‘Yes?’
‘I was thinking about the boat.’
‘Kestrel?’
‘It’s not unknown for people to break into boats on the canal. It’s very quiet down there. There’s a couple who live on their boat a bit further along, but that’s all.’
I pictured the deserted canalside, too far from any streetlights to be safe at this time of night. I was no hero. That kind of job should be left to the police.
‘Well, I don’t suppose there’s anything worth stealing,’ I said.
Mrs Wentworth gripped my sleeve. Her hand was trembling with anxiety. ‘You never know. It would be such a reassurance to an old lady. Would you, please—?’
I sighed, realising I’d have to spend a few more minutes on this nonsense before I could go to the pub. ‘All right, I’ll go and check.’
‘Thank you. I do appreciate it. And I’m sure Caroline will, when I tell her how concerned you were.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’ But I said it entirely to myself as I walked down the path between the two gardens towards the Coventry Canal.
Mrs Wentworth was absolutely right — it was deathly quiet on the canalside. All I could hear was the soft movement of water against the bank, and somewhere nearby a tawny owl calling that eerie cry that sounds like an animal screaming in terror.
The surface of the canal collected a little of what light was available from the overcast sky, and I could just make out the outline of Kestrel moored against the bank. In fact, I could smell it better than I could see it, because as I got closer the scents of bitumen and varnished wood mingled with the dankness of the water in the cold air.
Careful to avoid unseen mooring lines, I walked along the length of the boat, shining my torch onto the steel shutters that covered the windows. Everything seemed secure. The stern and fore-end lines were firmly fixed, and the small door that opened onto the fore deck was tightly locked. I began to wonder what the inside of the boat was like. For years, this had been Samuel Longden’s favourite plaything. He’d travelled many miles in it, according to the boaters I’d met at his funeral. And even after he’d grown too old, he’d spent a lot of time down here. Mrs Wentworth herself had told me that.
The hull was bituminised, with a thick coat of gloss paint to protect it from the weather, though in places it was starting to wear thin. All the exterior fittings looked solid and new, and I wondered what had made anybody doubt that it was in useable condition.
Now that I looked closely at the metal plate bolted to the side of the stern cabin, I realised that it was not a restored narrowboat, but a modern one made in traditional style at a well-known boatyard near Tamworth, where there was said to be a twelve-month waiting list of potential boat owners. From what I’d seen in the waterways magazines, a sixty-foot boat with something like a Beta BD3 Tug engine from that particular boatyard would cost in the region of £80,000. And Kestrel was the full narrowboat length of seventy feet. That represented quite an investment by Great-Uncle Samuel. But then, he could afford to indulge himself.
Returning to the stern, I examined the double doors on the back cabin. They were fitted with a Yale lock, and a sizeable padlock on a hasp across the middle. There were small windows in the upper part of the doors, but these too were shuttered, so that the interior was invisible. I tried to shine my torch through a narrow crack between the shutter and the window frame, but I could see nothing except a few patches of wooden panelling and the occasional gleam of brass. The light reflected off the shutter, and I could see my own breath in a cloud before me.
Everything seemed to be secure. With that in mind, I almost turned back towards the house and the safety of streetlights. But something stopped me. Examining the exterior of the boat so closely had made me feel differently about it. It sat there now taunting me, as one more mystery to be solved.
Suddenly, I was consumed with a desire to see inside the boat. I felt sure it could tell me a lot about Samuel’s life and character. Then it occurred to me that it might tell me even more than that. What more logical place for him to conceal some documents than on his boat, where no one ever went but himself? What had Mrs Wentworth said that day? ‘He still spent a lot of time down there. Tinkering about, I suppose. As men do.’
Surely if Samuel had been here with me now, he would have been delighted to have shown me round his boat. So it wouldn’t be disrespectful for me to take a look now that he was dead. I pulled at the handle of the door and rattled the padlock, but neither of them shifted.
Frustrated, I switched off my torch and shoved my frozen hands into my coat pockets, ready to return to the house. My fingers encountered something metallic in one pocket, and I’d already walked a few paces back along the towpath before I realised what they were. Keys. Not my own car keys — I always kept them on a leather fob in my trouser pocket. So what—? Of course. These were the keys Godfrey Wheeldon had given me, which had lain in my pocket since the previous Sunday. It had been obvious that neither of them fit the canal owners’ box, and so I’d forgotten about them until now.
I shone my torch on them. One key was a gold-coloured Yale, the other a silver key with a square end. I hurried back to the boat and clambered back onto the stern hatches, steadying myself on the gunwale as the boat rocked slightly. Sure enough, the silver key slipped in effortlessly and the padlock sprang open with a click. Then the Yale key went into the door lock.
‘Eureka!’ I almost gave a little skip. Samuel was here helping me after all.
38
As I stepped inside the boat, my first glimpse of the interior of the back cabin almost left me breathless. It was two steps down into the cabin from the hatches, with a deep, drawer-like coal box forming the bottom step. The floor of the cabin seemed a long way below me. But when the beam of the torch hit the walls, I had to sit down on the step to take it in properly.
The place was fitted out as a reproduction of a traditional cabin on a working narrowboat, and it was in exquisite condition. My torch flashed off gleaming brass and the glossy surfaces of walls and cupboards that looked as though they’d been scumbled — the decoration used by the boat people, involving scratch combs to create a woodgrain effect in the fresh varnish. To my left was a vast black stove with brass handles and rails, and lace-edged plates hanging over white crochet work near the chimney.
The cupboard doors were decorated with red and green Roses and Castles designs, the fairytale landscape scenes made famous by canal boat enthusiasts. When I turned round, I could see that the doors I’d come through had similar designs, so they’d be visible from outside when they were opened and folded back.
The golden colour of the scumbled walls and ceiling gave the cabin an unearthly glow in the torchlight. It looked more like a three-dimensional work of art than a living space. Then I realised this was probably an accurate description. This stove hadn’t been used for a long time, not by Great-Uncle Samuel or anyone else. Its surfaces were spotless. When I touched my fingers to the wooden panelling, there was barely a trace of dust. The padding of the bench seat was smooth and undented, as though no one had ever sat on it. It was many years since there had been fuel in the coal box below me, or food supplies in the cupboards.
It was no more than five feet across the cabin to a doorway that led into the rest of the boat. Yet this area would have comprised the entire living space for a family of boat people, even fifty years ago. They would have cooked, eaten, washed and slept in this space, adults and children together. They would have made love and died here, and the women would have given birth in the ‘bed ’ole’ across the forward end of the cabin, where the doorway was. They were people like Josiah Buckley, Samuel’s grandfather, the number one who’d died trapped behind a lock gate. These few square feet would have been home for himself and his family. No wonder Alfred had been put ‘on the bank’ when the family got too big.