Bloodhounds

Chapter Eighteen

Later the same afternoon, Diamond drove Milo Motion to the Dundas boatyard to collect his change of clothes from the Mrs. Hudson. A thick-knit sweater was likely to be among them, because now that the sun was disappearing behind the willows on the far bank, there was an unmistakable threat of frost in that cloudless sky. The Scenes of Crime team had finished work and left. The only police activity-apart from one luckless constable rubbing his hands to keep his circulation going-was a pair of divers searching the canal bottom for the murder weapon, and they didn't seem too happy either. What they were doing in the shallow water couldn't be described as diving, more a matter of wading about and bending double. On a blue tarpaulin on the towpath they had assembled their finds-a horseshoe, two plastic milk crates, a bicycle pump, a birdcage, about twenty beer cans, and several pieces of stone-the result of three hours' scavenging for fifty yards either side of the narrowboat. Diamond told them to give up for the day. The chance was slim that a killer so artful as this would have disposed of the weapon in so obvious a place, but procedure had required the search to be made. He asked Milo to check for any object missing from the boat that might have been used to crack Sid Towers over the head.

Milo said he was unable to think of anything, but he would certainly look.

The constable had to open up for them, because the door at the stern had been fitted with a fresh lock. Milo's German-made padlock had been stripped down and examined at the forensic lab. Pressed by Diamond for their findings, the scientists had reported no flaw in the mechanism. No sign, even, of tampering. It was described as a high-security close-shackle padlock. The locking mechanism provided over six million key variations, bearing out the manufacturers' claim that each padlock they sold in Britain had a unique key pattern.

Diamond had been over the narrowboat and its security arrangements many times in his mind without deducing how the body had been placed there, so this extra inspection wasn't embarked upon with much confidence. The murder of Sid Towers was becoming his own locked room mystery, his Gordian knot. If Milo Motion had spoken the truth, the facts were indisputable:

1. Milo locked the boat when he left it.

2. The key never left his person.

3. The keys fitted that padlock and no other. There was no second key.

4. The only other point of entry to the cabin was the door at the fore end, and this was bolted from the inside.

5. The padlock was still in position when Milo returned to the boat with Wigfull. He had opened it with the key and discovered the corpse of Sid Towers in the cabin.

Each time he looked for a flaw in the logic, Diamond was forced back to that qualifier: if Motion had spoken the truth. The hardware, surely, was foolproof; the human assurances had to be tested further.

The two men dipped their heads to enter the cabin, now stripped of its carpet.

"I want you to think hard and long," Diamond told Milo. "Do you keep anything in here that might have been used as a weapon? Some ornament, perhaps, like a heavy beer mug or a paperweight?"

Milo thought for a moment and shook his head. "Books are about the heaviest things in here. You couldn't kill someone with a book, could you?"

"It would take something heavier than those," Diamond admitted, eyeing the shelves of detective stories. "A really big dictionary might do the job."

"Can't help. I manage without one."

"Lucky for you. Good speller, are you?" he asked companionably. Putting the man at his ease might encourage him to talk more freely about the evening of the murder.

"Correct spelling was part of the education when I grew up."

"Mine, too." Diamond switched to a confiding mode. "I was at grammar school, but I never fully mastered the spelling. Bit of a handicap, because they deducted marks in every subject, and it all went on a weekly report card. There was a ritual on Saturday mornings called 'slackers' parade'-a painful encounter with the deputy head-and I was a regular on it. Then one of the English masters taught me the trick of avoiding words like necessary. You can always write needful instead. Good advice. So the next time, that's what I did-and still finished up on the slackers' parade. Pity he didn't warn me needful has only one / at the end. Tell me, what's the attraction of detective stories?"

Milo blinked and frowned, derailed by the unexpected admission of frailty by the man he'd come to regard as the embodiment of authority.

"I've never understood what people see in them," Diamond went on. "True crime, yes, I can read with pleasure. Fiction I can't."

"I suppose it's the not knowing."

"The what?"

"The not knowing… until the end," Milo explained.

"Not knowing who did it?"

Milo relaxed slightly. "That's true of some books, certainly, but not all. There are other things the reader is keen to discover these days. I mean, some books tell you right off who the villain is. There's the fascination of not knowing whether he gets away with the crime, or whether the good chap survives. There's much more emphasis on character these days, but there's always an element of surprise in the best mysteries. You should attend one of our Bloodhound meetings."

"I may end up doing that. Would you mind stepping into the kitchen, or the galley, or whatever you call it?"

