Last Ditch

8: Night Watches

i

The thing they got wrong in the gangster films, Ricky thought, was what it did to you being tied up. The film victims, once they were released, did one or two obligatory staggers and then became as nimble as fleas and started fighting again. He knew that when, if ever, he was released, his legs would not support him, his arms would be senseless, and his head so compounded of pain that it would hang down and wobble like a wilted dahlia.

He could not guess how long it was since they gagged him. Jones had made a pad out of rag and Ferrant had forced it between his teeth and bound it with another rag. It tasted of turpentine and stung his cut lip. They had done this when Syd said he’d heard something outside. Ferrant had switched off the light and they were very still until there was a scratching at the door.

“It’s the kid,” Ferrant said.

He opened the door a little way and after a moment shut it again very quietly. Syd switched on the light. Young Louis was there. He wore a black smock like a French schoolboy and a beret. He had a satchel on his back. His stewed-prune eyes stared greedily at Ricky out of a blackened face.

Ferrant held out his hand and Louis put a note in it. Ferrant read it — it was evidently very short — and gave it to Syd.

Louis said: “Papa, he asked me if I could row the boat.”

“Who did?”

“The fuzz. He asked if I was afraid to go out in her at night.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I wasn’t. I didn’t say anything else, Papa. Honest.”

“By God, you better not.”

“Maman says he’s getting worried about him.” Louis pointed to Ricky. “You got him so he can’t talk, haven’t you, Papa? Have you worked him over? His face looks like you have. What are you going to do with him, Papa?”

“Tais-toi donc. Keep your tongue behind your teeth. Passe-moi la boustifaille.”

Louis gave him the satchel.

“Good. Now, there is more for you to do. Take this envelope. Do not open it. You see it has his name on it. The detective’s name. Listen carefully. You are to push it under the door at the police station and nobody must see you. Do not put it through the slot. Under the door. Then push the bell and away home quick and silent before the door is opened. Very quick. Very silent. And nobody to see you. Repeat it.”

He did, accurately.

“That is right. Now go.”

“I’ve blacked my face. Like a gunman. So’s nobody can see me.”

“Good. The light, Syd.”

Syd switched it off, and on again when the door was shut.

“Is he safe?” Syd asked.

“Yes. Get on with it.”

“We can’t take—” Syd stopped short and looked at Ricky. “Everything,” he said.

They had paid no attention to him for a long time. It was as if by trussing him up they had turned him into an unthinking as well as an inanimate object.

They had been busy. His chair had been turned away from the table and manhandled excruciatingly to bring him face to the wall. There had been some talk of a blindfold, he thought, but he kept his eyes shut and let his head flop and they left him there, still gagged, and could be heard moving purposefully about the room.

He opened his eyes. Leda and the Swan had gone from their place on the wall and now lay face down on the floor, close to his feet. He recognized the frame and wondered bemusedly by what means it had hung up there because there was no cord or wire to be seen although there were the usual ring screws.

Ferrant and Syd went quietly about their business. They spoke seldom and in low voices but they generated a floating sense of urgency and at times seemed to argue. He began to long for the moment to come when they would have to release whatever it was that bound and cut into his ankles. If he were to walk between them down to the boat, that was what they would have to do. And where would the Cid be, then? Watching with Br’er Fox from the window in Ricky’s room? Unable to do anything because if he did — Would the Cid ever get the message? Where was he? Now? Now, when Ricky wanted him so badly. It’s too much, he thought. Yesterday and the thunder and lightning and the sea and blacking my eye and now all this: face, jaw, mouth, ankle. No, it’s too much. The wall poured upwards, his eyes closed, and he fainted.

The boy Louis did not follow the path down to the front but turned off it to his right and slithered, darkling, along tortuous passages that ran uphill and down, behind the backs of cottages, some occupied and some deserted.

The moon had not yet risen and the going was tricky but he was surefooted and knew his ground. He was excited and thought of himself in terms of his favorite comic strip as a Miracle Kid.

He came out of his labyrinth at the top of the lane that ran down to the police station.

Here he crouched for a moment in the blackest of the shadows. There was no need to crouch — the lane was deserted — but he enjoyed doing it and then flattening himself against a wall and edging downhill.

The blue lamp was on but the station windows were dark, while those in the living quarters glowed. He could hear music, radio or telly, with the fuzz family watching it and the Miracle Kid, all on his own, out in the dark.

“Whee-ee!!”

Across the lane like the Black Shadow. Envelope. Under the door. Stuck. Push. Bell. Push. “Zing!!!”

In by the back door with Maman waiting. Hands in pockets. Cool. Slouch in wagging the hips.

“Eh bien?” said Mrs. Ferrant, nodding her head up and down. “Tu es fort satisfait de ta petite personne, n’est-ce pas?”

Around the corner in the police station, Mrs. Plank, peering up and down the lane, told herself it was too late for a runaway knock. Unless, she thought, it was that young Louis from around the corner who was allowed to wait up until all hours and was not a nice type of child. Then she noticed the envelope at her feet. She picked it up. Addressed to the Super and sealed. She shut the front door, went into the kitchen, and turned the envelope over and over in her hands.

There was no telling how late it might be when they returned, all of them. Joe had been very quiet when he came in but she knew he was gratified by the way the corners of his mouth twitched. He had told her they were going to search Syd Jones’s premises but it was not to be mentioned. He knew, thought Mrs. Plank, that he could trust her.

It had been a most irregular way of delivering the note, if it was a note. Suppose it was important? Suppose Mr. Alleyn should know of it at once and suppose that by leaving it until he came in, if he did come in and not drive straight back to Montjoy, some irreparable damage was done? On the other hand, Joe and Mr. Alleyn and Mr. Fox might be greatly displeased if she butted in at that place with a note that turned out to be some silly prank.

She worried it over, this way and that. She examined the envelope again and again, particularly the direction, written in capital letters with some sort of crayon, it looked like: “MR. ALLEN.” Someone who didn’t know how to spell his name.

The flap was not all that securely gummed down.

“Well I don’t care, I will,” she thought.

She maneuvered it open, and read the message.

ii

Before they set out for Syd’s Pad, Alleyn had held a short briefing at the station with Fox, Plank, and the two constables from Montjoy: Cribbage and Moss.

