The Dead of Jericho

Chapter One

Oxford's main tourist attractions are reasonably proximate to one another and there are guidebooks aplenty, translated into many languages. Thus it is that the day visitor may climb back into his luxury coach after viewing the fine University buildings clustered between the High and the Radcliffe Camera with the gratifying feeling that it has all been a compact, interesting visit to yet another of England's most beautiful cities. It is all very splendid: it is all a bit tiring. And so is fortunate that the neighbouring Cornmarket can offer to the visitor its string of snack bars, coffee bars, and burger bars in which to rest his feet and browse through his recently purchased literature about those other colleges and ecclesiastical edifices, their dates and their benefactors, which thus far have fallen outside his rather arbitrary circumambulations. Perhaps by noon he's had enough, and quits such culture for the Westgate shopping complex, only a pedestrian precinct away, and built on the old site of St. Ebbes, where the city fathers found the answer to their inner-city obsolescence in the full-scale flattening of the ancient streets of houses, and their replacement by the concrete giants of supermarket stores and municipal offices. Solitudinem faciunt: architecturam.

But further delights there are round other corners-even as the guidebooks say. From Cornmarket, for example, the visitor may turn left past the Randolph into the curving sweep of the Regency houses in Beaumont Street, and visit the Ashmolean there and walk round Worcester College gardens. From here he may turn northwards and find himself walking along the lower stretches of Walton Street into an area which has, thus far, escaped the vandals who sit on the City's planning committees. Here, imperceptibly at first, but soon quite unmistakably, the University has been left behind, and even the vast building on the left which houses the Oxford University Press, its lawned quadrangle glimpsed through the high wrought-iron gates, looks bleakly out of place and rather lonely, like some dowager duchess at a discotheque. The occasional visitor may pursue his way even further, past the red and blue lettering of the Phoenix cinema on his left and the blackened-grey walls of the Radcliffe Infirmary on his right; yet much more probably he will now decide to veer again towards the city centre, and in so doing turn his back upon an area of Oxford where gradual renewal, sensitive to the needs of its community, seems finally to have won its battle with the bulldozers.

This area is called Jericho, a largely residential district, stretching down from the western side of Walton Street to the banks of the canal, and consisting for the most part of mid-nineteenth-century, two-storey, terraced houses. Here, in the criss-cross grid of streets with names like 'Wellington' and 'Nelson' and the other mighty heroes, are the dwellings built for those who worked on the wharves or on the railway, at the University Press or at Lucy's iron foundry in Juxon Street. But the visitor to the City Museum in St. Aldates will find no Guide to Jericho along the shelves; and even by the oldest of its own inhabitants, the provenance of that charming and mysterious name of 'Jericho' is variously-and dubiously-traced. Some claim that in the early days the whistle of a passing train from the lines across the canal could make the walls come tumbling down; others would point darkly to the synagogue in Richmond Road and talk of sharp and profitable dealings in the former Jewish quarter; yet others lift their eyes to read the legend on a local inn: 'Tarry ye at Jericho until your beards be grown'. But the majority of the area's inhabitants would just look blankly at their interlocutors, as if they had been asked such obviously unanswerable questions as why it was that men were born, or why they should live or die, and fall in love with booze or women.

It was on Wednesday, October 3^rd, almost exactly six months after Mrs. Murdoch's party in North Oxford, that Detective Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police was driving from Kidlington to Oxford. He turned down into Woodstock Road, turned right into Bainton Road, and then straight down into Walton Street. As he drove the Lancia carefully through the narrow street, with cars parked either side, he noticed that Sex in the Suburbs was on at the Phoenix; but almost simultaneously the bold white lettering of a street sign caught his eye and any thoughts of an hour or two of technicolour titillation was forgotten: the sign read 'Jericho Street'. He'd thought of Anne Scott occasionally-of course he had!-but the prospect of a complicated liaison with a married woman had not, in the comparatively sober light of morning, carried quite the same appeal it had the night before; and he had not pursued the affair. But he was thinking of her now…

That morning, in Kidlington, his lecture on Homicide Procedures to a group of earnest, newly fledged detectives (Constable Walters amongst them) had been received with a polite [missing] of enthusiasm, and Morse knew that he had been far from good. How glad he was to have the afternoon free! Furthermore, for the first time in many months he had every reason to be in the precincts of Jericho. As a member of the Book Association he had recently received advanced notice of a talk (Oct. 3^rd, 8 p.m.) by Dame Helen Gardner on The New Oxford Book of English Verse; and the prospect of that distinguished Oxford academic was quite sufficient in itself to stir an idle Morse to his first attendance of the year. But, in addition, the Association's committee had appealed to all members for any old books that might be finished with, because before Dame Helen's talk a sale of second-hand books had been arranged in aid of the Association's languishing funds. The previous night, therefore, Morse had decimated his shelves, selecting those thirty or so paperbacks which now lay in a cardboard box in the boot of the Lancia. All books were to be delivered to the Clarendon Press Institute in Walton Street (where the Association held its meetings) between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. that day. It was now twenty-five minutes past three.

For very good reasons, however, the delivery of Morse's offerings was temporarily postponed. Just before the OUP building, Morse turned right and drove slowly down Great Clarendon Street, crossed a couple of intersections, and noticed Canal Street on his right. Surely she must live somewhere very close? It had been raining intermittently all day, and heavy spots were spattering his windscreen as he turned into the deserted street and looked around for parking space. Difficult, though. Double yellow lines on one side of the street, with a row of notices on the other-a series of white Ps set against their blue backgrounds: 'Resident Permit Holders Only'. True, there was a gap or two here and there; but with a stubborn law-abiding streak within him-and with the added risk of a hefty parking fine-Morse drove on slowly round the maze of streets. Finally, beneath the towering Italianate campanile of St. Barnabas' Church, he found an empty space in a stretch of road by the canal, marked off with boxed white lines: 'Waiting limited to 2 hours. Return prohibited within 1 hour'. Morse backed carefully into the space and looked around him. Through an opened gate he glimpsed the blues, browns, and reds of a string of house-boats moored alongside the canal, whilst three unspecified ducks, long-necked and black against the late-afternoon sky, flapped away noisily towards a more northerly stretch of water. He got out of the car and stood in the rain a while, looking up at the dirtyish yellow tower that dominated the streets. A quick look inside, perhaps? But the door was locked, and Morse was reading the notice explaining that the regrettable cause of it all was adolescent vandalism when he heard the voice behind him.

'Is this your car?'

A young, very wet traffic warden, the yellow band round her hat extremely new, was standing beside the Lancia, trying bravely to write down something on a bedrenched page of her notebook.

'All right, aren't I?' mumbled Morse defensively, as he walked down the shallow steps of the church towards her.

'You're over the white line and you'll have to back it up a bit. You've plenty of room.'

Morse dutifully manoeuvred the Lancia until it stood more neatly within its white box, and then wound down the window. 'Better?'

'You ought to lock your doors if you're going to stay here-two hours, remember. A lot of cars get stolen, you know.'

'Yes, I always lock-'

'It wasn't locked just now!'

'I was only seeing if…'

But the young lady had walked on, apparently unwilling to discuss her edicts further, and was writing out a sodden ticket for one of the hapless non-permit holders just a little way up the street when Morse called out to her.

'Canal Reach? Do you know it?'

She pointed back up to Canal Street. 'Round the corner. Third on the left.'

In Canal Street itself, two parking tickets, folded in cellophane containers, and stuck beneath the windscreen wipers, bore witness to the conscientious young warden's devotion to her duties; and just across the road, on the corner of Victor Street, Morse thought he saw a similar ticket on the windscreen of an incongruously large, light blue Rolls Royce. But his attention was no longer focused on the problems of parking. A sign to his left announced 'Canal Reach'; and he stopped and wondered. Wondered why exactly he was there and what (if anything) he had to say to her… The short, narrow street, with five terraced houses on either side, was rendered inaccessible to motor traffic by three concrete bollards across the entrance, and was sealed off at its far end by the gates of a boat-builder's yard, now standing open. Bicycles were propped beside three of the ten front doors, but there was little other sign of human habitation. Although it was now beginning to grow dark, no light shone behind any of the net-curtained windows, and the little street seemed drab and uninviting. These were doubtless some of the cheaper houses built for those who once had worked on the canal: two up, two down-and that was all. The first house on the left was number 1, and Morse walked down the narrow pavement, past number 3, past number 5, past number 7-and there he was, standing in front of the last house and feeling strangely nervous and undecided. Instinctively he patted the pocket of his raincoat for a packet of cigarettes, but found he must have left them in the car. Behind him, a car splashed its way along Canal Street, its sidelights already switched on.

Morse knocked, but there was no answer. Just as well, perhaps? Yet he knocked again, a little louder this time, and stood back to look at the house. The door was painted a rust-red colour, and to its right was the one downstairs window, its crimson curtains drawn across; and just above it, the window of the first-floor bedroom where- Just a minute! There was a light. There was a light here. It seemed to Morse that the bedroom door must be open, for he could see a dull glow of light coming from somewhere: coming from the other room across the landing, perhaps? Still he stood there in the drizzling rain and waited, noting as he did so the attractive brickwork of the terrace, with the red stretchers alternating in mottled effect with the grey-blue contrast of the headers.

But no one answered at the rust-red door.

Forget it? It was stupid, anyway. He'd swallowed rather too much beer at lunch-time, and the slight wave of eroticism which invariably washed over him after such mild excess had no doubt been responsible for his drive through Jericho that day… And then he thought he heard a noise from within the house. She was there. He knocked again, very [missing] now, and after waiting half a minute he tried the door. It was open.

