Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Marsh, Ngaio]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat
Published: 2010-01-22T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Morning at the Cove

At half-past nine on that same morning, Ricky chucked his pen on his manuscript, ran his fingers through his hair, and plummeted into the nadir of doubt and depression that from time to time so punctually attends upon dealers in words. "I'm no good," he thought, "it's all a splurge of pretension and incompetence. I write about one thing and something entirely different is trying to emerge. Or is there quite simply nothing there to emerge? Over and out."

He stared through the window at a choppy and comfortless harbor and his thoughts floated as inconsequently as driftwood among the events of the past weeks. He wallowed again between ship and jetty at Saint Pierre-des-Roches. He thought of Julia Pharamond and that teasing face was suddenly replaced by the frightful caved-in mask of dead Dulcie. Ferrant returned to make a fool of him and he asked himself for the hundredth time if it had been Ferrant or Syd Jones who tried to drown him. And for the hundredth time he found it a preposterous notion that anybody should try to drown him. And yet knew very well that it had been so and that his father believed him when he said as much.

So now he thought of his father and of Br'er Fox, who was his godfather. He wondered how exactly they behaved when they worked together on a case and if at that moment they were up at Leathers. Detecting. And then, with a certainty that quite astonished him, Ricky tumbled to it that the reason why he couldn't write that morning was not because the events of the day before had distracted him or because he was bruised and sore and looked a sight or because the horror of Dulcie Harkness had been revived but simply because he wanted very badly indeed to be up there with his father, finding out about things.

"Oh no!" he thought. "I won't take that. That's not my scene. I've other things to do. Or have I?" He was very disturbed.

He hadn't seen any of the Pharamonds since the day of the postponed inquest. Jasper had rung up and asked him to dinner but Ricky had said he was in a bad patch with his work and had promised himself there would be no more junkets until he had got over it. He could hear Julia in the background shouting instructions.

"Tell him to bring his book and we'll all write it for him."

Jasper had explained that Julia was in the bath and she, in the background, screamed that umbrage would be taken if Ricky didn't come. It had emerged that the next day the Pharamonds were flying over to London to see the ballet and meant to stay on for a week or so if anything amusing offered. Ricky had stuck to his guns and not dined at L'Espérance and had wasted a good deal of the evening regretting it.

He wondered if they were still in London. Did they always

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