The Marlow Murder Club: A Novel
3.5/5
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About this ebook
2023 EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE, LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN AWARD
"An absolute joy to read. Funny, entertaining, and beautifully written." —B. A. Paris, New York Times bestselling author
A delightfully clever new mystery from creator of BBC One's hilarious murder mystery series Death in Paradise
Meet Judith: a seventy-seven-year-old whiskey drinking, crossword puzzle author living her best life in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Marlow.
Nothing ever happens here. That is, until Judith hears her neighbor shot while skinny-dipping in the Thames. The local police don't believe her story. It's an open and shut case, of course. Ha! Stefan can't be left for dead like that.
Judith investigates and picks up a crew of sidekicks: Suzie the dogwalker and Becks the vicar's wife. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.
When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…
Robert Thorogood, has turned the Christie-mystery on its head with this ever-so-sly cozy perfect for readers who love Richard Osmond's Thursday Murder Club and An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good.
"Lightweight but no-nonsense and genuinely brainy"—Kirkus Reviews
"Damn right funny and heartwarming…great fun"—Crime Time
"I love Robert Thorogood's writing."—Peter James, international bestselling author
Robert Thorogood
Robert Thorogood is an English screenwriter and novelist. He is the creator of the BBC One murder mystery series Death in Paradise.
Read more from Robert Thorogood
A Meditation on Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Killing of Polly Carter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The Marlow Murder Club
218 ratings18 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder Mystery set in England. Judith Potts, 77 year old woman who lives alone and swims naked in the Thames, also constructs crosswords for the Times. She witnesses a murder, contacts the police, but they don't believe her. Then, when the body appears, they start to listen to her, but are still skeptical. So, Judith starts to investigate on her own. She meets Suzie and Becks, who both help her uncover clues. This unlikely trio solves the mystery of why several people have been killed, but the real shocker is the ending of the story!Reminded me of the Thursday Murder Club series.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I've been spoiled by Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series and nothing quite seems to compare. I never connected emotionally with Judith Potts. She's feisty and confident but not very likable. Judith definitely has her flaws but the friendships she develops while investigating the murder of her neighbor help humanize her and will likely improve as the series progresses. Some of the events that transpire strain belief but the actual murder mystery plot is clever and well-crafted. The audiobook narration is good with clear differences between three key female characters but Judith is voiced as impatient, caustic and judgmental, possibly more so than the text implies.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely charming! This cozy but cheeky (language including a hilarious "what the fuck") mystery is anti-ageist and charming. Main character Judith is a 77 year old whisky-swilling, naked-swimming crossword writer and now amateur sleuth along with two new friends Bex and Susie. Back stories are hinted at - rounds the characters out and provides fodder for future stories. Delightful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judith Potts, 77, lives by herself in a house on the river she inherited in Marlow, We works as a crossword puzzle writer and is very reclusive. One evening while swimming in the river, she hears a gun shot across the river from her home. She knows that she cannot get to that side, swims back to her house and calls the police. Not satisfied when she is told the next morning that the police found nothing, Judith drives over to her neighbors home, and after a short search finds his body.Who would kill a man who was basically liked by all? But Judith knows that clues can be deceptive (crossword clues prove that) so she starts her own search for the truth. The unlikely characters, that she enlists to help her, entertain while moving the story forward. Look forward to more adventures by this trio.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5crosswords, small-town, murder, murder-investigation, amateur-sleuth, law-enforcement, sleuthing-seniors, sly-humor, situational-humor, verbal-humor, England, friendship, theft, cosy-mystery*****Fun!There's the puzzle maker, the dog walker, the rector's wife, and the police detective?! Judith starts the sleuthing after hearing voices and a gunshot at her neighbor's while swimming naked in the Thames (she's 77). The police disregard her but she is determined to follow up and make them listen. The detective only listens after the rector's wife pipes up, the second murder occurs, and the dogwalker joins in. This book is as much fun as the characters and has plenty of plot twists and red herrings. Loved it!I requested and received a free ebook copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judith Potts is a seventy something, happy to be able to continue to make crosswords for the paper as she ages. She keeps a punt at her riverside home and goes out often. One night, she witnesses what may be a murder. There's art history, a possible serial killer and a couple of fine sidekicks for Judith to get to know. This seems a bit more like a traditional crime novel (think Christie) and a bit less cozy than I found the Osman books. They are definitely different, but interesting to note that both authors have backgrounds in British TV. It was a good read and excited to hear there will be another book about with this trio.