Swing, Swing Together (21 page)

“It's a conundrum, sir. It really is. I'm trying my best. What about your family? Are your parents alive?”

“Both dead. I have two brothers serving in the army and an uncle in London. If you're as desperate as you appear to be to find a motive, you may wish to speculate on the fact that he is Deputy Governor of Coldbath Fields House of Correction.”

“The Steel, sir?” Cribb's eyes lit up as if mention had been made of his school. “I know it well. My word, this is a small world! You're right, though. It's not impossible for someone to have seen a way of taking revenge on your uncle by attacking you. Old lags get a lot of time to work up hatred, and to scheme. I'll think about that. His name is the same as yours, is it?”

“Matthew Fernandez. But I've no reason to believe—”

“Nor me, sir. I shan't discount it, though. You've been extremely patient with me. I'm an irritating sort of cove.”

Fernandez fumbled for an appropriately civil response. “Not at all. Not irritating. Well, you must admit it sounds deucedly far-fetched to suggest that three men came all the way from London in a boat to do away with a harmless don in modern history.”

Cribb smiled. The smile remained on his face as he passed through the Fellows' Quad to the Front Quad. It was still there when he started down Merton Street.

At no point in the interview had he suggested to Fernandez that the three men had started from London.

He marched into Oxford Police Station and announced to Thackeray that he was catching the next train to Paddington. “I'm going to see the Deputy Governor at the Steel,” he said. “If anything develops here, you can use the telephone set to leave a message at the Yard. I should be back tonight.”

CHAPTER

31

Coldbath on Sunday evening—The treadmill treatment—A little rift within the lute

“C
RIBB
,
YOU
DON
'
T
LOOK
a day older than you did in the infantry,” said Mr. Barry, warder-in-chief of Coldbath Fields House of Correction. “Police work evidently keeps you young. What are you now—inspector?”

“Sergeant only,” Cribb admitted. “Haven't done so well as you, Sam. I still speak out of turn too regular to please the high-ups. I'll tell you what I'm here for. I want to get a few words with a party named Fernandez—Deputy Governor, if my information's right.”

“One of
my
high-ups.” Barry put down his mug of tea and walked to the window. “Take a look down there.”

The office was high at the top of the North Block. Cribb glanced down the shaft formed by adjacent buildings and saw something very like a string of pearls arranged in a box, except that they were moving, rotating slowly clockwise: the cropped heads of sixty convicts at exercise.

“How many have you got in the Steel?”

“Twelve hundred, give or take a few,” said Barry. “That's three times the number in Holloway, and they've got twice the ground. We arrange the exercise in shifts. Mr. Fernandez, the one you mentioned, worked it out. He's a rare one for organizing. The treadmill's turning from eight in the morning till nine at night. Crank. Shot drill. Everything's on the go.”

“Including the warders, I expect,” said Cribb, sensing acrimony.

“Keeps us occupied. Come downstairs and we'll find him. Likely as not, he's in one of the yards. He likes to keep an eye on the exercise.”

“Is he disliked in the prison?” Cribb ventured, as they started down a flight of iron stairs.

“He devised the system,” Barry tersely answered. “What do you want with him?”

“I'm interested in his nephew. Oxford don. Has he ever mentioned him?”

“Never a word. He's too occupied with his own family, I expect. Five sons and eight daughters. They all appear in the prison chapel every Sunday. The two eldest girls are married.” Barry selected a key from the ring chained to his belt and let them through a door to another landing. “They say that's how he worked out the shift system—spacing out the baths on Saturday night.”

After two more flights of stairs they reached ground level. More doors, more locks, and they were in the exercise yard they had overlooked from the office. The prisoners, unsuggestive of pearls at this level, trudged mindlessly round the perimeter, their boots rasping on the stone flags. A stench of sweat hung in the air. Any thoughts Cribb might have entertained of a career in the prison service were dispersed in that yard. “It's known as the sorry-go-round,” Barry told him. “I'm told Mr. Fernandez is in the next block.”

