Swing, Swing Together (26 page)

“Fernandez?” repeated the boatman. “Do you mean Mr. Fernandez from Merton College? Why didn't you mention his name before? Of course I've seen him! One of my best customers. He's down here at every chance he gets. Always brings a lady with him, too. Yes, he collected a punt half an hour ago. Must have got to Mesopotamia by now.”

Hardy's jaw dropped.

“It's a meadow,” said Melanie. “I know exactly where he'll have taken her. Boatman, we shall want a boat at once.”

Well, she had permitted him to kiss her.
That
would be something to tell them at Elfrida. A proper kiss on the lips with one hand under her head pressing her face to his and the other … Well, the other had not stayed in one place. Even now, when it appeared to be resting on her waist, she could feel small movements through her clothes.

If she was honest, kissing was not so exquisite as Molly and Jane had led her to expect. His lips had been damp and his moustache had tickled her nose distractingly. By all accounts including his own he was not inexperienced in such things, so perhaps the fault was hers. She was not sure whether it was prudent to allow him a second one. It was certainly not proper, but she had stopped being proper when she had accepted his offer of luncheon. Perhaps one more could be justified, so long as she made it quite clear that the liberties ended there. If there
was
anything in kissing, she would like to find out while she had the opportunity.

His hold on her waist tightened and his face came close again, more slowly and confidently this time, the water's reflection glittering in his eyes.

Just as she parted her lips, the bells of Magdalen broke into a chime. Bells all over Oxford began sounding the hour. Harriet turned her head away and giggled.

“I'm sorry, John. That was so unexpected. I thought we were miles from anywhere and then the bells started.”

“They say it's the best place in Oxford to listen to the bells,” said Fernandez without enthusiasm. “Great Tom is the last you hear.”

“What are they striking? Is it four o'clock? I ought to be back by now.”

“What is it? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I want to hurt you?” For the first time that afternoon, he looked as if he might.

Harriet was alarmed. “Of course I don't, John! You have been more than kind to me, but if I am late in getting back, people will wonder where I am.”

“
People?
What do you mean by that?”

She was on the point of naming Sergeant Cribb and his assistants, but checked herself in time. “People in the hotel. Melanie and others I have met. Afternoon tea is at half-past four. If I am not there, somebody will notice.”

“Afternoon tea? I gave you an expensive luncheon and champagne.” Emboldened by this, Fernandez placed his hand on her throat and drew it down, forcing open another button of her blouse. “I shall take you back in good time, Harriet. We were on the point of exchanging a kiss, if you remember.”

She remembered, but her curiosity was not so strong as to consent to a kiss in her present predicament. “If you would take away your hand, I should like to fasten my blouse. Then you may kiss me.”

It was a brave offer, and it impressed him enough to move his hand back to her throat.

“I should prefer to fasten my own collar, if you don't mind,” said Harriet firmly. She took hold of his wrist and planted the hand where it had formerly been, on her waist.

As she leaned forward to attend to the buttons, something dropped from above her, something small that passed close to her face, touched the soft skin below her throat and lodged against the lace trimming of her chemise. “What was that?”

“A small caterpillar. It must have dropped off the tree. Shall I remove it?”

“Oh no!” She jerked away from him and the movement caused the caterpillar to fall between her breasts. “Oh, how horrid! I can feel it moving! It's inside my clothes!” She forced her finger and thumb down the front of her stays, but was unable to reach it. “I cannot bear it!”

Fernandez turned and picked up his jacket. From the pocket he took out a clasp knife and opened it. “Turn round!”

She was on the edge of panic. “What are you doing?”

He grasped her shoulder and forced her to face the water. She felt her blouse tugged from under her belt and wrenched up her back to her shoulders. She drew in her breath in a gasp, preparing to scream.

“Quiet, for God's sake, and keep still! I'm going to cut your laces.”

She should have realized it was the quickest way to loosen her stays and stop the tiny trespasser. She submitted, and felt the constriction ease with each cut. The torment inside her chemise increased. She would have writhed against the side of the punt if it were not for the touch of the knife on her spine.

The last lace snapped. Harriet succeeded in scooping her hand down the front of her clothes and extracting not a caterpillar, but an old brown catkin. It must have held fast to the tree for the whole of the summer. “A pussy willow!” she said.

Pandemonium followed.

Without warning, another punt coursed under the tree, with Constable Hardy aboard, crouching at the front, shouting, “Get away from her, you devil!”—and Melanie seated at the other end, screaming.

Fernandez turned, knife in hand, as Hardy leaped aboard and crashed a paddle over his head, knocking him insensible. The punt jerked against the bank and Harriet tipped headfirst into the water. Fortunately, it was only waist-deep.

She had started to stand up when she realized that her blouse was open to the waist and her stays jutted horizontally in front of her like a breakfast tray.

She hesitated only briefly. With style she had not dreamed she possessed, she pulled the stays free and dropped them into the water. Then she opened her arms and let Hardy lift her into the punt.

“You have rescued me, Roger,” she said. “You have rescued me again!” She held him tightly.

The empty champagne bottle, dislodged, like Harriet, from the punt, followed her stays downriver.

CHAPTER

39

Cribb reveals the truth—To say nothing of the dog—Swing, swing together

J
IM
H
ACKETT
'
S
SUICIDAL
LEAP
from the
Iffley Queen
had various consequences. It earned Thackeray, his rescuer, a column of tribute in the
Oxford Times
and a cold that stayed with him for a month. It inspired a question in Parliament about the safety of life belts, after the one Thackeray had carried to Hackett had proved incapable of supporting him. And it gave Percy Bustard time to consider his position.

“Drink your cocoa, Jim, and don't say a word,” he advised his accomplice, now swathed, like Thackeray, in a blanket, but with one arm handcuffed to a table in the saloon. “There's no evidence against us. A decent lawyer will see us through. We can answer any charge they bring.”

