Fox clicked his tongue against his palate and severely contemplated the glass he polished. “Fancy that,” he said.
Unhampered by the austere presence of her husband, Mrs. Plank elaborated. She said that mind you, Mr. Fox, she wouldn’t go so far as to say for certain but her friend next door knew for a fact that the poor girl had been seen embarking in “Fifi” after dark with Ferrant in attendance and as for her and that Jones… She laughed shortly and told her daughter to go into the garden and make another mud pie. The little girl did so by inches, retiring backwards with her eyes on Alleyn as if he were royalty. Predictably she tripped on the doorstep and fell, still backwards, on the wire mat. She was still roaring when they left.
“Didn’t amount to much joy,” Fox said disparagingly as they walked down to the front. “All this about the girl. We knew she was — what’s that the prince called the tom in the play?”
“ ‘Some road’?”
“That’s right. The young chap took me to see it,” said Fox, who usually referred in this fashion to his godson. “Very enjoyable piece. Well, as I was saying, we knew already what this unfortunate girl was.”
“We didn’t know she’d had to do with Ferrant, though. If it’s true. Or that she went boating with him after dark.”
“If it’s true,” they said together.
“Might be the longed-for link, if it is true,” Fox said. “In any case I suppose we add him to the list.”
“Oh yes. Yes. We prick him down. And if Rick’s got the right idea about the attack on him, I suppose we add a gloss to the name. ‘Prone to violence.’ ”
“There is that, too,” said Fox.
They were opposite the Ferrants’ cottage. Alleyn looked up at Ricky’s window. It was shut and there was no sign of him at his worktable.
“I think I’ll just have a word with him,” he said. “If he’s at home. I won’t be a moment.”
But Ricky was not at home. Mrs. Ferrant said he’d gone out about half an hour ago; she couldn’t say in what direction. He had not left a message. His bicycle was in the shed. She supposed the parcel in the hall must be his.
“Freshening himself up with a bit of exercise, no doubt,” said Fox gravely. “Heavy work, it must be, you know, this writing. When you come to think of it.”
“Yes, Foxkin, I expect it must,” Ricky’s father said with a friendly glance at his old colleague. “Meanwhile one must pursue the elusive ‘Fifi.’ From Rick’s story of the dead-of-night encounter between Ferrant and Louis Pharamond, it looks as if she sometimes ties up at the end of the pier. But if she anchors out in the harbor, he’ll need a dinghy. There are only four boats out there. Can you pick up the names?”
Fox, who was long-sighted, said: “ ‘Tinker.’ ‘Marleen.’ ‘Bonny Belle.’ Wait a bit. She’s coming round. Hold on. Yes. That’s her. Second from the right, covered with a tarpaulin. ‘Fifi.’ ”
“Damn.”
“Could we get a dinghy and row out?”
“With Madame Ferrant’s beady eye at the front parlor window?”
“Do you reckon?”
“I’d take a bet on it. Let’s trip blithely down the pier.”
They walked down the pier and stood with their hands in their pockets, ostensibly gazing out to sea. Alleyn pointed to the distant coast of France.
“To coin a phrase, don’t look now, but Fifi’s dinghy’s below, moored to the jetty with enough line to accommodate to the tide.”
“Is she though? Oh, yes.” said Fox, slewing his eyes down and round. “I see. ‘Fifi’ on the stern. Would she normally be left like that, though? Wouldn’t she knock herself out against the pier?”
“There are old tires down there for fenders. But you’d think she’d be hauled up the beach with the others. Or, of course, if the owner was aboard, tied up to ‘Fifi’.”
“Do we get anything out of this, then?”
“Let’s get back, shall we?”
They returned to the front and sat on the weatherworn bench. Alleyn got out his pipe.
“I’ve got news for you, Br’er Fox,” he said. “Last evening that dinghy was hauled up on the beach. I’m sure of it. I waited up in Rick’s room for an hour until he arrived and spent most of the time looking out of the window. There she was, half blue and half white and her name across her stern. She was just on the seaward side of the high-water mark with her anchor in the sand. She’d be afloat at high tide.”
“Is that so? Well, well. Now, how do you read that?” asked Fox.
“Like everything else that’s turned up — with modified rapture. Ferrant may let one of his mates in the cove have the use of his boat while he’s away.”
“In which case, wouldn’t the mate return it to the beach?”
“Again, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Alleyn said. And after a pause. “When I left last night, at ten o’clock, the tide was coming in. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. The dinghy wasn’t on the beach this morning.”
He lit his pipe. They were silent for some time.
Behind them the Ferrants’ front door banged. Alleyn turned quickly, half expecting to see Ricky, but it was only the boy, Louis, with his black hair sleeked like wet fur to his head. He was unnaturally tidy and French-looking in his matelot jersey and very short shorts.
He stared at them, stuck his hands in his pockets, and crossed the road, whistling and strutting a little.
“Hullo,” Alleyn said. “You’re Louis Ferrant, aren’t you?”
He nodded. He walked over to the low wall and lounged against it as Louis Pharamond had lounged that morning: self-consciously, deliberately. Alleyn experienced the curious reaction that is induced by unexpected cross-cutting in a film, as if the figure by the wall blinked by split seconds from child to man to child again.
“Where are you off to?” he asked. “Do you ever go fishing?”
The boy shook his head and then said: “Sometimes,” in an indifferent voice.
“With your father, perhaps?”
“He’s not here,” Louis said very quickly.
“You don’t go out by yourself? In the dinghy?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Or perhaps you can’t row,” Alleyn casually suggested.
“Yes. I can. I can so row. My papa won’t let anybody but me row the dinghy. Not anybody. I can row by myself even when it’s gros temps. Round the musoir, I can, and out to the cap. Easy.”
“I bet you wouldn’t go out on your own at night.”
“Huh! Easy! Often! I—”
He stopped short, looked uncomfortably at the house and turned sulky. “I can so row,” he muttered and began to walk away.
“I’ll get you to take me out one of these nights,” Alleyn said.
But Louis let out a small boy’s whoop and ran suddenly, down the road and around the corner.
“Let me tell you a fairy tale, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn.
“Any time,” said Fox.
“It’s about a little boy who stayed up late because his mother told him to. When it was very dark and very late indeed and the tide was high, she sent him down to the strand where his papa’s dinghy was anchored and just afloat and he hauled up the anchor and rowed the dinghy out to his papa’s motorboat which was called ‘Fifi’ and he tied her up to ‘Fifi’ and waited for his papa who was not really his papa at all. Or perhaps, as it was a calm night, he rowed right out to the heads — the cap—and waited there. And presently his papa arrived in a boat from France that went back to France. So the little boy and his papa rowed all the way back to the pier and came home. And they left the dinghy tied up to the pier.”