Swing, Swing Together

CHAPTER 22

A rowing boat drifted slowly with the current, the oarsman holding his blades clear of the water as his passenger, Constable Thackeray, trained a pair of binoculars on four small squares of light, the windows of a houseboat just distinguishable against the dark mass of Christ Church Meadow. The sun had set more than an hour before. The sky was overcast and the river had the solid look of tar macadam.

“Are you sure?” Thackeray asked, putting down the binoculars.

“Sure as a dose of salts,” affirmed his companion, a small rotund person of the type generally found where there are boats and water. Through the darkness his cheeks gleamed like the last two apples in a barrel. He had walked into Oxford Police Station at half-past eight. Hearing his story, the desk sergeant had brought him in to Thackeray, in charge of the search during Cribb’s absence at the mortuary.

It had been difficult to tell whether he genuinely had information. Searches on the scale of this one could be relied upon to excite certain members of the public into concocting totally spurious accounts of things they thought the police would like to hear. Cribb’s way of testing his informants was to put a few sharp questions to them. Thackeray, not equal to that, had muttered imprecations of appalling violence instead. “Honest to God I saw them,” the boatman had insisted. “One like a blooming great bear, one small cove with a large head and thick glasses and a thin one with glasses. And a dog.”

The dog had settled it. Thackeray had swiftly formed a posse of six regular constables and two specials and marched them down St. Aldate’s to Folly Bridge, where they had commandeered two skiffs. With the boatman showing the way in his rowing boat and the skiffs respectfully astern, this small flotilla had moved downstream past the spectral college barges until they had drawn level with the houseboat.

Everyone now waited in midstream for Thackeray’s signal. He held the glasses to his eyes again. If this proved to be a mistake, if the occupant of the houseboat turned out to be some Oxford worthy preparing to retire for the night, it would not be easy explaining what nine constables were doing aboard his floating home. It would not be easy explaining it to the constables. Or Cribb.

“I can’t hear the dog,” he said, wanting reassurance.

“It wouldn’t bark all the time, guv.”

“I can’t see anything through the window either.”

“It was a dog, not a blooming horse,” said the boatman.

When he had reached the inescapable conclusion that there was nothing to be salvaged from the adventure by giving up at this stage, Thackeray told the boatman to move alongside the houseboat. As they approached, he was able to see that it was actually a barge some thirty feet in length, with a broad deck on which the “house” was constructed, in fact a diminutive version of the Ark, except that the roof was flat, forming an upper deck with a wrought-iron balustrade around it.

The strains of a concertina from within the boat lifted Thackeray’s confidence as they came alongside. If there was music, the chance was good that more than one person was aboard. The spectre of the irate houseboat owner in his nightshirt ceased troubling him.

Standing in the rowing boat, Thackeray was unable to see through the lighted windows, which was a pity, because there was nothing for it now but to interrupt whatever was going on inside. He signalled to the waiting constables to approach, and then he clambered aboard with ponderous care. With good fortune the concertina would drown any sounds he made on the deck. He could do without Towser announcing his arrival.

The door of the cabin was ahead of him, ornately gilt-panelled. To its right a set of iron stairs painted white led to the upper deck. On an impulse he climbed them and stood aloft, beckoning to his support party to come aboard. With five hefty constables posted at the cabin door, he crouched and passed his hands speculatively over the surface of the deck.

In a moment he located a metal ring about four inches in diameter, inset level with the deck. By stroking his fingertips outwards from the ring, he traced the outline of a trapdoor to the room below.

He sat back on his haunches and rubbed the side of his beard, mentally invoking all the benign influences that ever favoured policemen. He drew a long breath and pulled up the trapdoor.

His first sensation was of dazzling light. Cigar smoke was billowing from the hatchway. The smoke thinned, his eyes adjusted to the light and he looked into the amazed and upturned face of a blonde woman in a black corset standing motionless on a red carpet. To state that she was motionless is not quite accurate, for parts of her were quivering, but all conscious movement had stopped, as if she were petrified by the interruption. The position of her arms suggested she had been performing a dance-and out of sight the concertina continued playing-but what kind of dance was performed in stays Thackeray did not know.

If it were not for the cigar smoke, he would have muttered an apology, put down the hatch, called off his constables and disappeared into the night. The way young women amused themselves on houseboats was no part of his present inquiry. The smoke reminded him that although the prospect through the hatch was enough to occupy one pair of eyes, there were parts of the cabin obscured from view.

The concertina stopped. “What is it?” asked a man’s voice.

The dancer unfroze sufficiently to point above her head and whisper, “Look!”

A suggestion that could only be helpful, Thackeray decided. Anyone curious enough to take it up would be obliged to stand where they could be seen. It saved him risking an accident by dipping his head and shoulders through the hatchway.

Yet the accident nearly happened when he lurched forward in surprise as two more young women appeared in view, one, like the first, in a corset, white in colour with purple trimmings, the other pulling on a silk gown with such unconcern that it was starkly clear she, at least, could not be faulted for wearing stays.

“Lawks! It’s another fellow dropping in on us,” said the one in the gown.

“Well, give him a hand, Meg. He can’t be worse than mine,” said the other. As she tossed back her head to laugh at her own wit, fumes of gin wafted upwards.

“Permit me to see for myself,” said a voice, a thin, clinical voice that Thackeray recognized. The three women were hustled aside by Mr. Lucifer. He was wrapped in a gown like Meg’s. “What the devil …? It’s that blighter with the beard we saw in the Barley Mow.”

“Follows you around, does he?” said one of the women. “A regular peeping Tom! Have you had your eyeful, darling?”

Insults could not touch Edward Thackeray. He was enjoying one of the grander moments of his police career. Almost single-handed, he had caught the three most wanted men in Oxfordshire.

He did not have long to savour it. Without a word, Humberstone, the biggest of the three, arrived beneath the hatch, reached up, caught Thackeray by the collar and jerked him headfirst into the cabin.

His shoulder hit the carpet and saved him from concussion, but his body crashed painfully through a small table. He lay among the splintered wood in an enclosure of legs without a skirt or trouser among them. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking.

He propped himself up on an elbow. Nothing was going to deflect him from his proper duty. “Gentlemen, I am a police officer. A warrant has been issued for your arrest and I am here to take you into custody.” He fainted.