Swing, Swing Together

by Peter Lovesey

  “I don’t suggest it, sir. They didn’t plan for two. They expected one, and one came.”

  Fernandez frowned. “I trust you are not suggesting that I conspired with these desperados to cause Bonner-Hill’s death.”

  “Not at all, sir,” answered Cribb. “If you want it straight, I think they might have planned to murder you.”

  “Me?” Fernandez tossed back his head and laughed. “Murder me? Why should anybody want to murder me?”

  Cribb had turned to face the quadrangle. “I don’t know, sir. I thought you might have some ideas about that.”

  Fernandez crossed the room and caught him by the shoulder. “Turn and look me in the face, Sergeant. You must have meant what you just said in jest. This is too ridiculous for words.”

  Solemnly, Cribb said, “I meant it, Mr. Fernandez. I’m not one for jokes. I don’t know why they should want to kill you, but I believe they tried. They expected to find you there yesterday morning. You’ve been going out on Saturdays looking for that pike for two years, you said. It’s common knowledge—must be, by now. They devised a means of killing a man from a boat and making it look like a drowning. They came to Oxford expecting to meet you in the backwater, but they met Bonner-Hill instead. Superficially Bonner-Hill bore some resemblance to you. He was about the same age, his height was similar and he had a moustache like yours. They’re all the rage, I know. Point is, that on a misty morning in September, the mistake was not impossible, particularly when he was dressed from head to foot in waterproofs. Did they belong to you, by any chance?”

  “Certainly not. Bonner-Hill wasn’t the sort to borrow other people’s clothes. He wouldn’t be seen—”

  “Dead in them, sir? Of course, he was careful about his clothes. I should have remembered.”

  “But really, the notion that he was somehow mistaken for me is pure speculation.”

  “Perhaps you’ll hear me out, sir,” Cribb quietly said. “I believe the murderers didn’t know that Bonner-Hill had taken to fishing with you. This only started in the last six weeks, you said. Until you told me otherwise, I thought they must have known exactly where you planned to do your fishing yesterday. That’s the part that baffles me. You stand by what you said, do you, sir—that the plan to go there was yours alone?”

  Fernandez made a sound of impatience. “For Heaven’s sake! If you think an experienced angler would go to anybody else for advice on where to pitch his line, you betray a lamentable ignorance of the sport.”

  “I’ll admit to that, sir. What troubles me, you see, is that there are no end of backwaters around Oxford. The Thames alone—”

  “The Isis,” said Fernandez in a pained voice. “In Oxford, the river is known as the Isis.”

  “Call it what you like, sir. It’s still got Potts Stream, Seacourt Stream and Hinksey Stream branching from it. That’s getting on for ten miles of backwaters, without adding the Cherwell. I cannot understand how the murderers knew where to find Bonner-Hill without prior knowledge. Unless, of course”—Cribb traced a finger thoughtfully round the line of his jaw—“unless they followed him from the boatyard. Where would he have hired the punt from?”

  “The boathouse at Folly Bridge. But I hardly think your three assassins would risk being seen at Folly Bridge. The place is very well-frequented, even early on a Saturday morning.”

  “Pity,” said Cribb. “It brings me back to my problem. Putting myself in the murderers’ place—and it sometimes helps to try, sir—if I wanted to make sure you took your boat to one particular backwater, I’d try to tempt you there, let you know that there was good fishing to be had in that locality.”

  “I think you would do better to confine yourself to facts, not flights of your imagination,” Fernandez commented.

  “I might send a message through a third party,” Cribb doggedly went on, “or a letter, anonymous of course. Might even offer to take you to the spot, or meet you there. A dedicated angler like yourself would find it difficult to resist an offer like that.”

  Fernandez inhaled sharply and audibly, and said, “This is entirely hypothetical and I object to your implication that I am withholding information from you. If you have any other questions to address to me, my man, kindly state them now, in a decent, straightforward fashion, before I altogether lose my temper.”

  Cribb looked contrite. “I’m sorry, sir. Went beyond myself.” In his experience it was almost a law of interrogation that a straight apology evinced a magnanimous response.

