Last Ditch

5: Intermezzo with Storm

i

The last stroke of ten still rumbled on the air as Ricky watched the midget that was Syd walk up the street and, sure enough, turn in at the gateway to Jerome et Cie’s factory. Had he come out of the church? Had he already been lurking in some dark corner when Ricky came in? Or had he followed Ricky? Why had he gone there? To say his prayers? To look for something to paint? To rest his legs? The box, loaded as it always seemed to be with large tubes of paint, must be extremely heavy. And yet he had shifted it casually from one shoulder to the other and there was nothing in the movement to suggest weight. Perhaps it was empty and he was going to get a load of free paints from Jerome et Cie.

Ricky was visited by a sequence of disturbing notions. Did Sydney Jones really think that he, Ricky, was following him around, spying on him or — unspeakable thought — lustfully pursuing him? Or was the boot on the other foot? Was Syd, in fact, keeping Ricky under observation? Had Syd, for some unguessable reason, followed him on board the Island Belle? Into the bistro? Up the hill to the church? When cornered, were the abuse and insults a shambling attempt to throw him off the scent? Which was the hunter and which the hunted?

It had been after Syd’s return from London and after Dulcie’s death that he had, definitively, turned hostile. Why? Had anything happened when he lunched with Ricky’s parents to make him so peculiar? Was it because Troy had not thought well of his paintings? Or had asked if he was messing about with drugs?

And here Ricky suddenly remembered Syd’s face, six inches from his own when they were vis-à-vis across the fish crate and Syd’s dark glasses had slid down his nose. Were his eyes not pin-pupilled? And did he not habitually snuffle and sweat? And what about the night at Syd’s Pad when he asked if Ricky had ever taken a trip? And behaved very much as if he’d taken something or another himself? Could drugs in fact be the explanation? Of everything? The scene he made when vermillion paint burst out of the wrong end of the tube? The sulks? The silly violence? Everything?

A squalid, boring explanation, he thought, and one that didn’t really satisfy him. There was something else. It came to him that he would very much like to rake the whole thing over with his father.

He descended the church tower and went out to the street. Which way? On up the hill to Jerome et Cie or back to the town? Without consciously coming to a decision he found he had turned to the right and was approaching the entrance to the factory.

Opposite it was a café with chairs and tables set out under an awning. The day was beginning to be hot. He had walked quite a long way and climbed a tower. He chose a table beside a potted rubber plant whose leaves shielded him from the factory entrance but were not dense enough to prevent him watching it. He ordered beer and a roll and began to feel like a character in a roman policier. He supposed his father had often done this sort of thing and tried to imagine him, with his air of casual elegance, “keeping observation” hour after hour with a pile of saucers mounting on the table. “At a certain little café in the suburbs of Saint Pierre-des-Roches…,” thought Ricky. That was how they began roman policiers in the salad days of the genre.

The beer was cold and delicious. It was fun to be keeping his own spot of observation, however pointless it might turn out to be.

Someone had left a copy of Le Monde on the table. He picked it up and began laboriously to read it, maintaining through the rubber plant leaves a pretty constant watch on the factory gates.

Feeling as if the waiters and every customer in the café observed him with astonishment, he contrived to make a hole in the paper which might be useful if, by some freakish chance, Syd should take it into his head to refresh himself when he emerged from the factory. Time went by slowly. It really was getting awfully hot. The newspaper tipped forward. He gave a galvanic jerk, opened his eyes and found himself looking through the rubber plant leaves at Syd Jones, crossing the street toward him.

Ricky whipped the paper up in front of his face and found that the peephole he had made was virtually useless. He stole a quick look over the top and there was Syd, sure enough, seating himself at a distant table with his back to Ricky. He dumped his paint box on the unoccupied seat. There was no doubt that now it was extremely heavy.

Ricky asked himself what the devil he thought he was up to and why it had become so important to find a reason for Syd Jones’s taking a scunner to him. And why was he so concerned to find out if Syd doped himself? Was it because there were details in a pattern that refused to emerge and somehow or another — yes, that, absurdly, was it — could be associated with the death of Dulcie Harkness?

Having arrived at this preposterous conclusion, what was he going to do about it? Waste his little holiday by playing an inane game of hide-and-seek with Syd Jones and return to the island no wiser than when he left it?

There were no looking glasses in this café, and Syd had his back to Ricky, who had widened the hole in Le Monde. He was assured that his legs were unrecognizable since he had changed into jeans and espadrilles.

The waiter took an order from Syd and came back with café-nature and a glass of water.

And now Ricky became riveted to the hole in his paper. Syd looked round furtively. There were only four other people including Ricky in the cafe and he had chosen a table far removed from any of them. Suddenly, as far as Ricky could make out, he put the glass on the seat of his chair, between his thighs. He then appeared to take something out of the breast pocket of his shirt. His head was sunk on his chest, and he leaned forward as if to rest his left forearm on his knee and seemed intent on some hidden object. He became very still. After a few seconds his right arm jerked slightly, there was a further manipulation of some sort, he raised his head, and his body seemed to relax as if in the gift of the sun.

“That settles the drug question, poor sod,” thought Ricky.

But he didn’t think it settled anything else.

Syd began to tap the ground with his foot as though keeping time with an invisible band. With the fingers of his right hand he beat a tattoo on the lid of his paint box. Ricky heard him laugh contentedly. The waiter walked over to his table and looked at him. Syd groped in his pocket and dropped quite a little handful of coins on the table. The waiter picked up what was owing and waited for his tip. Syd made a wide extravagant gesture. “Help yourself,” Ricky heard him say. “Servez-vous, mon vieux,” in execrable French. “Prenez le tout.” The man bowed and swept up the coins. He turned away and, for the benefit of his fellow waiter, lifted his shoulders and rolled his head. Syd had not touched his coffee.

“Good morning, Mr. Alleyn.”

Every nerve in Ricky’s body seemed to leap. He let out an exclamation, dropped the newspaper and turned to find Mr. Ferrant smiling down at him.

ii

After the initial shock, Ricky’s reaction was one of hideous embarrassment joined to fury. He sat there with a flaming face knowing himself to look the last word in abysmal foolishness. How long, oh God, how long had Mr. Ferrant stood behind him and watched him squint with screwed up countenance through a hole in a newspaper at Syd Jones? Mr. Ferrant, togged out in skintight, modishly flared white trousers, a pink striped T-shirt, white buckskin sandals, and a medallion on a silver chain. Mr. Ferrant of the clustering curls and impertinent smile. Mr. Ferrant, incongruously enough, the plumber and odd-job man.

“You made me jump,” Ricky said. “Hullo. Mrs. Ferrant said you might be here.”

Mr. Ferrant snapped his fingers at the waiter.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked Ricky.

“No. Please. Do. What,” Ricky invited in a strange voice, “will you have?”

He would have beer. Ricky ordered two beers and felt that he himself would be awash with it.

Ferrant, whose every move seemed to Ricky to express a veiled insolence, slid into a chair and stretched himself. “When did you come over, then?” he asked.

“This morning.”

“Is that right?” he said easily. “So did he,” and nodded across at Syd who now fidgeted and looked at his watch. At any moment, Ricky thought, he might turn round and see them and what could that not lead to?

The waiter brought their beer. Ferrant lit a cigarette. He blew out smoke and wafted it away with a workman’s hand. “And what brought you over, anyway?” he asked.

“Curiosity,” said Ricky and then, hurriedly, “To make a change from work.”

“Work? That’d be writing, wouldn’t it?” he said as if there was something suspect in the notion. “Where’re you staying?” Ricky told him.

“That’s a crummy little old place, that is,” he said. “I go to Le Beau Rivage myself.”

He took the copy of Le Monde out of Ricky’s nerveless grasp and stuck his blunt forefinger through the hole. “Quite fascinating what you was reading, seemingly. Couldn’t take your eyes off of it, could you, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Look here,” Ricky said. He put his hand up to his face and felt its heat. “I expect you think there was something a bit off about — about — my looking — about. But there wasn’t. I can’t explain but—”

“Me!” said Ferrant. “Think! I don’t think nothing.”

He drained his glass and clapped it down on the table. “We all get our little fancies, like,” he said. “Right? And why not? Nice drop of ale, that.” He was on his feet. “Reckon I’ll have a word with Syd,” he said. “Quite a coincidence. He come in the morning boat, too. Lovely weather, isn’t it? Might turn to thunder later on.”