"You'd like a coffee?" said Milo.

"No, Mr. Motion." Abruptly he was the investigator again. "We're checking for a possible murder weapon. Remember?"

"Ah."

Nothing was missing from the galley that Milo could recall.

"You appreciate the importance," Diamond said to take the edge off his sharp remark. "The choice of weapon can tell us if the murder was planned or was just a response to something unexpected. Did the killer bring a weapon here with murder in mind, or was it just a matter of snatching up the first thing that came to hand?"

"I follow you," said Milo.

"But you can't help me?"

"On this matter, no."

"While we're here, let's go over the business of the padlock," Diamond continued. "I know you've been through it so many times you could say it in your sleep, but something else needs to be explained, doesn't it? The boat was totally secure, according to you, and yet a murder took place in here."

"Don't you think I'd have told you by now if I knew the answer?" Milo said with injured virtue. "It's utterly beyond my understanding. What is more, they got in twice. Someone must have broken in earlier to put the stamp inside my copy of John Dickson Carr."

"There's no evidence that anyone broke in." Diamond was swift to correct him. "If they had, we might have an explanation. Not one of the doors or windows was interfered with. Nothing was broken."

"What happened then? They couldn't have had a key. Mine is the only one in existence."

"That isn't true, is it? There's the spare one you dropped in the canal."

"If you want to nitpick to that degree, yes."

"How long ago did you lose it?"

"Last year. I told you."

"Exactly when, Mr. Motion?"

Milo sighed. "Toward the end of the summer. It must have been September."

"Can you recall the circumstances? I daresay it caused you some annoyance."

"Well, it did. I lost my car keys at the same time."

"So we're talking about a bunch-on a ring?"

"Yes."

"Did you try to recover them?"

"It happened after dark,"' Milo explained, tugging at his beard as if the whole episode was painful to recall. "If you must know, I was the worse for drink. Pretty unusual for me. A night out at the Cross Guns."

"The pub at Avoncliff?"

"Yes. Do you know it? Gorgeous on a summer evening. I had the boat tied up at one of the moorings just above the pub, that stretch of the canal before the aqueduct. Treated myself to a meal and a few beers, and when I got back-"

"Alone?"

"Yes. I opened up and stumbled a bit pulling open the door. The damned keys slipped out of my hand and over the side. Bloody annoying, but I knew I had spares for all of them, so it could have been worse."

"Next morning, did you try and get them out?"

He shook his head. "Hopeless. They would have sunk into the mud."

"Did you mention this to anyone else?"

"I may have done to the people in the next boat. Can't remember, frankly."

"What about the Bloodhounds? Would you have mentioned it to them?"

"Certainly not. Why should I? It wasn't an incident I'm proud of."

"We've got to think of all the angles."

"All I can say is what I know to be the truth," Milo stressed in a more defensive tone. "You can see for yourself that when I'm aboard the boat, it's just about impossible for anyone else to come in here without my knowing. You can hear every step, and there's nowhere to hide. It's all open-plan. Anyway, the cupboards are far too small to hide anyone."

"What exactly are you driving at?"

"If the murderer found some way of stowing away while I was still here, and remained hidden when I locked up, it" would be possible to unbolt the door at the far end-unbolt it from the inside-and admit the victim."

Diamond almost snapped his fingers in triumph. Then, as the flaw in the revelation occurred to him, he converted the gesture into scratching his right earlobe. "But when you and Wigfull entered the boat, it was bolted from the inside at that end and padlocked outside at the other. Unless the killer was still aboard, it couldn't have happened."

"There you go," said Milo with an air of resignation. "I can assure you, there wasn't anyone here except poor old Sid. I'm as confused as anyone by all this."

"And as you remarked just now, there's nowhere to hide. Everything folds against the walls. The only lockers are outside the cabin, back at the stern end." Diamond paused, watching Milo. "The crucial question is whether your memory is reliable when you say you locked the boat."

"Of course it is!" Milo said petulantly. "I remember rattling the damned padlock, testing it with my hand to be sure it was secure. And it was. Later, when I returned with your colleague, Mr. Wigfull, I unlocked with my own key and had the shock of my life when I saw what was inside. It's impossible, but it happened. I am at a total loss to account for it. You need Dr. Fell for this."

"Who's he?"

"Dickson Carr's detective."

"A detective in a book? Great."

"Someone of his caliber, at any rate."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Diamond. "Well, I think we need someone smarter than Dr. Fell. I've been through that chapter on the locked room lecture, and it's no help. I ask you. You've studied it yourself. This is a puzzle that defies all Dr. Fell's explanations."

