“You’re sure of that?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“She was pregnant.”
“If you’re trying to suggest—” Louis broke off. He had spoken loudly but now, after a quick look up at Ricky’s window stopped short. In the silence that followed Julia’s voice could be heard. Alleyn looked around and was in time to see her appear briefly at the closed window. She waved to them and then turned away. Ricky could be dimly seen in the background.
“There is absolutely no question of that,” Louis said. “You can dismiss any such notion.”
“Have you any theory on the parentage?”
For a moment or two he hesitated and then said that, “not to put too fine a point on it, it might be anybody.” By one of those quirks of foresight Alleyn knew what his next remark would be and out it came. “She was quite a girl,” Louis said.
“So I’ve been told,” said Alleyn.
Louis waited. “Is that all you wanted to see me about?” he asked at last.
“Pretty well, I think. We’d just like to be sure about any possible callers at Leathers during the day. A tidying-up process. Routine.”
“Yes, I see. I’m sorry if I didn’t take kindly to being grilled.”
“It was hardly that, I hope.”
“Well — you did trick me over that unlucky note, didn’t you?”
“You should see us when we get really nasty,” Alleyn said.
“It’s just because of Carlotta. You do understand?”
“I think so.”
“I suppose I’m pretty hopeless,” said Louis. “But still…” He stretched elaborately as if freeing himself from the situation. “Ricky seems to be enjoying the giddy pleasures of life in Deep Cove and la maison Ferrant,” he said. “I can’t imagine what he finds to do with himself when he’s not writing.”
“There’s been some talk of night fishing and assignations with his landlord in the early hours of the morning, but I don’t think anything’s come of it. Do you ever go in for that?”
Louis didn’t answer. It was as if for a split second he had become the victim of suspended animation, a “still” introduced into a motion picture with the smile unerased on his face. This hitch in time was momentary, so brief that it might have been an illusion. The smile broadened and he said: “Me? Not my scene, I’m afraid. Too keen on my creature comforts.”
He took out his cigarette case and filled it with a steady hand from a new packet. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
“Not that I can think of,” Alleyn said cheerfully. “I’m sorry I had to raise uncomfortable ghosts.”
“Oh,” Louis said, “I’ll survive. I wish I could have been more help.” He looked up at Ricky’s.window. “What’s all this we hear about him taking a plunge?”
Alleyn said it appeared that Ricky had slipped on the wet wharf, knocked his face against a gangway stanchion, and fallen in.
“He’s a pretty picture,” he said, “and loath to display himself.”
Louis said they’d soon see about that and with a sudden and uncomfortable display of high spirits, threw a handful of fine gravel at the window. Some of it miscarried and spattered on the front door. Ricky loomed up, empurpled and unwilling, behind the glass. Louis gestured for him to open the window and when he had done so shouted, “ ‘But soft, what light from yonder window breaks,’ ” in a stagey voice. Julia appeared beside Ricky and took his arm.
“Do pipe down, Louis,” she said. “You’re inflaming the populace.”
And indeed the populace in the shape of one doubled-up ancient-of-days on his way to the Cod-and-Bottle and three preschool-aged children had paused to gape at Louis. Two windows were opened. Mr. Mercer came out of his shop and went in again.
More dramatically, the front door of the Ferrants’ house was thrown wide and out stormed Mrs. Ferrant, screaming as she came: “Louis! Assez de bruit! What are you doing, Petit méchant!”
She came face to face with Louis Pharamond, stopped dead, and shut her mouth like a trap.
“Good morning, Marie,” he said. “Were you looking for me?”
Her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched. For a moment Alleyn thought she was going to have at Louis but she turned instead to him. “Pardon, Monsieur Alleyn,” she said. “A stupid mistake. My son occasionally has the bad manners to throw stones.” And with a certain magnificence she returned indoors.
“Let’s face it,” said Louis, “I am not, in that department, a popular boy.” He looked up at Julia in the window. “We’ll be late for luncheon,” he called. “Coming?”
“Go and find Bruno, then,” she said. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
Alleyn looked at his watch. “I’m running shamefully late,” he said. “Will you forgive me?”
“For almost anything,” Julia called, “except not coming to see us. Au revoir.”
iv
Ricky would not have chosen for Julia to see him with his black eye, which was half-closed and made him look as if he lewdly winked at people. He had felt sheepish and uncomfortable when she walked into his room but, although she did laugh, it was sympathetically, and at first she didn’t ask him to elaborate on his accident. This surprised him, because after all it would have been a natural thing to do. Perversely, although relieved, he felt slightly hurt at the avoidance.
Nor did she tease him with questions about his father’s activities, but related the Pharamonds’ London adventures, asked him about his writing, and repeated her nonsense offer to help him with it. She dodged about from one topic to another. The children, she said, had become too awful. “They writhe and ogle and have suddenly turned just so common that I begin to think they must be changelings and not Jasper’s and mine at all.”
“Oh, come,” said Ricky.
“I promise! Of course, I love them to distraction and put it all down to everybody but me spoiling them. We’ve decided that they shall have a tutor.”
“Aren’t they rather small for that?” Ricky ventured.
“Not at all. He needn’t teach them anything, just rule them with a rod of iron and think of strenuous and exhausting games. I had rather wondered if Mr. Jones might do.”
“You can’t by any chance mean that?”
“Not really. It did just cross my mind that perhaps he could teach them painting. Selina’s style is rather like his own. With guidance she might develop into a sort of Granddaughter Moses. Still, as you tell me he’s junketing in Saint Pierre-des-Roches these ideas are only wishful thinking on my part. I merely throw them out.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Didn’t you go jaunting together to Saint Pierre?”
“No, no,” he said in a hurry. “Not together. Only, as it happened, at the same time. I was just a day-tripper.”
“Well,” said Julia gazing at his face, “you certainly do seem to have tripped in a big way.”
Ricky joined painfully in her amusement. It was at this point that Julia had walked over to the window and waved to Alleyn and Louis.
“They look portentous,” she said and then, with an air of understatement that was not quite successful, she said: “It’s not fair.”
“I don’t understand? What isn’t?”
“The two of them, down there. The ‘confrontation.’ Isn’t that one of the in words? Oh, come off it, Ricky. You know what I mean. Diamond cut paste. One guess which is which.”
This was so utterly unlike anything Julia had ever said to him in their brief acquaintance and, in its content, so acutely embarrassing, that he could find no reply. She had come close to him and looked into his face searchingly as if hesitating on the edge of some further extravagance or indiscretion.