Gemma knew that he relied on her to digest information and spit the pertinent bits back out to him, and she rarely had to use her notes. “I’ve been over Thames Valley’s reports.” She nodded toward the rooms above their heads. “Had them waiting for me when I got in, very efficient.” Closing her eyes for a moment, she marshaled her thoughts. “They had a call at seven-oh-five this morning from a Perry Smith, lockkeeper at Hambleden Lock. He’d found a body caught in his sluicegate. Thames Valley called in a rescue squad to fish the body out, and they identified him from his wallet as Connor Swann, resident of Henley-on-Thames. The lockkeeper, however, once he’d recovered from the shock a bit, recognized Connor Swann as the son-in-law of the Ashertons, who live a couple of miles up the road from Hambleden. He said the family often walked there.”

“On the lock?” Kincaid asked, surprised.

“Apparently it’s part of a scenic walk.” Gemma frowned and picked up the thread of her story where she’d left off. “The local police surgeon was called in to examine the body. He found considerable bruising around the throat. Also, the body was very cold, but rigor had only just begun-”

“But you’d expect the cold water to retard rigor,” Kincaid interrupted.

Gemma shook her head impatiently. “Usually in drowning cases rigor sets in very quickly. So he thinks it likely that the victim may have been strangled before he went in the water.”

“Our police surgeon makes a bloody lot of assumptions, don’t you think?” Kincaid snagged a bag of onion-flavored crisps from a display and counted out the proper coins to Tony. “We’ll see what the postmortem has to say.”

“Nasty things,” said Gemma, eyeing the crisps distastefully.

Mouth full, Kincaid answered, “I know, but I’m starved. What about the interviews with the family?”

She finished the last of her drink before answering, taking a moment to shift mental gears. “Let’s see… they took statements from the in-laws as well as the wife. Yesterday evening, Sir Gerald Asherton conducted an opera at the Coliseum in London. Dame Caroline Stowe was home in bed, reading. And Julia Swann, the wife, was attending a gallery opening in Henley. None of them reported having words with Connor or having any reason to think he might be worried or upset.”