“He was on the river this morning.”
“The morning is a favourable time,” said Fernandez. “I should have been with him myself but for this abominable laryngitis.”
“After his body was taken from the water, we found his punt in Bulstake Stream. His fishing tackle was still aboard.”
“Had he caught anything? I suppose not. Trolling is an art not easily acquired. Bonner-Hill scarcely knew one end of the rod from the other, for all his enthusiasm. Would you care for a sherry?”
“He was murdered, sir,” said Cribb, determined not to be deflected. “Why should anyone choose to murder Mr. Bonner-Hill?”
Fernandez held open his hands. “It is enough for me to fathom the behaviour of a simple fish. I suggest you put your question to somebody who professes to know something about the intricacies of the human mind. In Oxford there are experts upon everything.”
“You saw a powerful lot of Mr. Bonner-Hill, though,” Cribb said in justification.
“No, Sergeant. Kindly do not jump to conclusions. I saw more of Bonner-Hill than others in Merton, but I did not see a powerful lot of him, as you so graphically assert. I am a man with many responsibilities, which often take me away from Oxford for days on end. I frequently visit the Royal Geographical Society in London. I am a member, you understand, and I have the honour to serve on more than one of the committees. If a meeting lasts until the evening, I stay overnight at my club, the Oxford and Cambridge. It would be quite misleading to suggest that Bonner-Hill and I were often in each other’s company. When it was possible, we went fishing together on Saturday mornings, and that was the extent of it.”
“Did he talk to you about his troubles, sir?”
“Troubles?”
“Matrimonial. I understand he left his wife a year ago and moved back into Merton. Have you met Mrs. Bonner-Hill?”
“The murderess? I’ve met her, yes.”
“Did you say ‘murderess’?”
Fernandez smiled. “A frivolous remark, Sergeant. It was Bonner-Hill’s term for her-only, of course, in a jesting sense. She is an actress, you know-very good in romantic comedy. At some point in her career she was persuaded to try a more demanding role. The local newspaper commented that if she and the actor playing Macbeth had murdered Duncan with a modicum of their success in murdering Shakespeare, the play could have stopped at Act One and so prevented further suffering. Uncharitable, but amusing. I saw her in something of Pinero’s at Windsor not long ago and thought her quite enchanting.”
“Why did Bonner-Hill leave her?”
“There you go again, Sergeant, inviting me to speculate on the mysteries of the human mind. I decline the invitation for the reason I gave you before.”
“I thought he might have told you.”
Fernandez tossed his head so vigorously that the towel fell off. “You think he might have told me why he left his wife? How in Heaven’s name do you suppose a subject like that arises between two gentlemen on a fishing expedition?”
“If you tell me it didn’t arise, I must believe you, sir, but my experience is that confidences are frequently exchanged in circumstances like that. The early morning. Nobody about. Two of you sitting in a punt in a quiet backwater waiting for the fish to bite. I’m no angler myself, but I’ve done observation duties in the police that aren’t so different from that and I’ve invariably found that if I have a fellow officer with me, we’ll talk, and before too long he’s telling me about the arguments he has with his wife and I’m telling tales about my days in the army. The most reticent of men become talkative when there’s no one else about and three or four hours to pass.” Cribb gave a short laugh. “Perhaps you did all the talking, sir. Poured out so many confidences that Bonner-Hill couldn’t get a word in edgeways.”
Fernandez crossed the room to within a yard of Cribb, his eyes alarmingly red-lidded. “What are you saying? What are you implying about me?”
Cribb put up a placatory hand. “One moment, sir. I don’t think I’m implying anything. I’m simply trying to assist your recollection of those fishing expeditions in case Bonner-Hill told you something that might be pertinent to my inquiries. When did you last speak to him? There’s a straightforward question for you!”
Fernandez continued to stare inhospitably at Cribb for several seconds more before replying, “Last night, after dinner.”
“Did he mention his plan to go out fishing this morning?” “He did. I had to tell him I wouldn’t be joining him. My laryngitis put it out of the question.”
“Of course. Did anyone else in Merton know he would be going out alone? Did he mention it at dinner?”
“I told you,” Fernandez said. “It was after dinner that we spoke.”
“To your knowledge, had he ever been out before on his own looking for that pike?”
“To my knowledge, no.”
“Well, there’s a curious thing,” said Cribb. “The first time the poor man decides to do a bit of fishing on his own, he gets murdered. The only other person in Oxford who knows he is going out alone is yourself, but you’re confined to your rooms with laryngitis. It looks as though this murder wasn’t planned at all. Whoever killed Mr. Bonner-Hill might as well have put an end to anybody else unfortunate enough to have been about at that particular time. A tramp. A university don. It’s all the same. This is murder for the sake of killing. I’ve come across some nasty things in my time, Mr. Fernandez, but this really makes me shudder.”
CHAPTER 20
The search for the three wanted men, Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer, was given the highest priority. At the Chief Constable’s orders every fit man in the City force was deployed. Those who had done night duty were recalled after four hours, and the police reserve were used for house-to-house inquiries. Hotels, public houses, shops, parks, music halls, the college precincts, even houses of accommodation were visited and Cribb’s meticulous description of the three recited, followed by the grim injunction, “If you should recognize these men, do not approach them yourself. Call a policeman. They are wanted for questioning in connection with a serious charge.”
Despite the thoroughness of the description and search nothing of importance was found until late in the afternoon, when a check was made of the skiffs lashed together near Magdalen Bridge in the Cherwell and one was found to be the Lucrecia. The covers were taken off and the luggage removed for examination. The two wicker baskets and one carpetbag contained between them three pairs of pyjamas, two towels, three blankets, toothbrushes, combs, leather boots, a map of the Thames, a set of playing cards and two bottles of cider. “What did you expect?” asked the sergeant who had found the boat. “A signed confession?”
Cribb had come back from Merton convinced that Bonner-Hill had been murdered in the same fashion as Walters, the tramp at Hurley. “He must have met his murderers early in the morning,” he told Thackeray and Harriet in a room at Oxford Police Station. “It was a quiet backwater, with nobody about. They approached him in their boat and got him aboard on some pretext. Then one of them must have pinioned his arms, while another gripped him round the neck, applying pressure to the artery until he lost consciousness. It wasn’t strangulation; that would have been too obvious. Even so, some marks were left around the neck and shoulders. Once he was insensible, they heaved him over the side and held his face under for long enough to fill his breathing passages with water. Verdict: drowning. So many bodies are taken from the Thames that there was every chance of the coroner finding a verdict of death by misadventure or suicide. The possibility of murder wouldn’t arise unless there was something suspicious. Our set of murderers didn’t reckon on the marks appearing on the victims’ necks after death.”