Still, he was a step closer to finding his sibling. He would be trying to find the Carver shop in Deptford, but he had certain clues. Wasn’t he the detective? He looked forward into his future, dimly foreseeing that it would be filled with monotonous, dirty, exhausting tasks and days of drudgery in which he would be in turn psychologist, pathologist, lawyer and humble searcher after truth. In short: a policeman. But he looked forward with hope: to him it seemed golden.
‘Goodbye, Stella.’
Because it was goodbye. He watched her go into Angel House.
‘Keep in touch.’ Would he ever see her again? The wind picked up his voice and carried it down river and out to sea.
Alex Rowley, whose surname had provoked his stepfather Bob Rowley’s only known joke (Alex’s own father was called Charley King; King Charles II was nicknamed Old Rowley; in making Alex call himself Rowley, Bob had mockingly given him a version of his name. He thought it funny), did not take the cyanide pill, and died by hanging, as enigmatic as he had lived (Liverpool never knew what it had missed) on November 30, 1946.
It was a difficult death.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank William Kelly of the Port of London Authority, Gravesend, for the kind and patient way he answered my questions about tidal waters of the Thames and what would happen to a body deposited in the river. He also told me the best place to drop one in.
I wish to thank my father, Alfred Williams, and my brother, Alan Lee Williams, both Freemen of the River, for their help with documents and diaries.
Any errors I have fallen into are entirely my own.
About the Author
Gwendoline Butler, who died in 2013, was a Londoner, born in a part of South London for which she still had a tremendous affection, and where Coffin on the Water is set. She was educated at one of the Haberdasher’s Schools and then read History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After a short period doing research and teaching, she married Dr Lionel Butler. They had one daughter, Lucille.
It was while her husband was Professor of Mediaeval History in the University of St Andrews that Gwendoline first began writing crime fiction. In her lifetime she wrote seventy-seven novels, thirty-four of which feature Detective John Coffin.
Also by the Author
John Coffin novels
Receipt for Murder
Dead in a Row
The Dull Dead
The Murdering Kind
The Interloper
Death Lives Next Door
A Coffin for Baby
Make Me a Murderer
Coffin in Oxford
Coffin Waiting
Coffin in Malta
A Nameless Coffin
Coffin Following
Coffin's Dark Number
A Coffin from the Past
A Coffin for Pandora
A Coffin for the Canary
Coffin On the Water
Coffin in Fashion
Coffin Underground
Coffin in the Black Museum
Coffin and the Paper Man
Coffin on Murder Street
Cracking Open a Coffin
A Coffin For Charley
The Coffin Tree
A Dark Coffin
A Double Coffin
Coffin's Game
A Grave Coffin
Coffin's Ghost
A Cold Coffin
A Coffin for Christmas
Coffin Knows the Answer
Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny novels
The King Cried Murder
Dread Murder
Standalone novels:
Sarsen Place
Olivia
The Vesey Inheritance
Meadowsweet
The Red Staircase
Albion Walk
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1986
Copyright © Gwendoline Butler 1986
Gwendoline Butler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780006176305
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780007544646
Version: 2014–05–07
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