“We’re going into the place,” he had told them, “because I think we’ve sufficient grounds to justify a search for illicit drugs. It will have to be an exhaustive search and as always in these cases it may bring us no joy. The two men we’re interested in are known to have been in Saint Pierre yesterday and as far as we’ve been able to find out, haven’t returned to the island. Certainly not by air. There has been no official passage to the Cove by sea and your chaps”—he looked at the two constables—“checked the ferry at Montjoy. This doesn’t take in the possibility that they came back during the night in a French chum’s craft and were transshipped somewhere near the heads into Ferrant’s dinghy and brought ashore. We’ve no evidence—” he hesitated for a moment and caught Fox’s eye—“no evidence,” he repeated, “to support any such theory: it is pure speculation. If, however, it had so happened, it might mean that Ferrant as well as Jones is up at the Pad and they might turn naughty. Mr. Fox and Sergeant Plank are carrying handcuffs.” He looked around at the four impassive faces. “Well,” he said, “that’s it. Shall we push off? Got your lamps?”

Plank had produced two acetylene lamps in addition to five powerful hand torches because, as he said, they didn’t know but what the power might be off. He had also provided himself with a small torch with a blue light.

They had driven along the front, past the Cod-and-Bottle, and parked their car near Fisherman’s Steps.

Ricky had described his visit to Syd’s pad so vividly that Alleyn felt as if he himself had been there before. They didn’t say much to each other as they climbed the steps. Plank, who in the course of duty beats had become familiar with the ground, led the way and used his torch to show awkward patches.

“We don’t want to advertise ourselves,” Alleyn had said. “On the other hand, we’re making a routine search, not scaling the cliffs of Abraham in blackface. If there’s somebody at home who won’t answer the door we effect an entrance. If nobody’s there we still effect an entrance. And that’s it.”

They were about halfway up the steps and had passed the last of the cottages, when Plank said: “The place is up on the right, sir. If there was lights in the front windows we’d see them from here.”

“I can just make out the roof.”

“Somebody might be in a back room,” said Fox.

“Of course. We’ll take it quietly from here. Plank, you’re familiar with the lie of the land. When we get there you take a man with you and move round to the back door as quietly as you can. We three will go to the front door. If there’s anybody at home he might try a break. From now on, softly’s the word. Don’t rush it and don’t use your torch unless you’ve got to and then keep it close to the ground.”

They moved on slowly. The going became increasingly difficult, their feet slipped, they breathed hard, and once the larger of the Montjoy men fell heavily, swore, and said, “Pardon.” Plank administered a stern rebuke. They continued uphill still led by Plank who turned every now and then to make sure they were all together.

On the last of these occasions he put out his hand and touched Alleyn.

“Sir,” Plank breathed, “has someone fallen back?”

No, they were all there.

“What is it?”

“We’re being followed.”

Alleyn turned. Some way below them a torchlight darted momentarily about the steps, blacked out and reappeared, nearer.

“One of the locals? Coming home?” Fox speculated.

“Wait.”

No. It showed again for a fraction of a second and was much nearer. They could hear uneven footfalls and labored breathing. Whoever it was must be scrambling, almost running up the steps.

“Christ!” Plank broke out. “It’s the Missus.”

It was Mrs. Plank, so out of breath that she clung to Alleyn with one hand and with the other shoved the paper at him.

“Sh-sh!” she panted. “Don’t speak. Don’t say anything. Read it.”

Alleyn opened his jacket as a shield to her torch and read.

Fox, who was at his elbow, saw the paper quiver in his hand. The little group was very still. Voices of patrons leaving the Cod-and-Bottle broke the silence and even the slap of the incoming tide along the front. Alleyn motioned with his head. The others closed about him, bent over and formed a sort of massive huddle around the torchlit paper. Fox was the first to break the silence.

“Signed P.A.D.?” Fox said. “Why?”

“It’s his writing. Weak. But his. It’s a tip-off. ‘Pad.’ They didn’t drop to it or they’d have cut it out.”

“Practical,” said Fox unevenly. And then: “What do we do?”

Alleyn read the message again, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Mrs. Plank switched off her torch. The others waited.

“Mrs. Plank,” Alleyn said, “you don’t know how grateful I am to you. How did this reach you?”

She told him. “I got the notion,” she ended, “that it might be that young Louis Ferrant. I suppose because he’s a one for runaway knocks.”

“Is he, indeed? Now, please, you must go back. Go carefully and thank you.”

“Will it — they won’t? — will it be all right?”

“You cut along, Mother,” said her husband. “ ’Course it will.”

“Goodnight, then,” she said and was gone.

Fox said: “She’s not using her torch.”

“She’s good on her feet,” said Plank.

Throughout, they had spoken just above a whisper. When Alleyn talked now it was more slowly and unevenly than was his custom but in a level voice.

“It’s a question, I think, of whether we declare ourselves and talk to them from outside the house or risk an unheard approach and a break-in. I don’t think,” he stopped for a moment, “I don’t think I dare do that.”

“No,” said Fox. “No. Not that way. Too risky.”

“Yes. It seems clear that already they’ve… given him a bad time — the writing’s very shaky.”

“It does say ‘OK,’ though. Meaning he is.”

“It says that. There’s a third possibility. He says ‘till they’ve gone’ and I can’t think of them making a getaway by any means other than the way we discussed, Fox. If so they’ll come out at some time during the night, carrying their stuff. With Rick between them. They’ve worked it out that we won’t try anything because of the threat to Rick. We carry on now, with the old plan. We don’t know which door they’ll use so we’ll have two at the back and three at the front. And wait for them to emerge.”

“And jump them?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “And jump them.”

“Hard and quick?”

“Yes. They’ll be armed.”

“It’s good enough,” Fox said and there were satisfied noises from the other three men.

“I think it’s the best we can do. It may be—” for the first time Alleyn’s voice faltered, “a long wait. That won’t — be easy.”

It was not easy. As they drew near the house they could make it out in a faint diffusion of light from the village below. They moved very slowly now, over soft, uneven ground, Plank leading them. He would stop and put back a warning hand when they drew near an obstacle, such as the bramble bush where Miss Harkness had tethered her horse and Ricky had so ostentatiously lit his pipe. No chink of light showed from window or door.

They inched forward with frequent stops to listen and grope about them. A breeze had sprung up. There were rustlings, small indeterminate sounds and from the pinegrove further up the hill, a vague soughing. This favored their approach.

It was always possible, Alleyn thought, that they were being watched, that the lights had been put out and a chink opened at one of the windows. What would the men inside do then? And there was, he supposed, another possibility — that Ricky was being held somewhere else, in one of the deserted cottages, for instance, or even gagged and out in the open. But no. Why “Pad” in the message? Unless they’d moved after sending the message. Should Fox return and try to screw a statement out of Mrs. Ferrant? But then the emergence from the Pad might happen and they would be a man short.

They had come to the place where a rough path branched off, leading around to the back of the house. Plank breathed this information in Alleyn’s ear: “We’ll get back to you double quick, sir, if it’s the front. Can you make out the door?” Alleyn squeezed his elbow and sensed rather than saw Plank’s withdrawal with P.C. Moss.

