‘Well, you’re looking pretty graceful to me, Edward,’ said Sarah with a smile.
‘He showed me some of the tricks people get up to on the unwary.’ Edward was grinning happily to himself now. ‘There are a lot of bridges along the back of the Cam, Sarah, and a person standing on them is about the same height as the pole of the punt at the top of its throw. Innocent tourists were often caught like this. A couple of people on the bridge would grab hold of the pole. The punt, of course, keeps moving. The man holding the pole has to let go or else he falls in. Most people fall in to great glee among the spectators. Then there’s another misfortune that sometimes causes confusion. The pole gets stuck in the mud at the bottom. Again the boat keeps moving. Sometimes, Mr Dauntsey told me, you can see people clinging on to the pole in clear water while the punt carries on.’
Further up the river, by the other bank, they could see a party of two punts, travelling in tandem, with about a dozen people on board. The noise and waving of bottles indicated they had started drinking at an early hour. Edward thought he could hear shouting and see fingers pointing.
‘What are those people saying, Sarah?’ asked Edward, bending his knees in the approved manner to send their punt skimming along the water. Sarah turned round, and looked slightly alarmed as she faced Edward again.
‘I think they’re saying “Wrong end!”’ she said. ‘Then’, she looked rather apprehensive at this point, ‘I think they’re saying “Throw him in!”’
‘Are they indeed,’ said Edward and his eyes began measuring distances between their two punts and his. ‘I’m punting from the Cambridge end, Sarah. In Oxford, for some unknown reason, they do it from the other end.’
They could hear the shouts again now. Sarah’s original version was undoubtedly correct. Bottles were being waved in the air. And a ragged cheer broke out every time the punters pressed their craft forward.
Edward, Sarah thought, was not looking at all alarmed. Indeed he seemed to be coaxing extra speed out of the boat, shooting the pole up through his hands and then dropping it down in one continuous movement. Sarah also saw that he was making experimental movements with the pole as if it were a rudder, trying to see how fast he could alter course. Enthusiastic the Oxford-enders might have been, but they were not very good punters. Their boats were travelling quite slowly, much more slowly than Edward and Sarah’s vessel.
When the punts were less than a hundred yards apart, Edward changed direction. He shot across the river at an angle of about sixty degrees into clear water.
‘Wrong end! Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The taunts continued.
At first Sarah had not understood what Edward was trying to do. There was a look of fierce concentration about him. Then she saw that they would intercept the Oxford-enders quite soon unless Edward could stop or alter course. And she didn’t see how he could alter course in time at this speed. There was, she thought, going to be a most almighty collision.
‘Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The jeers went on, but then began to fall silent. For the Oxford men could see this other boat, many hundredweight of it, coming at them like some ancient vessel from Salamis or Actium. They were going to be stove in amidships. Then Edward made a minor adjustment with his pole as rudder. A terrible silence fell over the Oxford craft as they saw their fate hurtling towards them. The two punters, suddenly realizing that they might receive the full force of the other boat, jumped desperately into the water on the far side of their punts. Then Edward dropped his pole to the bottom and heaved ferociously, not on a line parallel with the boat as he had been doing before, but towards himself as hard as he could pull. Just when a crash seemed inevitable, the Cambridge boat turned sharply to the right, at a distance of only a few feet from the other punts, and then shot ahead of them. Edward turned round and shouted, ‘Wrong end, anybody?’ There was a round of applause from the spectators watching from the bank. Even the vanquished Oxford boats joined in.
‘Well done, Edward, that was tremendous,’ said Sarah, clapping furiously. ‘The Philistines have been routed.’
‘I just think,’ said Edward, panting slightly from his exertions, ‘that I’ll put some distance between us in case those fellows turn around and come after us. I don’t think they will, and we’re faster than they are in any case, but I’d feel happier all the same.’
Sarah gazed at her young man with new respect. Edward the Silent had turned into Edward the Conqueror.
‘And there’s another thing,’ said Powerscourt, who was still trying to decide if Jeremiah Puncknowle was friend or foe, ‘I have to go to these solicitors in the next few days about this missing Maxfield person. The one Dauntsey left twenty thousand pounds to in his will.’ Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy and Johnny about the missing Maxfield before. ‘The police haven’t found any trace of him, nothing at all. Chief Inspector Beecham thinks he’s probably dead. But they’ve checked the records at Somerset House, and there’s no record of him there either. He seems to have disappeared.’
‘Perhaps he’s gone abroad,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Do you think Alex Dauntsey gave him the money to buy him out of trouble?’
‘God knows,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Just as easy to say he was paying off a blackmailer.’
‘What happens if he’s locked up?’ said Johnny Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘Debtors’ prison, lunatic asylum, that sort of place. Have the police checked those out?’
‘They have, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt with a sigh, ‘but what happens if he’s joined up to a different form of institution altogether? Suppose some earlier Maxfield has died and left our Maxfield his title. He’s not Maxfield any more, he’s Lord Kilkenny or something like that. Our Maxfield has now vanished clean away.’
‘Wouldn’t somebody remember?’ asked Lady Lucy.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Powerscourt with a grin. ‘I look forward to seeing the Chief Inspector’s face when I ask him to check this one out. He may be very intelligent, our Jack Beecham, but like all policemen he’s taken a very heavy dose of loyalty to all the institutions of the state he’s called to protect.’
9
Twenty minutes later Edward and Sarah had escaped from the buildings of Oxford altogether. They had passed Magdalen with its tower and its deer park, the punt still flying along at a rapid pace as Edward made sure that the Oxford-enders weren’t following them. Now a kind of open country with rather damp-looking fields and suspicious cows was around them. Edward steered the punt carefully into the shade of a weeping willow on the bank and clambered forward to sit opposite Sarah in the main section of the boat.
‘Are you hungry, Edward?’ asked Sarah, checking that her picnic basket was still there, feeling quite important as the person in charge of the catering.
‘Starving,’ said Edward happily and he proceeded to devour seven sandwiches in rapid succession, favouring the ham and the tomato over the egg. Sarah, not used to living with young males, was astonished at the amount he put away. When the demolition of the sandwiches had slowed down, she decided to ask her questions. It was so peaceful out here, nobody could mind being asked a few questions about themselves.
‘Edward,’ she began hesitantly.
‘Sarah,’ said Edward, polishing an apple on the sleeve of his shirt.
‘Can I ask you a great favour?’ the girl went on.
‘You ask whatever you like, Sarah,’ replied Edward, inspecting his freshly polished apple as if it were a diamond of some sort.