“And I haven’t got the answer yet,” said Cribb. “A few ideas, but nothing that fits all the facts. Don’t worry-it’ll come. Let’s have another talk with Gold.”
If there was a family resemblance between Sammy Gold and the suave manager of the Playhouse, it was difficult to spot this morning. His left eye was black and swollen behind the broken spectacles, and he had not shaved.
“Wouldn’t they let you use a razor?” Cribb asked.
“I tried, but I couldn’t judge the distance with one good eye,” said Gold. He put forward a restraining hand. “I don’t blame anyone. I want no trouble, Officer.”
“That’s good,” said Cribb, “because I want co-operation this morning, Mr. Gold. There’s a small matter that I must get clear at the start, and that’s your family name.”
“I told you last night. It’s Gold. I don’t want to be known by anything else.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but answer me this: was your father known by another name in Russia?”
“Leonard Gold was my father’s name. He did nothing to be ashamed of. He was an honest man all his life. A tailor by trade. Smile, if you like. A Jewish tailor. What else would you have expected him to have been, eh? He made this blazer I’m wearing and it’s lasted eleven years. Eleven years. You can look at the name on the label if you like. Leonard Gold. That was good enough for him. It’s good enough for me.”
“Did he have any brothers?”
Gold smiled and shook his head emphatically. “No, Officer, you won’t get it from me that way. My Uncle Solly and my Uncle Joe are Golds like me.”
“And so are your two sisters in Bethnal Green, I suppose,” said Cribb, playing his ace. “I wonder if they’re as sensitive on the matter as you are. It’s a pity I’ve got to send a constable round there on a Sunday morning to talk to them, with all the neighbours looking from behind their curtains. I have to make a telephone call to Bethnal Green Police Station to arrange it. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for a simple piece of information.”
Cribb’s penny-dreadful picture of Sunday morning in Bethnal Green did the trick. “All right,” said Gold. “It’s an infringement of my liberty, but I want no trouble for my sisters. The name we had in Russia was Goldberg.”
“Goldberg?” repeated Thackeray.
Cribb took the cigar from his mouth and stubbed it out with enough force to have pushed it through the desk.
CHAPTER 28
Harriet goes to the station-Interesting story from Hardy-Dynamite and the Polecat
Harriet had decided to talk to Sergeant Cribb about her theory. She had thought it over from every point of view and she was now convinced that the unfortunate Bonner-Hill had been murdered in error. On reflection, she had decided not to talk to Melanie about it. It was tragic enough to learn that your husband had been murdered, without having it suggested he had been murdered by mistake.
The theory was soundly based, otherwise Harriet would not have contemplated going to Cribb. From her observations he was not the sort to welcome other people’s help unless he asked for it. He liked to take the credit for himself. Yet it was her duty, if she had information, to give it to the police. And his to take account of it.
It was clear to her that Bonner-Hill had been murdered because he happened to be at the spot where Fernandez fished on Saturday mornings. Only lately had the two of them taken to going out together on these expeditions. All the signs were that this was a murder which had been planned for many weeks, before Bonner-Hill ever joined Fernandez. Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold had rowed up from Kingston like the characters in Three Men in a Boat, but the purpose of their journey had not been literary. It had been to get to Oxford on Saturday morning at half-past nine and murder John Fernandez. They had got to the spot at the appointed time and found a man there who fitted the description they had. Probably they were hired assassins who had never met the man themselves. The planning that had gone into the murder was as intricate as an anarchist plot.
She approached the desk and asked for Sergeant Cribb. It was just noon; the bells had been chiming everywhere as she had come along St. Aldate’s. He ought to be available.
“Sergeant Cribb, miss?” said the constable on duty. “I don’t know whether I ought to-”
Constable Thackeray made a timely appearance at the door behind the desk. “Miss Shaw! Good to see you, miss. Are you comfortable at that hotel?”
“I should like to speak to Sergeant Cribb if that is possible.”
