“Utterly heartless,” Goldstein confirmed, and added, moved by some personal recollection, “Little monsters.”
“Your husband was happier in Oxford, then?” suggested Cribb.
“Yes, indeed! He took to the academic life like a duck to water. Oh, dear.” Mrs. Bonner-Hill bit her lip like a schoolgirl who had given a wrong answer. A large tear rolled down her left cheek. She wiped it away. “Forgive me. Such a foolish thing to say.”
“Don’t concern yourself on our account, ma’am,” said Cribb. “If it distresses you to talk about your late husband …” He was catching the mortuary attendant’s habit.
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Bonner-Hill. “I want to help you if I possibly can. We must find the person responsible for this terrible thing. I have been trying to think of anyone who might have harboured a grudge against Harry, but I am at a loss. You see, I have not seen so much of him in the past twelve months. His colleagues in Merton could give you a better idea of his comings and goings.”
“Mr. Fernandez?” said Cribb. “I spoke to him earlier.”
“That man! Don’t rely on anything he tells you. A most unwholesome person. It is too embarrassing to go into now. He is not a gentleman, I am afraid.”
“Do I gather that there was an incident, ma’am?” Cribb asked.
“The lady prefers not to speak about it,” cautioned Goldstein. “I think this has gone far enough.”
“You’re wanting to get back in time for King Lear, sir?” “That is immaterial. Melanie should not be forced to submit to more interrogation.”
“I wasn’t forcing her, sir. She just expressed her willingness to help. If she prefers not to speak about her experience with Mr. Fernandez …”
But Melanie had evidently decided it was better if the truth were out. “One afternoon at Merton before Harry and I were married, he was standing in the corridor outside Harry’s rooms as I came out alone. I knew him as one of the Fellows, so I smiled—just a polite smile of recognition, you understand—and prepared to pass him. Imagine my astonishment when he stopped in front of me without a word, pressing me physically against the wall. I was too shocked to cry out and I could not move, he was so close to me. I thought he was attempting to kiss me and I tried to move my head aside. Then—I am a married woman now, but it makes me shudder still—I became conscious of the presence of his left hand inside my blouse.”
“Deplorable!” said Goldstein.
“It was only there for a second and then he withdrew it, released me and was gone. I was too mortified with shame to go back to Harry, so I rearranged my clothes and walked twice round the Fellows’ Quad.”
“What self-possession!” said Goldstein.
“It was more than a year before I mentioned the matter to Harry and by then he was my husband. To make things worse, he expressed no particular surprise when I told him, and actually tried to fabricate excuses for Mr. Fernandez by saying that he had a weakness—a blind spot, he called it—where ladies were concerned. It was fairly common knowledge in the Senior Common Room. He dismissed it, just like that! And then went on to tell me how unfortunate it was when a man had things he was ashamed of, because sooner or later they became known to his colleagues. Do you see what he did? He turned the whole thing upside-down to make me feel that if I went back to the stage it would be betraying him. That started our first serious argument. I should never have spoken to him about it.”
“He was already friendly with Fernandez, I expect,” said Cribb.
“Of course he was—and determined that my experience should not spoil the friendship. Harry was a fine man in many respects, and a dutiful husband, but he brushed aside my feelings in this matter. He insisted that we both behaved towards Mr. Fernandez as if nothing had happened. In fact, he took to inviting him to dinner, to show me that he possessed qualities I had not appreciated before. I admit that after several such evenings I started to revise my opinion of our visitor. I began to wonder whether I had exaggerated the incident in the passage. Mr. Fernandez has a very charming manner and he could not be faulted at our dinner parties. Harry was delighted, and I was greatly reassured—to my cost.”
“There was another incident?”
“Worse than the first. I should rather not speak about it now.”
“It made no difference to your husband’s friendship with him?”
“Harry did not find out. I had no encouragement to tell him. It was a chance encounter that led to something more. I tried to forget about it, but John Fernandez is not easily put down. He has often pestered me since. These days I find such approaches more tiresome than frightening, but he is still an odious man. After Harry and I had gone our own ways, he exerted more and more of an influence over him. This is the result.”
“You blame Fernandez for your husband’s death?”
“Most certainly. Harry had no interest in fishing until John Fernandez introduced him to it. He used to laugh at the man for getting up so early on Saturday mornings. I did not know until this morning that he had come so much under his influence that he was doing the very thing he used to hold in contempt. Find your murderer by all means, Sergeant, and hang him, but I shall always know who really was responsible for Harry’s death.”
CHAPTER
22
In which Thackeray acts on information received—A boarding party—And a party of quite another sort
A ROWING BOAT DRIFTED slowly with the current, the oarsman holding his blades clear of the water as his passenger, Constable Thackeray, trained a pair of binoculars on four small squares of light, the windows of a houseboat just distinguishable against the dark mass of Christ Church Meadow. The sun had set more than an hour before. The sky was overcast and the river had the solid look of tar macadam.
“Are you sure?” Thackeray asked, putting down the binoculars.
