Death Is Now My Neighbor

Chapter fifty-three Wednesday, March 6

Miss Adèle Cecil (she much preferred “Miss” to “Ms.” and “Adèle” to “Della”) had spent the previous evening and night in London, where she had attended, and addressed, a meeting of the chairmen, chairwomen, and chairpersons of the Essex Young Conservative Association. Thirty-eight such personages had assembled at Durrants, in George Street, a traditional English hotel just behind Oxford Street, with good facilities, tasteful cuisine, and comfortable beds. Proceedings had been businesslike, and the majority of delegates (it appeared) had ended up in the rooms originally allocated to them.

It was at a comparatively early breakfast in the restaurant that over her fresh grapefruit, with Full English to follow, the headwaiter had informed Adèle of the telephone message, which she had taken in one of the hooded booths just outside the breakfast room.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Don’t you remember me? I’m a detective.”

Yes, she remembered him — the white-haired, supercilious, sarcastic police officer she didn’t want to meet again.

“I shan’t be back in Oxford till lunchtime.”

“The Trout? Half past twelve?”

As she started on her eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and sausages, “she accepted the good-natured twitting of her three breakfast companions, all male:

“Boyfriend?”

“Couldn’t he wait?”

“What’s he got...?”

During her comparatively young life, Adèle had been companionably attached to a couple of dozen or so men, of varying ages, with many of whom she had slept — though seldom more than once or twice, and never without some satisfactory reassurance about the availability and reliability of condoms, and a relatively recent checkup for AIDS.

They were all the same, men. Well, most of them. Fingers fumbling for hooks at the backs of bras, or at the front these days. So why was she looking forward just a little to her lunchtime rendezvous? She wasn’t really, she told herself, as she parked the Rover, crossed the narrow road just below the bridge, and entered the bar.

“What’ll you have?”

“Orange juice and lemonade, please.”

They sat facing each other at a low wooden table, and Morse was immediately (and again) aware of her attractiveness. She wore a slimly tailored dark-gray outfit, with a high-necked Oxford blue blouse, her ash-blonde hair palely gleaming.

Morse looked down at his replenished pint of London Pride.

“Good time at the Conference?”

“I had a lovely time,” she lied.

“I’m glad it went well,” he lied.

“Do you mind?” She waved an unlit cigarette in the air.

“Go ahead, please.”

She offered the packet across.

“Er, not for the minute, thank you.”

“Well?”

“Just one or two questions.”

She smiled attractively: “Go ahead.”

Morse experienced a sense of paramnesia. Déjà vu. “You’ve already signed a statement — about the morning Rachel was murdered?”

“You know that, surely?”

“And it was the truth?” asked Morse, starkly. “You couldn’t have been wrong?”

“Of course not!”

“You told me you ‘had a heart-to-heart’ with Rachel once in a while. I think those were your words?”

“So?”

“Does that mean you spoke about boyfriends — men friends?”

“And clothes, and money, and work—”

“Did you know she was having an affair with Julian Storrs?”

She nodded slowly.

“Did you mention this to Mr. Owens?” Morse’s eyes, blue and unblinking, looked fiercely into hers.

And her eyes were suddenly fierce, too, as they held his.

“What the hell do you think I’d do that for?”

Morse made no direct answer as he looked down at the old flagstones there. And when he resumed, his voice was very quiet.

“Did you ever have an affair with Julian Storrs?”

She thought he looked sad, as if he hadn’t really wanted to ask the question at all; and suddenly she knew why she’d been looking forward to seeing him. So many hours of her life had she spent seeking to discover what lay beneath the physical looks, the sexual prowess, the masculine charms of some of her lovers; and so often had she discovered the selfsame answer — virtually nothing.

She looked long into the blazing log fire before finally answering:

“I spent one night with him — in Blackpool — at one of the Party Conferences.”