He strolled across between the empty tables with slight but ineffable shifts of his vulgar little stern. Ricky could have kicked him but he could have kicked himself still harder.

It seemed an eternity before Ferrant reached Syd, who appeared to have dozed off. Ricky, held in a nightmarish inertia, could not take his eyes off them. Ferrant laid his hand on Syd’s head and rocked it, not very gently, to and fro.

Syd opened his eyes. Ferrant twisted the head towards Ricky. He said something that didn’t seem to register. Syd blinked and frowned as if unable to focus his eyes, but he made a feeble attempt to shake Ferrant off. Ferrant released him with a bully’s playful buffet. Ricky saw awareness dawn on Syd’s face and a mounting anger.

Ferrant shifted the paint box to the ground and sat down. He put his hand on Syd’s knee and leaned toward him. He might have been giving him some important advice. The waiter strolled toward Ricky, who paid and tipped him. He said something about “un drôle de type, celui-là, ” meaning Ferrant.

Ricky left the café. On his way out Ferrant waved to him.

He walked back into the town, chastened.

Perhaps the circumstance that most mortified him was the certainty that Ferrant by this time had told Syd about the hole in the newspaper.

The day had turned into a scorcher and the soles of his feet were cobbled with red-hot marbles. He reached the front and sought the shade of a wooden pavillion facing the sea. He shuffled out of his espadrilles, lit his pipe, and began to feel a little better.

The Island Belle was still at her berth. After the upset with Syd Jones on the way over Ricky hadn’t thought of finding out when she sailed for Montjoy. He wondered whether he should call it a day, sail with her, and retire to his proper occupation of writing a book and perhaps licking the wounds in his self-esteem.

He was unable to make up his mind. French holiday-makers came and went; with the approach of noon the day grew hotter and the little pavillion less endurable. Ricky left it and walked painfully along the front to a group of three hotels, each of which had private access to a beach. He went into the first, Le Beau Rivage, hired bathing drawers and a towel, and swam about among the decorous bourgeoisie, hoping to become refreshed and in better heart.

What he did become was hungry. Unable to face the walk along scorching pavements, he took a taxi to his hotel, lunched there in a dark little salle à manger, and retired to his room where he fell into a very heavy sleep.

He woke, feeling awful, at three o’clock. The room had darkened. When he looked out his window it was to the ominous rumble of thunder and at steely clouds rolling in from the north. The harbor had turned gray and choppy and the Island Belle jaunced at her moorings. There were very few people about in the town and those that were to be seen walked quickly, seeking shelter.

Ricky was one of those beings who respond uncomfortably to electric storms. They produced a nervous tingling in his arms and legs and a sense of impending disaster. As a small boy they had aroused a febrile excitement so that at one moment he wanted to hide and at the next to stand at the window or even go out of doors for the sheer terror of doing so. Although he had learned to control these reactions and to give little outward sign of them, the restlessness they induced even now was almost unbearable.

The room flashed up and out. Ricky counted the seconds automatically, scarcely knowing that he did so. “One-a-b, two-a-b,” up to seven, when the thunder broke. That meant, or so he had always believed, that the core of the storm was seven miles away and might or might not come nearer.

The sky behaved in the manner of a Gustave Doré engraving. A crack opened and a shaft of vivid sunlight darted down like God’s vengeance upon the offending sea.

Ricky tingled from head to foot. The room had stealthily become much too small. He was invaded by an urge to prove himself to himself. “1 may have made a muck of my espionage,” he thought, “but, by gum, I’m not going to stay in my bedroom with pins-and-needles because a couple of clouds are having it off up there. To hell with them.”

He fished a light raincoat out of his rucksack and ran downstairs, pulling it on as he went. The elderly clerk was asleep behind his desk.

Outside there was a stifled feeling in the air, as if the town held its breath. Sounds — isolated footsteps, desultory voices, and the hiss of tires on the road — were all exaggerated. The sky was now so black that twilight seemed to have fallen on Saint Pierre-des-Roches.

Forked lightning wrote itself with a flourish across the heavens and almost simultaneously a gigantic tin tray banged overhead. A woman in the street crossed herself and broke into a shuffle. Ricky thought: “If I combed my hair it would crackle.”

A few big drops fell like bullets in the dust and then, tremendously, the rain came down.

It really was a ferocious storm. The streets were running streams; lightning whiplashed almost continuously, thunder mingled with the din made by rain on roofs, sea, and stone. Ricky’s espadrilles felt as if they had dissolved on his feet.

But he went on downhill to the sea, taking a kind of satisfaction in pandemonium. Here was the bistro where he had breakfasted, here the first group of shops. And here the deserted front, not a soul on it, pounded by the deluge and beyond it the high tide pocked all over with rain. Le Beau Rivage overlooked this scene. Ricky could see a number of people staring out from its glassed-in portico and wondered if Ferrant were among them.

The Island Belle rocked at her moorings. Her gangway grated on the wharf.

Ricky saw that the administrative offices were shut, but a goods shed in which three cars were parked was open. He sheltered there. It was very dark. The rain drummed remorselessly on the roof. He got an impression of somebody else being in the shed — an impression so strong that he called out “Hallo! Anyone at home?” but there was no answer. He shook the rain from his mackintosh and hood and fished out his handkerchief to wipe his face. “This has been a rum sort of a day,” he thought, and wondered how best to wind it up.

Evidently the Island Belle would not sail for some time. The cars and a number of crates were yet, he supposed, to be put aboard her. He thought he remembered that a notice of some sort was exhibited at the foot of the gangway: probably the time of sailing. The Cove and his own familiar island began to seem very attractive. He would find out when the Island Belle sailed, return to the hotel for his rucksack, pay his bill, and rejoin her.

He pulled his hood well over his face and squelched out of the shed into the storm.

It was only a short distance to the ship’s moorings. Her bows rose and fell and above the storm he could hear her rubbing-strake grind against the jetty. He walked forward into the rain and was half blinded. When he came alongside the ship he stopped at the edge of the jetty and peered up, wondering if there was a watchman aboard.

The blow came as if it was part of the storm, a violence that struck him below the shoulders. The jetty was gone from under his feet. The side of the ship flew upwards. He thought, “This is abominable,” and was hit in the face. Green cold enclosed him and his mouth was full of water. Then he knew what had happened.

He had fallen between the turn of the bilge and the jetty, had struck against something on his way down and had sunk and risen. Saltwater stung the back of his nose and lodged in his throat. He floundered in a narrow channel between the legs of the jetty and the sloping side of the bilge.

“Did he fall or was he pushed?” thought Ricky, struggling in his prison, and knew quite definitely that he had been pushed.

iii

He had no idea how much leeway the ship’s moorings allowed her or whether she might roll to such a degree that he could be crushed against the legs of the jetty, the only motionless things in a heaving universe.

His head cleared. Instinctive physical reactions had kept him afloat for the first moments. He now got himself under control. “I ought to yell,” he thought and a distant thunderclap answered him. He turned on his back; the ship rolled and disclosed a faint daylight moon careering across a gap in the clouds. With great difficulty he began to swim, sometimes touching the piles and grazing his hands and feet on barnacles. The turn of the bilge passed slowly above him and at last was gone. He had cleared the bows of the Island Belle. There was Saint Pierre-des-Roches with the Hotel Beau Rivage and the hill and the church spire above it.

Now, should he yell for help? But there was still Somebody up there perhaps who wanted him drowned, crushed, whatever way — dead. He trod water, bobbing and ducking, and looked about him.

Not three feet away was a steel ladder.

When he reached and clung to it he still thought of the assailant who might be up there, waiting. He was now so cold that it would be better to risk anything rather than stay where he was. So he climbed, slowly. He had lost his espadrilles and the rungs bit into his feet. There was a sound like a voice, very far away: In his head, he thought, not real. Halfway up he paused. Everything had become quiet. It no longer rained.

“Hey! Hey there! Are you all right?”

For a moment he didn’t know where to look. The voice seemed to have come out of the sky. Then he saw, in the bows of the ship, leaning over the taffrail, a man in oilskins and sou’wester. He waved at Ricky.

“Are you OK, mate?” shouted the man.

