Death Is Now My Neighbor

Chapter forty-one

Déjà vu.

The street, the police cars, the crowd of curious onlookers, the SOCOs — repetition almost everywhere, as if nothing was found only once in the world. Just that single significant shift: the shift from one terraced house to another immediately adjacent.

Morse himself had said virtually nothing since Strange had brought the news of Owens’ murder; and said nothing now as he sat in the kitchen of Number 15, Bloxham Drive, elbows resting on the table there, head resting on his hands. For the moment his job was to bide his time, he knew that, during the interregnum between the activities of other professionals and his own assumption of authority: a necessary yet ever frustrating interlude, like that when an in-flight stewardess rehearses the safety drill before takeoff.

By all rights he should have felt weary and defeated; but this was not the case. Physically, he felt considerably fitter than he had the week before; and mentally, he felt eager for that metaphorical takeoff to begin. Some people took little or no mental exercise except that of jumping to conclusions; while Morse was a man who took excessive mental exercise and who still jumped to dubious conclusions, as indeed he was to do now. But as some of his close colleagues knew — and most especially as Sergeant Lewis knew — it was at times like this, with preconceptions proved false and hypotheses undone, that Morse’s brain was wont to function with astonishing speed, if questionable lucidity.

As it did now.

Lewis walked through just before 2 P.M.

“Anything I can do for the minute, sir?”

“Just nip out and get me the Independent on Sunday, will you? And a packet of Dunhill.”

“Do you think—?” But Lewis stopped and waited as Morse reluctantly took a five-pound note from his wallet.

For the next few minutes Morse was aware that his brain was still frustrated and unproductive. And there was something else, too. For some reason, and for a good while now, he had been conscious that he might well have missed a vital clue in the case (cases!) which so far he couldn’t quite catch. It was a bit like going through a town on a high-speed train when the eyes had almost caught the name of the station as it flashed so tantalizingly across the carriage window.

Lewis returned five minutes later with the cigarettes, which Morse put unopened into his jacket pocket; and with the newspaper, which Morse opened at the Cryptic Crossword (“Quixote”), glanced at 1 across: “Some show dahlias in the Indian pavilion (6)” and immediately wrote in “HOWDAH.”

“Excuse me, sir — but how do you get that?”

“Easiest of all the clue types, that. The letters are all there, in their proper, consecutive order. It’s called the ‘hidden’ type.”

“Ah, yes!” Lewis looked and, for once, Lewis saw. “Shall I leave you for two or three minutes to finish it off, sir?”

“No. It’ll take me at least five. And it’s time you sat down and gave me the latest news on things here.”

Owens’ body Morse had already viewed, howsoever briefly, sitting back, as it had been, against the cushions of the living room settee, the green covers permeated with many pints of blood. His face unshaven, his long hair loose down to the shoulders, his eyes open and staring, almost (it seemed) as if in permanent disbelief; and two bullet wounds showing raggedly in his chest. Dead four to six hours, that’s what Dr. Laura Hobson had already suggested — a margin narrower than Morse had expected, though wider than he’d hoped; death, she’d claimed, had fairly certainly been “instant,” or “instantaneous,” as Morse would have preferred. There were no signs of any forcible entry to the house: the front door had been found still locked and bolted; the tongue of the Yale on the back door still engaged, though not clicked to the locked position from the inside. On the mantelpiece above the electric fire (not switched on) was a small oblong virtually free of the generally pervasive dust.

The body would most probably not have been discovered that day had not John Benson, a garage mechanic from Hartwell’s Motors, agreed to earn himself a little untaxed extra income by fixing a few faults on Owens’ car. But Benson had been unable to get any answer when he called just after 11:15 A.M.; had finally peered through the open-curtained front window; had rapped repeatedly, and increasingly loudly, against the pane when he saw Owens lying asleep on the settee there.

But Owens was not asleep. So much had become gradually apparent to Benson, who had dialed 999 at about 11:30 A.M. from the BT phone box at the entrance to the Drive.

Thus far no one, it appeared, had seen or heard anything untoward that morning between seven and eight o’clock, say. House-to-house inquiries would soon be under way, and might provide a clue or two. But concerning such a possibility Morse was predictably (though, as it happened, mistakenly) pessimistic. Early Sunday morning was not a time when many people were about, except for dog owners and insomniacs: the former, judging from the warnings on the lampposts concerning the fouling of verges and footpaths, not positively encouraged to parade their pets along the street; the latter, if there were any, not as yet coming forward with any sightings of strangers or hearings of gunshots.

No. On the face of it, it had seemed a typical, sleepy Sunday morning, when the denizens of Bloxham Drive had their weekly lie-in, arose late, walked around their homes in dressing gowns, sometimes boiled an egg, perhaps, and settled down to read in the scandal sheets about the extramarital exploits of the great and the not-so-good.

But one person had been given no chance to read his Sunday newspaper, for the News of the World lay unopened on the mat inside the front door of Number 15; and few of the others in the Drive that morning were able to indulge their delight in adulterous liaisons, stunned as they were by disbelief and, as the shock itself lessened, by a growing sense of fear.

At 2:30 P.M. Morse was informed that few if any of the neighbors were likely to be helpful witnesses — except the old lady in Number 19. Morse should see her himself, perhaps?

“Want me to come along, sir?”

“No, Lewis. You get off and try to find out something about Storrs — and his missus. Bath, you say? He probably left details of where he’d be at the Porters’ Lodge — that’s the usual drill. And do it from HQ. Better keep the phone here free.”

Mrs. Adams was a widow of some eighty summers, a small old lady who had now lost all her own teeth, much of her wispy white hair, and even more of her hearing. But her wits were sharp enough, Morse sensed that immediately; and her brief evidence was of considerable interest. She had slept poorly the previous night; got up early; made herself some tea and toast; listened to the news on the radio at seven o’clock; cleared away; and then gone out the back to empty her wastebasket. That’s when she’d seen him!

“Him?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re sure it was a man?”

“Oh yes. About twenty... twenty-five past seven.”

The case was under way.

“You didn’t hear any shots or bangs?”

“Pardon?”

Morse let it go.

But he managed to convey his thanks to her, and to explain that she would be asked to sign a short statement. As he prepared to leave, he gave her his card.

“I’ll leave this with you, Mrs. Adams. If you remember anything else, please get in touch with me.”

He thought she’d understood; and he left her there in her kitchen, holding his card about three or four inches from her pale, rheumy eyes, squinting obliquely at the wording.

She was not, as Morse had quickly realized, ever destined to be called before an identity parade; for although she might be able to spot that all of them were men, any physiognomical differentiation would surely be wholly beyond the capacity of those tired old eyes.

Poor Mrs. Adams!

Sans teeth, sans hair, sans ears, sans eyes — and very soon, alas, sans everything.

Seldom, in any investigation, had Morse so badly mishandled a key witness as now he mishandled Mrs. Arabella Adams.

Chapter forty-two

Some persons in life eschew all sense of responsibility, and are never wholly at ease unless they are closely instructed as to what to do, and how and when to do it. Sergeant Lewis was not such a person, willing as he was always to shoulder his share of responsibility and, not infrequently, to face some apportionment of blame. Yet to be truthful, he was ever most at ease when given some specific task, as he had been now; and he experienced a pleasing sense of purpose as he drove up to Police HQ that same afternoon.

One thing only disturbed him more than a little. For almost a week now Morse had forgone, been forced to forgo, both beer and cigarettes. And what foolishness it was to capitulate, as Morse had done, to both, within the space of only a couple of hours! But that’s what life was all about — personal decisions; and Morse had clearly decided that the long-term disintegration of his liver and his lungs was a price well worth paying, even with diabetes, for the short-term pleasures of alcohol and nicotine.

Yet Morse was still on the ball. As he had guessed, Storrs had left details of his weekend whereabouts at the Porters’ Lodge. And very soon Lewis was speaking to the Manager of Bath’s Royal Crescent Hotel — an appropriately cautious man, but one who was fully cooperative once Lewis had explained the unusual and delicate nature of his inquiries. The Manager would ring back, he promised, within half an hour.

