Swing, Swing Together

by Peter Lovesey

  “Give me Suspects, Other, will you? I’ll start with those.” He gave a long whistle as two bulging files tied with tape were dumped on the counter. “I should think you’ve got the whole of London in there.”

  In the adjoining office Cribb turned on the gas, placed his watch on the desk and unfastened the tape round the first file. He leafed through the contents carefully, not without excitement. Up to now there had not been much to get excited over in this investigation. Detective work held more disappointments than rewards, he knew, but occasionally, just occasionally, the shade of Sir Robert Peel, or whoever it was who interceded with the gods for detectives in despair, procured a small advantage for the side of law and order. Unless they were playing false, the gods had favoured Cribb when Fernandez Senior had mentioned Inspector Abberline’s name.

  With the possible exception of the sergeant at the information desk, nobody at Scotland Yard needed telling that Fred Abberline had been in charge of the Ripper investigation ever since the mutilated body of Mary Ann Nichols had been found in Buck’s Row on the last day of August, 1888. As the tally of Jack the Ripper’s victims had grown through the months of autumn, Abberline’s name had become a byword in the press. Inspector Abberline, we are informed, is sparing no effort in his investigation, but we understand that he is no nearer to making an arrest.

  If Abberline had been to Coldbath Fields asking questions about John Fernandez, it must have been connected with the Whitechapel murders. That was not necessarily significant, for hundreds of men in the city and the suburbs had been questioned, and Suspects, Other contained more reports than Cribb cared to count.

  It was not long before he found the one headed Fernandez, John, and began to read it.

  University lecturer. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Age 38. Height medium. Build sturdy. Hair black, straight, uses pomade. Eyebrows thick. Forehead narrow. Eyes brown. Nose fine, straight. Mouth broad, finely shaped, red lips. Chin square. Face oval. Complexion swarthy. Beard none. Moustache thick, black, extends beyond ends of mouth. Marks or Peculiarities none. Previous Convictions none.

  Suspect was interviewed at Merton College, Oxford, on June 9th, consequent upon information from an anonymous source that on a number of occasions he had violently forced his attentions on women, including the wives of other members of the University, interfering with their clothing in a manner that would have justified charges of indecent assault if the ladies concerned had not insisted that no complaint be made to the police. Suspect’s tendencies are said to be known to his colleagues at Merton (this was subsequently confirmed by the Warden) and “constitute no serious threat in a community which is exclusively male.” The informant suggested that the suspect had been visiting London during each of the nights when the Whitechapel murders took place, and that there were similarities between his handwriting and the script of the letters signed Jack the Ripper which had been reproduced in the newspapers.

  The interview was conducted by Sergeant Holloway (H Division), in the presence of P. C. Stoner, 177H. Suspect first denied that he had molested women, but on being informed that there was no intention of preferring charges respecting the incidents at Oxford, he admitted three which had come to the notice of his colleagues, but advanced the opinion that the ladies concerned had encouraged his attentions by unfastening certain of their garments, but had grown alarmed when he had behaved “with an excess of exuberance.” He admitted that in each case the lady had seemed distressed by the incident.

  On being questioned about his movements at the times of the murders, suspect claimed that he was in London for a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on August 31st (confirmed), and spent the previous night at the Oxford and Cambridge Club (not confirmed). On Friday, September 7th (the night of Annie Chapman’s death), he was in London again, visiting the London Library, and passed the night at Bradley’s Hotel in Jermyn Street (confirmed). On Saturday, September 29th (when the victims Stride and Eddowes were murdered), he again stayed at the Oxford and Cambridge Club (unconfirmed), having attended a committee meeting of the R.G.S. earlier in the day. On Thursday, November 8th (the night of Mary Kelly’s death), he claimed to have been visiting his uncle, Mr. Matthew Fernandez, who is Deputy Governor of Coldbath Fields House of Correction.

  This was later denied by Mr. Fernandez (see below). On being asked about the frequency of his visits to London, suspect replied that the weeks before the start of term (which commenced in October) were the obvious time for conducting business not connected with the University.

