Dengdasha Wharf

Dundas Boatyard is a canal-side mooring near the aqueduct at Limpley Stoke, reached from the Bradford Road. In the novel, its winter-stilled boats and shadowed towpath form the setting for the discovery of Sid Towers’s body aboard Milo Motion’s narrowboat, tying the secluded boatyard to the investigation of both murder and theft.

Setting and Layout

The entrance is an unprepossessing pull-in a few yards along the Bradford Road, over uneven ground. On the night Peter Diamond arrives, the gate is open and frost-coated cars stand inside beside an empty police car. A notice warns that cars are at risk from thieves; beyond the parking area, the route leads up a slope to temporary-looking offices beside a stretch of the old Somerset Coal Canal used for mooring.

From there, an iron bridge and the towpath open onto a much longer line of moorings than Diamond first expects. Boats are tied on both sides of the canal, with perhaps fifty or sixty in all. In the winter darkness, a torch picks out names painted in the florid lettering of canal craft, including Henrietta, Occam's 's Razor, and Charleen. The boats appear shut up for the season: curtains drawn and portable belongings removed from their decks. The warning about car theft prompts Diamond to consider that the boats, too, may be vulnerable.

The Mrs. Hudson and Its Mooring

The investigation gathers beside the red narrowboat Mrs. Hudson, moored at the yard. Its roof carries about twenty potted conifers, and a television aerial marks it as a lived-in houseboat. Although the interior is lit, closed Venetian blinds conceal it from view. John Wigfull identifies Milo Motion as the boat’s owner; Motion lives aboard it.

The Murder and Investigation

At about one in the morning, Sid Towers, a forty-six-year-old night watchman, is found dead inside the cabin of the Mrs. Hudson. He has been struck on the head with a heavy object, possibly a spanner, which has not been found. Divers are already at the scene in case the weapon was thrown into the water. Towers had last been seen in central Bath at 8:45 the previous evening.

The boatyard’s role in the case extends beyond providing the place where the body is found. The murder is linked to the theft of the Penny Black, which Motion has handed in. Motion says he locked up at a quarter to seven to attend a meeting in Bath; when he returned with Wigfull, the padlock was still in place, with Towers inside the cabin. The apparently secured boat makes the mooring the setting for a locked-room puzzle as well as a homicide inquiry.