Ricky tried to answer but could only produce a croak.

“Hang on, I’ll be with you. Hang on.”

Ricky hauled himself up another three rungs. His reeling head was just below the level of the jetty. He pushed his left arm through the rungs of the ladder and hung there, clinging with his right hand. He heard boots clump down the gangway and along the jetty towards him.

“You’ll be all right,” said the voice, close above him. He let his head flop back. The face under the sou’wester was red and concerned and looked very big against the sky. An arm and a purplish hand reached down. “Come on, then,” said the voice, “only a couple more.”

“I’m sort of — gone—” Ricky whispered.

“Not you. You’re fine. Make the effort, Jack.”

He made the effort and was caught by the arms and saved.

He lay on the jetty saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and being sick.

The man was very kind. He took off his oilskin and spread it over Ricky, whose teeth now chattered like castanets. He lay on his back and saw the clouds part and disperse. He felt the sun on his face.

“You’re doing good, mate,” said the man. “How’s about we go on board and take a drop of something for the cold? You was aboard us this morning? That right?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“Up she rises. Take it easy. Lovely.”

He was on his feet. They began to move along the jetty.

“Is there anybody else?” Ricky said.

“How’d you mean, anybody else?”

“Watching.”

“You’re not yourself. You’ll be all right. Here we go, then.”

Ricky made heavy work of the gangway. Once on board he did what he was told. The man took him into the little saloon. He helped him strip and brought him a vest and heavy underpants. He lay on a bench and was covered with a blanket and overcoats and given half a tumbler of raw whiskey. It made him gasp and shudder but it ran through him like fire. “Super,” he said. “That’s super.”

“What happened, then? Did you slip on the jetty or what?”

“I was pushed. No, I’m not wandering and I’m not tight — yet. I was given a bloody great shove in the back. I swear I was. Listen.”

The man listened. He scraped his jaw and eyed Ricky and every now and then wagged his head.

“I was looking up at the deck, trying to see if anyone was about. I wanted to know when she sails. I was on the edge almost. I can feel it now — two hands hard in the small of my back. I took a bloody great stride into damnall and dropped. I hit something. Under my eye, it was.”

The man leaned forward and peered at his face. “It’s coming up lovely,” he admitted. “I’ll say that for you.”

“Didn’t you see anybody?”

“Me! I was taking a bit of kip, mate, wasn’t I? Below. Something woke me, see. Thunder or what-have-you and I come up on deck and there you was, swimming and ducking and grabbing the ladder. I hailed you but you didn’t seem to take no notice. Not at first you didn’t.”

“He must have been hiding in the goods shed. He must have followed me down and sneaked into the shed.”

“Reckon you think you know who done it, do you? Somebody got it in for you, like?” He stared at Ricky. “You don’t look the type,” he said. “Nor yet you don’t sound like it, neither.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Ricky sighed. He was beginning to feel sleepy.

“Look,” said the man, “we sail at six. Was you thinking of sailing with us, then? Just to know, like. No hurry.”

“Oh yes,” Ricky said. “Yes, please.”

“Where’s your dunnage?”

Ricky pulled himself together and told him. The man said his mate, the second deckhand, was relieving him as watchman at four-thirty. He offered to collect Ricky’s belongings from the hotel and pay his bill. Ricky fished his waterproof wallet out of an inside pocket of his raincoat and found that the notes were not too wet to be presentable.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “Look. Take a taxi. Buy yourself a bottle of Scotch from me. You will, won’t you?”

He said he would. He also said his name was Jim Le Compte and they’d have to get Ricky dressed proper and sitting up before the Old Man came aboard them.

And by six o’clock Ricky was sitting in the saloon fully dressed with a rug over his knees. It was a smoother crossing than he had expected, and rather to his surprise he was not seasick, but slept through most of it. At Montjoy he said goodbye to his friend. “Look,” he said, “Jim, I owe you a lot already. Will you do something more for me?”

“What would that be?”

“Forget about there being anyone else in it. I just skidded and fell. Please don’t think,” Ricky added, “that I’m in any sort of trouble. Believe me, I’m not. Word of honor. But — will you be a good chap and leave it that way?”

Le Compte looked at him for some moments with his head on one side. “Fair enough, squire,” he said at last. “If that’s the way you want it. You skidded and fell.”

“You are a good chap,” said Ricky. He went ashore carrying a rucksack full of wet clothes and took a taxi to the Cove.

He let himself in and went straight upstairs, passing Mrs. Ferrant who was speaking on the telephone.

When he entered his room a very tall man rose from the armchair.

It was his father.

iv

“So you see I’m on duty,” said Alleyn. “Fox and I have got a couple of tarted-up apartments at the Neo-Ritz or whatever it calls itself in Montjoy, the use of a police car, and a tidy program of routine work ahead. I wouldn’t have any business talking to you, Rick, except that by an exasperating twist you may turn out to be a source of information.”

“Hi!” said Ricky excitedly. “Is it about Miss Harkness?”

“Why?” Alleyn asked sharply.

“I only wondered.”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it’s about normally, but if we’re to get any further I think I’ll have to. And Rick — I want an absolute assurance that you’ll discuss this business with nobody. But nobody. In the smallest degree. It must be as if it’d never been. Right?”

“Right,” said Ricky and his father thought he heard a tinge of regret.

“Nobody,” Alleyn repeated. “And certainly not Julia Pharamond.”

Ricky blushed.

“As far as you’re concerned, Fox and I have come over to discuss a proposed adjustment to reciprocal procedure between the island constabulary and the mainland police. We shall be sweating it out at interminable and deadly boring meetings. That’s the story. Got it?”

“Yes, Cid.” (“Cid,” deriving from C.I.D., was the name Ricky and his friends gave his father.)

“Yes. And nobody’s going to believe it when we start nosing round at the riding stables. But never mind. Let’s say that as we were here, the local chaps thought they’d like a second opinion. By the way, talking about local chaps, the Super at Montjoy who called us in hasn’t helped matters by bursting his appendix and having an urgent operation. The local sergeant at the Cove, Plank — but of course you know Plank — is detailed to the job.”

“He’s nobody’s fool.”

“Good. Now, coming back to you. The really important bit to remember is that we must be held to take no interest whatever in Monsieur Ferrant’s holidays and we’ve never even heard of Sydney Jones.”

“But,” Ricky ventured, “I’ve told the Pharamonds about his visit to you and Mum.”

“Damn. All right, then. It passed off quietly and nothing has ever come of it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Loud and clear.”

“Yes, Cid.”

“Good. All right. Are you hungry, by the way?”

“Now you mention it.”

“Could that formidable lady downstairs be persuaded to give us both something to eat?”

“I’m sure. I’ll ask her.”

“You’d better tell her you slid on the wet wharf and banged your cheek on a stanchion.”

“She’ll think I was drunk.”

“Good. You smell like a Scotch hangover anyway. Are you sure you’re all right, old boy? Sure?”

“Fine. Now. I’ll have a word with Mrs. F.”

When he’d gone, Alleyn looked out the window at the darkening Cove and turned over Ricky’s account of his visit to Saint Pierre-des-Roches and the events that preceded it. People, he reflected, liked to talk about police cases in terms of a jigsaw puzzle, and that was fair enough as far as it went. But in this instance he couldn’t be sure that the bits all belonged to the puzzle. “Only connect” Forster owlishly laid down as the novelist’s law. He could equally have been setting out a guide for investigating officers.

There had never been any question of Ricky following in his father’s footsteps. From the time when his son went to his first school, Alleyn had been at pains to keep his job at a remove as far as the boy was concerned. Ricky’s academic career had been more than satisfactory and about as far removed from the squalor, boredom, horror, and cynicism of a policeman’s lot as it would be possible to imagine.

And now? Here they were, both of them, converging on a case that might well turn out to be all compact of such elements. And over and above everything else, here was Ricky escaped from what, almost certainly, had been a murderous attack, the thought of which sent an icy spasm through his father’s stomach. Get him out of it, smartly, now, before there was any further involvement, he thought — and then had to recognize that already Ricky’s involvement was too far advanced for this to be possible. He must be treated as someone who might, himself in the clear, provide the police with “helpful information.”

And at the back of his extreme distaste for this development why was there an indefinable warmth, a latent pleasure? He wondered if perhaps an old loneliness had been, or looked to become, a little assuaged.