  “I must admit I’m not quite myself either,” said Fernandez. “It’s a shock to be told that you were meant to be murdered, even if you don’t altogether believe it.”

  “Nasty shock,” Cribb agreed. “You won’t feel very comfortable in your boat for a while after this. Be looking over your shoulder half the time. Mind, I don’t think Bonner-Hill was murdered in the punt. He was taken aboard another boat. Went freely, too, I think. There were no signs of a struggle on the punt. Makes me think of two possibilities—either he knew the murderers, or he was meeting them by arrangement.”

  Fernandez brought his hands together with a muted clap. “If he knew them, they must have known him, and they couldn’t have mistaken him for me.”

  “That’s why I favour the second possibility,” said Cribb. “The hired assassin baiting his hook, if I might borrow the expression, but catching Bonner-Hill instead of you. Can you think of anyone who bears a grudge against you? I think you might be in need of protection, you see. I can probably arrange for a constable to keep watch here, if you like.”

  “In Merton? Good Heavens, Sergeant, this is in the realm of fantasy. No, I can’t think of anyone who would like to kill me, and no, I don’t want a policeman in the passage, thank you.”

  Cribb rubbed the back of his neck. “This is very awkward, sir. You must forgive me if I press the question further. You haven’t any enemies, in Oxford, or anywhere else?”

  “How does one know one’s enemies? I shall begin to think I have, if you persist.”

  “You’re a single man, sir.” Cribb smiled. “A ladies’ man, they tell me, though.” He winked. “No jealous husbands lurking in the shadows, I would hope?”

  “Certainly not,” said Fernandez, without smiling.

  “It’s a conundrum, sir. It really is. I’m trying my best. What about your family? Are your parents alive?”

  “Both dead. I have two brothers serving in the army and an uncle in London. If you’re as desperate as you appear to be to find a motive, you may wish to speculate on the fact that he is Deputy Governor of Coldbath Fields House of Correction.”

  “The Steel, sir?” Cribb’s eyes lit up as if mention had been made of his school. “I know it well. My word, this is a small world! You’re right, though. It’s not impossible for someone to have seen a way of taking revenge on your uncle by attacking you. Old lags get a lot of time to work up hatred, and to scheme. I’ll think about that. His name is the same as yours, is it?”

  “Matthew Fernandez. But I’ve no reason to believe—”

  “Nor me, sir. I shan’t discount it, though. You’ve been extremely patient with me. I’m an irritating sort of cove.”

  Fernandez fumbled for an appropriately civil response. “Not at all. Not irritating. Well, you must admit it sounds deucedly far-fetched to suggest that three men came all the way from London in a boat to do away with a harmless don in modern history.”

  Cribb smiled. The smile remained on his face as he passed through the Fellows’ Quad to the Front Quad. It was still there when he started down Merton Street.

  At no point in the interview had he suggested to Fernandez that the three men had started from London.

  He marched into Oxford Police Station and announced to Thackeray that he was catching the next train to Paddington. “I’m going to see the Deputy Governor at the Steel,” he said. “If anything develops here, you can use the telephone set to leave a message at the Yard. I should be back tonight.”

  CHAPTER

  31


  Coldbath on Sunday evening—The treadmill treatment—A little rift within the lute

  “CRIBB, YOU DON’T LOOK a day older than you did in the infantry,” said Mr. Barry, warder-in-chief of Coldbath Fields House of Correction. “Police work evidently keeps you young. What are you now—inspector?”

  “Sergeant only,” Cribb admitted. “Haven’t done so well as you, Sam. I still speak out of turn too regular to please the high-ups. I’ll tell you what I’m here for. I want to get a few words with a party named Fernandez—Deputy Governor, if my information’s right.”

  “One of my high-ups.” Barry put down his mug of tea and walked to the window. “Take a look down there.”

  The office was high at the top of the North Block. Cribb glanced down the shaft formed by adjacent buildings and saw something very like a string of pearls arranged in a box, except that they were moving, rotating slowly clockwise: the cropped heads of sixty convicts at exercise.

