The Water Room Read Online Free PDF

generic terminology. I thought we were supposed to be an ingenious race, but I fear America has the edge on us when it comes to branding. Have we got any biscuits, Janice? Not Hobnobs, they get under my plate.’
    The streets around Mornington Crescent station were quiet for a Monday afternoon. If you had been walking past, and had looked up at the arched first-floor windows above the Tube entrance, rebuilt in their original maroon tiles, you would have seen Arthur Bryant and John May in silhouette against the opaque grey glass beneath the station logo, Bryant seated under an ‘N’, May tilting his chair below the ‘S’, as sharply delineated as Balinese puppets.
    ‘Tell John about your old lady,’ Longbright suggested.
    ‘What old lady?’ asked May. ‘Have I missed something interesting?’
    ‘Do you remember a fellow called Benjamin Singh? Ah.’ Bryant found the keys and released a traumatized Crippen from his cabinet. A less appropriately named kitten was hard to visualize. ‘Expert on English occult literature and pagan mythology. I used him as a consultant a few times in the eighties. His sister died this morning, and he came here.’
    There was a bang as DC Bimsley nearly went through the window with a box of stackable files. Everyone flinched except Bryant, whose deafness was highly selective.
    ‘He wanted her to be seen by someone he trusted, so I went round there and took a look.’ Bryant patted his pockets for a match. ‘She was in her late seventies. Body was in the basement on a very hard upright chair, and there was water in her throat. I’ve given Banbury the sample, and I’m waiting for a quick confirmation from the child Kershaw, but it would appear to have been a dry drowning.’
    ‘What’s a dry drowning?’ asked DC Bimsley, listening in.
    ‘No water in the lungs, death as a result of laryngospasm—constriction of the windpipe. Quite rare, but not unheard-of,’ May explained without thinking.
    ‘The problem is, it’s an unprovable method of death. Most drownings are accidental, often because the victim is pissed. A deep breath is taken in shock, and the lungs inflate like balloons. There was a small contusion on the back of her head, might have been an old mark but I’m inclined not to think so.’ Bryant, ignoring the newly installed No Smoking signs, poked about in his coat and produced his pipe. He started to light it but Longbright snatched it out of his mouth with a tut. ‘I got Oswald in to take a quick look at her.’
    ‘No wonder Kershaw’s upset with you,’ said May. ‘Oswald Finch is retired, you can’t just call him in over the new boy’s head.’
    ‘I can do what I like,’ Bryant reminded him. ‘I don’t trust someone whose surname sounds like a sneeze. I was going to use him, but Finch is an expert on drowning. You know how instinctive he is about such deaths. He reckons there’s no mucus in her air passages, nothing agitated by an attempt to breathe, no real distension in the lungs, no broken blood vessels in the nostrils. He’s opening her up tonight but doesn’t think he’ll find diatomic particles in the heart ventricles because she went into spasm almost at once.’
    ‘Could she have drowned at her sink?’
    ‘It’s possible, except that we found her bone-dry and fully dressed for going out, seated in a chair. She could have drowned in half an inch of water if she’d been unable to get up, but not in a chair.’
    ‘Did she have swollen ankles, bare feet?’ asked May suddenly.
    ‘Not bare—old-lady bootees, the non-slip kind—but swollen.’
    ‘I was thinking footbath. You know what old ladies are like. Was the floor wet?’
    ‘Yes, a little. There’s a rug over parquet.’
    ‘You didn’t ask the brother if he’d moved anything?’
    ‘I’m losing my touch, John, forgive me, I’ll call him right now.’ He turned to Longbright. ‘Why is everyone else’s phone connected except mine?’
    ‘Forgive me for pointing this out,’ said