Towser stood on one of the rowing thwarts with his forepaws on the side, a small fox terrier mainly white in colour, with brown patches on the head and tail. From his collar a leather lead hung slackly, its other end attached to the rowlock. He had given up barking now that they were near. He was growling instead, a low, reverberating sound like a boiler with the vent open.
“Leave this to me,” said Thackeray, taking the polony from Hardy with all the authority of the only canine expert in the party. “Keep a reasonable distance from him. That’s just right. You’re downwind of him there. I want him to get a good scent of the sausage before I offer it to him.”
Their vantage point was ten yards from the bank. Thackeray approached the snarling Towser with gladiatorial confidence, keeping the polony wrapped and tucked out of sight under his left arm.
The skiff was moored at the bow and lay at a narrow angle to the bank, held steady by the current. To reach the dog, he would need to board by the bow.
He approached indirectly, in the long, sweeping curve of an experienced tracker, covertly removing the cheesecloth from the polony as he drew level with the bank. Two yards more and he would have been aboard, but the unexpected intervened. He had underestimated the length of the lead trailing from Towser’s collar. The terrier bounded onto the bank just ahead of him, stretching the lead taut against his shins. The impetus of his movement lifted the end of the lead over the rowlock, and the dog was free.
Ignoring Thackeray and the polony, it rushed at Hardy, baying with predatory passion, and sank its teeth into his leg.
CHAPTER
16
Ace of trumps with iodine—The polony comes in useful—Hardy gets his marching orders
“BEAUTIFUL!” DECLARED SERGEANT CRIBB, a man not often given to aesthetic pronouncements.
A perfect set of teethmarks was displayed on Hardy’s left calf, uncovered for inspection in his room at the Barley Mow. He lay face down on the bed moaning faintly as Harriet dabbed the wound with iodine.
“Believe me, Constable, I’d never have asked you to do such a thing,” Cribb went on. “Quite beyond the call of duty. I don’t know who it was that thought of this, but it’s the ace of trumps. Exhibit number one! There’s a commendation in this for someone.”
“It was Constable Hardy’s own idea to purchase the sausage,” said Harriet generously.
“Good thinking,” said Cribb. “Give the dog a scent of meat and then show it your leg.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” said Harriet. “Constable Thackeray was holding the polony and—”
“Thackeray, eh?” said Cribb. “I thought this had the stamp of Scotland Yard on it. Stout work, Thackeray! I should have known that if there was a dust with a dog, you’d be in the thick of it. And when the evidence was firm, so to speak, you disconnected Towser from Hardy and secured the beast to the boat again?”
“That’s right, Sarge.”
Thackeray’s emphasis sought to convey that Cribb’s assumptions were not correct in every respect, but it was lost on the sergeant. “Capital work! The suspects won’t have any notion of the evidence we’ve secured. They’re paddling blissfully up to Culham at this minute to spend the night in the backwater, quite unaware of what was going on while they were drinking. I forgot to ask you if you recognized them, Miss Shaw.”
That question again. Harriet had hoped it had been forgotten in the excitement over Hardy’s leg. “They could well be the men I saw on Tuesday night, but I am not ready to swear to it yet. My view was partially obstructed downstairs and the conditions were altogether different, as you must appreciate.”
Cribb nodded tolerantly. “We’ll see if we can get you a better view of them on the river tomorrow. Actually, you must have come quite close to it today. You can’t have been too far behind them. A nifty piece of rowing, gentlemen.”
In the short pause that followed, Hardy did not stir a muscle, even when Harriet in her unease tipped some iodine directly onto his perforated skin. “We—er—came by train, Sarge,” Thackeray confessed. “We left the boat at Goring.”
“If you remember, you left a message there asking us to make the best speed we could,” Harriet quickly added in support, “but up to then we followed their route most faithfully. We established conclusively that they spent last night on an island at Shiplake.”
