Last Ditch Read online

  Presently Julia came out of the house.

  ‘He’s sitting in his parlour,’ she said, ‘drinking instant coffee with a good dollop of scotch in it. I don’t know whether he’s spotted the scotch and is pretending he hasn’t or whether he’s too bonkers to know.’

  There was the sound of light wheels on gravel and round the corner of the house came a policeman on a bicycle.

  ‘Good evening, all,’ said the policeman, dismounting. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  Julia walked up to him with outstretched hand.

  ‘You say it!’ she cried. ‘You really do say it! How perfectly super.’

  ‘Beg pardon, madam?’ said the policeman, sizing her up.

  ‘I thought it was only a joke thing about policemen asking what seemed to be the trouble and saying “Evening all”.’

  ‘It’s as good a thing to say as anything else,’ reasoned the policeman.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she agreed warmly. ‘It’s a splendid thing to say.’

  Jasper intervened. ‘My wife’s had a very bad shock. She made the discovery.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Julia said, in a trembling voice. ‘My name’s Julia Pharamond and I made the discovery and I’m not quite myself.’

  The policeman – he was a sergeant – had removed his bicycle clips and produced his notebook. He made a brief entry.

  ‘Is that the case?’ he said. ‘Mrs J. Pharamond of L’Esperance, that would be, wouldn’t it? I’m sure I’m very sorry. It was you that rang the station, sir, was it?’

  ‘No. I expect it was Dr Carey. I rang him. Or perhaps it was the ambulance.’

  ‘I see, sir. And I understand it’s a fatality. A horse-riding accident?’ They made noises of assent. ‘Very sad, I’m sure,’ said the sergeant. ‘Yes. So if I might just take a wee look-see.’

  Once more Jasper pointed the way. The sergeant in his turn tramped down the horse-paddock to the blackthorn hedge.

  ‘You could do with some of that coffee and grog yourself, darling,’ Jasper said.

  ‘I did take a sly gulp. I can’t think why I rushed at Sergeant Dixon like that.’

  ‘He’s not Sergeant Dixon.’

  ‘There! You see! I’ll be calling him that to his face if I’m not careful. Too rude. I suppose you’re right. I suppose I’m like this on account of my taking a wee look-see.’ She burst into sobbing laughter and Jasper took her in his arms.

  He looked from Ricky to Carlotta. ‘We ought to get her out of this,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t we all just go? We can’t do any good hanging about here,’ said Carlotta.

  ‘We can’t leave Mr Harness,’ Julia sobbed into her husband’s coat. ‘We don’t know what he mightn’t get up to. Besides Sergeant Thing will want me to make a statement and Ricky, too, I expect. That’s very important, isn’t it, Ricky? Taking statements on the scene of the crime.’

  ‘What crime?’ Carlotta exclaimed. ‘Have you gone dotty, Julia?’

  ‘Where’s Bruno got to now?’ Jasper asked.

  ‘He went away to be sick,’ said Carlotta. ‘I expect he’ll be back in a minute.’

  Jasper put Julia into the back of the car and stayed beside her for some time. Bruno returned looking ghastly and saying nothing. At last the empty landscape became reinhabited. First, along a lane beyond a distant hedge, appeared the vet leading the sorrel mare. They could see her head, pecking up and down, and the top of the vet’s tweed hat. Then, beyond the gap in the blackthorn hedge, partly obscured by leafy twigs, some sort of activity was seen to be taking place. Something was being half-lifted, half-hauled up the bank on the far side. It was Miss Harkness on the stretcher, decently covered.

  CHAPTER 4

  Intermission

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘This is a nasty business, Joey,’ said the vet.

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

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

  ‘I understand you was the first to see the deceased, sir,’ he said.

  Ricky experienced an assortment of frissons.

  ‘Mrs Pharamond was the first,’ he said. ‘Then me.’

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

  ‘Roderick Alleyn.’

  A longish silence followed.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said the sergeant. ‘How is that spelt, if you please?’

  Ricky spelt it.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ Sergeant Plank austerely suggested, ‘be trying to take the micky, would you, sir?’

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

  A further silence.

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

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Ricky.

  ‘He still wou
ldn’t remember,’ said Sergeant Plank, ‘but it was a pleasure, all the same.’

  Yet another silence was broken by Mr Blacker. ‘Quite a coincidence,’ he said.

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

  ‘If I can, Mr Plank, of course.’

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

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

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

  ‘Is that so? Excited?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘Only too well.’

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

  ‘I’d be obliged, Mr Blacker,’ said the sergeant, raising his chin-ablue gaze from his notes, ‘if you didn’t. Just a formality but it’s what we’re instructed. No offence.’

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

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

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

  ‘Like that,’ he said.

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

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

  Ricky turned to meet the sergeant’s blue regard.

  ‘I was too rattled,’ he said, ‘to notice anything.’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘No.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘We’ll make it as comfortable as we can.’

  ‘Comfortable!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Not as prolifically as they used to, I fancy.’

  ‘Well, my dear Ricky, I suppose we now take our bracing walk to L’Esperance.’

  ‘You don’t think –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We ought to stay until he’s – done it? Looked.’

  ‘The doctor’s with him.’

  ‘Yes. So he is.’

  ‘Well, then –’

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

  ‘The day,’ said Jasper, ‘has not been without incident.’

  ‘No.’

  They began to move away.

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

  ‘Haven’t you?’ Ricky asked.

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

  ‘Am I to hear what it was?’

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

  ‘It looks like it.’

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

  ‘He’s coming.’

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

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

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