Bloodhounds pd-4

by Peter Lovesey

  "So you worked out who the Grand Old Queen is?" said Diamond.

  "Victoria, obviously."

  "Can't say I'm with you there, old boy," said Diamond. "For my money, it was a reference to Mr. Milo Motion."

  Wigfull blinked and said, "The man's gay! You could be right."

  "You have to be an insensitive brute like me to get the point," said Diamond.

  Wigfull said, "You are right."

  "But where does it get us?" Diamond developed his theme. "All we can say is that the stamp theft was done according to plan. The way your Penny Black turned up last night was no mistake. It happened exactly as predicted. Milo Motion was earmarked as the fall guy."

  Julie said, "But it does tell us that the thief knew Milo would take the book to the Bloodhounds meeting and open it at chapter seventeen?"

  "Right!" said Wigfull. "We can count the suspects on one hand."

  "Two," said Diamond. "And you may need your feet as well."

  "I'm speaking of the Bloodhounds."

  "There are six of them."

  "Ah, but we can eliminate Motion," Wigfull pointed out. "That leaves five: Mrs. Wycherley, Miss Chilmark, Mrs. Shaw, Miss Miller, and the man, Rupert Darby."

  "What about Sid Towers?"

  "He's dead."

  "He wasn't dead when the stamp was stolen," Diamond reminded him. "If it were me investigating the stamp theft, I'd keep Sid Towers in the frame, dead or not."

  "Was the man capable of such a theft?"

  "Certainly. He was easily overlooked, but not dim. He knew all about security. He'd have known how to suss out a building for a break-in."

  "I can see that. But he doesn't strike me as the sort to compose riddles drawing attention to the crime."

  "Why not? He was a reader of whodunits. Plenty of time to himself to think it through. Setting a puzzle for the police might have appealed to him."

  Wigfull weighed the suggestion. "I suppose it's possible. But why was he killed?" He raised a finger like an umpire as he answered his own question. "Maybe the killer took offense at the way he chose to return the stamp. The obvious suspect would be Motion, but he's the one with the alibi."

  "Now, John," Diamond said sharply. "The murder is my business. I don't want interference."

  "You offered me some advice."

  "Here's some more, then. You said you could count the suspects on one hand. You've just added Towers. You must also add anyone Motion spoke to-anyone who learned that he was taking the Dickson Garr book to that meeting."

  "That's scraping the barrel, isn't it? From all I hear, he's another loner."

  Diamond gave a shrug.

  Wigfull was forced to concede. "Technically, I suppose you're right. Has anything helpful come up in the interviews?"

  "Nothing startling. They're still being fed into the system, but I've heard from all the officers who carried them out. We caught up with everyone in the end, all the Bloodhounds, anyway. A couple of them weren't at home, and we nobbled them later."

  "My number one suspect is the man."

  "Why do you say that?"

  A rare smile lit Wigfull's face. "I'm speaking of my case, the theft of the stamp. I can't see any of those women walking through the streets of Bath with a window cleaner's ladder and bucket."

  "Sexist."

  "Two of them are middle-aged."

  "What matters to me is whether they could murder a man," said Diamond, "and a woman can crack a bloke over the head with a blunt instrument whether she's middle-aged or twenty. We had a case in Twerton before you joined the squad. Two old people, well over seventy, married fifty years, regularly coming to blows and ending up in casualty. In the end she clobbered him with a hammer because he threw away the TV Times. Killed him. I often think of that when I'm putting the papers in the bin."

  After a sandwich lunch, Diamond interviewed Milo Motion for the third time.

  "Caught up on your sleep yet?"

  Milo was temporarily installed in a bed-and-breakfast house opposite the police station in Manvers Street. He had come in to ask when he could expect to return to his floating home. The black beard accentuated the challenging tilt of his chin. Bushy was the word for it, Diamond decided. A family of small mammals could have found a habitat in that abundant growth.

  "You can go back before the afternoon is out; I give you my word," Diamond promised. "It may not be restored to its former glory yet, because they took the carpet and one or two other items for forensic tests."

  "I simply want a change of clothes," said Milo. "I'm not proposing to sleep there after what happened."

  "Are you comfortable in the B and B?"

  "Tolerably."

  "You don't have a friend who would put you up?"

  He gave a prim click of the tongue. "No."

  "Why don't you sit down?"

  "Is it going to take as long as that?"

  "A few things need clearing up," said Diamond equably.

  "If it's about the bloody padlock again…" Milo started to say.

  "No, it's the Bloodhounds, sir. You were one of the founders, you told me. You should know everyone quite well."

  Guardedly, came the answer: "That doesn't necessarily follow. I see most of them once a week, on Mondays. That hardly entitles me to speak of them with any authority."

  "But you've known Mrs. Wycherley since the beginning."

  "True."

  "And the other lady, Miss, em…"

  "Chilmark?"

  "Miss Chilmark. You've known her almost as long. You told us last night that there was some sort of incident involving Miss Chilmark. Something about a dog."