“You did?” said Cribb, still absorbing the information that they were without a boat.
Rapidly, Harriet moved on to a breathless account of the meeting with Mr. Bustard and Jim Hackett, on the principle that if she bombarded him with detail, something sooner or later would make an impact. It turned out to be Jim Hackett’s habit of quoting from the Bible.
“Do you remember any of the texts?” Cribb asked.
“ ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ was one, and there was another about giving account for idle words on the day of judgment.”
“I remember a third,” said Thackeray enthusiastically. “ ‘Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.’ Psalm 104. Thirty-five verses. I learned it at school.”
“I wonder if Jim Hackett did,” said Cribb. “Did he have much else to say?”
“Very little,” answered Thackeray. “He corrected Bustard once, I remember, a question over where they’d bought a veal and ham pie. Bustard said it was the George and Dragon at Wargrave, but Hackett insisted it was the Dog and Badger. The way he said it made me think he was talking about the contents of the pie. Which reminds me, would anybody like a slice of polony before we all retire? It wasn’t touched by Towser, I promise you. I’ll use my pocketknife, if nobody objects.”
“Just what I could do with,” said Cribb, his spirits quite restored. “How about you, Miss Shaw?”
“I would rather not,” said Harriet. She was about to add that she had eaten very well at the Railway Hotel, but stopped herself in time. “The smell of the iodine is too strong for me, I’m afraid.”
“A piece for our intrepid hero, then?” said Cribb, clapping his hand on Hardy’s inert thigh. “Got to pull yourself together, man. You’re lying there as though you’re settled for the night.”
Hardy came swiftly to life, rolling onto his side. “Pull myself together? What for, Sergeant?”
Cribb consulted his watch. “For a train journey. In just over an hour you’re going to be at Culham Station to catch the eleven-fifteen to London. It’s a local, the landlord tells me, so you can change at Twyford Junction and with luck you’ll get a connection to Henley before morning. I want you at the mortuary at seven, when the keeper gets there, to compare your dog bite with the tramp’s. We know his name now, by the way. Another vagrant identified him yesterday. He’s called Walters, known among the tramps as ‘Choppy.’ It’s still a mystery why anyone should want to kill him. He kept to himself, but he wasn’t disliked. Stayed mostly in the Thames Valley, but always on the move. Anyway, when you’ve had a look at Choppy’s bite, arrange for drawings to be made of it. And yours, of course. After that, take a cab to Marlow, locate the Crown at the top of the High Street, and check the register for Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold. Then make your way to Oxford and wait for me at the central police station in St. Aldate’s. Any questions?”
“How am I to get to Culham Station from here, Sergeant?”
“You walk, Constable.”
“My leg is injured.”
“I’m aware of that. A stiff walk should do it good. Roll down your trouser leg and have a slice of polony. I can’t send anyone else, can I? You’re exhibit number one! The sooner you’re cheerfully on your way, the sooner the rest of us can get to bed.”
CHAPTER
17
Intervention of the elements—Lockkeepers, abusive and obliging—Oxford, and an untimely end
HARRIET WAS SURPRISED on waking to find it as late as ten past seven. Cribb had warned her before retiring that an early start was essential in the morning to catch up with Humberstone and his companions at Culham. He had learned from the landlord
that a steam launch left Clifton Hampden at 7:15 a.m. for the convenience of people from the village employed in Oxford. And already it was 7:10. Nobody had called her. A disquieting thought darted into her mind: having dispatched Hardy to Henley last night, had Cribb abandoned her this morning? She flung aside the bedclothes, ran to the curtains and swept them apart. There was no sign of Cribb, nor a steam launch. There was no sign of anything. A dense river mist hung in the air.
So it happened shortly after eight o’clock that Cribb, Thackeray and Harriet took to the water not in a steam launch, but an ancient skiff with broken rowlocks, the only vessel anyone would commit to their use in such conditions.
