Swing, Swing Together

by Peter Lovesey

  “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 creeps 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?”

  “But of course.” The Warden turned the key. “There is no reason to hurry yourselves, ladies. If you would kindly return the key to the porter as you leave …”

  “Did you ever hear anything so direct as that?” Melanie said, when the door was closed behind them. “ ‘We should like them for our library,’ without so much as a by your leave, and poor Harry not even buried yet. I tell you, Harriet, there’s a myth that people in universities have genteel manners. When they want anything, they’re as blunt as beggars. Well, my dear, I wonder where his papers are. It’s very tidy, isn’t it? No wonder he despaired of me. There’s his travelling trunk in the corner. We’ll pack things into that. His bedroom is through there. It would help me greatly if you would empty the wardrobe. I don’t intend to leave his suits behind for the Warden.”

  Harriet was no authority on gentlemen’s bedrooms, but she doubted whether many came up to Bonner-Hill’s in tidiness. Little in it suggested it was occupied at all. The furniture was all of the serviceable kind provided by the College. There were no photographs or pictures, no special ornaments or bric- a-brac. A pair of polished shoes symmetrically positioned on the mat beside the bed, and a bathrobe hanging on the door were more suggestive of a hotel room than a home. Oddly, she found the impersonality more poignant than a roomful of small evidences of occupation. She could see the lonely don, separated from the wife he had worshipped but failed to wean away from the stage, moving about these rooms like an overnight guest.

  She opened the wardrobe and began lifting out suits and putting them on the bed. There must have been a dozen there. She doubted whether they would all fit into the trunk without creasing, and that would be a sin.

  Melanie appeared at the bedroom door. “You’re doing splendidly, darling. Such a help! I say, here’s a strange thing. I found this letter on his writing desk. It’s addressed to John Fernandez. I wonder what Harry was doing with it. It’s been opened, you see.” She held it between them, showing the torn edge of the envelope.

  Nothing was said, but Harriet knew that Melanie was offering to take out the letter and look at it. She was pitting their friendship against decorum. It wanted only a whisper of encouragement to begin a conspiracy. The temptation was strong. Alone, Harriet might have yielded, but she was not ready to admit as much, even to Melanie. “We really ought to return it to Mr. Fernandez.”

  The “really” gave Melanie the chance, if she wished, of pressing the point, but she was not going to risk a stronger rebuff. “You’re right, my dear. Possibly he left it here when he was calling on Harry. Oh dear, I wish it wasn’t addressed to him, of all the people in Merton, though. I suppose I could hand it to the porter to give to him, but it looks so pointed when his room is just across the passage.”

  “Let me take it,” offered Harriet, hoping her eagerness was not too apparent. When Melanie had suggested spending the afternoon in Merton, the possibility of a second meeting with Fernandez had crossed her mind, but she had seen no way of taking the initiative. “I met Mr. Fernandez this morning.”

  “Would you? What a thoughtful suggestion! I am not comfortable with the man, as I think I mentioned this morning. I should not go inside, my dear, even if he invites you.”

  “I shall not,” said Harriet. “It would not be proper.”

  The card on the door read J. Fernandez, M.A., but the envelope in Harriet’s hand was less formal: Mr. John Fernandez, Merton College, Oxford. The postmark was London, 23 Aug. 89—a week ago. She examined the neatly severed envelope, even put her fingers inside and satisfied herself that it contained a letter, but she did not take it out. That would have been too demeaning after the conversation with Melanie.

  She knocked and held her breath, waiting to see if he was in. He might so easily have decided to go out for a Sunday afternoon stroll, making up on the fresh air now that his throat was better. How did she know it was better? In the chapel he had sung more lustily than the Warden and the other Fellows together.

  Footsteps ended the uncertainty. Fernandez opened the door, blinked in surprise, and said, “How very delightful. Let me see. It’s Miss Harriet S
haw, is it not?” His hand went to his hair and made sure that it was flat.

  She smiled. “Yes, I’m sorry to disturb you—”

  “Not at all. Won’t you come in?” He opened the door fully and stepped back with it.

  “Thank you, but no,” Harriet firmly replied. “I have just come to return a letter addressed to you which Mrs. Bonner-Hill found in her husband’s rooms. We are sorting through his things, you see.”