'Hello? Anyone there?' The street door led directly into the surprisingly large downstairs room, carpeted and neatly decorated, and the camera in Morse's mind clicked and clicked again as he looked keenly around.

'Hello? Anne? Anne?'

A staircase faced him at the far left-hand corner of the room, and at the foot of the stairs he saw an expensive-looking, light brown leather jacket, lined with sheep's wool, folded over upon itself, and flecked with recent rain.

But even leaning slightly forward and straining his ears to the utmost, Morse could hear nothing. It was strange, certainly, her leaving the door unlocked like that. But then he'd just done exactly the same with his own car, had he not? He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out on to the wet pavement. The house immediately opposite to him was number 10, and he was reflecting vaguely on the vagaries of those responsible for the numbering of street houses when he thought he saw the slightest twitch of the curtains behind its upper-storey window. Perhaps he was mistaken, though… turning once more, he looked back at the house he had come to visit and his thoughts lingered longingly on the woman he would never see again…

It was many seconds later that he noticed the change: the light on the upstairs floor of number 9 was now switched off and blood began to tingle in his veins.

Chapter Two

She seemed on nodding terms with all the great, and by any standards the visit of Dame Helen, emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature, to the Oxford Book Association was an immense success. She wore her learning lightly, yet the depths of scholarship and sensitivity became immediately apparent to the large audience, as with an assurance springing from an infinite familiarity she ranged from Dante down to T. S. Eliot. The texture of the applause which greeted the end of her lecture was tight and electric, the crackling clapping of hands seeming to constitute a continuous crepitation of noise, the palms smiting each other as fast as the wings of a humming bird. Even Morse, whose applause more usually resembled the perfunctory flapping of a large crow in slow flight, was caught up in the spontaneous appreciation, and he earnestly resolved that he would make an immediate attempt to come to terms with the complexities of the Four Quartets. He ought, he knew, to come along more often to talks such as this; keep his mind sharp and fresh-a mind so often dulled these days by cigarettes and alcohol. Surely that's what life was all about? Opening doors; opening doors and peering through them-perhaps even finding the rose gardens there… What were those few lines that Dame Helen had just quoted? Once he had committed them to memory, but until tonight they had been almost forgotten:

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened.

That was writing for you! Christ, ah!

Morse recognised no one at the bar and took his beer over to the corner. He would have a couple of pints and get home reasonably early.

The siren of a police car (or was it an ambulance?) whined past outside in Walton Street, reminding him tantalizingly of the opening of one of the Chopin nocturnes. An accident somewhere, no doubt: shaken, white-faced witnesses and passengers; words slowly recorded in constables' notebooks; the white doors of the open ambulance with the glutinous gouts of dark blood on the upholstery. Ugh! How Morse hated traffic accidents!

'You look lonely. Mind if I join you?' She was a tall, slim, attractive woman in her early thirties.

'Delighted!' said a delighted Morse.

'Good, wasn't she?'

'Excellent!'

For several minutes they chatted happily about the Dame, and Morse, watching her large, vivacious eyes, found himself hoping she might not go away.

'I'm afraid I don't know you,' he said.

She smiled bewitchingly. 'I know you, though. You're Inspector Morse.'

'How-?'

'It's all right. I'm Annabel, the chairman's wife.'

'Oh.' The monosyllable was weighted flat with disappointment.

Another siren wailed its way outside on Walton Street, and Morse found himself trying to decide in which direction it was travelling. Difficult to tell though…

A few minutes later the bearded chairman pushed his way through from the crowded bar to join them. 'Ready for another drink, Inspector?'

'No-no. Let me get you one. My pleasure. What will you have-?'

'You're not getting anything, Inspector. I would have bought you a drink earlier but I had to take our distinguished speaker back to Eynsham.'

When the chairman came back with the drinks, he turned immediately to Morse. 'Bit of a traffic jam outside. Some sort of trouble down in Jericho, it seems. Police cars, ambulance, people stopping to see what's up. Still, you must know all about that sort of thing, Inspector.'

But Morse was listening no longer. He got to his feet, mumbling something about perhaps being needed; and leaving his replenished pint completely ungulped walked swiftly out of the Clarendon Press Institute.

Turning left into Richmond Road, he noticed with a curiously disengaged mind how the street lights, set on alternate sides at intervals of thirty yards, bent their heads over the street like guardsmen at a catafalque, and how the houses not directly illuminated by the hard white glow assumed a huddled, almost cowering appearance, as if somehow they feared the night. His throat was dry and suddenly he felt like running. Yet with a sense of the inevitable, he knew that he was already far too late; guessed, with a heavy heart, that probably he'd always been too late. As he turned into Canal Street-where the keen wind at the intersection tugged at his thinning hair-there, about one hundred yards ahead of him, there, beneath the looming, ominous bulk of St. Barnabas' great tower, was an ambulance, its blue light flashing in the dark, and two white police cars pulled over on to the pavement. Some three or four deep, a ring of local residents circled the entrance to the street, where a tall, uniformed policeman stood guard against the central bollard.

'I'm afraid you can't-' But then he recognised Morse. 'Sorry, sir, I didn't-'

'Who's looking after things?' asked Morse quietly.

'Chief Inspector Bell, sir.'

Morse nodded, his eyes lowered, his thoughts as tangled as his hair. He walked along Canal Reach, tapped lightly on the door of number 9, and entered.

The room seemed strangely familiar to him: the settee immediately on the right, the electric fire along the right-hand wall; then the TV set on its octagonal mahogany table, with the two armchairs facing it; on the left the heavy-looking sideboard with the plates upon it, gleaming white with cherry-coloured rings around their sides; and then the back door immediately facing him, just to the right of the stairs and exactly as he had seen it earlier that very day. All these details flashed across Morse's mind in a fraction of a second and the two sets of photographs seemed to fit perfectly. Or almost so. But before he had time to analyse his recollections, Morse was aware of a very considerable addition to the room in the form of a bulky, plainclothes man whom Morse thought he vaguely remembered seeing very recently.

'Bell's here?'

'In there, sir.' The man pointed to the back door, and Morse felt the old familiar sensation of the blood draining down to his shoulders. 'In there?' he asked feebly.

'Leads to the kitchen.'

Of course it did, Morse saw that now. And doubtless there would be a small bathroom and WC behind that, where the rear of the small house had been progressively extended down into the garden plot at the rear, like so many homes he knew. He shook his head weakly and wondered what to do or say. Oh, god! What was he to do?

'Do you want to go in, sir?'

'No-o. No. I just happened to be around here-er, at the Clarendon Institute, actually. Talk, you know. We er we've just had a talk and I just happened…'

'Nothing we can do, I'm afraid, sir.'

'Is she-is she dead?'

'Been dead a long time. The doc's in there now and he'll probably-'

'How did she die?'

'Hanged herself. Stood on a-'

'How did you hear about it?'

'Phone call-anonymous one, sir. That's about the only thing that's at all odd if you ask me. You couldn't have seen from the back unless-'

'She leave a note?'

'Not found one yet. Haven't looked much upstairs, though.' What do you do, Morse? What do you do?

'Was-er-was the front door open?'

The constable (Morse remembered him now-Detective Constable Walters) looked interested.

'Funny you should ask that, sir, because it was open. We just walked straight in-same as anybody else could've done.'

'Was that door locked?' asked Morse, pointing to the kitchen.

'No. We thought it was though, first of all. As you can see, sir, it's sagging on its hinges and what with the damp and all that it must have stuck even more. A real push, it needed!'

He took a step towards the door as though about to illustrate the aforesaid exertion, but Morse gestured him to stop. 'Have you moved anything in here?'

'Not a thing, sir-well, except the key that was on the middle of the door-mat there.'

Morse looked up sharply. 'Key?'

'Yes, sir. newish-looking sort of key. Looked as if someone had just pushed it through the letter box. It was the first thing we saw, really.'

Morse turned to go, and on the light-green Marley tiles beside the front door saw a few spots of brownish rainwater. But the black gentleman's umbrella he'd seen there earlier had gone.

'Have you moved anything here, Constable?'

'You just asked me that, sir.'

'Oh yes. I-I was just thinking er-well, you know, just thinking.'

'Sure you don't want to have a word with Chief Inspector Bell, sir?'

'No. As I say, I just happened…' Morse's words trailed off into feeble mumblings as he opened the door on to the street and stood there hesitantly over the door-sill. 'You haven't been upstairs yet, you say?'

'Well, not really, sir. You know, we just looked in-'

'Were there any lights on?'

'No, sir. Black as night up there, it was. There's two rooms leading off the little landing…'

Morse nodded. He could visualise the first-floor geography of the house as well as if he'd stayed there-as he might well have stayed there once, not all that long ago; might well have made love in one of the rooms up there himself in the arms of a woman who was now stretched out on the cold, tiled floor of the kitchen. Dead, dead, dead. And-oh Christ!-she'd hanged herself, they said. A warm, attractive, living, loving woman-and she'd hanged herself. Why? Why? Why? For Christ's sake why?

As he stood in the middle of the narrow street, Morse was conscious that his brain had virtually seized up, barely capable for the moment of putting two consecutive thoughts together. Lights were blazing behind all the windows except for that of number 10, immediately opposite, against which darkened house there stood an ancient bicycle, with a low saddle and upright handlebars, firmly chained to the sagging drainpipe. Three slow paces and Morse stood beside it, where he turned and looked up again at the front bedroom of number 9. No light, just as the constable had said. No light at all… Suddenly, Morse found himself sniffing slightly. Fish? He heard a disturbance in the canal behind the Reach as some mallard splashed down into the water. And then he turned and sniffed specifically at the cycle. Fish! Yes, quite certainly it was fish. Someone had brought some fish home from somewhere.

