Dead in the Water

crooked smile on her face faded into invisibility. “You’re a man, aren’t you? And so by definition you’re a little boy at heart.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh I do.”

They stood facing each other for several seconds, this time in an enforced conversational silence as an ambulance tore past, siren blaring.

“I’d ask you in for a coffee,” he said trying to put things right, “but it’s all packed and I really need to get this car moved before the traffic warden comes calling.”

“I need to talk to you about a job.”

“Your husband, is it?”

She laughed. She held up her left hand, showing him her fingers. Not a ring in sight. “What sort of private investigator are you?”

* * *

Professor Thompson’s house was all you might expect of Boars Hill — and more. A sweeping gravel entrance and an honour guard of trees accompanied visitors — in this case Doug Mullen and Rose Wilby — right up to an imposing Edwardian edifice. Rose ran a curious eye over the façade. She looked up to the third storey, where large latticed windows peered out from under the steeply pitched roofs. It was easy to imagine that there might be a wardrobe inside which offered a secret entrance to another world. Not that C.S. Lewis had lived in Boars Hill. She knew that because she had visited his house in Risinghurst. Lewis’s home was an altogether much less imposing structure than this one. In some ways she had found it rather disappointing, not least because so much of the original three acres of garden had long since been sold off for development.

“Do you mind if I have a snoop around?” she asked as soon as he had unlocked the oak front door.

She didn’t wait for his answer, heading straight up the stairs to the bedrooms, where she took in each room like an estate agent assessing a house for a quick valuation. Downstairs again, as Mullen began to bring his boxes and bags in, she admired the sitting room, the dining room, another sitting room and finally the spacious kitchen with walk-in larder.

The professor — or rather, she suspected, the professor’s wife — had left a considerable supply of tinned and dry goods in the larder. She wondered if Mullen was free to raid their supplies as he liked. Returning to the kitchen, she filled and switched on the kettle, located tea bags and mugs and found a fresh pint of milk sitting unopened in the fridge.

Two minutes later they were sitting down in the kitchen at either end of a long oak table.

“Janice was full of praise for you,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true. Janice had said he was very good at tracking her husband, though she had only admitted this after she had got her to promise on the Bible not to reveal this to anyone. But Janice had been much less complimentary about other aspects of Mullen. “Morally unreliable if you ask me,” had been one of her comments. And, “I bet he looks at himself in the mirror every morning.” Which had only caused Rose to wonder whether Janice had made a pass at him and been rebuffed.

“This is a slightly different job from tracking an errant husband,” she continued. “I want you to find out what happened to a friend of mine called Chris.” Her grey-green eyes saw his blue ones blink in surprise.

“They found him floating face down in the River Thames. Bloodstream full of alcohol. Fell in drunk and drowned.” She paused again, wondering if Mullen would admit to knowing Chris. This was a test. Pass or fail. Right or wrong.

“It was me who found him,” Mullen said. He had passed.

“I know.”

“Who told you?”

She nearly said. It wouldn’t matter if he knew. But she didn’t want to spoon feed the man. Make him work for it.

She unzipped her handbag, removed a small white envelope and placed it on the table. “£300 to show my goodwill. Or rather our goodwill. It’s a group effort.”

Mullen didn’t even pick up the envelope. That was a plus mark as far as she was concerned. Instead he said, “You haven’t exactly given me a lot to go on.”

“I only knew Chris after he started coming to our church a couple of months ago. Sunday mornings and Thursday lunchtimes. I liked him. Lots of us did. Good with the old. Good with the young. He rubbed some people in St Mark’s up the wrong way, but I liked him.”

She shivered. It was colder in the house than it was outside. She wished she’d brought a cardigan or jacket.

Mullen rose from his chair. He ran his fingers through what little hair hadn’t been removed by the barber. “So you think his death is suspicious?”

She nodded, though in her head she was saying ‘stupid question.’ Of course she did. Why would she be here otherwise? “Chris didn’t drink,” she said. “He told me he’d been on the wagon for three years. I believed him.” She fixed Mullen with her eyes.

“Why don’t you tell the police all this?”

“I have. But they’ve already come to the conclusion that he relapsed, got drunk and fell in. Pure and simple. A detective came round to the church this morning. Detective Inspector Dorkin according to his ID. Said they weren’t likely to spend too much time on an open-and-shut case like this.”

Mullen, who had moved across to the sink, twisted his head round and nodded. She got the sense that he was getting interested finally, but not (curiously) so much in the envelope of cash on the table or indeed in her — though he had run an appraising pair of eyes up and down her in the Iffley Road — but in Chris. She wondered why.