Peter Lovesey: Swing, Swing Together

“It’s Harriet Shaw.”

“Harriet! Here comes your policeman, riding up the drive on his bicycle.”

“Let me see!” cried Jane, at the landing window before Molly had completed her announcement. “My word, Harriet, he is a cut above the average. Look at the way he rides-that straight back, like a Prussian. Is it really your policeman? What a perfectly ravishing moustache! Why do you suppose he’s here?”

If Harriet had known the answer to that, she would not have turned so pale. Two days after the episode in the river she had begun to hope that she might have got away with it. The Plum had not said a word, nor even looked more disagreeable than usual, although the rest of the College had been buzzing with the story, amended slightly under the influence of good taste and girls’ adventure stories. There was not one inmate of Elfrida who had not pictured herself plucked from the roaring weir by Harriet’s policeman, wrapped in his enormous cape, carried to safety and dosed with a strong-tasting restorative from a hip flask.

And now her rescuer, who had given his word not to speak to Miss Plummer about what had happened, was riding up to the front door as coolly as the cat’s-meat boy.

“He is the same one, isn’t he?” demanded Jane, pink with excitement.

Harriet admitted that he was.

“Marvellous! Why don’t you lean out and wave to him?”

“Let’s not forget who we are,” cautioned Molly. “Besides, it might cause an accident, surprising a bicyclist like that. You’re too impulsive, Jane. I don’t suppose his visit has anything to do with Harriet. The gardener must have been intemperate again in Henley last night.”

Jane pointed dramatically along the drive. “And do you suppose that this is the gardener being driven home in a growler?”

Their faces pressed to the window and watched a four-wheeled cab follow the wide curve of the drive and stop below them, almost out of view. Its connection with the policeman was made clear at once. Two bowler hats emerged and approached the helmet, all that was visible from this angle of the hero of Hurley Weir. Words were exchanged, impossible to hear, but suggestive of a prior arrangement. Fully a minute passed before the doorbell rang.

“I believe he is going to tell Miss Plummer everything,” said Harriet, sounding disturbingly like a clairvoyant. “Those men know all about it and they have come to make sure nothing is left out.”

“Harriet, what an appalling thought!”

Jane had lost her colour completely. “He doesn’t know about us-Molly and me-does he? You didn’t tell him there were three of us in the river?”

“I told him I was bathing alone.”

“You wouldn’t say anything to the Plum yourself, would you?”

Her fellow-conspirators waited, fingering their necks, for their reprieve.

“No.”

There followed one of the more uncomfortable intervals in Harriet’s life. Sensing her ordeal, the others talked of other things, as wardresses do in the condemned cell, but each time a door opened anywhere in the house the conversation faltered.

Crocker, the Plum’s personal maid, delivered the summons after forty minutes. “Begging your pardon, miss, the Principal wishes you to come to her study immediately.”

Sympathy mingled with awe surrounded Harriet as she stepped downstairs. At the Plum’s door she drew a deep breath, thought of all the Tudors and Stuarts who had faced the headsman with dignity, and knocked once.

“Enter.”

She had been in the study just once before, on her first day at College, and then it had looked more roomy, possibly because it was not full of large men. The two who had arrived by cab were seated in leather armchairs flanking Miss Plummer’s desk. The bowler hats rested catlike on their knees. Harriet’s constable was standing rigidly to the right, next to a Chinese screen depicting a stag hunt.

Her worst intimations were confirmed at once.

“Is this the girl, Constable?” the Plum asked in a voice of doom.

The quickness of his glance showed how ill at ease he was. “It is, ma’am.”

“You could not be mistaken?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then it seems that the mistake is mine. I reposed my trust in you, Harriet Shaw, and I am advised that you betrayed it by breaking bounds last Tuesday night. Is this correct?”

“Yes, Miss Plummer.”

Miss Plummer closed her eyes. “Is it also true that you put your life and the good name of the College at risk by recklessly plunging into the River Thames?”

“Quite true, I am afraid.”

The eyes opened. “What were you wearing at the time?”

“Nothing, Miss-”

The policeman firmly interjected, “Nothing liable to cause offence to passers-by, ma’am, if that was what you were thinkin’.”

Whatever Miss Plummer was thinking, she was determined to investigate the matter at the source. “Do you possess a bathing dress, Harriet?”

The person to her right shifted in his chair. “With respect, ma’am, we haven’t time to go into the contents of Miss Shaw’s wardrobe. You seem to have established that she was the young lady Constable Hardy came across on Tuesday night and now I propose to put some questions to her. With your permission, I hope.”

The speaker’s tone left no doubt that his hope was Miss Plummer’s command.

“If that is what you wish. The girl is at your disposal. Harriet, these gentlemen are going to speak to you about something rather horrid that has occurred in our locality. Please answer them truthfully. They are detectives from Scotland Yard, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray.”

Scotland Yard Detectives. Harriet knew she had broken the rules, but this was going rather far, even for the Plum. Sergeant Cribb, the one who had spoken, turned in her direction. “I think you should sit down, miss.”

The other detective stood up and she took his place in the armchair and faced Sergeant Cribb. In profile he reminded her of Portugal, sharp-featured with an imperfect line to the nose. She often saw people as maps, and maps as people. It was a useful faculty she intended to pass on in the classroom, if ever she got into one. His full face was more northern in character, long and somewhat lined by glaciation, with side-whiskers, like Norway. She was not good at estimating men’s ages, but she supposed he had reached what her mother called the dangerous time of life. His eyes certainly had the glitter of a man confident in his exchanges with the opposite sex and his clothes showed indications of being chosen with some thought to the impression he would make.

“I want to tell you something at the start, Miss Shaw. You’ve every right to think that Constable Hardy over there”-he turned a finger at Harriet’s policeman without looking at him-“has broken a promise he made to you. And so he has. It’s put you in a very difficult position. Constable Hardy isn’t going to blame you in the least if you set about him, pummel him all over and lead him round the room by the ends of his moustache. He’s mortified with shame, is Hardy.” Sergeant Cribb this time turned to regard the constable, who was staring dolefully in the direction of the wall opposite. “Now you might be thinking, Miss Shaw, that Hardy lightly disregarded that promise. Not so.” The Sergeant moved forward confidentially. “He’s like a cracker on Christmas Day, miss. Torn clean in two. It was his duty as a police officer against his promise to you. Terrible conflict. Duty prevailed.” Sergeant Cribb spread his hands eloquently. “And that’s why we’re here.” He immediately countered the callousness of this by holding up a cautionary finger. “I think you will discover that Hardy ain’t the scoundrel you take him for. There were circumstances, miss. Circumstances.” He glanced in Miss Plummer’s direction. “May I speak plain, ma’am?”