Bloodhounds pd-4

by Peter Lovesey

  Wigfull stopped to look.

  He had been mistaken. He wasn't looking at a beard, but something the dog was carrying between its teeth. Something as dark as the rest of the coat.

  "Here, boy!"

  He stopped and held out his hand.

  The dog approached to within a few yards before changing its mind and racing away.

  But in that short time, Wigfull saw clearly what the dog had in its mouth: a black beret.

  "Oy! Come back!"

  The beret could have belonged to anyone, been discarded by anyone. But there are not many owners of berets in Bath. He knew of one of them. He decided he had better go in pursuit.

  There is no chance of outrunning a dog, but they don't usually dash at top speed for long. This one stopped after thirty yards or so and looked back, wagging its pom-pom tail.

  Wigfull called some encouraging words. The dog dropped the beret and barked. It was ready for a game.

  "Come on, then!"

  It didn't come. It ran off again-not without picking up the beret.

  Wigfull wondered if this was worth the trouble. His shoes were going to be ruined. He looked about him to see if the poodle's owner was anywhere in sight. No such luck.

  Away to his left, on the far side of the lawn, was a Roman temple, or, rather, a twentieth-century reconstruction, an up-market rain shelter. The poodle was heading toward it fast. If he could only trap it in there…

  He covered the distance quickly. The dog had gone inside and was crouching under the stone seat that extended around the three enclosed sides. The beret was still in its mouth.

  Wigfull was wary of going too close. If the poodle felt cornered, it might get aggressive. Up to now, it had seemed playful, but this was a new situation.

  He ventured just inside the temple and tried clicking his tongue in a friendly way. The dog gave a low growl.

  "It's all right, old fellow," Wigfull said reassuringly. "I'm just a friend. Are you going to give me a present? I'd like that."

  The dog growled again. In the gloom of the temple its eyes had a reddish glint that Wigfull didn't care for.

  Then he remembered the bar of chocolate he had in his pocket to sustain him through the night. There were still several pieces left. Did poodles eat chocolate?

  "How about this, then?" He held a piece out. "Just the job, eh?"

  The dog was definitely interested. It raised its head and sniffed. Only it didn't move from under the seat.

  "Come and get it, then."

  No chance, the poodle seemed to say.

  In case he was more of a threat standing up, Wigfull crossed to the side opposite the dog and sat down, still holding out the chocolate in his open palm and speaking encouragingly.

  There was a break in the deadlock. The dog let the beret slip from its jaws and took a couple of deep sniffs. Then it got up, leaving the beret, and crossed to where Wigfull was sitting, put its nose to the chocolate, decided it was edible and took it.

  He noticed it was wearing a collar with a name tag, but he didn't dare put his hand under its neck. He found two more pieces of chocolate. The first he fed to the dog, and the second he planned to throw through the temple pillars onto the path outside. The dog would run after it, and Wigfull would retrieve the beret.

  But it didn't happen like that. A voice from nowhere, echoing around the stone walls, impressive as an oracle, spoke the words "What are you feeding that dog?"

  Wigfull jerked his hand away and looked guiltily to his right.

  A man carrying a spade like a weapon stepped from behind a pillar. He was dressed in a scuffed leather jacket, black jeans, and gumboots. He looked dangerous.

  "Only chocolate," said Wigfull.

  "You've no business feeding him anything," said the man with the spade. "What's your game?"

  Wigfull explained that he was a detective, a chief inspector, and he was trying to remove the beret from the dog, because it might be evidence in a case he was involved in. It sounded unconvincing, even to him, and on this, of all mornings, he wasn't carrying his identity card. He'd changed into a padded jacket for the night and left the ID in his suit at home.

  The poodle growled at Wigfull.

  The man said, "Bloody liar."

  Wigfull pointed across the temple at the beret, still lying on the floor.

  The man said, "Chief inspector, my arse. You were feeding him something. You weren't after the beret. You hadn't even bothered to pick it up. You were after my dog. He's a thoroughbred poodle, is Inky, and you well know it."