Thackeray’s expression changed. “I don’t advise it just now, miss. The air’s blue in there-and I ain’t talking about the cigar smoke. He’s had a setback, you see. We should have charged our prisoners by now-you heard that I arrested ’em last night, did you? — but things have gone a bit sour. It’s not so clear as it seemed. You’d be better off having your lunch first, really, miss.”
“Please tell the sergeant I have something that may be of the greatest importance to tell him,” Harriet insisted.
Thackeray departed, muttering something uncomplimentary about young women who wouldn’t listen to advice, and presently put his head round the door and beckoned her into the office.
Cribb was speaking into the telephone. “Definitely Goldberg? You’ve checked the naturalization papers? Well, get on with it, man. I’ll hold on while you do.” He put his hand over the receiver. “What is it, Miss Shaw? I’m busy, as you can see.”
Harriet started expounding her theory. She had not got far when Cribb put up his hand and spoke into the telephone again. “I told you the name. Fernandez. No, Goldberg. I’m getting confused. Nothing in the name of Goldstein? No, it’s not helpful. It’s no help at all. Good-bye.” He hung up the receiver. “Where’s Thackeray? I think I’ll have that dog brought in. I feel like kicking it. Continue your story, Miss Fernandez. You have my full attention.” The telephone rang and he picked it up. “Who are you? Yes, of course I’m Cribb. Who did you expect-Charlie Peace? Names? I gave you the names before. Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer. Thank you, Constable. I can do without your feeble attempts at humour. I’m trying to investigate a murder here. What do you say? All employed in the Claims Department? Very well, I don’t need to know any more. Is somebody checking with the Home Office as I asked? Habitual Criminals’ Register. And the Convict Office? I know it takes time. I wasn’t born yesterday, laddie.” He hung up the receiver. “So you think it was all a mistake, Miss Shaw?”
Behind Harriet, Thackeray appeared again. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Sergeant. I thought you ought to know straight away that P. C. Hardy has returned. He’s ready to make his report.”
“Send him in and come in yourself. You don’t mind, do you, Miss Shaw? No need to get up. You can stay and listen. We’ve all had a small hand in this investigation.”
Hardy was still in blazer and flannels. His boater was tucked under his left arm and he carried a notebook in his right hand. Seeing him again after an interval, and so soon after Cribb’s tantrums on the telephone, Harriet was inclined to view him in a more favourable light than formerly. He turned a glance in her direction as he crossed the carpet to take his position in front of Cribb. “Good mornin’, Sergeant. Good mornin’, miss.”
Cribb took out his watch. “Good afternoon. It took you enough time to get here, Constable. We’ve had another murder and three arrests since we saw you last.”
“Moses!” said Hardy. “Did you cop the three-”
“They’re in the cells. Make your report, man. We’re not here to welcome you to Oxford.”
Hardy’s stance stiffened. “Very well, Sergeant. After leavin’ Clifton Hampden, I took the train from Culham, changin’ at Twyford Junction-”
“I’m not interested in the blasted train journey!” exploded Cribb. “What happened about the dog bite?”
“Upon arrivin’ at Henley, I reported to the mortuary,” Hardy implacably continued, “where I had to wait for two hours for the police artist to arrive. I then climbed onto a slab and he made a sketch of the dog bite
on my leg. He also made a sketch of the bite on the tramp’s leg. I have them here in my notebook.” He extracted a loose sheet from among the leaves and handed it to Cribb.
The sergeant arranged the paper on the blotter in front of him. “These aren’t the same size. The top one’s bigger.”
“That was my impression too,” said Hardy. “I thought the artist must have got his proportions wrong. He said he hadn’t and he produced a tapeline to prove it to me. We measured both bites again. The one on the tramp’s leg was clearly made by a larger dog.”
“Not Towser?” said Thackeray in disbelief.
Cribb was speechless.
“If you look carefully at the drawings, you’ll see that there are half a dozen other differences of detail,” Hardy went on. “It’s mainly owin’ to the sharpness of the teeth. The mortuary keeper said that Towser must have been a younger dog than the one that bit the tramp.”