Lewis picked up the previous day’s copy of the Daily Mirror, and sat puzzling for a few minutes over whether the answer to 1 across — “River (3)” — was CAM, DEE, EXE, FAL, and so on through the alphabet; finally deciding on CAM, when he saw that it would fit neatly enough with COD, the fairly obvious answer to 1 down — “Fish (3).” He had made a firm start. But thereafter he had proceeded little, since the combination which had found favor with the setter of the crossword (EXE/EEL) had wholly eluded him. His minor hypothesis, like Morse’s earlier major one, was sadly undone.

But he had no time to return (quite literally) to square one, since the phone rang. It had taken the Manager only fifteen minutes to assemble his fairly comprehensive information...

Mr. and Mrs. J. Storrs had checked into the hotel at 4 P.M. the previous afternoon, Saturday, March 2: just the one night, at the special weekend-break tariff of £125 for a double room. The purpose of the Storrs’ visit (almost certainly) had been to hear the Bath Festival Choir, since one of the reception staff had ordered a taxi for them at 7 P.M. to go along to the Abbey, where the Fauré Requiem was the centerpiece of the evening concert. The couple had been back in the hotel by about half past nine, when they had immediately gone into the restaurant for a late, prebooked dinner, the only extra being a bottle of the house red wine.

If the sergeant would like to see the itemized bill...?

No one, it appeared, had seen the couple after about 11 P.M., when they had been the last to leave the restaurant. Before retiring, however, Mr. Storrs had rung through to room service to order breakfast for the two of them, in their room, at 7:45 A.M.: a full English for himself, a Continental one for his wife.

Again, the itemized order was available if the sergeant…

Latest checkout from the hotel (as officially specified in the brochure) was noon. But the Storrs had left a good while before then. As with the other details (the Manager explained) some of the times given were just a little vague, since service personnel had changed. But things could very soon be checked. The account had been settled by Mr. Storrs himself on a Lloyds Bank Gold Card (the receptionist recalled this clearly), and one of the porters had driven the Storrs’ BMW round to the front of the hotel from the rear garage — being tipped (it appeared) quite liberally for his services.

So that was that.

Or almost so — since Lewis was very much aware that Morse would hardly be overjoyed with such findings; and he now asked a few further key questions.

“I know it’s an odd thing to ask, sir, but are you completely sure that these people were Mr. and Mrs. Storrs?”

“Well, I...” The Manager hesitated long enough for Lewis to jam a metaphoric foot inside the door.

“You knew them — know them — personally?”

“I’ve only been Manager here for a couple of years. But, yes — they were here twelve months or so ago.”

“People change, though, don’t they? He might have changed quite a bit, Mr. Storrs, if he’d been ill or... or something?”

“Oh, it was him all right. I’m sure of that. Well, almost sure. And he signed the credit card bill, didn’t he? It should be quite easy to check up on that.”

“And you’re quite sure it was her, sir? Mrs. Storrs? Is there any possibility at all that he was spending the night with someone else?”

The laugh at the other end of the line was full of relief and conviction.

“Not — a — chance! You can be one hundred percent certain of that. I think everybody here remembers her. She’s, you know, she’s a bit sharp, if you follow my meaning. Nothing unpleasant — don’t get me wrong! But a little bit, well, severe. She dressed that way, too: white trouser-suit, hair drawn back high over the ears, beauty-parlor face. Quite the lady, really.”

Lewis drew on his salient reminiscence of Angela Storrs:

“It’s not always easy to recognize someone who’s wearing sunglasses, though.”

“But she wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Not when I saw her, anyway. I just happened to be in reception when she booked in. And it was she recognized me! You see, the last time they’d been with us, she did the signing in, while Mr. Storrs was sorting out the luggage and the parking. And I noticed the registration number of their BMW and I mentioned the coincidence that we were both ‘188J.’ She reminded me of it yesterday. She said they’d still got the same car.”

“You can swear to all this?”

“Certainly. We had quite a little chat. She told me they’d spent their honeymoon in the hotel — in the Sarah Siddons suite.”

Oh.

So that was that.

An alibi — for both of them.

Lewis thanked the Manager. “But please do keep all this to yourself, sir. It’s always a tricky business when we’re trying to eliminate suspects in a case. Not suspects, though, just... just people.”

A few minutes later Lewis again rang the Storrs’ residence in Polstead Road; again listening to Mrs. Storrs on the answer phone: “If the caller will please speak clearly after the long tone...” The voice was a little — what had the Manager said? — a little “severe,” yes. And quite certainly (Lewis thought) it was a voice likely to intimidate a few of the students if she became the new Master’s wife. But after waiting for the “long tone,” Lewis put down the phone without leaving any message. He always felt awkward and tongue-tied at such moments; and he suddenly realized that he hadn’t got a message to leave in any case.

Chapter forty-three

Morse was still seated at the kitchen table in Number 15 when Lewis rang through.

“So it looks,” concluded Lewis, “as if they’re in the clear.”

“Ye-es. How far is it from Oxford to Bath?”

“Seventy, seventy-five miles?”

“Sunday morning. No traffic. Do it in an hour and a half — no problem. Three hours there and back.”

“There’s a murder to commit in the middle, though.”

Morse conceded the point. “Three and a half.”

“Well, whatever happened, he didn’t use his own car. That was in the hotel garage — keys with the porter.”

“Haven’t you heard of a duplicate set of car keys, Lewis?”

“What if he was locked in — or blocked in?”

“He unlocked himself, and unblocked himself, all right?”

“He must have left about four o’clock this morning then, because he was back in bed having breakfast with his missus before eight.”

“Ye-es.”

“I just wonder what Owens was doing, sir — up and about and dressed and ready to let the murderer in at half past five or so.”

“Perhaps he couldn’t sleep.”

“You’re not taking all this seriously, are you?”

“All right. Let’s cross ’em both off the list, I agree.”

“Have we got a list?”

Morse nodded. “Not too many on it, I know. But I’d like to see our other runner in the Lonsdale Stakes.”

“Do you want me to see him?”

“No. You get back here and look after the shop till the SOCOs have left — they’re nearly through.”

With which, Morse put down the phone, got to his feet, and looked cautiously through into the hallway; then walked to the front door, where a uniformed PC stood on guard.

“Has the Super gone?” asked Morse.

“Yes, sir. Five minutes ago.”

Morse walked back to the kitchen and opened the door of the refrigerator. The usual items: two pints of Co-op milk, Flora margarine, a packet of unsmoked bacon rashers, five eggs, a carton of grapefruit juice, two cans of Courage’s bitter…

Morse found a glass in the cupboard above the draining board, and poured himself a beer. The liquid was cool and sharp on his dry throat; and very soon he had opened the second can, his fingers almost sensuously feeling the cellophane-wrapped cigarettes in his pocket, still unopened.

By the time the SOCOs were ready to move into the kitchen, the glass had been dried and replaced on its shelf.

“Can we kick you out a little while, sir?” It was Andrews, the senior man.

“You’ve finished everywhere else?”

“Pretty well.”

Morse got to his feet.

“Ah! Two cans of beer!” observed Andrews. “Think they may have had a drink together before...?”

“Not at that time of the morning, no.”

“I dunno. I used to have a friend who drank a pint of Guinness for breakfast every morning.”

“Sounds a civilized sort of fellow.”

“Dead. Cirrhosis of the liver.”

Morse nodded morosely.

“Anyway, we’ll give the cans a dusting over, just in case.”

“I shouldn’t bother,” said Morse.

“Won’t do any harm, surely?”

“I said, I shouldn’t bother,” snapped Morse.

And suddenly Andrews understood.

Upstairs there was little to detain Morse. In the front room the bed was still unmade, a pair of pajamas neatly folded on the top pillow. The wardrobe appeared exactly as he’d viewed it earlier. Only one picture on the walls: Monet’s miserable-looking version of a haystack.

The “study” (Morse’s second visit there too!) was in considerable disarray, for the desk drawers, now liberally dusted with fingerprint powder, had been taken out, their contents strewn across the floor, including the book which had stimulated some interest on Morse’s previous visit. The central drawer likewise had been removed, and Morse assumed that after discovering the theft of the manila file Owens had seen no reason to repair the damaged lock.

