Sam nodded. We took Roydale and Fringe from the lads and, when Tremayne had driven off and positioned himself on his hillock, we started together up the all-weather gallop, going the fastest I’d ever been. Fringe, flat out at racing pace, had a wildness about him I couldn’t really control and I guessed it was that quality which won him races. Whenever Roydale put his nose in front, Fringe found a bit extra, but it seemed there wasn’t much between them, and with the end of the wood chippings in sight the contest was still undecided. I saw Sam sit up and ease the pressure, and copied him immediately, none too soon for my taxed muscles and speed-starved lungs. I finished literally breathless but Sam pulled up nonchalantly and trotted back to Tremayne for a report in full voice.
‘He’s a green bugger,’ he announced. ‘He has a mouth like elephant skin. He shies at his own shadow and he’s as stubborn as a pig. Apart from that, he’s fast, as you saw.’
Tremayne listened impassively. ‘Courage?’
‘Can’t tell till he’s on a racecourse.’
‘I’ll enter him for Saturday. We may as well find out. Perhaps you’d better give him a pop over hurdles tomorrow.’
‘OK.’
We handed the horses back to their respective lads and went down the hill again with Tremayne and found Doone waiting for us, sitting in his car.
‘That man gives me the sodding creeps,’ Sam said as we disembarked.
The greyly persistent Detective Chief Inspector emerged like a turtle from his shell when he saw us arrive, and he’d come alone for once: no silent note-taker in his shadow.
‘Which of us do you want?’ Tremayne enquired bullishly.
‘Well, sir.’ The sing-song voice took all overt menace away, yet there was still a suggestion that collars might be felt at any minute. ‘All of you, sir, if you don’t mind.’
Just the same if we did mind, he meant.
‘You’d better come in, then,’ Tremayne offered, shrugging.
Doone followed us into the kitchen, removed a grey tweed overcoat and sat by the table in his much-lived-in grey suit. He felt comfortable in kitchens, I thought. Tremayne vaguely suggested coffee, and I made a mug of instant for us each.
Mackie came through from having breakfasted with Perkin saying she wanted to know how the trial had gone. She wasn’t surprised to see Doone, only resigned. I made her some coffee and she sat and watched while Doone picked a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to Sam.
‘A receipt, sir,’ he said, ‘for three lengths of floorboard retrieved from the dock in your boathouse.’
Sam unfolded the paper and looked at it dumbly.
‘Why didn’t they float?’ Tremayne asked bluntly.
‘Ah. So everyone knows about that?’ Doone seemed disappointed.
‘John just told us,’ Tremayne nodded.
Doone gave me a sorrowful stare, but I hadn’t given a thought to his wanting secrecy.
‘They didn’t float, sir, because they were weighted.’
‘With what?’ Sam asked.
‘With pieces of paving stone. There are similar pieces of paving stone scattered on a portion of your boatyard property.’
‘
‘Is that what it is, sir, marble?’ Doone didn’t know much about marble, it appeared.
‘It might be.’
Doone pondered, made up his mind, went out to his car and returned carrying a five-foot plank which he laid across the kitchen table. The old grey wood, though still dampish, looked as adequate for its purpose as its fellows still forming the boathouse floor and didn’t seem to have been weakened in any way. Slightly towards one end, on the surface that was now uppermost on the table, rested a long, unevenly shaped darkish slab of what I might have thought was rough-faced granite.
‘Yes,’ Sam said, glancing at it. ‘That’s marble.’ He stretched out his hand and tried to pick it up, and the plank came up an inch with it. Sam let it drop, frowning.
‘It’s stuck on,’ Doone said, nodding. ‘From the looks of the other pieces lying about, the surface that’s stuck to the wood is smooth and polished.’
‘Yes,’ Sam said.
‘Superglue, we think,’ Doone said, ‘would make a strong enough bond.’
‘A lot of plastic adhesives would,’ Sam said, nodding.
‘And how do you happen to have chunks of marble lying about?’ Doone asked, though not forbiddingly.
‘It came with a job-lot of stuff I bought from a demolition firm,’ Sam explained without stress. ‘They had some panelling I wanted for a boat I did up, and some antique bathroom fittings. I had to take a lot of oddments as well, like the marble. It came from a mansion they were pulling down. They sell off things, you know. Fireplaces, doors, anything.’
Doone asked conversationally, ‘Did you stick the marble on to the floorboards, sir?’
‘No, I sodding well did not,’ Sam said explosively.
‘Onto the underside of the floorboards,’ I said. ‘There were no slabs of marble in sight when Harry and I went into the upstairs room of the boathouse. I expect, if there are some other blocks still in place, that you can see them from underneath, in the dock.’
