Swing, Swing Together (11 page)

It was after nine when they went through Culham Lock. The keeper there was agreeably civil, but he had discouraging news. There had not been a suspicion of mist at Culham that morning. He was not surprised to hear about the mist at Clifton Hampden. It was quite usual in September for pockets of the stuff to hamper navigation along the river for an hour or so in the mornings. His lock had been open since six. Yes, three men answering Cribb's description had gone through shortly before he had closed the night before. They had asked the way to the backwater at the end of Culham Cut, where they had proposed passing the night.

Cribb decided not to explore the backwater, assuming instead that the three had already left for Oxford. They would be able to confirm this at the next lock, which was Abingdon.

“Will you arrest them when we catch up with them?” Thackeray inquired.

“I want Miss Shaw to identify 'em first,” said Cribb.

This, they discovered at Abingdon, was likely to take longer than they had earlier supposed. The three had been the first through the lock that morning, at seven o'clock. They could well be in Oxford already.

It was a party exercised in more ways than one that covered the last miles to Oxford, learning at each lock how far behind the
Lucrecia
they were. The suspects seemed not to have stopped even once along the way. As the distance from Culham to Oxford was nine miles, and none of them had looked like athletes, the question arose whether the quarry had been alerted to the chase. Nobody said a word, but Cribb's face became increasingly pink with the exertion of rowing at a rate he obdurately refused to slacken. It made fretful the business of waiting in locks for other craft to enter before the gates were closed, but it compelled him to take rests. While Thackeray put his head between his knees like a beaten blue, Cribb paddled the boat as close as possible to the upriver gates and stood with hands impatiently on hips watching the slow ascent as the water coursed in.

Beyond Iffley Lock the tangle of currents formed by the confluence of the Thames and Cherwell sapped what remained of Cribb's strength. He dismally acknowledged that they might as well ship oars and tow the skiff from the path. Thackeray was deputed to take the first turn.

“We'll follow the main stream,” Cribb instructed. “They could have gone up a backwater if they wanted to, I know, but Jerome seems to have kept to the Thames, so I don't propose to waste time looking anywhere else unless I'm persuaded otherwise.”

Harriet thought she divined a note of desperation in this. It was confirmed when Cribb tetchily ordered her to stop admiring the college barges moored beside Christ Church Meadow and look for the
Lucrecia. “
You're not on a pleasure cruise, you know.”

“I'm well aware of that,” she answered, ready to take him on. “Has it not occurred to you that they might as well have left their boat on that side as this? Not everyone is obliged to use the towing path.”

Cribb was either too surprised or too tired to reply.

At Folly Bridge, he shouted to Thackeray to halt so that they could make inquiries at the boatyard. The facetious remarks they had got from just about every lockkeeper along the river when putting their question about three men in a boat had caused Cribb to modify it a little. “Do you happen to have seen a double-sculled skiff with three passengers aboard and a fox terrier?” he asked.

He could have saved his breath. “Only on my bookshelf at home,” said the boatman with a grin.

“Could they have passed here earlier without you noticing?”

“Why not? I only started work at ten this morning, didn't I?”

They decided to go on as far as Osney Lock, in hope of finding the
Lucrecia
moored beside the bank. Cribb took the towrope and hauled them slowly past the gasworks and under the railway bridge. The best of Oxford is not to be seen from the Thames.

Shortly after the bridge, the river divides. A backwater leads away through fields to the left.

“Moses!” said Thackeray. “What's going on over there?”

A cluster of people had formed round a spot on the towpath, not unlike the crowd round a pavement artist, except that they were standing on gravel. A figure was on his knees working at something, even so. Too many on the outskirts were moving about, trying for a better view, for anything more to be made out from the river.

Cribb signalled to Thackeray to take charge of the boat and went to see what was happening. “Is something wrong, do you think?” asked Harriet.

“Let's go and see, miss.” Thackeray steered the boat into the backwater and moored it. They went ashore and approached the cause of all the interest.