Ricky came back with the assurance that Mrs. Ferrant was concocting a dish the mere smell of which would cause the salivary glands of a hermit to spout like fountains.

“She’s devoured by curiosity,” he said. “About you. Why you’re here. What you do. Whether you’re cross with me. The lot. She’d winkle information out of a Trappist monk, that one would. I can’t wait.”

“For what?”

“For her to start on you.”

“Rick,” Alleyn said. “She’s Mrs. Ferrant, and Ferrant, you tell me, is mysteriously affluent, goes in for solitary night fishing, pays dressy visits to Saint Pierre-des-Roches, and seems to be thick with Jones. With Jones who also visits there and goes to London carrying paint and who, since he’s found out your father is a cop, has taken a scunner to you. You think Jones dopes. So do I. Ferrant seems to have a bully’s ascendancy over Jones. One of them, you think, tried to murder you. It follows that you watch your step with Mrs. Ferrant, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course. And I always have. Not because of any of that but because she’s so bloody insatiable. About the Pharamonds in particular. Especially about Louis.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. And I’ll tell you what. I think when she was cooking or whatever she did up at L’Espérance, she had a romp on the side with Louis.”

“Why?”

“Because of the way he talks about her. The bedside manner. And — well, because of that kid.”

“The Ferrant kid?”

“That’s right. There’s a look. Unmistakable, I’d have thought. Dark and cheeky and a bit slyboots.”

“Called?”

“Wait for it.”

“Louis?”

Ricky nodded.

“It’s as common a French name as can be,” said Alleyn.

“Yes, of course,” Ricky agreed, “and it’d be going altogether too far, one would think, wouldn’t one? To christen him that if Louis was—” He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s probably just my dirty mind after all. And — well—”

“You don’t like Louis Pharamond?”

“Not much. Does it show?”

“A bit.”

“He was on that voyage when you met them, wasn’t he?” Ricky asked. Alleyn nodded. “Did you like him?”

“Not much.”

“Good.”

“Which signifies,” Alleyn said, “damnall.”

“He had something going with Miss Harkness.”

“For pity’s sake!” Alleyn exclaimed, “how many more and why do you think so?”

Ricky described the incident on the cliffs. “It had been a rendezvous,” he said rather importantly. “You could tell.”

“I don’t quite see how when you say you were lying flat on your face behind a rock, but let that pass.”

Ricky tried not to grin. “Anyway,” he said, “I bet I’m right. He’s a prowler.”

“Rick,” Alleyn said after a pause, “I’m here on a sort of double job which is my Assistant Commissioner’s Machiavellian idea of economy. I’m here because the local police are worried about the death of Dulcie Harkness and have asked us to nod in and I’m also supposed in an offhand, carefree manner to look into the possibility of this island being a penultimate station in one of the heroin routes into Great Britain.”

“Laws!”

“Yes. Of course you’ve read about the ways the trade is run. Every kind of outlandish means of transit is employed — electric light-fittings, component parts for hearing aids, artificial limbs, fat men’s navels, anything hollow — you name it. If the thing’s going on here there’s got to be some way of getting the stuff out of Marseilles, where the conversion into heroin is effected, across to Saint Pierre, from there to the island and thence to the mainland. Anything suggest itself?”

“Such as why did Jones cut up so rough when I trod on his paint?”

“Go on.”

“He does seem to make frequent trips — Hi!” Ricky said, interrupting himself. “Would this mean Jerome et Cie were in it or that Jones was on his own?”

“Probably the former but it’s anyone’s guess.”

“And Ferrant? The way he behaved with Syd at Saint Pierre. Could they be in cahoots? Is there anything on Ferrant?”

“The narcotics boys say he’s being watched. Apparently he makes these pleasure trips rather often and has been known to fly down to Marseilles and the Côte d’Azur where he’s been seen hobnobbing with recognized traders.”

“But what’s he supposed to do?”

“They’ve nothing definite. He may have the odd rendezvous on calm nights when he goes fishing. Suppose — and this is the wildest guesswork — but suppose a gentleman with similar propensities puts out from Saint Pierre with a consignment of artists’ paints. They’ve been opened at the bottom and capsules of heroin pushed up and filled in nice and tidy with paint. Then a certain amount is squeezed out at the top and the tubes messed about to look used. And in due course they go into Syd Jones’s paint box among his rightful materials and he takes one of his trips over to London. The stuff he totes round to shops and artists’ studios is of course pure as pure. The customs people have got used to him and his paint box. They probably did their stuff at some early stages before he began to operate. Even now, if they got curious, the odds are they’d hit on the wrong tube. One would suppose he doesn’t distribute more than a minimum of the doctored jobs among his legitimate material. Of which the vermillion you put your great hoof on was one.”

Alleyn stopped. He looked at his son and saw a familiar glaze of incredulity and interest on his open countenance.

“Don’t get it wrong,” he said. “That may be all my eye. Mr. Jones may be as pure as the driven snow. But if you can find another reason for him taking such a scunner on you, let’s have it. Rick, consider. You visit his ‘Pad’ and show an interest in his Jerome et Cie paint. A few days later you tread on his vermillion and try to pick up the tube. You send him to us and when he gets there he’s asked if he’s messing about with drugs. On top of that he learns that your pop’s a cop. He sets out on a business trip to headquarters and who does he find dodging about among the cargo? You, Chummy. He’s rattled and lets fly, accusing you of the first offense he can think of that doesn’t bear any relation to his actual goings-on. And to put the lid on it you dog his footsteps almost to the very threshold of Messrs. Jerome et Cie. And don’t forget, all this may be a farrago of utter nonsense.”

“It adds up, I suppose. Or does it?”

“If you know a better ‘ole’—”

“What about Ferrant, then? Are they in cahoots over the drug racket?”

“It could be. It looks a bit like it. And Ferrant it is who finds you — what exactly were you doing? Show me.”

“Have a heart.”

“Come on.” Alleyn picked up a copy of yesterday’s Times. “Show me.” Ricky opened it and tore a hole in the center fold. He then advanced his eye to the hole, screwed up his face, and peered through.

Alleyn looked over the top of the Times. “Boh!” he said.

Mrs. Ferrant came in.

“Your bit of supper’s ready,” she said, regarding them with surprise. “In the parlor.”

Self-conscious, they followed her downstairs.

The aroma — delicate, pervasive, and yet discreet — welcomed them into the parlor. The dish, elegantly presented, was on the table. The final assembly had been completed, the garniture was in place. Mrs. Ferrant, saucepan in hand, spooned the shellfish sauce over hot fillets of sole.

“My God!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Sole à la Dieppoise!”

His success with the cook could only be compared to that of her masterpiece with him. Ricky observed, with mounting wonderment and small understanding, since the conversation was in French, the rapprochement his father instantly established with Mrs. Ferrant. He questioned her about the sole, the shrimps, the mussels. In a matter of minutes he had elicited the information that Madame (as he was careful to call her) had a maman who actually came from Dieppe and from whom she inherited her art. He was about to send Ricky out at the gallop to purchase a bottle of white Burgundy when Mrs. Ferrant, a gratified smirk twitching at her lips, produced one. He kissed her hand and begged her to join them. She consented. Ricky’s eyes opened wider and wider.

As the strange little feast progressed he became at least partially tuned in. He gathered that his father had steered the conversation around to the Pharamonds and the days of her service up at L’Espérance. “Monsieur Louis” came up once or twice. He was sophisticated. A very mondain type, was he not? One might say so, said Mrs. Ferrant with a shrug. It was her turn to ask questions. Monsieur Alleyn was well acquainted with the family, for example? Not to say “well.” They had been fellow passengers on an ocean voyage. Monsieur’s visit was unanticipated by his son, was it not? But entirely so. It had been pleasant to surprise him. So droll the expression, when he walked in. Jaw dropped, eyes bulging. Alleyn gave a lively imitation and slapped his son jovially on the shoulder. Ah yes, for example, his black eye, Mrs. Ferrant inquired, and switching to English asked Ricky what he’d been doing with himself, then, in Saint Pierre. Had he got into bad company? Ricky offered the fable of the iron stanchion. Her stewed-prune eyes glittered and she said something in French that sounded like à d’autres: Ricky wondered whether it was the equivalent of “tell us another.”