  "He's yours?" said Wigfull.

  "Why else would he be running loose in the park? I'm the deputy head gardener here."

  The dispute continued for some time before Wigfull convinced the gardener that he was, indeed, one of the top men at Manvers Street and not a dog snatcher. Finally, they went their different ways, Wigfull with the beret in his pocket, and the gardener leading Inky to a council van.

  Annoyed with himself, Wigfull walked on toward the far end of the gardens and crossed the railway and the canal, thinking of things he should have said. He was so preoccupied that he failed to notice something far more sinister than a poodle with a beret.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  About twenty to seven the same morning, a jogger on his regular route along the towpath, approaching the point where the canal passed under Cleveland House and Sydney Road before entering Sydney Gardens, caught sight through the tunnel of the first of the two wrought iron bridges. He always looked forward to this point of the run. Aside from the boost of knowing that he was two thirds of the way home, there was the sheer pleasure in the spectacle of the white-painted bridge framed by the arch of the tunnel.

  Except that this morning something was different.

  When you are jogging for exercise, you don't stop to get a better view of things along the way. As he approached the tunnel, the jogger thought he could make out an object suspended beneath the arch of the bridge, but he couldn't tell what it was. It isn't possible to run through the tunnel, so he climbed up to Sydney Road to enter the Gardens, cross by the iron bridge, and take the little gate down to rejoin the towpath. When he got closer he saw that he was not mistaken. Something was hanging from the bridge, and it was a body.

  This section of canal is one of Bath's secrets, as charming as anything in the city, almost two centuries old, yet constructed with visual appeal, with sweetly curved passing places, and glimpses under the arches of several bridges, their reflections patterning the water.

  By eight, the reflections included an inflatable dinghy, police, park officials, a doctor, and two ambulancemen. The entire area was cordoned off. The body was photographed in situ and seen by the police surgeon before police performed the tricky operation of cutting it down and lowering it into the dinghy. The dead man was dressed in a black leather jacket, striped shirt, navy blue corduroy trousers, and black shoes. He was thin, about six feet tall, and looked about forty-five. His neck was obviously broken, confirming a considerable drop. This, the surgeon pointed out, must have been an efficient hanging. Most suicide victims use a chair or a ladder and rarely break their necks, and in consequence die slowly.

  The pockets of the leather jacket were found to contain a five-pound note, some loose change, a set of keys on a ring, and a padlock. An alert constable pointed out that the padlock was of the same make as the German one featured in the locked room case currently being investigated by the murder squad. The incident room was informed at once.

  Peter Diamond had no breakfast that morning. He drove the short distance from his home in Weston to the Royal United Hospital in time to see the body brought into the mortuary. He was allowed to unzip the body bag and confirm that the dead man was Rupert Darby. And the noose was still around his neck. The rope had been cut higher up.

  A real sense of loss affected the big detective on seeing Rupert's gaunt face, the bluish lips parted, revealing the gaps between a few nicotine-stained teeth. In that one short meeting the previous morning
he had enjoyed talking to Rupert, quickly getting attuned to his irreverent wit and warming to his vitality. What remained of the man was wholly pathetic.

  He would have liked to examine the arms and torso for possible bruising, but that was the pathologist's prerogative. To remove the clothes prematurely would be a major breach of procedure.

  After viewing the corpse, Diamond went home briefly. Steph offered to cook his usual bacon and eggs, but he didn't fancy anything except a black coffee. He told her he expected another long day.

  John Wigfull arrived an hour later than usual, with heavy shadows around his eyes, and was startled to find so much activity in the incident room. For a few nerve-racking minutes, he wondered if in the short time he had been away, the thief had got into the museum.

  Diamond told him about Rupert Darby.

  In turn, Wigfull told Diamond about the beret he had found. He didn't go into the problems Inky the poodle had given him, merely stating that he had picked up the beret soon after six thirty. "I'm bound to say I wondered about it when I saw it," he added.

  "Where was it?" Diamond asked.

