Swing, Swing Together

CHAPTER 37

The cab journey was shorter than Cribb or Thackeray expected. Instead of heading south along the Abingdon Road, the driver turned right at the police station and took them up Queen Street, New Road and Parkend Street, to halt outside the railway station.

“What’s the game?” Cribb called up to the cabman. “Clifton Lock, I said, not Oxford bloody Station!”

“Aye, chum, and you said you wanted to get there quick. It’ll take me an hour on them roads, whippin’ my horse into a lather. If you get out now, you’ve got two minutes to buy your tickets for the two forty-five, and that’ll get you to Culham inside fifteen minutes. From there you can walk to Clifton quicker than I can drive you, easy.”

A cabman so selfless as to sacrifice a good fare to the Great Western Railway had to be believed. Cribb gave Thackeray a prod, planted a shilling in the cabman’s proffered palm and led the way across the station yard to the booking office.

Just as promised, they handed in their tickets at Culham as the clock at Clifton faintly chimed the hour. The ticket collector who doubled as headwaiter was on duty.

“Can we get a cab from here to Clifton Hampden?” Cribb asked.

“It’s only a mile.”

“I know that. We want to ride.”

“No cabs here, sir.” The ticket collector paused, letting the bad news sink in. “I might be able to arrange something if you could wait ten minutes. They serve a nice cup of tea in the Railway Hotel across the road.”

So that was it. “There’s a shilling in it for you if you can get a cab here in the next five minutes,” Cribb recklessly promised. Eyebrows would be raised at Scotland Yard when his statement of expenses went in, but somewhere below Culham Cut was a steamer with two murderers aboard. If it reached Clifton Lock before he did, there was no chance of boarding it before Day’s, three miles downriver.

The ticket collector squinted at the station clock and came to a decision. “Might be able to fit it in before the three thirty-five,” he said. “Wait here a moment.” He closed the ticket barrier and moved at a trot out of sight behind the station building. In three minutes he reappeared on the box of an open cart hauled by an ancient white horse. “I’ll take you myself on the station wagon for half a crown,” he called.

“At least somebody’s got a head for business in these parts,” Cribb commented as he arranged a sack to furnish some sort of upholstery at the back of the cart. They turned out of the station approach and bowled quite briskly along the Clifton Road.

Near Clifton Hampden the courses of road and river approach each other. Cribb stood up in the cart hoping to be reassured by the sight of a funnel across the quarter of a mile or so of flat fields.

“Some of them paddlers go at no end of a lick,” Thackeray cheerlessly remarked. “Can you see anything, Sarge?”

Cribb waited at least two minutes before replying. “There she is. We’ve done it!”

At that the ticket collector pulled on the reins. The wagon stopped. “That’ll be half a crown as estimated, sir.”

“This isn’t Clifton Hampden. We’re not there yet,” protested Cribb.

“Clifton Lock, you said. Lock’s across the fields. If you want to catch that steamer, you’d best be footing it over the plough. I could take you on to Clifton if you like, but you’d still have to walk back to the lock from there. I can’t drive my wagon along the towing path.”

So for the second time that afternoon Cribb was forced to concede to local knowledge. Poorer by half a crown and muttering unspeakable things about cabmen professional and amateur, he clambered over a gate and his boots sank to the laces in freshly ploughed earth.

“You’ll always be welcome at the Railway Hotel, gentlemen,” called the ticket collector as he turned the cart.

After three minutes of hard footwork and blasphemy, Thackeray, too, sighted the steamer’s funnel. It was within fifty yards of what had to be the lockkeeper’s house, because it was the only building in view. “Sarge, we’re not going to get there in time,” he breathlessly told Cribb’s obdurate back.

“We will if the lock’s against them,” answered Cribb without turning his head.

By degrees the river itself flashed its presence and they saw the steamer slowing at the approach to the lock. Smaller than the pleasure steamers on London’s water, it had the spruced-up look the steamboat companies annually applied with a coat of white paint on the paddle box, life belts and funnel. The rest was brown in colour and had not been touched for years. Behind the funnel, under a faded green and white striped awning, a dozen or so passengers sat facing each other on what the company would have called the saloon deck, sited above the main cabin. At the level of the main deck a cluster of passengers had gathered at the fore end of the boat to watch the operation of the lock. On the aft deck a couple stood alone, leaning on the rail, studying the water or the river traffic behind. They could not have noticed the panting representatives of Scotland Yard who tottered aboard seconds before the paddles began to power the boat out of the lock, towards Clifton Hampden Bridge.

