“Oh, I don’t.” Harriet hazarded a tiny glance at P. C. Hardy and noticed the relief dawning on his face.
“That’s good, miss,” Cribb went on, “because we need your co-operation and I’m proposing to use Hardy on the case.”
“But what else is there that I can do? I’ve told you all that I saw, and that wasn’t much.”
“We’ll need you to identify those men, miss. I expect to find ’em before too long.”
Brave words, but Harriet was less confident. “Surely they will be miles away by now, and in three different directions if they have any sense.” Privately she was doubtful whether they had any connection with the dead tramp.
“I’m not convinced that these particular gentlemen have much sense,” said Cribb. “They left thirty pounds on the body, remember. That’s shocking carelessness. And, of course, they don’t know that the body was picked up so quick, or that you saw them in their boat on Tuesday night. I think there’s a good chance that they’re still on the river somewhere, paddling innocently along like the three men in Mr. Jerome’s book. The boat was stacked up as if for a trip of several days, you said.”
“Yes, there was a considerable pile of luggage at the rear of the boat, covered by something-a tarpaulin, I suppose. Oh.” A particularly unpleasant possibility occurred suddenly to Harriet and interrupted her answer.
“What is it, miss?”
“The luggage. You don’t suppose it could have been something else under the tarpaulin?”
Cribb shook his head firmly. “No, miss. All the signs are that he wasn’t killed before he was put into the water. There was a struggle. I think the luggage was exactly what you supposed at first-hampers and bags with food and clothes. They’re on a trip just like the three men in a boat. They’ve even brought a dog to make it complete. In the course of their trip they’ve killed a tramp. It’s my job to discover why.”
“You seem so certain that these men are murderers,” said Harriet. “It worries me. They may be innocent. I should hate to be responsible for their arrest and find that it is all a mistake. There isn’t anything to connect them with the tramp except that they were on the river the same night.”
“Not quite true, miss,” said Cribb. “There’s something else I haven’t mentioned yet. Before I called at your college this morning, I made another call, to the mortuary at Henley. They wheeled the body in for me to look at- begging your pardon, miss. I saw the bruises the local force identified, mainly round the shoulders and neck, as I mentioned. Then something else took my eye. Some marks on the right leg, the fleshy part of the calf, two small crescents of marks facing each other. The skin was broken, but there couldn’t have been much bleeding, so it’s no wonder the local lads missed it on a rather hairy leg. A dog bite, miss, made by a dog of medium size, I’d say. Could be a fox terrier.”
CHAPTER 8
They called at Henley police station, as Cribb loftily explained, to receive the latest intelligence on the case from the local force. “Although it’s debatable which is the local force. Three counties are involved. The body was found at Hurley and that’s in Berkshire. They took it to the nearest mortuary at Henley, which is Oxfordshire. Constable Hardy here, and you, Miss Shaw, come from Buckinghamshire. So which county force do you think should take the case? The three chief constables were about to settle it with pistols when some sharp lad remembered that the Thames itself is under Metropolitan jurisdiction, so they gave the job to Scotland Yard. Convenient for everyone but Thackeray and me.”
The desk sergeant was seated against a backcloth of notices describing the penalties for a range of offences from furious riding to harbouring thieves. Harriet thought him admirably calm for one in such dangerous employment. The unconcern was apparent in his responses to Sergeant Cribb. “Yes, we combed the riverbank as you asked, right along the Reach as far as Hambleden and we might as well have saved our perishing time. Twenty men diverted from their normal duties! Only Scotland Yard or Drury Lane would dare to stage a pantomime like that.”
“You found nothing?” Cribb tersely asked.
“Not so much as a perishing duck. No abandoned boat and nobody who remembered hiring one to three men and a dog. I hear that the Buckinghamshire lads have done no better. Don’t know how many men they were using, but it’s the devil of a lot of public money to go on a dead tramp.”
“A set of killers,” said Cribb.
“All right. A set of-”
“-who might very likely kill again if nobody stops ’em. I haven’t time nor patience to bandy words with you, Sergeant. Are the things ready as I asked?”
The desk sergeant gave a grudging nod.
“In that case,” said Cribb, turning to Harriet, “I shall be compelled to commit you to this officer’s care for a few minutes, Miss Shaw. The constables and I have something to attend to that won’t take long, but can’t be done in the presence of a lady. I suggest you sit behind the door there. You might be offered a cup of tea if there’s enough public money left to pay for it.”
So she sat in the chair Cribb had indicated and listened to the sergeant complaining that if the duty constable hadn’t been redeployed to the perishing riverbank there would be somebody to make the perishing tea. She got a cup nonetheless and the dissent was presently cut short by the entrance of a butcher whose plaster pig had been removed from outside his shop by two small boys. It took the sergeant eleven minutes by the clock over the door to establish the facts and reassure the butcher that as soon as the perishing station was back to strength an investigation would be put in train.
Then Cribb and his two assistants emerged from the door beside Harriet and swept the desk sergeant and his problems from her mind. They had completely changed their clothes. Instead of sober brown suits, Cribb and Thackeray wore striped blazers and white flannels. To match his stripes, Cribb had a red boating cap with a peak that lay low against his forehead. Thackeray’s was more of a fisherman’s hat, white and made of some soft material, with a brim that rested snugly over his whiskers.
The most stunning transformation was Constable Hardy’s. When Harriet saw him, she blushed again for Tuesday night. The blue serge and helmet had lent a reassuring impersonality to that episode which was shattered by his appearance now in a cream-coloured blazer trimmed with red, matching flannels tied with a silk handkerchief, and a straw boater perched nonchalantly on the back of his head. Was this elegant young man, this masher, the policeman she had run into in the dark? It was unendurable.
Between them Thackeray and Hardy carried a large hamper. Cribb had a picnic basket in his left hand and a white parasol in his right which he now presented to Harriet. “Compliments of the Chief Inspector of Henley, miss. It belongs to his daughter. You’ll look a picture on the river.”
Whether the boating costumes also were on loan from members of the Henley police and their families, Harriet did not inquire. Was it possible that the back room contained a property basket filled with boating attire of all sizes for visiting detectives? Was there a similar basket of bowler hats, umbrellas and dark suits at Scotland Yard? She had never heard of such a thing, but she supposed it would be a closely guarded secret. Actually Thackeray’s flannels, now she observed them more closely, ended some inches above his ankles, which looked slightly odd, even for going on the river. But the others could not be faulted.
They set off along the High Street in the direction of the Thames, Cribb accompanying Harriet, and the two constables following with the hamper. She was not in a position to judge whether they
On one matter she was unshakeably resolved: she would not ask Sergeant Cribb the purpose of this charade. If he did not choose to explain his intentions, she did not propose to give him the satisfaction of being asked. She had not known the man long, but he was obviously the sort who gave nothing away unless it suited him, and enjoyed the sensation of power his reticence gave him. He was civil enough, she admitted, and he had got the better of Miss Plummer, which was no mean feat, but that did not give him the right to assume Miss Plummer’s authority over her. If she could have been sure he was correct in his suspicions about the three men she had seen,
