Longshot (35 page)

“About Harry’s car,” I said to Doone. “There must have been just a small problem of logistics. I mean, perhaps our man parked his own car in Reading station car park, then took a train to Maidenhead station and a bus from there to near the river, and went on foot from there to the boatyard ... wouldn’t that make sense?”

“It would, but so far we haven’t found anyone who noticed anything useful.”

“Car park ticket?”

“There wasn’t one in the car. We don’t know when the car arrived in the car park. It could have been parked somewhere else on Wednesday and repositioned when our man discovered Mr. Goodhaven was still alive.”

“Mm. It would mean that our man had a lot of time available for maneuvering.”

“Racing people do have flexible hours,” he observed, “and they mostly have free afternoons.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a hope that my jacket and boots were still in the car?” I asked.

“No sign of them. Sorry. They’ll be in a dump somewhere, shouldn’t wonder.” He was looking around the room again, and this time revealed his purpose. “About those guidebooks of yours. I’d like to see them.”

They were in the family room. I went to fetch them and returned with only three I’d found,
Jungle, Safari
and Ice. The others, I explained, could be anywhere, as everyone had been reading them.

He opened
Jungle
and quickly flipped through the opening chapters, which were straightforward advice for well-equipped jungle holidays: “Never put a bare foot on the earth. Shower in slippers. Sleep with your shoes inside your mosquito netting. Never drink untreated water ... never brush your teeth with it ... don’t wash fruit or vegetables in it, avoid suspect ice cubes.”

“Never get exhausted!” Doone said aloud. “What sort of advice is that?”

“Exhausted people can’t be bothered to stick to lifesaving routines. If you don’t drive yourself too hard you’re more likely to survive. For instance, if you’ve a long way to go, it’s better to get there slowly than not at all.”

“That’s weak advice,” he said, shaking his head.

I didn’t argue, but many died from exhaustion every year through not understanding the strengths of weakness. It was better to stop every day’s travel early so as to have good energy for raising a tent, digging an igloo, building a platform up a tree. Dropping down exhausted without shelter could bring new meaning to the expression “dead tired.”

“‘Food,’” Doone read out. “‘Fishing, hunting, trapping.’” He flicked the pages. “In the jungle, hang fishhooks to catch birds. Don’t forget bait. You always need bait.” He looked up. “That envelope was bait, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Good bait.”

“We haven’t found it. That water’s like liquid mud. You can’t see an inch through it, my men say.”

“They’re right.”

He stared for a second. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten you’d been in it.” He went back to the book. “‘It’s possible to bring down game with a spear or a bow and arrow, but these take considerable practice and involve hours spent lying in wait. Let a trap do the waiting ...’” He read on. “‘The classic trap for large animals is a pit with sharpened staves pointing upwards. Cover the pit with natural-looking vegetation and earth, and suspend the bait over the top.”’ He looked up. “Very graphic illustrations and instructions.”

“Afraid so.”

Eyes down again to the book, he went on. “All sharpened staves for use in traps (and also spears and arrows) can be hardened to increase their powers of penetration by being charred lightly in hot embers, a process which tightens and toughens the wood fibers.” Doone stopped reading and remarked, “You don’t say anything about sharpening old bicycle frames and railings.”

“There aren’t many bicycle frames in the jungle. Er ... were they sharpened?”

He sighed. “Not artificially.” He read on. “If digging or scraping out a pit is impracticable because of hard or waterlogged ground, try netting. Arrange a net to entangle game when it springs the trap. To make a strong net you can use tough plant fibers ...” He silently read several pages, occasionally shaking his head, not, I gathered, in disagreement with the text, but in sorrow at its availability.

“How to skin a snake,” he read. “Dear God.”

“Roast rattlesnake tastes like chicken,” I said.

“You’ve eaten it?”

I nodded. “Not at all bad.”

“First aid. How to stop heavy bleeding. Pressure points... To close gaping wounds, use needle and thread. To help blood clot, apply cobwebs to the wound.
Cobwebs!
I don’t believe it.”

“They’re organic,” I said, “and as sterile as most bandages.”

“Not for me, thanks.” He put down
Jungle
and flipped through
Safari
and
Ice.
Many of the same suggestions for traps appeared in all the books, modified only by terrain.

“Don’t eat polar bear liver,” Doone read in amazement, “it stores enough vitamin A to kill humans.” He smiled briefly. “That would make a dandy new method for murder.”

First catch your polar bear...

“Well, sir,” Doone said, laying the books aside, “we can trace the path of ideas about the trap, but who do you think put them into practice?”

I shook my head.

“If I throw names at you,” he said, “give your reasons for or against.”

“All right,” I said cautiously.

“Mr. Vickers.”

“Tremayne?” I must have sounded astonished. “All against.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Well, he’s not like that.”

“As I told you before, I don’t know these people the way you do. So give me reasons.”

I said, thinking, “Tremayne Vickers is forceful, a bit old-fashioned, straightforward, often kind. Angela Brickell would not have been to his taste. If, and to my mind it’s a colossal if,
if
she managed to seduce him and then told him he was the father-to-be, and if he believed it, it would have been more his style to pack her off home to her parents and provide for her. He doesn’t shirk responsibility. Also I can’t imagine him taking any woman out into deep woods for sex. Impossible. As for trying to kill Harry . . .” Words failed me.

“All right,” Doone said. He brought out a notebook and methodically wrote
Kendall’s assessments
at the top of the page. Underneath he wrote
Tremayne Vickers,
followed by a cross, and under Tremayne,
Nolan Everard.

