Swing, Swing Together sc-7

by Peter Lovesey

  “That is a matter I shall have to consider. I do not think it is any concern of the police, if I may say so.”

  “On the contrary, Miss Plummer. The girl’s a witness. What she saw may be important. I need to know exactly what happens to my witnesses. You wouldn’t be proposing to send her away from here, by any chance?”

  Miss Plummer’s lips came tightly together, exhibiting a new arrangement of wrinkles. “The procedure when a student commits a flagrant breach of the rules is to suspend her forthwith, pending a decision which must be confirmed by the governors-almost certainly expulsion in this case.”

  Cribb had put up his forefinger before Miss Plummer finished speaking. “That’s my point, ma’am. You suspend my witness and what happens to her?”

  “I inform the parents as a matter of course and the girl is collected and taken home within a day or two. In Harriet’s case this will not be possible, as Colonel and Mrs. Shaw are not in England at present. I shall therefore confine her to her room. A student under suspension must have no communication with other members of the College.”

  “How very fortunate!” said Cribb. “I was just about to say that justice would be served by Miss Shaw being committed to my care for the next few days. It will save you all the trouble of confining her, because that’s exactly what I shall be doing.”

  Miss Plummer looked doubtful. “I don’t think I could agree to that. I am responsible to her parents.”

  “That’s a terrible responsibility when the girl is the principal witness in a murder case, ma’am,” said Cribb. “The newspapers will be on to this by tomorrow, you may depend on that. They’ll want to interview the girl and sketch her, full face and profile. You too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Oh!” gasped Miss Plummer.

  “And once the pictures are in the paper,” Cribb continued with a long-suffering sigh, “it means we’ll have to have a squad of constables on duty here protecting Miss Shaw. There’s always a possibility of the murderers returning to silence the witness, you understand.”

  Miss Plummer closed her eyes and swayed slightly.

  “So in all the circumstances it might be wiser if I took Miss Shaw along with me, don’t you think?” said Cribb.

  Miss Plummer wrung her hands in anguish. “I really don’t know whether such a thing is proper.”

  Cribb’s eyebrows peaked in surprise. “Not proper? Not proper to assist a police officer in the execution of his duty?”

  “How do I know she will be safe?”

  In a confidential tone Cribb said, “I’ve guarded the Sovereign herself in my time, ma’am. Have no fears about that. Go back into the room now and tell her you’re suspending her and committing her into my custody. She has half an hour to pack her things. We shall leave by the front door”-he drew out his watch-“at half-past eleven. Just think of the effect it will have on the other students.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Bushman of the Yard-Literary pursuits of the police-Concerning the corpse

  That was how Harriet found herself bowling along the Henley road in a growler in the company of three policemen. Her travelling bag sat importantly on the roof-privileged treatment, because P. C. Hardy’s bicycle, which could have been strapped up there, was left behind, propped against the gardener’s shed. Sergeant Cribb had made a pointed remark about the pace of life in the country and indicated with a jerk of his thumb that he wanted the constable to travel with the rest of the party in the cab. The bicycle had not been mentioned. It said much for P. C. Hardy’s judgment, in Harriet’s view, that he did not contest the point.

  She was seated next to Cribb, with the two constables opposite: a daunting experience considering that Miss Plummer allowed no member of the opposite sex except the Vicar of Henley into the same room with her students. It would have been gross bad manners to stare out of the window for the whole of the journey, however, but unendurably embarrassing to have caught P. C. Hardy’s eye (for he seemed determined not to look out of the window), so when she shifted her gaze from the beech trees, it turned without deviation to Constable Thackeray. And, most unusually when she first examined a face, the image that came to her was not from her atlas but her geography textbook, which had a frontispiece illustrating the multiformity of facial characteristics throughout the world. There was a striking resemblance between Constable Thackeray and Bushman, New Guinea. Harriet had never been quite sure whether “bush” referred to the man’s prodigious growth of whiskers or the sparse vegetation in the background. But Scotland Yard was quite the equal of New Guinea in growth of beard. Thackeray had the same broad forehead, shaggy eyebrows and generously proportioned ears, and if he lacked the finishing touch of a quill through his nostrils, at least he sported a fine brown bowler hat with a curly brim! Harriet decided she would not be intimidated by a set of whiskers. The face behind them was probably quite as jolly in reality as Esquimau, North America.