She spoke so softly that Morse could hardly hear the words, or perhaps it was he didn’t wish to hear the words. For a while he said nothing. Then he resumed his questioning:

“You told me that when you were at Roedean there were quite a few daughters of service personnel there, apart from yourself?”

“Quite a few, yes.”

“Your own father served in the Army in India?”

“How did you know that?”

“He’s in Who’s Who. Or he was. He died two years ago. Your mother died of cancer twelve years ago. You were the only child of the marriage.”

“Orphan Annie, yeah!” The sophisticated, upper-crust veneer was beginning to crack.

“You inherited his estate?”

“Estate? Hah!” She laughed bitterly. “He left all his money to the bookmakers.”

“No heirlooms, no mementos — that sort of thing?”

She appeared puzzled. “What sort of thing?”

“A pistol, possibly? A service pistol?”

“Look! You don’t seriously think I had anything to do with—”

“My job’s to ask the questions—”

“Well, the answer’s ‘no,’ ” she snapped. “Any more questions?”

One or two clearly:

“Where were you on Sunday morning — last Sunday morning?”

“At home. In bed. Asleep — until the police woke me up.”

“And then?”

“Then I was frightened. And you want me to tell you the truth? Well, I’m still bloody frightened!”

Morse looked at her again: so attractive; so vulnerable; and now just a little nervous, perhaps? Not frightened though, surely.

Was she hiding something?

“Is there anything more,” he asked gently “anything at all, you can tell me about this terrible business?”

And immediately he sensed that she could.

“Only one thing, and perhaps it’s got nothing... Julian asked me to a Guest Night at Lonsdale last November, and in the SCR after dinner I sat next to a Fellow there called Denis Cornford. I only met him that once — but he was really nice — lovely man, really — the sort of man I wish I’d met in life.”

“Bit old, surely?”

“About your age.”

Morse’s fingers folded round the cellophane, and he sought to stop his voice from trembling.

“What about him?”

“I saw him on the Drive, that’s all. On Thursday night. About eight. He didn’t see me. I’d just driven in and he was walking in front of me — no car. He kept walking along a bit, and then he turned into Number 15 and rang the bell. Geoff Owens opened the front door — and let him in.”

“You’re quite sure it was him?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Adèle.

Chapter fifty-four

With suspiciously extravagant caution Morse drove the Jaguar up toward Kidlington HQ, again conscious of seeing the nameplate of that particular railway station flashing, still unrecognizably, across his mind. At the Woodstock Road roundabout he waited patiently for a gap in the Ring Road traffic; rather too patiently for a regularly hooting hooligan somewhere behind him.

Whether he believed what his ABC girl had told him, he wasn’t really sure. And suddenly he realized he’d forgotten to ask her whether indeed it was she who occasionally extended her literary talents beyond her humdrum political pamphlets into the fields of (doubtless more profitable) pornography.

But it was only for a few brief minutes that Morse considered the official confiscation of the titillatingly titled novel, since his car phone had been ringing as he finally crossed onto Five Mile Drive. He pulled over to the side of the road, since seldom had he been able to discharge two simultaneous duties at all satisfactorily.

It was Lewis on the line — an excited Lewis.

Calling from the newspaper offices.

“I just spoke to the Personnel Manager, sir. It was him!”

“Lew-is! Your pronouns! What exactly was who?”

“It wasn’t Owens I spoke to on the phone. It was the Personnel Manager himself!”

Morse replied only after a pause, affecting a tone of appropriate humility: “I wonder why I don’t take more notice of you in the first place.”

“You don’t sound all that surprised?”

“Little in life surprises me any longer. The big thing is that we’re getting things straight at last. Well done!”

“So your girl wasn’t involved.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did she tell you anything important?”

“I’m not sure. We know Owens had got something on Storrs, and perhaps... it might be he had something on Cornford as well.”

“Cornford? How does he come into things?”

“She tells me, our Tory lass, that she saw him going into Owens’ house last Thursday.”

“Phew!”