Nothing much else of interest upstairs, as far as Morse could see; just that one, easy conclusion to be drawn: that the murderer had been looking for something — some documents, some papers, some evidence which could have constituted a basis for blackmail.

Exactly what Morse had been looking for.

Exactly what Morse had found.

He smiled sadly to himself as he looked down at the wreckage of the room. Already he had made a few minor blunders in the investigations; and one major, tragic blunder, of course. But how fortunate that he’d been able to avail himself of JJ’s criminal expertise, since otherwise the crucial evidence found in the manila file would have vanished now forever.

Downstairs, Morse had only the living room to consider. The kitchen he’d already seen; and the nominal “dining room” was clearly a room where Owens had seldom, if ever, dined — an area thick with dust and crowded with the sorts of items most householders regularly relegate to their lofts and garden sheds: an old electric fire, a coal scuttle, a box of plugs and wires, a traffic cone, an ancient Bakelite wireless, a glass case containing a stuffed owl, a black plastic lavatory seat, six chairs packed together in the soixante-neuf position — and a dog collar with the name “Archie” inscribed on its disc.

Perhaps, after all, there had been some little goodness somewhere in the man?

Morse had already given permission for the body to be removed, and now for the second time he ventured into the living room. Not quite so dust-bestrewn here, certainly; but manifestly Owens had never been a house-proud man. Surfaces all around were dusted with powder, and chalk marks outlined the body’s former configuration on the settee. But the room was dominated by blood — the stains, the smell of blood; and Morse, as was his wont, turned his back on such things, and viewed the contents of the room.

He stood enviously in front of the black, three-decked Revox CD-cassette player which stood on a broad shelf in the alcove to the left of the front window, with dozens of CDs and cassettes below it, including, Morse noted with appreciation, much Gustav Mahler. And indeed, as he pressed the “Play” panel, he immediately recognized Das Lied von der Erde.

No man is wholly bad, perhaps...

On the shelf beneath was an extended row of videos: Fawlty Towers, Morecambe and Wise Christmas Shows, Porridge, and several other TV classics. And two (fairly obviously) pornographic videos: Grub Screws, its crudely lurid, technicolor cover poses hardly promising a course in carpentry with the Open University; and the plain-covered, yet succinctly entitled Sux and Fux, which seemed to speak quite unequivocally for itself. Morse himself had no video mechanism on his rented TV set; but he was in the process of thinking about the benefits of such a facility when Lewis came in, the latter immediately instructed to have a look around.

Morse’s attention now turned to the single row of books in the opposite alcove. Mostly paperbacks: P. D. James, Jack Higgins, Ruth Rendell, Wilbur Smith, Minette Walters... RAC Handbook, World Atlas, Chambers Dictionary, Pevsner’s Oxfordshire...

“See this?” Lewis suddenly raised aloft the Grub Screws. “The statutory porn video, sir. Good one, that! Sergeant Dixon had it on at his stag night.”

“You’d like to see it again, you mean?”

“Again? Not for me, sir. Those things get ever so boring after a while. But don’t let me stop you if...”

“What? Me? I’ve got more important things to do than watch that sort of thing. High time I saw Cornford, for a start. Fix something up, Lewis. The sooner the quicker.”

After Lewis had gone, Morse felt unwilling to face the chorus of correspondents and the battery of cameras which awaited those periodically emerging from the front of Number 15. So he sat down, yet again, in the now empty kitchen; and pondered.

Always in his life, he had wanted to know the answers to things. In Sunday School he had once asked a question concerning the topographical position of Heaven, only to be admonished by an unimaginative middle-aged spinster for being so very silly. And he had been similarly discouraged when as a young grammar school boy he had asked his Divinity master who it was, if God had created the Universe, who in turn had created God. And after receiving no satisfactory answer from his Physics master about what sort of thing could possibly exist out there at the end of the world, when space had run out, Morse had been compelled to lower his sights a little, thereafter satisfying his intellectual craving for answers by finding the values of “x” and “y” in (ever more complicated) algebraic equations, and by deciphering the meaning of (ever more complicated) chunks of choruses from the Greek tragedies.

Later, from his mid-twenties onward, his need to know had transferred itself to the field of crossword puzzles, where he had so often awaited with almost paranoiac impatience the following day’s answer to any clue he’d been unable to solve the day before. And now, as he sat on Bloxham Drive on that overcast, chilly Sunday afternoon in early March, he was aware that there was an answer to this present puzzle: probably a fairly simple answer to the question of what exactly had taken place earlier that morning. For a sequence of events had taken place, perhaps about 7:30. Someone had knocked on the door; had gained entry; had shot Owens twice; had gone upstairs to try to find something; had left via the kitchen door; had gone away, on foot, on a bike, in a car.

Who?

Who, Morse? For it was someone — someone with a human face and with a human motive. If only he could put together all the clues, he would know. And even as he sat there some pattern would begin to clarify itself in his mind, presenting a logical sequence of events, a causative chain of reactions. But then that same pattern would begin to blur and fade, since there was destined to be no flash of genuine insight on that afternoon.

Furthermore, Morse was beginning to feel increasingly worried about his present failure — like some hitherto highly acclaimed novelist with a score of best-sellers behind him who is suddenly assailed by a nightmarish doubt about his ability to write that one further winner; by a fear that he has come to the end of his creative output, and must face the possibility of defeat.

Lewis came back into the kitchen once more.

Dr. Cornford would be happy to meet Morse whenever it suited. Five o’clock that afternoon? Before Chapel? In his room in Lonsdale?

Morse nodded.

“And I rang the Storrs again, sir. They’re back in Oxford. Seems they had a bit of lunch in Burford on the way. Do you want me to go round?”

Morse looked up in some puzzlement.

“What the hell for, Lewis?”

Chapter forty-four

Morse inquired at the Lodge, then turned left and walked along the side of the quad to the Old Staircase, where on the first floor he saw, above the door to his right, the Gothic-style white lettering on its black background: DR. D. J. CORNFORD.

“I suppose it’s a bit early to offer you a drink, Chief Inspector?”

Morse looked at his wristwatch.

“Is it?”

“Scotch? Gin? Vodka?”

“Scotch, please.”

Cornford began to pour an ever increasingly liberal tot of Glenmorangie into a tumbler.

“Say ‘when’!”

It seemed that the Chief Inspector may have had some difficulty in enunciating the monosyllable, for Cornford paused when the tumbler was half filled with the pale-golden malt.

“When!” said Morse.

“No ice here, I’m afraid. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to adulterate it, anyway.”

“Yes, I would, if you don’t mind. Same amount of water, please. We’ve all got to look after our livers.”

Two doors led off the high-ceilinged, oak-paneled, book-lined room; and Cornford opened the one that led to a small kitchen, coming back with a jug of cold water.

“I would have joined you normally — without the water! — but I’m reading the Second Lesson in Chapel tonight,” it was Cornford’s turn to consult his wristwatch, “so we mustn’t be all that long. It’s that bit from the Epistle to the Romans, Chapter thirteen — the bit about drunkenness. Do you know it?”

“Er, just remind me, sir.”

Clearly Cornford needed no copy of the text in front of him, for he immediately recited the key verse, with appropriately ecclesiastical intonation:

“You’ll be reading from the King James version, then?”

“Absolutely! I’m an agnostic myself; but what a tragedy that so many of our Christian brethren have opted for these new-fangled versions! ‘Boozing and Bonking,’ I should think they translate it.”

Morse sat sipping his Scotch contentedly. He could have suggested “Fux and Sux”; but decided against it.

Cornford smiled. “What do you want to see me about?”

“Well, in a way it’s about that last bit of your text: the ‘strife and envying’ bit. You see, I know you’re standing for the Mastership here...”

“Yes?”

Morse took a deep breath, took a further deepish draught, and then told Cornford of the murder that morning of Geoffrey Owens; told him that various documents from the Owens household pointed to a systematic campaign of blackmail on Owens’ part; informed him that there was reason to believe that he, Cornford, might have been — almost certainly would have been — one of the potential victims.

Cornford nodded quietly. “Are you sure of this?”

“No, not sure at all, sir. But—”

“But you’ve got your job to do.”

“You haven’t received any blackmail letters yourself?”