There was the door. They crept up to it, Alleyn and Fox on either side with P.C. Cribbage behind Fox. There was a sharp crackle as Cribbage fell foul of some bush or dry stick. They froze and waited. The breeze carried a moisture with it that tasted salt on Alleyn’s lips. Nothing untoward happened.

Alleyn began to explore with his fingers the wall, the door and a step leading up to it. He sensed that Fox, on his side, was doing much the same thing.

The door was weatherworn and opened inward. The handle was on Alleyn’s side. He found the keyhole, knelt and put his eye to it, but could see nothing. The key was in the lock, evidently. Or hadn’t Ricky, describing the Pad, talked about a heavy curtain masking the door? Alleyn thought he had.

He explored the bottom of the door. There was very little gap between it and the floor, but as he stared fixedly at the place where his finger rested he became aware of a lesser darkness, of the faintest possible thinning out of nonvisibility that increased, infinitesimally, when he withdrew his hand.

Light, as faint as light could be, filtered through the gap between the door and the floor.

He slid his finger away from him along the gap and ran into something alive. Fox’s finger. Alleyn closed his hand around Fox’s and then traced on its hairy back the word light. Fox reversed the process. Yes.

Alleyn knelt. He laid his right ear to the door and stopped up the left one.

There was sound. Something being moved. The thud of stockinged or soft-shod feet and then, only just perceptibly, voices.

He listened and listened, unconscious of aching knees, as if all his other faculties had been absorbed by the sense of hearing. The sounds continued. Once, one of the voices was raised. Of one thing he was certain — neither of them belonged to Ricky.

To Ricky, on the other side of the door. Quite close? Or locked up in some back room? Gagged? What had they done to him to turn his incisive Italianate script into the writing of an old man?

Monstrous it was, to wait and to do nothing. Should he, after all, have decided to break in? Suppose they shot him and Fox before the others could jump on them, what would they do to Ricky?

The sounds were so faint that the men must be at the end of the room farthest from the door. He wondered if Fox had heard them, or Cribbage.

He got to his feet surprised to find how stiff he was. He waited for a minute or two and then eased across until he found Fox who was leaning with his back to the wall and whispered:

“Hear them?”

“Yes.”

“At least we’ve come to the right place.”

“Yes.”

Alleyn returned to his side of the door.

The minutes dragged into an hour. The noises continued intermittently and, after a time, became more distant, as if the men had moved to another room. They changed in character. There was a scraping metallic sound, only just detectable, and then silence.

It was no longer pitch dark. Shapes had begun to appear, shadows of definite form and patches of light. The moon, in its last quarter, had risen behind the pine grove and soon would shine full upon them. Already he could see Fox and beyond him P.C. Cribbage, propped against the wall, his head drooping, his helmet inclined forward above his nose. He was asleep.

Even as Alleyn reached out to draw Fox’s attention to his neighbor, Cribbage’s knees bent. He slid down the wall and fell heavily to the ground, kicking the acetylene lamp. Wakened, he began to scramble to his feet and was kicked by Fox. He rose with abject caution.

Absolute silence had fallen inside the house.

Alleyn motioned to Fox and Fox, with awful grandeur, motioned to the stricken Cribbage. They cat-walked across to Alleyn’s side of the door and stood behind him, all three of them pressed back against the wall.

“If—” Alleyn breathed. “We act.”

“Right.”

They moved a little apart and waited. Alleyn with his ear to the door. The light that had shown so faintly across the threshold went out. He drew back and signaled to Fox. After a further eternal interval they all heard a rustle and clink as of a curtain being drawn.

The key was turned in the lock.

The deep framework surrounding the door prevented Alleyn from seeing it open but he knew it had opened, very slightly. He knew that the man inside now looked out and saw nothing untoward where Fox and Cribbage had been. To see them, he would have to open up wide enough to push his head through and look to his right.

The door creaked.

In slow motion a black beret began to appear. An ear, a temple, the flat of a cheek, and then, suddenly, the point of a jaw and an eye. The eye looked into his. It opened wide and Alleyn drove his fist hard at the jaw.

Ferrant pitched forward. Fox caught him under the arms and Cribbage took him by the knees. Alleyn closed the door.

Ferrant’s right hand opened and Alleyn caught the gun that fell from it. “Lose him. Quick,” he said. Fox and Cribbage carried Ferrant, head lolling and arms dangling, around the corner of the house. The operation had been virtually soundless and had taken a matter of seconds.

Alleyn moved back to his place by the door. There was still no sound from inside the house. Fox and Cribbage returned.

“Still out,” Fox muttered and intimated that Ferrant was handcuffed to a small tree with his mouth stopped.

They took up their former positions, Alleyn with Ferrant’s gun — a French army automatic — in his hand. This one, he thought, was going to be simpler.

Two loud thumps came from within the house followed by an exclamation that sounded like an oath. Then, soft but unmistakable, approaching footsteps and again the creak of the opening door.

“Gil!” Syd Jones whispered into the night. “What’s up? Where are you? Are you there, Gil?”

Like Ferrant, he widened the door opening and, like Ferrant, thrust his head out.

They used their high-powered torches. Syd’s face, a bearded mask, started up, blinking and expressionless. He found himself looking into the barrel of the automatic, “Hands up and into the room,” Alleyn said. Fox kicked the door wide open, entered the house, and switched on the light. Alleyn followed Syd with Cribbage behind him.

At the far end of the room, face to wall, gagged and bound in his chair, was Ricky.

“Fox,” Alleyn said. Fox took the automatic and began the obligatory chant—“Sydney Jones, I arrest—” Plank arrived and put on the handcuffs.

Alleyn, stooping over his son, was saying: “It’s me, old boy. You’ll be all right. It’s me.” He removed the bloodied gag. Ricky’s mouth hung open. His tongue moved and he made a sound. Alleyn took his head carefully between his hands.

Ricky contrived to speak. “Oh, golly, Cid,” he said. “Oh, golly!”

“I know. Never mind. Won’t be long, now. Hold on.”

He unstrapped the arms and they fell forward. He knelt to release the ankles.

Ricky’s white socks were bloodied and overhung his shoes. Alleyn turned the socks back and exposed wet ridges that had closed over the bonds.

From between the ridges protruded a twist of wire and two venomous little prongs.

iii

Ricky lay on the bed. In the filthy little kitchen, P.C. Moss boiled up a saucepan of water and tore a sheet into strips. Sergeant Plank was at the station, telephoning for a doctor and ambulance.

Ferrant and Syd Jones, handcuffed together, sat side by side facing the table. Opposite them Alleyn stood with Fox beside him and Cribbage modestly in the background. The angled lamp had been directed to shine full in the prisoners’ faces.