  “Have you read it yet?” Sergeant Cribb asked unexpectedly.

  After reflection, Thackeray replied, “Read what, Sarge?”

  “Three Men in a Boat. Appeared this summer. Popular book. You see it on the bookstalls at every London terminus.”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “I have, too,” contributed P. C. Hardy.

  “What about you, Miss Shaw?” asked Cribb, ignoring such meagre responses. “Student like yourself must read books by the dozen.”

  Harriet shook her head. “Nothing like that, I’m afraid. Miss Plummer regards books you can buy on railway stations as unsuitable. Somebody came back after the Christmas vacation with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and there was the most frightful scene.”

  “Pity,” said Cribb. “I was hoping to have a profitable discussion on the subject. Well-written book, too. I’m surprised not one of you has read it.” He turned his head to look out of the window, as if having taken the cultural pulse of his fellow travellers, he had decided he would be better employed looking at trees.

  Thackeray cleared his throat to speak and, unless Harriet were mistaken, winked at the same time. “Perhaps you could tell us what it’s about, Sarge. Just the outline of the story, like. We’d appreciate that.”

  Cribb returned a sharp look. “Three hundred pages, with illustrations? I haven’t time for that. You must read it for yourselves. I’ll tell you one thing, though. There’s a dog in it.”

  “So there is!” confirmed Hardy. “I’ve seen the picture on the cover-a silhouette with two men rowin’ and the third takin’ his ease on the cushions smokin’ a pipe. The dog is sittin’ at the front.”

  “In the prow,” said Cribb curtly. “The author is Mr. Jerome K. Jerome.”

  “That’s right,” said Hardy. “That’s on the cover, too.”

  Thackeray, who plainly knew the limit of Sergeant Cribb’s tolerance, quickly put in, “Is it a true story, Sarge?”

  Instead of attacking Hardy, Cribb rounded on his assistant, “That’s not a question you should put to me, Thackeray. Only Mr. Jerome himself can answer that. If I was so incautious as to say that it was true, it wouldn’t be admissible evidence, and you as an officer of the law shouldn’t place any reliance upon it. However”-the sergeant’s tone mellowed a little-“it’s a question which indicates that you’ve applied your mind to recent events, and that’s to be welcomed. No doubt you were pondering the significance of the three men in the boat seen by Miss Shaw on Tuesday night.”

  “To say nothing of the dog,” added Thackeray.

  “That’s part of the title!” exclaimed Hardy in some excitement.

  Cribb eyed him witheringly. “What do you suggest I do-arrest Mr. Jerome K. Jerome?”

  Harriet spoke: “How can you be sure that there is any connection at all between the three men I saw and the unfortunate man at Hurley Weir?”

  “Can’t be sure, miss,” said Cribb, “but there are certain indications. Circumstantial evidence, we’d say. The doctors tell me that the man at Hurley died from drowning. Now, that’s nothing unusual in a corp
se taken from the Thames.”

  “It nearly happened to me.”

  “So I believe, miss. But, as I understand it, you were in the water because you chose to be. You weren’t wearing any-that is to say, many clothes. The man in the water was fully dressed right down to his boots. It’s a wonder the boots stayed on, because they had no proper laces. He was a vagrant, miss, a gentleman of the road, to coin a phrase. We haven’t identified him yet. Aged about forty-five, although he looks older-they always do. Good physique. Hands and feet a bit weathered. I’m not distressing you, am I? Not so different, as I say, from scores of other corpses we take from the river every month. Some of ’em get in by accident-drunks falling off the Embankment and the like-and some are suicides and I dare say there’s a few that are helped in. They’re mostly derelicts and one more wouldn’t have brought me here from Scotland Yard except for some uncommon circumstances. You see, he was taken from the water within six or seven hours of his death, and there were signs of violence on his body. Bruising round the shoulders: the clear marks of a hand on the nape of the neck, as if somebody had held him face down in the water.”

