Swing, Swing Together (16 page)
“What time was that?” Cribb asked.
“Oh, early in the afternoon. Before two o'clock, I should say.”
“I had every copper in Oxford looking for you and there you were sitting in a blooming houseboat. What happened after that?”
“They showed us over the boat. It was comfortably furnished, but, of course, rooms are at a premium aboard a vessel of that sort, so the sitting room served a secondary purpose as their bedroom, which might have given rise to embarrassment if they had not been so splendidly unconcerned about the matter. They suggested a game of cards. Humberstone and Gold enjoy a hand of poker and offered to teach the game to two of the girls, Moll and Meg, while I went on the upper deck with Towser to take a look at the view. I rather disapprove of cards. There was a canvas chair up there and I suppose I fell asleep in the sun, because when I next looked at my watch it was gone five o'clock. I rejoined the others and found them eating oysters. The game of poker had ended in victory for the ladies, who must have learned the rudiments of the game with remarkable speed. Gold had lost seven shillings and Humberstone nearly ten, so when somebody suggested we ought to have champagne to accompany the oysters, I felt obliged to row ashore and bring back a magnum of Mumm's and a bottle of gin from a public house near Folly Bridge. That was a mistake, I now realize.”
“How was that, sir?”
“The girls were manifestly unused to strong drink. I am a teetotaller myself and I should have realized the danger. During my absence they had produced a concertina from somewhere and Humberstone, who is quite a virtuoso, was playing it. Towser was locked in the galley, whining mournfully. After one glass of champagne the young lady called Meg pulled me out of my chair and pinioned me with her arms in such a way that I was obliged to perform a dance with her. It was a most distracting experience, I assure you.”
“I believe you,” said Cribb.
“I think that possibly my companions were a little shamed at having lost at poker to novices. They rather enjoyed the spectacle of me, the friend who had declined to play cards, suffering indignities of my own. Within a short time, however, Gold was prised from his seat by the other two young ladies and compelled to join in a waltz. It started as a waltz and ended in a gallop, for Humberstone, wretched fellow, increased the tempo of the music until our heads were spinning. I confess that we ended by collapsing in a heap on one of the beds. For a short time I was unable to focus my eyes with any certainty, but, oddly enough, the ladies seemed not at all distressed. On the contrary, they exhibited such exuberance that the thought crossed my mind that the gyrations of the dance must have generated some mysterious force, on the principle of the electric dynamo. Before I could draw breath, my jacket and waistcoat were removed and I had the greatest difficulty in dissuading Meg from parting me from my shirt as well. My colleague Gold, I discovered at this point, is susceptible to tickling. He was laughing uncontrollably as his partner grappled with him, which encouraged the ladies to believe we were enjoying the experience.”
“You were not?” said Cribb.
By way of response, Mr. Lucifer straightened his back, drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and looked at the ceiling.
“You protested, then?”
“I am afraid not. The possibility of an effective protest was undermined by Gold being so convulsed with laughter. Fortunately, that particular crisis passed eventually with the ladies getting out of breath and asking for another drink. By this time my nerves were in such an agitated state that I decided to set aside my temperance principles to the extent of half a glass of champagne. I must own that my memory of the next two hours is somewhat patchy. Certain things I can still see quite vividlyâ”
“I can imagine, sir. Constable Thackeray saw plenty when he opened the trapdoor. Two women in their undergarments and a third wearing only a dressing gown.”
Lucifer nodded thoughtfully. “It must have come as a shock to an outsider. I am afraid that we failed those young ladies. As gentlemen, we should never have introduced them to the influence of the grape. It is a demon, Officer, and I hope for your sake that it never holds you in its thrall. And to think that by going out to purchase gin and champagne, I was the devil's agent! If only we had adhered to our original plan of spending the afternoon visiting the colleges! It grieves me to think of the blushes of Meg and her friends when they are sufficiently sober to remember this evening and the shameful encouragement they got from three respectable employees of the Providential Assurance Company.”
The man was either a simpleton or a humbug. “They were ladies of the town, sir. Common prostitutes.”
Lucifer's jaw dropped. “Good God! In Oxford?”
