'Oh, yes. It has to be raised each time a boat goes out.'
'How do you lift it, then? So far as I can tell, the thing is bolted down.'
'It is. We unfasten it with a windlass. Everyone using the moorings has one. You get one from the office.'
'Like a spanner, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'That explains it, then. Let me help you with those.' He picked up one of the bags. 'Ready to leave?'
'Will the constable lock up?'
'We'll do it.'
They emerged from the cabin. Diamond pressed the strap over the staple and closed the padlock over it. 'Where do you keep the windlass? I wouldn't mind seeing what it looks like.'
'It's in the locker on the right. I keep the tiller in there with it.'
Diamond pulled up the lid of the locker and peered at the collection of tools. 'I can see the tiller. Can't see anything like a windlass.'
Milo bent over and shifted the contents about. 'Well, that's a damned liberty. It's gone. Someone must have pinched it.'
'Are you sure?'
'It's always here.'
'What size and weight is this windlass?' Diamond asked.
Milo extended his hands about eight inches. 'It's iron. Not a thing you'd put in your pocket and forget about.'
'Heavy enough to crack a man over the head and kill him?'
'Good Lord. Is that possible?'
'Problems?' said Julie, seated at a desk near the door.
Diamond made a sound deep in his throat like a growl, pushed a computer keyboard aside, and perched his rear on one of the desks in the incident room. The civilian staff had finished work for the day.
He sighed. 'No worse than yesterday. I'm boxed in, Julie. I don't care for it.'
'Because of the way the body was found?'
'The whole shooting match. The bloody riddles. The missing Penny Black. This ridiculous Bloodhounds club. It's straight out of a whodunit. I'm a career detective, not a poncy Frenchman with spats and a walking stick.'
'Belgian.'
'What?'
'Hercule Poirot is a Belgian.'
'I don't care if he's from Outer Mongolia. He's a figment of some writer's imagination-that's the point. Everything up to now is detective story stuff from sixty years ago. It shouldn't be happening in the real world. I'm being asked to deal with a locked room murder, for Christ's sake. If I crack it-I mean when I crack it-what am I going to be faced with next? Invisible ink?'
Julie allowed a suitable pause. She'd worked with Diamond long enough to know that these occasional outpourings weren't entirely negative in effect. Then she remarked, 'Do you really need to crack the locked room mystery?'
He folded his arms. 'You'd better explain yourself.'
'Well, the great temptation is to go at this head on, as they did in those detective stories, puzzling over the locked room until we hit on the solution. That's what we're meant to do. Why don't we approach it another way?'
'Tell me how.'
'There's only a handful of people who could have committed the stamp theft. Agreed?'
'Certainly-but that's for John Wigfull to unravel.'
Julie refused to be deflected. 'I mean the Bloodhounds. They knew from the previous meeting that Milo would be bringing in his copy of The Hollow Man-an opportunity that the thief found irresistible. If Milo himself is not the thief, then it has to be the person who planted the stamp in his book.'
Diamond nodded. This was pretty obvious stuff.
She continued. 'Someone who must have been at the meeting the previous week when Milo promised to read from the chapter on locked room mysteries.'
'Or who was tipped off about what was said.'
'All right,' Julie conceded. 'But it's still a small group, right?'
'Right.'
'And so is the list of murder suspects.'
Diamond held up a finger. 'Careful, now.'
Julie got up and crossed the room to argue her case. 'Because the killer got inside the Mrs. Hudson, just as the stamp thief did. Be fair, Mr. Diamond. It's got to be the same person. I refuse to believe that two people independently worked out a way of getting inside that cabin without disturbing the lock. Two different people, each smarter than you? No way.'
'So?'
'So instead of all this brain-fag over the locked room, I suggest we get talking to the suspects. You and I, I mean. I know we have a batch of statements, but there's no substitute for getting face to face with people.'
'Doorstepping.' He smiled.
'No, I don't mean house-to-house inquiries. I'm talking about the suspects, and there aren't many of them.'
'That's your advice?'
She hesitated, detecting the note of irony. 'I'm trying to be helpful.'
'And you are.' This was sincerely meant. Listening to Julie had helped him take hold of a doubt that had been hovering just out of reach for some time. 'Only I'm not yet convinced that you're right about the thief and the killer being one and the same. Think for a moment about Sid Towers. What if he were the man who stole the stamp?'
'Sid?'
He gave a nod.
'The murder victim?'
Diamond gave his snap assessment of Towers. 'Unassuming, easily disregarded, yet not unintelligent. A reader of John Dickson Carr. Imagine the quiet satisfaction Sid would have derived from surprising the rest of the Bloodhounds-that opinionated lot who thought they knew all there is to know about detective stories. This is pure hypothesis, but let's suppose he stole the Penny Black simply to make a point, not with his power of speech which was so underdeveloped, but through the written word, with riddles and rhymes. 'I'm smarter than all of you put together,' he was saying in effect, 'whatever you think of me.' And what a marvelous notion to have the stamp turn up between the pages of Milo's book-thus demonstrating a locked room mystery unknown to Dr. Fell or anyone else. Do you see what I'm getting at, Julie?'
'Sid was the thief? But Sid was murdered.'
Diamond sketched the scenario as he spoke, and it made a lot of sense, even to himself. 'Murdered aboard the narrow-boat. Sid went back there, knowing Milo would be occupied at the nick for some time to come. Maybe he intended to leave a note, another riddle, even. He let himself in by the same brilliant method he used on the previous occasion-whatever that may be-only this time he was followed in by someone else, who picked up a windlass and cracked him over the head.'
'Who?'
'That's the question. Could be one of the Bloodhounds who followed him there. Could be someone else with a grudge against Sid. Could simply be some evil person who was on the towpath last night and decided to mug the occupant. In other words, anyone from your half-dozen suspects to the entire population of Avon and Somerset, plus any visitors passing through. That's why I'm cautious, Julie. But it's only a hypothesis. I may be totally mistaken.'
