Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

Last call

Not too carefully — not carefully at all really — Morse looked down at the man lying supine on the double bed, dressed only in an unbuttoned white shirt, Oxford-blue pants, and black socks. The paleness of the man’s skin precluded the probability of any recent holiday on the Greek islands — with only the dullish-red V below the throat suggesting the possibility of any life outside the executive-suited higher echelons of British management.

Late forties, by the look of him; a firmly built man, with a pleasantly featured, clean-shaven face, and frizzy, grey-flecked hair. The jacket of a subfusc herring-bone suit was hanging inside the open-doored wardrobe, a maroon tie over it; and neatly aligned at the near side of the bed was a pair of soft black leather shoes.

A methodical, successful businessman, thought Morse.

A quiet knock on the door of Room 231 of The Randolph Hotel heralded the arrivals of Sergeant Lewis and Dr. Laura Hobson — the latter immediately stepping forward to peer down at the dead man’s face. Blood was still seeping slowly from a deep gash that slanted over the closed right eye like some monstrous acute accent. But there was no other sign of red in the face, for the lips were a palish shade of purple.

“Probably had a heart attack,” volunteered the pathologist.

Lewis looked down at the Corby trouser-press, standing to the left of the bathroom door, on which a pair of subfusc herring-bone trousers were draped over the opened leaf.

“Probably bashed his head on that?” suggested Lewis.

And Morse nodded.

The cream paint of the left-hand door-jamb was splashed with elongated flecks of scarlet, and two feet inside the bathroom itself, on the blue-and-white-tiled floor, was a patch of darkly dried blood.

“If he’d tripped it could have brought on a heart attack, don’t you think, sir?”

Again Morse nodded. “And if he’d had a heart attack he could have tripped and cracked his head, yes.”

Turning her head momentarily towards them, Dr. Hobson put the situation rather more simply: “Which came first — the chicken or the egg?”

“The chicken?” said Morse.

But the blonde pathologist was clearly in favour of an each-way bet. “Like as not it happened contemporaneously.”

Lewis’s eyebrows shot up. “Big word, that.”

Dr. Hobson smiled at him, attractively. “I’ve finished with it for now, Sergeant. It’s all yours if you’d like to have it.”

On the dressing table to the right of the bathroom door, beside the phone, lay two items which had been recovered from the bathroom floor: a calibrated syringe, its orange hood still in place over the needle; and the glass fragments of what had been a small phial, some three inches long, which had contained (as indicated by its label) “Human Actrapid Insulin” — the colourless liquid having almost completely seeped away into a layer of white tissue-paper.

For a minute or so longer, Chief Inspector Morse stood exactly where he was, visualizing much — visualizing almost everything, perhaps — of what had happened there on the threshold of the bathroom, his eyes finally concentrating on the telephone, its receiver cradled firmly on its base.

Then he announced his strategy: “I think we’ll just nip down to the bar, Lewis — which Doctor Hobson finishes off here.” He looked at his wrist-watch. “That’s two nights running I’ve missed The Archers. For nothing, too — there’s been no murder here.”

But before leaving Room 231, he dipped a hand gently into the inside breast-pocket of the dead man’s jacket, withdrawing a wallet of pigskin leather.

“Do we know who found him — and how?” asked Lewis, as the two detectives walked down the grandly wide staircase to the reception area of The Randolph.

“That’s exactly what I hope you’re going to find out for me.”

Three-quarters of an hour later Sergeant Lewis had discovered all there was to be known. Not much, but enough. And he reported to Morse.

Sherwood had reserved the double-bedded, en suite, five-star room by phone only the previous evening — with no opportunity thus afforded for any written confirmation. He had booked in, on his own, at about 5:40 P.M. But the form, duly completed at reception, was comparatively uninformative: Name(s) — “Sherwood”; Home Address — “53 Leominster Drive, Shrewsbury”; Signature — “Peter Sherwood.” The two boxes beside the questions Are you here on business? On leisure? remained unticked, and the space for Car Registration was completed with a dismissive dash. That was all, except for a tick in the Cash box alongside How do you intend to settle your account?