“Visibility’s improving every minute,” Cribb said with conviction. “This is probably quite local. It’ll be perfectly clear before we get to Culham. Steer us close to the bank, Miss Shaw, and we’ll know exactly where we are.”
Harriet clung grimly to the tiller ropes, sensing that an emergency which brought Cribb to the oars called for exceptional efforts on everyone’s part, but steering was hardly the word for the small influence she had on the direction of the boat. Twice in the first minute they went too close to the bank and the oars struck solid ground. Soon after, they found themselves somewhere in midstream without anything to steer by except the flow of the current.
“No matter,” Cribb encouragingly said. “Somewhere ahead is Clifton Lock. We need to move across for that. If we stayed on the Berkshire side, we’d find ourselves running into the weir.”
Five minutes after, his confidence was noticeably on the wane. “No need to be quite so energetic with the oars, Thackeray. This ain’t the boat race, you know.” He had got to the point shortly afterwards of saying, “This is madness—” when the prow struck something solid and the rowers were pitched off their seats. They had found the lock gate.
They had to disembark to rouse the lockkeeper, and then endure a torrent of abuse about lunatics who put to the water in conditions like that, until Cribb coolly reminded the fellow that he was a public servant and it was no business of his to question the sanity of people considerate enough to keep him in employment. As if to reinforce the point, the mist miraculously lifted as the gates parted to let them out of the lock. In sunshine they got down to the serious business of rowing to Culham in the shortest time they could.
It was after nine when they went through Culham Lock. The keeper there was agreeably civil, but he had discouraging news. There had not been a suspicion of mist at Culham that morning. He was not surprised to hear about the mist at Clifton Hampden. It was quite usual in September for pockets of the stuff to hamper navigation along the river for an hour or so in the mornings. His lock had been open since six. Yes, three men answering Cribb’s description had gone through shortly before he had closed the night before. They had asked the way to the backwater at the end of Culham Cut, where they had proposed passing the night.
Cribb decided not to explore the backwater, assuming instead that the three had already left for Oxford. They would be able to confirm this at the next lock, which was Abingdon.
“Will you arrest them when we catch up with them?” Thackeray inquired.
“I want Miss Shaw to identify ’em first,” said Cribb.
This, they discovered at Abingdon, was likely to take longer than they had earlier supposed. The three had been the first through the lock that morning, at seven o’clock. They could well be in Oxford already.
It was a party exercised in more ways than one that covered the last miles to Oxford, learning at each lock how far behind the Lucrecia they were. The suspects seemed not to have stopped even once along the way. As the distance from Culham to Oxford was nine miles, and none of them had looked like athletes, the question arose whether the quarry had been alerted to the chase. Nobody said a word, but Cribb’s face became increasingly pink with the exertion of rowing at a rate he obdurately refused to slacken. It made fretful the business of waiting in locks for other craft to enter before the gates were closed, but it compelled him to take rests. While Thackeray put his head between his knees like a beaten blue, Cribb paddled the boat as close as possible to the upriver gates and stood with hands impatiently on hips watching the slow ascent as the water coursed in.
Beyond Iffley Lock the tangle of currents formed by the confluence of the Thames and Cherwell sapped what remained of Cribb’s strength. He dismally acknowledged that they might as well ship oars and tow the skiff from the path. Thackeray was deputed to take the first turn.
“We’ll follow the main stream,” Cribb instructed. “They could have gone up a backwater if they wanted to, I know, but Jerome seems to have kept to the Thames, so I don’t propose to waste time looking anywhere else unless I’m persuaded otherwise.”
Harriet thought she divined a note of desperation in this. It was confirmed when Cribb tetchily ordered her to stop admiring the college barges moored beside Christ Church Meadow and look for the Lucrecia. “You’re not on a pleasure cruise, you know.”
“I’m well aware of that,” she answered, ready to take him on. “Has it not occurred to you that they might as well have left their boat on that side as this? Not everyone is obliged to use the towing path.”
