Swing, Swing Together

on the table beside the bed. It was not, after all, wholly unsuggestive of sudden death.

She pulled the sheet aside, got out of bed and for a second time checked that the door was bolted from the inside. She took a hairbrush from her travelling case and sat at the dressing table, tugging at her hair with short, agitated strokes. For a moment, for just a moment, she wished she were in the boat with the two constables. As company they left something to be desired-more than that, in Hardy’s case-but at least she had the measure of them now. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, as Jim Hackett might have said in the circumstances, probably adding chapter and verse as well.

She tossed her head to shake such silly notions out of it, and wielded the brush more vigorously still.

Of course it was out of the question to pass the night with Thackeray and Hardy. Goodness, her reputation was in ruins already after Tuesday’s episode. It was enough to face Mamma and Papa with that when they got back to England. She had been over the scene in her mind a dozen times. Mamma would collapse sobbing into a chair and Papa would pace the drawing room invoking the Almighty and saying he should take a whip to her, but going straight to the whisky instead. Mortifying. To confess after that that she had spent a night sleeping in a boat with two policemen would drive Papa beyond the brink. She could not do it.

Besides, the conditions down there must be insufferable. The canvas was up, admittedly, but it could be counted on to leak, and a night on damp boards was enough to give you rheumatism for life if you did not die of pneumonia within a week. No wonder the constables had spent the entire evening in the public bar.

Not that she pitied them much. Thackeray she had a spark of compassion for-he had not been unkind, and he was rather large to fit into a small boat. She would have preferred to think of Cribb suffering down there, but he was doubtless in a hotel bed himself, the wily man.

Hardy was another matter. It would do that young man no harm at all to suffer some discomfort. His boating clothes would be hideously crumpled by morning and she would leave him in no doubt that she noticed the fact. He might even be a shade more endurable with wrinkles in his trousers. Perhaps it would improve his manner. He had not been so objectionable in uniform; he had behaved quite differently, in fact.

Harriet’s brushing became slower, and the strokes carried to the ends of her hair.

She recollected Tuesday evening. Not the three men in their boat, nor the dangerous time in the water, but the meeting with Constable Hardy. Up to now she had thought of it exclusively from her own point of view.

How must it have seemed to him as he stood shining his bull’s-eye lamp through the spokes of his bicycle wheel?

She put down her brush and flicked her now gleaming hair over her shoulders. Then she got up and went to the curtains. Through the rain she thought she could just make out the shape of the skiff with its canvas awning. She closed the curtain carefully, collected the candle from the bedside table and deposited it on the dressing table to the left of the mirror. From a flower arrangement on the mantelpiece she selected a fern and placed it beside the candle.

She took three steps back from the dressing table and unfastened the bows at the front of her nightdress so that it parted at the bodice. Watching her movements in the mirror, she guided the garment over her shoulders and allowed it to fall to her feet. Without looking down, she stepped over it and advanced slowly towards the mirror, stooping slightly, as she had when she had climbed the riverbank, feeling the movement of her bosom, then straightening as the light caught the bloom of her skin. Her hand reached forward for the fern and held it close to her eyes, so that she could study her reflection through the fronds-the best she could improvise for bicycle spokes. What she saw was neither vulgar nor offensive, but rather elegant. She thought she might understand the effect it could have on an impressionable young man.

Harriet put down the fern and smiled shyly at her image in the glass before extinguishing the light. She picked up her nightdress, drew it quickly over her head and climbed into bed. She slept well.

CHAPTER 13

Thackeray runs out of steam-Hooray for the G.W.R.-A proposition for Harriet

In the morning they pulled up to Streatley, an eight-mile row which the constables accomplished in a little over two and a half hours without stops, except for the locks at Mapledurham and Whitchurch, and without much conversation either. Harriet could only suppose that the previous night’s sleeping arrangements were responsible, but she deemed it tactful not to inquire, nor did she comment on the breakfast provided by the Roebuck. By the time the bridge connecting Streatley and Goring came into sight, she was actually looking forward to Sergeant Cribb rejoining the party.

This proved to be premature, for when they had tied up and found the police station, they were told Cribb had left the town two hours before. “The gentlemen he was taking an interest in made an unexpectedly early start,” explained the constable on duty. “He was obliged to board a passenger steamer to pursue them. His instructions are that you are to make the best speed you can and keep your eyes skinned for a sight of the Lucrecia.”

“Make the best speed we can!” said Thackeray, wiping his forehead with his soft hat. “What does he think we are-blooming galley slaves? Till yesterday I’d never touched an oar in my life-save for a day at Southend-and I reckon we’ve covered more than twenty miles since Henley. I’ve got stilts for legs and arms six inches longer than they were, and they’re the only parts of me with any feeling left at all. The rest is numb. Make the best speed you can! That’s a fine blooming message to leave as you step aboard a steamer, ain’t it?”

“We could try drawing the boat with a towrope,” Harriet suggested. “I could take a turn at that. It would give you a change from rowing.”

“A tow from a steam launch would be more like it,” said Thackeray.

“It happened in Three Men in a Boat,” said Harriet. “They met some friends who pulled them all the way from Reading to within a mile of Streatley.”

“A fat lot of good that is to us,” said Thackeray.

“Now, Ted, that ain’t no way to speak to a young lady,” Hardy unexpectedly put in. “We know you’re sufferin’, and we’re grateful for all the work you’ve done with the oars, but you’ve no cause to take it out on Miss Shaw. Matter of fact, she’s given me an idea. Do I understand from what you said, miss, that you’ve read the book now?”

“Yes, I read most of it last night and finished it this morning,” Harriet answered, surprised at Hardy’s intervention, and curious where it was leading.

“I can see you wasn’t idlin’ away your time in the Roebuck, miss,” said Hardy with a glance at Thackeray. “I wonder if by any chance you remember where the three men in the story made for after they left Streatley.”

“I do. They passed the next night under canvas, in a backwater at Culham.”

“Culham?” vacantly repeated the constable on duty, looking up from the Occurrence Book.

“It might as well be Timbuktu,” said Thackeray unhelpfully.

“I believe they stopped on the way at a place nearby called Clifton Hampden,” Harriet added. “The Barley Mow inn came in for special comment, I remember.”

“Very good, miss,” said Hardy, venturing a smile. “I think we can take it from what we heard about our three men that they’ll spend this evening at the Barley Mow too. They sounded most particular about copyin’ what happened in the book.” He turned to Thackeray. “At least we’ll get a drink when we get to Clifton Hampden.”

“You’ll need one,” said the constable on duty. “It’s fourteen miles from here.”

“Jerusalem!” said Thackeray.

“No, Clifton Hampden.”

Thackeray muttered something inaudible.

“But don’t you see?” said Hardy. “Now we know where we’re goin’, we needn’t go by river at all. We can take a train. If we cross the river to Goring, we can catch a local to Oxford. It’ll put us off at Culham Station and we can walk up the road to Clifton Hampden. We might be there before Cribb.”

A moment’s silence followed this audacious suggestion.