  “How many have you got in the Steel?”

  “Twelve hundred, give or take a few,” said Barry. “That’s three times the number in Holloway, and they’ve got twice the ground. We arrange the exercise in shifts. Mr. Fernandez, the one you mentioned, worked it out. He’s a rare one for organizing. The treadmill’s turning from eight in the morning till nine at night. Crank. Shot drill. Everything’s on the go.”

  “Including the warders, I expect,” said Cribb, sensing acrimony.

  “Keeps us occupied. Come downstairs and we’ll find him. Likely as not, he’s in one of the yards. He likes to keep an eye on the exercise.”

  “Is he disliked in the prison?” Cribb ventured, as they started down a flight of iron stairs.

  “He devised the system,” Barry tersely answered. “What do you want with him?”

  “I’m interested in his nephew. Oxford don. Has he ever mentioned him?”

  “Never a word. He’s too occupied with his own family, I expect. Five sons and eight daughters. They all appear in the prison chapel every Sunday. The two eldest girls are married.” Barry selected a key from the ring chained to his belt and let them through a door to another landing. “They say that’s how he worked out the shift system—spacing out the baths on Saturday night.”

  After two more flights of stairs they reached ground level. More doors, more locks, and they were in the exercise yard they had overlooked from the office. The prisoners, unsuggestive of pearls at this level, trudged mindlessly round the perimeter, their boots rasping on the stone flags. A stench of sweat hung in the air. Any thoughts Cribb might have entertained of a career in the prison service were dispersed in that yard. “It’s known as the sorry-go-round,” Barry told him. “I’m told Mr. Fernandez is in the next block.”

  He led Cribb up more stairs and along a catwalk between lines of cell doors, descending again to enter a yard no different on the ground from the other, with its own shuffling circle of misery watched by yawning warders. But here an activity was taking place in a gallery above the heads of the footsloggers. In twelve narrow stalls convicts were at the treadmill, forcing their feet to keep pace with steps that sank endlessly away as an unseen wheel turned, its revolutions fixed at a rate that took no account of aching calves and skinned ankles.

  “He’s over there,” said Barry. “You’d better introduce yourself.”

  He was conspicuous by being in a plain suit, but otherwise Fernandez Senior was a disappointment in appearance, smaller and more mild-looking than Cribb had expected of a man who had fathered thirteen children and reorganized the largest prison in London. He had a winged collar and a spotted tie. He was hairless except for a thin, reddish moustache.

  Cribb lifted his bowler. “Mr. Fernandez? The name’s Cribb, sir. Detective Sergeant. Scotland Yard. Might I have a word?”

  “You are obstructing my view of the clock,” said Fernandez in a pained voice.

  Cribb sidestepped. “I shan’t take up much time, sir.”

  “I hope you don’t, or twelve prisoners will tread a forty-minute shift, instead of twenty, and they won’t thank you for that. I am supervising an innovation in the exercise. The present group is due to be replaced at twenty minutes to the hour, but the order has to come from me. You have two and a half minutes of my time, Sergeant. What is it you require—an interview with a prisoner?”

  “With you, sir. It concerns your nephew, John Fernandez.” Cribb could not have been prepared for the reaction this provoked. “Does it indeed? What did you say your name was?”

  “Cribb, sir.”

  “The Metropolitan Commissioner shall hear of this, Cribb. Reasonable inquiries are one thing, but this amounts to persecution, and I won’t tolerate it. I was personally assured by Inspector Abberline that I should not be subjected to more questions about my nephew. It was conclusively established that he is unconnected with the matters under investigation. I will not have my family hounded by policemen. Have you spoken to Inspector Abberline?”

  “No, sir, but—”

  “I suggest you do. I have nothing more to say on the matter.” He turned his back on Cribb and pushed through the line of convicts to the center of the yard. “Odds!” he piped in a voice just strident enough to be heard above the mechanism of the treadmill. “On your feet! Sharp now, unless you want a turn on the crank.”

  Twelve convicts stood up in the stalls, which Cribb now saw were numbered from one to twenty-four. The odd numbers were about to start their shift. “One, two, three, change!” called Fernandez.

