Last Ditch

“Gilbert Ferrant! Woe unto you Gilbert Ferrant—”

By now half the audience had turned in their seats. Gilbert Ferrant, tallow-faced, stared at Harkness.

“Woe unto you, Gilbert Ferrant. Adulterer! Trader in forbidden fruits!”

It went on. Now, only the I

He paused. His roving and ensanguined gaze alighted on the Pharamonds. He pointed: “And ye,” he apostrophized them: “Wallowers in the fleshpots…”

He rambled on at the top of his voice. They were motionless throughout. At last he stopped, glared, and seemed to prepare himself for some final and stupendous effort. Into the silence desultory sounds intruded. It was as if somebody outside the barn had begun to pepper the iron roof with pellets, only a few at first but increasing. At last the clouds had broken and it had begun to rain.

One might be forgiven, Alleyn thought afterwards, for supposing that some celestial stage manager had taken charge, decided to give Mr. Harkness the full treatment, and grossly overdone it. Mr. Harkness himself seemed to be unaware of the mounting fusillade on the roof. As the din increased he broke out anew. He stepped up his parade-ground delivery. He shouted anathemas: on his niece and her sins, citing predictable biblical comparisons, notably Jezebel and the Whore of Babylon. He referred to Leviticus 20:6 and to the Cities of the Plains. He began to describe the circumstances of her death. He was now very difficult to hear, for the downpour on the iron roof was all-obliterating.

“And the Si

He raised his right arm to the all-too-appropriate accompaniment of a stupendous thunderclap and turned himself into a latterday Lear. He beat his bosom and seemed at last to become aware of the storm.

An expression of bewilderment and frustration appeared. He stared wildly about him, gestured incomprehensively, clasped his hands, and looked beseechingly around his audience.

Then he covered his face with his hands and bolted into the i

Alleyn and Fox were on the stage with Plank hard at their heels. Nothing they said could be heard. Alleyn was at the door. It was locked. He and Fox stood back from it, collected themselves and shoulder-charged it. It resisted but Plank was there and joined in the next assault. It burst open and they plunged into the room.

Brother Cuth hung from a beam above the chair he had kicked away. His confession was pi

iv

Alleyn pushed the confession across the table at Fox. “It’s all there,” he said. “He may have written it days ago or whenever he first made up his mind.

“He was determined to destroy the author of his damnation, as he saw her, and then himself. The method only presented itself after their row about Dulcie jumping the gap. He seems to have found some sort of satisfaction, some sense of justice in the act of her disobedience being the cause of her death. He must have… made his final preparations… during the time he was locked up in the back room before the service began. If we’d broken in the door on the first charge we might just have saved him. He wouldn’t have thanked us for it.”

“I don’t get it, sir,” Plank said. “Him risking the sorrel mare. It seems all out of character.”

“He didn’t think he was risking the mare. He’d ordered Jones to take her to the smith and he counted on Dulcie trying the jump with Mungo, the outlaw, the horse he wanted to destroy. In the verbal battle they exchanged, he told her the mare had gone to the smith and she said she’d do it on Mungo. It’s there, in the confession. He’s been very thorough.”

“When did he rig the wire in the gap?” Fox asked. He was reading the confession. “Oh yes. I see. As soon as Jones went to the corn chandlers, believing that on his return he would remove the sorrel mare to the blacksmith’s.”

“And unrigged it after the Ferrants left, when Jones was sleeping off his drugs in the loose-box.”

Fox said: “And that girl lying in full view there in the ditch, looking the way she did! You can’t wonder he went off the rails.” He read on.

Plank said: “And yet, Mr. Alleyn, by all accounts he used to be fond of her, too. She was his niece. He’d adopted her.”

“What’s all this he’s on about? Leviticus twenty, verse six,” Fox asked.

“Look it up in the Bible they so thoughtfully provide in your room, Br’er Fox. I did. It says: ‘None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness.’ ”

Fox thought it over and was scandalized. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”

“To him,” Alleyn said, “she was the eternal temptress. The Scarlet Woman. The cause of his undoing. In a way, I suppose, he thought he was handing over the outcome to the Almighty. If she obeyed him and stayed in her room, nothing would happen. If she defied him, everthing would. Either way the decision came from on High.”

“Not my idea of Christianity,” Plank muttered. “The Missus and I are C of E,” he added.

“You know,” Alleyn said to Fox, “one might almost say Harkness was a sort of cross between Adam and the Ancient Mariner. ‘The woman tempted me,’ you know. And the subsequent revulsion followed by the awful necessity to talk about it, to make a proclamation before all the world and then to die.”

They said nothing for some time. At last Fox cleared his throat.

“What about the button?” he asked.

“In the absence of its owner, my guess would be that he went into the horse paddock out of curiosity to inspect Bruno’s jump and saw dead Dulcie. Dulcie who’d been threatening to shop her drug-ru

“Well,” Fox said after a further pause. “We haven’t had what you’d call a resounding success. Missed out with our homicide by seconds, lost a big fish on the drug scene, and ended up with a couple of tiddlers. And we’ve seen the young chap turn into a casualty on the way. How is he, Mr. Alleyn?”

“We’ve finished for the time being. Come and see,” said Alleyn.

Ricky had been discharged from hospital and was receiving in his bedroom at the hotel. Julia, Jasper, and Troy were all in attendance. The Pharamonds had brought grapes, books, champagne, and some more langouste sandwiches because the others had been a success. They had been describing, from their point of view, Cuth’s party as Julia only just continued not to call it.

“Darling,” she said to Ricky, “your papa was quite wonderful.” And to Troy, “No, but I promise. Superb.” She appealed to Fox. “You’ll bear me out, Mr. Fox.” Rather to his relief she did not wait for Fox to do so. “There we all were,” Julia continued at large. “I can’t tell you — the noise! And poor, poorest Cuth, trying with all his might to compete, rather, one couldn’t help thinking, like Mr. Noah in the deluge. I don’t mean to be fu

Julia stopped short. “Would you agree,” she said, appealing to Alleyn, “that when something really awful happens it’s terribly important not to work up a sort of phony reaction? You know? Making out you’re more upset than you really are. Would you say that?”