Morse was conscious of many eyes upon him as he edged his way through the little crowd conversing quietly with one another about the excitement of the night. He turned right to retrace his steps and spotted the telephone kiosk-empty. For no apparent reason he pulled open the stiff door and stepped inside. The floor was littered with waste paper and cigarette stubs, but the instrument itself appeared unvandalised. Picking up the receiver, he heard the buzzing tone, and was quietly replacing it when he noticed that the blue telephone directory was lying open on the little shelf to his right. His eyes were no longer as keen as they once had been, and the light was poor; but the bold black print stood out clearly along the top of the pages: Plumeridge-Pollard-Pollard-Popper. And then he saw the big capitals in the middle of the right-hand page: POLICE. And under the Police entries he could just make out the familiar details, including one that caught and held his eye: Oxford Central, St. Aldates, Oxford 49881. And there was something else, too-or was he imagining it? He sniffed closely at the open pages, and again the blood was tingling across his shoulders. He was right-he knew it! There was the smell of fish.

Morse walked away from Jericho then, across Walton Street, across Woodstock Road, and thence into Banbury Road and up to his bachelor apartment in North Oxford, where he slumped into an armchair and sat unmoving for almost an hour. He then selected the Barenboim recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto number 21, switched on the gramophone to 'play', and sought to switch his mind away from all terrestrial troubles as the etherial Andante opened. Sometimes, this way, he almost managed to forget.

But not tonight.

Chapter Three

When Constable Walters closed the door, his eyes were puzzled, and the slight frown on his forehead was perpetuated for several minutes as he recalled the strange things that Morse had asked him. He'd heard of Morse many times, of course, albeit Morse worked up at the Thames Valley HQ in Kidlington whilst he himself was attached to the City force in St. Aldates. Indeed, that very morning he'd heard Morse giving a lecture: just a little disappointing that had been, though. People said what an eccentric, irascible old sod he could be; they also said that he'd solved more murders than anyone else for many leagues around, and that the gods had blessed him with a brain that worked as swiftly and as cleanly as the lightning.

'Chief Inspector Morse was here a few minutes ago.'

Bell, a tall, black-haired man, looked across at Walters with a mixture of suspicion and distaste. 'What the 'ell did he want?'

'Nothing really, sir. He just asked-'

'What the 'ell was he doing here?'

'Said he'd been to some do at the Clarendon Institute or something. I suppose he must have heard about it.'

Bell's somewhat dour features relaxed into a hint of a grin, but he said nothing.

'Do you know him well, sir?'

'Morse? Ye-es, I suppose you could say that. We've worked together once or twice.'

'They say he's an odd sort of chap.'

'Bloody odd!' Bell shook his head slowly from side to side.

'They say he's clever, though.'

'Clever?' The tone of voice suggested that Bell was not firmly convinced of the allegation; but he was an honest man. 'Cleverest bugger I've ever met. I'm not saying he's always right, though-God, no! But he usually seems to be able to see things, I don't know, half a dozen moves ahead of most of us.'

'Perhaps he's a good chess player.'

'Morse? He's never pushed a pawn in his life! Spends most of his free time in the pubs-or listening to his beloved Wagner.'

'He never got married, did he?'

'Too lazy and selfish to be a family man, I reckon, flirt-' Bell stopped and his eyes suddenly looked sharp. 'Perhaps you'd like to tell me, would you, Walters, exactly what this sudden interest in Morse is all about?'

As well as he could remember them, Walters repeated the questions that Morse had asked him; and Bell listened in silence, his face showing no outward sign of interest or surprise. The fact of the front-door being open was certainly a bit unusual, he realized that; and there was, of course, the question of who it was who'd rung the police and how it was that he (or she?) had come to find the grim little tragedy enacted in the kitchen behind him. Still, these were early hours yet, and many things would soon be clear. And what if they weren't? It could hardly matter very much either way, for everything was so pathetically simple. She'd made a neatly womanish job of fashioning a noose from strands of household twine, fastened the end to a ceiling-hook, fixed deep into the joist above to support a clothes-rack; then stood on a cheap-looking plastic-covered stool-and hanged herself, immediately behind the kitchen door. It wasn't all that uncommon. Bell had read the reports some dozens of times: 'Death due to asphyxia caused by hanging. Verdict: suicide. And he was an experienced enough officer-a good enough one, too-to know exactly what had happened here. No note, this time; but sometimes there was, and sometimes there wasn't. Anyway, he'd not yet had the opportunity of searching the other rooms at all thoroughly; and there was every chance, especially in that back bedroom, that he'd find something to help explain it all. Just the one thing that was really worrying-just the one thing; and he was going to keep that to himself for the present. He'd said nothing to Walters about it, nothing to the police surgeon, nothing to the ambulance men-and, for the last hour, as things were slowly straightened out inside the kitchen, nothing much to himself, either. But it was very strange: how in heaven's name does a woman stand on a flimsy kitchen stool and then, at that terrible, irrevocable second of decision, kick it away from under her so that it lands, still standing four-square and upright, about two yards (well, 1.72 metres, according to his own careful measurement) from the suspended woman's left foot, itself dangling no more than a few inches above the white and orange floor-tiles? And that's where it had been, for it was Bell himself who had exerted his bulk against the sticking door, and there had been no stool immediately behind it: only a body, swaying slightly under the glaring light of the neon strip that stretched across the ceiling. A fluke, perhaps? Not that it affected matters unduly, though, since Bell was utterly convinced in his own mind (and the post-mortem held the next morning was to corroborate his conviction) that Ms. Anne Scott had died of asphyxiation caused by hanging. 'The police,' as the Oxford Mail was soon to report, 'do not suspect foul play.'

'C'mon,' said Bell, as he walked over to the narrow, carpeted stairs. 'Don't touch anything until I tell you, right? Let's just hope we find a note or something in one of the rooms. It'd pull the threads together all nice and tidy like, wouldn't it?'

Bell himself, however, was to find no suicide note in the house that evening, nor any other note in any other place on any other evening. Yet there was at least one note which Anne Scott had written on the night before she died-a note which had been duly delivered and received…

From number 10 Canal Reach, George Jackson continued to watch the house opposite. He was now 66 years old, a sparely built man, short in stature, with a sharp-featured face, and rheumy, faded-blue eyes. For forty-two years he had worked at Lucy's iron foundry in neighbouring Juxon Street and then, three years since, with the foundry's order books half empty and with little prospect of any boom in the general economy, he had accepted a moderately generous redundancy settlement, and come to live in the Reach. He had a few local acquaintances-mostly one or two of his former workmates; but no real friends. To many he appeared to exude an excessive meanness of soul, creating (as he did) the impression of being perpetually preoccupied with his own rather squalid self-interest. But he was not a particularly unpopular man, if only because he was good with his hands and had undertaken a good many little odd jobs for his Jericho neighbours; and if the charges he made were distinctly on the steep side, nevertheless he was punctual, passably expeditious, and quite certainly satisfactory in his workmanship.

He was a fisherman, too.

Although he seldom drank much, Jackson stood at the back of his darkened front room that evening with a half-bottle of Teacher's whisky on the cupboard beside him and a tiny, grimy glass in his right hand. He had seen the police arrive: first two of them; then a doctor-looking man with a bag; then two other policemen; and after them a middle-aged man wearing a raincoat, a man with windswept, thinning hair, who was almost certainly a policeman, too, since he'd been admitted readily enough through the front door of the house opposite. A man Jackson had seen before. He'd seen him that very afternoon, and he felt more than a little puzzled… After that there'd been the ambulance men; then a good deal of activity with the lights throughout the house flicking on and off, and on and off again. And still he watched, slowly sipping the unwatered whisky and feeling far more relaxed, far less anxious than he'd felt a few hours earlier. Had anyone seen him?-that was his one big worry. But even that was now receding, and in any case he'd fabricated a neat enough little lie to cover himself.

It was 3 a.m. before the police finally left, and although the whisky bottle had long since been drained Jackson maintained his static vigil, his slow-moving mind mulling over many things. He felt hungry, and on a plate in the kitchen behind him lay the fish he'd caught that morning. But when at last he could see no further point in staying where he was, the two rainbow trout remained untouched and he climbed the stairs to the front bedroom, where he pulled the flimsy floral-patterned curtains, jerking them into an ill-fitting overlap across the window, before kneeling down by his bed, putting his hand beneath it, and sliding out a large pile of glossy, pornographic magazines. Then he slipped his hand still further beneath the bed-and drew out something else.

Earlier that same evening, in a posh-addressed and well-appointed bungalow on the outskirts of Abingdon, Mrs. Celia Richards at last heard the crunch of gravel as the car drove up to the double garage. He was very late, and the chicken casserole had long been ready.

'Hello, darling. Sorry I'm so late. God. What a foul evening!'

'You might have let me know you were going to be-'

'Sorry, darling. Just said so, didn't I?' He sat down opposite her, reached to his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

'You're not going to smoke just before we eat, surely?'

'All right.' He pushed a cigarette carefully back into its packet and stood up. 'Time for a quick drink though, isn't there, darling? I'll get them. What's yours? The usual?'

Celia suddenly felt a little more relaxed and-yes!-almost happy to see him again; felt a little guilty, too, for she had already drunk a couple of jumbo gins herself.

'You sit down, Charles, and have that cigarette. I'll get the drinks.' She forced herself to smile at him, fetched another gin for herself, a whisky for her husband, and then sat down once more.

'You see Conrad today?'

Charles Richards looked preoccupied and tired as he repeated the word absently: 'Conrad?'

'Isn't it the duty of your dear little brother Conrad, as co-partner in your dear little company-?'

