Swing, Swing Together (24 page)

“Well, I never!” said Thackeray. “A man and a woman. Who would have thought—”

“
You
wouldn't and that's plain,” said Cribb ungraciously. “You're coming with me to arrest 'em, Thackeray. Hardy can cope with Fernandez.”

Hardy had made his priorities patently clear before Cribb had got to the end of his speech by stepping into the road and whistling for a cab he had seen. It pulled up beside the curb.

“This will do,” said Cribb. “What are you waiting for, Thackeray? There's another one behind for you, Hardy. Whistle him up, man, or he'll pass you by.”

CHAPTER

36

Jolly boating weather—Confidences on the Cherwell—Harriet unbalanced

H
ARRIET
RECLINED
AGAINST
THE
cushions watching clusters of foliage drift across her vision. She had the interesting sensation that the punt was stationary and the trees were travelling over her head in the direction of Oxford. Common sense dimly insisted that John Fernandez was poling the punt upstream, but common sense was a poor match for dark leaves moving against a blue sky after Chianti and Benedictine.

She should not have accepted the drinks. How many times had she heard Miss Plummer articulate the perils of insobriety? One sip, she would say, one sip will seep into your veins, depriving you of the will to resist the devil and all his works. And she was right! The dear old Plum was right! Harriet on her cushions was unable to resist even the glass of champagne John Fernandez had poured for her after they had pushed off from Magdalen Bridge.

Bubbly, Molly always called it when she talked about it in college. Molly,
naturally,
knew about champagne, the devil and any of his works you cared to mention. But had she ever shared a bottle of Pommery and Greno's Extra Sec on a punt with a Fellow of the University of Oxford?

“We shall stop under the willow there,” announced Fernandez, so distantly he might still have been at Magdalen Bridge. “The leaves will form a natural canopy. Do not be alarmed if they brush your face as we pass underneath.”

She closed her eyes and enjoyed the coolness of the shade. Fernandez thrust the pole into the mud below and looped the painter round it. Then he brought the champagne bottle to Harriet's end of the boat and sat level with her knees. “Before I begin, will you have another glass, Harriet? Of course you will.”

She held her glass unsteadily under the neck of the bottle.

“You must be asking yourself, my dear, how I was able to confirm so confidently that Bonner-Hill was murdered in error. It will interest you to know that you have held the evidence of this in your own pretty hands.”

“My own pretty hands?” Harriet repeated, wishing she could think of something more intelligent to say.

“I refer to the letter you found in Bonner-Hill's rooms and so kindly returned to me. I still have it in my pocket.”

Harriet saw him take it out and open it. It was pale green in colour. She had remembered the envelope as white. She moved herself up on the cushions and saw that not only the envelope, but his hands were tinted green. With some relief she realized that it was due to the effect of the sunlight filtered through the leaves.

“Shall I read it?” he said. “It is only a note and there is no address and nor is it signed. It says,
‘If you would care to hook one of thirty pounds or more, take the backwater on the Osney side of the second railway bridge at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, 28th August, and proceed towards North Hinksey. Bring live bait and hooking tackle. You will be shown the place. I promise you this one is no jack.'
”

“I don't understand it,” said Harriet. “Have I drunk too much champagne?”

Fernandez smiled indulgently. “It would make sense only to an angler, and a pike man at that. It promises to reveal the haunt of a pike of prodigious size. The person who wrote it knew precisely how to secure my interest.”

“I think I should be suspicious of a letter nobody had signed.”

“So was I, my dear—up to a point. The truth of it is that my curiosity was stronger than my suspicion. When you have been searching for two years for a large pike, a letter such as this is difficult to dismiss. The person who wrote it obviously knew something about pike fishing.”

“He knew something about you,” added Harriet, and thought it rather a profound remark.

“True, my dear. Oh, I considered the possibility of an undergraduate prank, but the students were still on vacation. Term doesn't begin for another week. The trunks are starting to arrive, but not their owners. I ask you, where would be the amusement of a jape with nobody about to appreciate it? The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the letter was serious in intent. What I could not fathom was the reluctance of the writer to identify himself. The only explanation I could hazard was that somebody for his own malicious reasons wished to frustrate another angler who had traced the fish to its lair and was planning to take it. The pike, you see, is a fish that favours particular haunts. The backwater mentioned in the note happens to lead into Hinksey Stream, where the largest pike in Oxford was caught. In short, the letter was too convincing to ignore.”

“You decided to carry out the instructions?”

“That was my intention until Friday evening, when I felt so wretched after dinner that I knew I should be unable to get there on Saturday. I went to Bonner-Hill's rooms and showed him the letter. I had made no arrangement with him to come with me because it seemed to me there was some question of confidentiality in the business, and I did not want to risk antagonizing my mysterious correspondent. Bonner-Hill read it carefully and agreed with me that it would be a pity to ignore it. He offered at once to go in my place, and I agreed. He would say, if he were asked, that he was John Fernandez. Neither of us realized what a fateful decision we had made. You may imagine how I felt when I learned that Bonner-Hill's body had been found.”

Harriet took hold of a willow leaf and traced her fingers along its stem to the bough. “Did you tell the police about the letter?”

“I did not, I confess. I shall explain the reason, Harriet. As recently as last June, I had a profoundly disturbing experience at the hands of the police. The Warden called on me one afternoon and said that a detective sergeant had come to Merton and wanted to ask me certain questions. He had travelled up from Scotland Yard, so I gathered that it must be something important, although I couldn't imagine what. I hold the view that we have a duty to co-operate with the functionaries of law and order, so I admitted this detective and a constable who had come with him, and the Warden very decently withdrew.”

“What did they want?”

