Free Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh Page A

woebegone Mr Punch, over the half-door of a loose-box.
    ‘Bob,’ he said. ‘Bob, she’s dead lame. The sorrel mare, Bob. Bob, she’s dead lame and she’s killed Dulcie.’
    And then the ambulance arrived.
    Ricky stood in a corner of the yard feeling extraneous to the scenes that followed. He saw the vet move off and Mr Harkness, talking pretty wildly, make a distracted attempt to follow him and then stand wiping his mouth and looking from one to the other of the two retreating figures, each with its professional bag, rather like items in a surrealistic landscape.
    Then Mr Harkness ran across the yard and bailed up the two ambulance men who were taking out a stretcher and canvas cover. Lamentations rolled out of him like sludge. The men seemed to calm him after a fashion and they listened to Jasper when he pointed the way. But Mr Harkness kept interrupting and issuing his own instructions: ‘You can’t miss it,’ he kept saying. ‘Straight across there. Where there’s the gap in the hedge. I’ll show you. You can’t miss it.’
    ‘We’ve got it, thank you, sir,’ they said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. Take it easy.’
    They walked away, carrying the stretcher between them. He watched them and pulled at his underlip and gabbled under his breath. Julia went to him. She was still very white and Ricky saw that her hand trembled. She spoke with her usual quick incisiveness.
    ‘Mr Harkness,’ Julia said, ‘I’m going to take you indoors and give you some very strong black coffee and you’re going to sit down and drink it. Please don’t interrupt because it won’t make the smallest difference. Come along.’
    She put her hand under his elbow and, still talking, he suffered himself to be led indoors.
    Carlotta remained in the car. Jasper went over to talk to her. Bruno was nowhere to be seen.
    It occurred to Ricky that this was a situation with which his father was entirely familiar. It would be at about this stage, he supposed, that the police car would arrive and his father would stoop over death in the form it had taken with Miss Harkness and would dwell upon that which Ricky turned sick to remember. Alleyn did not discuss his cases with his family but Ricky, who loved him, often wondered how so fastidious a man could have chosen such work.And here he pulled up. I must be barmy, he told himself. I’m thinking about it as if it were not a bloody accident but a crime.
    Presently Julia came out of the house.
    ‘He’s sitting in his parlour,’ she said, ‘drinking instant coffee with a good dollop of scotch in it. I don’t know whether he’s spotted the scotch and is pretending he hasn’t or whether he’s too bonkers to know.’
    There was the sound of light wheels on gravel and round the corner of the house came a policeman on a bicycle.
    ‘Good evening, all,’ said the policeman, dismounting. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’
    Julia walked up to him with outstretched hand.
    ‘You say it!’ she cried. ‘You really do say it! How perfectly super.’
    ‘Beg pardon, madam?’ said the policeman, sizing her up.
    ‘I thought it was only a joke thing about policemen asking what seemed to be the trouble and saying “Evening all”.’
    ‘It’s as good a thing to say as anything else,’ reasoned the policeman.
    ‘Of course it is,’ she agreed warmly. ‘It’s a splendid thing to say.’
    Jasper intervened. ‘My wife’s had a very bad shock. She made the discovery.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Julia said, in a trembling voice. ‘My name’s Julia Pharamond and I made the discovery and I’m not quite myself.’
    The policeman – he was a sergeant – had removed his bicycle clips and produced his notebook. He made a brief entry.
    ‘Is that the case?’ he said. ‘Mrs J. Pharamond of L’Esperance, that would be, wouldn’t it? I’m sure I’m very sorry. It was you that rang the station, sir, was it?’
    ‘No. I expect it was Dr Carey. I rang him. Or perhaps it was the ambulance.’
    ‘I