'If you wanted to end it all,' Diamond said to Julie, who was with him, 'there are worse ways than this. You sit on the railing here with one end around your neck and the other attached to the bridge and jump down. Mercifully quick.'
'Is that what happened?' Julie said. Something in his tone had suggested otherwise.
'He certainly broke his neck.'
She nodded. 'Only I notice you haven't used the word suicide once.'
'Because I'm not sure,' he said.
'Murder by hanging would be pretty unusual, wouldn't it?'
'Very.'
'Have you ever come across one?'
'Never. The victim is going to struggle, isn't he? I reckon you'd need a couple of people to carry it out. It's not as if his arms and legs were pinioned, as they are in a judicial hanging. Unless he were very feeble for some reason, or so pissed out of his mind that he didn't know what was happening-'
'That might be true in this case,' she said.
'He was out early last evening,' Diamond confirmed. 'I did establish that he had a quick pint in the Saracen's Head about seven and went off to meet someone else.'
'Did he say who?'
'No. But it was at some other pub, which was why he didn't have the dog with him. He told them in the Saracen's that you couldn't count on every pub accepting animals.'
'So it was a boozy evening,' said Julie. 'Do we know what time he died?'
He shrugged. 'They can never tell you with any precision. Between midnight-when Wigfull came through here- and six thirty in the morning.'
Julie tried to picture the scene. 'If he was drunk by then-I mean so helpless that someone could hang him- this would be a long way to bring him. Can you get a car along these paths?'
Diamond's immediate response showed that he'd given the problem some thought already. 'Yes, you can drive straight in from Sydney Place. There's no gate.'
'Difficult to prove,' Julie remarked.
'Impossible.'
'I meant the possibility of murder.'
'You never know what the postmortem may show up,' he said. 'I've asked Jack Merlin to do it.'
Merlin was the top forensic pathologist in the west of England. He would have to drive seventy miles, from Reading. He and Diamond knew each other of old, but he would have needed some convincing that a routine suicide by hanging was worth the journey.
'You do believe there's something suspicious,' Julie probed.
He made some indeterminate sound and pulled a face. 'Nothing very solid.'
To draw him out, she said, 'There wasn't any suicide note. If he did this from a sense of guilt, you'd think he would want to confess.'
Again, he gave a shrug. 'It's early days to worry about a note. Could be at his house, or in the post. The thing that makes me pause for thought is the padlock being found in his pocket. If you were going on a bender with a friend, would you carry a damned great padlock with you? What would be the point? It's not as if he was going to try the locked room trick on Milo's boat again. No point in that, surely? The only reason I can think of is to link him with the killing of Sid Towers. That may have been Rupert's way of telling us he was guilty. But as you just pointed out, he could have done that better in a written confession.'
'And if we're talking murder,' said Julie, 'the padlock in his pocket is a lot easier to plant than a fake confession. It still frames him.'
Diamond turned and looked along the strip of blue-green water toward the second iron bridge. 'Another murder on the canal? I wonder, Julie. I wonder.'
The first task after entering the house in Hay Hill that afternoon was to open a tin of dog food and pour some water into a bowl. Marlowe was ravenous.
Julie saw to it. 'Poor thing-he's been alone here since seven last night. I'm going to take him for a walk. You don't mind?'
'If it doesn't take long.'
He opened some windows.
The second task was to find the suicide note, if one existed. He looked in the obvious places, over the fireplace and by the bed. On the kitchen table. Beside the ancient typewriter in the back room.
No joy.
He found some cash, about thirty pounds, in an old box file, along with an out-of-date passport, letters from the local Job Center and the Social Security office, unfilled tax declaration forms, doctors' certificates, and beer mats with some names and addresses scribbled on them that meant nothing to Diamond. Nothing so helpful as a diary. A testament to a chaotic existence. He was learning nothing new about Rupert.
While his thoughts were still full of the dead man, he felt a sudden pressure against his leg. 'Jesus!'
Marlowe was back from his walk and wanting more food.
Julie followed the dog in. 'He's a super old thing really,' she said. 'Just wants some training. I'm sure he'd pick it up.'
'You'd better open another tin before he has my leg,' said Diamond, less enchanted.
'Found anything useful?' she asked.
He shook his head.
'So we wait for the postmortem?'
'Well, I did ask the1 police surgeon to take a blood sample. There may be some news on the alcohol content. We'd better be getting back to the nick, anyway.'
'What about the dog?'
Diamond's mind was on other things.
Julie said, 'We can't leave him here and forget about him. What's going to happen to him?'
He yawned and said as if such details were beneath him, 'The Dogs' and Cats' Home at Claverton, I reckon.'
Julie's blue eyes moistened at the thought. 'We can't just stick him in a home.'
'My cat, Raffles, came from there.'
'He's not a young dog, you can see that. No one would want to take him on.'
'There's no alternative.'
'There is. He can come home with me. I'll have him.'
His eyes widened. 'You've got two dogs already, haven't you?'
'So I'm used to it.'
He felt compelled to ask, 'What's your husband going to say?'
'Charlie? I'll talk him into it.'
'But if you've got the dog with you already…'
She smiled. 'Exactly. When he sees Marlowe, he won't turn him away.'
He didn't pursue it. Julie's domestic arrangements were her own business. They drove back to Manvers Street with Marlowe seated contentedly on the backseat, spreading gusts of his doggy breath around the car.
Chapter Thirty-two
Back at Manvers Street, there was a message waiting from the police surgeon; Rupert's blood alcohol level had been high, at lOOmg/ 100ml, but not excessively high. Diamond screwed it up and tossed it into the bin. 'I'd have expected double that figure if he was legless.'
Julie pointed out that lOOmg was above the legal limit for a driver, and Diamond said offhandedly that this wasn't about pinching a dead man for drunk driving.
She was treading on eggs, but she wasn't going to let him get away with a cheap jibe. 'It's worth