“By your own account they took seventeen shillings from your friends at poker and the price of two bottles of drink from you. How much else did they collect from you? Speak up, Mr. Lucifer.”
His face performed contortions again.
“How much to take off their clothes?” Cribb asked.
“A shilling a garment from each of us,” Lucifer managed to say.
Cribb whistled. “Just as well you're going to spend the rest of the night here. You can't have much left for a hotel. Take him down, Constable, and bring up Mr. Gold.”
The cocoa treatmentâRussian GoldâFried kidneys and Great Tom
A
STEAMING
MUG
OF
COCOA
was waiting on the table when Gold arrived, an indication if he had known it that he was to get a different style of interview from his fellows.
“Unlock the handcuffs, Constable,” ordered Cribb. “I don't expect any unpleasantness. My word, sir, you
have
been in the wars.”
The right-hand lens of Gold's spectacles had shattered. The fragments of glass were held in the frame, quite uselessly, for the spaces between the cracks were frosted over. There was also an ugly bruise above his right eyebrow. “No complaints, Officer,” he quickly said. “My own fault entirely. Should never have panicked on the houseboat. Got too close to Humberstone, you know, and found his elbow in my eye.”
“Try the cocoa, sir. If you'd like cold milk to take the heat off, say the word. I wouldn't like to burn your tongue as well. I thought you might have got cold, sitting in the cells in a bathrobe. I'm Sergeant Cribb from Scotland Yard, making inquiries into the death of a man at Hurley last Tuesday night. I met you briefly at the Barley Mow the other evening.”
“So you did!” said Gold. “I say, I'm sorry I didn't recognize you at once, Sergeant. I thought I knew the voice, but I can't see too famously like this. I blame nobody, mind. The death of a man, you say. That tramp, I take it. Somebody mentioned him at Clifton Hampden.”
“That's right, sir. And since we spoke, there's been another death. A don from Merton College was picked out of the water here in Oxford this morning.”
“You don't say!”
“They were both murdered, sir.”
“By Jove!”
“You and your friends have been arrested on suspicion of murdering them both.”
“I say, that's a bit thick. I've never heard of either of them.”
“I didn't mention their names,” said Cribb.
“So you didn't.” Mr. Gold put the mug of cocoa to his lips and said, “Lord! I've done it! Burnt my tongue.”
“Vicious stuff, hot cocoa, if you ain't used to it,” said Cribb, pouring milk into the mug. “You don't mind personal questions, do you, sir? What's your name in full?”
Gold dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief and said, “Samuel Isaac Gold.”
“And your father's name?”
“Leonard Gold. What's my father got to do with it?”
“Nothing, I hope. Born in England, was he?”
Gold frowned. “You want to know if I'm Jewish, is that it?”
“I'm asking where your father came from, Mr. Gold.”
Gold spread out his hands. “So he came from Russia. Does that make me a murderer?”
“Russia. What was his name in Russia?”
“What's this about? I told you my father's name. Gold is my name. If you want to call me Jewish, I won't stop you, but leave my father out of it. It's the same all over the world. If there's trouble, blame the Jews. Jack the Ripper is a Jew, did you know? That's what they say in Whitechapel. Who am I to argue, with a name like Sammy Gold?”
“Your father didn't change his name when he came to England?”
“What is it to you if he did?” Gold bitterly replied. “He was a good man and he died ten years ago. The name on his stone is Leonard Gold.”
“As you say, sir.” Cribb steered the conversation into calmer waters. “I was speaking to Mr. Humberstone not long ago. He paid you a compliment, sir. Said you were a great authority on matters of detail, or something of the sort. We were talking about last Tuesday, the night you stayed in Marlow. The Crown, wasn't it?”
“The Crown,” Gold repeated flatly.
“You don't sound quite so positive as you were in the Barley Mow, sir. It
was
the Crown where you stayed, was it? Big hotel at the top of the High Street. Mentioned in
Three Men in a Boat.
”
“As you say. Chapter Twelve. The way Jerome puts it, you'd think it was beside the bridge.” Gold took off his spectacles and started polishing the good lens with his handkerchief. “I have a confession, Sergeant. A Jew with a confessionâwhat do you say to that? We didn't stay at the Crown.”