The Guest Registration Card thus negotiated, £140 (in twenties) had been paid; and no further details were disclosed by Sherwood or demanded by the chicly uniformed receptionist. Any wake-up call in the morning? “No.” Any newspaper? “Yes — the Telegraph.” Sherwood had taken the key, politely declined the offer of help with his two suitcases, and that was that.

No woman on the scene — no one remembered a woman at all.

Sherwood was scheduled to attend a two-day conference on Computer Technology being held at Rewley House — very close by, just up at the top of St. John Street, almost immediately opposite The Randolph.

Now clearly of importance had been two telephone calls. The first, probably an outside call, asking to be put through to Mr. Sherwood; the second, presumably made from inside the hotel, reporting to the operator that medical assistance was urgently required in Room 231. The Senior Concierge, Roy Harden, had immediately gone up to the room, where he’d found the door slightly ajar — and Sherwood lying across the threshold of the bathroom. Already dead by the look of him. From the room itself Harden had promptly telephoned the house-doctor; and then the manager, with whose assistance two minutes later he’d carried Sherwood’s body over to the bed. A room-maid had cleared up the broken glass from the bathroom — for there seemed to be no suspicious circumstances at the time. It was only because of the house-doctor’s marginal unease over the head wound that the manager had deemed it prudent to call in the police. Just to be on the safe side.

“What do you think so far?” asked Morse.

“Same as you, sir. Cherchez la belle femme. He’s off to another conference — he invites his mistress — they know how to work things — he has a heart attack — she’s scared out of her wits — rings for the doc — and then gets pretty smartish out of it.”

“Ye-es...” Morse picked up the dead man’s wallet. “No railway tickets in here, Lewis.”

“So?”

“They don’t very often collect railway tickets from passengers these days, do they?”

Lewis followed the drift of Morse’s thinking. “They probably came by car, you mean?”

“Her car, like as not. He tells his wife he’s going to the railway station, and his lady-love picks him up there. Then when she gets him here, she just nips off and parks her car somewhere nearby — and there’s no need for anyone to know her registration number or anything. Very neat. Very easy.”

Lewis nodded agreement. “It’s getting easier all the time to commit adultery.”

Morse looked up sharply. “Let’s be slightly more accurate about things, Lewis. What you mean is that the preconditions for adultery are easier to handle: fewer eyebrows raised; fewer questions asked; fewer details to be filled in; just fork out your fee for the room... But whether it’s really become emotionally easier, psychologically easier... physically easier — well, I just wouldn’t know, would I?”

Saving Lewis the possible embarrassment of any reply, the young pathologist now appeared beside them in the Chapters Bar.

Morse beamed happily, and pushed forward his emptied glass. “Ah, Doctor Hobson! What’ll you have to drink? Lewis here is in the chair.”

But Dr. Hobson shook her pretty head. “I can’t stay, I’m afraid.”

“Pity!”

“You’re feeling all right, Chief Inspector?”

“Pardon?”

“They told me the only thing you ever wanted from any pathologist was an estimated time of death.”

“Oh, I know that already,” replied Morse. “Six o’clock — to the minute, I’d say.”

Laura Hobson smiled, refusing to rise to the bait. “About six o’clock, yes. I hope you don’t expect me to be quite so precise as you, though? I’m just a humble medical scientist myself. No foul-play, though. I’m fairly sure of that.”

“Fairly sure?”

“As I say, I’m just a scientist. Good night.”

“He was a neat and tidy enough man,” resumed Lewis. “The bag he’d packed for himself — well, it was all laid out with sort of military precision. You know, socks, hankies, spare pants, washing kit — all in their proper compartments.”

“Condoms?”

“Yes, sir, in a little compartment at the front.”

“It’s all very sad, isn’t it?”

“More sad for the wife, if you ask me.”