“Nolan Everard,” he said.

Not so easy. “Nolan is brave. He’s dynamic and determined . . . and violent.”

“And he threatened to kill you,” Doone said flatly.

“Who told you that?”

“Half the racing world heard him.”

Sighing, I explained about my riding.

“And when he attacked you, you picked him up like a baby in front of all those people,” Doone said. “A man might not forgive that.”

“We’re talking about Angela Brickell and Harry,” I pointed out mildly.

“Talk about Nolan Everard then.
For,
first.”

“
For . . .
Well, he killed Olympia, not really meaning to, but definitely by putting her life at risk. He couldn’t afford another scandal while waiting for trial. If Angela Brickell had seduced him—or the other way round—and she threatened a messy paternity suit . . . I don’t know. That’s again a big if, but not as impossible as Tremayne. Nolan and Sam Yaeger often bed the same girl, more or less to spite each other, it seems. Nolan regularly rides the horse Chickweed, that Angela Brickell had care of, and there would have been opportunities for sex at race meetings, like in a horse box, if he wanted to take the risk. He could sue me for slander over this.”

“He won’t hear of it,” Doone said positively. “This conversation is just between you and me. I’ll deny I ever discussed the case with you if anyone asks.”

“Fair enough.” I thought a bit. “As for the trap for Harry, Nolan would be mentally and physically capable.”

“But? I hear your but.”

I nodded. “
Against.
He’s Fiona’s cousin, and they’re close. He depends on Fiona’s horses to clinch his amateur-champion status. He couldn’t be sure she would have the heart to go on running racehorses if she were forced to believe Harry a murderer ... if she thought he had left her without warning, without a note, if she were worried sick by not knowing where he’d gone, and was also haunted by the thought of Harry with Angela Brickell.”

“Would Everard have stopped to consider all that?” he mused doubtfully.

“The trap was well thought out.”

Doone wrote a question mark after Nolan’s name.

“Doesn’t
anyone
have a solid alibi for Wednesday afternoon?” I asked. “That’s the one definite time our man has to explain away.”

“And don’t think we don’t know it.” Doone nodded. “Not many of the men connected with this place can account for every hour of that afternoon, though the women can. We’ve been very busy this morning, making inquiries. Mrs. Goodhaven went to a committee meeting, then home in time to be there when you telephoned. Mrs. Perkin Vickers was at Ascot races, vouched for by saddling a horse in the three-mile chase. Mr. Vickers’s secretary, Dee-Dee, made several telephone calls from the office here and Mrs. Ingrid Watson went shopping in Oxford with her mother and can produce receipts.”

“
Ingrid?
”

“She can’t vouch for what her husband did.”

He wrote
Bob Watson
under Nolan.

“For him being our man,” I said dubiously, “is, I suppose, Ingrid herself. She wouldn’t put up with shenanigans with Angela Brickell. But whether Bob would kill to stay married to Ingrid ...” I shook my head. “I don’t know. He’s a good head lad, Tremayne trusts him, but I wouldn’t stake my life on his loyalty. Also he’s an extremely competent carpenter, as you saw yourself. He was serving drinks at the party when Olympia died. He went to the boatyard party as a guest.”

“
Against?
”

I hesitated. “Killing Angela Brickell might have been a moment’s panic. Setting the trap for Harry took cunning and nerve. I don’t know Bob Watson well enough for a real opinion. I don’t know him like the others.”

Doone nodded and put a question mark after his name also.

Gareth Vickers,
he wrote.

I smiled. “It can’t be him.”

“Why not?” Doone asked.

“Angela Brickell’s sexuality frightened him. He would never have gone into the woods with her. Apart from that, he hasn’t a driving license, and he was at school on Wednesday afternoon.”

“Actually,” Doone said calmly, “he is known to be able to drive his father’s jeep on the Downs expertly, and my men have discovered he was out of school last Wednesday afternoon on a field trip to Windsor Safari Park. That’s not miles from the boatyard. The teacher in charge is flustered over the number of boys who sneaked off to buy food.”

I considered Gareth as a murderer. I said, “You asked me for my knowledge of these people. Gareth couldn’t possibly be our man.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“I just am.”

He wrote a cross against Gareth’s name, and then as an afterthought, a question mark also.

I shook my head. Under Gareth’s name he wrote
Perkin Vickers.

“What about
him?
” he asked.

“Perkin ...” I sighed. “He lives in another world, half the time. He works hard.
For,
I suppose, is that he makes furniture, he’s good with wood. I don’t know that it’s
for
or against that he dotes on his wife. He’s very possessive of her. He’s a bit childlike in some ways. She loves him and looks after him.
Against
. . . he doesn’t have much to do with the horses. Seldom goes racing. He didn’t remember who Angela Brickell was, the first morning you were here.”

Doone pursed his lips judiciously, then nodded and wrote a cross against Perkin, and then again a question mark.

“Keeping your options open?” I asked dryly.

“You never know what we don’t know,” he said.

“Deep.”

“It might be reasonable to assume that Mr. Goodhaven didn’t set the trap himself, to persuade me of his innocence,” he said, writing
Henry Goodhaven
on the list.

“A hundred percent,” I agreed.

“However, he took you along as a witness.” He paused. “Suppose he planned it and it all went wrong? Suppose he needed you there to assert he’d walked into a trap?”

“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
assessments,”’ I protested. “My assessment 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 way to the right on the same line. “My assessments,” 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 outward... 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, and on Wednesday he rode at Ascot, so the boathouse was vulnerable all day Tuesday and again Wednesday morning.”