  The evens backed away from the mechanism and leaned on the sides of the stalls or crumpled to the floor. The odds took up the tread.

  Cribb had eased his way through the chain and was speaking to the Deputy Governor at a rate that brooked no interference. “Someone nearly murdered your nephew, Mr. Fernandez. It happened yesterday morning in Oxford. A man was drowned. We think the murderers mistook him for John Fernandez. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Kindly modulate your voice,” said Fernandez. “I would rather that the whole of Coldbath Fields did not hear about the misfortunes of my family. Somebody tried to murder him? Whatever for?”

  “I hoped you might be able to tell me, sir. I’ve reason to believe that somebody travelled from London to Oxford with the intention of drowning him.”

  “Why question me about it?” said Fernandez. “Naturally it causes me concern, but I know nothing about it.”

  “Your nephew raised the possibility that released prisoners might seek revenge on you by attacking your family, sir.”

  “Revenge?” said Fernandez, screwing his face into an expression of horror. “What an ill-informed idea! These men bear no malice towards me. They have their term to serve and I am here to see that it is served as the law dictates. They have much to thank me for, if you want to know. I inaugurated many of the procedures which contribute to the general efficiency of this house of correction and, in consequence, the well-being of its inmates. The fact that you see me supervising treadmill exercise does not mean that I am not concerned with the things of the spirit, Sergeant. The improving texts displayed throughout these buildings are here on my initiative.” In case it had escaped Cribb’s notice, he extended his hand towards a card above the treadmill bearing the legend Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out (Numbers, Ch. 32, v. 23). “As a matter of fact, they were chosen by my own dear wife and daughters. No, Sergeant, I have no fear of former prisoners, nor need my nephew be alarmed.”

  “I’ll try to reassure him, sir,” said Cribb. “Perhaps he hasn’t had the advantage of visiting the prison.”

  “This is a house of correction. A man of your vocation ought to know that prisons are for long-term convicts. No, my nephew has never been here. I have not set eyes on him for a year. The last occasion was his father’s funeral. That is why it so infuriates me that I am plagued with policemen asking questions about him. The man has a slight imperfection of character, I concede—‘the little rift within the lute,’ as Tennyson puts it—but to my knowledge it has never bee
n more than that. They understand him at Oxford. I’m sorry, if what you say is true, that somebody tried to murder him. These are violent times, I am afraid. It could happen to any of us. The Queen herself, God bless her, has survived a number of attempts upon her life. Savage times. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I see a man shirking up there. An hour on the crank will do him good.”

  CHAPTER

  32

  A look at Suspects, Other—The file on Fernandez— Frou-Frou and an alibi

  FROM COLDBATH FIELDS, CRIBB caught a green Victoria bus to Whitehall and marched briskly into the Metropolitan Police Office in Great Scotland Yard. At half-past eight on a Sunday evening the sergeant at the information desk was deep in his News of the World. Cribb’s curt “Inspector Abberline—is he on duty?” got a less instant response than it warranted.

  “Abber what?”

  “Fred Abberline, for God’s sake. Where have you been for the past twelve months? The man in charge of the Ripper investigation.”

  “Jesus!” The desk sergeant dropped his newspaper. “Abberline’s off duty. There hasn’t been another … ?”

  “No.” Cribb had conducted this conversation as he was moving through the information room to the registry.

  The clerk on duty here was sharper to react. He had dropped his Bicycling Times into the wastepaper basket before Cribb reached the counter.

  “The Whitechapel murders,” Cribb announced. “I’d like to look at the file on them.”

  “File!” The clerk pulled a face. “There’s twenty altogether, Sergeant. One for each of the five victims; one for others murdered in similar circumstances; nine for correspondence; one for suspects, principal; two for suspects, other; and two marked miscellaneous.”

  “I’d better take them all. Where do I sign for them?”

  “You’ll need a handcart to move them. The correspondence was coming in at the rate of a thousand letters a week last winter. We’re still getting upwards of a hundred, mostly from lunatics.”