Swing, Swing Together (5 page)

“You found nothing?” Cribb tersely asked.

“Not so much as a perishing duck. No abandoned boat and nobody who remembered hiring one to three men and a dog. I hear that the Buckinghamshire lads have done no better. Don't know how many men they were using, but it's the devil of a lot of public money to go on a dead tramp.”

“A set of killers,” said Cribb.

“All right. A set of—”

“—who might very likely kill again if nobody stops 'em. I haven't time nor patience to bandy words with you, Sergeant. Are the things ready as I asked?”

The desk sergeant gave a grudging nod.

“In that case,” said Cribb, turning to Harriet, “I shall be compelled to commit you to this officer's care for a few minutes, Miss Shaw. The constables and I have something to attend to that won't take long, but can't be done in the presence of a lady. I suggest you sit behind the door there. You might be offered a cup of tea if there's enough public money left to pay for it.”

So she sat in the chair Cribb had indicated and listened to the sergeant complaining that if the duty constable hadn't been redeployed to the perishing riverbank there would be somebody to make the perishing tea. She got a cup nonetheless and the dissent was presently cut short by the entrance of a butcher whose plaster pig had been removed from outside his shop by two small boys. It took the sergeant eleven minutes by the clock over the door to establish the facts and reassure the butcher that as soon as the perishing station was back to strength an investigation would be put in train.

Then Cribb and his two assistants emerged from the door beside Harriet and swept the desk sergeant and his problems from her mind. They had completely changed their clothes. Instead of sober brown suits, Cribb and Thackeray wore striped blazers and white flannels. To match his stripes, Cribb had a red boating cap with a peak that lay low against his forehead. Thackeray's was more of a fisherman's hat, white and made of some soft material, with a brim that rested snugly over his whiskers.

The most stunning transformation was Constable Hardy's. When Harriet saw him, she blushed again for Tuesday night. The blue serge and helmet had lent a reassuring impersonality to that episode which was shattered by his appearance now in a cream-coloured blazer trimmed with red, matching flannels tied with a silk handkerchief, and a straw boater perched nonchalantly on the back of his head. Was this elegant young man, this masher, the policeman she had run into in the dark? It was unendurable.

Between them Thackeray and Hardy carried a large hamper. Cribb had a picnic basket in his left hand and a white parasol in his right which he now presented to Harriet. “Compliments of the Chief Inspector of Henley, miss. It belongs to his daughter. You'll look a picture on the river.”

Whether the boating costumes also were on loan from members of the Henley police and their families, Harriet did not inquire. Was it possible that the back room contained a property basket filled with boating attire of all sizes for visiting detectives? Was there a similar basket of bowler hats, umbrellas and dark suits at Scotland Yard? She had never heard of such a thing, but she supposed it would be a closely guarded secret. Actually Thackeray's flannels, now she observed them more closely, ended some inches above his ankles, which looked slightly odd, even for going on the river. But the others could not be faulted.

They set off along the High Street in the direction of the Thames, Cribb accompanying Harriet, and the two constables following with the hamper. She was not in a position to judge whether they
walked
like policemen, but other people in the street appeared entirely unsuspicious and incurious. Boating parties were not worth a second glance in Henley.

On one matter she was unshakeably resolved: she would not ask Sergeant Cribb the purpose of this charade. If he did not choose to explain his intentions, she did not propose to give him the satisfaction of being asked. She had not known the man long, but he was obviously the sort who gave nothing away unless it suited him, and enjoyed the sensation of power his reticence gave him. He was civil enough, she admitted, and he had got the better of Miss Plummer, which was no mean feat, but that did not give him the right to assume Miss Plummer's authority over her. If she could have been sure he was correct in his suspicions about the three men she had seen, she might have respected him more, but she was not. Sergeant Cribb would need to find something more remarkable than a dog bite before he convinced Harriet Shaw that she had seen a boatful of murderers.

At the landing stage a brown-skinned man with a peaked cap met them, took the picnic basket from Cribb and led them to where a skiff was tied up. Harriet's travelling case was already aboard. She had forgotten its existence in all the excitement at the police station and was astonished to see it lying in the boat behind the seat as if it belonged there. It did not require much in the way of deduction to establish how it had got there, but the planning in all this was beginning to impress her.