  Inquiries were put in train at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. The staff were unwilling to comment on the movements of a member, but confirmed that Fernandez had not signed the register for the nights of August 30th or September 29th. Mr. Matthew Fernandez, interviewed by Inspector Abberline on June 13th, stated that he had not seen his nephew for over a year. He confirmed that the suspect was “unreliable on occasions with members of the fair sex,” but he was strongly of the view that his nephew was “not a homicidal type” and referred to his experience of such men in penal institutions.

  The suspect was interviewed again, by Inspector Abberline and Sergeant Holloway, on June 14th, when it was put to him that his account of his movements on the nights in question had been confirmed in one instance only, and had been found to be false in another. Suspect admitted that his previous statements had been misleading. He had supplied a false account of his movements out of loyalty to a lady. On being questioned further, the suspect stated that he had spent the nights of August 30th and September 29th in the company of a Mrs. Melanie Bonner-Hill, the wife of a Fellow of Merton College. Mrs. Bonner-Hill, who is an actress, was appearing in The Belle’s Stratagem at the Lyceum Theatre. They had stayed at a theatrical lodging house in Kensington. On November 8th, they had been in Windsor, where she was appearing in Frou-Frou. Mrs. Bonner-Hill was now living apart from her husband. Suspect stated that after certain disagreements with Mrs. Bonner-Hill he, too, had ended his alliance with her. He was not confident, in the circumstances, that she would confirm his account.

  Mrs. Bonner-Hill was traced to Windsor and interviewed by Inspector Abberline on June 17th. Contrary to the suspect’s expectations, she confirmed that he had been with her on the dates in question, and verified the information from her diary. She stated that he was a man of “ungovernable passion” and an adventurer, but she was confident that he was not murderously inclined towards women.

  A handwriting expert, Mr. Looper, reported that in his opinion there was no resemblance between a specimen of the suspect’s handwriting he had studied and the “Jack the Ripper” correspondence.

  In the light of these findings, Inspector Abberline ceased to regard Mr. John Fernandez as a serious suspect, and the inquiries were brought to an end.

  P. Holloway

  Sergeant

  H Division.

  Cribb sat for a minute in thought. Then he replaced the report in the file, tied the tape round it again, picked up his watch and hat and returned to the registry.

  “That was quick,” said the clerk. He smirked. “Are you off to make an arrest now?”

  Cribb shook his head. “Not on a Sunday. Tomorrow, I think.”

  The clerk’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t mean it? Heavens! What’s Inspector Abberline going to say when we tell him in the morning?”

  He got no answer.

  Cribb was already on his way to Paddington Station.

  CHAPTER

  33

  In which Thackeray works it out—Cribb delivers a lesson in geography—Japan’s attitude is explained

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH you, Constable? Moonstruck?” Cribb demanded. Having gone to the unusual length of providing his assistants with a detailed account of what he had learned at Coldbath Fields and Scotland Yard, he felt he was entitled to a response. He was not asking for a bouquet; two or three words indicating approval would have satisfied him. Frankly, he had not expected much from Thackeray, but Hardy he had come to regard as
a sharp young constable capable of appreciating good detective work. He was obviously mistaken.

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Hardy answered. “I was turnin’ it over in my mind, like, thinkin’ how clever it was.”

  “Ah,” said Cribb, his confidence pricking up.

  “Yes, we could do with Miss Shaw in the force. We would never have found out so much about Fernandez if she hadn’t pointed out in the first place that he must have been intended as the victim instead of Bonner-Hill. She’s an uncommon clever young woman, that one.”

  “That’s a fact,” Thackeray confirmed. “And pretty with it.”

  It was Monday morning. Cribb had arrived sufficiently early at the police station to use the telephone set for an hour before the Chief Inspector got in. Sharp at nine, he had hung up the receiver, blown his cigar ash out of the window, replaced the ashtray on the desk and moved into the charge room next door.

  “Pity Miss Shaw ain’t here to give us the benefit of her latest theories,” Cribb acidly said. “I was planning to make an arrest this morning, but I might be wrong again.”