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved everything about this book. I'd classify it as a cozy as the sleuths were amateurs, and I loved them. A motley crew thrown together through circumstances that become friends - one of my favorite tropes. The characters were really well rounded and lived in a great little town. Add to all that a pretty well done mystery and this read was definitely a winner for me! My thanks go to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an ok murder mystery. I admit I figured out the solution a ways out, but it was interesting to watch the characters get there. I was interested to watch the relationships between the three friends develop.The biggest problems I had with this book were that 1) it was far too long. It probably could have been cut in third and tightened up and been more successful for that and 2) the foreshadowing was more like "fore-getting-hit-on-the-head." Basically I honestly thought this was a decent first novel. I don't know about it not being a first novel...Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was exactly the type of book I was craving, and I found it thoroughly satisfying. I had not read the author's previous books (but will now), and I was delighted to get the opportunity to preview this book thanks to Netgalley. The premise reminded me of Richard Osman's wonderful Thursday Murder Club books, and it did not disappoint. The characters were fun and clever, some of the scenarios were far-fetched, but it all made for an enjoyable read. I highly recommend this book and look forward to future books.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A group of women in a small British village solve murders.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delightful rag tag group of women solve the crime!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I listened to this book and the narration was superb! I believe it added so much to the story which I thoroughly enjoyed.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I don't read a lot of fiction, but really enjoyed this mystery. The main character reminds me of the Jessica Fletcher mysteries. I'll look into reading more of this series.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Perhaps it was unfortunate that I read a book by Richard Osman right before starting this book, The Marlow Murder Club: A Novel. Both books involve elderly people solving mysteries. In comparison, this book by Robert Thorogood, is just not as funny, the characters are not as interesting, and the writing style just doesn't measure up. But I think that even if I hadn't read it immediately following, I would have thought the same. The book has many impossibilities. One is; the investigating police officer gives the the main characters important information sometimes and at others denies them information citing the need to keep the investigation private. The police come across as being inept - all the important clues were found by the three main characters. Not worth the time.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5For fans of straight-up pure & proper cozies.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A lot of people read scary books for the month of October. I am not one of those people. I am too much of a coward. But I also want to read spooky books like everyone else. So I compromise with myself. I read spooky adjacent books. You know the ones: they scare no one but there might be a mostly off-page murder or slight thriller-y bits. But I am picky and want something a half degree more plausible than the cozy mystery series that take up a ton of real estate at the bookstore. I may not want the knit shop owner and her cat to solve the murder, but I am all over feisty old folks solving murders. So I was more than delighted to pick up The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood.Judith is 77. She lives happily on her own on the banks of the River Thames in the pleasant village of Marlow. She is a crossword setter for the Times, loves a glass or three of Scotch of an evening, and enjoys a private skinny dip in the river outside her door. One night she is out for her swim when she hears shouting and a gunshot from the neighbor's across the way. When she calls the police to investigate, they don't believe her so she takes it upon herself, returns to her neighbor's and finds his body. When two more people turn up dead, both also shot by an antique German Luger, it's possible that there's a serial killer on the loose. Judith teams up with Suzie, a local dogwalker, and Becks the very buttoned up mother