“This means that Mr. Humberstone and the others didn’t have anything to do with the murder of Walters,” said Harriet.
“Or Bonner-Hill, for that matter,” added Thackeray. “We only suspected them of that because the circumstances were alike.”
As the implications of Hardy’s news fizzed and spattered like firecrackers in their minds, speech stopped in the room. For several seconds only their eyes communicated.
Cribb said, “You knew this yesterday. What prevented you from coming back at once and letting us know?”
“I was acting upon your orders, Sergeant. After I’d finished at Henley, I proceeded to Marlow to examine the register of guests at the Crown. After the discovery about the bites, I fully expected to find the names in the register.”
“They weren’t there,” said Cribb.
“No, they weren’t,” said Hardy. “I was flummoxed. The receptionist couldn’t remember seein’ three men of their description. It seemed to me that if their dog wasn’t the one that bit Walters, they had no reason to pretend they were in Marlow on Tuesday night if they weren’t.”
“Eh?” said Thackeray.
“I decided to do some more checkin’,” Hardy continued. “I walked down the High Street to the town landing-stage and I was lucky enough to find a boatman there who remembered them tyin’ up the Lucrecia there on Tuesday evening, towards nine o’clock. He remembered them exactly as I described them, even the dog, which they left on the boat to guard it.”
“Did he notice where they went after they tied up?” Cribb asked.
“Yes, he did, because it was the public house he spent the rest of the evening in, a little place close to the river, name of the Polecat. Time he got there, they’d already had a few drinks. They were sittin’ at a table with three young women often to be found in the Polecat.” Hardy took a sidelong glance at Harriet, who continued to look steadily in his direction. “The boatman remembers them leavin’ with the, er, ladies at about half-past ten.”
“This begins to sound familiar,” said Cribb.
“Well, Sergeant, havin’ got as far as that in tracin’ the movements of the suspects, I decided I should try to speak to the ladies”-he looked again at Harriet-“to establish for certain where Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold spent Tuesday night. I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon footin’ it round the poor end of Marlow, tryin’ to find them. In the end I talked to a woman who said she knew them and they always spent Saturday nights in Maidenhead, because that’s where all the, er, swells go. She even mentioned the name of the pub where I could expect to find them. Havin’ got so far, I didn’t like givin’ up. I gave careful consideration to what you would probably order me to do in the circumstances and I decided it was my duty to go to Maidenhead. A bus left Marlow at seven and I was on it.”
“Did you find the women?”
“I found one of them, called Dinah, known in the Polecat as Dynamite.”
“Very whimsical,” said Cribb without smiling.
“And very dangerous it turned out to be, askin’ her for information,” said Hardy. “She had a man with her from London who formed the impression that I was tryin’ to cut him out. He got quite ugly about it. What made things worse was that Dinah was under the same misapprehension, but she seemed to, er”-Hardy eased a finger round his collar-“prefer me to the man from London, which hampered my inquiries somewhat. Not to prolong the story, Dinah told me when I pressed the matter that she and her two friends took Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer to a house of accommodation in Marlow after they left the Polecat on Tuesday. They were there all night and left early next day. To make quite sure, I visited the house this morning. That’s why I wasn’t here before now, Sergeant. The woman who keeps the place confirmed that three men answerin’ to their description were in that house from eleven on Tuesday night until seven o’clock on Wednesday mornin’.”
The impact of Hardy’s statement was devastating. When Cribb spoke, it was not to say the obvious, but to provide time to absorb the shock.
“That was it, then. You can see why they were so unforthcoming about their night in Marlow. A pilgrimage, they called it. It wasn’t holy places they were visiting. Not the sort of thing that would go down very well in the Providential, I imagine.”
“Never mind that,” said Thackeray, grasping the nettle. “It means that they definitely didn’t murder Choppy Walters. They couldn’t have. Are you going to release them, Sarge?”
