Coffin on the Water. Gwendoline Butler

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Copyright

      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.

      Harper

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       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

      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 ebook 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 ebooks

      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: 2017-04-25

Dedication

       To J.K.M.

       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: The Delivery

Chapter 2: The Shape of the Murderer

       Chapter 3: The Stance of the Murderer

       Chapter 4: The Feet of the Murderer

       Chapter 5: Following the Feet of the Murderer

       Chapter 6: The Neck of the Murderer

       Chapter 7: The Neck Feels the Rope

       Chapter 8: The Hands of the Murderer

       Chapter 9: The Work of the Murderer’s Hands

       Chapter 10: A Sight of the Murderer’s Hands

       Chapter 11: The Way the Murderer Walked

       Chapter 12: The Face of the Murderer

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by the Author

       About the Publishers

CHAPTER ONE

       The Delivery

      It was the biggest feast since the feeding of the five thousand, or so it was felt locally in Greenwich, and their outliers, the Hythe and the Wick. In the spring of 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations was entertained to a banquet in the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College. Premier Attlee welcomed them. The feast was austere, in tune with the rationed times: a soup, game, and a pudding, but the wines were good.

      Present, in a purely professional capacity and not eating, were Chief Superintendent Dander, and Inspectors Warwich and Banbury. Also there were a troupe of young detectives-in-training, and among them John Coffin and Alex Rowley.

      Also present was a murderer-to-be, like a bridegroom in waiting.

      The bodies came later.

      The bodies came drifting in, delivered by the river, bearing a greeting card as if they were a birthday present. The river is a part of this story; the river supported the bodies, carrying them on the tide to their appointed destination. A body dropped on a rising tide in the river somewhere as yet unknown, between Deptford and Greenwich, to be carried up river, then back by the ebbing water towards Fidder’s Reach where it will be deposited on the mud on schedule. Or so the killer thought.

      Looked at later, as through the eyes of John Coffin, young detective still on probation, it was a hell of a journey they made for the hell of a purpose.

      What СКАЧАТЬ