dropped them into the water. Then she opened her arms and let Hardy lift her into the punt.
“You have rescued me, Roger,” she said. “You have rescued me again!” She held him tightly.
The empty champagne bottle, dislodged, like Harriet, from the punt, followed her stays downriver.
CHAPTER 39
Jim Hackett’s suicidal leap from the
“Drink your cocoa, Jim, and don’t say a word,” he advised his accomplice, now swathed, like Thackeray, in a blanket, but with one arm handcuffed to a table in the saloon. “There’s no evidence against us. A decent lawyer will see us through. We can answer any charge they bring.”
Cribb smiled. “Feeling more confident, now you’re out of your skirts, Mr. Bustard? He’ll need to be a very good lawyer. I made a bad mistake early in this case-spent the best part of a week tagging after the shirttails of three gentlemen interested in other things than murdering university dons-but this time I don’t think I’m wrong. You murdered a tramp by the name of Walters on Tuesday night at Hurley, and Henry Bonner-Hill on Saturday morning in Oxford.”
“We were not in Hurley on Tuesday night.”
“Miss Harriet Shaw-a young lady you’ve met more than once-observed three men in a boat above Hurley Lock in the early hours of last Wednesday morning. The passenger was Walters, probably drunk, and the two oarsmen answered your descriptions-one much larger than the other.”
“That’s not much of a description,” commented Bustard. “If Miss Shaw persuaded herself that she saw Jim and me, she’s mistaken. We slept in the boat at Wargrave on Tuesday night. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the River Thames, old sport, but Wargrave is a good ten miles upriver from Hurley and, more to the point, there’s Hambleden and Marsh Locks in between. The locks are closed at sundown. We couldn’t have brought the boat to Hurley without shooting the weirs.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the story,” said Cribb. “You were careful to mention that you bought a veal and ham pie in the George and Dragon. But Jim Hackett corrected you, said it was the Dog and Badger.”
Bustard shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it was.”
“The only Dog and Badger for miles around is in Medmenham,” said Cribb. “It happens to be P. C. Hardy’s local pub. There’s no Dog and Badger in Wargrave. I’ve checked the county gazetteer.”
“Slip of the tongue,” said Jim Hackett.
“Stow it!” ordered Bustard immediately. Then, affecting unconcern again, he asked Cribb, “Why do you suppose we should have wanted to murder a common tramp?”
“Not for his money,” answered Cribb. “We found thirty pounds on the body. He was killed to practise the method. You reasoned that nobody would take much interest in a tramp who drowned in the river. You met Walters somewhere in the neighbourhood of Medmenham-quite possibly the taproom of the Dog and Badger-filled him with liquor, walked him to the river and took him aboard the boat. He was nine parts drunk by then, and I dare say you gave him some gin or whisky to do the rest. You rowed towards Hurley and heaved him over the side, taking care to hold his head and shoulders under long enough to fill his lungs with water. Pity you gripped him so tightly. You left some bruises round the neck. There was also a dog bite on his leg.”
“A dog bite!” said Bustard. “That’s ridiculous! We haven’t got a dog.”
“Not now, Mr. Bustard, but you had one at the time. Fox terrier, I think. Miss Shaw noticed it sitting at the front of your boat. A nice domestic touch, that. Pity it got too excited when you were struggling with Walters’ body and fastened its teeth on his leg, because you had to get rid of it after that. It’s no good asking what you did with the poor animal. I suppose it went the same way as Walters. Nobody’s going to get excited about one more dead dog in the Thames.”
Jim Hackett started to say, “We didn’t drown the-” when Bustard nudged him so sharply that cocoa spilled over the blanket.
“If you didn’t drown it, then I’ve a theory that it’s buried on Phillimore’s Island,” said Cribb. “You lit a fire there. If we dig underneath the ashes, I reckon we might find what’s left of that unfortunate dog. A fire is a useful way of covering freshly dug earth. Yes, I think we’ll send a little exhumation party to Phillimore’s Island.”
“A dead dog won’t prove much, even if you find one,” said Bustard.
“On the contrary,” said Cribb. “If its teeth match the marks on Walters’ leg, that’s evidence strong enough to hang you.”
Bustard was unmoved, even if Jim Hackett winced at the mention of hanging. “You really haven’t explained why we should have gone to so much trouble to kill the tramp.”
“I told you. You were trying out the method. You were going to Oxford to do a job of murder and you wanted to be sure of getting it right. And you did, of course, apart from the fact that you killed the wrong man. Bonner-Hill, poor man, came to the rendezvous instead of Fernandez.”
“Rendezvous? Fernandez? This is all a cipher to me, old boy.”
“It was to me until I realized you were sent to kill Fernandez, and not Bonner-Hill,” said Cribb. “Fernandez had been fishing for pike on Saturday mornings for two years. Anyone who wanted to kill him must have known they could rely on him being on the river on a Saturday. Just to make sure, a letter was sent from London telling him to be in a certain backwater if he wanted to be shown where a large pike could be found. You were waiting there for him, but Bonner-Hill arrived instead. Thinking he was Fernandez, you murdered him. I’ll make a guess and say you used chloroform or ether instead of alcohol to render him insensible first.”
“Make as many guesses as you like, old sport,” Bustard airily said. “You’ve still got to find a reason why Jim and I should have wanted to kill this fellow Fernandez.”
“That took a little trouble to establish,” said Cribb. “Even after I’d convinced myself Fernandez was intended as the victim, it wasn’t easy. A philanderer like that makes no end of enemies-jilted ladies, jealous husbands and the like. Someone got so agitated about him three months ago that they wrote to Scotland Yard suggesting he was Jack the Ripper. Nasty thing to do. They must have known the Yard would have to investigate. Detectives came to Merton to question him, and when he unwisely gave a false account of his movements at the time of the Whitechapel murders, they began to consider him as a serious suspect. He had claimed to be visiting his uncle, who is Deputy Governor at Coldbath Fields, on the night of the Ripper’s fifth murder, but when asked, the gentleman said he hadn’t seen Fernandez for a full year. Inspector Abberline, the man in charge of the Ripper investigation, visited Fernandez himself and put some sharp questions to him. It turned out that he wasn’t Jack the Ripper. He had been trying to preserve a lady’s reputation.”
“Very reassuring for Oxford University,” commented Bustard, “but I fail to understand what connection it has with Jim and me.”
“So did I, until I looked into it,” said Cribb. “On Saturday, we found you beside Bonner-Hill’s body, if you remember.”
“Attempting to resuscitate him,” Bustard pointed out.
“I don’t deny it. By then you’d realized that you had murdered the wrong man. You must have taken his pocketbook before you tipped him in the river, thinking it would hinder identification. After the body had floated away with the current, you opened the pocketbook and found Bonner-Hill’s name inside. In a panic you rowed after him and got him onto the bank to try resuscitation. At the time, I had the idea fixed in my mind that we were looking for three assassins, not two, so I put it down to coincidence that you were there beside the body. Later I saw it in a different light. And I understood why you had been in such a hurry to get to Oxford that you had abandoned your boat at Benson on Friday afternoon and completed the journey by bus. You had to be sure of being in Oxford for the meeting with Fernandez on Saturday morning.”
“Ah yes. The rendezvous,” said Bustard sardonically. “I suppose you think Jim and I wrote the letter telling