Milo nodded. "I have to agree with you."

"And the locked room is only part of the mystery. What was Sid's reason for coming here?"

"I haven't the foggiest," Milo answered with a shrug. "He wasn't in the habit of visiting me. Besides, he knew I wouldn't be here. I told everyone I was going straight to the police station to hand in the Penny Black. Do you think the murderer lured him to his death?"

Diamond didn't want to trade theories any longer. "Look, why don't you pick out the clothes you need? I'll take a stroll along the towpath and see you in ten minutes."

He needed more time for reflection. Milo, surely, was a reliable witness. This, after all, was the one member of the Bloodhounds who couldn't have murdered Towers. Yet there was still a doubt. Any lawyer will tell you that witnesses tend to present themselves and their actions in the most favorable light, sometimes obscuring serious flaws in their evidence. Suppose Milo hadn't after all locked the narrowboat before leaving for the meeting. Suppose through carelessness or over-confidence he had left the padlock hanging from the staple still unfastened. At first he may have decided not to mention it; no one wants to admit to negligence, particularly to the police. Later, as the investigation proceeded, he would find it increasingly embarrassing. An act of carelessness would grow into a deception. He might even have lied to cover it up.

Human frailty seemed a stronger bet than mechanical wizardry. Ingenious locked room puzzles were the province of detective story writers.

He went across to the divers. They had unpeeled their wet suits and were stacking their van. He had another job for them tomorrow, he told them, further along, by the Avoncliff Aqueduct. A bunch of keys. They didn't sound overjoyed. With a wink at the constable on duty, he stepped briskly along the towpath. This stretch of waterway now used for mooring was historically the route taken by the barges transporting coal from the Somerset mines. Much more narrow than the main canal, almost two centuries old and edged with ancient flag-stones, it had its own character, though the aluminum lift-bridge where it joined the Kennet and Avon was clearly a modern replacement. He stood for a moment staring at this bridge, deciding how the lifting mechanism worked. Clearly it had to be raised for anything the size of a narrowboat to pass under. There were counterweights projecting from the fulcrum, but the walkway was bolted down on the opposite side. He hauled on it to make sure. At this late hour nothing was about to pass into the boatyard, so his curiosity had to be set aside. He turned and started back toward the solitary policeman.

The question of most interest to him now was the one Milo had raised only a few minutes ago: What could have induced Sid Towers to visit the Mrs. Hudson? It was strange behavior considering that Milo himself was not going to be present. Why visit a locked boat after dark? One possible explanation was that the murderer had suggested meeting him there. If it was a trap, what was the bait? Or was it a threat? Maybe Sid had been under some pressure to obey the summons.

Blackmail?

He stepped aboard the narrowboat and found Milo in the cabin filling carrier bags with clothes. "I'm about ready."

"Good. It's cold in here. I don't know how you put up with it."

"Well, I've got no heating on. Normally it can be really snug."

"I walked to the end of the canal," said Diamond. "As far as that lift-bridge. It is a lift-bridge?"

"Oh, yes. It has to be raised each time a boat goes out."

"How do you lift it, then? So far as I can tell, the thing is bolted down."

"It is. We unfasten it with a windlass. Everyone using the moorings has one. You get one from the office."

"Like a spanner, you mean?"

"Yes."

"That explains it, then. Let me help you with those." He picked up one of the bags. "Ready to leave?"

"Will the constable lock up?"

"We'll do it."

They emerged from the cabin. Diamond pressed the strap over the staple and closed the padlock over it. "Where do you keep the windlass? I wouldn't mind seeing what it looks like."

"It's in the locker on the right. I keep the tiller in there with it."

Diamond pulled up the lid of the locker and peered at the collection of tools. "I can see the tiller. Can't see anything like a windlass."

Milo bent over and shifted the contents about. "Well, that's a damned liberty. It's gone. Someone must have pinched it."

"Are you sure?"

"It's always here."

"What size and weight is this windlass?" Diamond asked.

Milo extended his hands about eight inches. "It's iron. Not a thing you'd put in your pocket and forget about."

"Heavy enough to crack a man over the head and kill him?"

"Good Lord. Is that possible?"

"Problems?" said Julie, seated at a desk near the door.

Diamond made a sound deep in his throat like a growl, pushed a computer keyboard aside, and perched his rear on one of the desks in the incident room. The civilian staff had finished work for the day.

