Bloodhounds

Chapter Fourteen

Peter Diamond was still up after midnight watching television, picking holes in the plot of an old film, To Catch a Thief. Stephanie had quit after the first commercial break. "Far be it from me to drag you away from Grace Kelly," she told him. "See it to the end. I'm tired."

She was amused to see that the new kitten stayed on the arm of his chair, ready to pounce on his hand if he moved. It still had no name. Peter had this weird theory that the kitten would let them know what it wanted to be called. She was content to let the little tabby do its own job of winning approval. On the first evening, after the predictable flare-up when he'd spotted the cat-tray, her bruiser of a husband, the tyrant of Manvers Street, had stayed up most of the night with the kitten in case it cried. Big softie.

Then the phone rang.

She was still sitting up in bed reading when he came into the bedroom to hand over the kitten. "I'm going to have to go out, love. That was Wigfull."

Her eyes widened. "He isn't your boss, is he? What does he want at this time of night?"

"He's found a body."

"Personally?"

"So he says. Murder is my pigeon, not his."

"Where is it?"

"On a canal boat."

"In Bath?"

"Limpley Stoke. That boatyard near the Aqueduct. I've got to go."

"It's wickedly cold tonight. There's a frost."

"I'll take it carefully down Brassknocker," he promised.

"I wasn't thinking of your driving. I meant I'm going to freeze in this bed without you."

He smiled. "You'll have warmed up nicely by the time I get in."

"Thanks-I'll really look forward to that. You'll be as cold as Finnegan's feet on the day they buried him."

By daylight Brassknocker Hill offers a series of glorious, gasp-inducing views of the Limpley Stoke Valley. By night the descent from Claverton Down is even more dramatic, for you plunge into a vast, black void with just a scattering of lights. He would have driven cautiously anyway, without the frost warning. At the bottom he turned right at the Viaduct pub, joined the A36 and immediately left it by the traffic lights.

The entrance to the Dundas boatyard is an unprepossessing pull-in over uneven ground a few yards along the Bradford Road. The gate was open, and a few frost-coated cars were parked inside. He bumped over a couple of potholes and stopped beside an empty police car. Nobody was about. There was some kind of notice at the far end of the parking area. He groped in his glove compartment for a torch. The notice informed him: YOUR CAR is AT RISK FROM THIEVES.

There was only one way to go: up a slope toward some temporary-looking buildings that turned out to be the boat-yard offices. They stood beside a stretch of the old Somerset Coal Canal that was used for mooring. His torch picked out a small iron bridge and beyond it a row of narrowboats and other small craft.

Along the towpath he discovered that the moorings extended much farther than he had first appreciated, using both sides of the canal. Fifty or sixty boats must have been tied up there. He flicked the torch over some names painted in the florid lettering that is the canal boat style: Henrietta, Occam's 's Razor, Charleen. They were moored for the winter, he guessed, locked up, curtains drawn, with everything portable removed from the decks. If cars were at risk from thieves, then so were boats.

Presently voices carried to him. A torchbeam speared the darkness and dazzled him. He stepped out toward John Wigfull, two uniformed officers, and a bearded man in a deerstalker hat. They were beside a red narrowboat called the Mrs. Hudson. As if to proclaim that it was also a houseboat, some twenty conifers in pots stood along the roof, and there was a television aerial. The interior was lit, but nothing could be seen; the Venetian blinds were closed at all the windows.

"This is Mr. Motion," Wigfull said, with a nod at the bearded man. "He owns the boat."

"Nice boat," said Diamond to Motion. "And you say there's a corpse inside?"

Wigfull said, "We found it together."

"You found it?" Diamond could have added that Wigfull was supposed to be fully stretched investigating a stamp theft, but there was no need. The point was made in the way he stressed the word You.

"Peter, can we take this from the beginning? We've got to wait for the SOCOs, so you might as well hear what happened. Mr. Motion walked into Manvers Street this evening and informed us that the missing Penny Black had come into his possession."

"So you've found it." Diamond took a longer look at Motion in his deerstalker, but without shining a torch into his face it was difficult to assess the man in these conditions. "A body and the stamp?"

Wigfull continued, "It turned up in a book. He doesn't know how it got there. He happened to be reading from this book at a meeting. There's a club called the Bloodhounds that meets on Mondays-"

"Hold on a minute. The what?"

"Bloodhounds."

"We're a group of local people with a mutual interest in crime fiction," Motion explained in a tone that expressed some irritation with Wigfull. Clearly they'd been over this a number of times already.

Wigfull said, "They bring their books to the meeting and read bits. When Mr. Motion opened his, the cover was inside- and when I say cover, I'm using the stamp collectors' term. I mean the envelope with the Penny Black. It was between the pages at precisely the section Mr. Motion had chosen to read from. Have I summarized the facts correctly, Mr. Motion?"

"Yes," said Motion wearily.

"He opened the book and made the discovery in the presence of six other witnesses. When he realized what it was, he came directly to the station and reported it. That was at five to nine this evening. I was called in and interviewed him from nine thirty onward."

"For almost three hours," said Motion.

"This wasn't a missing budgerigar you brought- in, sir," said Wigfull, displaying some impatience of his own. "It's the world's most valuable stamp." He switched back to Diamond. "Mr. Motion insists that the book never left his hands from the time he started out for his meeting."