'Conrad.' Sorry, yes, darling. I'm a bit whacked, that's all. Conrad's fine, yes. Sends his love, as always. Enjoyed his trip, he said. But the meeting finished at lunchtime-well, the formal part of it-and then I had some er some rather delicate business to see to. That Swedish contract-you remember me telling you about it?'

Celia nodded vaguely over her gin and said nothing. Her momentary euphoria was already dissipated, and with a blank look of resignation she sank back into her armchair, an attractive, smartly dressed, and wealthy woman on whom the walls were slowly closing in. She knew, with virtual certainty, that Charles had been unfaithful to her in the past: it was an instinctive feeling-utterly inexplicable-but she felt she almost always knew. Had he been with another woman today? Dear God, could she be wrong about it all? Suddenly she felt almost physically sick with worry again: so many worries, and none greater than her awareness that she herself was quite certainly the cause of some of Charles's orgiastic escapades. Sex meant virtually nothing to her-never had-and for various reasons the pair of them had never seriously considered having children. Probably too late now, anyway, with her thirty-eighth birthday shortly coming up…

Charles had finished his whisky and she went out to the kitchen to serve the evening meal. But before she took the casserole out of the oven she saw the gentleman's black umbrella, opened and resting tentatively on two fragile points, in the broad passageway that led to the rear door. The place for that (Charles could be so very fussy about some things!) was in the back of the Rolls-just as the place for her own little red one was in the back of the Mini. She furled the umbrella, walked quietly through into the double garage, flicked on the lights, opened a rear door of the Rolls, and placed the umbrella along the top of the back seats. Then she looked around quickly in the front of the car, sliding her hands down the sides of the beige leather upholstery, and looking into the two glove-compartments-both unlocked. Nothing. Not even the slightest trace of any scented lady lingering there.

It was almost half-past eight when they finished their meal-a meal during which Celia had spoken not a single word. Yet so many, many thoughts were racing madly round and round her mind. Thoughts that gradually centred specifically around one person: around Conrad Richards, her brother-in-law.

It was three-quarters of an hour later that someone had rung the Police in St. Aldates and told them to go to Jericho.

Chapter Four

At exactly the same time that Bell and Walters were climbing the stairs in Canal Reach, Edward Murdoch, the younger of the two Murdoch brothers, was leaning back against his pillow with the light from his bedside table-lamp focused on the book he held in his hand: The Short Stories of Franz Kafka. Edward's prowess in German was not as yet distinguished and his interest in the language (until so recently) was only minimal; but during the previous summer term a spark of belated enthusiasm had been kindled-kindled by Ms. Anne Scott. Earlier in the evening he had been planning the essay he had to write on Das Urteil, but he needed (he knew) to look more closely at the text itself before committing himself to print; and now he had just finished re-reading the fifteen pages which comprised that short story. His eyes lingered on the last brief paragraph-so extraordinarily vivid and memorable as now he saw it: In diesem Augenblick ging uber die Brucke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr. In his mind the familiar words slipped fairly easily from German into English: 'In this moment there went across the bridge a' (he had difficulty over that geradezu in its context and omitted it) 'a continuous flow of traffic.' Phew! That was while the hero (hero?) of the story was hanging by his faltering fingertips from the parapet, determined upon and destined for his death by suicide, whilst the rest of the world, unknowing and uncaring, passed him by, driving straight on across- Ah, yes! That was the point of geradezu, surely? He pencilled a note in the margin and closed the slim, orange volume, a cheap white envelope (its brief note still inside) serving to mark the notes at the back of the text. He put the book down on the table beside him, pressed the light-switch off, lay on his back, and allowed his thoughts to hover in the magic circle of the night…

It was Anne Scott who dominated and monopolized those thoughts. His elder brother, Michael, had told him one or two stories about her, but surely he'd been exaggerating and romanticizing everything? It was often difficult to believe what Michael said, and in this particular case quite out of the question until-until last week, that was. And for the hundredth encore Edward Murdoch re-enacted in his mind those few erotic moments…

The door had been locked the previous Wednesday afternoon, and that was most unusual. With no bell to ring, he had at first tapped gently in a pusillanimous attempt to make her hear. Then he had rapped more sharply with his knuckles against the upper panel and, with a childlike surge of relief, he was aware of a stirring of activity within. A minute later he heard the scrape of the key in the lock and the noisy twang as the key was turned-and then he saw her there.

'Edward! Come in! Oh dear, I must have overslept for hours.' Her hair, usually piled up high on the top of her head, was resting on her shoulders, and she wore a long, loose-fitting dressing-gown, its alternating stripes of black, beige, brown, and white reminding Edward vaguely of the dress of some Egyptian queen. But it was her face that he noticed: radiant, smiling-and somehow almost expectant, as if she was so pleased to see him. Him! She fussed for a further second or two with her hair before standing back to let him in.

'Come upstairs, Edward. I shan't be a minute.' She laid her hand lightly on his arm and shepherdessed him up the stairs and into the back bedroom (the 'study', as she called it) where side by side they invariably sat at the roll-top desk while Edward ploughed his wobbling furrows through the fields of German literature. She came into the study with him now and, as she bent forward to turn on the electric fire, the front of her dressing-gown gaped wantonly open awhile, and he could see that she was naked beneath it. His thoughts clambered over one another in erotic confusion and the back of his mouth was like the desert as she left him there and walked across the little landing to the front bedroom.

She had been gone for two or three minutes when he heard her.

'Edward? Edward?'

Her bedroom door was half open, and the boy stood beside it, hesitant and gauche, until she spoke again.

'Come in. I'm not going to bite you, am I?'

She was standing, with her back towards him, at the foot of a large double-bed, folding a light-grey skirt round her waist, and for some inconsequential reason Edward was always to remember the inordinately large safety-pin fixed vertically at its hem. With her hands at her waist, tucking, fastening, buckling, he was also to remember her, in those few moments, for a far more obvious cause: above the skirt her body was completely bare, and as she turned her head towards him, he could see the swelling of her breast.

'Be a darling and nip down to the kitchen, will you, Edward? You'll find a bra on the clothes-rack-I washed it out last night. Bring it up, will you?'

As he walked down the stairs like some somnambulant zombie, Edward heard her voice again. 'The black one!' And when he returned to her room she turned fully towards him still naked above the waist, and smiled gratefully at him as he stood there, his eyes seemingly mesmerized as he stared at her.

'Haven't you seen a woman's body before? Now you be a good boy and run along-I'll join you when I've done my hair.'

Somehow he had struggled through that next three-quarters of an hour, fighting to wrench his thoughts away from her, and seeking with all his powers to come to grips with Kafka's tale Das Urteil; and he could still recall how movingly she'd dwelt upon that final, awesome, terrifying sentence…

He turned over on to his right side and his thoughts moved forward to the present, to the day that even now was dying as the clock ticked on to midnight. It had been a huge disappointment, of course, to find the note. The first of the household to arise, he had boiled the kettle, made himself two slices of toast, and listened to the 7 a.m. news bulletin on Radio 4. At about twenty past seven the clatter of the front letter-box told him that The Times had been pushed through; and when he went to fetch it he'd seen the small white envelope, face upwards, lying in the middle of the door-mat. It was unusually early for the mail to have been delivered, and in any case he could see immediately that the envelope bore no stamp. Picking it up he found that it was addressed to himself; and sticking an awkward forefinger under the sealed flap he opened it and read the few words written on the flimsy sheet inside.

And now, as he turned over once again, his mind wandered back to those words, and he eased himself up on his arm, pressed the switch on the bedside lamp, slid the envelope out of the textbook, and read that brief message once more:

Dear Edward,

I'm sorry but I shan't be able to see you for our usual lesson today. Keep reading Kafka-you'll discover what a great man he was.

Good luck!

Yours, Anne (Scott)

He had never called her 'Anne'-always 'Miss Scott', and always slightly over-emphasizing the 'Miss', since he was not at all in favour of the 'Ms.' phenomenon; and even if he had been he would have felt self-conscious about pronouncing that ugly, muzzy monosyllable. Should he be bold next week-and call her 'Anne'? Next week… Had he been slightly brighter he might have been puzzled by that 'today', perhaps. Had he been slightly older than his seventeen years, he might, too, have marked the ominous note in that strangely final-sounding valediction. He might even have wondered whether she was thinking of going away somewhere: going away-perhaps for ever. As it was, he turned off the light and soon sank into a not-unpleasing slumber.

Morse awoke at 7.15 a.m. the following morning feeling taut and unrefreshed; and half an hour later, in front of the shaving-mirror, he said 'Bugger!' to himself. His car, he suddenly remembered, was still standing in the court of the Clarendon Institute, and he had to get out to Banbury by 9 a.m. There were two possibilities: he could either catch a bus down into Oxford; or he could ring Sergeant Lewis. He rang Sergeant Lewis.

To Morse's annoyance, he found that a sticker had been obstinately glued to the Lancia's windscreen, completely obscuring the driver's view. It was an official notice, subscribed by the Publisher of the Oxford University Press:

This is private property and you have no right to leave your vehicle here. Please remove it immediately. Note has been taken of your vehicle's registration number, and the Delegacy of the Press will not hesitate to initiate proceedings for trespass against you should you again park your vehicle within the confines of this property without official authorization.

It was Lewis, of course, who had to scrape it off, whilst Morse asked vaguely, though only once, if he could do anything to help. Yet even now Morse's mind was tossing as ceaselessly as the sea, and it was at this very moment that there occurred to him an extraordinarily interesting idea.