“It was the wife I was thinking of,” replied Morse quietly.

Lewis thought it wise to change tack. “You seem very sure about the time?”

“There a Diabetic Card here in the wallet, giving details and times of daily injections: 7 A.M.; 6 P.M.; 10:30 P.M. ‘Military precision,’ did you say? I think you’re right.”

“We’d know it was just before or just after six anyway, wouldn’t we? From the telephone calls, I mean.”

“Ye-es.”

“Who do you think made the first call, sir?”

“Same woman who made the second. She rang from a phone-box outside — said she’d parked OK — asked him for the room number — told him to leave the door slightly ajar — promised she’d be with him in just a few minutes...”

“... saw him lying there — realized he was dead — and rang for help.”

“Where did she ring from, though?” asked Morse slowly.

“Bedroom, I should think?”

“I wonder... She’d have to stand just over him when she rang, wouldn’t she?”

“Not everybody’s quite so put off by dead bodies as you, sir.”

The Senior Concierge, now re-summoned, briskly confirmed his earlier evidence, and Morse had only one additional question.

“Was the telephone off the hook when you went into the room?”

“Yes, sir. Dangling on the cord.”

“And you replaced it?”

“I replaced it.”

“I see.”

“Should I have left it?”

“No, no!” For some reason Morse seemed almost relieved, and the concierge left.

“I wish all our witnesses were as bright and unequivocal as Mr. Harden, Lewis!”

“Important, is it, this phone business?”

“No. I don’t think so. Not now.”

Lewis looked at his watch. “We shall have to do something about his wife, sir.”

“You know the routine better than I do.”

Yes, Lewis did.

“Tell ’em to be gentle with her. Just to say her husband’s had a fatal heart attack. We can arrange transport — well, they can — if she wants to come to Oxford tomorrow. Not tonight, though. Get her local GP in. Well — you know the ropes.”

Morse drained his beer and his eyes reflected the curious sadness he clearly felt for the woman left alone that night in Shrewsbury.

“Another pint?” suggested Lewis.

But Morse shook his head and stood up to go, the pigskin wallet held tightly in his right hand.

Three-quarters of an hour later, a police car drew up outside the double-garaged property that stood at 53 Leominster Drive, Shrewsbury. Accompanying the police sergeant was a young smartly attractive WPC, who did the talking:

“Mrs. Sherwood?”

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you.”

Sometimes the police had the lousiest job in the whole world.

Mid-morning the following day Morse had received Dr. Hobson’s preliminary report:

And now Lewis read through the findings.

“Things seem to have happened, er, contemporaneously, sir.”

“Clears it up, certainly, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Mrs. Sherwood’s coming down this morning. Identify the body and...”

Morse nodded. “Keep her out of The Randolph, if you can. No need for her to know anything about the room or... or anything.”

“I suppose not.”

“Look! Nobody’s going to profit from parading any dirty linen, agreed?”

“Least of all Mrs. Sherwood.”

“And her family.”

“OK.”

“Have we discovered much about her?”

Lewis consulted his note-book.

“Aged forty-five; son and daughter — both early twenties; she works part-time; bags o’ money; everybody seemed to think the marriage was fine.”

Morse nodded sombrely. “Death’s bad enough, but... Remember that Greek Archbishop, Lewis? Had a heart attack in his local knocking-shop at Athens? Poor sod!”

“At least he hadn’t got a wife.”

“How do you know?”

“Perhaps Mrs. Sherwood was having a bit on the side, too.”

But Morse appeared not to be listening. He took from the dead man’s wallet a passport-sized colour photograph of a duskily tressed and deeply tanned young beauty, wearing thinly rimmed schoolma’amish spectacles, and looking half-seriously into the camera — yet with lips beginning to curl in a sensuous smile.

“Lovely!” said Morse. “Lovely!”

“And that’s...?”

“That’s Mr. Sherwood’s ‘bit on the side,’ as you so elegantly phrase things.”