  He took the letter, glanced at the writing on the envelope and pocketed it. “Careless of me. I must have left it when I spoke to him on Friday evening. I wasn’t my usual self at all. Had a confounded nasty bout of laryngitis.”

  “You’re better now, I hope?”

  “Immeasurably, Miss Shaw, immeasurably. If I may presume to say so, I felt a distinct improvement in chapel this morning when I saw that our little congregation was not quite the same as usual. And when you mentioned afterwards that you had an interest in geography, my recuperation was complete. Is it physical?”

  Harriet felt a tingling of her cheeks. “I beg your pardon.”

  Fernandez smiled. “The geography, my dear. Is your interest mainly in the natural features of the earth’s surface?” “Oh. I understand. Yes, I particularly enjoy looking at maps.”

  “A cartographer, too! We seem to have so much in common. Are you sure you won’t step inside for a few minutes? I have a collection of maps which is certain to interest you, including, I may say, a copy of a sixteenth-century chart said to have been used by Magellan.”

  “You are most generous, sir, but I must return to Mrs. Bonner-Hill. I am here to keep her company, you see. She is likely to become depressed if I leave her for long.”

  He nodded resignedly. “Yes, from my slender acquaintance with Mrs. Bonner-Hill, I would expect her to be easily agitated. Well, Miss Shaw”—he took a step towards Harriet—“I shall let you go upon one condition, and that is that you allow me to meet you tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock at the entrance to the Bodleian Library. It is not renowned for its maps, but I suppose I am the foremost authority in Oxford on those that are there, and I should be most honoured to show them to you.”

  “That is very obliging of you, sir, but—”

  “You cannot refuse,” said Fernandez.

  “I shall have to see how Mrs. Bonner-Hill proposes spending the morning. If she should require my company …” Harriet was already determined that nothing would stop her from keeping this engagement, but she was not so naive as to let Fernandez know. It did no harm to introduce a little uncertainty into one’s dealings with gentlemen.

  “It would be kindest not to tell her of our arrangement,” Fernandez suggested. “I should not like her to think that we discovered our mutual interest in geography as an indirect consequence of her husband’s death.”

  “I shall not mention the matter to a soul,” said Harriet, and meant it. Her cultivation of Fernandez was her own business. She was uniquely placed to find out why somebody had meant to murder him.

  CHAPTER

  30

  A tutorial for Sergeant Cribb—Jacks, piscatorial and homicidal—Uncle in the Steel

  TWENTY MINUTES AFTER HARRIET had left, Fernandez had a second caller: Sergeant Cribb.

  Harriet, back in Bonner-Hill’s rooms packing shirts into the trunk, did not look up as the sergeant made his way round the Fellows’ Quad. If she had, she might have wondered what he was doing in Merton. That he was there to follow up her theory that Bonner-Hill had been murdered in error would not have occurred to her. At the police station, her contribution had been totally eclipsed by Constable Hardy’s.

  She did not understand that Cribb was a strict observer of priorities. First, he had done what was of paramount importance, released Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold, at the same time assuring them that no charges were to be preferred on any of the matters which had come to his attention. Then he had taken a solitary, ruminative lunch. Over the roast beef he had assessed the consequences of the collapse of his case against the three men. He was left with no suspects and, worse, no logical explanation for the murders. Over the apple pie with cream he had begun to think about what Harriet had said.

  A strong black coffee, and he was on his way to Merton College.

  Fernandez whisked open the door with such a winning smile that Cribb took half a step backwards.

  Order was swiftly restored. “I supposed you were somebody else,” Fernandez explained, frowning.

  To make things absolutely clear, Cribb reminded him of their last meeting. “I’d like a few words more with you, if that’s possible, sir,” he went on. “You know how it is-things come to you afterwards that you should have asked about before. Might I come in, sir? I wouldn’t care to be overheard.”

  In the sitting room, Fernandez took a stance at the fireplace and motioned Cribb towards a chaise longue. The wall behind it fairly bristled with actresses and angels.

  “I’ll take the window seat, if it’s all the same to you, sir. I was wanting to talk to you about the late Mr. Bonner-Hill.”

  Fernandez shrugged. “I hardly expected you were here to discuss the weather.”

  “I was hoping you might know what led him to go out on the river yesterday morning.”

  “Nothing led him there,” said Fernandez. “He went of his own volition.”