Cribb was either too surprised or too tired to reply.
At Folly Bridge, he shouted to Thackeray to halt so that they could make inquiries at the boatyard. The facetious remarks they had got from just about every lockkeeper along the river when putting their question about three men in a boat had caused Cribb to modify it a little. “Do you happen to have seen a double-sculled skiff with three passengers aboard and a fox terrier?” he asked.
He could have saved his breath. “Only on my bookshelf at home,” said the boatman with a grin.
“Could they have passed here earlier without you noticing?”
“Why not? I only started work at ten this morning, didn’t I?”
They decided to go on as far as Osney Lock, in hope of finding the Lucrecia moored beside the bank. Cribb took the towrope and hauled them slowly past the gasworks and under the railway bridge. The best of Oxford is not to be seen from the Thames.
Shortly after the bridge, the river divides. A backwater leads away through fields to the left.
“Moses!” said Thackeray. “What’s going on over there?”
A cluster of people had formed round a spot on the towpath, not unlike the crowd round a pavement artist, except that they were standing on gravel. A figure was on his knees working at something, even so. Too many on the outskirts were moving about, trying for a better view, for anything more to be made out from the river.
Cribb signalled to Thackeray to take charge of the boat and went to see what was happening. “Is something wrong, do you think?” asked Harriet.
“Let’s go and see, miss.” Thackeray steered the boat into the backwater and moored it. They went ashore and approached the cause of all the interest.
The kneeling man was still at work. He was moving the arms rhythmically on and off the chest of a motionless man, stretched on his back on the path. Somebody else was gripping the ankles.
“Resuscitation?” asked Cribb, who had forced his way to the front.
“Yes, mate,” someone replied. “It’s doing no good. They’ve been at this for twenty minutes. Poor blighter’s dead as mutton.”
CHAPTER
18
A nice class of corpse—Cribb makes a discovery—Help from a scout
HARRIET, STILL ON THE fringe of what was going on, heard a murmur and made out someone standing up. Several men around her removed their hats. A voice intoned, “ ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’ The ninetieth Psalm, Verse 12.”
It could not be anyone else but Jim Hackett.
As people replaced their hats and dispersed in all directions in case someone should ask them to assist with whatever happened next, Harriet was enabled to move to the front. Jim Hackett it was who had worked unavailingly to persuade air into the dead man’s
lungs. Mr. Bustard had held the ankles.
Cribb had not met Bustard and Hackett, so Thackeray made the introductions, taking care not to mention rank. They shook hands across the corpse like football captains before a match.
“Where did you find the poor fellow?” Cribb asked.
“Out there,” said Bustard, indicating the water with his thumb. “Floating face downwards. Jim picked him out of the river and we brought him here and tried resuscitation. Jim had lessons in lifesaving, you know.”
“But raising the dead wasn’t included, eh?” said Cribb, adding, before Jim could supply a text, “This one must have joined the majority before you hooked him out of the water. Does anyone know who he is?”
“If his clothes are anything to go by, he’s out of the top drawer, or was,” contributed Thackeray. “It looks as if he’s wearing a Norfolk jacket under that waterproof. Perhaps there’s something in the pockets.”
“I don’t approve of pilfering from the dead,” said Bustard in a scandalized voice.
“For identification,” said Thackeray, red-faced. “I was thinking that he might be carrying a pocketbook.”
They examined the jacket and found the pockets empty. So were the pockets of the waistcoat and trousers.
“He didn’t want to be recognized,” decided Bustard. “Suicide probably.”
“Nice class of person, too,” insisted Thackeray, examining the lining of the jacket.
They looked down at the pale face marbled with lines of mud. Thackeray was right: the features matched the tailoring. It was a fine Roman nose with narrow nostrils and a black moustache beneath it. The lips were thin, but neatly formed, the teeth well cared for. He could not have been much over thirty-five.
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