Cribb smiled. “Feeling more confident, now you're out of your skirts, Mr. Bustard? He'll need to be a very good lawyer. I made a bad mistake early in this case—spent the best part of a week tagging after the shirttails of three gentlemen interested in other things than murdering university dons—but this time I don't think I'm wrong. You murdered a tramp by the name of Walters on Tuesday night at Hurley, and Henry Bonner-Hill on Saturday morning in Oxford.”

“We were not in Hurley on Tuesday night.”

“Miss Harriet Shaw—a young lady you've met more than once—observed three men in a boat above Hurley Lock in the early hours of last Wednesday morning. The passenger was Walters, probably drunk, and the two oarsmen answered your descriptions—one much larger than the other.”

“That's not much of a description,” commented Bustard. “If Miss Shaw persuaded herself that she saw Jim and me, she's mistaken. We slept in the boat at Wargrave on Tuesday night. I don't know whether you're familiar with the River Thames, old sport, but Wargrave is a good ten miles upriver from Hurley and, more to the point, there's Hambleden and Marsh Locks in between. The locks are closed at sundown. We couldn't have brought the boat to Hurley without shooting the weirs.”

“Yes, I'm familiar with the story,” said Cribb. “You were careful to mention that you bought a veal and ham pie in the George and Dragon. But Jim Hackett corrected you, said it was the Dog and Badger.”

Bustard shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it was.”

“The only Dog and Badger for miles around is in Medmenham,” said Cribb. “It happens to be P. C. Hardy's local pub. There's no Dog and Badger in Wargrave. I've checked the county gazetteer.”

“Slip of the tongue,” said Jim Hackett.

“Stow it!” ordered Bustard immediately. Then, affecting unconcern again, he asked Cribb, “Why do you suppose we should have wanted to murder a common tramp?”

“Not for his money,” answered Cribb. “We found thirty pounds on the body. He was killed to practise the method. You reasoned that nobody would take much interest in a tramp who drowned in the river. You met Walters somewhere in the neighbourhood of Medmenham—quite possibly the taproom of the Dog and Badger—filled him with liquor, walked him to the river and took him aboard the boat. He was nine parts drunk by then, and I dare say you gave him some gin or whisky to do the rest. You rowed towards Hurley and heaved him over the side, taking care to hold his head and shoulders under long enough to fill his lungs with water. Pity you gripped him so tightly. You left some bruises round the neck. There was also a dog bite on his leg.”

“A dog bite!” said Bustard. “That's ridiculous! We haven't got a dog.”

“Not now, Mr. Bustard, but you had one at the time. Fox terrier, I think. Miss Shaw noticed it sitting at the front of your boat. A nice domestic touch, that. Pity it got too excited when you were struggling with Walters' body and fastened its teeth on his leg, because you had to get rid of it after that. It's no good asking what you did with the poor animal. I suppose it went the same way as Walters. Nobody's going to get excited about one more dead dog in the Thames.”

Jim Hackett started to say, “We didn't drown the—” when Bustard nudged him so sharply that cocoa spilled over the blanket.

“If you didn't drown it, then I've a theory that it's buried on Phillimore's Island,” said Cribb. “You lit a fire there. If we dig underneath the ashes, I reckon we might find what's left of that unfortunate dog. A fire is a useful way of covering freshly dug earth. Yes, I think we'll send a little exhumation party to Phillimore's Island.”

“A dead dog won't prove much, even if you find one,” said Bustard.

“On the contrary,” said Cribb. “If its teeth match the marks on Walters' leg, that's evidence strong enough to hang you.”

Bustard was unmoved, even if Jim Hackett winced at the mention of hanging. “You really haven't explained why we should have gone to so much trouble to kill the tramp.”

“I told you. You were trying out the method. You were going to Oxford to do a job of murder and you wanted to be sure of getting it right. And you did, of course, apart from the fact that you killed the wrong man. Bonner-Hill, poor man, came to the rendezvous instead of Fernandez.”

“Rendezvous? Fernandez? This is all a cipher to me, old boy.”

“It was to me until I realized you were sent to kill Fernandez, and not Bonner-Hill,” said Cribb. “Fernandez had been fishing for pike on Saturday mornings for two years. Anyone who wanted to kill him must have known they could rely on him being on the river on a Saturday. Just to make sure, a letter was sent from London telling him to be in a certain backwater if he wanted to be shown where a large pike could be found. You were waiting there for him, but Bonner-Hill arrived instead. Thinking he was Fernandez, you murdered him. I'll make a guess and say you used chloroform or ether instead of alcohol to render him insensible first.”

“Make as many guesses as you like, old sport,” Bustard airily said. “You've still got to find a reason why Jim and I should have wanted to kill this fellow Fernandez.”

“That took a little trouble to establish,” said Cribb. “Even after I'd convinced myself Fernandez was intended as the victim, it wasn't easy. A philanderer like that makes no end of enemies—jilted ladies, jealous husbands and the like. Someone got so agitated about him three months ago that they wrote to Scotland Yard suggesting he was Jack the Ripper. Nasty thing to do. They must have known the Yard would have to investigate. Detectives came to Merton to question him, and when he unwisely gave a false account of his movements at the time of the Whitechapel murders, they began to consider him as a serious suspect. He had claimed to be visiting his uncle, who is Deputy Governor at Coldbath Fields, on the night of the Ripper's fifth murder, but when asked, the gentleman said he hadn't seen Fernandez for a full year. Inspector Abberline, the man in charge of the Ripper investigation, visited Fernandez himself and put some sharp questions to him. It turned out that he wasn't Jack the Ripper. He had been trying to preserve a lady's reputation.”