Fox said: “When we came into Saint Pierre at four yesterday a plane for Marseilles was taking off. If it calls at—” Mr. Fox arranged his mouth in an elaborate pout “—La Tournière; it could be there by six-thirty, couldn’t it? Just?”
“Is there anything,” Ricky ventured, “against him having been staying at La Tournière, and deciding to fly up to Saint Pierre by an early plane yesterday morning?”
“What was it you used to say, Mr. Alleyn?” Mr. Fox asked demurely. “ ‘Stop laughing. The child’s quite right!’ ”
“My very words,” said Alleyn. “All right, Rick, that may be the answer. Either way, Fox, the peloton des narcotiques, as you would no doubt call the French drug squad, had better be consulted. Ferrant’s on their list as well as ours. He’s thought to consort with someone in the upper strata of the trade.”
“Where?” Ricky asked.
“In Marseilles.”
“I say! Could he have been under orders to get rid of me? Because Syd had reported I’d rumbled his game with the paints?”
Fox shot a quick look at Alleyn and made a rumbling noise in his throat.
Alleyn said, “Remember, we haven’t anything to show for the theory about Jones and his paints. It may be as baseless as one of those cherubim that so continually do cry. But we’ve got to follow it up. Next time, if there is a next time, that Master Syd sets out for London with his paint box they’ll take him and his flake white to pieces at Weymouth and they won’t find so much as a lone pep pill in the lot. Either he’s in the clear or he’ll have seen the light and shut up shop.”
“Couldn’t — you — couldn’t it be proved one way or the other?” Ricky asked.
“Such as?” said Fox who was inclined to treat his godson as a sort of grown-up infant prodigy.
“Well—” said Ricky with diminishing assurance, “such as searching his Pad.”
“Presumably he’s still in France,” said Alleyn.
“All the better.”
“Troy and I agreed,” Alleyn said to Fox, “that taking one consideration with another it was better to keep our child uninformed about the policeman’s lot. Clearly, we have succeeded brilliantly.”
“Come off it, Cid,” said Ricky, grinning.
“However, we haven’t come here to discuss police law but to ask you to recall something Harkness said about his orders to Syd Jones. Do you remember?”
“Do you mean when he said he’d ordered Syd to take the sorrel mare to the blacksmith and he was in an awful stink because Syd hadn’t done it? He said Syd was as good as a murderer.”
“What did Jones do with himself?”
“I suppose he cleared off quite early. After he’d collected some horse feed, I think.”
“We don’t know,” Fox said heavily, “who was on the premises from the time the riding party left until they returned. Apart from the two Harknesses. Or has Plank gone into that, would you say?”
“We’ll ask him. All right, Rick. I don’t think we’ll be hounding you any more.”
“I’d rather be hounded than kept out.”
Fox said: “I daresay you don’t care to talk about work in progress.” He looked with respect at the weighted heap of manuscript on Ricky’s table.
“It’s a struggle, Br’er Fox.”
“Would I be on the wrong wavelength if I said it might turn out to be all the better for that?”
“You couldn’t say anything nicer,” said Ricky. “And I only hope you’re right.”
“He often is,” said Alleyn.
“About people at Leathers during that afternoon,” Ricky said. “There is, of course, Louis Pharamond.” And he described Louis’s cramp and early return.
“Nobody tells us anything,” Alleyn cheerfully complained. “What time would he have got back?”
“If he pushed along, I suppose about threeish. When he left he was carrying his right boot and had his right foot out of its stirrup. He’s very good on a horse.”
“Has he said anything about the scene at Leathers when he got there?”
Ricky stared at his father. “Funny,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Didn’t he give evidence at the inquest, for pity’s sake?”
“No. No, he didn’t. I don’t think they realized he returned early.”
“But surely one of you must have said something about it?”
“I daresay the others did. I haven’t seen them since the inquest. I should think he probably unsaddled his horse, left it in the loose-box, and came away without seeing anybody. It was there when we got back. Of course if there’d been anything untoward, he’d have said so, wouldn’t he?”
After a considerable pause during which Fox cleared his throat Alleyn said he hoped so and added that as investigating officers they could hardly be blamed if they didn’t know at any given time whether they were looking into a possible homicide or a big deal in heroin. It would be tidier, he said, if some kind of link could be found.
Ricky said: “Hi.”
“Hi, what?” asked his father.
“Well — I’d forgotten. You might say there is a link.”
“ ‘Define, define, well-educated infant,’ ” Alleyn quoted patiently.
“I’m sure it’s of no moment, mind you, but the night I came home late from Syd’s Pad—” and he described the meeting on the jetty between Ferrant and Louis Pharamond.
“What time,” Alleyn said after a long pause, “was this?”
“About one-ish.”
“Funny time to meet, didn’t you rather think?”
“I thought Louis Pharamond might go fishing with Ferrant. I didn’t know whether they’d been together in the boat or what. It was jolly dark,” Ricky said resentfully.
“It was your impression, though, that they had just met?”
“Yes. Well — yes, it was.”
“And all you heard was Louis Pharamond saying: ‘All right?’ or ‘OK, careful,’ or ‘Watch it.’ Yes?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Cid,” said Ricky. “Subsequent events have kind of wiped it.”
Fox said: “Understandable.”
Alleyn said perhaps it was and added that he would have to wait upon the Pharamonds anyway. Upon this, Ricky, looking very uncomfortable, told him about Julia’s telephone call and her intention of asking them to dinner. “I said I knew you’d adore to but were horribly busy. Was that OK?”
“Half of it was, at least. Yes, old boy, you were the soul of tact. Sure you don’t fancy the diplomatic after all? How did she know I was here?”
“Louis caught sight of you in the hotel. Last night.”
“I see. I don’t, on the whole, think this is an occasion for dinner parties. Will they all be at home this morning, do you suppose?”
“Probably.”
“One other thing, Rick. I’m afraid we may have to cut short your sojourn at the Cove.”
Ricky stared at him. “Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “Why?”
Alleyn walked over to the door, opened it, and had an aerial view of Mrs. Ferrant on her knees, polishing the stairs. She raised her head and they looked into each other’s faces.
“Bonjour, madame!” Alleyn called out jovially, “Comment ça va?”
“Pas si mal, monsieur, ” she said.
“Toujours affairée, n’est-ce pas?”
She agreed. That was how it went. He said he was about to look for her. He had lost his ball-point pen and wondered if she had come across it in the petit salon last evening after he left. Alas, no. Definitely, it was not in the petit salon. He thanked her and with further compliments reentered the room and shut the door.
Ricky began in a highish voice. “Now, look here, Cid—”
Alleyn and Fox simultaneously raised their forefingers. Ricky, against his better judgment, giggled. “You look like mature Gentlemen of the Chorus,” he said, but he said it quietly. “Shall I shut the window? In case of prowlers on the pavement?”