The kneeling man was still at work. He was moving the arms rhythmically on and off the chest of a motionless man, stretched on his back on the path. Somebody else was gripping the ankles.

“Resuscitation?” asked Cribb, who had forced his way to the front.

“Yes, mate,” someone replied. “It's doing no good. They've been at this for twenty minutes. Poor blighter's dead as mutton.”

CHAPTER

18

A nice class of corpse—Cribb makes a discovery—Help from a scout

H
ARRIET
,
STILL
ON
THE
fringe of what was going on, heard a murmur and made out someone standing up. Several men around her removed their hats. A voice intoned, “ ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.' The ninetieth Psalm, Verse 12.”

It could not be anyone else but Jim Hackett.

As people replaced their hats and dispersed in all directions in case someone should ask them to assist with whatever happened next, Harriet was enabled to move to the front. Jim Hackett it was who had worked unavailingly to persuade air into the dead man's lungs. Mr. Bustard had held the ankles.

Cribb had not met Bustard and Hackett, so Thackeray made the introductions, taking care not to mention rank. They shook hands across the corpse like football captains before a match.

“Where did you find the poor fellow?” Cribb asked.

“Out there,” said Bustard, indicating the water with his thumb. “Floating face downwards. Jim picked him out of the river and we brought him here and tried resuscitation. Jim had lessons in lifesaving, you know.”

“But raising the dead wasn't included, eh?” said Cribb, adding, before Jim could supply a text, “This one must have joined the majority before you hooked him out of the water. Does anyone know who he is?”

“If his clothes are anything to go by, he's out of the top drawer, or was,” contributed Thackeray. “It looks as if he's wearing a Norfolk jacket under that waterproof. Perhaps there's something in the pockets.”

“I don't approve of pilfering from the dead,” said Bustard in a scandalized voice.

“For identification,” said Thackeray, red-faced. “I was thinking that he might be carrying a pocketbook.”

They examined the jacket and found the pockets empty. So were the pockets of the waistcoat and trousers.

“He didn't want to be recognized,” decided Bustard. “Suicide probably.”

“Nice class of person, too,” insisted Thackeray, examining the lining of the jacket.

They looked down at the pale face marbled with lines of mud. Thackeray was right: the features matched the tailoring. It was a fine Roman nose with narrow nostrils and a black moustache beneath it. The lips were thin, but neatly formed, the teeth well cared for. He could not have been much over thirty-five.

“We ought to tell the law,” said Hackett.

“By now, somebody has,” Cribb cryptically remarked, bending to rearrange some hair that was plastered over the dead man's forehead. “You're a lifesaver, then, Mr. Hackett. Which resuscitation drill do you favour, the Silvester or the Marshall Hall?”

“Silvester.”

“As taught by the Royal Humane Society,” said Cribb. “Clear the throat, attend to the tongue, place a support under the back, loosen the garments and begin working the arms in the approved manner. You did all that?”

“Of course he did,” said Bustard. “I was holding the ankles. That's my blazer underneath him.”

“You had no cause to hold him by the neck?”

“Lord, no! This was lifesaving, old sport, not strangulation.”

“So I understood,” said Cribb, stooping to make a closer examination. “I only asked because of these marks. It looks to me as if someone gripped him from behind. They must have used a lot of force to leave the marks of their fingers on his neck.” He pulled aside the loosened collar so that everyone could see the set of marks, purple on the white flesh. “Perhaps you grabbed him by the neck to take him from the water, Mr. Hackett?”

“No, guvnor. I took hold of his clothes first and then I held him under the arms, like.”

Cribb stepped over the body to examine the left side of the neck. A similar formation of bruises was displayed there. “If this was suicide, I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“A very God-fearing man,” commented Jim Hackett.

“Are you quite well, miss?” Thackeray asked Harriet.