  "Em, I picked it up in that temple thing near the railway bridge. Do you know where I mean?" He produced the beret from his pocket. "By the look of this, some animal has chewed it about a bit. A dog, I'd say. Do you think it was Rupert's?"

  "Sure of it." Diamond flattened the beret on a table. "You can see where the paint spray got to it."

  Wigfull hadn't heard about the paint, or the graffiti on the Walsingham Gallery window. He had to be told. He studied the tiny paint spots that covered about a third of the beret and said humbly that if he'd realized how crucial a piece of evidence this was, he'd have treated it more carefully.

  Diamond had not deliberately withheld information, he made clear; he'd only heard about it late the previous afternoon. There had not been an opportunity.

  Wigfull, floundering in his own deceit, made no objection. Instead, he said, "He must have taken off the beret to fit the noose over his head. Probably left it on the bridge, and a dog picked it up."

  "His own dog, I expect," said Diamond, reasonably enough.

  "I shouldn't count on it," said Wigfull, going red. "I did happen to see a large poodle running loose in the gardens- quite near the temple, actually."

  "Could have been the poodle, then."

  "Doesn't really matter, does it?" said Wigfull, trying to emphasize the larger considerations. "The crucial thing is that we found it and confirmed what you heard about the paint marks. Pretty damning. This writing on the gallery window was a desperate attempt by Rupert to throw suspicion on someone else, wouldn't you say?"

  "Looks that way," Diamond said.

  "And when it didn't succeed, when you followed up yesterday, asking for him in all his usual haunts, he heard we were onto him and topped himself."

  Diamond wasn't having that. He hadn't hounded Rupert to his death. "You're wrong there, John. This hanging wasn't something he thought of yesterday evening. It couldn't have been."

  This drew a frown from Wigfull.

  Patiently and without condescension, Diamond explained. "It was in the third riddle:

  'To end the suspense, as yours truly did,

  Discover the way to Sydney from Sid.' "

  Wigfull's long, silent look showed that he dearly wanted to know what Diamond was getting at.

  "The riddle predicted this hanging," Diamond went on." 'To end the suspense': That's what happened this morning. Rupert was suspended from the bridge. When he was cut down, we ended the suspense. It was a play on words, John, a gruesome double meaning. So it was all planned. 'Discover the way to Sydney' is what we did, except that we guessed wrong and picked the bloody museum instead of the bridge. If we'd thought more about every sodding word in the riddle, we might have anticipated this."

  "Might not."

  Really, Diamond had to agree. The lines had tantalized, as the previous riddles had. To have penetrated their true meaning would have required the brilliance of one of those fictional sleuths the Bloodhounds revered. He knew his limitations.

  Wigfull took a more positive line. "At least you have your murderer, and I have my locked room thief," he pointed out. "All we have to do now is work out how it was done."

  "You're assuming Rupert Darby is your man?"

  "Aren't you?" said Wigfull, blushing scarlet.

  Diamond said, "If you really want to know, John, I think you couldn't be more wrong. I know how it was done, but I'm damned if I know who did it."

  "You're talking about the locked room mystery? You think you've cracked it?" said Wigfull on a shrill note of disbelief.

  Diamond had cracked it all right. He was certain now, after thinking it through, going over it many times in his mind since getting the flash of inspiration the evening before. As he'd told Julie at the time, the breakthrough had come with her question: "What was the murderer doing there?"

  Between them, on a table, labeled and bagged, were the contents of the dead man's pockets. Diamond pointed to the polythene bag containing the padlock. "Take a look. Is it, or is it not, indistinguishable from the padlock on the narrowboat?"

  Wigfull turned it over several times. "It's the same make, certainly. But we've been through this before, my theory about a substitute padlock. You know we have. I thought I had the answer until you showed it was impossible. This padlock can't have been used. Milo's was on the door when we opened it that night, and he had only the one key. You proved that yourself when your divers found his old bunch of keys in the canal and the damned thing fitted. This doesn't prove anything unless the keys happen to be identical, and we were told by the locksmith that such a thing couldn't happen."