“You got yourself in a proper mess,” she pointed out. “Dripping wet those things are in your rucksack.”

“I got caught in the thunderstorm.”

“Did it rain seaweed, then?” asked Mrs. Ferrant and for the first time in their acquaintance gave out a cackle of amusement in which, to Ricky’s fury, his father joined.

“Ah, Madame!” said Alleyn with a comradely look at Mrs. Ferrant. “Les jeunes hommes!”

She nodded her head up and down. Ricky wondered what the hell she supposed he’d been up to.

The sole à la Dieppoise was followed by the lightest of sorbets, a cheese board, coffee and cognac.

“I have not eaten so well,” Alleyn said, “since I was last in Paris. You are superb, Madame.”

The conversation proceeded bilingually and drifted around to Miss Harkness and to what Alleyn, with, as his son felt, indecent understatement, referred to as son contretemps équestre.

Mrs. Ferrant put on an air of grandeur, of somber loftiness. It had been unfortunate, she conceded. Miss Harkness’s awful face and sightless glare flashed up in Ricky’s remembrance.

She had perhaps been of a reckless disposition Alleyn hinted. In more ways than one, Mrs. Ferrant agreed and sniffed very slightly.

“By the way, Rick,” Alleyn said. “Did I forget to say? Your Mr. Jones called on us in London?”

“Really?” said Ricky, managing to sound surprised. “What on earth for? Selling Mummy his paints?”

“Well — advertising them, shall we say. He showed your mother some of his work.”

“What did she think?”

“I’m afraid, not a great deal.”

It was Mrs. Ferrant’s turn again. Was Mrs. Alleyn, then, an artist? An artist of great distinction, perhaps? And Alleyn himself? He was on holiday no doubt? No, no, Alleyn said. It was a business trip. He would be staying in Montjoy for a few days but had taken the opportunity to visit his son. Quite a coincidence, was it not, that Ricky should be staying at the Cove. Lucky fellow! Alleyn cried catching him another buffet and bowing at the empty dishes.

Mrs. Ferrant didn’t in so many words ask Alleyn what his job was but she came indecently close to it. Ricky wondered if his father would sidestep the barrage, but no, he said cheerfully that he was a policeman. She offered a number of exclamations. She would never have dreamed it! A policeman! In English she accused him of “having her on” and in French of not being the type. It was all very vivacious and Ricky didn’t believe a word of it. His ideas on Mrs. Ferrant were undergoing a rapid transformation, due in part, he thought, to her command of French. He cpuldn’t follow much of what she said but the sound of it lent a gloss of sophistication to her general demeanor. It put her into a new category. She had become more formidable. As for his father: it was as if some frisky stranger laughed and flattered and almost flirted. Was this The Cid? What were they talking about now? About Mr. Ferrant and his trips to Saint Pierre and how he would never eat as well abroad as he did at home. He had business connections in France perhaps? No. Merely family ones. He liked to keep up with his aunts—

Ricky had had a long, painful and distracting day of it. Impossible to believe that only this morning he and Sydney Jones had leaned nose to nose across a crate of fish on a pitching deck. And how odd those people looked, scuttling about so far below. Like woodlice. Awful to fall from the balcony among them. But he was falling: down, down into the disgusting sea.

“Arrrach!” he tried to shout and looked into his father’s face and felt his hands on his shoulders. Mrs. Ferrant had gone.

“Come along, old son,” Alleyn said, and his deep voice was very satisfactory. “Bed. Call it a day.”

v

Inspector Fox was discussing a pint of mild-and-bitter when Alleyn walked into the bar at the Cod-and-Bottle. He was engaged in dignified conversation with the landlord, three of the habituals, and Sergeant Plank. Alleyn saw that he was enjoying his usual success. They hung upon his words. His massive back was turned to the door and Alleyn approached him unobserved.

“That’s where you hit the nail smack on the head, sergeant,” he was saying. “Calm, cool, and collected. You’ve had the experience of working with him?”

“Well,” said Sergeant Plank clearing his throat, “in a very subsidiary position, Mr. Fox. But I remarked upon it.”

“You remarked upon it. Exactly, So’ve I. For longer than you might think, Mr. Maistre,” said Fox, drawing the landlord into closer communion. “And a gratifying experience it’s been. However,” said Mr. Fox who had suddenly become aware of Alleyn’s approach, “quoi qu’il en soit.”

The islanders were bilingual, and Mr. Fox never let slip an opportunity to practice his French or to brag, in a calm and stately manner, of the excellencies of his superior officer. It was seldom that Alleyn caught him at this exercise and when he did, gave him fits. But that made little difference to Fox, who merely pointed out that the technique had proved a useful approach to establishing comfortable relations with persons from whom Alleyn hoped to obtain information.

“By and large,” Mr. Fox had said, “people like to know about personalities in the Force so long as they’re in the clear themselves. They get quite curious to meet you, Mr. Alleyn, when they hear about your little idiosyncrasies: it takes the stiffness out of the first inquiries, if you see what I mean. In theatrical parlance,” Fox had added, “they call it building up an entrance.”

“In common or garden parlance,” Alleyn said warmly, “it makes a bloody great fool out of me.” Fox had smiled slightly.

On this occasion it was clear that the Foxian method had been engaged and, it was pretty obvious, abetted by Sergeant Plank. Alleyn found himself the object of fixed and silent attention in the bar of the Cod-and-Bottle and the evident subject of intense speculation.

Mr. Fox, who was infallible at remembering names at first hearing, performed introductions, and Alleyn shook hands all round. Throats were cleared arid boots were shuffled. Bob Maistre deployed his own technique as host and asked Alleyn how he’d found the young chap, then, and what was all this they’d heard about him getting himself into trouble over to Saint Pierre? Alleyn gave a lively account of his son losing his footing on the wet jetty, hitting his jaw on an iron stanchion, and falling between the jetty and the Island Belle.

“Could have been a serious business,” he said, “as far as I can make out. No knowing what might have happened if it hadn’t been for this chap aboard the ship — Jim Le Compte, isn’t it?”

It emerged that Jim Le Compte was a Cove man and this led easily to the introduction of local gossip and, easing around under Plank’s pilotage, to Mr. Ferrant and to wags of the head and knowing grins suggesting that Gil Ferrant was a character, a one, a bit of a lad.

“He’s lucky,” Alleyn said lightly, “to be able to afford jaunts in France. I wish I could.”

This drew forth confused speculations as to Gil Ferrant’s resources: his rich aunties in Brittany, his phenomenal luck on the French lotteries, his being, in general, a pretty warm customer.

This turn of conversation was, to Alleyn’s hidden fury, interrupted by Sergeant Plank, who offered the suggestion that no doubt the Chief Super’s professional duties sometimes took him across the Channel. Seeing it was expected of him, Alleyn responded with an anecdote or two about a sensational case involving the pursuit and arrest in Marseilles, with the assistance of the French force, of a notable child-killer. This, as Fox said afterwards, went down like a nice long drink but, as he pointed out to Sergeant Plank, had the undesirable effect of cutting off any further local gossip. “It was well meant on your part, Sarge,” Mr. Fox conceded, “but it broke the thread. It stopped the flow of info.”

“I’m a source of local info myself, Mr. Fox,” Sergeant Plank ventured. “In my own person, I am.”

“True enough as far as it goes, Sarge, but you’re overlooking a salient factor. As the Chief Super has frequently remarked, ours is a solitary class of employment. We can and in your own type of patch, the village community, we often do, establish friendly relations. Trespassing, local vandalism, creating nuisances, trouble with neighbors and they’re all over you, but let something big turn up and you’ll find yourself out on your own. They’ll herd together like sheep and you won’t be included in the flock. It can be uncomfortable until you get used to it.”

Fox left a moment or two for this to sink in. He then cleared his throat and continued. “The effect of the diversion,” he said, “was this. The thread of local gossip being broken what did they do? They got all curious about the Chief. What’s he here for? Is it the Harkness fatality and if not what is it? And if it is why is it? Enough to create the wrong atmosphere at the site of investigation.”

Whether or not these pronouncements were correct, the atmosphere at Leathers the next morning, as disseminated by Mr. Harkness, the sole occupant, was far from comfortable. Alleyn, Fox, and Plank arrived at eight-thirty to find shuttered windows and a notice pinned to the front door: “Stables Closed till Further Notice.” They knocked and rang to no effect.