Then Morse, after glancing briefly at the back of the photo, slowly tore it into smaller and smaller pieces.

“Destroying evidence, that is. Could be valuable in the case—”

“What case?”

Lewis shrugged. “You’re in charge, sir.”

Morse was now on his feet. “Just nip me down to Oxford, will you? Railway station for a couple of minutes — then on to St. Aidâtes. What time’s Mrs. Sherwood due here?”

“Eleven-thirty. Driving down — dunno if it’s the Rolls or the BMW, though!”

Morse shot off at an odd angle: “Do you believe in any after-life, Lewis?”

“Not sure, really. What about you?”

“No, not me. I think death’s just a process of chemical disintegration.”

“Perhaps she could tell us — Mrs. Sherwood. She took a Chemistry degree at Cambridge.”

“How on earth did you find that out?”

Lewis, too, now rose. “I’m a detective, sir, remember?”

“She must have been a clever lass at school.”

“But you still don’t want to see her?”

“No.”

As he’d promised, Morse spent only a brief while inside Oxford railway station; and five minutes later Lewis was driving down St. Aidâtes, when Morse peremptorily announced a slight change of plan. It was just after 11 A.M.

“Drop me anywhere here! I’ll just nip in to see how the landlord is.”

He gestured vaguely to the Bulldog, and Lewis brought the police car to a stop opposite Christ Church.

“Just give this to Mrs. Sherwood, will you?”

Lewis took the proffered wallet. “No more photos in it?”

“Only one of the four of ’em: mum and dad and the two kids. Everything’s all right now.”

Lewis had arrived back at Kidlington HQ at 2 P.M. to find that the chief had not yet returned — from wherever.

Mrs. Sherwood had been a quarter of an hour late (in the BMW), and Lewis had looked quickly through the contents of her late husband’s wallet as he’d waited in a small ante-room in the Pathology Institute. The usual plastic cards were there, relating to monies and memberships; £110 in banknotes; the family photograph that Morse had mentioned (but no others); and something else, yes — two green-and-orange British Rail tickets, one “Out” and one “Return,” between Shrewsbury and Oxford. Neither had received the attention of any ticket-collector’s clip. Yet they looked genuine enough. Were genuine enough, except for the fact that the date printed on each of them was not yesterday’s — but today’s.

Lewis smiled wryly to himself.

Mrs. Pamela Sherwood had turned out to be a slim, well-groomed, delicately featured woman — distressed, yes, but well in control. Lewis himself never really knew what to do or what to say in times of bereavement; but that was exactly why (as Morse well knew) he performed the job so successfully, since it was not unusual on such sad occasions for roles to be reversed and for the bereaved themselves to feel an instinctively reciprocal sympathy with the good sergeant.

As now.

Over coffee, and after identifying her husband’s body, Mrs. Sherwood herself had looked quickly through the contents of the wallet, her eyes intent as she took out one item after another, including the tickets.

One item after another... except of course for the photograph of the dusky siren whose features for a little while had recently held the Chief Inspector mesmerized.

But it was the message on Morse’s Ansaphone which displaced any thoughts of Mrs. Sherwood; a message left by the manager of The Randolph; a message which Lewis, now for the third time, replayed as he waited for Morse to return.

During the replay of this message, Lewis had been conscious that Morse was standing beside him, listening (it seemed) intently; and as Goodall signed off, Lewis noted that Morse’s eyes were shining with excitement; and impatience, too — like a camel sniffing the coolness of the air and eager to ride forth at evening from the wells...

Although Lewis himself would not have made that particular simile.

Morse’s verdict, whispered and intense, was barely audible in the now silent office:

“She did it! She murdered him!”

For a few moments Lewis looked across the desk with mouth agape, like a young lad bidden to display his tonsils to the doctor. He would have asked about that unspecified “She,” but already Morse had picked up the phone, asking to be put through to the Path lab — urgently. And as he covered the speaker with the palm of his left hand, he gave his instructions:

“Go and take a full statement from the manager, Lewis. I want to know exactly what she told him. Verbatim, as far as—

“Ah, Doctor Hobson?”