of two and wife of the local vicar to look into the background of her neighbor in hopes that figuring out what got him killed will help them stop the killer before anyone else dies. As a crossword setter, Judith is quite good at figuring out clues and she, Suzie, and Becks will need all of their collective intelligence to unravel the crazy mystery and catch the killer.These three women are delightfully kooky and do some madcap stuff in the course of their investigations. Each of them has a nicely worked out backstory (although Judith's has a hint of mystery: why does she keep one room in her house locked and what was her relationship with her late husband anyway?) and their growing friendship is quite appealing as each woman comes to appreciate her own inherent value. Everyone here is a suspect and the plot is rife with red herrings with the eventual solution being completely convoluted. The story can veer into the absurd (the police are really going to let these three women help them?) but the over all effect is fun and diverting if less than plausible. For big old scaredy-pants like me, it's a nice addition to mystery season.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seventy-seven year old Judith Potts lives on her own in her mansion along the Thames. She compiles crosswords for the national newspapers for a living, enjoys her whiskey, loves jigsaw puzzles and swims the river in the nude when she pleases. While swimming one evening she hears a gunshot echo across the garden of her neighbor, local art gallery owner Stefan Dunwoody. She calls the police and upon initial investigation, they don’t find anything that would warrant suspicion and assume that Mr. Dunwoody is probably away for the duration. Judith, not entirely convinced, goes exploring and finds the body of her neighbor at the base of his garden on the other side of a dam along the river.
“Murders just didn’t happen in Marlow.”
Judith is on high alert when subsequently, two more people are found dead - Iqbal Kassam, a taxi driver and Liz Curtis, Olympic silver medalist and owner of Marlow Rowing Center. All three murders have the same signature and the weapon is determined to be an antique German Luger pistol.
“Nothing links a local art dealer, a taxi driver, and the owner of a rowing center.”
Is there a serial killer in Marlow? Is it someone they know? Is there any connection between the victims? Is the killing spree over or are there others whose lives are in danger? Initially, Judith isn’t impressed with Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik, who in the absence of a superior offer is assigned as acting SIO to the case, and decides to engage in her own investigation. In the course of her sleuthing, she is joined by Rebecca “Becks” Starling, the dutiful, prim and proper wife of the local Vicar and mother of two and straight-shooting dog walker Suzie Harris. Judith, Becks and Suzie - The Marlow Murder Club, is a force to be reckoned with and loads of fun to be around! Together they embark on an intense search for answers despite DS Malik’s warning to not engage in any “amateur sleuthing”. Eventually, as the case garners national attention she relents and takes in the trio as “civilian advisers” to help in the case. The Marlow Murder Club is relentless in their pursuit of any clue that could lead them to solve the murders. These ladies are sharp, attentive and do not shy away from either legwork or homework. They can (and do) give seasoned law enforcement officials a run for their money. They line up a list of probable suspects and leave no stone unturned in exploring every possible lead, often leading to risky situations. Their antics will either have you in splits or gasping in disbelief, or maybe both! Their unlikely friendship and camaraderie make for some delightfully heartwarming moments. The drama in the personal lives of the main characters felt a little out of place in some parts of the narrative and that is where the pace faltered a bit but not so much that you’d lose interest.
The author does a good job in keeping us guessing the identity of the culprit, throwing in numerous red herrings and enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged and entertained till the very end. I adored Judith and admire her spunk! The Marlow Murder Clubby Robert Thorogood is a fun cozy mystery with an interesting cast of characters, a good dose of humor (some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments) and a satisfying ending. I eagerly look forward to reading the next book in the series.
Thank You NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the DRC in exchange for an honest review. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Suffice it to say, that all the way through the reading of this novel, I thought that I had somehow read it before, but I never checked if I had, until I came to write this review, and then I discovered that I actually had. My earlier review is here.Anyway. it seems that I have enjoyed it a little more this time around.And did I find it derivative of THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB, a question that seems to worry many readers, afraid of wasting their time if they take the plunge? The answer to that is No. Similar in plot lines but not derivative. It stands well on its own.