On the table, stretched out to its full length on a sheet of paper, lay the wire that had bound Ricky’s ankles and cut into them. It left a trace of red on the paper.

To Ricky himself, lying in the shadow, his injuries thrumming through his nerves like music, the scene was familiar. It was an interrogation scene with obviously dramatic lighting, barked questions, mulish answers, suggested threats. It looked like a standard offering from a police story on television.

But it didn’t sound like one. His father and Fox did not bark their questions. Nor did they threaten but were quiet and deadly cold and must, Ricky thought, be frightening indeed.

“This wire,” Alleyn was saying to Syd, “it’s yours, is it?”

Syd’s reply, if he made one, was inaudible.

“Is it off the back of the picture frame there? It is? Where did you get it? There?” A pause. “Lying about? Where?”

“I don’t remember.”

“At Leathers?”

“S’right.”

“When?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You know very well. When?”

“I don’t remember. It was some old junk. He didn’t want it.”

“Was it before the accident?”

“Yes. No. After.”

“Where?”

“In the stables.”

“Where, exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know. Where?”

“Hanging up. With a lot more.”

“Did you cut if off?”

“No. It was on its own. A separate bit. What’s the idea?” Syd broke out with a miserable show of indignation. “So it’s a bit of old wire. So I took it to hang a picture. So what?”

Ferrant, on a jet of obscenities, French and English, told him to hold his tongue.

“I didn’t tie him up,” Syd said. “You did.”

“Merde.”

Alleyn said: “You will both be taken to the police station in Montjoy and charged with assault. Anything you say now — and then — will be taken down and may be used in evidence. For the moment, that’s all.”

“Get up,” said Fox.

Cribbage got them to their feet. He and Fox marshaled them toward the far end of the room. As they were about to pass the bed, looking straight before them, Fox laid massive hands upon their shoulders and turned them to confront it.

Ricky, from out of the mess they had made of his face, looked at them. Ferrant produced the blank indifference of the dock. Syd, whose face, as always, resembled the interior of an old-fashioned mattress, showed the whites of his eyes.

Fox shoved them around again and they were taken, under Cribbage’s surveillance, to the far end of the room.

Constable Moss emerged from the kitchen with a saucepan containing boiled strips of sheet and presented it before Alleyn.

Alleyn said: “Thank you, Moss. I don’t know that we should do anything before the doctor’s seen him. Perhaps clean him up a bit.”

“They’re sterile, sir,” said Moss. “Boiled for ten minutes.”

“Splendid.”

Alleyn went into the kitchen. Boiled water had been poured into a basin. He scrubbed his hands with soap that Syd evidently used on his brushes if not on himself. Alleyn returned to his son. Moss held the saucepan for him and he very cautiously swabbed Ricky’s mouth and eyes.

“Better,” said Ricky.

Alleyn looked again at the ankles. The wire had driven fibers from Ricky’s socks into the cuts.

“I’d better not meddle,” Alleyn said. “We’ll get on with the search, Fox.” He bent over Ricky. “We’re getting the quack to have a look at you, old boy.”

“I’ll be OK.”

“Of course you will. But you’re bloody uncomfortable, I’m afraid.”

Ricky tried to speak, failed, and then with an enormous effort said: “Try some of the dope,” and managed to wink.

Alleyn winked back using the seriocomic family version with one corner of the mouth drawn down and the opposite eyebrow raised, a grimace beyond his son’s achievement at the moment. He hesitated and then said: “Rick, it’s important or I wouldn’t nag. How did you get here?”

With an enormous effort Ricky said: “Went for a walk.”

“I see: you went for a walk? Past this pad? Is that it?”

“Thought I’d case the joint.”

“Dear God,” Alleyn said quietly.

“They copped me.”

“That,” said Alleyn, “is all I wanted to know. Sorry you’ve been troubled.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Ricky faintly.

“Fox,” Alleyn said. “We search. All of us.”

“What about them?” Fox asked with a jerk of his head and an edge in his voice that Alleyn had never heard before: “Should we wire them up?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “We shouldn’t.” And he instructed Cribbage to double-handcuff Ferrant and Syd, using the second pair of bracelets to link their free hands together behind their backs. They were sat on the floor with their shoulders to the wall. The search began.

At the end of half an hour they had opened the bottom ends of thirty tubes of paint and found capsules in eighteen of them. Dollops of squeezed-out paint neatly ornamented the table. Alleyn withdrew Fox into the kitchen.

“Fair enough,” he said. “We’ve got the corpus delicti. What we don’t know yet is the exact procedure. Jones collected the paints in Saint Pierre but were they already doctored or was he supplied with the capsules and drugs and left to do the job himself? If the latter, there must be evidence of it here.”

“Stuff left over?”

“Yes. They were about to do a bolt, probably under orders to hide any stuff they couldn’t carry. And along came my enterprising son, ‘casing’ as he puts it, ‘the joint.’ ”

“That,” Fox murmured, “would put them about a bit.”

“Yes. What to do with him? Pull him in, which they did. But if they held him, sooner or later we’d set up a search. I imagine that they were in touch with Madame F. through that nefarious kid. Well, in their fluster, they hit on the not uningenious idea of using Rick as a screen for their getaway. And if Mrs. Plank had not been the golden lady she undoubtedly is, they might well have brought it off. I wish to hell that bloody quack would show up.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” said Fox, meaning Ricky.

The meticulous search went on, inch by inch through the littered room, under the bed, stereo table, in the shelves and cupboards, and through heaps of occulted junk. They were about to move into an unspeakable little bedroom at the back when Alleyn said: “While we were outside, before Ferrant came to the door, I heard a metallic sound. Very faint.”

“In the house?”

“Yes. Did you?”

“I didn’t catch it. No,” said Fox.

“Let’s try the kitchen. You two,” he said to Cribbage and Moss, “carry on here.” He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

The kitchen was in the same state of squalor as the rest of the Pad. Its most conspicuous feature was a large and decrepit coal range of an ancient make with a boiler and tap on one side of the grate and an oven on the other. It looked as if it were never used. On top of it was a small modern electric stove. Alleyn removed this to the table and started on the range. He lifted the iron rings and probed inside with a bent poker, listening to the sound. He opened the oven, played his torch around the interior, and tapped the lining. He had let down the front of the grate and lifted the top when Fox gave a grunt.

“What?” Alleyn asked.

“His personal supply. Syringe. Dope. It’s ‘horse’ all right,” said Fox, meaning heroin. “There’s one tablet left.”

“Where?”

“Top shelf of the dresser. Behind an old cookbook. Rather appropriate.”

A siren sounded down on the front. “This’ll be the ambulance,” said Fox. “And the doctor. We hope.”