“No.”

“I’ll be quite blunt, if I may, sir. Is there anything you can think of in the recent past, or distant past, that could have been used to compromise you in some way? Compromise your candidature, say?”

Cornford considered the question. “I’ve done a few things I’m not very proud of — haven’t we all? — but I’m fairly sure I got away with them. That was in another country, anyway...”

Morse finished the quotation for him: “… and, besides, the wench is dead.”

Cornford’s pale gray eyes looked across at Morse with almost childlike innocence.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me about them?”

“No. But only because it would be an embarrassment for me and a waste of time for you.”

“You’re a married man, I understand.”

“Yes. And before someone else tells you, my wife is American, about half my age, and extremely attractive.” The voice was still pleasantly relaxed, yet Morse sensed a tone of quiet, underlying strength.

“She hasn’t been troubled by letters, anonymous letters, anything like that?”

“She hasn’t told me of anything.”

“Would she tell you?”

Did Morse sense a hint of uneasy hesitation in Cornford’s reply?

“She would, I think, yes. But you’d have to ask her.”

Morse nodded. “I know it’s a bit of a bother — but I shall have to do that, I’m afraid. She’s, er, she’s not around?”

Cornford again looked at his wristwatch.

“She’ll be coming over to Chapel very shortly.”

“Has there been much feeling — much tension — between you and the, er, other candidate?”

“The atmosphere on High Table has been a little, let’s say, uncomfortable once or twice, yes. To be expected, though, isn’t it?”

“But you don’t throw insults at each other like those boxers before a big fight?”

“No, we just think them.”

“No whispers? No rumors?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, no.”

“And you get on reasonably well with Mr. Storrs?”

Cornford got to his feet and smiled again, his head slightly to one side.

“I’ve never got to know Julian all that well, really.”

The Chapel bell had begun to ring — a series of monotonous notes, melancholy, ominous almost, like a curfew.

Ten minutes to go.

quoted Cornford.

Morse nodded, as he ventured one final question:

“Do you mind me asking you when you got up this morning, sir?”

“Early. I went out jogging — just before seven.”

“Just you?”

Cornford nodded vaguely.

“You didn’t go out after that — for a paper? In the car, perhaps?”

“I don’t have a car, myself. My wife does, but it’s garaged out on New Road.”

“Quite a way away.”

“Yes,” repeated Cornford slowly, “quite a way away.”

As Morse walked down the stairs, he thought he’d recognized Cornford for exactly what he was: a civilized, courteous, clever man; a man of quiet yet unmistakable resolve, who would probably make a splendid new Master of Lonsdale.

Just two things worried him, the first of them only slightly: If Cornford was going to quote Housman, he jolly well ought to do it accurately.

And he might be wholly wrong about the second…

The bedroom door opened a few moments after Morse had reached the bottom of the creaking wooden staircase.

“And what do you think all that was about?”

“Couldn’t you hear?”

“Most of it,” she admitted.

She wore a high-necked, low-skirted black dress, with an oval amethyst pinned to the bodice — suitably ensembled for a seat next to her husband in the Fellows’ pews.

“His hair is whiter than yours, Denis. I saw him when he walked out.”

The bell still tolled.

Five minutes to go.

Cornford pulled on his gown and threw his hood back over his shoulders with practiced precision; then repeated Housman (again inaccurately) as he put his arms around his wife and looked unblinkingly into her eyes.

“Have you got anything to pray for? Anything that’s worrying you?”

Shelly Cornford smiled sweetly, trusting that such deep dissimulation would mask her growing, now almost desperate, sense of guilt.

“I’m going to pray for you, Denis — for you to become Master of Lonsdale. That’s what I want more than anything else in the world,” her voice very quiet now, “and that’s not for me, my darling — it’s for you.”

“Nothing else to pray for?”

She moved away from him, smoothing the dress over her energetic hips.

“Such as what?”

“Some people pray for forgiveness, that sort of thing, sometimes,” said Denis Cornford softly.

Morse had walked to the Lodge, where he stood in the shadows for a couple of minutes, reading the various notices about the College’s sporting fifteens, and elevens, and eights; and hoping that his presence there was unobserved — when he saw them. An academically accoutred Cornford, accompanied by a woman in black, had emerged from the foot of the Old Staircase, and now turned away from him toward the Chapel in the inner quad.

The bell had stopped ringing.

And Morse walked out into Radcliffe Square; then across into the King’s Arms in Broad Street, where he ordered a pint of bitter, and sat down in the back bar, considering so many things — including a wholly unprecedented sense of gratitude to the Tory Government for its reform of the Sunday licensing laws.

Chapter forty-five

In the Hilary Term, in Lonsdale College, on Sunday evenings only, it had become a tradition for the electric lighting to be switched off, and for candles in their sconces to provide the only means of illumination in the Great Hall. Such a procedure was popular with the students, almost all of whom had never experienced the romance of candlelight except during power cuts, and particularly enjoyable for those on the dais whereon the High Table stood, constantly aware as they were of flickering candles reflected in the polished silver of saltcellars and tureens, and the glitter of the cutlery laid out with geometrical precision at every place.

On such evenings, no particular table plan was provided, although it was the regular custom for the visiting preacher (on this occasion a black bishop from Central Africa) to sit on the right side of the Master, with the College Chaplain on the left. The other occupants of High Table (which was usually fully booked on Sunday evenings) were regularly those who had earlier attended the Chapel service, often with their wives or with a guest; and in recent years, one student invited by each of the Fellows in rotation.

That evening the student in question was Antony Plummer, the new organ scholar, who had been invited by Julian Storrs for the very good reason that the two of them had attended the same school, the Services School, Dartmouth, to which establishment some members of the armed forces were wont to send their sons while they themselves were being shunted from one posting to another around the world — in former colonies, protectorates, mandated territories, and the few remaining overseas possessions.

Plummer had never previously been so honored, and from his new perspective, seated between Mr. and Mrs. Storrs, he looked around him lovingly at the gilded, dimly illuminated portraits of the famous alumni — the poets and the politicians, the soldiers and the scientists — who figured so largely in the lineage of Lonsdale. The rafted timbers of the ceiling were lost in darkness, and the shadows were deep on the somber paneling of the walls, as deftly and deferentially the scouts poured wine into the sparkling glasses.

Storrs, just a little late in the proceedings perhaps, decided it was time to play the expansive host.

“Where is your father now, Plummer?”

“Last I heard he was running some NATO exercise in Belgium.”

“Colonel now, isn’t he?”

“Brigadier.”

“My goodness!”

“You were with him in India, I think.”

Storrs nodded: “Only a captain, though! I followed my father into the Royal Artillery there, and spent a couple of years trying to teach the natives how to shoot. Not much good at it, I’m afraid.”

“Who — the natives?”

Storrs laughed good-naturedly. “No — me. Most of ’em could have taught me a few things, and I wasn’t really cut out for service life anyway. So I opted for a gentler life and applied for a Fellowship here.”

Angela Storrs had finished the bisque soup, and now complimented Plummer on the anthem through which he had conducted his largely female choir during the Chapel service.

“You enjoyed it, Mrs. Storrs?”

“Er, yes. But to be quite truthful, I prefer boy sopranos.”

“Can you say why that is?”

“Oh, yes! One just feels it, that’s all. We heard the Fauré Requiem yesterday evening. Absolutely wonderful — especially the ‘In Paradisum,’ wasn’t it, Julian?”

“Very fine, yes.”

“And you see,” continued Angela, “I would have known they were boys, even with my eyes shut. But don’t ask me why. One just feels that sort of thing, as I said. Don’t you agree? One shouldn’t try to rationalize everything.”

Three places lower down the table, one of the other dons whispered into his neighbor’s ear:

“If that woman gets into the Lodge, I’ll go and piss all over her primroses!”

By coincidence, colonialism was a topic at the far end of the table, too, where Denis Cornford, his wife beside him, was listening rather abstractedly to a visiting History Professor from Yale.

“No. Don’t be too hard on yourselves. The Brits didn’t treat the natives all that badly, really. Wouldn’t you agree, Denis?”

“No, I wouldn’t, I’m afraid,” replied Cornford simply. “I haven’t made any particular study of the subject, but my impression is that the British treated most of their colonials quite abominably.”

