Peter Lovesey - Swing, Swing Together

“Did he mention his plan to go out fishing this morning?” “He did. I had to tell him I wouldn’t be joining him. My laryngitis put it out of the question.”

“Of course. Did anyone else in Merton know he would be going out alone? Did he mention it at dinner?”

“I told you,” Fernandez said. “It was after dinner that we spoke.”

“To your knowledge, had he ever been out before on his own looking for that pike?”

“To my knowledge, no.”

“Well, there’s a curious thing,” said Cribb. “The first time the poor man decides to do a bit of fishing on his own, he gets murdered. The only other person in Oxford who knows he is going out alone is yourself, but you’re confined to your rooms with laryngitis. It looks as though this murder wasn’t planned at all. Whoever killed Mr. Bonner-Hill might as well have put an end to anybody else unfortunate enough to have been about at that particular time. A tramp. A university don. It’s all the same. This is murder for the sake of killing. I’ve come across some nasty things in my time, Mr. Fernandez, but this really makes me shudder.”

The search for the three wanted men, Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer, was given the highest priority. At the Chief Constable’s orders every fit man in the City force was deployed. Those who had done night duty were recalled after four hours, and the police reserve were used for house-to-house inquiries. Hotels, public houses, shops, parks, music halls, the college precincts, even houses of accommodation were visited and Cribb’s meticulous description of the three recited, followed by the grim injunction, “If you should recognize these men, do not approach them yourself. Call a policeman. They are wanted for questioning in connection with a serious charge.”

Despite the thoroughness of the description and search nothing of importance was found until late in the afternoon, when a check was made of the skiffs lashed together near Magdalen Bridge in the Cherwell and one was found to be the Lucrecia. The covers were taken off and the luggage removed for examination. The two wicker baskets and one carpetbag contained between them three pairs of pyjamas, two towels, three blankets, toothbrushes, combs, leather boots, a map of the Thames, a set of playing cards and two bottles of cider. “What did you expect?” asked the sergeant who had found the boat. “A signed confession?”

Cribb had come back from Merton convinced that Bonner-Hill had been murdered in the same fashion as Walters, the tramp at Hurley. “He must have met his murderers early in the morning,” he told Thackeray and Harriet in a room at Oxford Police Station. “It was a quiet backwater, with nobody about. They approached him in their boat and got him aboard on some pretext. Then one of them must have pinioned his arms, while another gripped him round the neck, applying pressure to the artery until he lost consciousness. It wasn’t strangulation; that would have been too obvious. Even so, some marks were left around the neck and shoulders. Once he was insensible, they heaved him over the side and held his face under for long enough to fill his breathing passages with water. Verdict: drowning. So many bodies are taken from the Thames that there was every chance of the coroner finding a verdict of death by misadventure or suicide. The possibility of murder wouldn’t arise unless there was something suspicious. Our set of murderers didn’t reckon on the marks appearing on the victims’ necks after death.”

Thackeray’s mouth shaped as if to whistle, but drew in breath instead. “Killing two men in cold blood like that! The calculation in it-it’s horrible. Most murders you can understand, even if you don’t altogether agree with the outcome. Jealous husbands, neglected wives, sons and daughters wanting to inherit-murder’s a family thing, as often as not. But killing strangers as a way to pass the time on a river trip isn’t nice, not nice at all.”

“It’s beyond understanding,” said Harriet, still tortured by the knowledge that she might have averted Bonner-Hill’s death. “Where is the reason in it? It’s quite insane.”

“I can’t agree with that, miss,” said Cribb. “There’s a good intelligence behind all this. It may be inspired by the Devil, but it’s coolly planned, I’m sure of that. Here we are at the end of a summer when young men in hundreds have taken to the river, paddling gaily up to Oxford like the three in Mr. Jerome’s book. It’s high ton-the thing to do. Good sport, good exercise, good fun. A world away from sudden death. Who would believe in a party of assassins in a skiff? Murderers in straw hats? It’s preposterous-and that’s why they’ve done it. Three men in a boat, not to mention the dog, doing the journey in the book lock by lock, pausing only to commit jolly little murders at intervals along the way.”

“For amusement, Sarge?” said Thackeray, his face a study.

“Well, it wasn’t for gain, or they’d have taken the money the tramp was carrying. Can you think of any other reason? I wondered first of all whether the first murder-of Choppy Walters-was to try out the method. If you think of it callously, as they would, a tramp is a perfect subject for trying out your skills as a murderer. Nobody notices a vagrant, or misses him when he isn’t seen any more. If that’s what the first murder was about, a dress rehearsal, so to speak, it suggests that the second was the real performance. In other words, they’d been planning Bonner-Hill’s destruction from the start. A neat idea-until you recollect that Bonner-Hill wouldn’t have been alone in the backwater without Fernandez getting laryngitis, and that’s a circumstance they couldn’t have planned for.”

“So they happened to see Bonner-Hill alone in his punt and decided to kill him, just like that,” said Thackeray, still struggling to accept the truth of what he was saying.

“Just like that.”

“And they’re quite liable to do it again. Glory, Sarge, we’ve got to stop them this time!”

For Harriet, the last two words were twists of a dagger. She covered her face with her hands.

Late that afternoon a small group assembled in the City Mortuary for the formal identification of Bonner-Hill’s remains. Out of respect for Mrs. Bonner-Hill, who was coming from an address in Windsor, Cribb had exchanged his boating costume for a borrowed suit. Harriet, her eyes still red from crying, was wrapped in a black shawl. The attendant made the understandable error of supposing her the freshly bereaved widow and was murmuring condolences until Cribb explained that she was there in case Mrs. Bonner-Hill needed support from one of her own sex. With that made clear, the attendant’s conversation switched to horse racing and the entry for the Cesarewitch. A movement outside the door caused him just as suddenly to revert to: “… and so young, and with his whole career ahead of him. He would surely have risen in the University were it not for this. Ah! This must be …” The voice trailed respectfully away.

“Mrs. Bonner-Hill,” announced the man who had pushed open the door.

The young widow was heavily veiled and in deep mourning.

“This is Sergeant Cribb of the police,” explained the attendant. “And Miss Shaw. Sometimes, on occasions such as this, it is helpful if another lady …” He left his sentences unfinished from forbearance, not forgetfulness. Predictably in Oxford, he was a very polished mortuary attendant.

“Jacob Goldstein, manager of the Playhouse at Windsor,” said Mrs. Bonner-Hill’s companion, so young that for a moment it was not clear whether he was referring to somebody else, but as he said no more, the inference was that he had introduced himself. Dark-complexioned, with a handsome, sensitive face, he wore a lightweight black overcoat. The quality of the cloth suggested that the Playhouse did not run at a loss.