“You can drive back,” Morse had said the following morning when just after 10 A.M. he himself took the wheel of the maroon-coloured Jaguar and began the drive up to Shrewsbury, via Motorways 40, 42, 6, and 54. One hundred and ten miles. No Services. An hour and a half. Lewis, whose only indulgence in life (apart from eggs and chips) was speedy driving, would have cut fifteen minutes off the time.

Did cut fifteen minutes off, on the return journey.

“Difficult to know why anyone’d ever want to go from Shrewsbury to Oxford by British Rail,” declared Lewis, as Morse pulled up outside the elegantly appointed, detached house that stood at 53 Leominster Drive.

“Mrs. Sherwood,” began Morse, “we have some difficult things to tell you. When your husband went off to Oxford, we have every reason to believe, I’m afraid, that he’d arranged to spend two nights with a woman-friend — with a mistress — in The Randolph Hotel. She’d driven him down to Oxford in her own car—”

Mrs. Sherwood shook her head and closed her eyes, like a young girl refusing to believe that Santa Claus was just a dream.

“You’ve got it all wrong! He went to Oxford by train — I took him to the station myself. He knew he’d be having quite a lot to drink at the conference—”

“He went to Oxford by car,” countered Morse. “His mistress drove him there.”

“But that’s nonsense! I’ve got the rail tickets—”

“Show me!”

From her handbag, Mrs. Sherwood took out her husband’s wallet; and from the wallet, the two tickets — which she handed to him.

“We decided to buy these for you, Mrs. Sherwood, because we wanted to spare you some of the anguish and the pain of all this trouble. And if you’d been more observant, you’d have spotted the wrong date on them. Until yesterday, you see, we’d no suspicion at all that your husband’s death was due to anything but natural causes.”

Her eyes flicked up sharply. “And now you’re saying...?”

Morse made no direct answer, but looked away from those compelling eyes, and slowly tore the rail tickets into smaller and smaller pieces, just as earlier he’d torn the photograph.

“Did you know your husband’s mistress?”

For a while it seemed that Mrs. Sherwood would challenge the premiss of Morse’s brutal question. But she didn’t.

“I know her.”

“We did find a photograph,” continued Morse, “but foolishly I tore it up, because, as I say, we wanted to—”

“She was hardly the first, Chief Inspector.”

“Please tell me who she is and where we can find her.”

But Mrs. Sherwood shook her head as she stared into some middle distance. “I felt jealous about his other women — of course I did. But I envied this one. I’d found out a few things about her and I think she was everything to Peter that I’d never been. You see, I’m so very careful and tight about life — about emotions, money, everything. And she’s open and vivacious, and wonderful in bed, for all I know...”

“And very young,” added Morse cruelly.

“About half Peter’s age, yes. Perhaps that’s what hurt more than anything.”

“But who is she, Mrs. Sherwood?”

Morse had lifted his fiercely blue eyes to challenge hers. Yet to no avail; and it was Lewis who pursued the questioning.

“We’re interested in two telephone calls, Mrs. Sher wood, made about the time your husband died: one just before six o’clock; and one five or ten minutes later. At first we believed both calls were made by the same person. Yesterday, though, a woman rang and admitted making the second call — the one asking for a doctor — but she claimed quite certainly that she hadn’t made any earlier call — a call, we thought, possibly asking for your husband’s room-number, or whatever it was she needed to know. She said she already knew the room-number: he’d gone upstairs with the luggage after checking in, and then come down and actually given her the key — before she drove off to park the car somewhere. So what reason could she have had for ringing him?”

Mrs. Sherwood shrugged her thin shoulders. “Doesn’t seem much point, does there?”

“Do you think it was one of his other lady-loves?”

“Could have been—”

“You, perhaps?” broke in Morse, very quietly.