Chapter Five

Detective Constable Walters had been impressed by Bell's professionalism after the finding of Anne Scott. The whole grisly gamut of procedures had been handled with a quiet and practised authority, from the initial handling of the swinging corpse through to the post-mortem and inquest arrangements. And Walters admired professionalism.

Upstairs in the two small bedrooms of 9 Canal Reach, Bell had shown (as it seemed to Walters) an enviable competence in sifting the relevant from the irrelevant and in making a few immediate decisions. The bed in the front room had not, it appeared, been slept in during the previous night, and after a quick look through the drawers of the dressing table and the wardrobe Bell had concluded that there was nothing there to detain him further. In the back room, however, he had stayed much longer. In the two bottom right-hand drawers of the roll-top desk they had found piles of letters in a state of moderate-though far from chaotic-confusion. At a recent stage, it appeared, Anne Scott had made an effort to sort some of the letters into vaguely definable categories and to tie them into separate bundles, since the bank statements from the previous two and a half years, conjoined with her mortgage receipts and electricity bills, were neatly stacked together and fastened with stout household twine, rather too thick for its modest purpose.

'Recognize that, Walters?' Bell had asked quietly, flicking his finger under the knot.

Two or three loops of the twine, also knotted, were to be seen loose amongst the scores and scores of envelopes, as though perhaps Ms. Scott had recently been searching through the pre-tied bundles for some specific letters. Almost an hour had been spent on these two drawers, but Bell had finally left everything where it was. It was under the cover of the roll-top desk that he had found the only three items that held his attention: a recently dated letter headed from a Burnley address and subscribed 'Mum'; an address book; and a desk diary for the current year. Bell had looked through the address book with considerable care, but had finally laid it back on the desk without comment. The desk diary, however, he had handed to Walters.

'Should be helpful, my son!'

He had pointed to the entry for Tuesday, 2 October: 'Summertown Bridge Club 8 p.m.'; and then to the single entry for the following day, Wednesday, 3 October-the day that Anne Scott had died. The entry read: 'E.M. 2.30'.

When Walters reported to Bell on the Friday morning of the same week, he felt he'd done a good job. And so did Bell, for the picture was now pretty clear.

Anne Scott had been the only child of the Revd. Thomas Enoch Scott, a minister in the Baptist Church (deceased some three and a half years previously) and Mrs. Grace Emily Scott, presently living in Burnley. At the time of Anne's birth and throughout her childhood, the family had lived in Rochdale, where young Anne had been a pupil at Rochdale Grammar School, and where she had shown considerable academic prowess, culminating in her gaining a place at Lady Margaret Hall to read Modern Languages. Then the cream had turned sour. At Oxford, Anne had met a fellow undergraduate, a Mr. John Westerby, had fallen in love with him, fallen into bed with him, and apparently forgotten to exercise any of her contraceptual options. The Revd. Thomas, mortified by his beloved child's unforgivable lapse, had refused to have anything whatsoever to do with the affair, and had dogmatically maintained to the end his determination never to see his daughter again; never to recognise the existence of any child conceived in such fathoms of fornication. Anne had attended the funeral service when her father's faithful soul had solemnly been ushered into the joyous company of the saints, and she had been corresponding regularly with her mother since that time, occasionally travelling up to Lancashire to see her. Anne and John had been married at a register office, she 19, he 20; and then, almost immediately it seemed, they had left Oxford at the beginning of one long summer vac-no one knowing where they went-and when Anne returned some three and a half months later she told her few friends that she and John had separated. The gap of the lost months could be filled in only with guesswork, but Walters suggested (and Bell agreed) that the time was probably spent touting some back-street abortionist, followed by miserable weeks of squabble and regret, and finally by a mutual acceptance of their incompatibility as marriage partners. After that, Anne's career had been easy to trace and (in Walters' view) unexceptional to record. John Westerby was more of a mystery, though. A Barnado boy who had made good (or at least started to make good) he had not finished his degree in Geography, and after the break-up of his marriage had lived in a succession of dingy digs in the Cowley Road area, carrying on a variety of jobs ranging from second-hand car salesman to insurance agent. He was well-liked by his landladies, popular enough with the girls, generous with his money; but also somewhat withdrawn, a little unpredictable, and-according to two former employers whom Walters had interviewed-almost totally lacking in drive or ambition. Anyway, that was all hearsay now, for John Westerby, too, was dead. He had been killed just over a year ago in a car crash on the Oxford-Bicester road-one of those accidents where it was difficult to apportion blame, although the inquest findings revealed that the quantity of beer in Westerby's belly placed him just beyond the limits of statutory sobriety. Unlike the young male driver of the other car, he had not been wearing his safety-belt-and his head had gone straight through the windscreen. Finis.

'Type it all up,' said Bell. 'Nobody'll read it-but get it typed. There's not much else we can do.'

Bell had a busy day ahead of him. Two more burglaries overnight, one a wholesale clear-out in North Oxford; an appearance before the magistrates' court in half an hour's time; lunch with the Chairman of Oxford United to discuss the recurring hooliganism of the club's ill-christened 'supporters'; and a good deal of unfinished business from the past week. No, he could hardly feel justified in allowing young Walters to worry much more about what might have happened many years ago to a woman who had just put herself out of whatever misery she was in. Anyway, Bell had a secret respect for suicides… But he couldn't just leave things where they were, he knew that. There was the inquest to think about. Why had she done it?-that would be the question nagging away in the minds behind those saddened, tense, and self-recriminating faces. Oh dear! It was always the same old questions. Was there anything that was worrying her? Anything at all? Health troubles? Money troubles? Sex troubles? Family troubles? Any bloody troubles? And the answer to most of these questions was always the same, too: it was 'yes', 'yes', 'yes', and so they all said 'no', 'no', 'no', because it seemed so much the kinder way. Bell shook his head sadly at his own thoughts. The real mystery to him was why so many of them thought fit to soldier on. He got up and lifted his overcoat from the hook behind the door.

'Any luck with "E.M."?'

'No, sir,' said Walters, with obvious disappointment. That Anne Scott had taken in several private pupils each week had been made perfectly clear to him, but there seemed to have been an ad hoc acceptance of fees in cash for the tutorials rendered. Certainly there was no formal record of names and receipts of monies, and doubtless the tax-man was far from well informed about the scope of Anne's activities. The neighbours had spoken of various visitors, usually young, usually with books, and almost always with bicycles. But such visits appeared to have been somewhat spasmodic, and none of the neighbours could promise to recognise any of the callers again, let alone recall their names. Pity! Walters was slowly coming to terms with the sheer volume of work associated with even the most mundane inquiries; beginning, too, to appreciate the impossibility of following up every little clue. Yet, all the same, he would have been much gratified to have come up with a name (if it was a name) for those tantalising initials.

He found Bell looking at him with a half-smile on his lips.

'Forget it, Walters! It was probably the electricity man And just let me tell you one thing, my lad. That woman committed suicide-you can take the word of a man who's been finding 'em like that for the last twenty years. There is no way, no way, in which that suicide could have been rigged-have you got that? So. What are we left with? Why she did it, all right? Well, we may learn a few things at the inquest, but I doubt we're ever going to know for certain. It's usually cumulative, you know. A bit of disappointment and worry over this and that, and you sort of get a general feeling of depression about life that you just can't shake off, and sometimes you feel why the hell should you try to shake it off anyway.' Bell shrugged on his coat and stood holding the doorhandle. 'And don't you go running around with the idea that life's some wonderfully sacred thing, my lad-because it ain't. There's thousands of unborn kids lying around in abortion clinics, and every second-every second, so they tell me-some poor little sod somewhere round the globe gets its merciful release from hunger. There's floods and earthquakes and disease and plane crashes and car crashes and people killed in wars and shot in prisons and- Agh! Just don't feel too surprised, that's all, if you come across one or two people who find life's a bit too much for 'em, all right? This woman of yours probably put her bank balance on some horse at ten-to-one and it came past the post at twenty-to-six!'

Walters didn't see the joke, although he took the general drift of Bell's philosophy. Would Morse though (he wondered) not have been slightly more anxious to probe more deeply?

'You're not too worried about that chair in the-?'

The telephone rang on the desk, and whilst the outside call was switched through, Bell put his hand over the mouthpiece.

'I'm not worried about anything. But if you are, you go and do something about it. And find me one or two people for the inquest, lad, while you're about it.'

At that point, as Walters walked out into the bright, cold air of St. Aldates, he had not the remotest notion of the extraordinary sequence of events which was soon to unfold itself.

Chapter Six

Walters returned to Canal Reach at 2 p.m. the same day. It was the brief conversation with Morse that had given him the idea, and over a pint and a pork pie he had decided on his first move. Although he had already spoken to most of the residents in the Reach, he now knocked once again at the door of number 7, the house immediately adjacent to number 9.

'I just wondered whether Ms. Scott ever left a key with you, Mrs. Purvis,' he asked of the little, grey-haired widow who stood in the slit of the hall-here leading directly to the staircase.

'Well, as a matter of fact she did, yes. Left it about a year ago, she did. I always keeps it in me little pot on the- Just a minute, me dear.'

Mrs. Purvis retreated through one of the doors that led off the hall to the downstairs rooms, and returned with a key which Walters took from her and examined with interest.

'Did she ever ask you for it?'

'No, she didn't. But I know she were locked out once, poor soul, and it's always just as well to have a fall-back, isn't it? I remember once…' Walters nodded understandingly as the old girl recalled some bygone incident from the unremarkable history of the Purvis household.

'Do you remember how many keys you had when you came here?'

'Just the two, me dear.'