He led Cribb up more stairs and along a catwalk between lines of cell doors, descending again to enter a yard no different on the ground from the other, with its own shuffling circle of misery watched by yawning warders. But here an activity was taking place in a gallery above the heads of the footsloggers. In twelve narrow stalls convicts were at the treadmill, forcing their feet to keep pace with steps that sank endlessly away as an unseen wheel turned, its revolutions fixed at a rate that took no account of aching calves and skinned ankles.

“He's over there,” said Barry. “You'd better introduce yourself.”

He was conspicuous by being in a plain suit, but otherwise Fernandez Senior was a disappointment in appearance, smaller and more mild-looking than Cribb had expected of a man who had fathered thirteen children and reorganized the largest prison in London. He had a winged collar and a spotted tie. He was hairless except for a thin, reddish moustache.

Cribb lifted his bowler. “Mr. Fernandez? The name's Cribb, sir. Detective Sergeant. Scotland Yard. Might I have a word?”

“You are obstructing my view of the clock,” said Fernandez in a pained voice.

Cribb sidestepped. “I shan't take up much time, sir.”

“I hope you don't, or twelve prisoners will tread a forty-minute shift, instead of twenty, and they won't thank you for that. I am supervising an innovation in the exercise. The present group is due to be replaced at twenty minutes to the hour, but the order has to come from me. You have two and a half minutes of my time, Sergeant. What is it you require—an interview with a prisoner?”

“With you, sir. It concerns your nephew, John Fernandez.” Cribb could not have been prepared for the reaction this provoked. “Does it indeed? What did you say your name was?”

“Cribb, sir.”

“The Metropolitan Commissioner shall hear of this, Cribb. Reasonable inquiries are one thing, but this amounts to persecution, and I won't tolerate it. I was personally assured by Inspector Abberline that I should not be subjected to more questions about my nephew. It was conclusively established that he is unconnected with the matters under investigation. I
will
not have my family hounded by policemen. Have you spoken to Inspector Abberline?”

“No, sir, but—”

“I suggest you do. I have nothing more to say on the matter.” He turned his back on Cribb and pushed through the line of convicts to the center of the yard. “Odds!” he piped in a voice just strident enough to be heard above the mechanism of the treadmill. “On your feet! Sharp now, unless you want a turn on the crank.”

Twelve convicts stood up in the stalls, which Cribb now saw were numbered from one to twenty-four. The odd numbers were about to start their shift. “One, two, three, change!” called Fernandez.

The evens backed away from the mechanism and leaned on the sides of the stalls or crumpled to the floor. The odds took up the tread.

Cribb had eased his way through the chain and was speaking to the Deputy Governor at a rate that brooked no interference. “Someone nearly murdered your nephew, Mr. Fernandez. It happened yesterday morning in Oxford. A man was drowned. We think the murderers mistook him for John Fernandez. That's why I'm here.”

“Kindly modulate your voice,” said Fernandez. “I would rather that the whole of Coldbath Fields did not hear about the misfortunes of my family. Somebody tried to murder him? Whatever for?”

“I hoped you might be able to tell me, sir. I've reason to believe that somebody travelled from London to Oxford with the intention of drowning him.”

“Why question me about it?” said Fernandez. “Naturally it causes me concern, but I know nothing about it.”

“Your nephew raised the possibility that released prisoners might seek revenge on you by attacking your family, sir.”

“Revenge?” said Fernandez, screwing his face into an expression of horror. “What an ill-informed idea! These men bear no malice towards me. They have their term to serve and I am here to see that it is served as the law dictates. They have much to thank me for, if you want to know. I inaugurated many of the procedures which contribute to the general efficiency of this house of correction and, in consequence, the well-being of its inmates. The fact that you see me supervising treadmill exercise does not mean that I am not concerned with the things of the spirit, Sergeant. The improving texts displayed throughout these buildings are here on my initiative.” In case it had escaped Cribb's notice, he extended his hand towards a card above the treadmill bearing the legend
Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out (Numbers, Ch. 32, v. 23). “
As a matter of fact, they were chosen by my own dear wife and daughters. No, Sergeant, I have no fear of former prisoners, nor need my nephew be alarmed.”