Book preview
The Marlow Murder Club - Robert Thorogood
Praise for Robert Thorogood
Very funny and dark with great pace. I love Robert Thorogood’s writing.
—Peter James, New York Times bestselling author
This is a gem.
—Daily Express
Deftly entertaining…satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie–style buttons.
—Independent
For fans of Agatha Christie.
—Mail on Sunday
A treat.
—Radio Times
This brilliantly crafted, hugely enjoyable, and suitably goose bump–inducing novel is an utter delight from start to finish.
—Heat
Also by Robert Thorogood
A Meditation on Murder
The Killing of Polly Carter
Death Knocks Twice
Murder in the Caribbean
The title page for The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, published by Poisoned Pen Press.For Katie B
Copyright © 2021, 2022 by Robert Thorogood
Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover design © HQ 2021, Charlotte Phillips
Internal design by Holli Roach/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Originally published as The Marlow Murder Club in 2021 in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. This edition issued based on the hardcover edition published in 2021 in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thorogood, Robert, author.
Title: The Marlow Murder Club : a novel / Robert Thorogood.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021037059 (print) | LCCN 2021037060 (ebook) | (trade paperback) | (epub)
Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Thrillers (Fiction)
Classification: LCC PR6120.H6775 M37 2021 (print) | LCC PR6120.H6775 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037059
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037060
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Mrs. Judith Potts was seventy-seven years old and entirely happy with her life. She lived in an Arts and Crafts mansion on the River Thames, she had a job she loved that took up just enough of her time and no more, and best of all, she didn’t have to share her life with any man. This meant there was no one asking her what was for dinner that night, or wanting to know where she was going every time she left the house, or moaning that she was spending too much money on whisky, a small glass of which she’d have at about 6:00 p.m. each evening.
On the day Judith’s life changed, it was the height of summer and England had been in the grip of a heat wave for weeks. She’d kept all of her windows open to capture whatever breezes blew down the valley, but it seemed to make no difference. The heat of the sun had gotten into the bricks and timbers of her home into the oak staircase and minstrels’ gallery.
After taking her evening meal in front of the television news, she put her empty plate to one side and got out the latest copy of Puzzler magazine. She turned to a logic grid and started to work on it. Usually, she enjoyed reducing the language of the clues down to mathematical ones and zeros, but tonight her heart just wasn’t in it. It was too hot to concentrate.
Judith’s hand idly went to the key she kept on a chain around her neck, and her thoughts began to drift into the past, into a much darker time. She shot up from her chair. This wouldn’t do, she told herself. Wouldn’t do at all. There was always something else she could do to keep herself busy. She needed a change of scene, that was all, and she had the perfect solution.
Judith began to take off her clothes. With each garment she removed, she felt more and more released from the stifling constraints of the day. By the time she was naked, she was buzzing with an impish delight. She crossed the hallway, past the Blüthner grand piano she only ever played when she was really very drunk, and took up a dark-gray woolen cape she kept by the front door. Judith’s cape was her most treasured possession. She’d tell anyone who asked, and many did, it kept her warm in winter, served as a picnic blanket in the summer, and she could pull it over her head if ever she was caught in a spring shower.
Best of all, Judith believed it was a cloak of invisibility. Every evening, come rain or shine, she’d take off her clothes, wrap the cape around herself, and step out of her house feeling a delicious frisson of naughtiness. She would plunge her feet into a pair of ancient rain boots and stride through the knee-high grass—swish, swish, swish!—to her boathouse. Like the rest of Judith’s house, it was pink-bricked, timber-framed, and somewhat crumbling.
Judith entered the cobwebby darkness and kicked off her rain boots. She hung her cape on an old hook, and, still hidden from the outside world by a pair of ancient boathouse doors, stepped down the stone slipway and into the Thames.
