Dead in the Water (1998)

Vivien Armstrong's mystery was published by Severn House in 1998. Mimsie Crane, a London temp with no staying power, arrives one morning to find her employer, the dentist Mr Chambers, strapped naked in his own surgery chair and the surgery vandalised. When Chambers disappears and his former nurse is found strangled, Mimsie becomes the target of a stalker and a suspect for the police. (Open Library)

Watches

Rolex watch: Mimsie's gold Rolex was a trophy from a futures dealer to whom she was briefly engaged, kept in place of a diamond solitaire, and it is her only material asset. Short of the rent, she pawns it again with "Uncle" (p. 9), plans her escape round redeeming it (pp. 26 to 80) and gets money from Steve Epps to bail it out (p. 30). Redeemed at last, she dances out of the pawnbroker's feeling the gold strap on her wrist; later it glints back at her like a wink of encouragement (p. 174). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: ‘Uncle’ was unimpressed by her cash settlement for the Rolex — the pledge had been ‘his’ and ‘hers’ so often he regarded it in the same bracket as the time-share apartment he kept in Benidorm. Mimsie danced out of the pawnbroker’s on air, feeling the firm pressure of the gold strap on her wrist like a lover’s caress. (Vivien Armstrong, Dead in the Water, scan cataloged as Severn House, 1998, p. 88; Internet Archive scan OCR)