Swing, Swing Together

CHAPTER 26

As the oldest of Oxford’s colleges, Merton had suffered from the improving zeal of twenty generations of architects. The buildings surrounding its four quadrangles presented an agglomeration of styles that had managed to conserve a sense of dignity until an early Victorian named Blore rede-signed the main gate and the street front, and the notorious Butterfield eclipsed that with his grotesque block at the corner of Merton Grove. Happily, the chapel, conceived on the scale of a cathedral, dominated everything. The choir, dating from the thirteenth century, was in the Decorated style; the tower was Perpendicular. The rough stone on the west wall showed the intended outline of the nave, which had never been built.

So it was in the choir that Harriet sat with Melanie Bonner-Hill for Morning Service. The term not having started, the congregation was sparse. Across the aisle in the front pew was a white-haired, bearded man Mrs. Bonner-Hill pointed out as the Warden. Behind him, at a higher level, were three others-“The Fellows,” she explained in a whisper. “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.”

“Which one is Mr. Fernandez?” Harriet inquired.

“The third one in, with the glossy hair and moustache.”

Once they had overcome the first awkwardness of their situation, Harriet and Melanie had found no difficulty in making conversation. By the end of dinner the evening before in their hotel, the colour had returned to the widow’s cheeks and Harriet had felt herself buoyed up by the company of one of her own sex. Three days afloat with policemen had been more of an ordeal than she ever would have supposed. It had been a tonic to talk of nothing else but the theatre and Miss Terry’s gowns and Mrs. Langtry’s conquests. By the time the crepes suzette arrived, Harriet had quite forgotten Sergeant Cribb; she had almost forgotten Constable Hardy. And Melanie Bonner-Hill, judging by the sparkle of her conversation, had forgotten she was a widow.

Sunday morning breakfast had been more subdued, but the friendship had blossomed when Melanie had asked Harriet to accompany her to Merton Chapel for Matins. “The Warden invited me yesterday, out of respect for Harry, I presume. It’s an honour, I’m sure, but I’m dreading it, the one woman among all those men. Would you come with me? I’m sure the Warden wouldn’t mind, and it would be such a support. I can point out all the notables, Harriet. Oh, they’re a dreadfully dull old lot! You’ll see exactly what I mean.”

Certainly the Chaplain fitted the description. His voice was pitched on a monotone. When he introduced a note of topicality to the proceedings by prefacing the Collect of the Day with, “In this we also commend the spirit of our brother, Bonner-Hill, so tragically taken from us only yesterday,” the words passed generally unnoticed. So, happily, did the text of his sermon: “Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink.”

When it was over and they stepped into the sunshine of Mob Quad, a group was waiting to offer its condolences to Melanie. The Warden quite properly made the first approach. Harriet used the opportunity to take two steps backwards-two steps which took her within a yard of Mr. Fernandez. As she had hoped, he needed no bidding to start a conversation. Lifting his top hat, he asked, “Are you also from the theatre, ma’am?”

She turned to face him, and found the interest in his expression flattering, so flattering that she was quite relieved to notice that there was something just a little invidious in his smile. “I am afraid not. I happen to be staying at the same hotel as Mrs. Bonner-Hill. I am a visitor to Oxford.”

“How kind of you, in that case, to have escorted the poor lady to chapel.”

“Not at all, sir. I could not do less. You are a colleague of her late husband’s, I expect?”

“Yes indeed. Knew him well. Better than, er, never mind. And what have you seen of Oxford on your visit?”

The river and the mortuary, Harriet wryly thought, but answered, “Very little, sir. The college barges are beautiful. Like wedding cakes.”

“So they are, my dear, so they are. A pretty notion. I didn’t catch your name …”

“Harriet Shaw. I am a student teacher. My college is farther down the river, the other side of Henley.”

“A teacher. And what do you propose to teach?”

She smiled. “ ‘Who’ would be a better question. I am training to teach in elementary school, so I have to get a grounding in all the subjects.”

“Quite properly.” Fernandez nodded with high seriousness. “But I expect you favour one subject more than the others.”

“Geography is my favourite, Mr….?”

“I do apologize. John Fernandez. Geography! That really is remarkable. I am a modern historian myself, but geography is my secret passion. I tell you, if it were ever recognized in Oxford as a subject worthy of proper study, I should abandon history overnight. I say, wouldn’t it be grand to-”

Whatever Fernandez might have suggested was cut short by a tall, nervous man on his left. “The Warden’s moving, Fernandez. Are you going to speak next, or shall I?”

