkness.

“They’re saying it was a horse-riding accident,” she probed. “That’s correct, is it? They’re saying there was arguments with the uncle, upalong, over her being too bold with her jumping. Is it true, then, what they’re saying, that you was a witness to the accident? Was it you that found her, then? There’s a terrible retribution for you, isn’t it, whatever she may have been in the past?”

Ricky staved her off as best he could but she served his supper — one of her excellent omelets — with a new batch of questions at each reappearance, and he fought a losing battle. In the end he was obliged to give an account of the accident.

While this was going on he became aware of sundry bumps and shufflings in the passage outside.

“That’s him,” Mrs. Ferrant threw out. “He’s going on one of his holidays over to Saint Pierre-des-Roches by the morning boat.”

“I didn’t know there was one.”

“The Island Belle. She calls once a week on her way from Montjoy.”

“Really?” said Ricky, glad to steer Mrs. Ferrant herself into different waters. “I might take the trip one of these days.”

“It’s an early start. Five a.m.”

She had left the door ajar. From close on the other side, but without showing himself, Ferrant called peremptorily: “Marie! Hê!”

“Yes,” she said quickly and went out, shutting the door.

Ricky heard them walk down the passage.

He finished his supper and climbed up to his room, suddenly very tired. Too tired and too sore and becoming too stiff to go along to the Cod-and-Bottle, where in any case he would be avidly questioned about the accident. And much too tired to write. He had a hot bath, restraining a yelp when he got into it, applied with difficulty first aid plasters to the raw discs on his bottom, and went to bed, where he fell at once into a heavy sleep.

He woke to find his window pallid in the dawn light. He was aware of muted sounds in the downstairs passage. The heavy front door was shut. Footsteps sounded on the outside path.

Wide awake, he got out of bed, went to his open window, and looked down.

Mr. Ferrant, with two suitcases, walked toward the jetty where the Island Belle was coming in. There was something unexpected, unreal even, about her, sliding alongside in the dawn light. Quiet voices sounded, and the slap of rope on the wet jetty. Mr. Ferrant was a solitary figure with his baggage and his purposeful tread. But what very grand suitcases they were: soft hide, surely, not plastic, and coming, Ricky was sure, from some very smart shop. As for Mr. Ferrant, one could hardly believe it was he, in a camel’s hair overcoat, porkpie hat, suede shoes, and beautiful gloves. He turned his head and Ricky saw that he wore dark glasses.

He watched Mr. Ferrant, the only embarking passenger, go up the gangplank and disappear. Some packages and a mailbag were taken aboard and then the Island Belle, with a slight commotion from her propeller, pulled out, her lights wan in the growing morning.

Ricky returned to bed and to sleep. When he finally awoke at nine o’clock, Mr. Ferrant’s departure seemed unreal as a dream, enclosed, like a dream, between sleep and sleep.

Three days later the inquest was held in the Cove village hall. The coroner came out from Montjoy. The jury was made up of local characters, some of whom were known to Ricky as patrons of the Cod-and-Bottle.

Julia and Ricky were called to give formal evidence as to sighting the body, and Mr. Harkness as to its identity. He was subdued and shaky and extremely lugubrious, answering in a low, uneven voice. He tried to say something about the dangerous nature of the jump and about the warnings he had given his niece and the rows this had led to.

“I allowed anger to take hold on me,” he said and looked around the assembly with washed-out eyes. “I went too far and I said too much. I may have driven her to it.” He broke down and was allowed to leave the room.

Doctor Carey gave evidence as to the nature of the injuries, which were multiple and extensive. Some of the external ones could be seen to have been caused by a horse’s hoof, others were breakages. The internal ones might have been brought about by the mare rolling on her rider. It was impossible, on the evidence, to arrive at a more precise conclusion. She was some eight or nine weeks pregnant, Dr. Carey added, and a little eddy of attention seemed to wash through the court. Superintendent Curie, from Montjoy, nominally in charge of the police investigation, was ill in hospital but, to the obvious surprise of the jury, applied through Sergeant Plank for an adjournment, which was agreed to.

Outside in the sunshine, Ricky talked to Julia and Jasper. It was his first meeting with them since the accident, although they had spoken on the telephone. Nobody could have been more simply dressed than Julia and nobody could have looked more exquisite, he thought, or more exotic in that homespun setting.

“I don’t in the least understand all this,” Julia said. “Why an adjournment? Ricky, you’re the one to explain to us.”

“Why me?”

“Because your gorgeous papa is a copper. Is he perpetually asking for adjournments when everybody longs for the whole thing to be—” She stopped, looked for a moment into his eyes, and then said rapidly, “—to be dead, buried and forgotten.”

“Honestly, I don’t know anything at all about police goings-on. He never speaks of his cases. We’ve so much else to talk about,” Ricky said simply. “I imagine they have to be almost insanely thorough and exhaustive.”

