Why this website exists

My great-uncle told me not to bother. Three days later the website was up.

He is Arthur Penrose. He was a police detective for thirty years and he retired. Since the harbour business in October, people have wanted to find him. They ask Mrs Finch, because he has his tea at Finch’s Tea Room every morning. Mrs Finch has pointed out that she is not running an answering service.

He has now taken the room above Harper’s Bookshop on the High Street. It is up seventeen steps and the eighth one creaks. He has also put an advert in the Seabrook Chronicle, which was my suggestion. It is three lines long.

PENROSE INVESTIGATIONS
All mysteries great and small
Discreet enquiries undertaken

No address. No phone number.

I had already told him I would make a website. People look things up online now, and he needed to exist. He said he existed perfectly well without one. I said he existed in Seabrook, which is not the same thing.

I showed it to him on my phone. He said it was good. I said I knew.

For the record:

• Address: penroseinvestigations.uk
• Time taken: three days
• Permission asked: none
• Photographs of Uncle Arthur: 0. He declined.
• Photographs of Holmes: 1

Holmes is the cat. In the photograph he looks very serious, which is Uncle Arthur’s description and an accurate one. Uncle Arthur has since asked whether a cat is necessary on an investigator’s website. He is. People want to see who they will be dealing with before they climb seventeen steps, and Holmes is the only member of the firm who would sit for a photograph.

The photograph stays.

The office is a separate matter. It could do with a clean and some paint. Uncle Arthur says it is fine as it is. It is grey. I am bringing paint.

This part of the site is mine. I will write about Seabrook and about how to find things out. I will not write about his cases. The advert says discreet, and I can read.