He sighed. "No worse than yesterday. I'm boxed in, Julie. I don't care for it."

"Because of the way the body was found?"

"The whole shooting match. The bloody riddles. The missing Penny Black. This ridiculous Bloodhounds club. It's straight out of a whodunit. I'm a career detective, not a poncy Frenchman with spats and a walking stick."

"Belgian."

"What?"

"Hercule Poirot is a Belgian."

"I don't care if he's from Outer Mongolia. He's a figment of some writer's imagination-that's the point. Everything up to now is detective story stuff from sixty years ago. It shouldn't be happening in the real world. I'm being asked to deal with a locked room murder, for Christ's sake. If I crack it-I mean when I crack it-what am I going to be faced with next? Invisible ink?"

Julie allowed a suitable pause. She'd worked with Diamond long enough to know that these occasional outpourings weren't entirely negative in effect. Then she remarked, "Do you really need to crack the locked room mystery?"

He folded his arms. "You'd better explain yourself."

"Well, the great temptation is to go at this head on, as they did in those detective stories, puzzling over the locked room until we hit on the solution. That's what we're meant to do. Why don't we approach it another way?"

"Tell me how."

"There's only a handful of people who could have committed the stamp theft. Agreed?"

"Certainly-but that's for John Wigfull to unravel."

Julie refused to be deflected. "I mean the Bloodhounds. They knew from the previous meeting that Milo would be bringing in his copy of The Hollow Man-an opportunity that the thief found irresistible. If Milo himself is not the thief, then it has to be the person who planted the stamp in his book."

Diamond nodded. This was pretty obvious stuff.

She continued. "Someone who must have been at the meeting the previous week when Milo promised to read from the chapter on locked room mysteries."

"Or who was tipped off about what was said."

"All right," Julie conceded. "But it's still a small group, right?"

"Right."

"And so is the list of murder suspects."

Diamond held up a finger. "Careful, now."

Julie got up and crossed the room to argue her case. "Because the killer got inside the Mrs. Hudson, just as the stamp thief did. Be fair, Mr. Diamond. It's got to be the same person. I refuse to believe that two people independently worked out a way of getting inside that cabin without disturbing the lock. Two different people, each smarter than you? No way."

"So?"

"So instead of all this brain-fag over the locked room, I suggest we get talking to the suspects. You and I, I mean. I know we have a batch of statements, but there's no substitute for getting face to face with people."

"Doorstepping." He smiled.

"No, I don't mean house-to-house inquiries. I'm talking about the suspects, and there aren't many of them."

"That's your advice?"

She hesitated, detecting the note of irony. "I'm trying to be helpful."

"And you are." This was sincerely meant. Listening to Julie had helped him take hold of a doubt that had been hovering just out of reach for some time. "Only I'm not yet convinced that you're right about the thief and the killer being one and the same. Think for a moment about Sid Towers. What if he were the man who stole the stamp?"

"Sid?"

He gave a nod.

"The murder victim?"

Diamond gave his snap assessment of Towers. "Unassuming, easily disregarded, yet not unintelligent. A reader of John Dickson Carr. Imagine the quiet satisfaction Sid would have derived from surprising the rest of the Bloodhounds-that opinionated lot who thought they knew all there is to know about detective stories. This is pure hypothesis, but let's suppose he stole the Penny Black simply to make a point, not with his power of speech which was so underdeveloped, but through the written word, with riddles and rhymes. 'I'm smarter than all of you put together,' he was saying in effect, 'whatever you think of me.' And what a marvelous notion to have the stamp turn up between the pages of Milo's book-thus demonstrating a locked room mystery unknown to Dr. Fell or anyone else. Do you see what I'm getting at, Julie?"

"Sid was the thief? But Sid was murdered."

Diamond sketched the scenario as he spoke, and it made a lot of sense, even to himself. "Murdered aboard the narrow-boat. Sid went back there, knowing Milo would be occupied at the nick for some time to come. Maybe he intended to leave a note, another riddle, even. He let himself in by the same brilliant method he used on the previous occasion-whatever that may be-only this time he was followed in by someone else, who picked up a windlass and cracked him over the head."

"Who?"

"That's the question. Could be one of the Bloodhounds who followed him there. Could be someone else with a grudge against Sid. Could simply be some evil person who was on the towpath last night and decided to mug the occupant. In other words, anyone from your half-dozen suspects to the entire population of Avon and Somerset, plus any visitors passing through. That's why I'm cautious, Julie. But it's only a hypothesis. I may be totally mistaken."