When Alleyn didn’t answer Fox turned and found him face down in the open top of the range. “There should be a cavity over the oven,” he said, “and there isn’t and — Yes. Surprise, surprise.”

He began pulling. A flat object was edged into view. The siren sounded again and nearer.

“It is the ambulance,” Alleyn said. “You get this lot out, Br’er Fox and no reward for guessing what’s the prize.”

He was back with Ricky before Fox had collected himself or anything else.

Ricky took a bleary look at his father and begged him in a stifled voice not to make him laugh.

“Why should you laugh?”

“When did you join the Black and White Minstrels? Your face. Oh God, I mustn’t laugh.”

Alleyn returned to the kitchen and looked at it in a cracked glass on the wall. The nose was black. He swabbed it with an unused bandage and again washed his hands. Fox had extracted a black attaché case from the stove and had forced the lock and opened it. “What’s that lot worth on the street market?” he asked.

“Two thousand quid if a penny,” said Alleyn and returned to his son. “We’ve got Jones’s very own dope,” he said, “and we’ve got the consignment in transit.” He walked down the room to Ferrant and Jones seated in discomfort on the floor. “You heard that, I suppose,” he said.

Ferrant, in his sharp suit and pink floral shirt, spat inaccurately at Alleyn. He had not spoken since his passage with Syd.

But Syd gazed up at Alleyn. He shivered and yawned and his nose ran. “Look,” he said, “give me a fix. Just one. Look, I need it. I got to have it. Look — for God’s sake.” He suddenly screamed. “Give it to me. I’ll tell you the lot. Get me a fix.”

iv

Ricky was in the Montjoy hospital, having managed a fuller account of his misadventures before being given something to settle him down for the night.

At half-past two in the morning, the relentlessly lit charge room at Montjoy police station smelted of stale bodies, breath, and tobacco, with an elusive background of Jeyes fluid.

Ferrant, who had refused to talk without the advice of a solicitor, had been taken to the cells while the station sergeant tried to raise one. Syd Jones whimpered, suffered onsets of cramp, had to be taken to the lavatory, yawned, ran at the nose, and repeatedly pleaded for a fix. Dr. Carey, called in to watch, said that no harm would be done if the drug was withheld for the time being.

Everything that Jones said confirmed their guesswork. He even showed signs of a miserable sort of complacence over his ingenuity in the matter of the paint tubes. He admitted, as if it were of little account, that it was he who tried to drown Ricky at Saint Pierre.

On one point only he was obdurate: he could not or would not say anything about Louis Pharamond, contriving, when questioned, to recover something of his old intransigence.

“Him,” he said. “Don’t give me him!” and then looked frightened and would say no more about Louis Pharamond.

Alleyn said: “Why didn’t you take the sorrel mare to the smith as you were told to? After you got back with the horse feed?”

Syd drove his fingers through his thicket of hair. “What are you on about now?” he moaned. “What’s that got to do with anything? OK, OK, so I biked back to my pad, didn’t I? So what?”

“To get yourself a fix?”

“Yeah. OK. Yeah.”

For the twentieth time he got up and shambled about the room, stamping and grabbing at the calf of his leg. “I got cramp,” he said. He fetched up in front of Fox. “I’ll have it in for you lot the way you’re treating me. Sadists. Fascist pigs.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Fox.

Syd appealed to Dr. Carey. “Doc,” he said. “You’ll look after me. Won’t you, doc? You got to, haven’t you? For Christ’s sake, doc.”

“You’ll have to hang on a bit longer,” said Dr. Carey and glanced at Alleyn. Syd broke down completely and wept.

Alleyn said: “Give him what he needs.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Doctor Carey went out of the room.

Syd, fingering his beard and biting his dirty fingers, let out a kind of laugh. “I couldn’t help it, could I?” he gabbled and looked sideways at Alleyn who had turned away from him and didn’t reply.

“It was Gil used the wire on him, not me,” Syd said to Alleyn’s back.

Fox walked over to Plank who throughout the long hours had taken notes. Fox leaned over him and turned the pages back.

“Is this correct?” he asked Syd. “What you’ve deposed about the wire? Where you got it and what you wanted it for?”

“I’ve said so, haven’t I? Yes. Yes. Yes. For the picture.”

“Why won’t you talk about Mr. Louis Pharamond?”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Who’s the next above Ferrant? Who gives the orders?”

“I don’t know. I’ve told you. Where’s the doc? Where’s he gone?”

“He’ll be here,” said Fox. “You’ll get your fix if you’ll talk about your boss. And I don’t mean Harkness. I mean who gives the orders. Is it Louis Pharamond?”

“I can’t. I can’t. They’d knock me off. I would if I could. They’d get me. Honest. I can’t.” Syd returned to his chair and wept.

Without turning around Alleyn said: “Let it be, Fox.”

Doctor Carey came back with a prepared syringe and a swab. Syd with a trembling hand pushed up his sleeve.

“Good God,” said the doctor, “you’ve been making a mess of yourself, haven’t you?” He gave the injection.

The reaction was instantaneous. It was a metamorphosis — as if Syd’s entire person thawed and re-formed into a blissful transfiguration of itself. He lolled back in his chair and giggled. “Fantastic,” he said.

Doctor Carey watched him for a moment and then joined Alleyn at the far end of the room.

“He’s well away,” he said. “He’s had ten milligrams and he’s full of well-being: the classic euphoria. You’ve seen for yourselves what the withdrawal symptoms can be like.”

Alleyn said: “May I put a hypothetical case to you? There may be no answer to it. It may be just plain silly.”

“We can give it a go,” said Dr. Carey.

“Suppose, on the afternoon of Dulcie Harkness’s death, having taken himself off to his Pad he treated himself to an injection of heroin. Is it within the bounds of possibility that he could return on his motorbike to Leathers, help himself to a length of wire from the stables, rig it across the gap in the fence, wait until Dulcie Harkness was dying or dead, remove the wire, and return to his Pad? To reappear on his bike, apparently in full control of himself, later on in the evening?”

Doctor Carey was silent for some time. Syd Jones had begun to hum, tunelessly, under his breath.

Carey said at last, “Frankly I don’t know how to answer you. Since my time in the casualty ward at Saint Luke’s I’ve had no experience of drug addiction. I know symptoms vary widely from case to case. You’d do better to consult a specialist.”

“You wouldn’t rule it out altogether?”

“For what it’s worth — I don’t think I’d do that. Quite.”

“I’ll get that bugger,” Syd Jones announced happily. “I’ll bloody well get him.”

“What bugger?” Fox asked.

“That’d be telling. Think I’d let you in? You got to be joking, Big Fuzz.”

“About my son?” Alleyn asked Dr. Carey.

“Ah yes, of course. He’s settled down nicely.”

“Yes?”