Shelly slipped her left hand beneath the starched white tablecloth, and gently moved it along his thigh. But she could feel no perceptible response.

At the head of the splendid oak plank that constituted the High Table at Lonsdale, over the roast lamb, served with St. Julien ’93, Sir Clixby had been seeking to mollify the bishop’s bitter condemnation of the English Examination Boards for expecting Rwandan refugees to study the Wars of the Roses. And soon after the profiteroles, the atmosphere seemed markedly improved.

All the conversation which had been crisscrossing the evening — amusing, interesting, pompous, spiteful — ceased abruptly as the Master banged his gavel, and the assembled company rose to its feet.

Benedictus benedicatur.

The words came easily and suavely, from lips that were slightly overred, slightly overfull, in a face so smooth one might assume that it seldom had need of the razor.

Those who wished, and that was most of them, now repaired to the SCR where coffee and port were being served (though wholly informally) and where the Master and Julian Storrs stood side-by-side, buttocks turned toward the remarkably realistic gas fire.

“Bishop on his way back to the railway station then?” queried Storrs.

“On his way back to Africa, I hope!” said the Master with a grin. “Bloody taxi would have to be late tonight, wouldn’t it? And none of you lot with a car here.”

“It’s this drink-driving business, Master. I’m all in favor of it. In fact, I’d vote for random checks myself.”

“And Denis there — hullo, Denis! — he was no help either.”

Cornford had followed their conversation and now edged toward them, sipping his coffee.

“I sold my old Metro just before Christmas. And if you recall, Master, I only live three hundred yards away.”

The words could have sounded lighthearted, yet somehow they didn’t.

“Shelly’s got a car, though?”

Cornford nodded cautiously. “Parked a mile away.”

The Master smiled. “Ah, yes. I remember now.”

Half an hour later, as they walked across the cobbles of Radcliffe Square toward Holywell Street, Shelly Cornford put her arm through her husband’s and squeezed it. But, as before, she could feel no perceptible response.

Chapter forty-six

“Coffee?” she suggested, as Cornford was hanging up his overcoat in the entrance hall.

“I’ve just had some.”

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

“No! Leave it a while. I want to talk to you.”

They sat together, if opposite is together, in the lounge.

“What did you do when the Chaplain invited us all to confess our manifold sins and wickedness?”

The measured, civilized tone of Cornford’s voice had shifted to a slightly higher, yet strangely quieter key; and the eyes, normally so kindly, seemed to concentrate ever narrowingly upon her, like an ornithologist focusing binoculars on an interesting species.

“Pardon?”

“ ‘In thought, word, and deed’ — wasn’t that the formula?”

She shook her head in apparent puzzlement. “I haven’t the faintest—”

But his words cut sharply across her protestation. “Why are you lying to me?”

“What—?”

“Shut up!” The voice had lost its control. “You’ve been unfaithful to me! I know that. You know that. Let’s start from there!”

“But I haven’t—”

“Don’t lie to me! I’ve put up with your infidelity, but I can’t put up with your lies!”

The last word was hissed, like a whiplash across his wife’s face.

“Only once, really,” she whispered.

“Recently?”

She nodded, in helpless misery.

“Who with?”

In great gouts, the tears were falling now. “Why do you have to know? Why do you have to torture yourself? It didn’t mean anything, Denis! It didn’t mean anything.”

“Hah!” He laughed bitterly. “Didn’t you think it might mean something to me?”

“He just wanted—”

“Who was it?”

She closed her eyes, cheeks curtained with mascara’d tears, unable to answer him.

“Who was it?”

But still she made no answer to the piercing question.

“Shall I tell you?”

He knew — she realized he knew. And now, her eyes still firmly shut, she spoke the name of the adulterer.

“He didn’t come here? You went over to the Master’s Lodge?”

“Yes.”

“And you went to his bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“And you undressed for him?”

“Yes.”

“You stripped naked for him?”

“Yes.”

“And you got between the sheets with him?”

“Yes.”

“And you had sex? The pair of you had sex together?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Only once.”

“And you enjoyed it!”

Cornford got to his feet and walked back into the entrance hall. He felt stunned, like someone who has just been kicked in the teeth by a recalcitrant shire horse.

“Denis!” Shelly had followed him, standing beside him now as he pulled on his overcoat.

“You know why I did it, Denis? I did it for you. You must know that!”

He said nothing.

“How did you know?” Her voice was virtually inaudible.

“It’s not what people say, is it? It’s the way they say it. But I knew. I knew tonight... I knew before tonight.”

“How could you have known? Tell me! Please!”

Cornford turned up the catch on the Yale lock, and for a few moments stood there, the half-opened door admitting a draft of air that felt bitterly cold.

“I didn’t know! Don’t you see? I just hoped you’d deny everything — even if it meant you had to lie to me. But you hadn’t even got the guts to lie to me! You didn’t even want to spare me all this pain.”

The door banged shut behind him; and Shelly Cornford walked back into the lounge where she poured herself a vast gin with minimal tonic.

And wished that she were dead.

Chapter forty-seven

In the King’s Arms, that square, cream-painted hostelry on the corner of Parks Road and Holywell Street, Morse had been remarkably abstemious that evening. After his first pint, he had noticed on the door the pub’s recommendation in the Egon Ronay Guide (1995); and after visiting the loo to inject himself, he had ordered a spinach-and-mushroom lasagne with garlic bread and salad. The individual constituents of this particular offering had never much appealed to him; yet the hospital dietitian (as he recalled) had been particularly enthusiastic about such fare. And, let it be said, the meal had been marginally enjoyed.

It was 7:45 P.M.

A cigarette would have been a paradisal plus; and yet somehow he managed to resist. But as he looked around him, at the college crests, the colored prints, the photographs of distinguished local patrons, he was debating whether to take a few more calories in liquid form when the landlord was suddenly beside him.

“Inspector! I hadn’t seen you come in. This is for you — it’s been here a couple of weeks.”

Morse took the printed card:

Across the bottom was a handwritten note: “Make it, Morse! DC.”

Morse remembered her well... a slim, unmarried blonde who’d once invited him to stay overnight in her north London flat, following a comparatively sober Metropolitan Police party; when he’d said that after such a brief acquaintance such an accommodation might perhaps be inappropriate.

Yes, that was the word he’d used: “inappropriate.”

Pompous idiot!

But he’d given her his address, which she’d vowed she’d never forget.

Which clearly she had.

“She was ever so anxious for you to get it,” began the landlord — but even as he spoke the door that led to Holywell Street had opened, and he turned his attention to the newcomer.

“Denis! I didn’t expect to see you in tonight. No good us both running six miles on a Sunday morning if we’re going to put all the weight back on on a Sunday night.”

Morse looked up, his face puzzled.

“You mean — you went jogging — together — this morning? What time was that?”

“Far too early, wasn’t it, David!”

The landlord smiled. “Stupid, really. On a Sunday morning, too.”

“What time?” repeated Morse.

“Quarter to seven. We met outside the pub here.”

“And where did the pair of you run?”

“Five of us actually, wasn’t it, Denis? We ran up to Plain, up Iffley Road, across Donnington Bridge, along Abingdon Road up to Carfax, then through Cornmarket and St. Giles’ up to Woodstock Road as far as North Parade, then across to Banbury, South Parks, and we got back here...”

“Just before eight,” added Cornford, pointing to Morse’s empty glass.

“What’s it to be?”

“No, it’s my round—”

“Nonsense!”

“Well, if you insist.”

In fact, however, it was the landlord who insisted, and who now walked to the bar as Cornford seated himself.

“You told me earlier,” Morse was anxious to get things straight, “you’d been on your own when you went out jogging.”

“No. If I did, you misunderstood me. You said, I think, ‘Just you?’ And when I said yes, I’d assumed that you were asking if both of us had gone — Shelly and me.”

“And she didn’t go?”

“No. She never does.”

“She just stayed in bed?”

“Where else?”

Morse made no suggestion.

“Do you ever go jogging, Inspector?” The question was wearily mechanical.

“Me? No. I walk a bit, though. I sometimes walk down to Summertown for a newspaper. Just to keep fit.”