“I’m just going back to HQ, and then I’ll be off to see our friends the Cornfords — both of ’em — if I can park.”

“Last time you parked on the pavement in front of the Clarendon Building.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you, Lewis. I’d almost forgotten that.”

“Not forgotten your injection, I hope?”

“Oh no. That’s now become an automatic part of my lifestyle,” said Morse, who had forgotten all about his lunch-time jab.

The phone was ringing when Morse opened the door of his office.

“Saw you coming in,” explained Strange.

“Yes, sir?”

“It’s all these forms I’ve got to fill in — retirement forms. They give me a headache.”

“They give me a headache.”

“At least you know how to fill ’em in.”

“Can we leave it just a little while, sir? I don’t seem able to cope with two things at once these days, and I’ve got to get down to Oxford.”

“Let it wait! Just don’t forget you’ll be filling in the same forms pretty soon.”

Bloxham Drive was still cordoned off, the police presence still pervasively evident. But Adèle Beatrice Cecil — alias Ann Berkeley Cox, author of Topless in Torremolinos — was waved through by a sentinel PC, just as Geoffrey Owens had been waved through over a fortnight earlier, on the morning that Rachel James had been murdered.

As she let herself into Number 1, she was immediately aware that the house was (literally) almost freezing. Why hadn’t she left the heating on? How good to have been able to jump straight into a hot bath; or into an electric-blanketed bed; or into a lover’s arms...

For several minutes she thought of Morse, and of what he had asked her. What on earth had he suspected? And suddenly, alone again now, in her cold house, she found herself shivering.

Chapter fifty-five

Just after 4 P.M. that same day, Morse rang the bell beside the red-painted front door of an elegant, ashlared house just across from the Holywell Music Room. It was the right house, he knew that, with the Lonsdale Crest fixed halfway between the neatly paned windows of the middle and upper stories.

There was no answer.

There were no answers.

Morse retraced his steps up to Broad Street and crossed the cobbles of Radcliffe Square to the Porters’ Lodge at Lonsdale.

“Do you know if Dr. Cornford’s in College?”

The duty porter rang a number; then shook his head.

“Doesn’t seem to be in his rooms, sir.”

“Has he been in today?”

“He was in this morning. Called for his mail — what, ten? Quarter past?”

“You’ve no idea where he is?”

The porter shook his head. “Doesn’t come in much of a Wednesday, Dr. Cornford. Usually has his Faculty Meeting Wednesdays.”

“Can you try him for me there? It’s important.”

The porter rang a second number; spoke for a while; put down the phone.

“They’ve not seen him today, sir. Seems he didn’t turn up for the two o’clock meeting.”

“Have you got his home number?”

“He’s ex-directory, sir. I can’t—”

“So am I ex-directory. You know who I am, don’t you?”

The young porter looked as hopefully as he could into Morse’s face.

“No, sir.”

“Forget it!” snapped Morse.

He walked back up to Holywell Street, along to the red door, and rang the bell.

There was no answer.

There were no answers.

An overlipsticked middle-aged traffic warden stood beside the Jaguar.

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

“Yes, madam. I’m just waiting for the Chief Constable. He’s,” Morse pointed vaguely toward the Sheldonian, “nearly finished in there. At any rate, I hope he bloody has! And if he hasn’t, put the bill to ’im, love — not to me!”

“Sorry!”

Morse wandered across to the green-shuttered Blackwell’s, and browsed awhile; finally purchasing the first volume of Sir Steven Runciman’s History of the Crusades.

He wasn’t quite sure why.

Then, for the third time, he walked up to the red door in Holywell Street and rang the bell.

Morse heard the news back in HQ.

From Lewis.

A body had been found in a car, on a narrow lane off New Road, in a garage rented under the name of Dr. Cornford.

For a while Morse sat silent.

“I only met him the once you know, Lewis. Well, the twice, really. He was a good man, I think. I liked him.”

“It isn’t Dr. Cornford though, sir. It’s his wife.”

