Part 50 (1/2)

I said regretfully, 'No, I'm not.'

'I'll have to see those books.'

'Yes.'

Sam came back frowning and, stretching inside without stepping into the water, pressed the three switches that had been unresponsive two days earlier. The lights in the ceiling came on without fuss and illuminated the ancient brick walls and the weathered old grey beams which crossed from side to side, holding up the planks of the floor above: holding up the planks, except where the hole was.

Doone looked in briefly and made some remark about returning with a.s.sistance. Sam looked longer and said to me challengingly, 'Well?'

'There's a bit of beam missing,' I said, 'isn't there?'

He nodded unwillingly. 'Looks like it. But I didn't know about it. How could I?'

Doone, in his quiet way a pouncer, said meaningfully, 'You yourself, sir, have all the knowledge and the tools for tampering with your boathouse.'

'I didn't.' Sam's response was belligerence, not fear. 'Everyone knows this place. Everyone's been here. Everyone could cut out a beam that small, it's child's play.'

'Who, precisely?' Doone asked. 'Besides you?'

'Well- anybody. Perkin! He could. Nolan- I mean, most people can use a saw, can't they? Can't you?'

Doone's expression a.s.sented but he said merely, 'I'll take another look upstairs now, if you please, sir.'

We went in gingerly but as far as one could tell the floor was solid except for the one strip over the missing bit of beam. The floorboards themselves were grey with age, and dusty, but not worm-eaten, not rotten.

Sam said, 'The floorboards aren't nailed down much. Just here and there. They fit tightly most of the time because of the damp, but when we have a hot dry summer they shrink and you can lift them up easily. You can check the beams for rot.'

'Why are they like that?' Doone asked.

'Ask the people who built it,' Sam said, shrugging. 'It was like this when I bought it. The last time I took the floorboards up was for the party, installing coloured spotlights and strobes in the ceiling underneath.'

'Who knew you took the floorboards up?' Doone asked.

Sam looked at him as if he were r.e.t.a.r.ded. 'How do I know?' he demanded. 'Everyone who asked how I'd done the lighting, I told them.'

I went down on my knees and edged towards the hole.

'Don't do that,' Doone exclaimed.

'Just having a look.'

The way the floorboards had been laid, I saw, had meant that the doctored beam had been a main load-bearer. Several of the planks, including those that had given way under Harry's weight, had without that beam's support simply been hanging out in s.p.a.ce, resting like a seesaw over the previous beam but otherwise supported only by the tight fit of each plank against the next. The floorboards hadn't snapped, as I'd originally thought: they'd gone down into the dock with Harry.

I tested a few planks carefully with the weight of my hand, then retreated and stood up on safer ground.

'Well?' Doone said.

'It's still lethal just each side of the hole.'

'Right.' He turned to Sam. 'I'll have to know, sir, when this tampering could have been carried out.'