Cornford almost grinned. “If you’re going to be Master of Lonsdale, you’re supposed to be fit. It’s in the Statutes somewhere.”

“Makes you wonder how Sir Clixby ever managed it!”

Cornford’s answer was unexpected.

“You know, as you get older it’s difficult for young people to imagine you were ever young yourself — good at games, that sort of thing. Don’t you agree?”

“Fair point, yes.”

“And the Master was a very fine hockey player — had an England trial, I understand.”

The landlord came back with two pints of bitter; then returned to his bartending duties.

Cornford was uneasy, Morse felt sure of that. Something regarding his wife, perhaps? Had she had anything to do with the murder of Geoffrey Owens? Unlikely, surely. One thing looked an odds-on certainty, though: If Denis Cornford had ever figured on the suspect list, he figured there no longer.

Very soon, after a few desultory passages of conversation, Morse had finished his beer, and was taking his leave, putting Deborah’s card into the inside pocket of his jacket, and forgetting it.

Forgetting it only temporarily, though; for later that same evening he was to look at it again — more carefully. And with a sudden, strange enlightenment.

Chapter forty-eight

Feeling a wonderful sense of relief, Shelly Cornford heard the scratch of the key in the front door at twenty-five past eleven. For over two hours she had been sitting upright against the pillows, a white bed jacket over her pajamas, her mind tormented with the terrifying fear that her husband had disappeared into the dark night, never to return: to throw himself over Magdalen Bridge, perhaps; to lay himself across the railway lines; to slash his wrists; to leap from some high tower. And it was to little avail that she’d listened to any logic that her tortured mind could muster: that the water was hardly deep enough, perhaps; that the railway lines were inaccessible; that he had no razor in his pocket; that Carfax Tower, St. Mary’s, St. Michael’s — all were now long shut...

Come back to me, Denis! I don’t care what happens to me; but come back tonight! Oh, God — please, God — let him come back safely. Oh, God, put an end to this, my overwhelming misery!

His words before he’d slammed the door had pierced their way into her heart. “You hadn’t even got the guts to lie to me... You didn’t even want to spare me all this pain.”

Yet how wrong he’d been, with both his accusations!

Her mother had never ceased recalling that Junior High School report: “She’s such a gutsy little girl.” And the simple, desperately simple, truth was that she loved her husband far more than anything or anyone she’d ever loved before. And yet... and yet she remembered so painfully clearly her assertion earlier that same evening: that more than anything in the world she wanted Denis to be Master.

And now? The center of her life had fallen apart. Her heart was broken. There was no one to whom she could turn.

Except, perhaps...

And again and again she recalled that terrible conversation:

“Clixby?”

“Shelly!”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. What a lovely surprise. Come over!”

“Denis knows all about us!”

“What?”

“Denis knows all about us!”

“ ‘All’ about us? What d’ you mean? There’s nothing for him to know — not really.”

“Nothing? Was it nothing to you?”

“You sound like the book of Proverbs — or is it Ecclesiastes?”

“It didn’t mean anything to you, did it?”

“It was only the once, properly, my dear. For heaven’s sake!”

“You just don’t understand, do you?”

“How did he find out?”

“He didn’t.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“He just guessed. He was talking to you tonight—”

“After Hall, you mean? Of course he was. You were there.”

“Did you say anything? Please, tell me!”

“What? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Why did he say he knew, then?”

“He was just guessing — you just said so yourself.”

“He must have had some reason.”

“Didn’t you deny it?”

“But it was true!”

“What the hell’s that got to do with it? Don’t you see? All you’d got to do was to deny it.”

“That’s exactly what Denis said.”

“Bloody intelligent man, Denis. I just hope you appreciate him. He was right, wasn’t he? All you’d got to do was to deny it.”

“And that’s what you wanted me to do?”

“You’re not really being very intelligent, are you?”

“I just can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“It would have been far kinder.”

“Kinder to you, you mean?”

“To me, to you, to Denis — to everybody.”

“God! You’re a shit, aren’t you?”

“Just hold your horses, girl!”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“What do you mean — ‘do’ about it? What d’you expect me to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no one to talk to. That’s why I rang you.”

“Well, if there’s anything—”

“But there is! I want help. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“But don’t you see, Shelly? This is something you and Denis have got to work out for yourselves. Nobody else—”

“God! You are a shit, aren’t you! Shit with a capital ‘S.’ ”

“Look! Is Denis there?”

“Of course he’s not, you fool.”

“Please don’t call me a fool, Shelly! Get a hold on yourself and put things in perspective — and just remember who you’re talking to!”

“Denis!”

“You get back to bed. I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

“No. I’ll sleep in there—”

“I don’t give a sod who sleeps where. We’re just not sleeping in the same room, that’s all.”

His eyes were still full of anger and anguish, though his voice was curiously calm. “We’ve got to talk about this. For a start, you’d better find out the rights and wrongs and the rest of it about people involved in divorce on the grounds of adultery. Not tonight, though.”

“Denis! Please let’s talk now — please! — just for a little while.”

“What the hell about? About me? You know all about me, for Christ’s sake. I’m half-pissed — and soon I’m going to be fully pissed — and as well as that I’m stupid — and hurt — and jealous — and possessive — and old-fashioned — and faithful... You following me? I’ve watched most of your antics, but I’ve never been too worried. You know why? Because I knew you loved me. Deep down I knew there was a bedrock of love underneath our marriage. Or I thought I knew.”

In silence, in abject despair, Shelly Cornford listened, and the tears ran in furrows down her cheeks.

“We’re finished. The two of us are finished, Shelly — do you know, I can hardly bring myself to call you by your name? Our marriage is over and done with — make no mistake about that. You can feel free to do what you want now. I just don’t care. You’re a born flirt! You’re a born prick-teaser! And I just can’t live with you any longer. I just can’t live with the picture of you lying there naked and opening your legs to another man. Can you try to get that into your thick skull?”

She shook her head in utter anguish.

“You said,” Cornford continued, “you’d have given anything in life to see me become Master. Well, I wouldn’t — do you understand that? But I’d have given anything in life for you to be faithful to me — whatever the prize.”

He turned away from her, and she heard the door of the spare bedroom close; then open again.

“When was it? Tell me that. When?”

“This morning.”

“You mean when I was out jogging?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He turned away once more; and she beheld and could see no sorrow like unto her own sorrow.

The keys to her car lay on the mantelpiece.

Chapter forty-nine Monday, March 4

Never, in his lifetime of muted laughter and occasional tears, had Morse spent such a horrifying night. Amid fitful bouts of semislumber — head weighted with pain, ears throbbing, stomach in spasms, gullet afire with bile and acidity — he’d imagined himself on the verge of fainting, of vomiting, of having a stroke, of entering cardiac arrest. One of Ovid’s lovers had once besought the Horses of the Night to slacken their pace and delay thereby the onset of the Dawn. But as he lay turning in his bed, Morse longed for a sign of the brightening sky through his window. During that seemingly unending night, he had consumed several glasses of cold water, Alka-Seltzer tablets, cups of black coffee, and the equivalent of a weekly dosage of Nurofen Plus.

No alcohol, though. Not one drop of alcohol.

At last Morse had decided to abandon alcohol.

Lewis looked into Morse’s bedroom at 7:30 A.M. (Lewis was the only person who had a key to Morse’s flat.)

In the prestigious area of North Oxford, most householders had long since fitted their homes with antiburglar devices, with neighbors holding the keys to the alarm mechanism. But Morse had little need of such a device, for the only salable, stealable items in his flat were the CDs of all the operas of the man he regarded as a towering genius, Richard Wagner; and his earnestly assembled collection of first editions of the greatest hero in his life, the pessimistic poet A. E. Housman, who, like Morse, had left St. John’s College, Oxford, without obtaining a degree.

But not even North Oxford burglars had tastes that were quite so esoteric.

And in any case, Morse seldom spoke to either of his immediate neighbors.

“You look awful, sir.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lewis! Don’t you know if somebody says you look awful, you feel awful?”

“Didn’t you feel awful before I said it?”

Morse nodded a miserable agreement.

“Shall I get you a bit of breakfast?”