“I shall have to,” Cribb bleakly said. “From what we’ve just been told, it’s clear that we’ve spent the best part of a week tracking down the wrong three men. It’s a blasted nightmare. If Miss Shaw is right, even the corpse is the wrong man.”
CHAPTER 29
A small shock in Merton Street-The Warden goes too far-Harriet delivers a letter
At lunch Melanie asked Harriet to go with her to Merton College that afternoon to sort through her late husband’s things. The Warden had spoken to her about it after Morning Service. “It will be frightfully boring for you, my dear,” Melanie said, “but just having you with me is such a support. I don’t think I could bear to be alone in that room surrounded by his things.”
“I shall be glad to come,” said Harriet. She would be of more help to Melanie than she could at the police station. Now that the innocence of Humberstone and his friends was confirmed, there was nothing she could do to help Sergeant Cribb, unless he produced three different men and a different dog. She just had to wait until somebody could be spared to escort her back to Elfrida College. Rather than spend a depressing afternoon thinking about what happened after that, she would be glad to go with Melanie.
She should have been prepared for the small shock that awaited her as they turned out of the hotel into St. Aldate’s. Some fifty yards ahead, walking away from them, were the distinctive figures of Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold, with Towser lingering behind to bark at a cabhorse. Of course they had to be released, but it still made her catch her breath to see them at liberty.
It was ironic after her unwillingness to identify them and confirm their guilt that she now had difficulty in accepting their innocence. When Bonner-Hill’s body had been discovered, the horrid possibility that she might have prevented him from being murdered had dominated her thoughts. The idea had fixed itself so firmly in her mind that each time she tried to remember the scene in the water she could see only Humberstone and Lucifer at the oars, with Gold reclining on the cushions. The image her troubled conscience presented was more vivid than her recollection of the experience itself. In her worst moments she wondered whether what she had seen was a caprice of her imagination, induced by the tense excitement of that secret bathe. Yet Molly and Jane had seen the boat. They must have, to have taken fright as they did. What a relief it would be to summon them as witnesses and have their support! That was out of the question, of course. It would mean betraying them to Miss Plummer and ruining their careers as well as her own.
“Is something wrong?” Melanie asked.
“Nothing. I was thinking about College. Our principal is a formidable lady. She even cre
eps into your thoughts when you are not expecting it.”
“How very inconvenient. When I was your age I had the same trouble with young men, but that wasn’t a depressing experience. Isn’t there some nice young man of your acquaintance who might be called to mind to exorcise the lady?”
At Merton, the Warden drank tea with them before escorting them through the quadrangles to Bonner-Hill’s rooms. It was apparent to Harriet that there was something he wanted to mention; he tried to create an opening in the conversation once or twice over the teacups, but Melanie was unstoppable. The Warden said, “Perhaps this is the moment when-”
“Is it?” Melanie broke in. “I don’t know how you tell one moment from another. I lose all conception of time in Oxford.” And she expanded on the strangeness of a city with so many clocks that they confused people.
Five minutes later the Warden said, “If I may be so bold-”
“You’re going to suggest we have a second cup,” said Melanie. “I never do, but don’t let me stop you, Harriet. Tea is a stimulant-don’t you find it so? — but I think it isn’t good for me to drink too much. I’m too excitable already. I’ll let you into a secret. On stage I never drink tea. It’s always ginger beer in the teapot. Do you like ginger beer, Warden?”
At the door of Bonner-Hill’s rooms, the Warden paused, key in hand and an expression of grim determination on his face. “His books. We should like them for our library,” he said in a rush. “That is to say, I could help you to dispose of Mr. Bonner-Hill’s collection of books if his will is not specific in regard to them. So inconvenient, trying to deal with booksellers. You could leave them just as they are on the shelves for the librarian to sort-to catalogue, that is. Our library has benefited greatly from endowments,” he finished breathlessly.
“If that was Harry’s intention, no doubt he will have provided for it in his will,” said Melanie without enthusiasm. “May we go inside now, or was there anything else?”
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