“He’ll be round at the back,” Plank said and led the way to the stables.

At first they seemed to be deserted. A smell of straw and horse droppings hung on the air, flies buzzed, and in the old open coach house a couple of pigeons waddled about the floor, pecked here and there, and flew up to the rafters where they defecated offhandedly on the roof of the battered car. In the end loose-box the sorrel mare reversed herself, looked out, rolled her eyes, pricked her ears at them, and trembled her nostrils in an all but inaudible whinny.

“Will I see if I can knock Cuth Harkness up, sir?” offered Plank.

“Wait a bit, Plank. Don’t rush it.”

Alleyn strolled over to the loose-box. “Hullo, old girl,” he said, “how goes it?” He leaned on the half-door and looked her over. The near foreleg was still bandaged. She nibbled his ear with velvet lips. “Feeling bored, are you?” he said and moved down the row of empty loose-boxes to the coach house.

There was the coil of old wire where Ricky had seen it, hanging from a peg above a pile of empty sacks. It was rather heavier than picture-hanging wire and looked as if it had been there for a long time. But as Ricky had noticed, there was a freshly cut end. Alleyn called Fox and the sergeant over. Plank’s boots, being of the regulation sort, loudly announced his passage across the yard. He changed to tiptoe and an unnerving squeak.

“Take a look,” Alleyn murmured.

“I reckon,” Plank said after a heavy-breathed examination. “That could be it, Mr. Alleyn. I reckon that would fit.”

“Do you, by George,” Alleyn said.

There was an open box in the corner filled with a jumble of odds and ends and a number of tools, among them a pair of wire cutters. With uncanny speed Alleyn used them to nip off three inches of wire from the reverse end.

“That, Sergeant Plank,” he said as he replaced the cutters, “is something we must never, never do.”

“I’ll try to remember, sir,” said Sergeant Plank, demurely.

“Mr. Harkness,” Fox said, “seems to be coming, Mr. Alleyn.”

And indeed he could be heard coughing hideously inside the house. Alleyn reached the door in a breath and the other two stood behind him. He knocked briskly.

Footsteps sounded in the passage and an indistinguishable grumbling. A lock was turned and the door dragged open a few inches. Mr. Harkness, blinking and unshaven, peered out at them through a little gale of Scotch whiskey.

“The stables are closed,” he said thickly and made as if to shut the door. Alleyn’s foot was across the threshold.

“Mr. Harkness?” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you. We’re police officers. Could you give us a moment?”

For a second or two he neither spoke nor moved. Then he pulled the door wide open.

“Police, are you?” Mr. Harkness said. “What for? Is it about my poor sinful niece again, God forgive her, but that’s asking too much of Him. Come in.”

He showed them into his office and gave them chairs and seemed to become aware, for the first time, of Sergeant Plank.

“Joey Plank,” he said. “You again. Can’t you let it alone? What’s the good? It won’t bring her back. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord and she’s finding that out for herself where she’s gone. Who are these gentlemen?”

Plank introduced them. “The Chief Superintendent is on an administrative visit to the island, Mr. Harkness,” he said, “and has kindly offered to take a wee look-see at our little trouble.”

“Why do you talk in that silly way about it?” Mr. Harkness asked fretfully. “It’s not a little trouble, it’s hell and damnation and she’s brought it on herself and I’m the cause of it. I’m sorry,” he said and turned to Alleyn with a startling change to normality. “You’ll think me awfully rude but I daresay you’ll understand what a shock this has been.”

“Of course we do,” Alleyn said. “We’re sorry to break in on you like this but Superintendent Curie in Montjoy suggested it.”

“I suppose he thinks he knows what he’s talking about,” Mr. Harkness grumbled. His manner now suggested a mixture of hopelessness and irritation. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands unsteady, and his breath was dreadful. “What’s this about the possibility of foul play? What do they think I am, then? If there was any chance of foul play wouldn’t I be zealous in the pursuit of unrighteousness? Wouldn’t I be sleepless night and day as the hound of Heaven until the awful truth was hunted down?” He glared moistly at Alleyn. “Well,” he shouted. “Come on! Wouldn’t I?”

“I’m sure you would,” Alleyn hurriedly agreed.

“Very natural and proper,” said Fox.

“You shut up,” said Mr. Harkness but absently and without rancor.

“Mr. Harkness,” Alleyn began and checked himself. “I’m sorry — should I be giving you your rank? I don’t know—”

The shaky hand drifted to the toothbrush moustache. “I don’t insist on it,” the thick voice mumbled. “Might of course. But let it pass. ‘Mr.’ is good enough.” The wraith of the riding master faded and the distracted zealot returned. “Pride,” said Mr. Harkness, “is the deadliest of all the sins. You were saying?”

He leaned toward Alleyn with a parody of anxious attentiveness.

Alleyn was very careful. He explained that in cases of fatality the police had a duty to eliminate the possibility of any verdict but that of accident. Sometimes, he said, there were features that at first sight seemed to preclude this. “More often than not,” he said, “these features turn out to be of no importance, but we do have to make sure of it.”

With an owlish and insecure parody of the conscientious officer, Mr. Harkness said: “Cer’nly. Good show.”

Alleyn, with difficulty, took him through the period between the departure and return of the riding party. It emerged that Mr. Harkness had spent most of the day in the office concocting material for religious handouts. He gave a disjointed account of locking his niece in her room and of her presumed escape and said distractedly that some time during the afternoon, he could not recall when, he had gone into the barn to pray but had noticed nothing untoward and had met nobody. He began to wilt.

“Where did you have your lunch?” Alleyn asked.

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Harkness and left the room.

“Now what!” Mr. Fox exclaimed.

“Call of nature?” Sergeant Plank suggested.

“Or the bottle,” Alleyn said. “Damn.”

He looked about the office: at faded photographs of equestrian occasions, of a barely recognizable and slim Mr. Harkness in the uniform of a mounted-infantry regiment. A more recent photograph displayed a truculent young woman in jodhpurs displaying a sorrel mare.

“That’s Dulce,” said Sergeant Plank. “That was,” he added.

The desk was strewn with bills, receipts, and a litter of brochures and pamphlets, some of a horsey description, others proclaiming in dated, execrable type the near approach of judgment and eternal damnation. In the center was a letter pad covered in handwriting that began tidily and deteriorated into an illegible scrawl. This seemed to be a draft for a piece on the lusts of the flesh. Above and to the left of the desk was the corner cupboard spotted by Ricky and Jasper Pharamond. The door was not quite closed and Alleyn flipped it open. Inside was the whiskey bottle and behind this, as if thrust out of sight, but still distinguishable, the card with a red-ink skull and crossbones and the legend — “BEWARE!!! This Way Lies Damnation!!!” The bottle was empty.

Alleyn reached out a long finger and lifted a corner of the card, exposing a small carton half filled with capsules.

“Look at this, Br’er Fox,” he said.

Fox put on his spectacles and peered.

“Well, well,” he said and after a closer look: “Simon Frères. Isn’t there something, now, about Simon Frères?”

“Amphetamines. Dexies. Prohibited in Britain,” Alleyn said. He opened the carton and shook one capsule into his palm. He had replaced the carton and pocketed the capsule when Fox said, “Coming.”

Alleyn shut the cupboard door and was back in his chair as an uneven footstep announced the return of Mr. Harkness. He came in on a renewed fog of Scotch.

“Apologize,” he said. “Bowels, all to blazes. Result of shock. You were saying?”

“I’d said all of it, I think,” Alleyn replied. “I was going to ask, though, if you’d mind our looking over the ground outside. Where it happened and so on.”

“Go where you like,” he said, “but don’t, please, please, don’t ask me to come.”

“Of course, if you’d rather not.”

“I dream about that gap,” he whispered. There was a long and difficult silence. “They made me see her,” he said at last. “Identification. She looked awful.”

“I know.”

“Well,” he said with one of his most disconcerting changes of manner. “I’ll leave you to it. Good hunting.” Incredibly he let out a bark of what seemed to be laughter and rose with difficulty to his feet. He had begun to weep.

They had reached the outside door when he erupted into the passage and ricocheting from one wall to the other, advanced toward Alleyn upon whom he thrust a pink brochure.

