Part 64 (1/2)

'Yes.'

'Opportunity?' he said.

'No one can remember what they were doing the day Angela Brickell disappeared.'

'Except the murderer,' he observed. 'What about opportunity on the day Mr Goodhaven fell through the floor?'

'Someone was there to drive his car away- no fingerprints, I suppose?'

'Gloves,' he said succinctly. 'Too few of Mr Goodhaven's prints are still there. No palm print on the gear lever, for instance. I don't know if we'd have worried about that if we'd thought he'd done a bunk. It was a cold day, after all. He might have worn gloves himself.'

'You might have guessed at collusion,' I suggested.

'Did you ever consider police work?'

'Not good at that sort of discipline.'

'You don't like taking orders, sir?'

'I prefer giving them to myself.'

He smiled without criticism. 'You'd be no good in uniform.'

'None at all.'

He was ent.i.tled, I supposed, to his small exploratory excursion around my character; and if he himself, I thought, had been wholly fulfilled by uniform, he would still be in it.

Perkin in his overalls appeared in the open doorway, hovering.

'Is Mackie over here?' he said. 'I can't find her.'

'In the kitchen with Tremayne,' I said. 'Thanks.' He swept a gaze over Doone and the plank and said with irony, 'Sorting it out, then?'

Doone said a shade heavily, 'Mr Kendall's always helpful,' and Perkin made a face and went off to join Mackie.

'About Harry's car,' I said to Doone. 'There must have been just a small problem of logistics. I mean, perhaps our man parked his own car in Reading station car park, then took a train to Maidenhead station and a bus from there to near the river, and went on foot from there to the boatyard- wouldn't that make sense?'

'It would, but so far we haven't found anyone who noticed anything useful.' 'Car park ticket?'

'There wasn't one in the car. We don't know when the car arrived in the car park. It could have been parked somewhere else on Wednesday and repositioned when our man discovered Mr Goodhaven was still alive.'

'Mm. It would mean that our man had a lot of time available for manoeuvring.'

'Racing people do have flexible hours,' he observed, 'and they mostly have free afternoons.'

'I don't suppose there's a hope that my jacket and boots were still in the car?' I asked.

'No sign of them. Sorry. They'll be in a dump somewhere, shouldn't wonder.' He was looking round the room again, and this time revealed his purpose. 'About those guide books of yours, I'd like to see them.'

They were in the family room. I went to fetch them and returned with only three I'd found, Jungle, Safari and Ice. The others, I explained, could be anywhere, as everyone had been reading them.