“I can’t think that it makes any difference to anyone, not even Mr. Harkness in all his righteous anguish, whether poor Dulcie fell forwards, sideways, or over the horse’s tail. Oh God, Jasper, darling, why does everything I say always have to sound so perfectly heartless and beastly!”

“Because you’re a realist, my love, and anyway it doesn’t,” said Jasper. “You’d be the most ghastly fake if you pretended to be heartbroken over the wretched girl. You had a beastly shock because you saw her. If you’d only heard she’d been killed you’d have said, ‘How awful for poor Cuth,’ and sent flowers to the funeral. Which, by the way, we ought perhaps to do. What do you think?”

But Julia paid no attention.

“Ricky,” she said. “It couldn’t be, or could it? That the police — what is it that’s always said in the papers — don’t rule out the possibility of ‘foul play’? Could it be that, Ricky?”

“I don’t know. Truly I don’t know,” Ricky said. And then, acutely conscious of their fixed regard, he blurted out what he had in fact been thinking.

“I had wondered,” said Ricky.

iii

“ ‘So I thought,’ ” Alleyn read aloud, “ ‘I’d ask you if the idea’s just plain silly. And if you don’t think it’s silly, whether you think I ought to say anything to Sergeant Plank or whether that would be behaving like the typical idiot layman. Or, finally, whether it’s a guinea to a gooseberry Sergeant Plank will have thought of it for himself.’ Which,” Alleyn said looking up from the letter, “will certainly be the case if Sergeant Plank’s worth his stripes.”

“Wouldn’t we much rather Rick kept out of it, whatever it may be, and got on with his book?” asked Ricky’s mother.

“Very much rather. Drat the boy, why does he want to go and get himself involved?” Alleyn rubbed his nose and looked sideways at his wife. “Quite neat of him to spot that bit, though, wasn’t it? ‘Obviously recent,’ he says.”

“Should we suggest he come home?” Troy wondered and then: “No. Silly of me. Why on earth, after all?”

“He may be called when the inquest is reopened, in which case he’d have to go trundling back. No, I shouldn’t worry. It’s odds on there’s nothing in it and he’s perfectly well able to cope, after all, with anything that may turn up.” Alleyn returned to the letter. “I see,” he said, “that Julia was dreadfully upset but rallied gallantly and gave her evidence quite beautifully. So that’s still on the tapis, one gathers.”

“I hope she’s not finding him a bore.”

“Does a woman ever dislike the admiration of a reasonably presentable young chap?”

“True.”

“He really does seem to have struck a rum setup one way or another,” said Alleyn, still reading. “What with his odd-jobbing plumber of a landlord dressed up like a con man at the crack of dawn and going on holiday to Saint Pierre-des-Roches.”

“It’s a pretty little peep of a place. I painted it when I was a student. The egregious Syd has made a regrettable slosh at it. But it’s hardly the spot for camel’s hair coats and zoot suits.”

“Perhaps Ferrant uses it as a jumping-off place for the sophisticated south.”

“And then there’s Louis Pharamond,” said Troy, pursuing her own thoughts, “having had some sort of affair with poor Miss Harkness, doesn’t it seem? Or does it?”

“In company with your visitor with the free paints and the dizzy spell. And listen to this,” said Alleyn. “ ‘My Mrs. Ferrant reacts very acidly to mention of Dulcie Harkness, even though she does make obligatory ‘non nisi’ noises. I can’t help wondering if Mr. Ferrant’s roving eye has lit sometime or another on Miss Harkness.’ Really!” said Alleyn, “The island jollities seem to be of a markedly uninhibited kind. And Miss Harkness of an unusually obliging disposition.”

“Bother!” said Troy.

“I know. And then, why should the egregious Jones scream with rage when Ricky trod on his vermillion? 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 kids’ books. A collection of numbered dots and you joined them up in the given order and found you’d got a pussycat 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 pussycat.”

“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 A.C., 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 A.C.

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

“Well,” said the A.C, “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 phony castle in the Lebanon. Loos on every landing.”

“Maddening, isn’t it?” said the A.C. “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 morphine-heroin 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 daresay.”

“Not to Saint 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 A.C, “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 suede suitcases and bound for Saint Pierre-des-Roches.”

“There now!” cried the A.C. “Splendid fellow your son. Jolly good! Super!” He occasionally adopted the mannerisms of an effusive scoutmaster.

“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 Saint Pierre-des-Roches. Makes frequent visits to London.”

“Artists’ materials?”

“In tubes. Oil colors. Big ones.”

There was a longish silence.

“Oh, yes?” said the A.C. in a new voice. The strange preliminaries evidently were over and they were down to the hard stuff.

“First name?” snapped the A.C.

“Sydney.”

“Living?”

“In Deep Cove. The firm’s handing out free color 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 hangover.”