  “It was the first time he’d ever been out like that, fishing on a Saturday morning quite alone.”

  “True, but he was becoming interested in the sport.”

  “How long had he been going out with you on your fishing expeditions, sir?”

  “I told you that before,” Fernandez said, as if he were addressing an undergraduate. “Two months. No more.”

  “So you did, sir. But you’ve been doing this for two years yourself. Every Saturday.”

  “Not every Saturday. Kindly do not put words into my mouth, Sergeant. In court, it is called leading a witness, I believe. On a number of Saturdays in the last two years I have been away from Oxford. I have other obligations to attend to, besides my College duties.”

  “The Royal Geographical Society. I remember, sir. But it would be true to say, would it not—I’m trying not to lead you—that you’ve established a routine of going out on Saturdays—most Saturdays—to look for that thirty-pound pike you mentioned?”

  Fernandez nodded warily.

  “And do you always fish from the same spot, sir?”

  “Not always,” Fernandez answered. “We move about the backwaters. Those are the favourite haunts of the pike. They like it comparatively still, and thick with rushes and water plants. I’ve caught half a dozen or more this year along Potts Stream and Hinksey, but they were jacks, all but one, and I returned them. The big one still eludes me. I’ve seen him more than once, actually.”

  “Jacks, you said, sir?”

  “Young pike, Sergeant. It’s not sport to take them before they’re full-grown.”

  “It’s much the same in my line of work, sir. We like to hook the big ones if we can. Funnily enough, the biggest of them all is known as Jack. When we land him, we won’t be tossing him back.”

  “The Ripper?”

  Cribb nodded. “But let’s return to Mr. Bonner-Hill. I’m a stubborn man, sir, and I would like to know what prompted him to go out on Saturday. He talked to you about it, I expect. He must have, when you said you wouldn’t be going out yourself. When was that—on Friday evening?”

  “Friday evening. Yes.” Fernandez paused, evidently calculating whether it was necessary to add to his answer. Cribb waited expressionlessly, letting the silence work for him, and it did. Fernandez continued, “I looked in on him after dinner, about nine, I suppose. I could scarcely utter a word, my throat was so bad, so I went in to call it off. He said at once that he would go alone. He was adamant. I remember he remarked that it might be the very morning when the big one came by.” He gave a nervous laugh. “If it had, I don’t think he would have taken it, poor fellow. He was hopeless with a rod, but I was reluctant
to discourage him. Pity I didn’t, as it turned out.”

  Cribb was not there to speculate. “Another question, Mr. Fernandez. When you talked to Mr. Bonner-Hill, did you discuss the place where he would do his fishing?”

  “We talked about it, yes. We decided that the backwater leading to North Hinksey—the one that links with Seacourt Stream—was a promising stretch of water. That’s where the punt was found, I understand.”

  “Yes, sir. Did any other person suggest that you might go to that particular spot on Saturday?”

  Fernandez said cautiously, “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll tell you in a moment, sir.”

  “Nobody suggested it, in fact. The choice was ours alone.” Cribb got up from the window seat. “That’s odd, sir. That’s caught me by surprise.”

  “I fail to understand why,” said Fernandez.

  “This murder was arranged more than a week ago, sir, and probably before that. I thought at one stage that Bonner-Hill was done to death by some homicidal ruffians who didn’t like the look of his face. Now I’m sure that there was planning in this. Last Tuesday night a tramp by the name of Walters was taken on the river at Hurley and murdered in just the same way as Bonner-Hill. We think the murderers—there were three of them—were trying out the method. It’s a clever way to kill a man. Simple, but the cleverest ways usually are. You take him aboard a boat and render him insensible—with alcohol in the case of the tramp—and then you roll him over the side and hold his head and shoulders under till his lungs fill with water. Looks like drowning, of course. I think they might have used chloroform on Bonner-Hill. The post-mortem tomorrow may tell us. Could be traces in the lungs still. But you see my point, Mr. Fernandez. The thing was planned. The killers knew where to find their victim. Bonner-Hill was murdered because he went to the backwater leading to North Hinksey on the day and at the time the murderers expected a man to be there.”

  Fernandez folded his arms in a way that proclaimed how unimpressed he was. “Pure chance. It must have been. But for my laryngitis we should both have been there. They could hardly have murdered two of us.”