  “But who would want to drown a tramp?” asked Harriet.

  “Someone with a grudge, perhaps. Another tramp, maybe. There’s a complicated code of conduct among ’em. Or it could be someone from his past-the life he chose to turn his back on. He might have taken to the roads to escape from somebody. We shan’t know the answer until we can identify him. One thing’s certain: the motive wasn’t theft. When he was taken from the water, he still had a packet in his pocket containing almost thirty pounds in banknotes.”

  “A tramp, with that money?”

  “They aren’t all paupers, miss. It isn’t only want of funds that can drive a man out of his home. What surprises me isn’t that he had the money; it’s that his killers left it on him.”

  “Did he carry any papers or things that might help you to identify him?”

  “Like a set of visiting cards? No, miss. A knife, some matches and a clay pipe. It won’t be easy. That’s why we’re here from Scotland Yard-Thackeray and me, that is. P. C. Hardy’s here because he bumped into you on the night in question. Or did you bump into him? Never mind. What matters is that he was smart enough to put two and two together. When I picked him up at Medmenham this morning, he was ready to tell me about his meeting with you and what you said about the three men. It wasn’t easy for him, mind. It was breaking a confidence and he didn’t do it lightly, but the capital crime was involved, Miss Shaw, the capital crime. I hope you don’t blame him in any way.”

  “Oh, I don’t.” Harriet hazarded a tiny glance at P. C. Hardy and noticed the relief dawning on his face.

  “That’s good, miss,” Cribb went on, “because we need your co-operation and I’m proposing to use Hardy on the case.”

  “But what else is there that I can do? I’ve told you all that I saw, and that wasn’t much.”

  “We’ll need you to identify those men, miss. I expect to find ’em before too long.”

  Brave words, but Harriet was less confident. “Surely they will be miles away by now, and in three different directions if they have any sense.” Privately she was doubtful whether they had any connection with the dead tramp.

  “I’m not convinced that these particular gentlemen have much sense,” said Cribb. “They left thirty pounds on the body, remember. That’s shocking carelessness. And, of course, they don’t know that the body was picked up so quick, or that you saw them in their boat on Tuesday night. I think there’s a good chance that they’re still on the river somewhere, paddling innocently along like the three men in Mr. Jerome’s book. The boat was stacked up as if for a trip of several days, you said.”

  “Yes, there was a considerable pile of luggage at the rear of the boat, covered by something-a tarpaulin, I suppose. Oh.” A particularly unpleasant possibility occurred suddenly to Harriet and interrupted her answer.

  “What is it, miss?”

  “The luggage. You don’t suppose it could have been something else under the tarpaulin?”

  Cribb shook his head firmly. “No, miss. All the signs are that he wasn’t killed before he was put into the water. There was a struggle. I think the luggage was exactly what you supposed at first-hampers and bags with food and clothes. They’re on a trip just like the three men in a boat. They’ve even brought a dog to make it complete. In the course of their trip they’ve killed a tramp. It’s my job to discover why.”

  “You seem so certain that these men are murderers,” said Harriet. “It worries me. They may be innocent. I should hate to be responsible for their arrest and find that it is all a mistake. There isn’t anything to connect them with the tramp except that they were on the river the same night.”

  “Not quite true, miss,” said Cribb. “There’s something else I haven’t mentioned yet. Before I called at your college this morning, I made another call, to the mortuary at Henley. They wheeled the body in for me to look at-begging your pardon, miss. I saw the bruises the local force identified, mainly round the shoulders and neck, as I mentioned. Then something else took my eye. Some marks on the right leg, the fleshy part of the calf, two small crescents of marks facing each other. The skin was broken, but there couldn’t have been much bleeding, so it’s no wonder the local lads missed it on a rather hairy leg. A dog bite, miss, made by a dog of medium size, I’d say. Could be a fox terrier.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A slight hassle at Henley-Transformation scene-All aboard