As the hamper was taken on board, the stern dipped an inch or two lower in the water. Thackeray deposited himself on the seat at the opposite end and restored equilibrium. Hardy was next aboard, taking the position of stroke. Then Cribb stepped down and handed Harriet to her seat while the boatman held the skiff steady with his boat hook.

She had not even put up the parasol when Cribb arrived without warning beside her on the seat, in such inescapable proximity that their hips touched. She gave a small squeak at the contact.

“I didn't mean to alarm you, miss. It's the last seat left on the boat. Shall we draw the rug over our knees, or will you be warm enough?”

“Quite warm enough, thank you.”

CHAPTER

9

Lunch overboard—Lockkeeper's lament—Three men in a boat

T
HE
DAY
WAS
PERFECT
for boating. The Thames stretched ahead like a blue silk ribbon dividing the counties. The skiff cruised through the current at a respectable rate, and if Thackeray's work with the sculls betrayed some inexperience, the splashes did not often carry as far as Harriet and Cribb. Constable Hardy, plainly a practised oarsman, rowed with his eyes fastened on Harriet, obliging her to take an unflagging interest in the scenery along the bank. Sergeant Cribb, who was supposed to be managing the rudder lines, was deep in
Three Men in a Boat,
a copy of which he had purchased in Henley. For a second reading it was providing extraordinary amusement.

The agreement was that they would row the mile or so to Marsh Lock and there take lunch. They tied up at one of the posts before the lock gates and Cribb put down his book and began distributing plates with hard-boiled eggs, which proved difficult to control with knife and fork. Two, at least, were lost overboard. The porkpie was more manageable, but the next course, a Dundee cake, by general consent was consigned to the water and sank like a stone. Thackeray commented that it was a wonder the boat had stayed afloat so long. As compensation a stone jar of beer was provided. Cribb made some remark about the rights of a person in custody and poured Harriet a half-pint glass. It was bitter, but it took away the aftertaste of the food.

While Thackeray settled in the bows for a nap and Hardy washed up, Cribb helped Harriet ashore and they approached somebody in shirt sleeves and a white cap who had for some time been eyeing them from a distance.

“Good day to you, lockkeeper,” said Cribb civilly, but with the air of a man who did not have to do his own rowing. “Capital for us, this weather, but busy work for you I dare say.”

“It's the job I'm paid to do, sir,” the lockkeeper answered. Something in his tone suggested he was not wholly contented in his work, but Cribb ignored it.

“Interesting occupation, I expect, meeting such a variety of people.”

“I get all sorts, it's true.” The lockkeeper looked Cribb up and down as if he were one of the more remarkable specimens.

“I was wondering whether you might remember a party coming through in a skiff like ours a day or so ago. Three men together.”

This hopeful inquiry elicited a frown.

“People I'd give something to meet,” Cribb explained, putting his hand in his pocket. “I heard they were somewhere along this stretch. Thought you might have seen 'em through your lock, one way or the other.”

Far from the hoped-for flash of recollection in the lockkeeper's eye, a disconcerting redness was appearing at the edges.

“Name of Harris, I suppose, with George and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, to say nothing of a dog. No, they haven't been through, not today, nor last week, nor the week before. They're people in a book and I spend the greater part of my time now telling folks they don't exist, no more than Oliver Twist nor Alice in blooming Wonderland. I'd like to meet Mr. Jerome and tell him all the trouble he's caused in my life. This was a tolerable job before that book of his appeared. I don't get ten minutes to myself now from one day to the next. It's doubled the traffic on the river. Doubled it. They come through here in their hundreds, half of 'em not knowing one end of a boat from the other, all decked up in their flannels and straw hats and asking for glasses of water and things I wouldn't care to mention in present company. I don't know what they think a lock house is. I shan't stand it much longer. My wife's threatening to leave. I can tell you, when she goes, so shall I, and they can go over the blooming weir to Henley for all I care.”

“I wasn't talking about the book,” said Cribb, keeping his copy tactfully out of sight behind his back. “I simply wanted to know if you remembered letting three men through your lock. The book has nothing to do with it.”

