Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer by Simon Brett, Prefers to remain anonymous

made her sound more childish than her age, which Carole estimated at about twenty.
    “My wife Bridget would have liked to be here too,” Rowley apologized, “but sadly she has to work. She’s a teacher in Chichester.” Maybe at the college where Nathan was a pupil?
    Carole was struck by how relatively calm Arnold and Eithne Locke seemed. If her son Stephen had disappeared under suspicion of having committed a murder, she didn’t think she would be behaving with such equanimity. But Nathan’s parents appeared to think that everything was in hand and, from the way they looked at him, that Rowley was the one who had it in hand.
    “I hope you don’t mind meeting us all together, Mrs Seddon.”
    “That’s no problem. Please call me Carole.”
    “Thank you. And I’m Rowley. But this is obviously a family thing we’re talking about. And it’s quite serious.”
    “Particularly because it involves Fimby,” added Dorcas.
    In response to Carole’s look of puzzlement, Rowley explained, “Sorry, Fimby’s a nickname we have for Nathan.”
    “Everyone in the family has a nickname,” said Dorcas.
    Carole hoped she wasn’t about to be told what they all were, and fortunately Rowley continued, “I must tell you, Carole, that our starting point is that Nathan did not kill Kyra Bartos.”
    “Do you have any evidence to support that?”
    “The evidence we have is our knowledge of the boy’s personality. We’ve all watched him grow up. He’s only sixteen, and he does not have a violent nature.”
    “People’s nature can change…under provocation.”
    “Maybe, but I can’t see Nathan’s nature changing that much. He’s a gentle boy. His main interest is English literature.”
    “Rowley…” Carole didn’t find that the name tripped easily off her tongue, “…I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but it is quite possible that someone whose main interest is English literature, who is what one could call ‘bookish’, might have great difficulty in adjusting to the realities of the real world and, you know, particularly in an emotional relationship…” She left them to fill in the rest of the sentence.
    Rowley nodded in acknowledgement of her argument, noting it down as a good debating point. “I agree that is a possible scenario, but not in the case of Nathan.”
    “No, we really can’t imagine him doing anything like what he’s being publicly accused of,” Arnold contributed, and the ‘we’ he used seemed to encompass not just himself and his wife but the whole family.
    “But you don’t have anything handy like an alibi for him at the time when he was supposed to have been with Kyra?”
    “No.” After his brother’s brief intervention, Rowley once again took up the reins of the conversation. “And, indeed…I’m telling you this, Carole, because I respect the fact that you’ve agreed to come and talk to us this afternoon, and because I trust you not to spread the information around…we are pretty certain that Nathan did actually see Kyra Bartos the evening before she died.”
    “You haven’t heard that from Nathan himself?”
    “We’ve heard nothing from Nathan himself.”
    “And you don’t think he’s just run off, for reasons which have nothing to do with the murder?”
    Rowley was puzzled by the question. “Why on earth would he do that?”
    “Young people do it all the time. You know, if they’re unhappy at home…”
    “Nathan was not unhappy at home,” said Rowley firmly. “We are a very strong family, and he always enjoyed being part of it.”
    This was spoken so much like an article of faith that Carole found herself wondering what it must have been like for any family member who questioned the party line. She knew she’d find such a set-up impossibly claustrophobic. Maybe Nathan did too…
    Eithne Locke, perhaps because she feared being thought unmaternal, interjected at this point. “Of course he wouldn’t want to run off. Listen, we haven’t seen Nathan since he