“No.”

“Well, I reckon we can eliminate the Storrs — both of ’em. I’ve checked with the hotel as far as possible. And unless they hired a helicopter...”

“We can cross off the Cornfords, too — him, anyway. He’s got four witnesses to testify he was running around Oxford pretending to be Roger Bannister.”

“What about her?”

“I can’t really see why... or how.”

“Owens could have been blackmailing her?”

Morse fingered his stubbled chin. “I don’t think so somehow. But there’s something there... something Cornford didn’t want to tell me about.”

“What d’ you think?”

But Morse appeared unable to answer, as he swung his legs out of bed and sat for a while, alternately turning his torso to left and right.

“Just easing the lumbago, Lewis. Don’t you ever get it?”

“No.”

“Just nip and get me a glass of orange juice from the fridge. The unsweetened orange juice.”

As he walked into the kitchen, Lewis heard the post slither through the letter-box.

So did Morse.

“Lewis! Did you find out what time the postman usually calls on Polstead Road?”

“I’ve already told you. You were right.”

“About the only bloody thing I have been right about.”

“Arrghh! Cheer up, sir!”

“Just turn out those pockets, will you?” Morse pointed to the suit and shirt thrown carelessly over the only chair in the bedroom. “Time I had a change of clothes — maybe bring me a change of luck.”

“Who’s your new girlfriend?” Lewis held up the invitation card. “ ‘Make it, Morse! DC.’ ”

“That card is wholly private and—”

But Morse got no further.

He felt the old familiar tingling across the shoulders, the hairs on his lower arms standing up, as if a conductor had invited his orchestra to arise after a concert.

“Christ!” whispered Morse irreverently. “Do you know what, Lewis? I think you’ve done it again!”

Chapter fifty Monday-Tuesday, March 4-5

For the relatives, for the statement takers and the form fillers, for the boffins at ballistics and forensics, the murder of Geoffrey Owens would be a serious business. No less than for the detectives. Yet for Morse himself the remainder of that Monday had been unproductive and anticlimactic, with a morning of euphoria followed by an afternoon of blood trouble.

Hospital instructions had been for him to take four daily readings of his blood sugar level, using a slim, penlike appliance into which he inserted a test strip duly smeared with a drop of his blood, with each result appearing, after only thirty seconds, in a small window on the side of the pen. While the average blood sugar level of the healthy person is about 4.5, the pen is calibrated from 1 to 25, since the levels of diabetic patients often vary very considerably. Any level higher than 25 is registered as “HI.”

Now thus far readings had been roughly what Morse had been led to expect (the highest 15.5): It would take some little while — and then only if he promised to do as he was told — to achieve that “balance,” which is the aim of every diabetic. More than disappointing to him therefore had been the “HI” registered at lunchtime that day. In fact, more of a surprise than a disappointment, since momentarily he was misled into believing that “HI” was analogous to the greeting from a fruit machine: “Hello And Welcome!”

But it wasn’t; and Morse was rather worried about himself; and returned to his flat, where he took two further Nurofen Plus for his persisting headache, sat back in his armchair, decided he lacked the energy to do The Times crossword or even to turn on the CD player — and fairly soon fell fast asleep.

At six o’clock he rang Lewis to say he would be doing nothing more that day. Just before seven o’clock he measured his blood sugar once again; and finding it somewhat dramatically reduced, to 14.3, had decided to celebrate with a small glass of Glenfiddich before he listened to The Archers.

The following morning, feeling much refreshed, feeling eager to get on with things, Morse had been at his desk in Police HQ for half an hour before Lewis entered, holding a report.

“Ballistics, sir. Came in last night.”

Morse could no more follow the technical terminology of ballistics reports than he could understand a paragraph of Structural Linguistics or recall the configuration of the most recent map of Bosnia. To be sure he had a few vague notions about “barrels” and “grooves” and “cylinders” and “calibers”; but his knowledge went no further, and his interest not quite so far as that. Cursorily glancing therefore through the complex data assembled in the first five pages, he acquainted himself with the short, simply written summary on page six:

Morse sat back in the black-leather armchair and looked mildly satisfied with life.

“Ye-es. I think I’m beginning to wake up at last in this case, Lewis. You know, it’s high time we got together, you and me. We’ve been doing our own little things so far, haven’t we? You’ve gone off to see somebody — I’ve gone off to see somebody — and we’ve not got very far, have we? It’s the same as always, Lewis. We need to do things together from now on.”

“No time like the present.”

“Pardon?”

Lewis pointed to the ballistics report. “What do you think?”

“Very interesting. Same revolver.”

“Pistol, sir.”

“Same difference.”

“I think most of us had assumed it was the same, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s what most of the lads think.”

Morse’s smile was irritatingly benign. “Same revolver — same murderer. Is that what, er, most of the lads think as well?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you?”

Lewis considered the question. It either was — or it wasn’t. Fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, Lewis. Go for it!

“Yes!”

“Fair enough. Now let’s consider a few possibilities. Rachel was shot through the kitchen window when she was standing at the sink. The blind was old and made of thinnish material and the silhouette was pretty clear, perhaps; but the murderer was taking a risk. Revolvers,” Lewis had given up, “are notoriously inaccurate even at close range, and the bullet’s got to penetrate a reasonably substantial pane of glass — enough perhaps to knock the aim off course a bit and hit her in the neck instead of the head. Agreed?”

Lewis nodded at what he saw as an analysis not particularly profound. And Morse continued:

“Now the shooting of Owens took place inside the house — from a bit further away; but no glass this time, and a very clear target to aim at. And Owens is shot in the chest, not in the head. A modus operandi quite different from the first.”

Lewis smiled. “So we’ve got two moduses operandi.”

“Modi, Lewis! So it could be that we’ve two murderers. But that would seem on the face of it highly improbable, because it’s not difficult to guess the reason for the difference... Is it?”

“Well, as I see things, sir, Owens was probably murdered by somebody he knew. He probably invited whoever it was in. Perhaps they’d arranged to meet anyway. Owens was dressed and—” Lewis stopped a moment. “He hadn’t shaved though, had he?”

“He was the sort of fellow who always looked as if he needed a shave.”

“Perhaps we should have checked more closely.”

“You don’t expect me to check that sort of thing, do you? I’m a necrophobe — you’ve known me long enough, surely.”

“Well, that’s it then, really. But Rachel probably didn’t know him.”

“Or her.”

“She must have been really scared if she heard a tap on the window that morning and went to open the blind—”

“You’re still assuming that both murders were committed by the same person, Lewis.”

“And you don’t think so?”

Morse shrugged. “Could have been two lovers or partners or husband and wife — or two completely separate people.”

Lewis was beginning to sound somewhat exasperated. “You know, I shall be much happier when we’ve got a bit more of the routine work done, sir. It’s all been a bit ad hoc so far, hasn’t it?” (Morse raised his eyebrows at the Latinism.) “Can’t we leave a few of the ideas until we’ve given ourselves a chance to check everything a bit?”

“Lewis! You are preaching to the converted. That’s exactly what we’ve got to do. Go back to the beginning. ‘In our beginning is our end,’ somebody said — Eliot, wasn’t it? Or is it ‘In our end is our beginning’?”

“Where do you suggest we begin then, sir?”

Morse considered the question.

“What about you fetching me a cup of coffee? No sugar.”

Chapter fifty-one Tuesday, March 5

“Where do you suggest we begin then?” repeated Lewis, as Morse distastefully sipped his unsweetened coffee.

“When we do start again, we’ll probably find that we’ve been looking at things from the wrong angle. We’ve been assuming — I have, anyway — that it was Owens who was pulling all the strings. As a journalist, he’d often been in a privileged position with regard to a few juicy stories; and as a man he pretty clearly gloried in the hold he could have on other people: blackmail. And from what we learned, I thought it was likely that the two candidates for the Mastership at Lonsdale were being blackmailed; I thought that they’d have as good a motive, certainly Storrs, as anybody for wishing Owens out of the way. But I never dreamed that Owens was in danger of being murdered, as you know…

“There’s just the one trouble about following up that particular hypothesis though, isn’t there? It’s now clear that neither of those two, neither Storrs nor Cornford — nor their wives for that matter — could have been responsible for both murders. And increasingly unlikely, perhaps, that any of them could have been responsible even for one of the murders. So where does this all leave us? It’s a bit like a crossword clue you sometimes get stuck with. You think one bit of the clue’s the definition, and the other bit’s a buildup of the letters. Then suddenly you realize you’ve got things the wrong way round. And perhaps I’m reading the clue the wrong way round here, Lewis. What if someone was blackmailing Owens — the exact opposite of our hypothesis? What if — we’ve spoken about it before — what if Rachel James came to discover something that would upset his carefully loaded applecart? And blackmailed him?”