“He’ll be all right. There’s been quite a bit of pain and considerable shock. He’s had something that’ll help him sleep. And routine injections against tetanus and so on. The cuts around the ankles were nasty. We’d like to keep him under observation.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “I’ll tell his mother.”

“Of course I’m completely in the dark,” said Dr. Carey. “Or nearly so. But, damn it all, I am supposed to be the police surgeon round here. And there is an adjourned inquest coming up.”

“My dear chap,” said Alleyn, “I know, and I’m sorry. You shall hear all. In the meantime what shall we do with this specimen?”

Syd Jones, gloomily surveyed by Fox, laughed, talked incomprehensibly, and drifted into song.

“You won’t get any sense out of him. I’d put him in the cells and have him supervised. He’ll go to sleep sooner or later,” said Dr. Carey.

Syd was removed, laughing heartily as he went. Fox went out to arrange for a constable to sit in his cell until he fell asleep, and Alleyn, who now felt as if he’d been hauled through a mangle, pulled himself together and gave Dr. Carey a succinct account of the case as it had developed. They sat on the hideously uncomfortable wall bench. It was now ten minutes past three in the morning. The station sergeant came in with cups of strong tea: the third brew since they’d arrived, five hours ago.

Doctor Carey said: “No thanks, I’m for my bed.” He stood up, stretched, held out his hand, and was professionally alerted. “You look done up,” he said. “Not surprising. Will you get off now?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I expect so.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Montjoy.”

“Like anything to help you sleep?”

“Lord, no,” said Alleyn, “I’d drop off in a gravel pit. Nice of you to offer, though. Good night.”

He went to bed at his hotel, fell instantly and profoundly asleep and, having ordered breakfast in his room at seven-thirty and arranged with himself to wake at seven, did so and put in a call to his wife. It went through at once.

“That’s your waking-up voice,” he said.

“Never mind. Is anything the matter?”

“There was but it’s all right now.”

“Ricky?”

“Need you ask? But darling, repeat, it’s all right now. I promise.”

“Tell me.”

He told her.

“When’s the first plane?” Troy asked.

“Nine-twenty from Heathrow. You transfer at Saint Pierre-des-Roches.”

“Right.”

“Hotel Montjoy and George VI Hospital.”

“Rory, say if you’d rather I didn’t. You will, won’t you?”

“I’d rather you did but God knows where I’ll be when you get here. We may well blow up for a crisis.”

“Could you book a room?”

“I could. This one.”

“Right. I’ll be in it.”

Troy hung up. Alleyn rang up the hospital and was told Ricky had enjoyed a fairly comfortable night and was improving. He bathed, dressed, ate his breakfast, and was about to call the hotel office when the telephone rang again. He expected it would be Fox and was surprised and not overjoyed to hear Julia Pharamond’s voice.

“Good morning,” said Julia. She spoke very quietly and sounded harried and unlike herself. “I’m very sorry indeed to bother you and at such a ghastly hour. I wouldn’t have, only we’re in trouble and I — well, Jasper and I — thought we’d better.”

“What’s the matter?”

“And Carlotta agrees.”

“Carlotta does?”

“Yes. I don’t want,” Julia whispered piercingly into the mouthpiece, “to talk down the telephone. A cause des domestiques. Damn, I’d forgotten they speak French.”

“Can you give me an inkling?”

After a slight pause Julia said in a painstakingly casual voice. “Louis.”

“I’ll come at once,” said Alleyn.

He called Fox up. On his way out, while Fox rang Plank, Alleyn left the L’Espérance number at the hotel office, ordered a taxi to meet Troy’s plane, and booked her in. “And you might get flowers for the room. Lilies of the valley if you can.”

“How many?” asked the grand lady at Reception.

“Lots,” said Alleyn. “Any amount.”

The lady smiled indulgently and handed him a letter. It had just been sent in from the police station, she said. It was addressed to him. The writing was erratic. There was much crossing out and some omissions, but on the whole he thought it rather more coherent than might have been expected. It was written on printed note paper with a horse’s head printed in one corner.

He showed the letter together with the enclosure, a new pamphlet, to Fox, who read it when they had set off in Superintendent Curie’s car.

“He doesn’t half go on, does he?” said Fox. “Do you make out he thinks he knows who chummy is?”

“That’s how I read it.”

“What’ll we do about this service affair?”

“Attend in strength.”

They drove on in silence. The morning was clear and warm; the channel sparkled and the Normandy coast looked as if it were half its actual distance away.

“What do you reckon Mr. L. Pharamond’s been up to?” asked Fox.

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Skedaddled?”

“Skedaddled. And if we’d known, how could we have stopped him?”

“We could have kept him under obbo,” Fox mused.

“But couldn’t have prevented him lighting out. Well, could we? Under what pretext? Seen conversing with G. Ferrant at one o’clock in the morning? Query — involved in drug running? Dropped a sleeve button in the horse paddock at Leathers. Had previously denied going into horse paddock. Now says he forgot. End of information. Query — murderer Dulcie Harkness? He wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face over that lot, Br’er Fox.”

Up at L’Espérance they found Jasper waiting on the terrace. Alleyn introduced Fox. Jasper, though clearly surprised that he had come, was charming. He led them to a table and a group of chairs, canopied and overlooking the sea.

“Julia’s coming down in a minute,” he said. “We thought we’d like to see you first. Will you have coffee? And things? We’re going to. It’s our breakfast.”

It was already set out, with croissants and brioches on the table. It smelled superb. When Alleyn accepted, Fox did too.

“It really is extemely odd,” Jasper continued, heaping butter and honey on a croissant. “And very worrying. Louis has completely vanished. Here comes Julia.”

Out of the house she hurried in a white trouser suit and ran down the steps to them with her hands extended. Fox was drinking coffee. He rose to his feet and was slightly confused.

“How terribly kind of you both to come,” said Julia. “No, too kind. When one knows you’re being so active and fussed. How’s Ricky?”

“In hospital,” said Alleyn, shaking hands.

“No! Because of his black eye?”

“Partly. Could we hear about Louis?”

“Hasn’t Jasper said? He’s vanished. Into thin air.”

“Since when?”

Jasper, whose mouth was full, waved his wife on.

“Since yesterday,” said Julia. “You remember yesterday morning when he was as large as life in his zoot suit and talked to you on the front? In the Cove?”

“I remember,” Alleyn said.

“Yes. Well, we drove back here for luncheon. And when we got here, he sort of clapped his hand to his brow and said he’d forgotten to send a business cable to Lima and it was important and he’d have to attend to it. Louis has — what does one call them? — in Peru.”

Jasper said: “Business interests. We came originally from Peru. But he’s the only one of us to have any business links. He’s jolly rich, old Louis is.”