The captain could not have been more delighted if one of the royal family had patronized his trip. “Detectives, are you? By Jesus, it’s a famous day for the Iffley Queen. Will this be in The Times? We were in the Berkshire Post when Henry rammed Wallingford Bridge last summer, but I’ve had nothing so grand as this. Have you got handcuffs or would you like a length of rope?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” answered Cribb. “I’d like to take a look at the couple first. Should we go on to the top deck?”

“I can show you something more interesting from the saloon,” offered the captain. He beckoned to a deckhand. “Take the wheel, Henry. Centre arch, mind. Hold her steady and you shouldn’t go wrong.” He opened the door of the main cabin of the boat, a carpeted room with seats and windows on either side and at the farther end. “Very cozy on a cold day,” he said. “We sell more beer on the bad days. If you ever thought of bringing your detective department on a day’s excursion, you could do worse than this. You can have a minstrel band for five pounds extra.” He threaded a passage round bentwood chairs and tables to the windows at the end. “What do you say to that, then?” he said, pointing through the glass.

The saloon was sited some four feet lower than the aft deck, which was level with the windows. All that could be seen of the couple who had behaved with such unwonted incivility were their lower halves, the man’s white flannels and his partner’s navy blue serge skirt. “You’ve missed it,” said the captain. “You need a sharp eye. It’s a favourite game with the fast lads, coming down here and looking along the deck for a glimpse of a well-turned ankle. Keep looking. You’ll see something in a moment.”

Thackeray was as partial as anyone to a pretty ankle, but he had not traversed a ploughed field to indulge in this sort of thing. “Sarge, if we want to identify these people, shouldn’t we go upstairs, where we can see them properly?”

“There you are!” said the captain. “How about that?”

“Bless my soul!” said Thackeray.

The wearer of the skirt had changed position, leaning far enough forward to reveal not a shapely calf, not the trimming of a petticoat, but the ends of a pair of white trousers and a very unfeminine pair of boots.

“That’s good enough for me,” said Cribb. “I’m obliged to you, Captain.” He returned upstairs and made his way between the files of interested passengers on the upper deck and down the steps at the end.

The couple turned at the sound of his approach.

“James Hackett,” he said, “I am a police officer, Detective Sergeant Cribb of Scotland Yard. I have reason to believe that the person with you is a man by the name of Percy Bustard. I should like to put some questions to you both in connection with the death of Henry Bonner-Hill.”

“And may the Lord have mercy on our souls,” intoned Jim Hackett.

“It’s all up, then,” said Bustard, pulling off the beret toque which, with the rest of his boating costume, had contrived to make him quite a passable female. “How the devil did you cop us?”

“I reasoned that Jim Hackett was the Persian Gulf and you were the Gulf of Bothnia,” Cribb unhelpfully replied. “What are you doing now, man?”

“Unbuttoning the bodice. You’ve no idea how hot it is in this dress. I’m fully clothed underneath.”

“I know that,” said Cribb, “but they don’t.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the saloon deck. A dozen faces paraded expressions suggesting everything from open lechery to apoplectic shock. “Lord knows what they’re liable to do. Come below and you can take off your dress in private. I want no scenes aboard this boat.”

He might have saved his breath. Not on Bustard’s account, but his companion’s. It was Jim Hackett who chose that moment to shout “Jesus saves!”-and leap over the rail into the river.

“Blasted clown!” said Cribb. “One of us will have to go ashore and pick him up when he reaches the bank. Thackeray, you’d better warn the man at the wheel.”

“I wouldn’t bother with that,” said Bustard.

“Why not?”

“Jim Hackett can’t swim a stroke.”

“Lord help us!” said Cribb. “Take off your boots, Thackeray, and get in after him. Two drownings in a week is quite enough for me.”