Longshot. Part 50

I said regretfully, 'No, I'm not.'

'I'll have to see those books.'

'Yes.'

Sam came back frowning and, stretching inside without stepping into the water, pressed the three switches that had been unresponsive two days earlier. The lights in the ceiling came on without fuss and illuminated the ancient brick walls and the weathered old grey beams which crossed from side to side, holding up the planks of the floor above: holding up the planks, except where the hole was.

Doone looked in briefly and made some remark about returning with a.s.sistance. Sam looked longer and said to me challengingly, 'Well?'

'There's a bit of beam missing,' I said, 'isn't there?'

He nodded unwillingly. 'Looks like it. But I didn't know about it. How could I?'

Doone, in his quiet way a pouncer, said meaningfully, 'You yourself, sir, have all the knowledge and the tools for tampering with your boathouse.'

'I didn't.' Sam's response was belligerence, not fear. 'Everyone knows this place. Everyone's been here. Everyone could cut out a beam that small, it's child's play.'

'Who, precisely?' Doone asked. 'Besides you?'

'Well- anybody. Perkin! He could. Nolan- I mean, most people can use a saw, can't they? Can't you?'

Doone's expression a.s.sented but he said merely, 'I'll take another look upstairs now, if you please, sir.'

We went in gingerly but as far as one could tell the floor was solid except for the one strip over the missing bit of beam. The floorboards themselves were grey with age, and dusty, but not worm-eaten, not rotten.

Sam said, 'The floorboards aren't nailed down much. Just here and there. They fit tightly most of the time because of the damp, but when we have a hot dry summer they shrink and you can lift them up easily. You can check the beams for rot.'

'Why are they like that?' Doone asked.

'Ask the people who built it,' Sam said, shrugging. 'It was like this when I bought it. The last time I took the floorboards up was for the party, installing coloured spotlights and strobes in the ceiling underneath.'

'Who knew you took the floorboards up?' Doone asked.

Sam looked at him as if he were r.e.t.a.r.ded. 'How do I know?' he demanded. 'Everyone who asked how I'd done the lighting, I told them.'

I went down on my knees and edged towards the hole.

'Don't do that,' Doone exclaimed.

'Just having a look.'

The way the floorboards had been laid, I saw, had meant that the doctored beam had been a main load-bearer. Several of the planks, including those that had given way under Harry's weight, had without that beam's support simply been hanging out in s.p.a.ce, resting like a seesaw over the previous beam but otherwise supported only by the tight fit of each plank against the next. The floorboards hadn't snapped, as I'd originally thought: they'd gone down into the dock with Harry.

I tested a few planks carefully with the weight of my hand, then retreated and stood up on safer ground.

'Well?' Doone said.

'It's still lethal just each side of the hole.'

'Right.' He turned to Sam. 'I'll have to know, sir, when this tampering could have been carried out.'

Sam looked as if he'd had too much of the whole thing. With exasperation, he said, 'Since when? Since Christmas?'

Doone said stolidly, 'Since ten days ago.'

Sam briefly gave it some thought. 'A week last Wednesday I dropped off a load of wood here on my way to Windsor races. Thursday I raced at Towcester. Friday I spent some time here, half a day. Sat.u.r.day I raced at Chepstow and had a fall and couldn't ride again until Tuesday. So Sunday I was nursing myself until you came knocking on my door, and Monday I spent here, pottering about. Tuesday I was back racing at Warwick. Wednesday I went to Ascot, yesterday Wincanton, today Newbury-' He paused. 'I've never been here at night.'

'What races did you ride in on Wednesday afternoon?' Doone asked. 'At Ascot.' 'What races?' 'Yes.'

'The two-mile hurdle, the novice hurdle, novice chase.'

I gathered from Doone's face that it wasn't the type of answer he'd expected, but he pulled out a notebook and wrote down the reply as given, checking that he'd got it right.

Sam, upon whom understanding had dawned, said, 'I wasn't here driving Harry's sodding car away, if that's what you're thinking.'

'I'll need to ascertain a good many people's whereabouts on Wednesday afternoon,' Doone said placidly in a flourish of jargon. 'But as for now, sir, we can proceed with our investigations without taking any more of the time of either of you two gentlemen, for the present.'

'Cla.s.s dismissed?' Sam said with irony.

Doone, unruffled, said we would be hearing from him later.

Sam came with me to where I'd parked Tremayne's car on stone-strewn gra.s.s. The natural jauntiness remained in his step but there was less confidence in his thoughts, it seemed.

'I like Harry,' he said, as we reached the Volvo.

'So do I.'

'Do you think I set that trap?'

'You certainly could have.'

'Sure,' he said. 'Dead easy. But I didn't.'

He looked up into my face, partly anxious, partly still full of his usual machismo.

'Unless you killed Angela Brickell,' I said, 'you wouldn't have tried to kill Harry. Wouldn't make sense.'

'I didn't do the silly little bimbo any harm.' He shook his head as if to free her from his memory. 'She was too intense for me, if you want to know. I like a bit of a giggle, not remorse and tears afterwards. Old Angie took everything seriously, always going on about mortal sin, and I got sodding tired of it, and of her, tell the truth. She wanted me to marry her!' His voice was full of the enormity of such a thought. 'I told her I'd got my sights set on a high-born heiress and she d.a.m.ned near scratched my eyes out. A bit of a h.e.l.l-cat, she could be, old Angie. And hungry for it! I mean, she'd whip her clothes off before you'd finished the question.'

I listened with fascination to this insider viewpoint, and the moody Miss Brickell suddenly became a real person; not a pathetic collection of dry bones, but a mixed-up pulsating young woman full of strong urges and stronger guilts who'd piled on too much pressure, loaded her need of penitence and her heavy desires and perhaps finally her pregnancy onto someone who couldn't bear it all, and who'd seen a violent way to escape her.

Someone, I thought with illumination, who knew how easily Olympia had died from hands round the neck.

Angela Brickell had to have invited her own death. Doone, I supposed, had known that all along.

'What are you thinking?' Sam asked, uncertainly for him.

'What did she look like?' I said.