‘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 enquiries. 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’ 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 licence, 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 sloped 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 per cent,’ 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 away 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 outwards... 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; on Wednesday he rode at Ascot, so the boathouse was vulnerable all day Tuesday and again Wednesday morning.’
Doone looked at me from under his eyelids.
‘You’re forgetting something,’ he said, and added ‘SAM YAEGER’ to his list.
Chapter 17
‘Put a cross,’ I said.
Doone shook his head. ‘You admire him. You could be blinded.’
I thought it over. ‘I do in many ways admire him, I admit. I admire his riding, his professionalism. He’s courageous. He’s a realist.’ I paused. ‘I’ll agree that on the For side you could put the things you listed the other day, that he has all the skills to set the trap and the perfect place to do it.’
‘Go on,’ Doone nodded.
‘You’d begun actively investigating him,’ I said.
‘Yes, I had.’
‘He’d rolled around a bit with Angela Brickell,’ I said, ‘and that’s where we come to the biggest Against.’