Arthur Penrose

Arthur Penrose is a retired police detective in Seabrook. He keeps an office above Harper’s Bookshop and takes on enquiries as Penrose Investigations.

He is seventy and spent thirty years in the police. He has lived on Church Row for thirty-five years, at the good end, which is the end where the gutters work reliably. He lives alone, apart from Holmes the cat.

Since leaving the force he has walked the sea wall most mornings at half past eight. He then takes the table by the window at Finch’s Tea Room, where the tea arrives before he has opened the paper. He regards a raisin in a scone as an act of betrayal.

The office opened in November 2025. His advertisement runs among the classifieds in the Seabrook Chronicle, in a small box with a thin black border. It reads:

PENROSE INVESTIGATIONS
All mysteries great and small
Discreet enquiries undertaken

Enquiries so far have included a disputed fence and a dog that had not, in fact, been stolen. The town knows him better for the harbour case, back in October, which began with a missing cat and on which he does not enlarge.

Mr Penrose carries a notebook and leaves the correct money on the table. His grand-niece Alice made him a website. He told her not to bother.

Where you will find him

• On the sea wall at half past eight, most mornings, with his collar turned up.
• At Finch’s Tea Room, at the table by the window. On Tuesdays the Chronicle is folded on his seat.
• At Harper’s Bookshop, in the armchair beside the fiction shelves.
• In the office above it, up seventeen steps, of which the eighth creaks. If a record is playing, it is most likely Brubeck.
• By the harbour, on the long way home.

His house on Church Row is a private residence.