“Sure as a dose of salts,” affirmed his companion, a small rotund person of the type generally found where there are boats and water. Through the darkness his cheeks gleamed like the last two apples in a barrel. He had walked into Oxford Police Station at half-past eight. Hearing his story, the desk sergeant had brought him in to Thackeray, in charge of the search during Cribb’s absence at the mortuary.
It had been difficult to tell whether he genuinely had information. Searches on the scale of this one could be relied upon to excite certain members of the public into concocting totally spurious accounts of things they thought the police would like to hear. Cribb’s way of testing his informants was to put a few sharp questions to them. Thackeray, not equal to that, had muttered imprecations of appalling violence instead. “Honest to God I saw them,” the boatman had insisted. “One like a blooming great bear, one small cove with a large head and thick glasses and a thin one with glasses. And a dog.”
The dog had settled it. Thackeray had swiftly formed a posse of six regular constables and two specials and marched them down St. Aldate’s to Folly Bridge, where they had commandeered two skiffs. With the boatman showing the way in his rowing boat and the skiffs respectfully astern, this small flotilla had moved downstream past the spectral college barges until they had drawn level with the houseboat.
Everyone now waited in midstream for Thackeray’s signal. He held the glasses to his eyes again. If this proved to be a mistake, if the occupant of the houseboat turned out to be some Oxford worthy preparing to retire for the night, it would not be easy explaining what nine constables were doing aboard his floating home. It would not be easy explaining it to the constables. Or Cribb.
“I can’t hear the dog,” he said, wanting reassurance.
“It wouldn’t bark all the time, guv.”
“I can’t see anything through the window either.”
“It was a dog, not a blooming horse,” said the boatman.
When he had reached the inescapable conclusion that there was nothing to be salvaged from the adventure by giving up at this stage, Thackeray told the boatman to move alongside the houseboat. As they approached, he was able to s
ee that it was actually a barge some thirty feet in length, with a broad deck on which the “house” was constructed, in fact a diminutive version of the Ark, except that the roof was flat, forming an upper deck with a wrought-iron balustrade around it.
The strains of a concertina from within the boat lifted Thackeray’s confidence as they came alongside. If there was music, the chance was good that more than one person was aboard. The spectre of the irate houseboat owner in his nightshirt ceased troubling him.
Standing in the rowing boat, Thackeray was unable to see through the lighted windows, which was a pity, because there was nothing for it now but to interrupt whatever was going on inside. He signalled to the waiting constables to approach, and then he clambered aboard with ponderous care. With good fortune the concertina would drown any sounds he made on the deck. He could do without Towser announcing his arrival.
The door of the cabin was ahead of him, ornately gilt-panelled. To its right a set of iron stairs painted white led to the upper deck. On an impulse he climbed them and stood aloft, beckoning to his support party to come aboard. With five hefty constables posted at the cabin door, he crouched and passed his hands speculatively over the surface of the deck.
In a moment he located a metal ring about four inches in diameter, inset level with the deck. By stroking his fingertips outwards from the ring, he traced the outline of a trapdoor to the room below.
He sat back on his haunches and rubbed the side of his beard, mentally invoking all the benign influences that ever favoured policemen. He drew a long breath and pulled up the trapdoor.
His first sensation was of dazzling light. Cigar smoke was billowing from the hatchway. The smoke thinned, his eyes adjusted to the light and he looked into the amazed and upturned face of a blonde woman in a black corset standing motionless on a red carpet. To state that she was motionless is not quite accurate, for parts of her were quivering, but all conscious movement had stopped, as if she were petrified by the interruption. The position of her arms suggested she had been performing a dance—and out of sight the concertina continued playing—but what kind of dance was performed in stays Thackeray did not know.
If it were not for the cigar smoke, he would have muttered an apology, put down the hatch, called off his constables and disappeared into the night. The way young women amused themselves on houseboats was no part of his present inquiry. The smoke reminded him that although the prospect through the hatch was enough to occupy one pair of eyes, there were parts of the cabin obscured from view.
The concertina stopped. “What is it?” asked a man’s voice.
The dancer unfroze sufficiently to point above her head and whisper, “Look!”
A suggestion that could only be helpful, Thackeray decided. Anyone curious enough to take it up would be obliged to stand where they could be seen. It saved him risking an accident by dipping his head and shoulders through the hatchway.
Yet the accident nearly happened when he lurched forward in surprise as two more young women appeared in view, one, like the first, in a corset, white in colour with purple trimmings, the other pulling on a silk gown with such unconcern that it was starkly clear she, at least, could not be faulted for wearing stays.
“Lawks! It’s another fellow dropping in on us,” said the one in the gown.
“Well, give him a hand, Meg. He can’t be worse than mine,” said the other. As she tossed back her head to laugh at her own wit, fumes of gin wafted upwards.
“Permit me to see for myself,” said a voice, a thin, clinical voice that Thackeray recognized. The three women were hustled aside by Mr. Lucifer. He was wrapped in a gown like Meg’s. “What the devil … ? It’s that blighter with the beard we saw in the Barley Mow.”
“Follows you around, does he?” said one of the women. “A regular peeping Tom! Have you had your eyeful, darling?”
Insults could not touch Edward Thackeray. He was enjoying one of the grander moments of his police career. Almost single-handed, he had caught the three most wanted men in Oxfordshire.