“Very well.” Fernandez doffed his hat to Harriet and moved to Melanie’s side.

The tall man inclined his head to confer with Harriet. “Flescher, ma’am. Principal of Postmasters. I wouldn’t take Jack Fernandez too seriously, if you’ll accept a word of advice.”

“It wasn’t a serious conversation.”

“That’s all right, then. We understand him in Merton, but we make allowances, you see.”

“I’m not sure whether I do.”

“It doesn’t matter, then. Ah, Mrs. Bonner-Hill is free.” Melanie was, but John Fernandez was not. Another of the Fellows was in solemn conversation with him and they were walking slowly away across the quad.

“Aren’t they quaint?” Melanie said when she had received all their condolences and she had started back along Merton Street with Harriet. “I was near to giggling at one point. I suddenly thought of the Vice-Chancellor’s Ball last year-it was exactly the same ritual as they lined up to write their names on my card. I was terribly tempted to say to Mr. Flescher-he’s the thin one who came last-that all I had left was the polka. Is that very wicked? He was so flustered anyway that I don’t think he would have noticed. Harry used to call him Goose-Flescher. Poor Harry-he was so scornful of them when I first knew him. The idea of becoming like them was unthinkable. I am afraid they must have worn him down in the last months. Murder is an unnecessary end, but to be murdered because you got up early to go fishing is absurd, don’t you agree?”

“If you put it like that, yes.” Actually, Melanie had put it like that once or twice the night before as well. The circumstances of her husband’s death seemed to distress her more than the fact. Yet the circumstances were important. The absence of sentiment in what she said made Harriet blink at times, but the sharpness of the observations was helping her question certain assumptions concerning Bonner-Hill’s death. “Didn’t he have any interest in fishing when you were married?”

A ripple of laughter came from under the black veil. “My dear, we had other ways to occupy ourselves. We didn’t get up till noon. I’m used to theatre hours, you see. I never retire until after midnight. No, he only started his fishing after I left him and he went back to Merton.”

“Do they all go in for fishing?”

“Heavens, no! Only Fernandez, and he’s been an enthusiast for years. I despise the man for reasons we needn’t go into, but I am bound to admit that he was the only possible companion for Harry in the College. Just think of the rest! If Harry was to have a friend in Merton, he had to affect an interest in fish. Isn’t it monstrous?”

“I suppose if he were without a friend …”

“My dear, I wouldn’t have blamed him for going after other women. But fish!” Melanie pulled a face. “I thought he was doing it to humour Fernandez until they told me he was out alone yesterday morning. I couldn’t believe it!”

Harriet was beginning to pity Harry herself. “A lot of men go in for angling, Melanie. I noticed scores as we rowed up from Henley. It doesn’t seem to have prevented Mr. Fernandez from taking an interest in other things. He spoke to me this morning-”

“Oh, did he? I noticed him standing conspicuously near. He wasn’t unpleasant, I hope?”

“On the contrary, he-”

“Don’t be taken in by his honeyed phrases, my dear. The man is dangerous. He has no more concern for women as individuals than he has for fish. If he hooks you, the best you can hope for is that he’ll throw you back. Did he try to arrange-”

“Nothing was arranged,” Harriet quickly answered. Here, she sensed, was a threat to the friendship she had kindled with Melanie. For whatever the odium was that surrounded John Fernandez, she was determined not to ignore the interest he had shown in her. Not from girlish notions of romance, but because she had been drawn into the investigation of the river murders. There still gnawed at her conscience the knowledge that Bonner-Hill need not have been killed if she had identified the three men in the boat in time. Sergeant Cribb had them prisoner now, but there remained the question of a motive, and without that he could not provide a case for a prosecution. Cribb had not speculated much on the case, but Harriet had heard him build one theory only to knock it down again. The murder of the tramp, he had postulated, could have been a rehearsal for the murder of Bonner-Hill, a testing of the method. The theory had foundered on the fact that no one but Fernandez could have known Bonner-Hill was going out that Saturday morning. And Fernandez could not be implicated because he had been nursing his sore throat in Merton College.

Harriet had accepted all this, accepted that the murders must have been done on a whim, without motive. Then Melanie’s statement had transformed her thinking. “To be murdered because you got up early to go fishing is absurd.”

Of course it was absurd!

Nobody could have anticipated that Bonner-Hill would go fishing alone. The whim was not the murderers’, but his. The intended victim had been John Fernandez.