  They called at Henley police station, as Cribb loftily explained, to receive the latest intelligence on the case from the local force. “Although it’s debatable which is the local force. Three counties are involved. The body was found at Hurley and that’s in Berkshire. They took it to the nearest mortuary at Henley, which is Oxfordshire. Constable Hardy here, and you, Miss Shaw, come from Buckinghamshire. So which county force do you think should take the case? The three chief constables were about to settle it with pistols when some sharp lad remembered that the Thames itself is under Metropolitan jurisdiction, so they gave the job to Scotland Yard. Convenient for everyone but Thackeray and me.”

  The desk sergeant was seated against a backcloth of notices describing the penalties for a range of offences from furious riding to harbouring thieves. Harriet thought him admirably calm for one in such dangerous employment. The unconcern was apparent in his responses to Sergeant Cribb. “Yes, we combed the riverbank as you asked, right along the Reach as far as Hambleden and we might as well have saved our perishing time. Twenty men diverted from their normal duties! Only Scotland Yard or Drury Lane would dare to stage a pantomime like that.”

  “You found nothing?” Cribb tersely asked.

  “Not so much as a perishing duck. No abandoned boat and nobody who remembered hiring one to three men and a dog. I hear that the Buckinghamshire lads have done no better. Don’t know how many men they were using, but it’s the devil of a lot of public money to go on a dead tramp.”

  “A set of killers,” said Cribb.

  “All right. A set of-”

  “-who might very likely kill again if nobody stops ’em. I haven’t time nor patience to bandy words with you, Sergeant. Are the things ready as I asked?”

  The desk sergeant gave a grudging nod.

  “In that case,” said Cribb, turning to Harriet, “I shall be compelled to commit you to this officer’s care for a few minutes, Miss Shaw. The constables and I have something to attend to that won’t take long, but can’t be done in the presence of a lady. I suggest you sit behind the door there. You might be offered a cup of tea if there’s enough public money left to pay for it.”

  So she sat in the chair Cribb had indicated and listened to the sergeant complaining that if the duty constable hadn’t been redeployed to the perishing riverbank there would be somebody to make the perishing tea. She got a cup nonetheless and the dissent was presently cut short by the entrance of a butcher whose plaster pig had been removed from o
utside his shop by two small boys. It took the sergeant eleven minutes by the clock over the door to establish the facts and reassure the butcher that as soon as the perishing station was back to strength an investigation would be put in train.

  Then Cribb and his two assistants emerged from the door beside Harriet and swept the desk sergeant and his problems from her mind. They had completely changed their clothes. Instead of sober brown suits, Cribb and Thackeray wore striped blazers and white flannels. To match his stripes, Cribb had a red boating cap with a peak that lay low against his forehead. Thackeray’s was more of a fisherman’s hat, white and made of some soft material, with a brim that rested snugly over his whiskers.

  The most stunning transformation was Constable Hardy’s. When Harriet saw him, she blushed again for Tuesday night. The blue serge and helmet had lent a reassuring impersonality to that episode which was shattered by his appearance now in a cream-coloured blazer trimmed with red, matching flannels tied with a silk handkerchief, and a straw boater perched nonchalantly on the back of his head. Was this elegant young man, this masher, the policeman she had run into in the dark? It was unendurable.

  Between them Thackeray and Hardy carried a large hamper. Cribb had a picnic basket in his left hand and a white parasol in his right which he now presented to Harriet. “Compliments of the Chief Inspector of Henley, miss. It belongs to his daughter. You’ll look a picture on the river.”

  Whether the boating costumes also were on loan from members of the Henley police and their families, Harriet did not inquire. Was it possible that the back room contained a property basket filled with boating attire of all sizes for visiting detectives? Was there a similar basket of bowler hats, umbrellas and dark suits at Scotland Yard? She had never heard of such a thing, but she supposed it would be a closely guarded secret. Actually Thackeray’s flannels, now she observed them more closely, ended some inches above his ankles, which looked slightly odd, even for going on the river. But the others could not be faulted.