“I'll try to reassure him, sir,” said Cribb. “Perhaps he hasn't had the advantage of visiting the prison.”

“This is a house of correction. A man of your vocation ought to know that prisons are for long-term convicts. No, my nephew has never been here. I have not set eyes on him for a year. The last occasion was his father's funeral. That is why it so infuriates me that I am plagued with policemen asking questions about him. The man has a slight imperfection of character, I concede—‘the little rift within the lute,' as Tennyson puts it—but to my knowledge it has never been more than that. They understand him at Oxford. I'm sorry, if what you say is true, that somebody tried to murder him. These are violent times, I am afraid. It could happen to any of us. The Queen herself, God bless her, has survived a number of attempts upon her life. Savage times. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I see a man shirking up there. An hour on the crank will do him good.”

CHAPTER

32

A look at Suspects, Other—The file on Fernandez—
Frou-Frou
and an alibi

F
ROM
C
OLDBATH
F
IELDS
, C
RIBB
caught a green Victoria bus to Whitehall and marched briskly into the Metropolitan Police Office in Great Scotland Yard. At half-past eight on a Sunday evening the sergeant at the information desk was deep in his
News of the World.
Cribb's curt “Inspector Abberline—is he on duty?” got a less instant response than it warranted.

“Abber what?”

“Fred Abberline, for God's sake. Where have you been for the past twelve months? The man in charge of the Ripper investigation.”

“Jesus!” The desk sergeant dropped his newspaper. “Abberline's off duty. There hasn't been another … ?”

“No.” Cribb had conducted this conversation as he was moving through the information room to the registry.

The clerk on duty here was sharper to react. He had dropped his
Bicycling Times
into the wastepaper basket before Cribb reached the counter.

“The Whitechapel murders,” Cribb announced. “I'd like to look at the file on them.”

“File!” The clerk pulled a face. “There's twenty altogether, Sergeant. One for each of the five victims; one for others murdered in similar circumstances; nine for correspondence; one for suspects, principal; two for suspects, other; and two marked miscellaneous.”

“I'd better take them all. Where do I sign for them?”

“You'll need a handcart to move them. The correspondence was coming in at the rate of a thousand letters a week last winter. We're still getting upwards of a hundred, mostly from lunatics.”

“Give me Suspects, Other, will you? I'll start with those.” He gave a long whistle as two bulging files tied with tape were dumped on the counter. “I should think you've got the whole of London in there.”

In the adjoining office Cribb turned on the gas, placed his watch on the desk and unfastened the tape round the first file. He leafed through the contents carefully, not without excitement. Up to now there had not been much to get excited over in this investigation. Detective work held more disappointments than rewards, he knew, but occasionally, just occasionally, the shade of Sir Robert Peel, or whoever it was who interceded with the gods for detectives in despair, procured a small advantage for the side of law and order. Unless they were playing false, the gods had favoured Cribb when Fernandez Senior had mentioned Inspector Abberline's name.

With the possible exception of the sergeant at the information desk, nobody at Scotland Yard needed telling that Fred Abberline had been in charge of the Ripper investigation ever since the mutilated body of Mary Ann Nichols had been found in Buck's Row on the last day of August, 1888. As the tally of Jack the Ripper's victims had grown through the months of autumn, Abberline's name had become a byword in the press.
Inspector Abberline, we are informed, is sparing no effort in his investigation, but we understand that he is no nearer to making an arrest.

If Abberline had been to Coldbath Fields asking questions about John Fernandez, it must have been connected with the Whitechapel murders. That was not necessarily significant, for hundreds of men in the city and the suburbs had been questioned, and Suspects, Other contained more reports than Cribb cared to count.

It was not long before he found the one headed
Fernandez, John,
and began to read it.