  “An arrest?” Hardy looked more dubious than impressed. “Who do you propose to arrest this time, Sergeant?”

  “Work it out. Miss Shaw gave us a description. It must be useful, coming from an uncommon clever young woman like that.”

  Thackeray scratched the side of his head. “I don’t follow you, Sarge. Do you mean the three men she saw on the night the tramp was killed?”

  “Yes. What’s the matter with that?”

  “We arrested the only three men we’ve seen along the river, and they was innocent—well, innocent of murder, that is.”

  “Quite right,” said Cribb. “We released ’em.”

  “Because they couldn’t have been the three Miss Shaw observed that night,” contributed Hardy. “They were in a house of accommodation in Marlow. If she didn’t see them, who did she see?”

  “Perhaps she made a mistake,” hazarded Thackeray. “What do you think, Sarge?”

  Hardy put in his answer first. “Miss Shaw is a reliable witness. I’ll stake my reputation on that.”

  “She’s cool-headed, I agree,” Cribb said. “But don’t be too free with that reputation of yours where this young lady is concerned. I don’t suggest we can’t rely on what she’s told us, but I don’t believe she’s told it all.”

  “What do you mean by that?” demanded Hardy.

  “She led us to believe she was bathing alone when the boat came by. Bathing in the altogether isn’t a solitary pastime, in my limited experience. It’s a social activity. I’m told that undergraduates bathe naked here in Oxford. There’s a place along the Cherwell known as Parson’s Pleasure.”

  “Do you mean that there might have been other girls with her in the river?” said Hardy, blinking at such a possibility.

  “Not girls, necessarily,” Cribb wickedly replied. Leaving Hardy to ponder that, he turned to his other assistant. “Yes, Thackeray, the answer to your question is that it’s reasonable to believe what Miss Shaw has told us. Do you recollect the description she gave of the men in the boat?”

  “She likened them to places on a map, Sarge. It didn’t mean much to me. Maps wasn’t done when I went to school.”

  “Let’s remedy that deficiency, then.” Cribb got up and tapped on the Chief Inspector’s door. There was no reply, so he let himself in and presently returned with a large revolving globe on a stand, which he placed on the table in front of Thackeray. “The first man was like the Gulf of Bothnia, Miss Shaw informed us. You’ll find that near the top, Thackeray. Should be marked in blue.”

  Thackeray gripped the globe with his hands.

  “There,” said Hardy, touching it with his finger.

  “It doesn’t look like anybody I know,” said Thackeray.

  Cribb had his notebook out. “The man was wearing a cap, according to Miss Shaw. Look at the top part of the Gulf. Do you see the peak of the cap, and the nose and chin underneath?”

  “Blimey, yes, I do. Long, thin neck. Narrow chest. This don’t look like an oarsman, Sarge.”

  “I know. I took it for Mr. Lucifer. Now take a look at the Persian Gulf. Down a bit and to your right.”

  Hardy came to the rescue again.

  “Good Lord!” said Thackeray. “Blooming clever! It’s just like a big fellow sitting in a boat, pulling at the oars.”

  “Thicker in the neck, large head, wearing a hat,” said Cribb. “Seemed good for Humberstone to me. Now for the third man. Miss Shaw wasn’t very clear about this one, if you recollect. She said she found it difficult to distinguish his outline from the cushions.”

  “And you suggested Japan,” said Hardy.

  “Where’s that, for pity’s sake?” asked Thackeray, trying to turn the globe with his fingers still marking the Gulfs.

  “Never mind,” said Cribb. “That was only my suggestion. I didn’t see the man myself. Japan has quite a bend in it, like someone leaning back against a cushion. Miss Shaw was positive the third person was a man, because of his attitude. I have her words here somewhere. ‘No lady would recline in quite the attitude this person did.’ ”

  “Mr. Gold?” said Thackeray.