Was Walters imagining things, or did Mrs. Purvis seem rather more nervous than when he had interviewed her the day before? Imagining things, he decided, as he took his leave of her and walked along Canal Street to Great Clarendon Street where, turning left, he could see the sandstone, temple-like church of St. Paul's, its fluted columns supporting the classical portico, facing him at the far end on the other side of Walton Street. Yes, he'd been right, and he felt pleased with himself for remembering. There it was, the corner shop he'd been looking for, only twenty-odd yards up the street on the left: A. Grimes, Locksmith.

The proprietor himself, surrounded by a comprehensive array of keys, locks, and burglar-alarm devices, sat behind a yellow-painted counter sorting out into various boxes a selection of metal and plastic numerals such as are used for the numbering of street houses. Putting a large, white '9' into its appropriate box, he extended a dirt-ingrained hand as Walters introduced himself.

'You cut quite a lot of extra keys, I suppose?'

Grimes nodded cautiously, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses slightly further up his porous-looking nose. 'Steady old line, that sort of thing, officer. People are forever losin' 'em.'

Walters held out the three keys now in his possession: the one (that found on the cupboard-top just inside Anne Scott's lounge) a dull, chocolate-brown in colour; the other two of newish, light-grey gun-metal, neither of them looking as if it had often performed its potential function.

'You think you cut those two?' asked Walters, nodding to the newer keys.

'Could've done, I suppose.' The locksmith hesitated a moment. 'From Canal Reach, officer? Number 9, perhaps?'

'Perhaps.'

'Well, I did then.'

'You've got a record of doing the job?'

The man's eyes were guarded. 'Very doubtful, I should think, after all this time. It must have been eighteen months, coupla years ago. She locked herself out one day and came in to ask for help. So I went down there and opened up for her-and I suggested that she had a couple more keys cut.'

'A couple, you say?'

'That's it.'

'I suppose most of the people round here have two to start with, don't they?'

'Most of 'em.'

'So she finished up with four,' said Walters slowly.

'Let's say that one time or another she had four different keys in her possession. Wouldn't that be slightly more accurate, officer?'

Walters was beginning to dislike the man. 'Nothing else you can tell me?'

'Should there be?'

'No, I'm sure there shouldn't.'

But as Walters was halfway through the door, the locksmith decided that there might be a little more to tell after all. 'I shouldn't be surprised if somebody else in the Reach knows something about those keys.'

'Really. Who-?'

But the locksmith had no further need of words. His right hand selected one of the numerals from the boxes in front of him, his left hand another. Then, like an international judge at a skating championship, he held his arms just above his head, and the number thus signalled was 10.

Walters walked thoughtfully back to Canal Reach and let himself into number 9 with the key that Mrs. Purvis had kept for her neighbour. It slipped easily into the socket and the tongue of the lock sprang across with a smooth but solid twang. He walked through into the kitchen, every detail of death now removed, and looked out on to the narrow back garden, where he noticed that the wall fronting the canal had recently (very recently, surely?) been repaired, with thirty or so new rosy-red bricks and half a dozen coping stones-all most professionally pointed. Then he went upstairs into the front bedroom and looked around quietly, keeping as far as he could from the line of the curtainless window. The bed was just as he had seen it before, neatly made, with the edge of the purple quilt running uniformly parallel about three inches from the floor. Would Morse have noticed anything here, he wondered? Then he suddenly stepped boldly right in front of the window-and saw what he was half expecting to see. The floral curtains of the bedroom across in number 10 had moved, albeit very slightly, and Walters felt quite sure that the room in which he stood was under a steady and proximate surveillance. He smiled to himself as he looked more closely at the houses opposite-brick-built, slate-roofed, sash-windowed, with square chimneys surmounted by stumpy, yellow pots. No tunnel-backs to the houses, and so the bicycles had to be left outside: like the bicycle just opposite. Yes… perhaps it was high time to pay a brief call at number 10, one of only two houses in the Reach at which he'd received no answer to his knocks the day before.

The door was opened almost immediately. 'Yes?'

'I'm a police officer, Mr. er-?'

'Jackson. Mr. Jackson.'

'Mind if I come in for a minute or two, Mr. Jackson?'

Here the ground floor of the house had (as at number 9) been converted into one large, single room, but in comparison it seemed crowded and dingy, with fishing paraphernalia-rods, baskets, keep-nets, boxes of hooks, and dirty-sided buckets-providing the bulk of the untidy clutter. Removing a copy of The Angler's Times, Walters sat down in a grubby, creaking armchair and asked Jackson what he knew about the woman who had lived opposite for the past two years.

'Not much really. Nice woman-always pleasant-but I never knew her personally, like.'

'Did she ever leave her key with you?'

Was there a glimmer of fright in those small, suspicious eyes? Walters wasn't sure, but he felt a little surprised at the man's hesitant reaction; even more surprised at his reply.

'As a matter of fact she did, yes. I do a few little jobs, you know-round about, like-and I did one or two things for Miss Scott.'

'She used to let you have a key for that?'

'Well, you see, she wasn't always in in the afternoons-and with me, well, not in much in the mornings, like-so I'd let meself in if-'

'Was it you who did the brick-work?'

There was no fright this time-Walters was sure of that-and perhaps he'd been wrong earlier. After all, most of the public get a little flustered when the police start questioning them.

'You saw that?' Jackson's ratty-featured face was creased with pleasure. 'Neat little job, wasn't it?'

'When did you do that?'

'This week-Monday and Tuesday afternoons it was-not a big job-about four or five hours, that's all.'

'You finished Tuesday afternoon?'

'That's right-you can ask Mrs. Purvis if you don't believe me. She was out the back when I was just finishing off, and I remember her saying what a nice and neat little job it was, like. You ask her!' The man's small eyes were steady and almost confident now.

'You've still got the key?'

Jackson shook his head. 'Miss Scott asked me to give it back to her when I'd finished and-'

'You gave it back to her, then?'

'Well, not exactly, no. She was there on the Tuesday afternoon and while she paid me, like, it must have slipped me memory-and hers, as well. But I remembered on the Wednesday, see. I'd been fishing in the morning and I got back about-oh, I don't know-some time in the afternoon, so I nipped over and-'

'You did?' Walters felt strangely excited.

'-just stuck it through the letter box.'

'Oh.' It was all as simple and straightforward as that, then; and Walters suspected he'd been getting far too sophistical about the key business. Could Jackson clear up one or two other things, as well, perhaps? 'Was the door unlocked, do you remember?'

Jackson closed his eyes for a few moments, inclining his head as though pondering some mighty problem. 'I didn't try it, I don't think. As I say, I just stuck-'

'What time was that, do you say?'

'I-I can't remember. Let's see, I must have slipped across there about-it must have been about half-past… No, I just can't seem to remember. When you're out fishing, you know, you lose all track of time, really.' Then Jackson looked up with a more obvious flash of intelligence in his eyes. 'Perhaps one or two of the neighbours might have seen me, though? Might be worth asking round, mightn't it?'

'You mean people here tend to er to pry on what all the others are doing?' Walters had chosen his words carefully, and he could see that his point had registered.

'Only a tiny little street, isn't it? It's difficult not to-'

'What I meant was, Mr. Jackson, that perhaps-perhaps you might have seen someone-someone else-going over to number 9 when you got back from your fishing.'

'Trouble is,' Jackson hesitated, 'one day seems just like any other when you're getting on a bit like I am.'

'It was only two days ago, you know.'

'Ye-es. And I think you're right. I can't be sure of the time and all that, like-but there-was someone. It was just after I'd nipped over, I think-and-yes! I'm pretty sure it was. I'd just been up to the shop for a few things-and then I saw someone go in there. Huh! I reckon I'd have forgotten all about it if-'

'This person just walked in?'

'That's it. And then a few minutes later walked out.'

Phew! Things had taken an oddly interesting turn, and Walters pressed on eagerly. 'Would you recognise him-it was a man, you say?'

Jackson nodded. 'I didn't know him-never seen him before.'

'What was he like?'

'Middle-age, sort of-raincoat he had on, I remember-no hat-getting a bit bald, I reckon.'

'And you say you'd never seen him before?'

'No.'

Walters was getting very puzzled, and he needed time to think about this new evidence. In a few seconds, however, his puzzlement was to be overtaken by an astonished perplexity, for Jackson proceeded to add a gloss on that categorically spoken 'no'.

'I reckon I seen him later, though.'

'You what?'

'I reckon I seen him later, I said. He went in there again while you was there, officer. About quarter past ten, I should think it was. You must have seen him because you let him in yourself, if me memory serves me right. Must have been a copper, I should think, wasn't he?'

After Walters had left, Jackson sat in his back kitchen drinking a cup of tea and feeling that the interview had been more than satisfactory. He hadn't been at all sure about whether he should have mentioned that last bit, but now he felt progressively happier that he had in fact done so. His plan was being laid very carefully, but just a little riskily; and the more he could divert suspicion on to others, the better it would be. How glad he was he'd kept that key! At one point he'd almost chucked it into the canal-and that would have been a mistake, perhaps. As it was he'd just 'stuck it through the letter box'-exactly the words he'd used to the constable. And it was the truth, too! Telling the truth could be surprisingly valuable. Sometimes.