“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 from 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 vermillion.

“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 Saint 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 A.C. 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 keep his eyes open,” said the A.C.

“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 Super at Montjoy rang up. Superintendent Curie, he is. There’s been a riding fatality. A fortnight ago. Looked like a straightforward accident but they’re not satisfied. Inquest adjourned. Thing is: the 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 A.C. 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.

iv

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 Saint 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 were 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 harbor 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 nightlife of its own.

It was warm and smelled of recent cooking. His thermos stood in the middle of the table and, beside it, a message on the back of an envelope.

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 Saint 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 harbor with not a living soul to see her, it seemed, but Ricky.

He went downstairs and wrote on the envelope.

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 harbor.

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 wheelhouse and toward the forward hatch.

Crates of fish covered with tarpaulins were lashed together on the deck. Ricky stopped short. Someone was standing motionless on the far side of the crates with his back turned. This person wore a magenta woolen 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 around 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.”

And here they were, confronted. Not for long, however. Syd, gray in the face, jerked away and Ricky was left staring at his back across a crate of fish.

“Ah, to hell with it,” he thought and walked around the cargo.

“Look here,” he said. “What is all this? What’ve I done?”

Syd made a plunge, an attempt, it seemed, to dodge around him, but they were both caught by an ample roll of the Island Belle and executed an involuntary pas de deux that landed them nose to nose across the fish crate as if in earnest and loving colloquy. Syd’s dark glasses slid away from his washed-out eyes.

In spite of growing queasiness Ricky burst out laughing. Syd mouthed at him. He was regrowing his beard.

“Come on,” Ricky said. “Let’s know the worst. You can’t insult me! Tell me all.” He was beginning to be cold. Quite definitely all was not well within. Syd contemplated him with unconcealed disgust.

“Come on,” Ricky repeated with an awful attempt at jauntiness. “What’s it all about, for God’s sake?”

Clinging to the fish crate and exhibiting intense venom, Syd almost shrieked at him: “It’s about me wanting to be on my bloody pat, that’s what it’s about. Get it? It’s about I can’t take you crawling round after me. It’s about I’m not one of those. It’s not my scene, see? No way. See? No way. So do me a favor and—”

Another lurch from the Island Belle coincided with a final piece of obscene advice.

“You unspeakable—” Ricky shouted and pulled himself up. “I was wrong,” he said. “You can insult me, can’t you, or have a bloody good try, and if I thought you meant what you said I’d knock your bloody little block off. ‘Crawl round after you,’ ” quoted Ricky, failing to control a belch. “I’d rather crawl after a caterpillar. You make me sick,” he said. He attempted a dismissive gesture and, impelled by the ship’s motion, broke into an involuntary canter down the sloping deck. He fetched up clinging to the taffrail where, to his fury, he was indeed very sick. When it was over, he looked back at Syd. He too, had retired to the taffrail where he was similarly engaged.

Ricky moved as far aft as he was able and for the remainder of the short voyage divided his time between a bench and the side.

Saint Pierre-des-Roches lay in a shallow bay between two nondescript headlands. Rows of white houses stared out to sea through blank windows. A church spire stood over them, and behind it on a hillside appeared buildings of a commercial character.

As the ship drew nearer some half-dozen small hotels sorted themselves out along the front. Little streets appeared and shop fronts with titles that became readable: “Dupont Frères.” “Occasions.” “Chatte Noire,” and then, giving Ricky — wan and shaky but improving — quite a little thrill: “Jerome et Cie” above a long roof on the hillside.

Determined to avoid another encounter, Ricky watched Syd Jones go ashore, gave him a five-minute start, and then himself went down the gangway. He passed through the duanes and a bureau-de-change and presently was walking up a cobbled street in Saint Pierre-des-Roches.

Into one of the best smells in all the world: the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and fresh-baked brioches and croissants. His seasickness was as if it had never been. There was “La Chatte Noire” with an open door through which a gust of warm air conveyed these delectable aromas, and inside were workpeople having their breakfasts; perhaps coming off night shift. Suddenly Ricky was ravenous.

The little bistro was rather dark. Its lamps were out and the early morning light was still tentative. A blue drift of tobacco smoke hung on the air. Although the room was almost full of customers, there was not much conversation.

Ricky went to the counter and gave his order in careful French to the patronne, a large lady with an implacable bosom. He was vaguely conscious, as he did so, that another customer had come in behind him.

He took the only remaining single seat, facing the street door, and was given his petit déjeuner. No coffee is ever quite as good as it smells, but this came close to it. The butter and confitures in little pots were exquisite and he slapped sumptuous dollops of them on his warm brioches. This was adventure.

He had almost finished when there was a grand exodus from the bistro, with much scraping of chair legs, clearing of throats, and exchanging of pleasantries with the patronne. Ricky was left with only three other customers in view.

