The Quiet River

Book 717: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Steve and Helen Anderson move from their London flat into an isolated old house near the Lod River. Both are strangely drawn to the river, though stories circulate about its dangerously weak banks and powerful undertow. Helen is also drawn to neighbor Matthew Summers, the forbidding village squire and Casanova. They have moved from urbanity and movement to a silent and brooding landscape dominated by the almost invisible river that runs through it. It is this change that provides the catalyst to an inherently unstable relationship, and a final catastrophe ... 'He has the ability to achieve a mounting kind of tension that rivets the reader' New York Times Book Review

Release date: July 14, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 256

Sample

The river, when they came to it, was bigger than they expected and much less beautiful. It was big only by the standards of minor English rivers well inland from the coast
– they were not expecting the Mississippi, or even the Severn – but it was still unexpectedly big. It was a smooth, unbroken body of brown water moving steadily through the flat green
country, and running in so slight a curve that it looked almost artificially straight, as if it was a canal. It must have been all of twenty-five yards across from bank to bank, and the banks were
steep. They could not tell how deep the water was, but it looked deep.

There were no frills at all, no islands or backwaters, no lilies or bulrushes, not even, as far as they could see, any trees growing on the bank. The fact of the river was there in front of
them, but all the pleasant associations their minds had conjured up were missing. They stood for a moment looking at it in silence, and then the whole smooth surface was suddenly pockmarked with
spreading rings, and it began to rain. They still stood there, turning up their coat-collars and trying to find words to say to each other, but no words came, and the rain went on, falling straight
out of the grey sky on to the brown, dimpled water. It was difficult enough to know what to say without having the rain beginning to soak into their clothes and run down their necks, and presently
they gave it up and turned and went back to the car.

They shook off what water they could and got into their places, and Steve started the engine and turned the heater on. He ran his window down, so that the damp off their clothes should not steam
up the windscreen. It was not cold outside, and the rain fell so vertically that none of it came in. He said, ‘So that’s Lod. Pity we had to see it like this.’ He always called
rivers by their bare names, without the definite article, as if they were people, but even he was not going to pretend that the Lod was not to some extent a disappointment.

Helen said, ‘It’s bigger than I thought. I don’t know – I wasn’t expecting more than a good-sized brook.’ It was the size of the river that impressed her more
than its lack of charm. She had been thinking of a human amenity, but this was something you would have to live with, like a mountain at your back. Once you had seen it, it dominated the landscape
from underneath, as a mountain dominates it from above, only, unlike a mountain, you did not see it at all until you were right on top of it. It must run, obviously, where the contours of the
ground dictated, and it had dug itself into its present channel, but there was nothing like a river-valley to show you, from a distance, where it did run. You knew it was there, snaking its way
along the line of least resistance, but most of the time, like a snake, you did not see it. It was a river, right enough, even in some way quite a formidable one, but she knew at once that it was
not her idea of what a river should be.

Unexpectedly, perhaps because he was sensitive about rivers, Steve answered what was in her mind rather than what she had actually said. He said, ‘It’ll look better when the
sun’s out. And it’s a nice piece of water. Clean, too. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, coming from where it does. One could swim in it without poisoning oneself, and
there ought to be fish. It’s not a pretty river, I admit, but it’s real, and it hasn’t been mucked about with. I think I could get to like it.’ But then Steve did like
rivers. He called them by their Christian names, if Lod was Christian, which she doubted. To Helen it was the Lod, and she did not think she was going to like it whatever she called it. But perhaps
that did not matter very much, and in any case there was nothing she could do about it.

She said, ‘It’s not pretty, certainly, but I’ve nothing really against it. It’s just that it isn’t what I was expecting, and I don’t somehow take to
it.’

He nodded. ‘Well, look,’ he said, ‘let’s leave it out of the reckoning. It’s not the asset we hoped for, but I don’t think it’s a liability either.
Let’s forget it’s there, and take our decision on all the other things. The house mainly, I suppose, and that’s really up to you. We had to see Lod, and we’ve seen it.
Let’s go back and have a proper look at the house.’

She said, ‘All right, I agree,’ because there was nothing else she could reasonably say. She knew he would not openly force her hand. But she knew already that he wanted the place,
and she did not think, now, that she did. As for forgetting the river was there, she could not, any more than he could. Already, even from here in the car, it was out of sight again, but she knew
very well it was there. Steve backed and turned the car on the rough grass, and they bumped back along the track to the road.

