“By and large,” Mr. Fox had said, “people like to know about personalities in the Force so long as they’re in the clear themselves. They get quite curious to meet you, Mr. Alleyn, when they hear about your little idiosyncrasies: it takes the stiffness out of the first inquiries, if you see what I mean. In theatrical parlance,” Fox had added, “they call it building up an entrance.”
“In common or garden parlance,” Alleyn said warmly, “it makes a bloody great fool out of me.” Fox had smiled slightly.
On this occasion it was clear that the Foxian method had been engaged and, it was pretty obvious, abetted by Sergeant Plank. Alleyn found himself the object of fixed and silent attention in the bar of the Cod-and-Bottle and the evident subject of intense speculation.
Mr. Fox, who was infallible at remembering names at first hearing, performed introductions, and Alleyn shook hands all round. Throats were cleared arid boots were shuffled. Bob Maistre deployed his own technique as host and asked Alleyn how he’d found the young chap, then, and what was all this they’d heard about him getting himself into trouble over to Saint Pierre? Alleyn gave a lively account of his son losing his footing on the wet jetty, hitting his jaw on an iron stanchion, and falling between the jetty and the Island Belle.
“Could have been a serious business,” he said, “as far as I can make out. No knowing what might have happened if it hadn’t been for this chap aboard the ship — Jim Le Compte, isn’t it?”
It emerged that Jim Le Compte was a Cove man and this led easily to the introduction of local gossip and, easing around under Plank’s pilotage, to Mr. Ferrant and to wags of the head and knowing grins suggesting that Gil Ferrant was a character, a one, a bit of a lad.
“He’s lucky,” Alleyn said lightly, “to be able to afford jaunts in France. I wish I could.”
This drew forth confused speculations as to Gil Ferrant’s resources: his rich aunties in Brittany, his phenomenal luck on the French lotteries, his being, in general, a pretty warm customer.
This turn of conversation was, to Alleyn’s hidden fury, interrupted by Sergeant Plank, who offered the suggestion that no doubt the Chief Super’s professional duties sometimes took him across the Channel. Seeing it was expected of him, Alleyn responded with an anecdote or two about a sensational case involving the pursuit and arrest in Marseilles, with the assistance of the French force, of a notable child-killer. This, as Fox said afterwards, went down like a nice long drink but, as he pointed out to Sergeant Plank, had the undesirable effect of cutting off any further local gossip. “It was well meant on your part, Sarge,” Mr. Fox conceded, “but it broke the thread. It stopped the flow of info.”
“I’m a source of local info myself, Mr. Fox,” Sergeant Plank ventured. “In my own person, I am.”
“True enough as far as it goes, Sarge, but you’re overlooking a salient factor. As the Chief Super has frequently remarked, ours is a solitary class of employment. We can and in your own type of patch, the village community, we often do, establish friendly relations. Trespassing, local vandalism, creating nuisances, trouble with neighbors and they’re all over you, but let something big turn up and you’ll find yourself out on your own. They’ll herd together like sheep and you won’t be included in the flock. It can be uncomfortable until you get used to it.”
Fox left a moment or two for this to sink in. He then cleared his throat and continued. “The effect of the diversion,” he said, “was this. The thread of local gossip being broken what did they do? They got all curious about the Chief. What’s he here for? Is it the Harkness fatality and if not what is it? And if it is why is it? Enough to create the wrong atmosphere at the site of investigation.”
Whether or not these pronouncements were correct, the atmosphere at Leathers the next morning, as disseminated by Mr. Harkness, the sole occupant, was far from comfortable. Alleyn, Fox, and Plank arrived at eight-thirty to find shuttered windows and a notice pinned to the front door: “Stables Closed till Further Notice.” They knocked and rang to no effect.
“He’ll be round at the back,” Plank said and led the way to the stables.
At first they seemed to be deserted. A smell of straw and horse droppings hung on the air, flies buzzed, and in the old open coach house a couple of pigeons waddled about the floor, pecked here and there, and flew up to the rafters where they defecated offhandedly on the roof of the battered car. In the end loose-box the sorrel mare reversed herself, looked out, rolled her eyes, pricked her ears at them, and trembled her nostrils in an all but inaudible whinny.
“Will I see if I can knock Cuth Harkness up, sir?” offered Plank.
“Wait a bit, Plank. Don’t rush it.”
Alleyn strolled over to the loose-box. “Hullo, old girl,” he said, “how goes it?” He leaned on the half-door and looked her over. The near foreleg was still bandaged. She nibbled his ear with velvet lips. “Feeling bored, are you?” he said and moved down the row of empty loose-boxes to the coach house.
There was the coil of old wire where Ricky had seen it, hanging from a peg above a pile of empty sacks. It was rather heavier than picture-hanging wire and looked as if it had been there for a long time. But as Ricky had noticed, there was a freshly cut end. Alleyn called Fox and the sergeant over. Plank’s boots, being of the regulation sort, loudly announced his passage across the yard. He changed to tiptoe and an unnerving squeak.
“Take a look,” Alleyn murmured.
“I reckon,” Plank said after a heavy-breathed examination. “That could be it, Mr. Alleyn. I reckon that would fit.”
“Do you, by George,” Alleyn said.
There was an open box in the corner filled with a jumble of odds and ends and a number of tools, among them a pair of wire cutters. With uncanny speed Alleyn used them to nip off three inches of wire from the reverse end.
“That, Sergeant Plank,” he said as he replaced the cutters, “is something we must never, never do.”
“I’ll try to remember, sir,” said Sergeant Plank, demurely.
“Mr. Harkness,” Fox said, “seems to be coming, Mr. Alleyn.”
And indeed he could be heard coughing hideously inside the house. Alleyn reached the door in a breath and the other two stood behind him. He knocked briskly.
Footsteps sounded in the passage and an indistinguishable grumbling. A lock was turned and the door dragged open a few inches. Mr. Harkness, blinking and unshaven, peered out at them through a little gale of Scotch whiskey.
“The stables are closed,” he said thickly and made as if to shut the door. Alleyn’s foot was across the threshold.
“Mr. Harkness?” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you. We’re police officers. Could you give us a moment?”
For a second or two he neither spoke nor moved. Then he pulled the door wide open.
“Police, are you?” Mr. Harkness said. “What for? Is it about my poor sinful niece again, God forgive her, but that’s asking too much of Him. Come in.”
He showed them into his office and gave them chairs and seemed to become aware, for the first time, of Sergeant Plank.
“Joey Plank,” he said. “You again. Can’t you let it alone? What’s the good? It won’t bring her back. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord and she’s finding that out for herself where she’s gone. Who are these gentlemen?”
Plank introduced them. “The Chief Superintendent is on an administrative visit to the island, Mr. Harkness,” he said, “and has kindly offered to take a wee look-see at our little trouble.”
“Why do you talk in that silly way about it?” Mr. Harkness asked fretfully. “It’s not a little trouble, it’s hell and damnation and she’s brought it on herself and I’m the cause of it. I’m sorry,” he said and turned to Alleyn with a startling change to normality. “You’ll think me awfully rude but I daresay you’ll understand what a shock this has been.”