Chapter Seven

The recently formed Summertown Bridge Club had advertised itself (twice already in the Oxford Times and intermittently in the windows of the local newsagents) as the heaven-sent answer to those hundreds of residents in North Oxford who had played the game in the past with infinite enjoyment but with rather less than infinite finesse, and who were now a little reluctant to join one of the city's more prestigious clubs, where conversation invariably hinged on trump-coups and squeezes, where county players could always be expected round the tables, and where even the poorest performer appeared to have the enviable facility of remembering all the fifty-two cards at a time. The club was housed in Middle Way, a road of eminently desirable residences which runs parallel to the Banbury Road and to the west of it, linking Squitchey Lane with South Parade. Specifically, it was housed at a large white-walled residence, with light-blue doors and shutters, some half-way down that road, where lived the chairman of the club (who also single-handedly fulfilled the functions of its secretary, treasurer, hostess, and general organiser), a gay and rather gaudy widow of some sixty-five summers who went by the incongruously youthful name of Gwendola Briggs and who greeted Detective Constable Walters effusively under the mistaken impression that she had a new-and quite handsome-recruit to a clientele that was predominantly (much too predominantly!) female. Never mind, though! A duly identified Walters was anxious, it seemed, to talk about the club, and Gwendola, as publicity agent, was more than glad to talk about it. Ms. Scott ('She wore a ring, though,') had been a member for about six months. She was quite a promising, serious-minded player ('You can never play bridge flippantly, you know, Constable.'), and her bidding was improving all the time. What a tragedy it all was! After a few years (who knows?) she might have developed into a very good player indeed. It was her actual playing of the cards that sometimes wasn't quite as sharp as… Still, that was neither here nor there, now, was it? As she'd said, it was such a tragedy. Dear, oh dear! Who would ever have thought it? Such a surprise. No. She'd no idea at all of what the trouble could have been. Tuesday was always their night, and poor Anne ('Poor Anne!') had hardly ever missed. They started at about 8 p.m. and very often played through until way past midnight-sometimes (the chairman almost smiled) until 3 or 4 a.m. Sixteen to twenty of them, usually, although one quite disastrous night they'd only had nine. ('Nine,-Constable!') Anne had moved round the tables a bit, but (Gwendola was almost certain) she must have been playing the last rubber with Mrs. Raven ('The Ravens of Squitchey Lane, d'you know them?'), old Mr. Parkes ('Poor Mr. Parkes!') from Woodstock Road, and young Miss Edgeley ('Such a scatterbrain!') from Summertown House.

Walters took down the addresses and walked across the paved patio towards the front gate with the strong impression that the ageing Gwendola was far more concerned about the re-filling of an empty seat at a green baize table than about the tragic death of an obviously enthusiastic and faithful member of the club. Perhaps even such modest stakes as tuppence a hundred tended to make you mean deep down in the soul; perhaps with all those slams and penalty points and why-didn't-you-play-so-and-so, a bridge club was hardly the happiest breeding-ground for any real compassion and kindliness. Walters was glad he didn't play.

It was not a good start, for Miss Catharine Edgeley was away from home. The young, attractive brunette who shared the flat informed Walters that Cathy had left Oxford that same morning after receiving a telegram from Nottingham: her mother was seriously ill. Declining the offer of a cup of tea, Walters asked only a few perfunctory questions.

'Where does Miss Edgeley work?'

'She's an undergraduate at Brasenose.'

'Do they have women there?'

'They've always had women at Brasenose, haven't they?' said the brunette slowly.

But Walters missed the second joke of the day, and drove down to Squitchey Lane, where he received from Mrs. Raven an inordinately long and totally unhelpful account of the bridge evening; and thence to Woodstock Road, where he received from Mr. Parkes an extremely brief but also totally unhelpful account of the same proceedings. So that was that.

As it happened Walters had been unusually unlucky that day. But life can sometimes be a cussed business, and even a policeman with a considerably greater endowment of nous than Walters possessed must hope for a few lucky breaks here and there. And, indeed, Walters was no one's fool. As he lay beside his young wife in Kidlington that night, there were several points that now appeared clear to him. Bell was quite right-there was no doubt about it: the Scott woman had hanged herself, albeit for reasons as yet unapparent. But there were several fishy (fishy?) aspects about the affair. The bridge evening (evening?) had finally finished at about 2.45 a.m., and almost certainly Anne Scott had gone home shortly after that. How, though? Got a lift with someone? In a taxi? On a bicycle? (He'd forgotten to put the point to the garish Gwendola.) And then something had gone sadly wrong. Time of death could not be firmly established, but the medical report suggested she had been dead at least ten hours before the police arrived, and that meant… But Walters wasn't quite sure what it meant. Then again there was the business of the front door being left open. Why? Had she forgotten to lock it? Unlikely, surely. Had someone else unlocked it, then? If so, the key on the inside must first have been removed. Wasn't that much more likely, though? He himself always took the key out of his own front door and placed it by the telephone on the hall table. Come to think of it, he wasn't quite sure why he did it. Just habit, perhaps. Three keys… three keys… and one of them must have opened that door. And if it wasn't Anne Scott herself and if it wasn't Mrs. Purvis… Jackson! What if Jackson had gone in, unlocking the door with his own key, called out for Ms. Scott, heard no reply, and so walked through-into the kitchen! Jackson would know all about that sticking door because he'd been through it at least twice on each of the two previous days. And what if… what if he'd… Yes! The chair must have been in the way and he would almost certainly have knocked it over as he pushed the door inwards… would probably have picked it up and placed it by the kitchen table before turning round and- Phew! That would explain it all, wouldn't it? Well, most of it. Yet why, if that had happened, hadn't Jackson phoned the police immediately? There was a phone there, in number 9. Had Jackson felt guilty about something? Had there been something-money, perhaps?-in the kitchen that his greedy soul had coveted? It must have been something like that. Then, of course, there was that other mystery: Morse! For it must have been Morse whom Jackson had seen there that day. What on earth was he doing there earlier in the afternoon? Was he taking German lessons? Walters thought back to those oddly tentative, yet oddly searching questions that Morse had asked that night. 'Is she-is she dead?' Morse had asked him. Just a minute! How on earth…? Had one of the policemen outside mentioned who it was they'd found? But no one could have done, for there was no one else who knew… Suddenly Walters shot bolt upright, jumped out of bed, slipped downstairs, and with fingers all thumbs, riffled through the telephone directory until he came to the Ms. Rubbing his eyes with disbelief he stared again and again at the entry he'd been looking for: 'Morse, E., 45 The Flats, Banbury Road'. Morse! 'E.M. M. Was it Morse who'd been expected that afternoon? Steady on, though! There were a thousand and one other people with those initials-of course there were. But Morse had been there that afternoon-Walters was now quite sure in his own mind of that. It all fitted. Those questions he'd asked about doors and locks and lights-yes, he'd been there, alright. Now if Morse had a key and if he, not Jackson, had found his way through into the kitchen… Why hadn't he reported it, then? Money wouldn't fit into the picture now, but what if somehow Morse had… what if Morse was frightened he might compromise himself in some strange way if he reported things immediately? He'd rung later, of course-that would have been his duty as a police officer… Walters returned to bed but could not sleep. He was conscious of his eye-balls darting about in their sockets, and it was in vain that he tried to focus them on some imaginary point about six inches in front of his nose. Only in the early hours did he finally drift off into a disturbed sleep, and the most disturbing thought of all was what, if anything, he was to say to Chief Inspector Bell in the morning.

Chapter Eight

It was not only Walters who slept uneasily that night, although for Charles Richards the causes of his long and restless wakefulness were far more anguished. The undertow of it all was what he saw as the imminent break-up of his marriage, and all because of that one careless, amateurish error on his own part. Why, oh why-an old campaigner like he!-when Celia had seen that long, blonde, curling hair on the back of his dark brown Jaeger cardigan, hadn't he shrugged her questions off, quite casually and uncaringly, instead of trying (as he had) to fabricate that laboured, unconvincing explanation? He remembered-kept on remembering-how Celia's face, for all its fortitude, had reflected then her sense of anger and of jealousy, her sense of betrayal and agonized inadequacy. And that hurt him-hurt him much more deeply than he could have imagined. In the distant past she might have guessed; in the recent past she must, so surely, have suspected; but now she knew-of that there now was little doubt.

And as he lay awake, he wondered how on earth he could ever cope with the qualms of his embering conscience. He could eat no breakfast when he got up the next morning, and after a cup of tea and a cigarette he experienced, as he sat alone at the kitchen table, a sense of helplessness that frightened him. His head ached and the print of The Times jumped giddily across his vision as he tried to distract his thoughts with events of some more cosmic implication. But other facts were facts as well: he was losing his hair, losing his teeth, losing whatever integrity he'd ever had as a civilised human being-and now he was losing his wife as well. He was drinking too heavily, smoking too addictively, fornicating far too frequently… Oh God, how he hated himself occasionally!

Saturday mornings were hardly the most productive periods in the company's activities, but there was always correspondence, occasionally an important phone call, and usually a few enquiries at the desk outside; and he had established the practice of going in himself, of requiring his personal secretary to join him, and of expecting his brother Conrad to put in a brief appearance, too, so that before adjourning for a midday drink together they could have the opportunity of discussing present progress and future plans.

On that Saturday morning, as often when he had no longer-ranging business commitments, Charles drove the five-minute journey to the centre of Abingdon in the Mini. The rain which had persisted through the previous few days had now cleared up, and the sky was a pale and cloudless blue. Not an umbrella day. Once seated in his office he called in his secretary and told her that he didn't wish to be disturbed unless it were absolutely necessary: he had, he said, some most important papers to consider.