  "Just in case, let's put that to the test," said Diamond. He went to a drawer and took out Milo's padlock and the key that fitted it. "Pass me the other bag, would you-the one containing Rupert's keys?"

  "Do you think you ought to be handling them?" said Wigfull.

  "The keys, please."

  Wigfull shook the bag and dropped the key ring on the table top. He wasn't going to risk leaving his prints on them.

  All work was suspended in the incident room. Everyone in there-detectives, filing clerks, computer operators-gathered around the two senior men. Julie Hargreaves was there, and Keith Halliwell, on tenterhooks to hear the explanation.

  There were four keys on the ring: one of the Yale type that looked like a front-door key; a plastic-topped one that was probably for a car; and two small narrow ones, identical in shape. Diamond slotted one of the latter into Milo's padlock and tried unsuccessfully to turn it. To leave no one in any doubt, he tried the other, still with no result.

  Wigfull said smugly, "You see. It doesn't match. Let's compare it with Milo's key. I'm willing to bet the whole shape is different."

  He was right. When placed together, the two keys were clearly cut for different locks.

  Diamond was not discouraged. Far from it. "Right. This is the way it was done. It's going to make you groan, it's so simple. This is Milo's padlock, right? And this is the key that fits it, the one key available at the time. Milo had possession of the key, so Milo was the only person who could open the padlock at any time. Everyone agreed?"

  There were some cautious murmurs. Nobody really wanted to be shown up as gullible.

  "Now imagine Milo going to his locked boat anytime you like. He uses his key to open the padlock. Now what does he do?"

  Halliwell said, "Removes the key and replaces it in his pocket."

  Diamond wagged a stubby finger in confirmation. "Right. The keys go back into his pocket. What about the padlock?"

  "He doesn't put that in his pocket," said one of the computer operators. "It's too bulky."

  "So what does he do?"

  "Leaves it hanging on the staple."

  "Correct. Locked or unlocked?"

  A moment's hesitation. Then, from Wigfull: "Unlocked, presumably. No point in locking it while he's at home. If he wants privacy, he can use the finge
rbolts on the inside of the door."

  Diamond gave a nod and referred the matter to everyone else by spreading his hands. "Reasonable? Now, let's take this on a bit. Milo is aboard his boat, sitting in the cabin watching TV or cooking. The door is bolted from the inside. The padlock is hanging from the staple outside the door with the shackle-this arched bit at the top-unfastened. Anyone could lift the padlock off. Are you with me still?"

  There were nods and murmurs all around.

  "Now along comes our villain with a similar padlock- different key, of course-unhooks Milo's padlock and substitutes his own. Done in a moment without Milo being aware of it. He goes away and waits for his opportunity."

  There were definite sounds of understanding.

  "You're onto it, aren't you?" said Diamond. "Milo decides to go out. And what does he do to lock his door? Simply closes it, lifts off the padlock-the new padlock, believing it to be his own-and slots the hasp over the staple. Puts the padlock in position and presses it home. He doesn't need to use his key. They lock automatically, as anyone who has used a padlock knows."

  They were not only up with his explanation now; they were ahead. The murmurs were of appreciation.

  "But of course," Diamond said, "the padlock he's just attached to his boat belongs to the villain, who can now unlock it at will. So the villain lets himself in, does his dirty work, and leaves. And when he leaves, he fixes Milo's padlock on the door and presses it closed. Milo comes back later, unlocks as usual, and can't fathom how someone could have got inside his cabin."

  Julie said, "Nor could anyone else until this moment."

  Halliwell said, "You've cracked it."

  Even Wigfull was nodding.

  A couple of people applauded, and almost everyone joined in.

  Diamond flushed with embarrassment and reminded them that there was work to be done. His stock had never been higher at the Bath nick.

  Later, at the bridge in Sydney Gardens, he examined the scene of the hanging. The approaches were still cordoned off. The Scenes of Crime officers had come and gone. Part of the rope was still attached to the iron parapet.