There was a pause while the lockkeeper considered whether such an unlikely claim could have an iota of truth in it. He looked along the river and said, “It's novices that cause the trouble. They read the book and before they've finished a couple of chapters they're down at Kingston hiring a skiff. They throw in a tent and some meat pies and away they go just like them three duffers in the book. If they survive the first night at Runnymede, they spend the second in the Crown at Marlow—them that can get in—and next morning they come through here looking for the backwater to Wargrave. ‘There shouldn't be a lock here,' they say. ‘What's this lock doing in our way? It isn't in the book.' ‘Yes it is,' I say. ‘Marsh Lock. Page 220.' The book is generally open on their knees, so they pick it up and frown into it and sure enough they find it mentioned. The reason why they never see it is that the backwater is mentioned
first,
even though it's half a mile upriver from here. And do you think they're grateful when I point it out? Not a bit of it. ‘Well, if we
must
go through the beastly lock,' they say, ‘you'd better get the gates open or we'll never make Shiplake before dark. When you've done that, be good enough to fetch us some fresh water while we're waiting. Rowing is devilish thirsty work.' ‘So is managing a blooming lock,' I tell 'em. ‘You get out and work the paddles for me, and I'll get you your blooming water.' That shuts 'em up.”

“I'm sure!” said Cribb. “But we haven't come to ask for water. Just tell me when you last had three men together through your lock.”

“With a dog,” added Harriet, and realized as she said it that Cribb had not mentioned this because it seemed too much like provocation. She wished she had drunk lemonade instead of beer.

“Three men and a dog,” said the lockkeeper slowly. “You're asking me, are you?”

“I am indeed,” confirmed Cribb, chinking the coins in his pocket to show good faith.

“Three men and a dog. Three men is quite common,” said the lockkeeper. “Dogs is not so common. Only your real fanaticals actually go so far as to take a dog along with 'em.”

“But it isn't unknown?”

“Last time were yesterday, towards teatime. Small white dog, it was, but don't ask me the breed. I don't know a bulldog from a beagle.”

“There were three men, though? Do you remember them?”

“I don't recall things that easy, sir.”

“Sixpence apiece?” offered Cribb.

“For a florin I might remember the name of the boat as well.”

“Done.”

“It were the
Lucrecia.
Neat little skiff built not above a year, I'd say. The wood were light in colour, without many varnishings. Fine set of cushions, too, dark red plush.”

“And the men?”

“You do have that florin with you?”

The exchange took place.

“I reckon the one at stroke weighed all of fifteen stone. Bearded he was, and red-faced. Turned fifty, I'd say, but able to pull a powerful oar just the same. His hair was sandy-coloured and he had bright yellow braces. He were talking plenty, and it didn't seem to matter that the others wasn't listening. The voice matched his build. He'd have passed for a Viking, that one would, if he'd worn a helmet on his head instead of a boater. Sitting at bow was a smaller man. A queer sight they made rowing that skiff. He was dark-complexioned, the small fellow, Jewish if I can spot 'em, and with arms that barely reached the oars. I don't know what difference he was making to the movement of the boat, but he couldn't have got up much of a sweat—begging your pardon, young lady—for he was still wearing his blazer. Oh, and he had pebble glasses so thick you could hardly see his eyes behind 'em.”

“You've earned your florin already,” said Cribb. “Do you remember as much about the third man?”

“Most of all, because he was the one that spoke to me as I worked the gates for 'em. A rum cove he was, that one. He didn't talk natural at all. He might have been standing at a pulpit instead of sitting in a boat. ‘Be good enough to explain, lockkeeper,' he said, ‘why this lock does not appear in our itinerary, which we faithfully compiled from Mr. Jerome K. Jerome's celebrated work.' I gave him my usual answer and the little man at bow turned up page 220 and squinted at it. ‘He's right,' he says. ‘It's here in the book.
We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It is a short cut, leading out of the right-hand bank about half a mile above Marsh Lock.
' ‘That,' says the other, ‘is of no consequence. It is merely a retrospective reference. If there
is
a lock here as there appears incontrovertibly to be, then Jerome ought to have mentioned its existence at the appropriate point in the book. The omission is inexcusable.' ”