The colour must have drained from her face. “I think so. The shock. I am not used to such things.” In truth the sight of death frightened her less than she would have supposed. The real horror that gripped her was Cribb's discovery—the marks on the neck, marks similar to those on the murdered tramp at Hurley. Cribb was not saying so yet, but he might as well have blown a whistle and shouted to everyone within earshot that this was murder, a second brutal and callous murder within an hour of his three suspects reaching Oxford. If she had done what he had asked her to do, identified Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer as the three she saw the night the tramp was killed, this second man need not have died. She had shirked her responsibility, put off the moment when she had to be definite, and this was the consequence.

“It's a good thing Jim's got a sharp eye,” said Bustard. “I'd never have spotted a body in the water on my own. Wouldn't have noticed a confounded whale swimming by this morning. I was still thinking about the college barges. Handsome things! The carving on them—magnificent!”

“Impossible to ignore,” said Cribb, although Harriet remembered him advocating the impossible ten minutes before. “Is that why you were on the river—to see the barges?”

“The barges and any other delightful objects visible in Oxford early in the morning,” said Bustard, glancing Harriet's way. “We like to be about before the river gets too cluttered, don't we, Jim? We were going up to Osney to see the mill. We started from Folly Bridge.”

“Is that rowing boat yours?”

“Hired for the morning, yes. One's supposed to see Oxford from a punt, I believe, but I've never trusted the things.”

“You had a skiff like ours when I saw you last,” said Thackeray.

“In Goring, yes. Now for my confession,” said Bustard. “We abandoned it at Benson two hours after we saw you. Jim was game to carry on, but I was feeling the effects of too much sun. We had some tea and caught the four o'clock bus to Oxford. We're putting up at the Gentle Bulldog by Folly Bridge. B. and B. for seven and six. Very comfortable.”

“That's worth knowing,” said Thackeray.

“We were up early to look at the barges,” said Bustard. “Then we decided to come this way. When we got to those vile gasometers, we nearly changed our minds, but the stretch ahead looks altogether more salubrious.”

“Apart from what you find in the water,” said Cribb. “Hello, the bluebottles are buzzing this way. I thought it wouldn't be long.”

A uniformed constable of the Oxford City Police came heavily along the towpath with two men in attendance who must have fetched him. “Stand aside, if you please,” he said breathlessly as he arrived. “Is this the body?”

“It's the only one I've noticed,” said Cribb.

“Did you discover it?”

“No, but—”

“Better get on your way, then. We don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry crowding round it. Who's the man that took it from the water?”

“Jim Hackett,” Bustard loftily announced, with a hand towards his companion.

“Hackett,” repeated the policeman, taking out his notebook and pencilling the name carefully inside. “What's the nature of your employment, Mr. Hackett?”

Hackett frowned.

“Your job,” Cribb explained.

“Oh. Removals.”

“Nobody can get a piano up a staircase like Jim Hackett,” said Bustard.

“Who is your employer?” asked the constable.

“Morgan and Morgan, Islington,” Bustard replied for Hackett. “Before that he worked in my father-in-law's business. That's how we met.”

“Business?” said the constable. “From the look of his hands, I'd say Mr. Hackett was a labouring man.”

“That's right!” said Bustard. “Every inch of him is muscle.”

“That's convenient,” said the constable. “I shall want some help to carry the body back to the ambulance. And what's your name, sir?”

“Bustard with a ‘u.' Tallyman, of Notting Hill Gate, taking my vacation on the river with Mr. Hackett. We hired a rowing boat from the man at Folly Bridge this morning, thinking of exploring the City from the river, and Jim noticed this. He's eagle-eyed, is Jim.”

“I shall require you both to accompany me to the station to make a statement. The rest of you,” the constable added, raising his voice, “had better move along quick unless you've got something useful to impart. Pull the man's waterproof over his face, would you, mate, and that'll put a stop to the peepshow.”

Thackeray was about to drape the ends of the coat over the head and shoulders when a voice to his right said, “Stop a moment! I know the face.” A thin, silver-haired man, shabby in appearance, came forward, looping spectacles over his ears. He crouched by the body and peered with earnest concentration at the features. “I'm sure of it. This is Mr. Bonner-Hill, a Fellow of Merton College. Whatever made him do such a thing?”