  Milo sighed. "It seems a century ago. The dog belongs to Rupert Darby. He's bloody inconsiderate, is Rupert. Miss Chilmark doesn't care for the dog at all, and of course it always makes a beeline for her. If he left it at home, or kept it on the leash, we wouldn't have any trouble. Last night at the meeting Rupert came in late as usual, and Marlowe-that's the dog-"

  "Did you say Marlowe?"

  "Marlowe, yes. That's its name."

  "Funny name for a dog."

  "It's the name of Raymond Chandler's private eye. You remember The Big Sleep}"

  "It's still a funny name for a dog."

  "Rupert told us why. You must have heard that Chandler quote: 'down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean…' Well, that dog adores a mean street."

  Diamond nodded. "Go on. Tell us what this dog did that was so obnoxious."

  "It jumped up beside Miss Chilmark and threw her into a panic. She had some sort of attack of breathlessness that was only brought under control thanks to swift action by Jessica- Mrs. Shaw."

  "What kind of action?"

  "She called for a paper bag. Sid produced one. His book was wrapped in it. Jessica held it against Miss Chilmark's face, and the attack subsided. That's all it was."

  "Sid had a book with him?"

  "I just said so."

  "Why would he have a book with him? He didn't read things out, did he?"

  "No, he was far too shy. I imagine it was for private reading."

  "Did you happen to notice the title?"

  "Of cdurse. I'm not uninterested in books myself. It was The Three Coffins, by John Dickson Carr. Sid was an admirer of Dickson Carr's work."

  "Are you familiar with this book?"

  "Extremely familiar, yes, but under the English title."

  "Isn't The Three Coffins English?"

  "I should have said British. The Three Coffins was the title the book was known by in America. Publishers sometimes decide in their wisdom that a book will sell better over there with a different title. It's a blasted nuisance to collectors."

  "So what was the British title?"

  "The Hollow Man."

  "Really? But that was the book you took to the meeting."

  "Yes, indeed. The first English edition, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1935. Unfortunately, my copy is without a wrapper, or it might be worth a few pounds."

  "
Let's get this clear," said Diamond. "You and Sid Towers each took a copy of the same book to the meeting on Monday?"

  "You make it sound suspicious," said Milo, "but it isn't at all. Far more suspicious things happened than that. The explanation is simple. At the previous meeting I announced to everyone that the next time we met, I would read the locked room chapter from The Hollow Man."

  Diamond mentally ticked one of the points he had wanted to check. Wigfull would be cockahoop. All the Bloodhounds who were present the previous week knew that Milo would bring his book to the meeting and open it at chapter seventeen. Any of them could have placed the stamp between the pages-any clever enough to find a way of doing it.

  Milo was saying, "I presume Sid brought along his copy to follow the text. In his quiet way he was quite an authority on Dickson Carr."

  "And so are you, apparently."

  Milo preened the beard, pleased by the compliment. "I prefer to be thought of as a? Sherlockian, but, yes, I have a sneaking admiration for much of Carr's work. He made the impossible crime his own specialty. Wrote seventy crime novels, which isn't at all bad considering he was notoriously fond of the bottle and also led a complicated love life. And of course he found time to write a fine biography of Conan Doyle. He was quite an Anglophile until the Labour government was elected after the war. He couldn't abide socialism, so he went back to the States and only returned after Churchill was returned to power."

  "How does politics come into crime writing?"

  "My dear superintendent, it's all about conservatism and affirming the social order, or was for almost a century."

  "The class system."

  Milo gave Diamond a sharp glance. "However vile the crime, the reader can rest assured that order is restored by the end. Only in comparatively recent times have left-wing crime writers discovered ways of subverting the status quo. You're not a socialist, are you?"

  "I'm a policeman," said Diamond. "We're neutral."

  Milo gave a hollow laugh. He was becoming confident.

  Diamond said, "Getting back to the incident with the dog-"

  "You're going to ask me once again if I let go of the book in all the confusion. The answer is the same. I had it on my knees or in my hand throughout. No one could have tampered with it. No one." Milo shook his head. "Nothing like this has happened to me in years. Once in my youth I met a close-up magician, and he did remarkable things that I still can't explain, like removing my watch without my being aware of it and having it turn up inside a box of chocolates. This business with the stamp is just as miraculous. I can only account for it as a brilliant conjuring trick. I can't guess the solution."

  "And the murder of Sid Towers-is that magic?"

  "The circumstances are."

  "Trickery."

  "Magic or trickery, it's beyond my understanding."

  "That's a conclusion I'm not permitted to make," said Diamond. "I've got to catch the conjurer. Do you have any suspicions?"

  "Of whom?"

  "The other Bloodhounds."

  "How can I?" said Milo. "They're charming people, all of them. Oh, Miss Chilmark has the reputation of being a sourpuss, but she's all right when you take a little trouble with her, butter her up, you know. And Jessica Shaw went out of her way to help poor old Sid fit in. She took him for a drink on more than one occasion. No, I'm afraid if you're looking for suspects, they're a very unlikely bunch. Not like a detective story at all. In this case, I can't think of anyone with a grudge against poor old Sid."

  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."