Alleyn took it and glanced at flaring headlines.

“Read,” Mr. Harkness said with difficulty, “mark, learn and inwardly indigestion. See you on Sunday.”

He executed an abrupt turn and once more retired, waving airily as he did so. His uneven footsteps faded down the passage.

Fox said thoughtfully: “He won’t last long at that rate.”

“He’s not himself, Mr. Fox,” Plank said, rather as if he felt bound to raise excuses for a local product. “He’s very far from being himself. It’s the liquor.”

“You don’t tell me.”

“He’s not used to it, like.”

“He’s learning, though,” Fox said.

Alleyn said: “Didn’t he drink? Normally?”

“T.T. Rabid. Hellfire according to him. Since he was Saved,” Plank added.

“Saved from what?” Fox asked. “Oh, I see what you mean. Eternal damnation and all that carry-on. What was that about ‘See you Sunday’? Has anything been said about seeing him on Sunday?”

“Not by me,” Alleyn said. “Wait a bit.”

He consulted the pink brochure. Following some terrifying information about the evils of intemperance it went on to urge a full attendance at the Usual Sunday Gathering in the Old Barn at Leathers with Service and Supper, Gents 50p, Ladies a Basket. Across these printed instructions a wildly irregular hand had scrawled: “Special! Day of Wrath!! May 13th!!! Remember!!!!”

“What’s funny about May thirteenth?” asked Plank and then: “Oh. Of course. Dulcie.”

“Will it be a kind of memorial service?” Fox speculated.

“Whatever it is, we shall attend it,” said Alleyn. “Come on.” And he led the way outside.

The morning was sunny and windless. In the horse paddock two of the Leathers string obligingly nibbled each other’s flanks. On the hillside beyond the blackthorn hedge three more grazed together, swishing their tails and occasionally tossing up their heads.

“Peaceful scene, sir?” Sergeant Plank suggested.

“Isn’t it?” Alleyn agreed. “Would that be the Old Barn?” He pointed to a building at some distance from the stables.

“That’s it, sir. That’s where they hold their meetings. It’s taken on surprising in the district. By all accounts he’s got quite a following.”

“Ever been to one, Plank?”

“Me, Mr. Alleyn? Not in my line. We’re C of E, me and my Missus. They tell me this show’s very much in the blood-and-thunder line.”

“We’ll take a look at the barn later.”

They walked down to the gap in the hedge.

An improvised but sturdy fence had been built, enclosing the area where the sorrel mare had taken off for her two jumps. Pieces of raised and weathered board covered the hoofprints.

“Who ordered all this?” Alleyn asked. “The Super?”

After a moment Plank said: “Well, no sir.”

“You did it on your own?”

“Sir.”

“Good for you, Plank. Very well done.”

“Sir,” said Plank, crimson with gratification.

He lifted and replaced the boards for Alleyn. “There wasn’t anything much in the way of human prints,” he said.

“There’s been heavy rain. And, of course, horses’ hoofprints all over the shop.”

“You’ve saved these.”

“I took casts,” Plank murmured.

“You’ll be getting yourself in line for a halo,” said Alleyn and they moved to the gap itself. The blackthorn in the gap had been considerably knocked about. Alleyn looked over it and down and across to the far bank where a sort of plastic tent had been erected. Above and around this a shallow drain had been dug.

“That’s one hell of a dirty great jump,” Alleyn said.

There was a massive slide down the near bank and a scramble of hoofprints on the far one.

“As I read them,” Plank ventured, “it looks as if the mare made a mess of the jump, fell all ways down this bank, and landed on top of her rider on the far side.”

“And it looks to me,” Alleyn rejoined, “as if you’re not far wrong.”

He examined the two posts on either side of the gap. They were half hidden by blackthorn, but when this was held aside, scars, noticed by Ricky, were clearly visible: on one post thin, rounded grooves, obviously of recent date; on the other, similar grooves dragged upwards from the margin. Both posts were loose in the ground.

At considerable discomfort to himself, Alleyn managed to clear a way to the base of the left-hand post and crawl up to it.

“The earth’s been disturbed,” he grunted. “Around the base.”

He backed out, groped in his pocket, and produced his three inches of fencing wire from the coach house.

“Here comes the nitty-gritty bit,” said Fox.

He and Plank wrapped handkerchiefs around their hands and held back obstructing brambles. Alleyn cupped his scratched left hand under one of the grooves and with his right finger and thumb insinuated his piece of wire into it. It fitted snugly.

“Bob’s your uncle,” said Fox.

“A near relation at least. Let’s try elsewhere.”

They did so with the same result on both posts.

“Well, Plank,” Alleyn said, sucking the back of his hand, “how do you read the evidence?”

“Sir, like I did before, if you’ll excuse my saying so, though I hadn’t linked it up with that coil in the coach house. Should have done, of course, but I missed it.”

“Well?”

“It looks like there was this wire, strained between the posts. It’d been there a long time because coming as we now know from the lot in the coach house it must have been rusty.” Plank caught himself up.‘ “Here. Wait a mo,” he said. “Forget that. That was silly.”

“Take your time.”

“Ta. No. Wipe that. Excuse me, sir. But it had been there a long time because the wire marks are overgrown by thorn.”

Fox cleared his throat.

“What about that one, Fox?” Alleyn said.

“It doesn’t follow. Not for sure. It wants closer examination,” Fox said. “It could have been rigged from the far side.”

“I think so. Don’t you, Plank?”

“Sir,” said Plank, chastened.

“Go on, though. When was it removed from the barn?”

“Recently. Recently it was, sir. Because the cut end was fresh.”

“Where is it?”

“We don’t know that, do we, sir?”

“Not on the peg in the coach house, at least. That lot’s in one piece. What does all this seem to indicate?”

“I’d kind of thought,” said Plank carefully, “it pointed to her having cut it away before she attempted the jump. It’s very dangerous, sir, isn’t it, in horse jumping — wire is. Hidden wire.”

“Very.”

“Would the young chap,” Fox asked, “have noticed it if it was in place when he jumped?”

Alleyn walked back to the prints of the sorrel mare’s takeoff and looked at the gap.

“Old wire. It wouldn’t catch the light, would it? We’ll have to ask the young chap.”

Plank cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I did carry out a wee routine check along the hedgerow, and there’s no wire there. I’d say never has been.”

“Right.” Alleyn hesitated for a moment. “Plank,” he said, “I can’t talk to your Super till he’s off the danger list so I’ll be asking you about matters I’d normally discuss with him.”

“Sir,” said Plank, fighting down any overt signs of gratification.

“Why was it decided to keep the case open?”

“Well, sir, on account really of the wire. I reported what I could make out of the marks on the posts and the Super had a wee look-see. That was the day he took bad with the pain, like. It were that evening his appendix bust and they operated on him and his last instructions to me was: ‘Apply for an adjournment and keep your trap shut. It’ll have to be the Yard.’ ”

“I see. Has anything been said to Mr. Harkness about the wire?”

“There has but bloody-all come of it. Far’s I could make out it’s been there so long he’d forgotten about it. Was there, in fact before he bought the place. He reckons Dulcie went down and cut it away before she jumped, which is what I thought seemed to make sense if anything he says can be so classed. But Gawd knows,” said Plank removing his helmet and looking inside it as if for an answer, “he was that put about there was no coming to grips with the man. Would you care to take a look at the far bank, sir? Where she lay?”

They took a look at it and the horses in the field came and took a look at them, blowing contemptuously through their nostrils. Plank removed his tent and disclosed the pegs he had driven into the ground around dead Dulcie Harkness.

“And you took photographs, did you?” Alleyn asked.

“It’s a bit of a hobby with me,” Plank said and drew them from a pocket in his tunic. “I carry a camera round with me,” he said. “On the off-chance of a nice picture.”

Fox placed his glasses, looked, and clicked his tongue. “Very nasty,” he said. “Very unpleasant. Poor girl.”

Plank, who contemplated his handiwork with a proprietary air, his head slightly tilted, said absently: “You wouldn’t hardly recognize her if it wasn’t for the shirt. I used a sharper aperture for this one,” and he gave technical details.

Alleyn thought of the picture in the office of a big blowsy girl in a check shirt, exhibiting the sorrel mare. He returned the photographs to their envelope and put them in his pocket. Plank replaced the tent.