The house was called Spandles. It stood on a spur of slightly higher ground that reached out from the low hills behind it, and looked southward across the flat fields towards the invisible
river. The fields went with the house. They stretched for perhaps a quarter of a mile each way along the bank. There were a few lines of thorn hedge, but mostly the fields were divided only by
posts and wire. The individual fields had no natural identities, because there was nothing in the shape of the ground to give them any. It was really one big field broken up for practical purposes,
and the fences had an arbitrary, almost temporary, look, like the electric fences the farmers used to control grazing. Even the big field itself was almost rectangular, bounded by the almost
straight river to the south and an almost straight road to the north. East and west there were just the thin fences stretching between road and river. The house would have been a farmhouse once,
and could be again, but now the grazing was let to the farmer along the river. If they took the house, it would be only the house they would have to worry about, and the bit of garden that went
with it. That was what had attracted them, that and the river. Steve was no farmer, and had no intention of being one, but he liked rivers.

The house was pleasant enough, but not dramatic. You could not expect drama in that landscape. It was built of brick, rendered over and colour-washed in a flat buff, so that from a distance it
looked like a stone house, but there was no building stone in these parts. There was a walled kitchen garden east of the house, and here the brick walls had been left uncovered, and did not look
amiss. In front, southwards, there was a small open garden of grass and flower-beds, which had been terraced out from the end slope of the spur, so that from the front of the garden there was a
vertical drop of seven or eight feet to the fields below. There was a brick retaining wall here, with brick steps in the middle going down to the fields, and the wall ran back along both sides of
the garden until, about half way along, the level of the garden merged with the level of the higher ground where the house stood. Behind the house there was an open yard between out-buildings, and
from there a drive led through a wooden gate to the road running east and west thirty or forty yards away. Westward the house was open to the green fields and a distant view of Calton Farm, which
was where Mr. Summers lived. It was Mr. Summers who had the grazing of their fields, or what would be their fields if they took the house. They had not met Mr. Summers yet. They drove in through
the gate, open now because there was nothing to shut in or out, and parked the car in the yard.

The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening minute by minute. There was no wind at all, but the sun was breaking through the thin cloud cover, and presently they would have a hazy sunshine.
There was a tremendous feeling of air and space, and it was dead quiet. Even here there were no trees, just the man-made verticality of the buildings breaking the flat landscape. It was all
extraordinarily peaceful, but the peace had a brooding quality which you would have to accept if it was not going to worry you. When the wind blew, there would be no defence against it, but it was
not a windy part. It was too far from the sea for that. In the winter there would certainly be snow, but snow, as England gets it, is no great menace in a flat country. Placed as they were, Helen
could see that the house had a lot to offer them.

Steve took the house keys out of the pocket in the dashboard, and they got out. They had already had a quick look at the house, and then Steve had wanted to go and have a look at the river. Now
they must make a proper job of it, and they both knew that it was Helen who had to make up her mind. Steve was already committed.

They went in by the back door, because that was the door they would nearly always use and everybody always had. The front door opened on nothing but the flower-garden, and the side door on
nothing but the kitchen garden. It was the back door which was the real entrance of the house. A narrow hall ran right through from back door to front door with two rooms opening out of each side
of it and the stairs going up between the two western doors. Half-way along the hall, between the back rooms and the front, there was a glazed door. It was open now, hooked back against one wall,
but it would be a useful draught-stopper when the wind blew. All four rooms had windows in both outer walls. One of the back rooms was the kitchen, but the others, stripped and empty, were theirs
to do what they liked with. It was a simple, unimaginative plan, but not unpleasing, and the rooms were high and light, with tall sash windows. They went into each of them in turn, silent as it
were by consent, each making their own judgement. As they went into the second front room, the light suddenly brightened, flooding in from an outside world that seemed all sky, and touching the
bare boards and faded wallpaper with a pale yellow glow. It was a solid, reassuring house, that would hold no secrets, and for a house that had been shut up so long, it smelt unexpectedly
sweet.

It was the sweetness that decided her, even before they went upstairs, that and the sudden flood of pale sunlight in the empty rooms. She still did not like the river, but you could not see it
from here, and it seemed a long way off. Even now she did not say anything, but she knew what she was going to say. As they came back into the hall, Steve said, ‘Say about 1850?’, and
Helen nodded.

‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘Let’s see upstairs.’ She started up the stairs and he went after her. Their shoes clumped on the bare boards, but the risers were
low and the stairs easy to climb. As if conscious of the noise they made, he fell into step with her, two stairs lower down, and they walked steadily up in unison, clump, clump, clump, so that
anyone listening in one of the upstairs rooms would have thought there was only one person coming upstairs. But there was nobody, of course, to worry with the noise their feet made on the treads,
only three nearly square rooms, as bare as the rooms below them, and full of the same soft sunlight from the same tall windows, and the plumbing concentrated over the kitchen, to save piping and
heat.

There were not so much views from the windows as outlook. It was like looking out of a lighthouse. But you could see the low hills north and south, and eastwards, further away but higher, the
jumbled hill-country where the river water collected itself for its long run westward to the sea. Even from this height you still could not see the river itself. She wondered why she was as
conscious of its presence as she was when it was so extraordinarily good at hiding itself, and then thought that perhaps it was just because you could not see it that you had to keep on telling
yourself that it was there. But she had surrendered now. The house had got her, and to hell with the river. The house could be lovely, and she knew she could make it look better than it had ever
looked yet.

When they had gone into all the rooms and come out again on to the central landing, she turned to look at Steve, because she knew he was watching her, and when she smiled at him, his face
crumpled into a smile of such enormous relief that he looked for the moment ridiculously young. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘I like it very much myself. What do you think?’

‘Well, look, we’re only proposing to rent it, not buy it.’

‘At this stage.’ Steve interrupted her deliberately, smiling and making a joke of it, but quite determined now to make her understand how much he wanted the place.

‘All right, at this stage. But I mean – there are a lot of things we don’t really have to worry about that we should if we were buying it. We’re not putting capital into
it. All we’re investing is the expense of the move, and of course we’ll have to do it up a bit. But it’s not all that of a serious decision. Do you want a survey?’

He shook his head quickly and decisively. ‘No. That’s one of the things we needn’t worry about. The structure’s obviously sound, and if the house has got any vices,
we’ll discover them as we go along, and no real harm done. I’d get the plumbing and heating checked, but that’s all.’ He said ‘I’d’, not
‘I’ll.’ He was still determined not to seem to assume her agreement, and she had not agreed yet. But he had made up his mind. He was only playing reasonable.

Now she did agree. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘go ahead and take it.’

He looked at her with a curious solemnity which she was to remember later. ‘You’re sure? You’re not agreeing against your better judgement?’

She found herself irritated by his insistence, because her decision was not too firmly based, and now she had made it, she did not want to have to take another look at it. And she knew that the
balance in her mind was different from his, almost its opposite, because she liked the house and disliked the river, but she did not want to tell him that. She said, ‘I don’t know about
my better judgement. But I’m sure, yes. You go ahead, and let’s see what we can make of it.’

There was a window in the south wall lighting the landing from behind him as he stood and faced her, and now, as they looked at each other, a flicker of movement caught her eye through the
bottom pane, and she took her eyes from his and looked past him to the field in front of the house. ‘There’s someone there,’ she said, and he turned, and they stood looking out
together. There was a man coming across the field towards the steps at the bottom of the garden. Even from up here he looked immensely tall and thin, and he walked with a deliberate, swinging
stride. His clothes and hat were uniformly black, so that he made a surprising figure on the sunlit grass, as if he was a scarecrow walking. They watched him until he came to the steps, and even
then his head and shoulders remained in sight, and the next moment there he was at the top of the steps, taller than ever, looking up the garden towards the front of the house.

Instinctively they both moved back, so that he should not find them watching him if he looked up at the first-floor windows. Helen said, ‘Come on. Let’s go and see who it is,’
and they hurried down the stairs together, not worrying now about the noise they made. Steve ran into the kitchen and came back with the keys, looking for the one labelled for the front door. It
was a formidable piece of ironmongery, and when they turned to the inside of the door, they found a massive boxlock, with a touch of what had probably been brass decoration, but had long since been
painted over. The key turned with a smooth heaviness and the bolt thudded back on a powerful spring. Even then they found the door bolted top and bottom, and Steve wrestled with the bolts, swearing
softly under his breath. He got them drawn at last and stepped back and swung the door open, and there was the tall man standing almost on the threshold, not more than a couple of feet from them,
and looking down at them, first at Helen and then at Steve.

He was much less disconcerted than they were, because he had been standing there, listening to Steve’s fight with the. . .