He did not have long to savour it. Without a word, Humberstone, the biggest of the three, arrived beneath the hatch, reached up, caught Thackeray by the collar and jerked him headfirst into the cabin.
His shoulder hit the carpet and saved him from concussion, but his body crashed painfully through a small table. He lay among the splintered wood in an enclosure of legs without a skirt or trouser among them. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking.
He propped himself up on an elbow. Nothing was going to deflect him from his proper duty. “Gentlemen, I am a police officer. A warrant has been issued for your arrest and I am here to take you into custody.” He fainted.
CHAPTER
23
Humberstone at bay—Pinning it on Towser—Cribb learns about insurance
“WHAT ARE THEY GOING to say about this at the Providential?” Cribb asked.
“About what in particular?” Humberstone replied, managing to preserve his loftiness of manner while wearing a silk kimono. He was sitting handcuffed in the charge room at Oxford Police Station facing Cribb across a table. A uniformed constable sat nearby, notebook in hand.
“Why, about three respectable members of its Claims Department visiting a houseboat named, I understand, the Xanadu, and being found there in the company of three ladies of very uncertain reputation.”
“I can think of no reason why the Providential should hear about it. Is this a threat of some kind? I don’t care for your tone, Sergeant. You may not approve of the ladies on the Xanadu, but there is nothing unlawful in what we were doing.”
“I grant you that,” said Cribb, “but assaulting a police officer isn’t lawful. We regard that very seriously in the Force. Constable Thackeray is going to get an uncommon nasty bruise on his shoulder as the result of your attentions.”
“I merely pulled the man down through the hatch. How could I have known he was a policeman? It’s a sorry state of affairs if a gentleman can’t challenge a fellow who intrudes upon his privacy. If your constable wanted to be treated in a civil fashion, he should have knocked at the door and introduced himself, instead of peering through the skylight.”
“Are you suggesting Thackeray didn’t tell you he was a police officer?”
“Not until I had him on the floor. He was too busy goggling at the girls, old boy. It’s lucky for him I had the dog locked in the galley, or he might have had some more injuries to complain of. Policeman! If he told you he announced himself before I had him helpless on the floor, the bounder’s lying.”
Cribb sniffed. “And I suppose the two officers who attempted to apprehend you as you bolted through the door are just imagining they were hurled into the river—or perhaps you didn’t notice they were wearing uniforms?”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic with me, Sergeant. The events aboard that houseboat were very confused, believe me. Between the dog barking and the women screaming and your policeman jabbering something about a warrant, it’s not surprising that we made for the door. And with Gold and Lucifer pushing at my back, I may have met your officers with something of an impact. I’m sixteen stone in weight and once I’m moving it isn’t easy to stop. I’m sorry about the wet uniforms and the man with the broken nose. I’m sorry about Constable Thackeray’s shoulder. But if you burst in upon people as he did, unexpected things are liable to happen. Now perhaps you’ll tell me what it was all about.”
For a man in Humberstone’s situation, it was a polished performance, Cribb had to concede. Anyone who could fell three policemen trying to arrest him and put it down to circumstances beyond his control was a cool customer. It was already past midnight. Here he was, figuratively squaring up like a prize fighter, ready to trade punches by the hour. It would be unwise to mix it with him when there were two others to come. Best take him quickly through the evidence and then try conclusions with Gold and Lucifer.
“When I saw you last, Mr. Humberstone—it was in the Barley Mow, if you remember—there was talk of a dead
man, a tramp, down the river a bit, at Hurley.”
“You mentioned it,” said Humberstone with caution. “I didn’t attach much importance to it. You didn’t tell us you were a detective, or I might have taken more interest. It’s a queer thing when you think about it that a member of the public can be locked away for impersonating a policeman, when there’s policemen all over England masquerading as members of the public.”
“The tramp was murdered,” Cribb went on, refusing to be drawn. “Someone took him on a boat and very likely got him drunk. They pushed him over the side and held him down until his lungs filled with water. We found the marks of someone’s hands on his neck and shoulders. There were other marks, Mr. Humberstone. There must have been a struggle aboard the boat before they got him into the water. We found a dog bite on his leg.”
“My word!” said Humberstone in an exaggerated squeak. “I begin to understand how Scotland Yard works. You suspect Towser. I hope you will allow him to get in touch with his solicitor.”
“Today a second body was found, here in Oxford. The victim was a don from Merton College, Mr. Bonner-Hill. The state of his body indicates that he was murdered in the same manner as the tramp.”
“Don’t say it, Sergeant! You found Towser’s teethmarks again. A tramp and a don! That animal makes no distinctions at all. He’ll bite anyone who comes his way.”
Cribb was disinclined to smile. “No, Mr. Humberstone. This time there were no teethmarks. I happen to know that you and your friends were on the river at about the time the murder was committed—that’s the connection.”
Humberstone sat back in his chair and rested the handcuffs on the table’s edge. “At this point, you would like me to deny emphatically that we were anywhere near the scene of the murder at the time it happened. You then ask me how I can possibly know when and where the crime took place when you haven’t told me. Checkmate.”
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