Peter Lovesey - Swing, Swing Together

“You seem to presume that you have the right to order my actions.”

“I do, miss, up to a point.”

“Take care what you say, Constable.”

“I shall,” said Hardy.

“I intend to speak to Sergeant Cribb about you. I shall tell him that you threatened me with physical violence.”

“And I shall tell him what you were proposin’ to do, miss.” “It was nothing criminal. I have the right to accept a perfectly proper invitation from a gentleman, do I not?”

“Not while I’m responsible for you,” said Hardy.

“You are not my chaperone.”

Here Thackeray judged it right to intervene. “It was for your own good, miss. I don’t think those two are quite what they may appear.”

“Neither are you, come to that,” said Harriet, glancing contemptuously at his ill-fitting flannels. “But at least they know how to speak to a lady.”

No more was said until Culham. Having had the last word, Harriet should have felt better for the exchange, but Hardy’s inexcusable behaviour still rankled. If he had not taunted her into waving to Mr. Bustard, the incident need not have happened.

They managed to agree on one thing by the time they reached Culham: they needed a meal. At the ticket barrier Hardy asked if tea was served anywhere locally. “I can think of three places,” said the ticket collector after some reflection. “The first is in Culham, but that’s closed down. The second I wouldn’t recommend, and the third is the Railway Hotel across the road.”

It was an attenuated meal, owing partly to Thackeray’s repeated requests for more tea cakes and partly to a general understanding that it would not be prudent to get to Clifton Hampden before Sergeant Cribb. There was not much conversation, but Hardy did find the good grace to congratulate Harriet on pouring a perfect cup of tea, an observation she acknowledged with a nod. It would want more than that to reinstate him.

Towards six o’clock the waitress signalled that tea was officially over by laying the tables for dinner in a good imitation of a rifle volley. After a short consultation, Hardy approached her and asked for the bill. “You serve a good dinner too, by the looks of it,” he told her, indicating a table spread with various kinds of cold meat. “That large sausage at the back-is that the sort they call a polony?”

“I couldn’t tell you, sir. Germans is what we call them in the kitchen.”

“Do you have another one like it? I’d like to take one with me.”

“You’ll have to ask the waiter, sir. Germans are supposed to be for cold dinner, you see.”

“Is he available, then?”

“Just coming across the road from the station, sir. He comes on at six.”

It was the ticket collector. He had exchanged his railway livery for a black tie and tails. “Can I be of assistance, sir?”

“Yes,” said Hardy. “That-er-German on the table-”

“The polony, sir?”

“Polony. I’d like to buy it, or another like it.”

So when the party started along the road to Clifton Hampden, Hardy’s polony, wrapped in cheesecloth, perched on Harriet’s travelling case.

“That was a good thought,” Thackeray remarked. “You never know when you might need something to eat.”

“Oh, it’s not for eatin’,” said Hardy. “I’ve got something else in mind for this.”

The sunlight of early evening on the brickwork of the village produced a roseate glow of the intensity only a pavement artist would dare reproduce. The church stood high in the background and the river was to the right. When they were midway across the narrow, six-arched bridge to the Berkshire bank, Hardy asked Thackeray to put down the case, and drew him into a bay. He pointed to a moored skiff with the hoops up and the covers gathered along the top. As they moved on, they were able to see the name Lucrecia on the side. When they drew level, a dog barked twice. Smiles were exchanged. They had saved themselves fourteen miles of rowing.

The Barley Mow lay ahead, a timbered structure of genuine antiquity with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof.

“Before we go in,” said Hardy, “I don’t think Cribb will thank us if we walk straight up to him and say, ‘Here we are, Sarge.’ ”

“Which of us do you suppose would be so stupid as to do that?” Thackeray asked. He was still frowning as they entered and took their places at a corner table.

Cribb was sitting in an armchair facing the door, staring into his beer with the preoccupied air of an angler waiting for a strike. The only others present were three seated round a table against the window adjacent to the door. Without question they were the crew of the Lucrecia, a bearded man of Viking proportions telling a story in painstaking detail to his not too attentive companions, a short, squat man with glasses so thick that all you could see from the side was concentric rings, and another in a pinstripe suit, hunched over a glass of sherbet.

Hardy dipped his head under the beams to cross the floor to the bar, through a doorway opposite. Thackeray escorted Harriet to a table screened from the other group by a short projecting wall, but still visible to Cribb.

The narrative in the corner finished as Hardy ordered his two beers and a cider, so his conversation with the landlord was heard by everyone in the room.

“Come by the river, have you, sir?”

“Over the bridge, actually. The village is charmin’ from the river, but we wanted to see it at close quarters.”

“I hope it didn’t disappoint you.”

“Quite the reverse. It’s as pretty a spot as any of us have seen. We’d like to stay the night. Do you have three rooms-or a single and a double?”

“Whichever you like. Have you got luggage?”

“One case only. It’s all in one for ease of travellin’. We’ll take three single rooms, then.”

“Two, three and four,” said the landlord. “The gentleman in the parlour is in number one. The party in the corner are going on to Culham. They’re following the route of the-”

“Don’t tell me -Three Men in a Boat! ” said Hardy, loudly enough to be heard at the end of the room.

The Viking turned in his chair. The others also moved their heads for a better view, and a low shaft of sunlight flashed on two pairs of spectacles. At the other table, Harriet’s hand caught Thackeray’s and held it.

“Did somebody make a reference to the celebrated book by Mr. Jerome K. Jerome?” asked the man in pinstripes. As he spoke, his top lip rolled upwards to reveal a row of large, uneven teeth.

“Merely a quip,” said Hardy, appearing with his tray of drinks. “ Three Men in a Boat. D’you see?”

If the man in pinstripes did see, he was not amused. “Are you familiar with the work, then?”

“I’ve heard of it, of course,” said Hardy, “but I wouldn’t pretend to have read it.”

“Just as well, sir,” commented the landlord, following him in to pursue the conversation. “These gentlemen know it better than a bishop knows his Bible. What does Mr. Jerome say about the Barley Mow, gentlemen?”

“Come, come. That’s no test at all,” said the large man. “It is well known that some of the book was written in this very house last summer. I’m sure you like to hear it repeated, Landlord, but anyone with the slightest knowledge of Three Men in a Boat must remember the complimentary things Jerome says about your inn. If you want to put our knowledge to the test, do us the credit of devising a more difficult question than that.”

The landlord coloured and found something needing attention in the taproom.