  “Well, he was the third man of those we arrested, so I supposed it must be him. There was something wrong about it, though. Gold seemed to be the spry one of that three-some. I couldn’t see him lying at his ease. Yet he didn’t fit the description of either of the oarsmen. I began to think again about this third man, propped against the cushions. Was he asleep? I wondered. It made no sense, going out in a boat by night to do a murder and falling asleep on the way. Then I thought suppose this third man hadn’t been a murderer at all. Suppose he were the victim.”

  “Choppy Walters!”

  “Already dead, Sarge?”

  “No. He definitely died from drowning. He was breathing till they put him in the water. Dead drunk, I think. They could have met him in a pub and got him tight. They might have used chloroform, but I think gin is more likely.”

  Thackeray was hacking his way through a jungle of tangled thoughts. “Then we must be hunting for two men in a boat, instead of three.”

  “But where do we start looking for them now the trail’s gone cold?” Hardy dismally asked.

  “We don’t look,” said Cribb. “This is eighteen eighty-nine.

  We wait for a telephone call. If they’re somewhere on the Thames, as I think they are, we’ve got ’em. I’ve alerted every lockkeeper up and down the river.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  Rendezvous at the Bodleian—Some observations on chance occurrences—Fernandez leaves nothing to chance

  HARRIET’S WHITE MUSLIN SKIRT embroidered with pansies had creased hardly at all in the travelling case. Once she had decided on that for her appointment with Mr. Fernandez, she was bound to put on her plain navy blue velvet jacket, worn with the blue striped blouse and the matching hat. Her thoughts strayed to the hummingbird hat, still in its box in her room at college. It would have been nice to have worn it this morning; after the things Jane and Molly had said about it, she would never wear it again to church, but it was still a beautiful hat. She turned away from the mirror and buttoned her boots, high-lows that clicked noisily on the hotel steps as she went out. She hoped she had not been seen; Melanie would have guessed everything at a glance.

  Fernandez greeted her at the Bodleian with a compliment about her clothes. He was well-turned-out himself, in a biscuit-coloured suit and boater, although Harriet did not presume to say so.

  He had arranged for a dozen or so books to be displayed on a table in a room adjoining the upper reading room. Most contained maps of great antiquity, scarcely recognizable as the outlines Harriet knew from her atlas. Great fish and sea monsters enlivened the maritime areas, looking capable of biting chunks from the land masses. Fernandez encouraged her to play the game of identifying countries, praising her successes and confessing that he would not have known the others himself unless he ha
d spent years studying the history of maps. He went on to talk with quiet authority of the problems of early navigators, the impossibility of relying on the mappae mundi and the consequent development of the portolani, the pilot books of the Portuguese, and the less sophisticated ruttiers used by the English.

  In the hour and few minutes they spent there, Harriet began to understand what it might mean to study at a great university with a tutor to guide her, not a Miss Plummer reciting her Notes for Teachers in Training Colleges on each topic decreed by the inspectors, but an authority with the ability to bring her close enough to a subject to apprehend its purpose and feel its power to inspire. Interestingly, Fernandez spoke without the tendency to arrogance she had noticed before in his statements. Instead of airing his expertise, he spoke with reserve, in terms calculated more to clarify than impress.

  He ended by showing her one of the treasures of the Bodleian, Marco Polo’s Les Livres du Graunt Caam, with its lavishly illustrated pages. “The first of the illustrated travel books, and still the best, I think,” said Fernandez, as he returned it to its box. “And now, Miss Harriet—if I may call you that—I should be honoured if you would join me for luncheon.”

  “For luncheon?” Harriet blanched. She had not been taken to luncheon by a gentleman in her life. She doubted whether it was proper. “I was not expecting such a thing. Of course, it is exceedingly generous of you. You have already been uncommonly kind to me—”

  “Then it is settled!” said Fernandez. “The least you can do to repay my kindness is grace my table at the Clarendon.”

  “A hotel?” said Harriet, hardly able to voice the word.

  “The best in Oxford, my dear. Frequently patronized by royalty. Ah,” said Fernandez, touching his fingers on the back of her gloved hand, “I should have realized. You are concerned about the propriety of visiting a hotel in the company of a gentleman. I shall take you instead to Mr. Stanford’s Restaurant in the High.”