“Trying to climb aboard the gravy train herself?”

“Exactly. Money! You said right at the start that we needed a motive for Rachel’s murder; and I suspect she’d somehow got to know about his own blackmailing activities and was threatening to expose him.”

Lewis was looking decidedly impatient.

“Sir! Could we please get along to Owens’ office first, and get a few simple facts established?”

“Just what I was about to suggest. We shall have to get down there and find out everything we can about him. See the editor, the subeditor, his colleagues, that personnel fellow — especially him! Go through his desk and his drawers. Get hold of his original application, if we can. Try to learn something about his men friends, his girlfriends, his enemies, his habits, what he liked to eat and drink, his salary, any clubs he belonged to, his political leanings—”

“We know he voted Conservative, sir.”

“—the newspaper he took, where he usually parked his car, what his job prospects were — yes, plenty to be going on with there.”

“Quite a list. Good job there’s two of us, sir.”

“Pardon?”

“Hefty agenda — that’s all I’m saying.”

“Not all that much really. Far easier than it sounds. And if you get off straightaway...” Morse looked at his wristwatch: 10:45 A.M.

Lewis frowned. “You mean you’re not joining me?”

“Not today, no.”

“But you just said—”

“One or two important things I’ve got to do after lunch.”

“Such as?”

“Well, to be truthful, I’ve been told to take things a bit more gently. And I suppose I’d better take a bit of notice of my medical advisers.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t get me wrong, mind! I’m feeling fine. But I think a little siesta this afternoon...”

“Siesta? That’s what they have in Spain in the middle of the summer when the temperature’s up in the nineties — but we’re in England in the middle of winter and it’s freezing outside.”

Morse looked down at his desk, a little sheepishly, and Lewis knew that he was lying.

“Come on, sir! It’s something to do with that invite you had, isn’t it? Deborah Crawford?”

“In a way.”

“Why are you being so secretive about it? You wouldn’t tell me yesterday either.”

“Only because it needs a bit more thinking about, that’s all.”

“ ‘You and me together’ — isn’t that what you said?”

Morse fingered the still-cellophaned cigarettes, almost desperately.

“Si’ down then, Lewis.”

Chapter fifty-two

“It wasn’t Deborah Crawford, Lewis — it was her initials, ‘DC.’ When we found that list in the manila file, I jumped the gun. I automatically assumed that ‘JS’ was Julian Storrs — I think I was right about that — and I assumed that ‘DC’ was Denis Cornford — and I think I was wrong about that. As things have turned out I don’t believe Owens ever knew Cornford at all, or his missus, for that matter. But he knew another ‘DC’: the woman at Number 1 Bloxham Close — Adèle Beatrice Cecil — the ABC lass Owens knew well enough to call by her nickname, ‘Della.’ ‘DC.’ And the more I think about her, the more attractive a proposition I find it.”

“Well, most men would, sir. Lovely looker!”

Ignoring the pleasantry, Morse continued: “Just consider for a minute what an important figure she is in the case. She’s the prime witness, really. She’s the one who sees Owens leave for work about sevenish on the morning Rachel was murdered; she’s the one who rings Owens an hour or so later to tell him the police are on Bloxham Close” (again Lewis let it go) “and gives him a headstart on all the other newshounds. That’s what she says, isn’t it? But she might not be telling the truth!”

Lewis sat in silence.

“Now, as I recall it, your objection to Owens himself ever being a suspect was the time factor. You argued that he couldn’t have gone to work that morning, parked his car, been seen in the newspaper offices, got in his car again, driven back to Kidlington, murdered Rachel, driven back to Osney Mead again, taken the phone call from Della Cecil, driven back to Kidlington again, to be on hand with his mobile and his notebook while the rest of the press are pulling their socks on. He could never have done all that in such a short space of time, you said. Impossible! And of course you were right—”

“Thank you, sir.”

“—in one way; and quite wrong in another. Let’s stick to our original idea that the list of initials we found was a blackmail list, and that she’s on it — Della Cecil. He’s got something on her, too. So when he asks her to help him in his plan to get Rachel out of the way, she’s little option but to cooperate.”

“Have you any idea what this ‘Plan’ was, sir?”

“That’s the trouble. I’ve got far too many ideas.”

“Want to try me?”

“All right. They’re all the same sort of plan, really — any plan to cut down that time business you’re so worried about. Let me just outline a possible plan, and see what you think of it. Ready? Owens drives out to work, at ten to seven, let’s say — and she follows him, in her own car. When he’s parked the car, when his entry’s recorded, he goes into the building, makes sure he’s seen by somebody — doesn’t matter who it is — then immediately leaves via a side door and gets into her car, parked along the street in front of the offices. Back in Kidlington, he murders Rachel James, about half past seven, and doesn’t return to work at all. He’s got a key and he goes into Della’s house — and waits. At the appropriate time, when the police arrive, a call is made to his own office — he knows there’ll be no one there! — and a message is left or isn’t left on the answer phone. All that matters is that a telephonic communication is established, and gets recorded on those BT lists we all get, between her phone and Owens’ phone in his office. Then all he’s got to do is to emerge amid all the excitement once the murder’s reported — the police, the local people, the Press, the TV... Well?”

“You make it up as you go along, sir.”

Morse’s face betrayed some irritation. “Of course I bloody do! That’s what I’m here for. I just told you. If once we accept there could be two people involved — two cars — there are dozens of possibilities. It’s like permutating your selection on the National Lottery. I’ve just given you one possibility, that’s all.”

“But it just couldn’t—”

“What’s wrong with it? Come on! Tell me!”

“Well, let’s start with the car—”

“Cars, plural.”

“All right. When he’s parked his car—”

“I didn’t say that. I deliberately said parked the car, if you’d been listening. It could have been his — it could have been hers: It’s the card number that’s recorded there, not the car number. She could have driven his car — he could have driven hers — and at any point they could have swapped. Not much risk. Very few people around there at seven. Or eight, for that matter.”

“Is it my turn now?” asked Lewis quietly.

“Go on!”

“I’m talking about Owens’ car, all right? That was parked on Bloxham Drive — ‘Drive’ please, sir — when Owens was there that morning. The street was cordoned off, but the lads let him in — because he told them he lived there. And I saw the car myself.”

“So? He could have left it — or she could have left it — on a nearby street. Anywhere. Up on the main road behind the terrace, say. That’s where JJ—”

But Morse broke off.

“It still couldn’t have happened like you say, sir!”

“No?”

“No! He was seen in his office, Owens was, remember? Just at the time when Rachel was being murdered! Seen by the Personnel Manager there.”

“We haven’t got a statement from him yet, though.”

“He’s been away, you know that.”

“Yes, I do know that, Lewis. But you spoke to him.”

Lewis nodded.

“On the phone?”

“On the phone.”

“You did it through the operator, I suppose?”

Lewis nodded again.

“Do you know who she probably put you through to?” asked Morse slowly.

The light dawned in Lewis’s eyes. “You mean... she could have put me through to Owens himself?”

Morse shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what we’ve got to find out, isn’t it? Owens was deputy Personnel Manager, we know that. He was on a management course only last weekend.”

“Do you really think that’s what happened?”

“I dunno. I know one thing, though: It could have happened that way.”

“But it’s all so — so airy-fairy, isn’t it? And you said we were going to get some facts straight first.”

“Exactly.”

Lewis gave up the struggle. “I’ll tell you something that would be useful: some idea where the gun is.”

“The ‘pistol,’ do you mean?”

“Sorry. But if only we knew where that was...”

“Oh, I think I know where we’re likely to find the pistol, Lewis.”