"You can go back before the afternoon is out; I give you my word," Diamond promised. "It may not be restored to its former glory yet, because they took the carpet and one or two other items for forensic tests."
"I simply want a change of clothes," said Milo. "I'm not proposing to sleep there after what happened."
"Are you comfortable in the B and B?"
"Tolerably."
"You don't have a friend who would put you up?"
He gave a prim click of the tongue. "No."
"Why don't you sit down?"
"Is it going to take as long as that?"
"A few things need clearing up," said Diamond equably.
"If it's about the bloody padlock again…" Milo started to say.
"No, it's the Bloodhounds, sir. You were one of the founders, you told me. You should know everyone quite well."
Guardedly, came the answer: "That doesn't necessarily follow. I see most of them once a week, on Mondays. That hardly entitles me to speak of them with any authority."
"But you've known Mrs. Wycherley since the beginning."
"True."
"And the other lady, Miss, em…"
"Chilmark?"
"Miss Chilmark. You've known her almost as long. You told us last night that there was some sort of incident involving Miss Chilmark. Something about a dog."
Milo sighed. "It seems a century ago. The dog belongs to Rupert Darby. He's bloody inconsiderate, is Rupert. Miss Chilmark doesn't care for the dog at all, and of course it always makes a beeline for her. If he left it at home, or kept it on the leash, we wouldn't have any trouble. Last night at the meeting Rupert came in late as usual, and Marlowe-that's the dog-"
"Did you say Marlowe?"
"Marlowe, yes. That's its name."
"Funny name for a dog."
"It's the name of Raymond Chandler's private eye. You remember The Big Sleep}"
"It's still a funny name for a dog."
"Rupert told us why. You must have heard that Chandler quote: 'down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean…' Well, that dog adores a mean street."
Diamond nodded. "Go on. Tell us what this dog did that was so obnoxious."
"It jumped up beside Miss Chilmark and threw her into a panic. She had some sort of attack of breathlessness that was only brought under control thanks to swift action by Jessica- Mrs. Shaw."
"What kind of action?"
"She called for a paper bag. Sid produced one. His book was wrapped in it. Jessica held it against Miss Chilmark's face, and the attack subsided. That's all it was."
"Sid had a book with him?"
"I just said so."
"Why would he have a book with him? He didn't read things out, did he?"
"No, he was far too shy. I imagine it was for private reading."
"Did you happen to notice the title?"
"Of cdurse. I'm not uninterested in books myself. It was The Three Coffins, by John Dickson Carr. Sid was an admirer of Dickson Carr's work."
"Are you familiar with this book?"
"Extremely familiar, yes, but under the English title."
"Isn't The Three Coffins English?"
"I should have said British. The Three Coffins was the title the book was known by in America. Publishers sometimes decide in their wisdom that a book will sell better over there with a different title. It's a blasted nuisance to collectors."
"So what was the British title?"
"The Hollow Man."
"Really? But that was the book you took to the meeting."
"Yes, indeed. The first English edition, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1935. Unfortunately, my copy is without a wrapper, or it might be worth a few pounds."
"Let's get this clear," said Diamond. "You and Sid Towers each took a copy of the same book to the meeting on Monday?"
"You make it sound suspicious," said Milo, "but it isn't at all. Far more suspicious things happened than that. The explanation is simple. At the previous meeting I announced to everyone that the next time we met, I would read the locked room chapter from The Hollow Man."
Diamond mentally ticked one of the points he had wanted to check. Wigfull would be cockahoop. All the Bloodhounds who were present the previous week knew that Milo would bring his book to the meeting and open it at chapter seventeen. Any of them could have placed the stamp between the pages-any clever enough to find a way of doing it.
Milo was saying, "I presume Sid brought along his copy to follow the text. In his quiet way he was quite an authority on Dickson Carr."
"And so are you, apparently."
Milo preened the beard, pleased by the compliment. "I prefer to be thought of as a? Sherlockian, but, yes, I have a sneaking admiration for much of Carr's work. He made the impossible crime his own specialty. Wrote seventy crime novels, which isn't at all bad considering he was notoriously fond of the bottle and also led a complicated love life. And of course he found time to write a fine biography of Conan Doyle. He was quite an Anglophile until the Labour government was elected after the war. He couldn't abide socialism, so he went back to the States and only returned after Churchill was returned to power."
"How does politics come into crime writing?"
"My dear superintendent, it's all about conservatism and affirming the social order, or was for almost a century."
"The class system."
Milo gave Diamond a sharp glance. "However vile the crime, the reader can rest assured that order is restored by the end. Only in comparatively recent times have left-wing crime writers discovered ways of subverting the status quo. You're not a socialist, are you?"
"I'm a policeman," said Diamond. "We're neutral."
Milo gave a hollow laugh. He was becoming confident.
Diamond said, "Getting back to the incident with the dog-"
"You're going to ask me once again if I let go of the book in all the confusion. The answer is the same. I had it on my knees or in my hand throughout. No one could have tampered with it. No one." Milo shook his head. "Nothing like this has happened to me in years. Once in my youth I met a close-up magician, and he did remarkable things that I still can't explain, like removing my watch without my being aware of it and having it turn up inside a box of chocolates. This business with the stamp is just as miraculous. I can only account for it as a brilliant conjuring trick. I can't guess the solution."
"And the murder of Sid Towers-is that magic?"
"The circumstances are."
"Trickery."
"Magic or trickery, it's beyond my understanding."
"That's a conclusion I'm not permitted to make," said Diamond. "I've got to catch the conjurer. Do you have any suspicions?"
"Of whom?"
"The other Bloodhounds."
"How can I?" said Milo. "They're charming people, all of them. Oh, Miss Chilmark has the reputation of being a sourpuss, but she's all right when you take a little trouble with her, butter her up, you know. And Jessica Shaw went out of her way to help poor old Sid fit in. She took him for a drink on more than one occasion. No, I'm afraid if you're looking for suspects, they're a very unlikely bunch. Not like a detective story at all. In this case, I can't think of anyone with a grudge against poor old Sid."
Chapter Eighteen
Later the same afternoon, Diamond drove Milo Motion to the Dundas boatyard to collect his change of clothes from the Mrs. Hudson. A thick-knit sweater was likely to be among them, because now that the sun was disappearing behind the willows on the far bank, there was an unmistakable threat of frost in that cloudless sky. The Scenes of Crime team had finished work and left. The only police activity-apart from one luckless constable rubbing his hands to keep his circulation going-was a pair of divers searching the canal bottom for the murder weapon, and they didn't seem too happy either. What they were doing in the shallow water couldn't be described as diving, more a matter of wading about and bending double. On a blue tarpaulin on the towpath they had assembled their finds-a horseshoe, two plastic milk crates, a bicycle pump, a birdcage, about twenty beer cans, and several pieces of stone-the result of three hours' scavenging for fifty yards either side of the narrowboat. Diamond told them to give up for the day. The chance was slim that a killer so artful as this would have disposed of the weapon in so obvious a place, but procedure had required the search to be made. He asked Milo to check for any object missing from the boat that might have been used to crack Sid Towers over the head.