Fernandez moved closer to Harriet. “My dear, I am sure that a young lady such as yourself can have had no experience of the police, except perhaps to ask for directions in some unfamiliar neighbourhood. Allow me to tell you that they are by no means so courteous or considerate as they may appear. These officers began at once to question me in a manner that was so far from being civil that I had to remind them more than once where they were and who I was.”

“How very unpleasant,” Harriet commented, at the same time moving more to the side of the punt so that her legs were less in danger of touching his.

“I would not describe myself as a gregarious person, Harriet,” he went on, “but I am fortunate in having a modest circle of acquaintances, including some of the fair sex. I am a bachelor, as you must know, and my position in the College necessarily reduces my opportunities of meeting ladies, but that does not mean that I do not enjoy their company. Without being indiscreet, at the risk even of sounding a little conceited, I would add that from time to time ladies have demonstrated more than a little interest in making my acquaintance.” He paused, as if to give Harriet the opportunity of making her own position clear, but she was dipping the willow leaf in her champagne and moistening the tip of her tongue with it. “If this bores you, my dear …”

“Not at all. Please go on.”

“If I may speak frankly, then, a gentleman—even a cloistered gentleman such as myself—does not reach the prime of life without noticing that certain ladies—and I speak of respectable, married ladies—are disposed at times to encourage a gentleman to—how shall I put it?”

“Flirt with them?” suggested Harriet.

“You have it.” Fernandez put his hand over hers to confirm the fact. “These are the games wives of an adventurous spirit occasionally like to play. Mild diversions from the solemn business of matrimony, quite harmless if they are not indulged in to excess. The secret smile, the touch of fingers, the contact of legs under a table—of course, you would have no experience of such things.”

“I am learning,” said Harriet, withdrawing her hand from his with a smile that would go usefully with a mild reproof in the classroom. “Did the policemen ask you about your games?”

“They did, Harriet. I might not have objected to that if they had been discreet, but they were not. They referred to them in terms that could only be described as coarse, portraying my part in the business in the most lurid colours imaginable. I supposed that they hoped to provoke me into revealing names, but I was determined that I should not.”

“That was gallant,” said Harriet.

“Yes. Imagine my surprise, then, when the sergeant made it crystal-clear not only that he knew the names of the ladies, but that he was actually in possession of a letter claiming I had perpetrated an assault on one of them.”

“Oh!” Harriet drank the rest of her champagne in a gulp.

“That was my response exactly, Harriet. I was bereft of speech for several seconds. Won't you have some more? There's enough for another glass each.” In upending the bottle, Fernandez drew himself to Harriet's side and stayed there. “I hope, my dear, that you do not take me for the class of person who forces himself on defenceless ladies. The detective sergeant obviously did, you see, because of the libelous contents of this letter he had received. He had been persuaded that I was a veritable satyr. He was investigating certain incidents concerning a number of women in London and he wanted me to state where I had been on four separate nights last autumn. I gathered that the writer of the letter had maliciously linked my name with the events in question.”

“How very unfair!” said Harriet.

Fernandez took her hand in his again. “The deuce of it was that by coincidence I had been out of Oxford on the nights he mentioned. On two of the occasions I had been with a lady.”

“Melanie?” The champagne must have sharpened Harriet's intuition. She was certain he was talking about Melanie. Or had cold logic told her that something like this must have happened for Melanie to hold Fernandez in such contempt?

“Why keep it from you?—yes. Naturally, I did not at first reveal her name to the police. I fabricated a story instead. One of the nights I had passed at my club, I told them, and the other with an uncle of mine, a man whose position in the world ought to have impressed a policeman. That was a miscalculation. I thought the mention of his name would be enough, and that they would not presume to approach him on the matter. Unfortunately, it seems they did, and he denied having seen me. They were back within a few days and I was compelled to admit the truth—that I had spent both nights in the company of Melanie Bonner-Hill. It was ungallant, I know, and she has not forgiven me, but, Harriet, my predicament was extreme. They actually suspected I was that monster who murdered all those women in the East End last autumn.”

Harriet felt her hands jerk in his, but he seemed not to notice.

“Of course,” he went on, “I could not be sure that Melanie would be willing to confirm my story. To her lasting credit, she did, and the suspicion was lifted from my shoulders. Harriet, I cannot convey the relief I felt when I learned she had told them the truth. The mental torment I had been through, wondering if she would shrink from the shame of it! Now do you understand my feelings when the police came to my rooms again on Saturday inquiring into Bonner-Hill's death? They were not the same policemen, but I was terrified that they would link the tragedy in some way with the matters they had tried to connect me with before. That was why I said nothing about the letter that sent Bonner-Hill to his death. I could not face the ordeal of having my private life investigated again by the police, as it must be if they discover I was the intended victim.”

“But if you have done nothing to be ashamed of—”

“That is not the point, my dear. One's reputation becomes tarnished. Things are said about one. It was dreadful enough having to walk about Merton with people knowing the police had visited me twice. Imagine the investigations that would be set in train if it became known that someone had wanted to murder me. All my friends, acquaintances, people who scarcely know me even, would be interrogated, invited to speculate on anything I had done which might have given offence to my supposed murderer. Too horrible! I'll tell you what I shall do, Harriet—I shall destroy the letter.”

Harriet sat up. “I don't think you should do that.”

He had already taken it from his pocket again and was preparing to tear the envelope and its contents in two. Impulsively, Harriet tried to snatch it from him, but he jerked it clear of her grasp. As her fingers came ineffectually together, she found to her dismay that she toppled clumsily against his chest. There seemed to be something amiss with her sense of balance, for willow leaves started drifting across her vision like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Or was he tearing the letter into confetti and scattering it over her? Impossible to tell.

The only certain thing was that she was lying with her back against his chest, unable to sit up. Close to her ear she heard Fernandez say, “So
you
like playing games, Miss Harriet Shaw. I thought you might.”