Chapter fifty-six Thursday, March 7

“Tell me about it,” said Morse.

Seated opposite him, in the first-floor office in St. Aldates Police Station, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Warner told the story sadly and economically.

Mrs. Shelly Cornford had been found in the driving seat of her own car, reclining back, with a hosepipe through the window. The garage had been bolted on the inside. There could be little doubt that the immediate cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes. A brief handwritten note had been left on the passenger seat: “I’m so sorry, Denis, I can’t forgive myself for what I did. I never loved anyone else but you, my darling — S.” No marks of violence; 97 mg blood alcohol — the equivalent (Warner suggested) of two or three stiffish gins. Still a few unanswered questions, of course: about her previous whereabouts that day; about the purchase of the green hosepipe and the connector, both new. But suspicion of foul play? None.

“I wonder where she had a drink?” asked Morse.

“Well, if she’d walked up from Holywell Street, there’d be the King’s Arms, the White Horse, The Randolph... But you’re the expert.”

Morse asked no more questions; but sat thinking of the questionnaire he had set for the Police Gazette (it seemed so long ago): “If you could gladden your final days with one of the following...” Yes, without a doubt, if he’d been honest, Morse would have applauded Shelly Cornford’s choice. And what the hell did it matter where she’d had those few last glasses of alcohol — few last “units” rather — the measurements into which the dietitian had advised him to convert his old familiar gills and pints and quarts.

“Do you want to see her?”

Morse shook his head.

“You’d better see him, though.”

Morse nodded wearily. “Is he all right?”

“We-ell. His GP’s been in — but he refuses to take any medication. He’s in the canteen with one of the sergeants. We’ve finished with him, really.”

“Tell me about it,” urged Morse.

Denis Cornford’s voice was flat, almost mechanical, as he replied:

“On Sunday just before I met you in the pub she told me she’d been to bed with another man that morning. I hardly spoke to her after that. I slept in the spare room the last three nights.”

“The note?” asked Morse gently. “Is that what she was referring to?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing to do with anything else?”

“No.”

“She was there, in your room, just before Chapel on Sunday, wasn’t she?”

Cornford evinced no surprise.

“We’d had a few harsh words. She didn’t want to see you.”

“Do you know who the other man was?”

“Yes. Clixby Bream.”

“She told you that, sir?”

“Yes.”

“So — so she couldn’t have had anything to do with the Owens murder?”

“No. Nor could the Master.”

“Did you have anything to do with it?”

“No.”

“Why did you go to see Owens last Thursday?”

“I knew Owens a bit through various things I did for his newspaper. That night I had to go to Kidlington — I went on the bus — the Kidlington History Society — held at the school — ‘Effects of the Enclosure Acts in Oxfordshire’ — seven o’clock to eight. He lived fairly near — five minutes’ walk away. I’d done a three-part article for him on Medieval Oxford — Owens said it needed shortening a bit — we discussed some changes — no problems. I got a bus back to Oxford — about nine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Owens?”

“I didn’t want to get involved.”

“What will you do now?”

“I left a note for the Master about the election.” The voice was still monotonous; the mouth dry. “I’ve withdrawn my nomination.”

“I’m so sorry about everything,” said Morse very quietly.

“Yes, I think you are, aren’t you?”

Morse left the pale, bespectacled historian staring vaguely into a cup of cold tea, like a man who is temporarily anesthetized against some overwhelming pain.

“It’s a terrible business — terrible!”

The Master poured himself a single-malt Scotch.

“Drink, Chief Inspector?”

Morse shook his head.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“No. I’ve only called to say that Dr. Cornford has just told me everything — about you and his wife.”

“Mmm.”

“We shall have to get a statement from you.”

“Why is that?”

“The time chiefly, I suppose.”

“Is it really necessary?”

“There was a murder on that Sunday morning.”

“Mmm. Was she one of your suspects?”

Morse made no direct answer. “She couldn’t have been making love to you and murdering someone else at the same time.”