Or were there only three? Was there perhaps not someone still there in the corner of the room behind his back? He had the feeling that there was and that it would be better not to turn around and look.

Instead he raised his eyes to the wall facing him and looked straight into the disembodied face of Sydney Jones.

The shock was so disconcerting that seconds passed before he realized that what he saw was Syd’s reflection, dark glasses and all, in a shabby looking glass, and that it was Syd who sat in the corner behind his back and had been watching him.

There is always something a little odd, a little uncomfortable, about meeting another person’s eyes in a glass: it is as if the watchers had simultaneously caught each other out in a furtive exercise. In this case the sensation was much exaggerated. For a moment Ricky and Syd stared at each other’s image with something like horror and then Ricky scrambled to his feet, paid his bill, and left in a hurry.

As he walked up the street with his rucksack on his back, he wondered if Syd was going to ruin his visit to Saint Pierre-des-Roches by cropping up like a malignant being in a Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since Dulcie Harkness’s death he hadn’t thought much about Syd’s peculiar behavior, being preoccupied with misgivings of another kind concerning freshly cut wire scars on wooden posts and a gash on a sorrel mare’s leg. He thought how boring it was of Syd to be like that. If they were on friendly terms he could have asked him about the wire. And then he thought, with a nasty jolt, that perhaps it mightn’t be a good idea to ask Syd about the wire.

He passed several shops and an estaminet and arrived at a square with an hôtel-de-ville, central gardens, a frock-coated statue of a portentous gentleman with whiskers, a public lavatory, a cylindrical billboard, and a newsagent. There were also several blocks of offices, a consequential house or two, and L’Hôtel des Roches, which Ricky liked the look of.

The morning was now well established, the sun shone prettily on the Place Centrale, as the little square was called, and Ricky thought it would be fun to stay overnight in Saint Pierre and perhaps not too extravagant to put up at L’Hôtel des Roches. He went in and found it to be a decorous hostelry, very provincial in tone and smelling of beeswax. In a parlor opening off the entrance hall, a bourgeois family sat like caricatures of themselves and read their morning papers. A dim clerk said they could accommodate Monsieur and an elderly porter escorted him by way of a cautious old lift to a room with a double bed, a wash-hand-stand, an armchair, a huge wardrobe, and not much else. Left alone he took the opportunity to wash the legacy of the fish crate from his hands and then looked down from his lattice window at a scene that might have been painted by a French Grandmère Moses. Figures, dressed mostly in black, walked briskly about the Place Centrale, gentlemen removed hats, ladies inclined their heads, children in smocks, bow ties, and berets skittered in the central gardens, housewives in shawls marched steadfastly to market. And behind all this activity was the harbor with the Island Belle at her moorings.

This didn’t look like Syd Jones’s scene, Ricky thought, still less like Mr. Ferrant’s, with his camel’s hair coat and porkpie hat. Days rather than hours might have passed since he sailed away from the Cove: it was a new world.

He changed into jeans and a T-shirt, left his rucksack in his room, and went out to explore. First, he would go uphill. The little town soon petered out. Some precipitous gardens, a flight of steps and a road to a cemetery led to the church, not surprisingly dedicated to Saint Pierre-des-Roches. It turned out to be rather commonplace except perhaps for a statue of the saint himself in pastel colors, wearing his custodial keys and stationed precariously on an unconvincing rock. “Tu es Pierre,” said a legend, “et sur cette pierre Je bâtirai Mon église.”

One could, for a small sum, climb the tower. Ricky did so and was rewarded by a panorama of the town, its environs, the sparkling sea, and a fragile shadow that was his own island out there in the Channel.

And, quite near at hand, were the premises of Jerome et Cie with their own legend in electric lights garnished with the image of a tube from which erupted a sausage of paint. At night, by a quaint device this would seem to gush busily. It reminded Ricky of the morning when he trod on Syd’s vermillion. Perhaps Syd had come over to Saint Pierre to renew his stock of samples and to this end would be calling on Messrs. Jerome et Cie. Ricky rested his arms on the balustrade and watched the humanoids moving about in the street below: all heads and shoulders. A funeral crawled up the road. He looked down into a wreath of lilies on top of the hearse. The cortège turned into the cemetery and presently there was a procession with a priest, a boy swinging a censer, and a following of black midgets. He imagined he could catch a whiff of incense. The cortège disappeared behind a large monument.

Ricky, caught in a kind of indolence, couldn’t make up his mind to leave the balcony. He still lounged on the balustrade and stared down at the scene below. Into a straggle of pedestrians there emerged from beneath him someone who seemed to have come out of the church itself, a figure with a purplish-red cap. It wore a belted coat and something square hung from its shoulder.

Ricky was not really at all surprised.

A frightful rumpus outraged his eardrums and upheaved his diaphragm. The church clock, under his feet, was striking ten.