Ricky’s hands began to tingle and his heart to thump.
“Poorest Ricky,” she said and gently laid her palm against his unbruised cheek, “I’ve muddled you. Never mind.”
Ricky’s thoughts were six-deep and simultaneous. He thought: “That’s torn it,” and at the same time, “this is it: this is Julia in my arms and these are her ribs,” and “if I kiss her I’ll probably hurt my face,” and even, bouleversé though he was, “what does she mean about Louis?” And then he was kissing her.
“No, no,” Julia was saying. “My dear boy, no. What are you up to! Ricky, please.”
Now they stood apart. She said: “Bless my soul, you did take me by surprise,” and made a shocked face at him. “ ‘Out upon you, fie upon you Bold Faced Jig,’ ” she quoted.
“She’s not even disconcerted,” he thought. “I might be Selina for all she feels about it.”
He said: “I’m sorry, but you do sort of trigger one off, you know.”
“Do I? How lovely! It’s very gratifying to know one hasn’t lost the knack. I must tell Jasper, it’ll be good for him.”
“How can you?” Ricky said quietly.
“My dear, I’m sorry. That was beastly of me. I won’t tell Jasper. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She waited for a moment and then began to make conversation as if he were an awkward visitor who had, somehow or another, to be put at his ease. He did his best to respond and in some degree succeeded, but he was humiliated and confusedly resentful.
“Have you,” she said at last, “had your invitation to Cuth’s party?”
“His party? No.”
“Not exactly a party perhaps although it’s ‘ladies a basket,’ we must remember. You must remember. It’s one of his services. In the barn at Leathers on Sunday. You’re sure to be asked. Do come and bring your papa. Actually it seems anyone is welcome. Gents fifty pence. We’ve all been invited and I think we’re all going although Louis may be away. It has ‘The Truth!’ written by hand all over it with rows of exciting marks and ‘Revelation!’ in enormous capitals on the last page. You must come back to L’Espérance afterwards for supper in case the baskets are not very filling.”
It had been at this point that Louis threw gravel at the window. When Ricky looked down and saw him there with Alleyn standing behind him it was if they were suddenly exhibited as an illustration to Julia’s extraordinary observations. He was given, as he afterwards thought, a new look at his father — at his quietude and his air of authority. And there was handsome Louis in the foreground, all eyes and teeth, acting his boots off. Ricky understood what Julia had meant when she said it wasn’t fair.
In response to Louis’s gesture he opened the window and was witness to the idiotic quotation from Romeo, Julia’s quelling of Louis, and Mrs. Ferrant’s eruption into the scene and departure from it.
When Julia had dealt crisply with the remaining situation she shut the window and returned to Ricky.
“High time the Pharamonds removed themselves,” she said. She looked directly into his eyes, broke into her laugh, kissed him rapidly on his unbruised side, and was gone.
She gave a cheerful greeting to Mrs. Ferrant as she saw herself off.
Ricky stood stock-still in his room. He heard the car start up and climb the hill to the main road. When he looked out his father had gone and the little street was deserted.
“And after all that,” he thought, “I suppose I’m meant to get on with my book.”
v
Around the corner in Sergeant Plank’s office, Alleyn talked to his contact in Marseilles, M. l’Inspecteur Dupont. They spoke in French and were listened to with painful concentration by Mr. Fox. Dupont had one of those Provençal voices that can be raised to a sort of metallic clatter guaranteed to extinguish any opposition. It penetrated every corner of the little room and caused Mr. Fox extreme consternation.
At last, when Alleyn, after an exchange of compliments, hung up the receiver, Fox leaned back in his chair, unknitted his brow, and sighed deeply.
“It’s the pace,” he said heavily. “That’s what gets you — that and the noise. I suppose,” he added wistfully, turning to Sergeant Plank, “you had no difficulty?”
“Me, Mr. Fox? I don’t speak French. We only came here four years ago. We’ve tried to learn it, the Missus and me, but we don’t seem to make much headway and in any case the lingo they use over here’s a patois. The chaps always seem to drop into it when I look in at the Cod-and-Bottle,” said Plank in his simple way. Another symptom, Alleyn thought, of the country policeman’s loneliness.
“Well,” he said, “for what it’s worth, Ferrant has been spotted in La Tournière and in Marseilles.”
“I got that all right,” said Fox, cheering up a little.
“And he’s made a trip to a place outside Marseilles where one of the big boys hangs out in splendor and is strongly suspected. They haven’t been able to pin anything on him. The old, old story.”
“What are they doing about it?”
“A lot. Well — quite a lot. No flies, by and large, on the narcotics squad in Marseilles; they get the practice if they look for it and could be very active. But it’s the old story. The French are never madly enthusiastic about something they haven’t set up themselves. Nor, between you and me and the junkie, are they as vigilant at the ports as they might be. Still, Dupont’s one of their good numbers. He’s all right as long as you don’t step on his amour propre. He says they’ve got a dossier as fat as a bible on this character — a Corsican, he is, like most of them: a qualified chemist and a near millionaire with a château halfway between Marseilles and La Tournière and within easy distance of a highly sophisticated laboratory disguised as an innocent research setup where this expert turns morphine into heroin.”
“Well!” said Fox. “If they’ve got all this why don’t they pull chummy in?”
“French law is very fussy about the necessity for detailed, conclusive, and precise evidence before going in for a knockoff. And they haven’t got enough of that. What they have got is a definite line on Ferrant. He’s been staying off and on in an expensive hotel in La Tournière known to be a rendezvous for heroin merchants. He left there unexpectedly yesterday morning. Yes, I know. Rick’s idea. They’ve been keeping obbo on him for weeks. Apparently the tip-off came from an ex-mistress in the hell-knows-no-fury department.”
“Did I catch the name Jones?” asked Fox.
“You did. Following up their line on Ferrant, they began to look out for anybody else from the Island who made regular trips to Saint Pierre and they came up with Syd. So far they haven’t got much joy out of that but, as you may have noticed, when I told Inspector Dupont that Jones is matey with Ferrant, the decibel count in his conversation rose dramatically. There’s one other factor, a characteristic of so many cases in the heroin scene: they keep getting shadowy hints of another untraced person somewhere on a higher rung in the hierarchy, who controls the island side of operations. One has to remember the rackets are highly sophisticated and organized down to the last detail. In a way they work rather like labor gangs in totalitarian countries: somebody watching and reporting and himself being watched and reported upon all the way up to the top. One would expect an intermediary between, say, an operative like Ferrant and a top figure like the millionaire in a château outside Marseilles. Dupont feels sure there is such a character.”
“What do we get out of all this?” Fox asked.
Alleyn got up and moved restlessly about the little office. A bluebottle banged at the windowpane. In the kitchen, Mrs. Plank could be heard talking to her daughter.