Last Ditch (20 page)

‘Do we know where he keeps it exactly?’

‘No, and I don’t want to ask Madame. We’ll take a little prowl. Come and say goodbye to Mrs P.’

He took the tray into the kitchen. Mrs Plank was ironing. ‘That
was
kind,’ he said, and unloaded crockery into the sink. ‘Is this the drill?’ he asked, and turned on the tap.

‘Don’t you touch them things!’ she shouted. Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure. It’s very kind but Joe’d never forgive me.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘It wouldn’t be fitting,’ she said in a flurry. ‘Not the thing at all.’

‘I don’t see why. Here!’ he said to the little girl who was ogling him round the leg of the table. ‘Can you dry?’

She swung her barrel of a body from side to side and shook her head.

‘No, she can’t,’ said her mother.

‘Well, Fox can,’ Alleyn announced as his colleague loomed up in the doorway. ‘Can’t you?’

‘Pleasure,’ he said, and they washed up together.

‘By the way, Mrs Plank,’ Alleyn asked, ‘do you happen to know where Gil Ferrant berths his boat?’

She said she fancied it was anchored out in the harbour. He makes great use of it, said Mrs Plank.

‘When he goes night fishing?’

‘If that’s what it is.’

This was a surprising reaction, but it turned out that Mrs Plank referred to the possibility of philandering escapades after dark in
Fifi,
which was the name of Ferrant’s craft. ‘How
she
puts up with it, I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Mrs Plank. ‘No choice in the matter, I dare say.’

Fox clicked his tongue against his palate and severely contemplated the glass he polished. ‘Fancy that,’ he said.

Unhampered by the austere presence of her husband, Mrs Plank elaborated. She said that mind you, Mr Fox, she wouldn’t go so far as to say for certain but her friend next door knew for a fact that the poor girl had been seen embarking
Fifi
after dark with Ferrant in attendance, and as for her and that Jones…She laughed shortly and told her daughter to go into the garden and make another mud pie. The little girl did so by inches, retiring backwards with her eyes on Alleyn as if he were royalty. Predictably she tripped on the doorstep and fell backwards on to the wire mat. She was still roaring when they left.

‘Didn’t amount to much joy,’ Fox said disparagingly as they walked down to the front. ‘All this about the girl. We knew she was – what’s that the prince called the tom in the play?’

‘ “Some road”?’

‘That’s right. The young chap took me to see it,’ said Fox, who usually referred in this fashion to his god-son. ‘Very enjoyable piece. Well, as I was saying, we knew already what this unfortunate girl was.’

‘We didn’t know she’d had to do with Ferrant, though. If it’s true. Or that she went boating with him after dark.’

‘If it’s true,’ they said together.

‘Might be the longed-for link, if it
is
true,’ Fox said. ‘In any case I suppose we add him to the list.’

‘Oh yes. Yes. We prick him down. And if Rick’s got the right idea about the attack on him, I suppose we add a gloss to the name. “Prone to violence”.’

‘There is that, too,’ said Fox.

They were opposite the Ferrants’ cottage. Alleyn looked up at Ricky’s window. It was shut and there was no sign of him at his work table.

‘I think I’ll just have a word with him,’ he said. ‘If he’s at home. I won’t be a moment.’

But Ricky was not at home. Mrs Ferrant said he’d gone out about half an hour ago: she couldn’t say in what direction. He had not left a message. His bicycle was in the shed. She supposed the parcel in the hall must be his.

‘Freshening himself up with a bit of exercise, no doubt,’ said Fox gravely. ‘Heavy work, it must be, you know, this writing. When you come to think of it.’

‘Yes, Foxkin, I expect it must,’ Ricky’s father said, with a friendly glance at his old colleague. ‘Meanwhile one must pursue the elusive
Fifi.
From Rick’s story of the dead-of-night encounter between Ferrant and Louis Pharamond, it looks as if she sometimes ties up at the end of the pier. But if she anchors out in the harbour, he’ll need a dinghy. There are only four boats out there. Can you pick up the names?’

Fox, who was long-sighted, said:
‘Tinker, Marleen, Bonny Belle.
Wait a bit. She’s coming round. Hold on. Yes. That’s her. Second from the right, covered with a tarpaulin.
Fifi:

‘Damn.’

‘Could we get a dinghy and row out?’

‘With Madame Ferrant’s beady eye at the front parlour window.’

‘Do you reckon?’

‘I’d take a bet on it. Let’s trip blithely down the pier.’

They walked down the pier and stood with their hands in their pockets, ostensibly gazing out to sea. Alleyn pointed to the distant coast of France.

‘To coin a phrase, don’t look now, but
Fifi’s
dinghy’s below, moored to the jetty with enough line to accommodate to the tide.’

‘Is she, though? Oh, yes,’ said Fox, slewing his eyes down and round. ‘I see.
Fifi
on the stern. Would she normally be left like that though? Wouldn’t she knock herself out against the pier?’

‘There are old tyres down there for fenders. But you’d think she’d be hauled up the beach with the others. Or, of course, if the owner was aboard, tied up to
Fifi:

‘Do we get anything out of this, then?’

‘Let’s go back, shall we?’

They returned to the front and sat on the weatherworn bench. Alleyn got out his pipe.

‘I’ve got news for you, Br’er Fox,’ he said. ‘Last evening that dinghy
was
hauled up on the beach. I’m sure of it. I waited up in Rick’s room for an hour until he arrived and spent most of the time looking out of the window. There she was, half-blue and half-white, and her name across her stern. She was just on the seaward side of high-water mark with her anchor in the sand. She’d be afloat at high tide.’

‘Is that so? Well, well. Now, how do you read that?’ asked Fox.

‘Like everything else that’s turned up – with modified rapture. Ferrant may let one of his mates in the Cove have the use of his boat while he’s away.’

‘In which case, wouldn’t the mate return it to the beach?’

‘Again, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Alleyn said. And after a pause: ‘When I left last night, at ten o’clock, the tide was coming in. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. The dinghy wasn’t on the beach this morning.’

He lit his pipe. They were silent for some time.

Behind them the Ferrants’ front door banged. Alleyn turned quickly, half-expecting to see Ricky, but it was only the boy, Louis,
with his black hair sleeked like wet fur to his head. He was unnaturally tidy and French-looking in his matelot jersey and very short shorts.

He stared at them, stuck his hands in his pockets and crossed the road, whistling and strutting a little.

‘Hullo,’ Alleyn said. ‘You’re Louis Ferrant, aren’t you?’

He nodded. He walked over to the low wall and lounged against it as Louis Pharamond had lounged that morning: self-consciously, deliberately. Alleyn experienced the curious reaction that is induced by unexpected crosscutting in a film as if the figure by the wall blinked by split seconds from child to man to child again.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked. ‘Do you ever go fishing?’

The boy shook his head and then said: ‘Sometimes,’ in an indifferent voice.

‘With your father, perhaps?’

‘He’s not here,’ Louis said very quickly.

‘You don’t go out by yourself? In the dinghy?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Or perhaps you can’t row,’ Alleyn casually suggested.

‘Yes. I can. I can so, row. My papa won’t let anybody but me row the dinghy. Not anybody. I can row by myself even when it’s
gros temps.
Round the
musoir,
I can, and out to the
cap.
Easy.’

‘I bet you wouldn’t go out on your own at night.’

‘Huh! Easy! Often! I –’

He stopped short, looked uncomfortably at the house and turned sulky. ‘I can so, row,’ he muttered, and began to walk away.

‘I’ll get you to take me out one of these nights,’ Alleyn said.

But Louis let out a small boy’s whoop and ran suddenly, down the road and round the corner.

‘Let me tell you a fairy-tale, Br’er Fox,’ said Alleyn.

‘Any time,’ said Fox.

‘It’s about a little boy who stayed up late because his mother told him to. When it was very dark and very late indeed and the tide was high, she sent him down to the strand where his papa’s dinghy was anchored and just afloat and he hauled up the anchor and rowed the dinghy out to his papa’s motor-boat, which was called
Fifi,
and he tied her up to
Fifi
and waited for his papa who was not really his
papa at all. Or
perhaps
as it was a calm night, he rowed right out to the heads – the
cap –
and waited there. And presently his papa arrived in a boat from France which went back to France. So the little boy and his papa rowed all the way back to the pier and came home. And they left the dinghy tied up to the pier.’

‘And what did the papa do then?’ Fox asked in falsetto.

‘That,’ Alleyn said, ‘is the catch. He can hardly have bedded down with his lawful wedded wife, and be lying doggo in the bedroom. Or can he?’

‘Possible.’

‘Yes. Or,’ Alleyn said, ‘he may be bedded down somewhere else.’

‘Like where?’

‘Like Syd’s pad, for example.’

‘And why’s he come back? Because things are getting too hot over there?’ Fox hazarded.

‘Or, while we’re in the inventive vein, because they might be potentially even hotter over here and he wants to clean up damning evidence.’

‘Where? Don’t tell me. At Syd’s pad. Or,’ Fox said, ‘could it be, don’t laugh, to clean up Syd.’

‘Because, wait for it, Syd it was who made the attempt on Rick and bungled it and has become unreliable and expendable. Your turn.’

‘A digression. Reverting to the deceased. While on friendly terms with Syd at his pad, suppose she stumbled on something,’ said Fox.

‘What did she stumble on? Oh, I’m with you. On a doctored tube of emerald oxide of chromium or on the basic supply of dope.’

‘And fell out with Jones on account of it being his baby and he not being prepared to take responsibility and so she threatened to grass on him,’ said Fox, warming to his work. ‘Or alternatively, yes, by gum, for Syd read Ferrant. It was
his
baby and
he
did her in. Shall I go on?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Anyway, one, or both of them, fixes up the death trap and polishes her off,’ said Fox. ‘There you are! Bob’s your uncle.’ He chuckled.

Alleyn did not reply. He got up and looked at Ricky’s window. It was still shut. The village was very quiet at this time in the afternoon.

‘I wonder where he went for his walk,’ he said. ‘I suppose he could have come back while we were on the pier.’ ‘He couldn’t have failed to see us.’

‘Yes, but he wouldn’t butt in. He’s not at his table. When he’s there you can see him very clearly from the street. Good God, I’m behaving like a clucky old hen.’

Fox looked concerned but said nothing.

Alleyn said: ‘We’re not exactly active at the moment, are we? What the hell have we got in terms of visible, tangible, put-on-table evidence? Damn all.’

‘A button.’

‘True.’

‘It wasn’t anywhere near the fence,’ said Fox. ‘Might he just have forgotten?’

‘He might, but I don’t think so. Fox, I’m going to get a search-warrant for Syd’s pad.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. We can’t leave it any longer. Even if we’ve done no better than concoct a fairy-tale, Jones does stand not only as an extremely dubious character but as a kind of link between the two crackpot cases we’re supposed to be handling. I’ve been hoping Dupont at his end might turn up something definite and in consequence haven’t taken any action with the sprats that might scare off the mackerel. But there’s a limit to masterly inactivity and we’ve reached it.’

‘So we search,’ Fox said. He fixed his gaze upon the distant coast of France. ‘What d’you reckon, Mr Alleyn?’ he asked. ‘Has he got back? Have they both got back? Jones and Ferrant?’

‘Not according to the airport people.’

‘By boat, then, like we fancied. In the night?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Here comes a copper in the Super’s car. It’s ho for the nearest beak and a search-warrant.’

‘It’ll be a pity,’ Fox remarked, ‘if nobody’s there after all. Bang goes the fairy-tale. Back to square one.’ He considered this possibility for a moment. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘although I don’t usually place any reliance on hunches, I’ve got a funny kind of feeling there’s somebody in Syd’s pad.’

The really extraordinary feature of Ricky’s situation was his inability to believe in it. He had to keep reminding himself that Ferrant had a real gun of sorts and was pointing it into the small of his back. Ferrant had shown it to him and said it was real and that he would use it if Ricky did not do as he was told. Even then Ricky’s incredulity nearly got the better of him and he actually had to pull himself together and stop himself calling his bluff and suddenly bolting down the hill.

The situation was embarrassing rather than alarming. When Syd Jones slouched out of the pad and met them and fastened his arms behind his back with a strap, Ricky thought that all three of them looked silly and not able to carry the scene off with style. This reaction was the more singular in that, at the same time, he knew they meant business and that he ought to be deeply alarmed.

And now, here he was, back in Syd’s pad and in the broken-down chair he had occupied on his former visit, very uncomfortable because of his pinioned arms. The room smelt and looked as it had before and was in the same state of squalor. He saw that blankets had been rigged up over the windows, A solitary shaded lamp on the work table gave all the light there was. His arms hurt him and broken springs dug into his bottom.

There was one new feature apart from the blankets. Where there had been sketches drawing-pinned to the wall there now hung a roughly framed canvas. He recognized the work that had Leda and the Swan as its subject.