Alleyn said: “From the time the riding party left until she was found, who was here? On the premises?”

“There again!” Plank cried out in vexation. “What’ve we got? Sir, we’ve got Cuth Harkness and that’s it. Now then!” He produced his notebook, wetted his thumb, and turned pages. “Harkness. Cuthbert,” he said and changed to his police-court voice.

“I asked Mr. Harkness where he and Miss Harkness and Mr. Sydney Jones were situated and how employed subsequent to the departure of the riding party. Mr. Harkness replied that he instructed Jones to drive into Montjoy and collect horse fodder, which he later did. At this point Mr. Harkness broke down and spoke very confusedly about Mr. Jones — something about him not having got the mare reshod as ordered. He shed tears considerably. Mr. Jones, on being interviewed, testified that Mr. Harkness had words with the deceased who was in her room but who looked out of her window and spoke to him, he being at that time in the stable yard. I asked Mr. Harkness ‘Was she locked in her room?’ He said she had carried on to that extent that he went quietly upstairs and turned the key in her door, which at this point was in the outside lock. When I examined the door, the key was in the inside lock and was in the unlocked position. I noted a gap of three-quarters of an inch between door and floor. I noted a thin rug laying in the gap. I pointed this out to Mr. Harkness who told me that he had left the key in the outside lock. I examined the rug and the area where it lay and formed the opinion it had been dragged into the room. The displacement of dust on the floor caused me to form this opinion, which was supported by Mr. Harkness to the extent that the deceased had effected an escape in this manner when a schoolgirl.”

Plank looked up. “I have the key, sir,” he said.

“Right. So your reading is that she waited until her uncle was gone and then poked the key onto the mat. With what?”

“She carried one of those old-time pocket knives with a spike for getting stones out of hooves. It was in her breeches pocket.”

“ ‘First Steps in Easy Detection,’ ” Alleyn murmured.

“Sir?”

“Yes, all right. Could be. So you read it that at some stage after this performance she let herself out, went downstairs, cut away the wire and dumped it we don’t know where. But replaced the cutters—”

Fox said: “Ah. Yes. There’s that.”

“—and then saddled up the mare and rode to her death. I can’t,” said Alleyn, rubbing his nose, “get it to run smoothly. It’s got a spurious feel about it. But then, of course, one hasn’t known that poor creature. What was she like, Plank?”

After a considerable pause Plank said: “Big.”

“One could see that. As a character? Come on, Plank.”

“Well,” said Plank, a countryman, “if she’d been a mare you’d of said she was always in season.”

“That’s a peculiar way of expressing yourself, Sergeant Plank,” Fox observed austerely.

“My son said something to much the same effect,” said Alleyn.

They returned to the yard. When they were halfway up the horse paddock Alleyn stooped and poked at the ground. He came up with a small and muddy object in the palm of his hand.

“Somebody’s lost a button,” he said. “Rather a nice one. Off a sleeve, I should think.”

“I never noticed it,” said Plank.

“It’d been trodden by a horse into the mud.”

He put it in his pocket.

“What’s the vet called, Plank?” he asked.

“Blacker, sir, Bob.”

“Did you see the cut on the mare’s leg?”

“No, sir. He’d bandaged her up when I looked at her.”

“Like it or lump it, he’ll have to take it off. Ring him up, Plank.”

When Mr. Blacker arrived he seemed to be, if anything, rather stimulated to find police on the spot. He didn’t even attempt to hide his curiosity and darted avid little glances from one to the other.

“Something funny in the wind, is there?” he said, “or what?”

Alleyn asked if he could see the injury to the mare’s leg. Blacker demurred, but more as a matter of form, Alleyn thought, than with any real concern. He went to the mare’s loose-box and was received with that air of complete acceptance and noninterest that animals seem to reserve for veterinary surgeons.

“How’s the girl, then?” asked Mr. Blacker.

She was wearing a halter. He moved her about the loose-box and then walked her around the yard and back.

“Nothing much the matter there, is there?” Plank ventured.

The mare stretched out her neck toward Alleyn and quivered her nostrils at him.

“Like to take hold of her?” the vet asked.

Alleyn did. She butted him uncomfortably, drooled slightly, and paid no attention to the removal of the bandage.

“There we are,” said Mr. Blacker. “Coming along nicely.”

Hair was growing in where it had been shaved off around the cut, which ran horizontally across the front of the foreleg about three inches above the hoof. It had healed, as Mr. Blacker said, good and pretty and they’d have to get those two stitches out, wouldn’t they? This was effected with a certain display of agitation on the part of the patient.

Alleyn said: “What caused it?”

“Bit of a puzzle, really. There were scratches from the blackthorn, which you’ll have seen was knocked about, and bruises and one or two superficial grazes, but she came down in soft ground. I couldn’t find anything to account for this cut. It went deep, you know. Almost to the bone. There wasn’t anything of the sort in the hedge but, my God, you’d have said it was wire.”

“Would you indeed?” Alleyn put his hand in his pocket and produced the few inches of wire he had cut from the coil in the coach house. He held it alongside the scar.

“Would that fit?” he asked.

“By God,” said Mr. Blacker, “it certainly would.”

Alleyn said, “I’m very much obliged to you, Blacker.”

“Glad to be of any help. Er — yes — er,” said Mr. Blacker, “I suppose, er, I mean, er—”

“You’re wondering why we’re here? On departmental police business, but your Super finding himself out of action suggested we might take a look at the scene of the accident.”

They were in the stable yard. The Leathers string of horses had moved to the brow of the hill. “Which,” Alleyn asked, “is Mungo, the wall-eyed bay?”

“That thing!” said Blacker. “We put it down a week ago. Cuth always meant to, you know, it was a wrong ’un. He’d taken a scunner on it after it kicked him. Way he talked about it, you’d have thought it was possessed of a devil. It was a real villain, I must say. Dulce fancied it, though. Thought she’d make a show jumper of it. Fantastic! Well, I’ll be on my way. Morning to you.”

When he had gone Alleyn said: “Shall we take a look at the barn? If open.”

It was a stone building standing some way beyond the stables and seemed to bear witness to the vanished farmstead, said by Plank to have predated Leathers. There were signs of a thatched roof having been replaced by galvanized iron. They found a key above the door, which carried the legend “Welcome to all” in amateurish capitals.

“That lets us in,” said Fox, drily.

The interior was well lit from uncurtained windows. There was no ceiling to hide the iron roof and birds could be heard scruffling about outside. The hall wore that air of inert expectancy characteristic of places of assembly caught, as it were, by surprise. A group of about a hundred seats, benches of various kinds, and a harmonium faced a platform approached by steps, on which stood a table, a large chair, and six smaller ones. The table carried a book prop and an iron object that appeared to symbolize fire, flanked by a cross and a sword.

“That’ll be Chris Beale, the smith’s, work,” said Plank, spotting it. “He’s one of them.”

The platform, set off by curtains, was backed by a whitewashed wall with a central door. This was unlocked and opened into a room fitted with a gas boiler, a sink, and cupboards with crockery. “ ‘Ladies a basket’ we must remember,” Alleyn muttered and returned to the platform. Above the door and occupying half of the width of the wall hung an enormous placard, scarlet and lettered in white. “THE WAGES OF SIN,” it alarmingly proclaimed, “ARE DEATH.”

The side walls, also, were garnished with dogmatic injunctions including quotations from the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy. One of these notices attracted Mr. Fox’s attention. “Watch,” it said, “For ye know not at what Hour the Master Cometh.”

“Do they reckon they do?” Fox asked Plank.

“Do what, Mr. Fox?”

“Know,” Fox said. “When.”

As if as in answer to his inquiry the front door opened to reveal Mr. Harkness. He stood there, against the light, swaying a little and making preliminary noises. Alleyn moved toward him.

“I hope,” he began, “you don’t mind our coming in. It does say on the door—”

A voice from within Mr. Harkness said, “Come one, come all. All are called. Few are chosen. See you Sunday.” He suddenly charged down the hall and up the steps, most precariously, to the door on the platform. Here he turned and roared in his more familiar manner. “It will be an unexamplimented experience. Thank you.”

He gave a military salute and plunged out of sight.

“I’ll think we’ll have it at that,” said Alleyn.