“What made you say that you did?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Conceit. We
meant
to stay there. Wanted to do the whole journey according to the book. That was the purpose of our holiday. When you mentioned the Crown, I couldn't bring myself to admit that we hadn't even seen it.”
Cribb indicated with a nod that the explanation was plausible. “What prevented you from staying there?”
“The truth of it is that we found a cozy little inn beside the river and by the end of the evening we were in no condition to walk up the hill to the Crown.”
“Where did you put up?”
“Under canvas on our boat.”
“That's odd,” said Cribb. “Mr. Lucifer told me that you stayed at a private lodging house. He didn't mention an inn.” “Lucifer wouldn't,” Gold said with a grin. “He likes to think of himself as a teetotaller, but he lapses, you see, he lapses. I don't suppose he remembers anything about Tuesday night, the state he was in. Yet to hear him talk, you'd think a drop never passed his lips. Did you question him about this evening? I'd like to have heard his account of that.”
“Never mind this evening,” said Cribb. “Tell me about this morning. You were on the river very early, weren't you?”
“All night, to be accurate. We slept in the boat, in the backwater above Culham Lock. We were under way before seven this morning. Had breakfast in Oxford. Fried kidneys. Delicious.”
“What time was this?”
“Between half-past eight and nine. We heard Great Tom striking as we finished off the toast. What time was your murder?”
“The doctor who examined the body estimated that death took place shortly after half-past nine. Which hotel served you with breakfast?”
Mr. Gold opened his palms again. “Pity about that. We almost had an alibi, didn't we? It was the Hotel Humberstone, Sergeant. We cooked the kidneys over an open fire on the edge of Christ Church Meadow.”
To Merton for MatinsâAn encounter in Mob QuadâThe absurdity of Henry Bonner-Hill
A
S
THE
OLDEST
OF
Oxford's colleges, Merton had suffered from the improving zeal of twenty generations of architects. The buildings surrounding its four quadrangles presented an agglomeration of styles that had managed to conserve a sense of dignity until an early Victorian named Blore rede-signed the main gate and the street front, and the notorious Butterfield eclipsed that with his grotesque block at the corner of Merton Grove. Happily, the chapel, conceived on the scale of a cathedral, dominated everything. The choir, dating from the thirteenth century, was in the Decorated style; the tower was Perpendicular. The rough stone on the west wall showed the intended outline of the nave, which had never been built.
So it was in the choir that Harriet sat with Melanie Bonner-Hill for Morning Service. The term not having started, the congregation was sparse. Across the aisle in the front pew was a white-haired, bearded man Mrs. Bonner-Hill pointed out as the Warden. Behind him, at a higher level, were three othersâ“The Fellows,” she explained in a whisper. “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.”
“Which one is Mr. Fernandez?” Harriet inquired.
“The third one in, with the glossy hair and moustache.”
Once they had overcome the first awkwardness of their situation, Harriet and Melanie had found no difficulty in making conversation. By the end of dinner the evening before in their hotel, the colour had returned to the widow's cheeks and Harriet had felt herself buoyed up by the company of one of her own sex. Three days afloat with policemen had been more of an ordeal than she ever would have supposed. It had been a tonic to talk of nothing else but the theatre and Miss Terry's gowns and Mrs. Langtry's conquests. By the time the crêpes suzette arrived, Harriet had quite forgotten Sergeant Cribb; she had almost forgotten Constable Hardy. And Melanie Bonner-Hill, judging by the sparkle of her conversation, had forgotten she was a widow.
Sunday morning breakfast had been more subdued, but the friendship had blossomed when Melanie had asked Harriet to accompany her to Merton Chapel for Matins. “The Warden invited me yesterday, out of respect for Harry, I presume. It's an honour, I'm sure, but I'm dreading it, the one woman among all those men. Would you come with me? I'm sure the Warden wouldn't mind, and it would be such a support. I can point out all the notables, Harriet. Oh, they're a dreadfully dull old lot! You'll see exactly what I mean.”