“Well, then,” said Julia. “He often has to ring up Lima or cable to it. They’re not very clever at the Cove about cables in Spanish or long distance calls to Peru. So he goes into Montjoy. At first we thought he’d probably lunched there.”

“Did you see him again before he left?”

“No. We were at luncheon,” said Julia.

“We heard him come downstairs and start his car. Now I come to think of it,” said Jasper, “it was some little time after we’d sat down.”

“Have you looked to see if he’s taken anything with him — an overnight bag for instance?”

“Yes,” said Julia, “but not a penny the wiser are we. Louis has so many zoot suits and silken undies and pajamas and terribly doggy pieces of luggage that one couldn’t tell. Even Carlotta couldn’t. She’s still looking.”

“What else have you done about it?” asked Alleyn. He thought of his own gnawing anxieties during Ricky’s disappearance and wondered if Carlotta, for example, suffered anything comparable; Jasper and Julia, though worried, clearly did not.

“Well,” Julia was saying, “for a long time we didn’t do anything. We’d expected him simply to whiz into Montjoy, send his cable, and whiz back. Then when he didn’t we supposed he’d decided to lunch at the Montjoy and perhaps stay the night. He often does that when the little girls get too much for him. But he always rings up to tell us. When he didn’t ring and didn’t come back for dinner Carlotta telephoned the hotel and he hadn’t been there at all. And still we haven’t had sniff nor sight of him.”

“I even rang the pub at Belle Vue,” said Jasper.

“What about his car?”

“We rang the park where he always leaves it and it’s there. He clocked in about twenty minutes after he left here.”

“The thing that really is pretty bothering,” Julia said, “is that he was in a peculiar sort of state yesterday morning. After we left you. We wondered if you noticed anything.”

Alleyn gave himself a moment’s respite. He thought of Louis: overelegant, overfacetious, giving his performance on the front. “How do you mean: ‘peculiar’?” he asked.

“For him, very quiet, and at the same time, I felt he was in a rage. You mustn’t mind my asking, but did you have words, the two of you?”

“No.”

“I only wondered. He wouldn’t say anything about being grilled by you and didn’t seem to enjoy my calling it that — I was just being funnyman. You know? But he didn’t relish it. So I wondered.”

“Was that why you asked me to come?”

Jasper said: “What we really hoped you’d do is give us some advice about what action we could take. One doesn’t want to make a sort of public display but at the same time one can’t just loll about in the sun supposing that he’ll come bouncing back.”

“Has he ever done anything of this sort before?”

Julia and Jasper spoke simultaneously. “Not like this,” said Jasper. “Not exactly,” said Julia.

They looked at Fox and away.

Fox said: “I wonder if I could be excused, Mrs. Pharamond? We started a slow puncture on the way up. If I’m not required at the moment, sir, perhaps, I should change the wheel?”

“Would you, Fox? We’ll call out if we need you.”

Fox rose. “A very enjoyable cup of coffee,” he said with a slight bow in Julia’s direction and descended the steps to the lower terrace where the car was parked. It was just as well, thought Alleyn, that it was out of sight.

“Not true!” said Julia with wide-open eyes. “My dear! The tact! Have you many like that?”

“We have a finishing school,” said Alleyn, “at the C.I.D.”

Jasper said: “Answering your question. No, Louis, as Julia said, always lets us know if he’s going to be away unexpectedly.”

“Is he often away? ‘Unexpectedly’?”

“Well—”

Julia burst out. “Oh let’s not be cagey and difficult, darling. After all we asked the poor man to come so why shuffle and snuffle when he wants to know about things? Yes, Louis does quite often leave us for reasons undisclosed and probably not very respectable. He can’t keep his hands off the ladies.”

“Julia! Darling!”

“And what ladies some of them are. But then, it appears that Louis bowls them over like ninepins and has only to show himself at a casino in Lima for them to swarm. This we find puzzling. Perhaps he’s been hijacked and taken away for a sort of gentlemanly white-slave trade, to be offered to sex-starved señoritas. Which would really suit him very well as he could combine their pleasure with his business.”

“No, honestly,” Jasper protested and giggled.

“Darling, admit. You’re not all that keen on him yourself. But we do love Carlotta, very dearly,” said Julia, “and we’ve got sort of inoculated to Louis like one does with sandflies, blood being thicker than water as far as Jasper is concerned.”

Jasper said: “What steps do you think we should take?”

Alleyn found it odd to repeat the advice that he and Fox had offered each other yesterday. He said they could report Louis’s disappearance to the police now or wait a little longer. He thought he would advise the latter course.

“Have you,” he said, “looked to see if his papers — passport and medical certificates and so on — are in his room? You say he often makes business trips to Peru. Isn’t it just possible that something cropped up — say a cable — calling him there on urgent business and that you’ll get a radiogram to this effect?”

Jasper and Julia looked at each other and shook their heads. Alleyn was trying to remember in which South American countries extradition orders could be operated.

“Speaking as a policeman,” said Julia, “which it’s so difficult to remember you are, would the Force be very bored if asked to take a hand? I mean, busy as you all seem to be over the Harness affair? Wouldn’t they think Louis’s ongoings of no account?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “They wouldn’t think that.”

A stillness came over the three. Jasper, who had reached out to the coffeepot, withdrew his hand. He looked very hard at Alleyn and then at his wife.

Julia said: “Is there something you know and we don’t? About Louis?”

Carlotta came out of the house and down the steps. She was very pale, even for a Pharamond. She came to the table and sat down as if she needed to.

“I’ve made a discovery,” she said. “Louis’s passport and his attaché case and the file he always takes when he goes to Lima are missing. I forced open the drawer in his desk. So I imagine, don’t you,” said Carlotta, “that he’s walked out on me?”

“You sound as if you’re not surprised,” said Julia.

“Nor am I. He’s been precarious for quite a time. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You must have.” They were silent. “I always knew, of course,” Carlotta said, “that by and large you thought him pretty ghastly. But there you are. I have a theory that quite a lot of women require a touch of the bounder in their man. I’m one of them. So, true to type, he’s bounded away.”

Jasper said: “Carla, darling, aren’t you rushing your fences a bit? After all, we don’t know why he’s gone. If he’s gone.”

Julia said: “I’ve got a feeling that Roderick, if we’re still allowed to call him that, knows. And I don’t believe he thinks it’s anything to do with you, Carla.” She turned to Alleyn. “Am I right?” she asked.

Alleyn said slowly: “If you mean do I know definitely he’s gone, I don’t. I’ve no information at all as to his recent movements.”

“He’s in trouble, though. Isn’t he? It’s best we should all realize. Really.”

“What’s he done?” Carlotta demanded. “He has done something, hasn’t he? I’ve known he was up to something. I can always tell.”