Rising from her armchair, Mrs. Sherwood walked over to the french window and stood gazing out across the wide lawn.

“Is a wife not allowed to ring her husband? At least he almost always told me where he was staying, if not who he was staying with.”

“What time did you make the call?” continued Morse.

“Six — sixish? As you say.”

“Before or after?”

“Does it matter?”

“You said you’re — what was it? — a bit tight and careful about things like money.”

She nodded. “Silly really. We’d plenty of money — two salaries coming in.”

“You work in a pharmaceutical lab, I think?”

“Part-time, yes.”

“And you’re a Chemistry graduate.”

“Huh! You know all about me. But all you really want to know is about her. Am I right?”

“I’d like to know more about you, though. For example, the phone-rate gets cheaper after six o’clock, doesn’t it? So why didn’t you wait till after six o’clock — it was only a matter of a few minutes.”

“I didn’t think.”

“Come on, Mrs. Sherwood! You can do better than that.”

“No, I can’t.”

“You’ll have to, if you want us to find out who murdered your husband.”

She turned from the window, and in the pale face the eyes were now ablaze.

“Murdered?”

“Yes, murdered.”

“But you’re wrong! He died of a heart attack. That’s what they told me — the medical people — in Oxford.”

“We’ve had a further report from the police pathologist, Mrs. Sherwood. Sergeant!”

Lewis now read out the relevant extract from Dr. Hobson’s second report:

“But would be available,” added Morse slowly, “to someone working in a pharmaceutical lab.”

“My husband died of a heart attack! I was told so. Are you now saying he didn’t?”

“No.”

“So please tell me what you are saying! What’s all this about murder?”

“You wished to murder your husband, Mrs. Sherwood. You poisoned the insulin capsule. That’s what I’m saying.”

She turned to stare out of the window again.

“And if I did?” she asked finally.

“I don’t know,” replied Morse simply. “But I believe you intended to poison your husband. You’d lived with him for twenty-odd years and you knew him to be an extremely meticulous and methodical man. You knew perfectly well that in Oxford, just as here at home, he’d almost certainly be taking his insulin at six o’clock that evening. And the reason you rang him up just before six o’clock was to make sure he didn’t inject himself from the capsule you’d poisoned. Please tell me if I’m wrong, Mrs. Sherwood! But I think that in spite of all that had happened, in spite of all his infidelities, you didn’t hate him quite enough to go through with your plan. In the last analysis, you wanted him to stay alive. Perhaps you even hoped he’d come to love you once again.”

She nodded weakly, and spoke in a sing-song voice as if the events she now described were distanced and unreal.

“Five to six, it was when I rang. The line was engaged at first and I began to panic. But then I did get through. It was just like when I was a girl; when I used to play little games with myself. I just asked him if he was going to sleep with her that night... I wanted to shock him, you see... And if he said ‘no,’ I was going to tell him about the insulin.”

She stopped.

“And if he said ‘yes’?”

“It never got that far. I just — I just heard a great crash.”

“Don’t you think you may have murdered him just as surely as if you’d poisoned him yourself?”

She shook her head, more in bewilderment, it seemed, than in denial. “What will happen to me?”

“I just don’t know,” said Morse.

At the front door, she laid a hand lightly on his arm, and lowered her eyes.

“It was very kind of you — what you did.”

“But you won’t tell me who this other woman is?”

“No.”

Once the Jaguar had disappeared from view, Mrs. Sherwood moved back inside the house, a semi-smile upon her lips.

Too clever for his own good, that man! She’d played it mostly by ear, of course. But how easy he’d made it for her! With him pointing out the escape route she’d so desperately been seeking after his mention of the Sodium Fluoroacetate; him suggesting the blessedly mitigating circumstance that it was she, Pamela Sherwood, who had rung her husband; she who had tried not to cause, but to prevent her husband’s death. Why he’d even told her the time of that telephone call — a call she’d never made, of course.

