Home Water at Lock Twenty

Fourteen witnesses. One perfect alibi. And an old keeper who knows how long a boat can stand still.Thurstan Pickersgill has reached eighty with his curiosity intact. His daughter has taken silk, his grandson walks half the morning Round for him, and the woman on the next mooring has begun asking how wide his boat is.Christmas is looking promising.Then a note arrives from the Lock House. Septimus Brearley, ninety-two and the richest old man in Sedgeworth, wants to see him. Alone. Before Christmas.What he hands Thurstan is forty-seven years overdue.Two nights later, illuminated narrowboats climb the flight beneath Septimus's window. He eats his customary finger of Christmas shortbread—and dies. Everybody knew about his peanut allergy.The police suspect a careless kitchen. Thurstan suspects a very careful hand.But the person who stood to gain from the death was aboard the Friends' boat throughout the parade, singing carols with fourteen witnesses.Nobody saw them leave. Thurstan wonders whether anybody was watching.He knows every boat that night had to wait below the Lock House for its turn on the aqueduct. Some waited twenty-five minutes. He also knows there is a new path from the water to the garden gate, laid with yellow clay that clings stubbornly to a boot.As Christmas draws near, the Monday Puzzle Club gathers for one final case. To uncover how a killer slipped through a crowd of friends, Thurstan must follow the smallest traces—and face the truth Septimus waited almost half a century to tell.For once, he will not have to walk the whole way alone.Home Water at Lock Twenty brings the Monday Puzzle Club Mystery series to a warm, moving close: a Christmas mystery of old debts, steadfast friendship and a new beginning at eighty.The ninth and final book, with a complete fair-play solution, no graphic content and no bad language.