The tall man inclined his head to confer with Harriet. “Flescher, ma’am. Principal of Postmasters. I wouldn’t take Jack Fernandez too seriously, if you’ll accept a word of advice.”
“It wasn’t a serious conversation.”
“That’s all right, then. We understand him in Merton, but we make allowances, you see.”
“I’m not sure whether I do.”
“It doesn’t matter, then. Ah, Mrs. Bonner-Hill is free.” Melanie was, but John Fernandez was not. Another of the Fellows was in solemn conversation with him and they were walking slowly away across the quad.
“Aren’t they quaint?” Melanie said when she had received all their condolences and she had started back along Merton Street with Harriet. “I was near to giggling at one point. I suddenly thought of the Vice-Chancellor’s Ball last year-it was exactly the same ritual as they lined up to write their names on my card. I was terribly tempted to say to Mr. Flescher-he’s the thin one who came last-that all I had left was the polka. Is that very wicked? He was so flustered anyway that I don’t think he would have noticed. Harry used to call him Goose-Flescher. Poor Harry-he was so scornful of them when I first knew him. The idea of becoming like them was unthinkable. I am afraid they must have worn him down in the last months. Murder is an unnecessary end, but to be murdered because you got up early to go fishing is absurd, don’t you agree?”
“If you put it like that, yes.” Actually, Melanie had put it like that once or twice the night before as well. The circumstances of her husband’s death seemed to distress her more than the fact. Yet the circumstances were important. The absence of sentiment in what she said made Harriet blink at times, but the sharpness of the observations was helping her question certain assumptions concerning Bonner-Hill’s death. “Didn’t he have any interest in fishing when you were married?”
A ripple of laughter came from under the black veil. “My dear, we had other ways to occupy ourselves. We didn’t get up till noon. I’m used to theatre hours, you see. I never retire until after midnight. No, he only started his fishing after I left him and he went back to Merton.”
“Do they all go in for fishing?”
“Heavens, no! Only Fernandez, and he’s been an enthusiast for years. I despise the man for reasons we needn’t go into, but I am bound to admit that he was the only possible companion for Harry in the College. Just think of the rest! If Harry was to have a friend in Merton, he had to affect an interest in fish. Isn’t it monstrous?”
“I suppose if he were without a friend …”
“My dear, I wouldn’t have blamed him for going after other women. But fish!” Melanie pulled a face. “I thought he was doing it to humour Fernandez until they told me he was out alone yesterday morning. I couldn’t believe it!”
Harriet was beginning to pity Harry herself. “A lot of men go in for angling, Melanie. I noticed scores as we rowed up from Henley. It doesn’t seem to have prevented Mr. Fernandez from taking an interest in other things. He spoke to me this morning-”
“Oh, did he? I noticed him standing conspicuously near. He wasn’t unpleasant, I hope?”
“On the contrary, he-”
“Don’t be taken in by his honeyed phrases, my dear. The man is dangerous. He has no more concern for women as individuals than he has for fish. If he hooks you, the best you can hope for is that he’ll throw you back. Did he try to arrange-”
“Nothing was arranged,” Harriet quickly answered. Here, she sensed, was a threat to the friendship she had kindled with Melanie. For whatever the odium was that surrounded John Fernandez, she was determined not to ignore the interest he had shown in her. Not from girlish notions of romance, but because she had been drawn into the investigation of the river murders. There still gnawed at her conscience the knowledge that Bonner-Hill need not have been killed if she had identified the three men in the boat in time. Sergeant Cribb had them prisoner now, but there remained the question of a motive, and without that he could not provide a case for a prosecution. Cribb had not speculated much on the case, but Harriet had heard him build one theory only to knock it down again. The murder of the tramp, he had postulated, could have been a rehearsal for the murder of Bonner-Hill, a testing of the method. The theory had foundered on the fact that no one but Fernandez could have known Bonner-Hill was going out that Saturday morning. And Fernandez could not be implicated because he had been nursing his sore throat in Merton College.
Harriet had accepted all this, accepted that the murders must have been done on a whim, without motive. Then Melanie’s statement had transformed her thinking. “To be murdered because you got up early to go fishing is absurd.”
Of course it was absurd!
Nobody could have anticipated that Bonner-Hill would go fishing alone. The whim was not the murderers’, but his. The intended victim had been John Fernandez.
CHAPTER 27
Sergeant Cribb was not at Morning Service that Sunday. He was sitting in the Chief Inspector’s chair at Oxford Police Station making a series of telephone calls. Sergeants at Scotland Yard did not qualify for telephone sets of their own, so he took unaccustomed pleasure in calling up the duty officers at Windsor, Marlow, Great Scotland Yard and the headquarters of the City of London Police at Old Jewry, and giving each of them a small task, as he put it, “to expedite certain inquiries we are at present engaged upon in the City of Oxford.” When Thackeray returned from exercising Towser along the High, he received a sharp rebuke for “presuming to bring that savage animal into the same room as a telephone set.”
At ten o’clock, the questioning resumed in earnest, couched with more craft than the previous evening. “These friends of yours, Mr. Humberstone-James Lucifer and Samuel Gold-you trust them, do you?”
The handcuffs had been taken off Humberstone; the fetters were in the mind by now. “I think so.”
“You’d trust them to give a truthful character of yourself if I asked them?”
“What are you trying to do, Sergeant-set us against each other?”
“Answer my question, please. Can I accept what Mr. Lucifer has been telling me about you?”
“I can’t say. I don’t know what he’s told you.”
“Nothing to be concerned about, sir,” said Cribb. He turned to Thackeray. “You didn’t hear Mr. Lucifer say anything untoward about this gentleman, did you, Thackeray?”
Thackeray considered the question. He could be relied upon to pause long enough over any question to shake the confidence of a man in Humberstone’s position. “I can’t recollect anything, Sarge.”
“There you are, Mr. Humberstone. So you worked with Lucifer in Fire and Accident, is that correct?”
Humberstone nodded.
“And you both joined Mr. Gold in the Claims Department six years ago?”
“Yes, but the circumstances of our employment have no bearing on this business.”
“Oh.” Cribb’s eyebrows jumped half an inch. “Are you suggesting I should ask about your domestic circumstances?”
“Nothing of the sort. I was merely pointing out-”
“Because that’s what I was coming to,” continued Cribb. “The City of London Police will be making the necessary inquiries at the Providential.”
“God in heaven! I’m finished!”
“I’m not,” Cribb drily said. “One of the things I haven’t asked you is where you live.”
“Does that mean you propose sending a policeman to my house as well as my place of work?” demanded Humberstone, beginning to vibrate with anger.
“I hope that won’t be necessary. If you don’t want to tell me the address just now, I’m sure the desk sergeant must have taken it as he booked you in last night. I can look in his book.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Humberstone heavily. “Orchard Walk, Beckenham.”