Longshot. Part 66

'Impossible.'

He put a question mark against Harry, all the same.

'Who drove his car away?' I said, a shade aggressively.

'A casual thief.'

'I don't believe it.'

'You like him,' Doone said. 'You're unreliable.'

'That page is headed "kendall's a.s.sESSMENTS",' I protested. 'My a.s.sessment of Harry merits a firm cross.'

He looked at what he'd written, shrugged and changed the question mark to a negative. Then he made a question mark away to the right on the same line. 'My a.s.sessments,' he said.

I smiled a little ruefully and said reflectively, 'Have you worked out when the trap was set? Raising the floorboards, finding the marble and sticking it on, cutting out the bit of beam - and I bet that went floating down the river- remembering to lock the lower door- It would all have taken a fair time.'

'When would you say it was done, then?' he asked, giving nothing away.

'Any time Tuesday, or Wednesday morning, I suppose.'

'Why, exactly?'

'Anti-Harry fever was publicly at its height on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but by the Sunday before, at least, you'd begun to spread your investigation outwards- which must horribly have alarmed our man. Sam Yaeger spent Monday at the boatyard because he'd been medically stood down from racing as a result of a fall, but by Tuesday he was racing again; on Wednesday he rode at Ascot, so the boathouse was vulnerable all day Tuesday and again Wednesday morning.'

Doone looked at me from under his eyelids.

'You're forgetting something,' he said, and added 'Sam Yaeger' to his list.

CHAPTER 17.

'Put a cross,' I said.

Doone shook his head. 'You admire him. You could be blinded.'

I thought it over. 'I do in many ways admire him, I admit. I admire his riding, his professionalism. He's courageous. He's a realist.' I paused. 'I'll agree that on the For side you could put the things you listed the other day, that he has all the skills to set the trap and the perfect place to do it.'

'Go on,' Doone nodded.

'You'd begun actively investigating him,' I said.

'Yes, I had.'

'He'd rolled around a bit with Angela Brickell,' I said, 'and that's where we come to the biggest Against.'

'You're not saying he couldn't have had the irritation, the nerve, the strength to strangle her?'

'No, I'm not, though I don't think he did it. What I'm saying is that he wouldn't have taken her out into the woods. He told you himself he moves a mattress into the boathouse on such occasions. If he'd strangled her on impulse it would have been there, and he could have slid her weighted body into the river, no one the wiser.'

Doone listened with his head on one side. 'But what if he'd deliberately planned it? What if he'd suggested the woods as being far away from his own territory?'

'I wouldn't think he'd need to cover his sins with strangulation,' I said. 'Everyone knows he seduces anything that moves. He would pa.s.s off an Angela Brickell sort of scandal with a laugh.'

Doone disapproved, saying, 'Unsavoury,' and maybe thinking of his a.s.sailable daughters.

'We haven't got very far,' I said, looking at his list. All my own a.s.sessments were a cross except the question mark against Nolan. Not awfully helpful, I thought.

Doone clicked his pen a few times, then at the bottom wrote Lewis Everard.

'That's a long shot,' I said.

'Give me some Fors and Againsts.'

I pondered. 'Against first. I don't think he's bold enough to have set that trap, but then-' I hesitated, 'there's no doubt he's both clever and cunning. I wouldn't have thought he would have gone into the woods with Angela Brickell. Can't exactly say why, but I'd think he'd be too fastidious, especially when he's sober.'

'For? Doone prompted, when I stopped.

'He gets drunk- I don't know if he'd tumble Angela Brickell in that state or not.'

'But he knew her.'

'Even if not in the biblical sense,' I agreed.

'Sir!' he said with mock reproach.

'He would have seen her at the races,' I said, smiling. 'And For- he is a good liar. According to him, he's the best actor of the lot.'

'A question mark, then?' Doone's pen hovered.

I slowly shook my head. 'A cross.'

'The trouble with you,' Doone said with disillusion, looking at the column of negatives, 'is that you haven't met enough murderers.'

'None,' I agreed. 'You can't exactly count Nolan Everard.'

'And you wouldn't know a murderer if you tripped over one.'

'Your list is too short,' I said.

'It seems so.' He put away the notebook and stood up. 'Well, Mr Kendall, thank you for your time. I don't discount your impressions. You've helped me clarify my thoughts. Now we'll have to step up our enquiries. We'll get there in the end.'

The sing-song accent came to a stop and he shook my hand and let himself out, a grey man in grey clothes following his own informal, idiosyncratic path towards the truth.

I sat for a while thinking of what I'd said and of what he'd told me, and I still couldn't believe that any of the people I'd come to know so well was really a murderer. No one was a villain, not even Nolan. There had to be someone else, someone we hadn't begun to consider.

I worked on and off on Tremayne's book for the rest of the morning but found it hard to concentrate.

Dee-Dee drifted in and out, offering coffee and company, and Tremayne put his head in to say he was going to Oxford to see his tailor, and to ask if I wanted an opportunity to shop.