Longshot. Part 48

'Yes.'

'And any dog worth his salt would bite open a handbag to get to the chocolate?'

'It's possible.' He made a decision and a big admission. 'There were toothmarks on the handbag.'

'Suppose then,' I said, 'that she did in fact have a thing about Harry. He's a kind and attractive man. Suppose she did carry his photo with the horse, not Fiona's, who's the owner after all. Suppose she'd managed to acquire personal things of Harry's, his sungla.s.ses, a pen, even a belt, and wore them or carried them with her, as young people do. They'd only be evidence of her crush on Harry, not of his presence at her death.'

'I considered all that, yes.'

'Suppose someone couldn't understand why you didn't arrest Harry, particularly in view of all the hounding in the papers, and decided to remove any doubts you might be showing?'

He sat for a while without speaking, apparently debating how many of his thoughts to share. Not many more, it transpired.

'Whoever took Harry's car,' I said, 'removed my jacket and boots as well. I took them off before I went through the floor into the dock.'

'Why didn't you tell me that?' He seemed put out, severe.

'I'm telling you now.' I paused. 'I would think that whoever took those things is very worried indeed now to find that I was with Harry and that he is alive. I'd say there wasn't supposed to be any reason to think Harry had gone to Sam's boatyard. No one would ever have looked for him there. I'd say it was an attempt to confirm Harry's guilt that went disastrously wrong, leaving you with bristling new doubts and a whole lot more to investigate.'

He said formally, 'I would like you to be present at the boatyard tomorrow morning.'

'What do you think of the place?' I asked.

'I've taken statements from Mr and Mrs Goodhaven and others,' he said stiffly. 'I haven't been to the boatyard yet. It has, however, been cordoned off. Mr Yaeger is meeting me there tomorrow at nine a.m. I would have preferred this afternoon but it seems he is riding in three races at Wincanton.'

I nodded. Tremayne had gone there, also Nolan. Another clash of the t.i.tans.

'You know,' Doone said slowly, 'I had indeed started to question others besides Mr Goodhaven.'

I nodded. 'Sam Yaeger for one. He told us. Everyone knew you'd begun casting wider.'

'The la.s.s had been indiscriminate,' he said regretfully.

Tremayne lent me his Volvo to go to the boatyard in the morning, reminding me before I set off that it was the day of the awards dinner at which he was to be honoured.

I'd seen the invitation pinned up prominently by Dee-Dee in the office: most of the racing world, it seemed, would be there to applaud. For Tremayne, though he made a few self-deprecating jokes about it, the event gave proof of the substance of his life, much like the biography.

Sam and Doone were already in the boatyard by the time I'd found my way there, neither of them radiating joy, Sam's multicoloured jacket only emphasising the personality clash with grey plain clothes. They'd been waiting for me, it seemed, in a mutual absence of civility.

'Right, sir,' Doone said, as I stood up out of the car, 'we've done nothing here so far. Moved nothing. Please take us through your actions of Wednesday afternoon.'

Sam said crossly, 'Asking for sodding trouble, coming here.'

'As it turned out,' Doone said placidly. 'Go on, Mr Kendall.'

'Harry said he was due to meet someone in the boathouse, so we went over there.' I walked where we'd gone, the others following. 'We opened this main door. It wasn't locked.'

'Never is,' Sam said.

I pushed open the door and we looked at the hole in the floor.

'We walked in,' I said. 'Just talking.'

'What about?' Doone asked.

'About a great party Sam gave here once. Harry was saying there had been a bar here in the boathouse and a grotto below. He began to walk down to the windows and saw an envelope on the floor and when he bent to pick it up, the floor creaked and gave way.'

Sam looked blank.

'Is that likely?' Doone asked him. 'How long ago was the floor solid enough to hold a party on it?'

'A year last July,' Sam said flatly.

'Quick bit of rot,' Doone commented, in his sing-song voice.

Sam made no answer, in itself remarkable.

'Anyway,' I said, 'I took off my boots and jacket and left them up here and I dropped into the water, because Harry hadn't come up for air, like I told you.'

'Yes,' Doone said.

'You can see better from the lower door,' I remarked, turning to go down the path. 'This door down here leads into the dock.'

Sam disgustedly fingered the splintered door frame.

'Did you sodding do this?' he demanded. 'It wasn't locked.'

'It was,' I said. 'With no key in sight.'

'The key was in the keyhole on the inside.'

'Absolutely not,' I said.

Sam pulled the door open and we looked into the scene that was all too familiar to my eyes; an expanse of muddy water, the hole in the ceiling overhead and the curtain of iron mesh across the exit to the river; a dock big enough for a moderate-sized cabin cruiser or three or four smaller boats. The water smelled dankly of mud and winter, which I hadn't seemed to notice when I'd been in it.

'There's a sort of walkway along this right-hand wall,' I told Doone. 'You can't see it now because of the floodwater.'

Sam nodded. 'A mooring dock, with bollards.'

'If you care to walk along there,' I suggested, deadpan, 'I'll show you an interesting fact about that hole.'

They both stared at the water with reluctance stamped all over their faces, then Sam's cleared as he thought of a more palatable solution.

'We'll go and look in a boat.'

'How about the curtain?'

'Roll it up, of course.'