It was almost a religious experience for her, accepting the cold water onto her skin, and she exhaled with a whoosh as she leaned forward into the embrace of the river. Suddenly she was weightless, supported by the soft water that felt like silk to her body.
She swam upstream, the evening sunshine flashing diamonds on the water all around. Judith smiled to herself. She always smiled to herself when she was out swimming. She couldn’t help it. After all, there might be dog walkers on the Thames Path, and there were very definitely plenty of people in the near distance as she looked at the spire of a church and the span of the Victorian suspension bridge that linked the town to the neighboring village of Bisham. None of these people were aware there was a seventy-seven-year-old woman swimming nearby entirely in the nude.
It was just as Judith was thinking, This is the life, she heard a shout.
It came from the opposite riverbank, from somewhere near her neighbor Stefan Dunwoody’s house. But from her position low in the water, it was hard for Judith to see exactly what was going on. Only the roof of Stefan’s house was visible above the thick bank of bulrushes at the edge of the river.
Judith strained her ears, but all was quiet. She decided it must have been an animal. A dog or a fox maybe.
And then she heard a man’s voice call out, Hey, no!
What on earth was that?
Stefan, is that you?
Judith called from the river, but her words were cut short by the sharp retort of a gunshot.
Stefan?
she shouted again, panic rising. Are you all right?
All was silence. But Judith knew what she’d heard. Someone had fired a gun, hadn’t they? And Stefan’s voice had called out immediately beforehand. What if he was now bleeding from a bullet wound and needed saving?
Judith swam toward Stefan’s house as fast as she could, but as she reached his riverbank, she realized she had a problem. Beyond the bulrushes, Stefan had put corrugated metal across the span of his lawn to protect it from river erosion. Judith knew swimming through the rushes would cut her body to shreds, and even if she made it to land, she wouldn’t be able to pull herself out. She wouldn’t have the strength.
Ahead of her she could see a blue canoe wedged in among the reeds. Could she somehow use it to help lever her body out of the water? She tried to grab hold of the end, but she couldn’t get a proper grip. It kept bobbing around like a cork, and she realized she didn’t have the balance to climb up onto the canoe anyway. But she gave it one last go, and this time just about managed to pull herself up onto the back of it. And then, oh so slowly, she and the canoe barrel-rolled over, and she lost her hold and fell back into the water with an ungainly splash.
She came up for air and shook the water from her hair. The canoe was out of the question, so what else could she do?
Judith swam back to the center of the river, desperately looking for someone who could help. Where were the dog walkers or canoodling couples when you needed them? She couldn’t see anyone. There was only one thing for it. She turned and swam for home as fast as she could.
Reaching her boathouse, Judith climbed out of the water, wheezing, but there was no time to lose. She threw on her cape and strode out onto the lawn, turning back to look at what she could see of Stefan’s house. Only half of his garden was visible behind the weeping willow that grew unchecked on her side of the riverbank.
She ran into her house, grabbed up her phone, and dialed 999. As she waited for the call to connect, she moved over to the bay window to keep an eye on Stefan’s property.
I need the police!
Judith said as soon as the call was answered. There’s been a shooting at my neighbor’s house! Hurry! Someone’s been shot!
The operator took down the details of Stefan’s address, recorded what Judith had seen, informed her the emergency services would be on their way, and then ended the call. Judith felt deeply frustrated. Surely there was something else she could do, or someone else she could phone? What about the Coast Guard? It was a waterside catastrophe after all. Or the RNLI?
Judith peered out of her window at Stefan’s property. It was still sitting there, apparently innocently, in the evening sunshine.
If anyone had been out on the river at that precise moment and had had occasion to look up at Judith’s mansion, they’d have seen a very short and comfortably plump woman in her late seventies with wild gray hair standing entirely naked in her bay window, a cape over her shoulders as if she were some kind of a superhero. Which in many ways she was.
She just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 2
Half an hour later, Judith saw a police car arrive at Stefan’s property and a uniformed police officer get out. Judith tried as best she could to keep her binoculars trained on him as he looked in through the windows of Stefan’s house and took a wander through the garden. She wanted to bellow across the river that the man should jolly well look harder, but she bit her tongue. She had to believe he knew what he was doing, and he’d find evidence of whatever it was that had happened.
However, after twenty minutes of what Judith could only describe as a cursory search, the police officer returned to his car, got in, and drove away.
Was that it? The man had barely explored the garden, and he’d not even entered Stefan’s house. Perhaps he’d gone to get reinforcements? So she kept on looking. And looking.
At midnight, Judith discovered there was no more whisky in the decanter on the little table to her side. That was always a sign to go to bed. As she woozily ascended the heavy oak staircase, she found she had to hold on to the banister a bit more tightly than normal. She then turned left to go to her bedroom when her bedroom was really on her right, but once she’d corrected her course via a brief tangle with a recalcitrant aspidistra, she safely made her destination.
Judith adored her bedroom. The wood panels were painted light green, and there was a majestic four-poster bed with a tapestry of a medieval hunting scene as its canopy. That the room was covered in old clothes, half-finished meals, and piles of discarded newspapers and magazines didn’t bother her one jot. Judith never noticed the mess. In fact, she let it encompass her in the same way she let the river embrace her when she went swimming. The messier her bedroom, the more she felt cocooned and safe.
The following morning, Judith was woken by the sound of the phone ringing. She reached for it, blearily seeing it had just gone 10:00 a.m.
Hello,
she croaked.
Good morning,
an efficient female voice said. My name’s Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik from the Maidenhead Police Station. I’m following up on the incident you reported at Mr. Dunwoody’s property last night.
Ah, thank you for calling,
Judith said, still somewhat groggily.
The detective sergeant explained she’d sent a constable to inspect Mr. Dunwoody’s house and garden. He’d not found anything of note, so she was ringing to inform Judith there was nothing to worry about.
But I know what I heard!
Judith said.
Yes, the report said you heard a gunshot.
"Not just a gunshot. I heard someone call out something like, ‘Hey, no!’ and then I heard the gunshot."
But I understand you were swimming in the river at the time. Are you sure it was in fact a gunshot?
Judith was now fully awake and thoroughly irritated. I grew up on a farm. I know what a gun sounds like.
But what if it was something else?
Like what?
Well, for example, maybe it was a car backfiring?
This hadn’t occurred to Judith. She thought for a moment before answering. No. I’m sure I’d have known if it were a car. It was a gunshot. I take it this constable of yours reported that Stefan’s car is still parked at his house?
Why do you mention that?
Because I presume Stefan didn’t answer his phone when you called him, did he?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t quite follow your line of thought there. What phone call?
You must have phoned him last night.
I’m afraid I’m not allowed to share specific details with you.
"But a neighbor reports a shooting at a house, of course you phoned to check up on him. And the fact you haven’t told me he answered suggests to me he didn’t answer. So, seeing as his car is still in his driveway, well, that tells me something’s up with him. After all, if you’re at home, you answer your phone. If you’re away, you take your car. At least someone who owned a car would. I don’t."
Detective Sergeant Malik didn’t respond immediately. You’ve really thought this through,
she eventually said.
It’s all I could think about last night. I was so worried for Stefan. What if he’s been shot, and the gunman’s escaped? In fact, what if Stefan is right now lying bleeding in a ditch?
I don’t think he’s lying in a ditch. I’m sure there’s some very innocent explanation for all of this. There wasn’t any indication at his property that anything untoward had happened, and it’s not unusual for someone to ignore their phone. It’s a holiday season. People are away. I’m sure Mr. Dunwoody will turn up in the next few days. And the moment he does, I’ll let you know. Really, there’s nothing to worry about.
DS Malik ended the call by thanking Judith for being such a civic-minded neighbor and then rung off.
Afterward, Judith lay in bed not knowing what to do. Was DS Malik right? Was there in fact a far more innocent explanation for what she’d heard the night before? After all, Judith knew one thing for sure: murders just didn’t happen in Marlow.
She decided to put the matter from her mind and get on with her work for the day.
When Judith had inherited her house from her great aunt Betty in 1976, she’d also received a portfolio of shares that provided her with a modest income, so she didn’t have much need to work for a living, but nothing would have ever made Judith give up her job. She loved it too much.
Judith compiled crosswords for the national newspapers. She set two or three a week, and the hours she spent each day working on the puzzles were a cherished refuge for her mind. When she was setting a crossword, a calm descended over her, and she could lose herself for whole stretches of time as she carefully worked through all the permutations of a particularly satisfying anagram or considered an elegant phrase or word that could be interpreted in more than one way.
Judith crossed her drawing room to the card table by the bay window and smoothed down the green baize with her hand. Next, she reached up to a shelf and pulled down a sheet of squared mathematical paper. She then chose a 2B pencil from a mug of 2B pencils, and even though it didn’t need sharpening, she pushed the pencil into her metal desk sharpener. It gripped the end, the old electric motor clattering as it spun, and the pencil Judith removed a few seconds later wasn’t so much a writing implement as a lethal weapon.
Judith smiled to herself. A fresh pencil. The empty squares on the paper in front of her. The fight ahead.
Sitting down, she picked up her wooden ruler and began to mark out a fifteen-by-fifteen grid of squares. Next, she shaded in a pattern of darker squares around a single line of symmetry, so each darker square had a twin reflected on the right. There wasn’t any particular pattern she followed; it was mostly her many decades of experience that guided her hand.
Once she had marked out her grid, all she had to do was fill in the blank spaces with words. This, she knew, would take her the next hour or so, and only once she was happy she had an interesting collection of words intersecting with each other would she turn her mind finally to creating the clues.
As for the types of clues she liked to set, she eschewed the willful opacity favored by many setters, most famously represented by the near-impossible monthly puzzle that used to appear in the Listener magazine. She felt there was something a bit too male
about how they tried to show off how very clever they were. Look at me,
they seemed to be saying, you’ll never guess how brilliant I am.
Instead, like many setters, she aligned herself with the principles of Ximenes, the legendary setter for the Observer newspaper from 1939 to 1972. Accordingly, her clues had to have two halves, the literal clue on one side, the riddle on the other. And the two halves had ultimately to play fair
with the solver, with the small caveat if a clue was ingenious or witty enough, she was prepared on occasion to break the rules.
This morning, however, the muse wasn’t with Judith. Having created her square of blocks and blanks, she couldn’t settle on the correct words with which to fill the grid. She lacked all decisiveness. It was Stefan, she knew. She couldn’t concentrate. She had to know he was okay.
Judith reached for her tablet computer. She didn’t much like the device, but it was useful for photographing and then emailing in her crosswords to the papers, so she’d come to terms with it some years ago.
She held it up to her face, but the stupid machine refused to unlock, claiming it didn’t recognize her. Judith harrumphed, once again cursing at the indignities of being an older woman. The modern world treated her as though she were entirely invisible, and even her own bloody computer criticized her for not looking suitably like herself. But there was no point trying to fight with technology. Judith had learned that a long time ago in an incident that had involved a strawberry-colored iMac, an electric cable that wasn’t quite long enough, and a trip to Accident and Emergency.
Judith took a deep breath and composed herself.
She held the tablet up and looked at it again.
Nothing happened.
Bloody thing! Muttering to herself, Judith entered the passcode and then opened her web browser. Maybe there’d been some news about Stefan in the last twenty-four hours?
She typed Stefan Dunwoody
into the search bar, but all of the hits told her he owned an art gallery called Dunwoody Arts in Marlow, a fact she already knew. But she wanted to be thorough, so she clicked through the pages of results.
Although, what was this? One of the later results was a link to a web page from a local newspaper, the Bucks Free Press. It was the headline that caught her attention: BUST-UP AT HENLEY REGATTA.
Clicking the link, she found herself reading a diary piece from a roundup of the Henley Royal Regatta, six weeks before.
Word reaches us that Stefan Dunwoody, local art gallery owner, got into a tipsy dispute in the Royal Enclosure with Elliot Howard, owner of the Marlow Auction House. According to our little birdie, when Mr. Howard threatened to punch Mr. Dunwoody, the stewards were called, and both men were forcibly ejected.
Judith put her tablet down. So, Stefan had gotten into a drunken altercation at Henley with someone called Elliot Howard, and here he was, only a few short weeks later, and there’d been another row of some sort on his property.
A set-to where someone had fired a gun.
And then Stefan had subsequently vanished.
Sod this for a game of soldiers, Judith thought as she strode across the room, swept up her cloak from its peg, and left the house.
She went down to her boathouse, approached an old punt that was half in and half out of the water, and gave it a shove with her foot. She stepped up onto the back of it and grabbed the punting pole as the front of the boat bumped through the rotten boathouse doors and slipped out onto the river.
Despite her advanced years, Judith was an expert punter. With a flick of her wrists, she thrust the pole down into the riverbed, bent at the waist, and pushed with all her might. As the punt shot forward, she twisted the pole up and out of the soft mud, and the boat had the momentum to cross the river.
Once she reached the further bank and the river was shallow again, it was no effort to punt upstream the fifty or so yards to Stefan’s house, use the prow of the punt to penetrate the wall of reeds that protected his riverbank, and step up onto his land. She didn’t need to secure the boat. Entirely surrounded by bulrushes, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Checking her watch, Judith could see that just over eight minutes ago, she’d been sitting in her house, and now here she was, at the sharp end of her neighbor’s mysterious disappearance.
Stefan’s house was really rather splendid to Judith’s mind. It was a converted water mill with a wooden wheel that still turned lazily, but differently sized rectangular glass windows had subsequently been cut into the building. It was both pleasingly old-fashioned and modern at the same time.
She went and looked at Stefan’s car in the driveway. Judith knew nothing about cars and cared even less, so all she could tell was it was gray in color, and it was gleaming, not a spot of dirt on it anywhere. She could see no other tire tracks in the gravel or any other clues that suggested that perhaps Stefan had left the house in a different vehicle.
She went for a walk around the garden, trying to work out where the sound of the gunshot might have come from, but it was hard to place herself accurately when her only reference point was from a position in the river below the height of the bulrushes.
In fact, it took only a few minutes of walking around and inspecting the reed bed by the riverbank for Judith to realize she didn’t even know what she was looking for. A drop of blood on a blade of grass? A muddy footprint?
Judith looked at the wooden wheel turning on the side of the house and the millpond in front of it. Despite the heat of the day, the water here was dark, and Judith shivered at the thought of it. There was something about still bodies of water that spooked her. Although, as she looked, she could see the water wasn’t quite still. There was a slight current tugging at the surface. Where was the water going?
Judith walked around the edge of the pond until she saw it fed into a river that was about ten feet across. Where the millpond ended and the river began, there was a narrow brick causeway that crossed from one side of the garden to the other.
Judith considered the river beyond the dam. It had to feed back into the Thames somehow. But it was hard to see exactly how, as Stefan had allowed this section of the garden to grow wild, and the water soon slipped under dense shrubs and bushes that crowded in from both banks.
With a sigh, Judith realized she’d have to follow the course of the river. She had to be thorough. So she pushed her way through the bushes, branches whipping her body, cobwebs sticking to her face and hair as she struggled to the other side.
Once there, Judith was disappointed. It was even wilder in this corner of the garden, but she