Bloodhounds

'The very thing I was about to say, sir,' said Wigfull.

'Do you think he was composing another riddle?' said Mr. Musgrave.

'Look at the middle row,' Diamond gently nudged them on. 'What else rhymes with 'lotion'?'

'These other words?' said Wigfull.

'Apart from those other words.'

'Ha-you're ahead of us,' said Mr. Musgrave. 'Motion. He wanted something to rhyme with Milo Motion. Good spotting, Peter. This does look like the notes for another cryptic riddle. So how about 'Jack'?'

' 'Attack'? ' suggested Wigfull, still thinking about hyperventilation, and in some danger of succumbing to it himself.

' 'Black,' ' said Mr. Musgrave. 'Penny Black.'

Diamond gave a nod. 'That's my best guess, sir.'

'And 'tomb'?'

'Locked room,' Diamond guessed again.

'I'll buy that. Ha. Neat. So Towers was jotting down words to make his next press release. This isn't absolute proof, of course, but I'm satisfied, Peter. You've linked him to the crime.'

Wigfull straightened in his chair. 'Why didn't you show it to me before?' he demanded in a high, aggrieved tone. 'It's evidence.'

He was answered first with a long look, and then: 'I got it from Mrs. Shaw less than an hour ago.'

'Then she was withholding evidence.'

'A paper bag?'

'If it's written on…'

'She hadn't noticed. Anyway, she'd forgotten about it. It was still in her handbag.'

'Are you sure she hadn't noticed the writing?'

'Even if she had, why should she have thought it important?'

'Crafty old sod,' said Mr. Musgrave. But it was Sid Towers he was talking about, not Jessica Shaw. 'What's the old saying? 'Who knows most, speaks least.' '

Some of the steam dispersed as they all thought about silent Sid, dismissed by most of the Bloodhounds as a nonentity. This, surely, was the proof that he had stolen the world's most valuable stamp and devised a locked room puzzle capable of baffling the best minds.

John Wigfull's mind excepted.

'You were going to tell us how it was done,' Mr. Musgrave prompted him.

Wigfull had a mountain to climb after that revelation. You could almost sense the effort of lacing his boots again and pulling on the rucksack. 'Yes, sir.'

'You're not going to keep us in suspense, I hope.'

'No, sir.' Manfully, Wigfull started again. 'The crime, as I was saying, was meticulously planned. Sid Towers must have been working on it for weeks, if not months. He needed to find a way of getting inside the narrowboat when Milo Motion wasn't present. He had an opportunity to see the Mrs. Hudson for himself the previous Christmas, when the Bloodhounds held their party there.'

'Aboard the boat?' said Mr. Musgrave. 'Good place for a party.'

'I checked, and he was certainly there, in spite of being so shy. I picture him at the party unwilling to mix, moving about the boat, looking at things. It's probable, isn't it, that a professional security officer like Towers would take an interest in the locks and bolts? I reckon he noted the type of padlock at that early stage. No doubt he'd come across such locks before. Probably knew they were supplied by Foxton's. If not, it was easy to note the name of the manufacturer and find out who stocked them.'

'What was the point?' Mr. Musgrave asked.

'An amazingly obvious one. No disrespect, sir. Most of these locked room puzzles are obvious when they're explained. I think he went to Foxton's and bought one of those German padlocks himself. He waited for his chance to make a substitution.'

'Good. I'm with you.'

'Exactly when he made the switch I can't be sure. May have been months ago, or as late as the meeting before last.'

'Are you saying he changed over the padlocks at the Bloodhounds?'

'Not exactly, sir.' With a startling sense of drama for such a prosaic man, Wigfull pictured the scene. 'Motion takes off his coat and hangs it on one of the coathooks near the door. Towers chooses a suitable moment to go to the gents. On the way he dips into Motion's overcoat pocket and finds the bunch of keys. He removes Milo's padlock key from the ring and replaces it with one of his own that fits the new padlock. Returns the keys to the pocket.'

'Now he can unlock the boat.'

'Right, sir. He leaves before Motion and drives fast to the boatyard to make sure he gets down there first. With the old key he unlocks the original padlock and replaces it with the one he bought.'

'And when Motion gets back to his boat he uses the key on his ring to let himself in.'

'In the usual way,' said Wigfull, 'unaware that the switch has been made.'

'Neat,' said Mr. Musgrave. 'I like it.'

John Wigfull beamed. 'And of course Sid Towers is now in possession of a spare key. He can visit the boat anytime he likes.' He brought his hands together in a gesture of finality. Then in case it appeared he was applauding himself, he rubbed them vigorously as if using a drying machine in a public toilet.

'The locked room mystery solved,' said Mr. Musgrave. 'What do you say, Peter?'

Diamond digested what had been said and then gave a nod. 'Full marks, John.' He meant it sincerely. He was genuinely impressed. The explanation had no obvious flaw. 'And the reason we didn't find the key on Towers's body is that the murderer must have taken it with him.'

'Or her,' Wigfull was quick to point out.

Mr. Musgrave said to Wigfull, 'You'd already thought of that, I'm sure.'

Wigfull smiled. He'd scaled his mountain and was on the summit posing for pictures.

Mr. Musgrave reached for the padlock again. 'It doesn't look as if it was bought recently,' he said, turning it over in his hand.

Wigfull had an answer to that. 'He'll have done what any forger of coins does-roughed it up a bit to take off the sheen. They stick them in a bag with other metal objects and shake them about. Sometimes they bury them. They soon look worn.'

Diamond had never judged Wigfull as short in intelligence; it was the sense of humor that was lacking. This wasn't an occasion for sour grapes. The man had just made a crucial contribution to the case, to his case, as well as Wigfull's own. 'Wish I'd thought of it,' he admitted. 'I didn't come near to working it out.'

Chapter Twenty-two

For Julie's benefit, as he put it, Diamond had been over Wigfull's explanation of the locked boat mystery point by point, and they could find no flaw. The substituted padlock and key answered every problem.

Finally he said, 'I'm thinking of handing the whole thing over to Wigfull.'

Julie blinked and frowned. She had sacrificed her lunch hour attending the postmortem, an unsavory duty she shouldn't have been lumbered with, and now he hit her with this. 'What do you mean? Let him take over the murder inquiry?'

'Locked rooms and cryptic rhymes. It isn't my scene, Julie. He's motoring through it. Firing on all cylinders while I'm… I'm stuck in the pits.'

She stared across the office at the big man as he stood by the window watching the traffic in Manvers Street. 'What does that make me-a worn tire?'

Diamond was not easy to work with, but his saving grace was a sense of humor. Such a remark would usually produce a smile, whatever the pressures he was under. This time he sighed. He had taken heavy punishment. Actually he wasn't indulging in self-pity; this was about confidence. At this minute he genuinely believed John