“No.” The bland features betrayed no emotion; yet Morse was distastefully aware that the Master was hardly displeased with such a succinct, such an unequivocal assertion of Shelly Cornford’s innocence, since by implication it was an assertion of his own.

“I understand that Dr. Cornford has written to you, sir.”

“Exited from the lists, poor Denis, yes. That just leaves Julian Storrs. Good man though, Julian!”

Morse slowly walked to the door.

“What do you think about suicide, Sir Clixby?”

“In general?” The Master drained his tumbler, and thoughtfully considered the question. “Aristotle, you know, thought suicide a form of cowardice — running away from troubles oneself and leaving all the heartache to everybody else. What do you think?”

Morse was conscious of a deep loathing for this smooth and odious man.

“I don’t know what your particular heartache is, sir. You see I never met Mrs. Cornford myself. But I’d be surprised if she was a coward. In fact, I’ve got the feeling she was a bit of a gutsy girl.” Morse stood beside the study door, his face drawn, his nostrils distended. “And I’ll tell you something else. She probably had far more guts in her little finger than you’ve ever had in the whole of your body!”

Lewis was waiting in the Jaguar outside the Porters’ Lodge; and Morse quickly climbed into the passenger seat. His voice was still vicious:

“Get — me — out — of — here, Lewis!”

Chapter fifty-seven Friday, March 8

Sergeant Lewis had himself only just entered Morse’s office when Jane came through with the post: six official-looking letters, opened, with appropriate previous correspondence paper-clipped behind them; one square white envelope, unopened, marked “Private,” and postmarked Oxford; and an airmail letter, also unopened, marked “Personal,” and postmarked “Washington.”

Jane smiled radiantly at her boss.

“Why are you looking so cheerful?” queried Morse.

“Just nice to have you back, sir, that’s all.”

Inside the white envelope was a card, the front showing an auburn-haired woman, in a white dress, reading a book; and Morse read the brief message inside:

“Why are you looking so cheerful?” asked Lewis.

But Morse made no answer, and indeed appeared to be reading the message again and again. Then he opened the letter from America.

Morse handed the letter across to Lewis.

“The old Metropolitan Commissioner!”

Morse nodded, rather proudly.

“Washington, D.C., that’ll be, sir.”

“Where else?”

“Washington, C.D. — County Durham, near enough.”

“Oh.”

“What’s your program today, sir?”

“Well, we’ve done most of the spadework—”

“Except the Harvey Clinic side of things.”

“And that’s in hand, you say?”

“Seeing the woman this morning. She’s just back from a few days’ holiday.”

“Who’s she again? Remind me.”

“I told you about her: Dawn Charles.”

“Mrs. or Miss or Ms.?”

“Not sure. But she’s the main receptionist there. They say if anybody’s likely to know what’s going on, she is.”

“What time are you seeing her?”

“Ten o’clock. She’s got a little flat out at Bicester on the Charles Church Estate. You joining me?”

“No, I don’t think so. Something tells me I ought to see Storrs again.”

Lovingly Morse put the “Girl Reading” (Perugini, 1878) back into her envelope, then looked through Sir Peter’s letter once again.

Don Carlos.

The two words stood out and stared at him, at the beginning of a line as they were, at the end of a paragraph. Not an opera Morse knew well, Don Carlos. Another “DC,” though. It was amazing how many DCs had cropped up in their inquiries — and still another one just now in the District of Columbia. And suddenly in Morse’s mind the name of the Verdi opera merged with a name he’d just heard: the “Don” chiming in with the “Dawn,” and the “Carlos” with the “Charles.”

Was it Dawn Charles (Mrs. or Miss or Ms.) who held the key to the mystery? Did they belong to her, that pair of initials in the manila file?

Morse’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

“I think,” he said slowly, “Mr. Julian Storrs will have to wait a little while. I shall be coming with you, Lewis — to Bicester.”