Jasper said with an unfamiliar note in his voice: “I think we’d better remember, girls, that we are talking, however much we may like him, to a policeman.”

“Oh dear. I suppose we should,” Julia agreed and sounded vexed rather than alarmed. “I suppose we must turn cagey and evasive and he’ll set traps for us and when we fall into them he’ll say things like ‘I didn’t know but you’ve just told me.’ They always do that. Don’t you?” she asked Alleyn.

“I don’t fancy it’s going to be my morning for aphorisms,” he said.

“Somehow,” Julia mused, “I’ve always thought — you won’t mind my saying, Carla darling? I prefer to be open — I’ve always thought Louis was a tiny bit the absconding type.”

Carlotta looked thoughtfully at her. “Have you?” she said as if her attention had been momentarily caught. “Well, it looks as though you’re right. Or doesn’t it?” she added turning to Alleyn.

He stood up. The three of them contemplated him with an air of — what? Polite interest? Concern? One would have said no more than that, if it had not been for Carlotta’s pallor, the slightest tremor in Jasper’s hand as he put down his coffee cup, and — in Julia? — the disappearance, as if by magic, of her immense vitality.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that in a situation which for me, if not for you, poses a problem, I’ll have to spill the beans. The not very delicious beans. As you say, I’m a policeman. I’m what is known as an ‘investigating officer’ and if something dubious crops up I’ve got to investigate it. That is why I’m here, on the island. Now, such is the nature of the investigation that anybody doing a bolt for no discernible reason becomes somebody the police want to see. Your cousin is now somebody I want to see.”

After a long silence Jasper said: “I don’t like your chances.”

“Nor do I, much.”

“I suppose we aren’t to know what you want to see him about?”

“I’ve gone further than I should already.”

Carlotta said: “It’s not about that girl, is it? Oh God, it’s not about her?”

“It’s no good, Carla,” Julia said and put her arm round Carlotta. “Obviously, he’s not going to tell you.” She looked at Alleyn and the ghost of her dottiness revisited her. “And we actually asked you to come and help us,” she said. “It’s like the flies asking the spider to walk into their parlor, isn’t it?”

“Alas!” said Alleyn. “It is, a bit. I’m sorry.”

The child Selina appeared on the steps from the house. She descended them in jumps with her feet together.

“Run away, darling,” her parents said in unison.

Selina continued to jump.

“Selina,” said her father. “What did we tell you?”

She accomplished the final jump. “I can’t,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said her mother. “Why can’t you?”

“I got a message.”

“A message? What message? Tell us later and run away now.”

“It’s on the telephone. I answered it.”

“Why on earth couldn’t you say so?”

“For him,” said Selina. She pointed at Alleyn and made a face.

Julia said automatically: “Don’t do that and don’t point at people. It’s for you,” she said to Alleyn.

“Thank you, Selina,” he said. “Will you show me the way?”

“Okey-dokey-pokey,” said Selina, and seized him by the wrist.

“You see?” Julia appealed to Alleyn. “Quite awful!”

“One is helpless,” said Jasper.

As they ascended the steps Selina repeated her jumping technique, retaining her hold on Alleyn’s wrist. When they were halfway up she said: “Cousin Louis is a dirty old man.”

Alleyn, nonplussed, gazed down at her. In her baleful way Selina was a pretty child.

“Why do you talk like that?” he temporized.

“What is a dirty old man?” asked Selina.

“Father Christmas in a chimney.”

“You’re cuckoo.” She slid her hand into his and adopted a normal manner of ascent. “Anyway,” she said, “Louis says he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Louis Ferrant says his mother says Cousin Louis is a D.O.M.”

“Do you know Louis Ferrant?”

“Nanny knows his mother. We meet them in the village. He’s bigger than me. He says things.”

“What sort of things?”

“I forget,” said Selina and looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t think Louis Ferrant’s an awfully good idea,” Alleyn said. He hoisted Selina up to his shoulder. She gave a shriek of pleasure and they entered the house.

It was Plank on the telephone.

“I thought you’d like to know, sir,” he said. “They’ve rung through from Montjoy. Jones wants to bargain.”

“He does? What’s he offering?”

“As far as we can make out, info on Dulcie. He won’t talk to anyone but you. He’s drying out and in a funny mood.”

“I’ll come.”

“One other thing, Mr. Alleyn. Mr. Harkness rang up. He’s on about this service affair tomorrow. He’s very keen on everybody attending it. There was a lot of stuff about Vengeance Is Mine Saith the Lord and the book of Leviticus. He said he’s been guided to make known before the multitude the sinner in Israel.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes. Something about it being revealed to him in a dream. He sounded very wild.”

“Drunk?”

“Damn near DTs, I reckon.”

“Do you suppose there’ll be a large attendance?”

“Yes,” said Plank, “I do. There’s a lot of talk about it. He’s sent some dirty big announcements to the pub and the shop.”

“Sent them? By whom?”

“The delivery boy from the Cod-and-Bottle. Mr. Harkness was very upset when I told him Jones and Ferrant wouldn’t be able to be present. He said the Lord would smite the police hip and thigh and cast them into eternal fires if Jones and Ferrant didn’t attend the meeting. Particularly Jones. He’s far gone, sir.”

“So it would seem. We’ll have to go to his party, of course. But first things first, Plank, and that means Jones. Is there anything to keep you in the Cove?”

“No, sir. I’ve informed Mrs. Ferrant her husband’s in custody and will come before the court on Monday.”

“How did she take that?”

“She never said a word but, my oath, she looked at me old-fashioned.”

“I daresay. I’ll get down as soon as I can,” said Alleyn and hung up.

When he came out of the house he found the Pharamonds still sitting around the table. They were not speaking and looked as if they had been that way ever since he left.

He went over to them. Jasper stood up.

“That was Sergeant Plank,” Alleyn said. “I’m wanted. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am that things have fallen out as they have.”

“Not your fault,” said Julia. “Or ours if it comes to that. We’re what’s called victims of circumstance. Why’s Ricky in hospital?”

“He was beaten up.”

“Not—?” Carlotta broke out.

“No, no. By Gil Ferrant and Syd Jones. They come up before the beak tomorrow. Rick’s all right.”

Julia said: “Poorest Ricky, what a time he’s having! Give him our love.”

“I will, indeed,” said Alleyn.

“Of course, if Louis should turn up, the Pharamonds, however boring the exercise, will close their ranks.”

“Of course.”

“And I with them. Because it behooves me so to do.” She reached out her hand to Carlotta who took it. “But then again,” she said, “I’m not a Pharamond. I’m a Lamprey. I think, ages ago, you met some of my relations.”

“I believe I did,” said Alleyn.