"Literally?" said Diamond.

Motion gave a nod.

"I see that you're wearing an overcoat, sir. Did you wear it for the meeting?"

"Obviously not," said Motion.

"You removed it, then, and still held on tosthe book? Not impossible, but not easy."

"You're splitting hairs, aren't you? I put it on a chair for a moment, but it didn't leave my possession."

"So we shouldn't take everything you say as the literal truth. Carry on, John."

Wigfull said, "We've been over this several times."

"You mean you covered the question of the overcoat."

"I established that nobody at the club had an opportunity to place the cover inside the book," Wigfull said, sidestepping the overcoat question. "It was likely that it was in the book before he started out-in which case, the perpetrator must have boarded this boat, got inside and found the book, and planted the cover between the pages. Mr. Motion insists that the boat is always locked. He uses a padlock with a key that is unique."

"Unique? Most padlocks are sold with two keys," said Diamond. Wigfull's complacent manner was bringing out the pedant in him.

"There were two originally," Motion explained. "One fell into the canal at least a year ago. I only have the one."

"Couldn't someone buy a padlock with a similar key?"

"No. Not in England. It's German-made. A strong lock, and expensive. From that locksmith in George Street. Well, you can see for yourself."

Diamond shone his torch on the steel padlock, now unlocked and hooked over an iron staple fixed to the top of the door. When the door was closed, the staple would slot into a hinged metal strap attached to the sliding hatch at the back end of the roof. It looked a secure arrangement. He wouldn't touch anything until the Scene of Crime Officers arrived. Certainly the padlock was heavy-duty. "Do you attach this at all times?" he asked Motion.

"Except when I'm aboard. Then I can close everything and bolt it from inside."

"And do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Always take the trouble to bolt yourself in?"

"Of course I do. I want my home to feel as secure as you no doubt wish yours to be." Motion didn't jib at crossing swords with Diamond. He had the confidence of someone well practiced with words.

Wigfull took up the narrative again. "Naturally, after questioning Mr. Motion about the stamp I decided to accompany him here and see if his story held up. When we got here, the boat was padlocked, just as he claimed. But when he opened it, we found the body inside, lying on the floor of the lounge."

"Before your very eyes."

"What?"

"Just like magic."

Wigfull said huffily, "I didn't find it particularly enchanting."

"But you can't think how it was done."

"Can you? Mr. Motion swears that nobody was aboard when he left for his meeting."

"What about the door at the front end?" asked Diamond.

"Prow," said Wigfull.

"Bolted from the inside," said Motion.

"The windows?" Diamond shone his torch along the side of the boat. There were five in view. "Fair enough," he said, for it was obvious that no one could have climbed through the narrow vents at the top. "No other means of access? Hatches?"

"There's a hatch to the engine, but that wouldn't let you into the cabin."

"You've got some explaining to do, sir."

"I have?" said Motion. "I'm more mystified than you are."

"The funny thing is," said Wigfull, "the place in the book where the missing stamp was found is the start of a chapter with the title 'The Locked-Rbom Lecture.' "

"Is that funny?" said Diamond.

"You can't deny it's a strange coincidence. What we've got here is a locked room puzzle. How did the body get into the boat when it was locked?"

"Right now, I'm more interested in the body. Do we know who it is?"

"He's face down."

"So it's male?"

"I examined him briefly to see if he was still alive. There was blood beside his head. He'd gone. No pulse. I don't know if you can see anything between the blinds." Wigfull crouched at the nearest window, but the slats on the Venetian blinds were tightly closed.

"Do you have any idea who this man might be, sir?" Diamond asked Motion.

"None. I wasn't allowed to go in. I unlocked and reached for the light switch and saw the figure lying on the floor ahead of me and said 'Oh my God!' or something similar, and then this gentleman took over. That's all I can tell you."

The drone of car engines entering the boatyard stopped the conversation. Two bobbing sets of headlights came down from the road and advanced along the towpath: the Scenes of Crime team in the Land Rovers. In no time they were climbing into white overalls and stretching barrier tapes across the towpath, regardless that no one was likely to come along at this hour.

"If you'd open the blinds, we can take a look at the scene without disturbing you," Diamond suggested, but it was getting on for twenty minutes before this request was acted upon. The SOCOs had their procedures and stuck to them.

Eventually the senior man informed Diamond, "Victim is a male, white, aged about forty-five. Light brown raincoat over a blue sports jacket, black trousers, white shirt and black tie. There's a cap beside him, brown. The only injury I can see is the head wound."

"And the weapon?"

"Couldn't tell you. Nothing obvious in there."

Diamond turned to Milo Motion. "Know anyone of that description?"

"No."

"You live alone here?"

"Haven't I made that clear?"

"Not to me." He hesitated. "I'm bound to ask this, sir. Do you have a companion?"

"Absolutely not." Spoken with umbrage.

"They've lifted the blinds now. Would you look at this man and tell me if you recognize him?"

"He's face down."

"From his clothes and general appearance. We can't move him until the doctor has looked at him."

Motion bent closer to one of the windows. "He looks a little like

… But that's impossible."

"Like who, sir?"

"Like a man called Sid. But he's one of the Bloodhounds. He does have a raincoat like that. No, it couldn't possibly be Sid. He was at the meeting with me until it ended. Besides, what would Sid be doing on my boat?"