Swing, Swing Together

CHAPTER 17

Harriet was surprised on waking to find it as late as ten past seven. Cribb had warned her before retiring that an early start was essential in the morning to catch up with Humberstone and his companions at Culham. He had learned from the landlord that a steam launch left Clifton Hampden at 7:15 a.m. for the convenience of people from the village employed in Oxford. And already it was 7:10. Nobody had called her. A disquieting thought darted into her mind: having dispatched Hardy to Henley last night, had Cribb abandoned her this morning? She flung aside the bedclothes, ran to the curtains and swept them apart. There was no sign of Cribb, nor a steam launch. There was no sign of anything. A dense river mist hung in the air.

So it happened shortly after eight o’clock that Cribb, Thackeray and Harriet took to the water not in a steam launch, but an ancient skiff with broken rowlocks, the only vessel anyone would commit to their use in such conditions.

“Visibility’s improving every minute,” Cribb said with conviction. “This is probably quite local. It’ll be perfectly clear before we get to Culham. Steer us close to the bank, Miss Shaw, and we’ll know exactly where we are.”

Harriet clung grimly to the tiller ropes, sensing that an emergency which brought Cribb to the oars called for exceptional efforts on everyone’s part, but steering was hardly the word for the small influence she had on the direction of the boat. Twice in the first minute they went too close to the bank and the oars struck solid ground. Soon after, they found themselves somewhere in midstream without anything to steer by except the flow of the current.

“No matter,” Cribb encouragingly said. “Somewhere ahead is Clifton Lock. We need to move across for that. If we stayed on the Berkshire side, we’d find ourselves running into the weir.”

Five minutes after, his confidence was noticeably on the wane. “No need to be quite so energetic with the oars, Thackeray. This ain’t the boat race, you know.” He had got to the point shortly afterwards of saying, “This is madness-” when the prow struck something solid and the rowers were pitched off their seats. They had found the lock gate.

They had to disembark to rouse the lockkeeper, and then endure a torrent of abuse about lunatics who put to the water in conditions like that, until Cribb coolly reminded the fellow that he was a public servant and it was no business of his to question the sanity of people considerate enough to keep him in employment. As if to reinforce the point, the mist miraculously lifted as the gates parted to let them out of the lock. In sunshine they got down to the serious business of rowing to Culham in the shortest time they could.

It was after nine when they went through Culham Lock. The keeper there was agreeably civil, but he had discouraging news. There had not been a suspicion of mist at Culham that morning. He was not surprised to hear about the mist at Clifton Hampden. It was quite usual in September for pockets of the stuff to hamper navigation along the river for an hour or so in the mornings. His lock had been open since six. Yes, three men answering Cribb’s description had gone through shortly before he had closed the night before. They had asked the way to the backwater at the end of Culham Cut, where they had proposed passing the night.

Cribb decided not to explore the backwater, assuming instead that the three had already left for Oxford. They would be able to confirm this at the next lock, which was Abingdon.

“Will you arrest them when we catch up with them?” Thackeray inquired.

“I want Miss Shaw to identify ’em first,” said Cribb.

This, they discovered at Abingdon, was likely to take longer than they had earlier supposed. The three had been the first through the lock that morning, at seven o’clock. They could well be in Oxford already.

It was a party exercised in more ways than one that covered the last miles to Oxford, learning at each lock how far behind the Lucrecia they were. The suspects seemed not to have stopped even once along the way. As the distance from Culham to Oxford was nine miles, and none of them had looked like athletes, the question arose whether the quarry had been alerted to the chase. Nobody said a word, but Cribb’s face became increasingly pink with the exertion of rowing at a rate he obdurately refused to slacken. It made fretful the business of waiting in locks for other craft to enter before the gates were closed, but it compelled him to take rests. While Thackeray put his head between his knees like a beaten blue, Cribb paddled the boat as close as possible to the upriver gates and stood with hands impatiently on hips watching the slow ascent as the water coursed in.

Beyond Iffley Lock the tangle of currents formed by the confluence of the Thames and Cherwell sapped what remained of Cribb’s strength. He dismally acknowledged that they might as well ship oars and tow the skiff from the path. Thackeray was deputed to take the first turn.

“We’ll follow the main stream,” Cribb instructed. “They could have gone up a backwater if they wanted to, I know, but Jerome seems to have kept to the Thames, so I don’t propose to waste time looking anywhere else unless I’m persuaded otherwise.”

Harriet thought she divined a note of desperation in this. It was confirmed when Cribb tetchily ordered her to stop admiring the college barges moored beside Christ Church Meadow and look for the Lucrecia. “You’re not on a pleasure cruise, you know.”

“I’m well aware of that,” she answered, ready to take him on. “Has it not occurred to you that they might as well have left their boat on that side as this? Not everyone is obliged to use the towing path.”

Cribb was either too surprised or too tired to reply.

At Folly Bridge, he shouted to Thackeray to halt so that they could make inquiries at the boatyard. The facetious remarks they had got from just about every lockkeeper along the river when putting their question about three men in a boat had caused Cribb to modify it a little. “Do you happen to have seen a double-sculled skiff with three passengers aboard and a fox terrier?” he asked.

He could have saved his breath. “Only on my bookshelf at home,” said the boatman with a grin.

“Could they have passed here earlier without you noticing?”

“Why not? I only started work at ten this morning, didn’t I?”

They decided to go on as far as Osney Lock, in hope of finding the Lucrecia moored beside the bank. Cribb took the towrope and hauled them slowly past the gasworks and under the railway bridge. The best of Oxford is not to be seen from the Thames.

Shortly after the bridge, the river divides. A backwater leads away through fields to the left.

“Moses!” said Thackeray. “What’s going on over there?”

A cluster of people had formed round a spot on the towpath, not unlike the crowd round a pavement artist, except that they were standing on gravel. A figure was on his knees working at something, even so. Too many on the outskirts were moving about, trying for a better view, for anything more to be made out from the river.

Cribb signalled to Thackeray to take charge of the boat and went to see what was happening. “Is something wrong, do you think?” asked Harriet.

“Let’s go and see, miss.” Thackeray steered the boat into the backwater and moored it. They went ashore and approached the cause of all the interest.

The kneeling man was still at work. He was moving the arms rhythmically on and off the chest of a motionless man, stretched on his back on the path. Somebody else was gripping the ankles.

“Resuscitation?” asked Cribb, who had forced his way to the front.

“Yes, mate,” someone replied. “It’s doing no good. They’ve been at this for twenty minutes. Poor blighter’s dead as mutton.”