Oh, she’d willingly enough have faced the consequences of poisoning her husband, because above all things in life she’d wanted him dead. But now? If by some happy chance she were to be seen as guilty only of causing him a heart attack — well, she’d settle for that all right. Why not? He was dead, that was the main thing. And that Jane bloody Ballantyre — pox-ridden strumpet! — would have to seek some other demerara daddy now.

“You were kind, you know,” said Lewis as he drove the Jaguar out of Leominster Drive.

“How come?”

“Well, the photo—”

“ ‘Stupid,’ do you mean?”

“—and the rail tickets.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do. You probably know you haven’t got a reputation for being too generous with money—”

“No?”

“—but I reckon underneath you’re a bit of an old softie, really. I mean, forking out of your own pocket for those tickets...”

Morse opened his mouth as if to reply; but decided against it. He would (he promised himself) inform Lewis about the expenses claim he had already submitted for £26 — but not for the time being.

“Where to now, sir?”

“We’re going to try to trace Peter Sherwood’s mistress.”

“But — but haven’t we cleared things up?”

“What? You didn’t believe all that stuff we got from Mrs. Sherwood, did you?”

“You mean — you mean you didn’t?”

“Lewis! Lewis! Why do you think she refused to tell us anything about her husband’s latest conquest?”

Lewis had no idea, and mercifully Morse continued.

“Because our dusky maiden is the only one who knows the truth in this case. And Mrs. Sherwood doesn’t want us to know the truth, does she?”

“Perhaps not,” mumbled Lewis, uncomprehendingly.

“So you ask me where were going? Well, it’s a longish shot, but not a hopeless one. The initials on the back of the photo were ‘JB’; she looked deeply tanned—”

“Perhaps she’s just back from a topless two weeks in Torremolinos.”

“You know, Lewis, you don’t often come out with such a splendid sentence as that.”

Lewis felt better. “You mean she might belong to a local health centre?”

“Lying on a sun-bed, yes. And if Mrs. Sherwood was able to find out a few things about her—”

“—she might not live a million miles from Leominster Drive.”

“Exactly so.”

“Sounds like my sort of job, sir.”

“Just what I was thinking, Lewis. So, if you’ll just drop me off at the nearest pub?”

Late that same afternoon, in a luxury flat rather less than a mile from the Sherwood residence, a dark-haired, totally and fatally attractive young woman, wearing thinly rimmed, schoolma’amish spectacles, was still in an agitated frame of mind.

For she knew that she had killed her lover.

Had it been foolish to ring the manager of The Randolph? Certainly the questions he’d asked were disturbingly shrewd; yet her conscience had compelled her to do something. Yes, even she had a conscience...

It had been five minutes to six when she’d finally managed to park the car — up in Norham Gardens, rather further out than she’d anticipated. But at least a telephone booth had stood near by, and (as arranged) she’d dialled the hotel and been put through without delay. And virtually verbatim could she recall that brief — that fatal — conversation:

“Peter?”

“Jane!”

“Everything OK?”

“Will be once you get here. Room 231.”

“Is it nice?”

“Lovely double bed!”

“I can hardly wait.”

“I’ll leave the door ajar.”

“Peter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m wanting you like crazy.”

“Jane! Please don’t say things like that!”

“Why on earth not?”

“You make me — you make me so excited—”

That was when she’d heard a great crash, although the terrible truth had not immediately dawned upon her consciousness...

Who the two men were she now saw walking up to the block of flats, she hadn’t the faintest notion. But they looked a well enough heeled pair, and the posh car parked at the kerbside hardly suggested a couple of double-glazing double-dealers. And when she answered the door-bell (yes, they had called to see her) she acknowledged to herself that she could really rather fancy one of the two men, the one whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey. For in spite of her anxieties, she was already casting round (as Mrs. Sherwood had suspected) for some replacement demerara daddy.

“Jane Ballantyre?”

She smiled invitingly. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

“You know, I rather think you can,” said the man whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey.