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Authors: Ngaio Marsh

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BOOK: Last Ditch
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He rode back to the cottage.

He was gradually becoming
persona grata
at the pub. He was given a ‘good evening’ when he came in and warmed up to when, his work having prospered that day, he celebrated by standing drinks all round. Bill Prentice, the fish-truck driver, offered to give him a lift into Montjoy if ever he fancied it. They settled for the coming morning. It was then that Miss Harkness came into the bar alone.

Her entrance was followed by a shuffling of feet and by the exchange of furtive smiles. She ordered a glass of port. Ferrant, leaning back against the bar in his favourite pose, looked her over. He said something that Ricky couldn’t hear and raised a guffaw. She smiled slightly. Ricky realized that with her entrance the atmosphere in the Cod-and-Bottle had become that of the stud. And that not a man there was unaware of it. So this, he thought, is what Miss Harkness is about.

The next morning, very early, Ricky tied his bicycle to the roof of the fish-truck and himself climbed into the front seat.

He was taken aback to find that Syd Jones was to be a fellowpassenger. Here he came, hunched up in a dismal mackintosh, with his paintbox slung over his shoulder, a plastic carrier-bag and a large and superior suitcase which seemed to be unconscionably heavy.

‘Hullo,’ Ricky said. ‘Are you moving into the Hotel Montjoy, with your grand suitcase?’

‘Why the hell would I do that?’

‘All right, all right, let it pass. Sorry.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t fall about at upper-middle-class humour.’

‘My mistake,’ said Ricky. ‘I do better in the evenings.’

‘I haven’t noticed it.’

‘You may be right. Here comes Bill. Where are you going to put your case? On the roof with my upper-middle-class bike?’

‘In front. Shift your feet. Watch it.’

He heaved the case up, obviously with an effort, pushed it along the floor under Ricky’s legs and climbed up. Bill Prentice, redolent of fish, mounted the driver’s seat, Syd nursed his paintbox and Ricky was crammed in between them.

It was a sparkling morning. The truck rattled up the steep lane, they came out into sunshine at the top and banged along the main road to Montjoy. Ricky was in good spirits.

They passed the entry into Leathers with its signboard: ‘Riding Stables. Hacks and Ponies for hire. Qualified Instructors.’ He wondered if Miss Harkness was up and about. He shouted above the engine to Syd: ‘You don’t go there every day, do you?’

‘Definitely bloody not,’ Syd shouted back. It was the first time Ricky had heard him raise his voice.

The road made a blind turn round a dense copse. Bill took it on the wrong side at forty miles an hour.

The windscreen was filled with Miss Harkness on a plunging bay horse, all teeth and eyes and flying hooves. An underbelly and straining girth reared into sight. The brakes shrieked, the truck skidded, the world turned sideways, and the passenger’s door flew open. Syd Jones, his paintbox and his suitcase shot out. The van rocked and sickeningly righted itself on the verge in a cloud of dust. The horse could be seen struggling on the ground and its rider on her feet with the reins still in her hands. The engine had stopped and the air was shattered by imprecations – a three-part disharmony from Bill, Syd and, predominantly, Miss Harkness.

Bill turned off the ignition, dragged his hand-brake on, got out and approached Miss Harkness, who told him with oaths to keep off. Without a pause in her stream of abuse she encouraged her mount to clamber to its feet, checked its impulse to bolt and began gently to examine it; her great horny hand passed with infinite delicacy down its trembling legs and heaving barrel. It was, Ricky saw, a wall-eyed horse.

‘Keep the hell out of it,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll hear about this.’

She led the horse along the far side of the road and past the truck. It snorted and plunged but she calmed it. When they had gone some
distance, she mounted. The sound of its hooves, walking, diminished. Bill began to swear again.

Ricky slid out of the truck on the passenger’s side. The paintbox had burst open and its contents were scattered about the grass. The catches on the suitcase had been sprung and the lid had flown back. Ricky saw that it was full of unopened cartons of Jerome et Cie’s paints. Syd Jones squatted on the verge, collecting tubes and fitting them back into their compartments.

Ricky stooped to help him.

‘Cut that out!’ he snarled.

‘Very well, you dear little man,’ Ricky said, with a strong inclination to throw one at his head. He took a step backwards, felt something give under his heel and looked down. He had trodden on a large tube of vermilion and burst the end open. Paint had spurted over his shoe.

‘Oh damn, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m most awfully sorry.’

He reached for the depleted tube. It was snatched from under his hand. Syd, on his knees, the tube in his grasp and his fingers reddened, mouthed at him. What he said was short and unprintable.

‘Look,’ Ricky said. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the paint and if you feel like a fight you’ve only to say so and we’ll shape up and make fools of ourselves here and now. How about it?’

Syd was crouched over his task. He mumbled something that might have been ‘Forget it.’ Ricky, feeling silly, walked round to the other side of the truck. It was being inspected by Bill Prentice with much the same intensity as Miss Harkness had displayed when she examined her horse. The smell of petrol now mingled with the smell of fish.

‘She’s OK,’ Bill said at last and climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Silly bitch,’ he added, referring to Miss Harkness, and started up the engine.

Syd loomed up on the far side with his suitcase, round which he had buckled his belt. His jeans drooped from his hip-bones as if from a coat-hanger.

‘Hang on a sec,’ Bill shouted.

He engaged his gear and the truck lurched back on the road. Syd waited. Ricky walked round to the passenger’s side. To his astonishment, Syd observed on what sounded like a placatory note: ‘Bike’s OK, then?’

They climbed on board and the journey continued. Bill’s strictures upon Miss Harkness were severe and modified only, Ricky felt, out of consideration for Syd’s supposed feelings. The burden of his plaint was that horse-traffic should be forbidden on the roads.

‘What was she on about?’ he complained. ‘The horse was OK.’

‘It was Mungo,’ Syd offered. ‘She’s crazy about it. Savage brute of a thing.’

‘That so?’

‘Bit me. Kicked the old man. He wants to have it destroyed.’

‘Is it all right with her?’ asked Ricky.

‘So she reckons. It’s an outlaw with everyone else.’

They arrived at the only petrol station between the Cove and Montjoy. Bill pulled into it for fuel and oil and held the attendant rapt with an exhaustive coverage of the incident.

Syd complained in his dull voice: ‘I’ve got a bloody boat to catch, haven’t I?’

Ricky, who was determined not to make advances, looked at his watch and said that there was time in hand.

After an uncomfortable silence Syd said, ‘I’m funny about my painting gear. You know? I can’t do with anyone else handling it. You know? If anyone else scrounges my paint, you know, borrows some, I can’t use that tube again. It’s kind of contaminated. Get what I mean?’

Ricky thought that what he seemed to mean was a load of highfalutin’ balls, but he gave a tolerant grunt and after a moment or two Syd began to talk. Ricky could only suppose that he was trying to make amends. His discourse was obscure but it transpired that he had been given some kind of agency by Jerome et Cie. He was to leave free samples of their paints at certain shops and with a number of well-known painters, in return for which he was given his fare, as much of their products for his own use as he cared to ask for and a small commission on sales. He produced their business card with a note, ‘Introducing Mr Sydney Jones’, written on it. He showed Ricky the list of painters they had given him. Ricky was not altogether surprised to find his mother’s name at the top.

With as ill a grace as could be imagined, he said he supposed Ricky ‘wouldn’t come at putting the arm on her’, which Ricky
interpreted as a suggestion that he should give Syd an introduction to his mother.

‘When are you going to pay your calls?’ Ricky asked.

The next day, it seemed. And it turned out that Syd was spending the night with friends who shared a pad in Battersea. Jerome et Cie had expressed the wish that he should modify his personal appearance.

‘Bloody commercial shit,’ he said violently. ‘Make you vomit, wouldn’t it?’

They arrived at the wharves in Montjoy at half past eight. Ricky watched the crates of fish being loaded into the ferry and saw Syd Jones go up the gangplank. He waited until the ferry sailed. Syd had vanished, but at the last moment he re-appeared on deck wearing his awful raincoat and with his paintbox still slung over his shoulder.

Ricky spent a pleasant day in Montjoy and bicycled back to the Cove in the late afternoon.

Rather surprisingly, the Ferrants had a telephone. That evening Ricky put a call through to his parents advising them of the approach of Sydney Jones.

CHAPTER 3
The Gap

‘As far as I can see,’ Alleyn said, ‘he’s landing us with a sort of monster.’

‘He thinks it might amuse us to meet him after all we’ve heard.’

‘It had better,’ Alleyn said mildly.

‘It’s only for a minute or two.’

‘When do you expect him?’

‘Some time in the morning, I imagine.’

‘What’s the betting he stays for luncheon?’

Troy stood before her husband in the attitude that he particularly enjoyed, with her back straight, her hands in the pockets of her painting smock and her chin down rather like a chidden little boy.

‘And what’s the betting,’ he went on, ‘my own true love, that before you can say Flake White, he’s showing you a little something he’s done himself.’

‘That,’ said Troy grandly, ‘would be altogether another pair of boots and I should know how to deal with them. And anyway he told Rick he thinks I’ve painted myself out.’

‘He grows more attractive every second.’

‘It was funny about the way he behaved when Rick trod on his vermilion.’

Alleyn didn’t answer at once. ‘It was, rather,’ he said at last. ‘Considering he gets the stuff free.’

‘Trembling with rage, Rick said, and his beard twitching.’

‘Delicious.’

‘Oh well,’ said Troy, suddenly brisk. ‘We can but see.’

‘That’s the stuff. I must be off.’ He kissed her. ‘Don’t let this Jones fellow make a nuisance of himself,’ he said. ‘As usual, my patient Penny-lope, there’s no telling when I’ll be home. Perhaps for lunch or perhaps I’ll be in Paris. It’s that narcotics case. I’ll get them to telephone. Bless you.’

‘And you,’ said Troy cheerfully.

She was painting a tree in their garden from within the studio. At the heart of her picture was an exquisite little silver birch just starting to burgeon and treated with delicate and detailed realism. But this tree was at the core of its own diffusion a larger and much more stylized version of itself and that, in turn, melted into an abstract of the two trees it enclosed. Alleyn said it was like the unwinding of a difficult case with the abstractions on the outside and the implacable ‘thing itself’ at the hard centre. He had begged her to stop before she went too far.

She hadn’t gone any distance at all when Mr Sydney Jones presented himself.

There was nothing very remarkable, Troy thought, about his appearance. He had a beard, close-cropped, revealing a full, vaguely sensual but indeterminate mouth. His hair was of a medium length and looked clean. He wore a sweater over jeans. Indeed, all that remained of the Syd Jones Ricky had described was his huge sillysinister pair of black spectacles. He carried a suitcase and a newspaper parcel.

‘Hullo,’ Troy said, offering her hand. ‘You’re Sydney Jones, aren’t you? Ricky rang up and told us you were coming. Do sit down, won’t you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, and sniffed loudly. He was sweating.

Troy sat on the arm of a chair. ‘Do you smoke?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got any cigarettes but do if you’d like to.’

He put his suitcase and the newspaper parcel down and lit a cigarette. He then picked up his parcel.

‘I gather it’s about Jerome et Cie’s paints, isn’t it?’ Troy suggested. ‘I’d better say that I wouldn’t want to change to them and I can’t honestly give you a blurb. Anyway I don’t do that sort of thing. Sorry.’ She waited for a response but he said nothing. ‘Rick tells us,’ she said, ‘that you paint.’

With a gesture so abrupt that it made her jump, he thrust his parcel at her. The newspaper fell away and three canvases tied together with string were exposed.

‘Is that,’ Troy said, ‘some of your work?’

He nodded.

‘Do you want me to look at it?’

He muttered.

Made cross by having been startled, Troy said: ‘My dear boy, do for pity’s sake speak out. You make me feel as if I were giving an imitation of a woman talking to herself. Stick them up there where I can see them.’

With unsteady hands he put them up, one by one, changing them when she nodded. The first was the large painting Ricky had decided was an abstraction of Leda and the Swan. The second was a kaleidoscopic arrangement of shapes in hot browns and raucous blues. The third was a landscape, more nearly representational than the others. Rows of perceptible houses with black, staring windows stood above dark water. There was some suggestion of tactile awareness but no real respect, Troy thought, for the medium.

She said: ‘I think I know where we are with this one. Is it St Pierre-des-Roches on the coast of Normandy?’

‘Yar,’ he said.

‘It’s the nearest French port to your island, isn’t it? Do you often go across?’

‘Aw – yar,’ he said, fidgeting. ‘It turns me on. Or did. I’ve worked that vein out, as a matter of fact.’

‘Really,’ said Troy. There was a longish pause. ‘Do you mind putting up the first one again. The Leda.’

He did so. Another silence. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘do you want me to say what I think? Or not?’

‘I don’t mind,’ he mumbled, and yawned extensively.

‘Here goes, then. I find it impossible to say whether I think you’ll develop into a good painter or not. These three things are all derivative. That doesn’t matter while you’re young: if you’ve got something of your own, with great pain and infinite determination you will finally prove it. I don’t think you’ve done that so far. I do get something from the Leda thing – a suggestion that you’ve got a strong sense of rhythm, but it is no more than a suggestion. I don’t
think you’re very self-critical.’ She looked hard at him. ‘You don’t fool about with drugs, do you?’ asked Troy.

There was a very long pause before he answered quite loudly, ‘No.’

‘Good. I only asked because your hands are unsteady and your behaviour erratic, and –’ She broke off. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you’re
not
well, are you? Sit down. No, don’t be silly, sit down.’

He did sit down. He was shaking, sweat had started out under the line of his hair and he was the colour of a peeled banana. He gaped and ran a dreadful tongue round his mouth. She fetched him a glass of water. The dark glasses were askew. He put up his trembling hand to them and they fell off, disclosing a pair of pale ineffectual eyes. Gone was the mysterious Mr Jones.

‘I’m all right,’ he said.

‘I don’t think you are.’

‘Party. Last night.’

‘What sort of party?’

‘Aw. A fun thing.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ll be OK.’

Troy made some black coffee and left him to drink it while she returned to her work. The spirit trees began to enclose their absolute inner tree more firmly.

When, at a quarter past one, Alleyn walked into the studio, it was to find his wife at work and an enfeebled young man avidly watching her from an armchair.

‘Oh,’ said Troy, grandly waving her brush and staring fixedly at Alleyn. ‘Hullo, darling. Syd, this is my husband. This is Rick’s friend, Syd Jones, Rory. He’s shown me some of his work and he’s going to stay for luncheon.’

‘Well!’ Alleyn said, shaking hands. ‘This
is
an unexpected pleasure. How are you?’

II

Three days after Ricky’s jaunt to Montjoy Julia Pharamond rang him up at lunch-time. He had some difficulty in pulling himself together and attending to what she said.

‘You do ride, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘Not at all well.’

‘At least you don’t fall off?’

‘Not very often.’

‘There you are, then. Super. All settled.’

‘What,’ he asked, ‘is settled?’

‘My plan for tomorrow. We get some Harkness hacks and ride to Bon Accord.’

‘I haven’t any riding things.’

‘No problem. Jasper will lend you any amount. I’m ringing you up while he’s out because he’d say I was seducing you away from your book. But I’m not, am I?’

‘Yes,’ said Ricky, ‘you are, and it’s lovely,’ and heard her splutter.

‘Well, anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s all settled. You must leap on your
bicyclette
and pedal up to L’Esperance for breakfast and then we’ll all sweep up to the stables. Such fun.’

‘Is Miss Harkness coming?’

‘No. How can you ask! Before we knew where we were she’d miscarry.’

‘If horse-exercise was going to make her do that it would have done so already, I fancy,’ said Ricky, and told her about the mishap on the road to Montjoy. Julia was full of exclamations and excitement. ‘How,’ she said, ‘you dared not to ring up and tell us immediately!’

‘I thought you’d said she was beginning to be a bore.’

‘She’s suddenly got interesting again. So she’s back at Leathers and reconciled to Mr Harkness?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But couldn’t you
tell?
Couldn’t you
sense
it?’

‘How?’

‘Well, from her conversation.’

‘It consisted exclusively of oaths.’

‘I can’t wait to survey the scene at Leathers. Will Mr Jones be there mucking-out?’

‘He was in London quite recently.’

‘In London! Doing what?’

‘Lunching with my parents, among other things.’

‘You really are
too
provoking. I can see that all sorts of curious things are happening and you’re being furtive and sly about them.’

‘I promise to disclose all. I’m not even fully persuaded, by the way, that she and Syd Jones
are
lovers.’

‘I shall be the judge of that. Here comes Jasper and I’ll have to tell him I’ve seduced you. Goodbye.’

‘Which is no more than God’s truth,’ Ricky shouted fervently. He heard her laugh and hang up the receiver.

The next morning dawned brilliantly, and at half past nine Ricky, dressed in Jasper’s spare jodhpurs and boots and his own Ferrant sweater, proposed to take a photograph of the Pharamonds, including the two little girls produced for the purpose. They assembled in a group on the patio. The Pharamonds evidently adored being photographed, especially Louis, who looked almost embarrassingly smooth in breeches, boots, sharp hacking jacket and gloves.

‘Louis, darling,’ Julia said, surveying him, ‘
trés snob presque cad!
You lack only the polo stick!’

‘I don’t understand how it is,’ Carlotta said, ‘but nothing Louis wears ever looks even a day old.’

Ricky thought that this assessment didn’t work if applied to Louis’s face. His very slight tan looked almost as if it had been laid on, imposing a spurious air of health over a rather dissipated foundation.

‘I bought this lot in Acapulco eight years ago,’ said Louis.

‘I remember. From a dethroned Prince who’d lost his all at the green baize tables,’ said Julia.

‘My recollection,’ Carlotta said, ‘is of a
dèclassè
gangster but I may be wrong.’

Selina, who had been going through a short repertoire of exhibitionist antics, ignored by her seniors, suddenly flung herself at Louis and hung from his wrist, doubling up her legs and shrieking affectedly.

‘You little monster,’ he said, ‘you’ve nearly torn off a button,’ and examined his sleeve.

Selina walked away with a blank face.

Bruno said, ‘Do let’s get posed-up for Ricky and then take off for the stables.’

‘Let’s be ultra-mondains,’ Julia decided. She sank into a swinging chaise-longue, dangled an elegantly breeched leg and raised a drooping hand above her head.

Jasper raised it to his lips. ‘Madame is enchanting – nay, irresistible –
ce matin
,’ he said.

Selina stuck out her tongue.

Bruno, looking impatient, merely stood.

‘Thank you,’ said Ricky.

They piled into Louis’s car and drove to Leathers.

The avenue, a longish one, led to an ugly Victorian house, and continued round the back into the stable yard, and beyond this to a barn at some distance from the other buildings.

‘Hush!’ Julia said dramatically. ‘Listen! Louis, stop.’

‘Why?’ asked Louis, but stopped nevertheless.

Somewhere round the corner of the house a man was shouting.

‘My dears!’ said Julia. ‘Mr Harkness in a rage again. How too awkward.’

‘What should we do about it?’ Carlotta asked. ‘Slink away or what?’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Jasper said. ‘He may be ticking off a horse or even Mr Jones for all we know.’

‘Ricky says Mr Jones is in London.’


Was
,’ Ricky amended.

‘Anyway, I refuse to be done out of our riding treat,’ said Bruno. ‘Press on, Louis.’

‘Be quiet, Bruno. Listen.’

Louis wound down the window. A female voice could be clearly heard.


And if I want to bloody jump the bloody hedge, by God I’ll bloody jump it, I’ll jump it on Mungo, by God
.’


Anathema! Blasphemy!


Don’t you lay a hand on me: I’m pregnant,
’ bellowed Miss Harkness.


Harlot!


Shut up.


Strumpet!


Stuff it.

‘Oh, do drive on, Louis,’ said Carlotta crossly. ‘They’ll stop when they see us. It’s so boring, all this.’

Louis said, ‘It would be nice if people made up their minds.’

‘We have. Press on.’

He drove into the stable yard.

The picture that presented itself was of a row of six loose-boxes, each with a horse’s bridled head looking out of the upper half,
flanked at one end by a tack-room and at the other by an open coach-house containing a small car, coils of old wire discarded gear, tools, and empty sacks: all forming a background for a large red man with profuse whiskers towering over Miss Harkness, who faced him with a scowl of defiance.

‘Lay a hand on me and I’ll call the police,’ she threatened.

Mr Harkness, for undoubtedly it was he, had his back to the car. Arrested, no doubt, by a sudden glaze that overspread his niece’s face, he turned and was transfixed.

His recovery was almost instantaneous. He strode towards them, all smiles.

‘Morning, morning. All ready for you. Six of the best,’ shouted Mr Harkness. He opened car doors, offered a large freckled hand with ginger bristles, helped out the ladies and, laughing merrily, piloted them across the yard.

‘Dulcie’s got ’em lined up,’ he said.

Julia beamed upon Mr Harkness and, to his obvious bewilderment, gaily chided Miss Harkness for deserting them. He shouted: ‘Jones!’

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