For half an hour he sat there and did nothing, his chin resting on his left hand as he smoked one cigarette after another. That could be a start, though! He vowed earnestly that as soon as he'd finished his present packet (Glory be!-it was still almost full) he would pack up the wretched, dirty habit, thereby deferring, at a stroke, the horrid threats to heart and lungs, with the additional sweet benefits of less expense and (as he'd read) a greater sexual potency in bed. Yes! For a moment, as he lit another cigarette, he almost regretted that there were so many left. By lunchtime they'd be gone through, and that would be the time for his monumental sacrifice-yes, after he'd had a drink with Conrad. If Conrad were coming in that morning… He sank into further fathoms of self-pitying gloom and recrimination… He had tried so hard over the years. He had reformed and vowed to turn from his sinful ways as frequently as a regular recidivist at revivalist meetings, and the thought of some healing stream that could abound and bring, as it were, some water to the parched and withering roots of life was like the balm of hope and grace. Yet (he knew it) such hope was like the dew that dries so early with the morning sun. So often had his inner nature robbed him of his robe of honour that now he'd come to accept his weaknesses as quite incurable. So he safeguarded those weaknesses, eschewing all unnecessary risks, foregoing those earlier, casual liaisons, avoiding where he could the thickets of emotional involvement, playing the odds with infinitely greater caution, and almost persuading himself sometimes that in his own curious fashion he was even becoming a fraction more faithful to Celia. And one thing he knew: he would do anything not to hurt Celia. Well, almost anything.

At ten fifteen he rang his brother Conrad-Conrad, eighteen months younger than himself, not quite so paunchy, far more civilised, far more kindly, and by some genetic quirk a little greyer at the temples. The two of them had always been good friends, and their business association had invariably been co-operative and mutually profitable. On many occasions in the past Charles had needed to unbosom himself to his brother about some delicate and potentially damaging relationship, and on those occasions Conrad had always shown the same urbanity and understanding.

'You thinking of putting in any appearance today, Conrad? It's after ten, you know.'

'Twenty past, actually, and I'm catching the London train at eleven. Surprised you'd forgotten, Charles. After all, it was you who arranged the visit, wasn't it?'

'Of course, yes! Sorry! I must be getting senile.'

'We're all getting a little older day by day, old boy.'

'Conrad-er-I want you to do me a favour, if you will.'

'Yes?'

'It'll be the last one, I promise you.'

'Can I have that in writing?'

'I almost think you can, yes.'

'Something wrong?'

'Everything's wrong. But I can sort it out, I think-if you can help me. You see, I'd-I'd like an alibi for yesterday afternoon.'

'That's the second time this week!' (Was there an unwonted note of tetchiness in Conrad's voice?)

'I know. As I say, though, I promise it won't-'

'Where were we?'

'Er-shall we say we had a meeting with some prospective-'

'Whereabouts?'

'Er-High Wycombe, shall we say?'

'High Wycombe it shall be.'

'The Swedish contract, let's say.'

'Did I drive you there?'

'Er-yes. I-er-we-er-finished about six.'

'About six, I see.'

'This is all just in case, if you see what I mean. I'm sure Celia wouldn't want to go into details, but-'

'Understood, old boy. You can put your mind at rest.'

'Christ, I wish I could!'

'Look, Charles, I must fly. The train's-'

'Yes, of course. Have a good day and, Conrad-thanks! Thanks a million!'

Charles put down the phone, but almost immediately it rang, and his secretary informed him that there was a call on the outside line: personal and urgent.

'Hello? Charles Richards here. Can I help you?'

'Charles?' The voice was caressing and sensual. 'No need to sound quite so formal, darling.'

'I told you not to ring-' The irritation in his voice was obvious and genuine, but she interrupted him with easy unconcern.

'You're on your own, darling-I know that. Your secretary said so.'

Charles inhaled deeply. 'What do you want?'

'I want you, darling.'

'Look-'

'I just wanted to tell you that I had a call from Keith this morning. He's got to stay in South Africa until a week tomorrow. A week tomorrow! So I just wondered whether to put the electric blanket on for half past one or two o'clock, darling. That's all.'

'Look, Jenny. I-I can't see you today-you know that. It's impossible on Saturdays. I'm sorry, but-'

'Never mind, darling! Don't sound so cross about it. We can make it tomorrow. I was just hoping-'

'Look!'

'For God's sake stop saying "look"!'

'I'm sorry; but I can't see you again next week, Jenny. It's getting too risky. Yesterday-'

'What the hell is this?'

Charles felt a rising tide of despair engulfing him as he thought of her long, blonde, curling hair and the slope of her naked shoulders. 'Look, Jenny,' he said more softly, 'I can't explain now but-'

'Explain? What the hell is there to explain!'

'I can't tell you now.' He ground the words into the mouthpiece.

'When shall I see you then?' Her voice sounded brusque and indifferent now.

'I'll get in touch. Not next week, though. I just can't-'

But the line was suddenly dead.

As Charles sat back breathing heavily in his black leather swivel chair, he was conscious of a hard, constricting pain between his shoulder-blades, and he reached into a drawer for the Opas tablets. But the box was empty.

That day the Oxford Mail carried a page-two account (albeit a brief and belated one) of the death of Anne Scott at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho; and at various times in the day the account was noticed and read by some tens of thousands of people in the Oxford area, including the Murdoch family, George Jackson, Elsie Purvis, Conrad Richards, Gwendola Briggs, Detective Constable Walters, and Chief Inspector Morse. It was quite by chance that Charles Richards himself was also destined to read it. After three double Scotches at the White Swan, he had returned home to find the Rolls gone and a note from Celia saying that she had gone shopping in Oxford. 'Back about five-pork pie in the fridge.' And when she had returned home, she'd brought a copy of the Oxford Mail with her, throwing it down casually on the coffee table as Charles sat watching the football round-up.

The paper was folded over at page two.

Chapter Nine

The inquest on Ms. Anne Scott was one of a string of such melancholy functions for the Coroner's Court on the Tuesday of the following week. Bell had spent the weekend arranging the massive security measures which had surrounded the visit to Oxfordshire of one of the Chinese heads of state; and apart from exhorting Walters to 'stop bloody worriting' he took no further part in the brief proceedings. He had already been informed of the one new-and quite unexpected-piece of evidence that had come to light, but he had betrayed little surprise about it; indeed, felt none.

Walters took the stand to present a full statement about the finding of the body (including the one or two rather odd features of that scene), and about his own subsequent inquiries. The Coroner had only two questions to ask, which he did in a mournful, disinterested monotone; and Walters, feeling considerably less nervous than he'd expected to be, was ready with his firm, unequivocal replies.

'In your opinion, officer, is it true to say that the jury can rule out any suspicion of foul play in the death of Ms. Scott?'

'It is, sir.'

'Is there any doubt in your own mind that she met her death by her own hand?'

'No, sir.'

The hump-backed surgeon was the only other witness to be called, and he (as ever) delighted all those anxious to get away from the court by racing through the technical jargon of his medical report with the exhilarating rapidity of an Ashkenazy laying into Liszt. To those with acute hearing and micro-chip mentalities it was further revealed that the woman had probably died between 7 and 9.30 a.m. on the day she was found-that is, she had been dead for approximately eleven hours before being cut down; that her frame was well nourished and that her bodily organs were all perfectly sound; that she was 8-10 weeks pregnant at the time of death. The word 'pregnant' lingered for a while on the air of the still courtroom as if it had been acoustically italicised. But then it was gone, and Bell as he stared down at the wooden flooring silently moved his feet a centimetre or two towards him.

Only one question from the Coroner this time.

'Is there any doubt in your own mind that this woman met her death by her own hand?'

'That is for the jury to decide, sir.'

At this point Bell permitted himself a saddened smile. The surgeon had answered the same question in the same courtroom in the same way for the last twenty years. Only once, when the present Coroner had just begun his term of office, had this guarded comment been queried, and on that occasion the surgeon had deigned to add an equally guarded gloss, at a somewhat decelerated tempo: 'My job, sir, is to certify death where it has occurred and to ascertain, where possible, the physical causes of that death.' That was all. Bell was sometimes surprised that the old boy ever had the temerity to certify death in the first place; and, to be fair, the surgeon himself had grown increasingly reluctant to do so over the past few years. But, at least, that was his province, and he refused to trespass into territory beyond it. As a scientist, he had a profound distrust of all such intangible notions as 'responsibility', 'motive', and 'guilt'; and as a man he had little or no respect for the work of the police force. There was only one policeman he'd ever met for whom he had a slight degree of admiration, and that was Morse. And the only reason for such minimal approbation was that Morse had once told him over a few pints of beer that he in turn had a most profound contempt for the timid twaddle produced by pathologists.

The jury duly recorded a verdict of 'death by suicide', and the small band of variously interested parties filed out of the courtroom. Officially, the case of Ms. Anne Scott was filed and finished with.

On the evening of the day of the inquest, Morse telephoned the hump-backed surgeon.

'You fancy a drink in an hour or so, Max?'

'No.'

'What's up? You stopped boozing or something?'

'I've started boozing at home. Far cheaper.'

'No licensing hours, either.'

'That's another reason.'

'When do you start?'

'Same time as you, Morse-just before breakfast.'

'Did this Scott woman commit suicide, Max?'

'Oh God! Not you as well!'

'Did she commit suicide?'

'I look at the injuries, Morse-you know that, and in this case the injuries were firm and fatal. All right? Who it is who commits the injuries is no concern of mine.'

'Did she commit suicide, Max? It's important for me to have your opinion.'

There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line, and the answer obviously cost the surgeon dearly. The answer was 'yes'.

A little later that evening, Detective Constable Walters, in the course of his variegated duties, was seated by the bedside of a young girl in the Intensive Care Unit of the John Radcliffe Two. She had swallowed two bottles of pills without quite succeeding in cutting the thread-sometimes so fragile, sometimes so tough-that holds us all to life.

'It's getting dreadful, all this drugs business,' said the sister as Walters was leaving. 'I don't know! We're getting them in all the time. Another one besides her today.' She pointed to a closed white door a little further down the corridor, and Walters nodded with a surface understanding but with no real sympathy: he had quite enough to cope with as it was. In fact, as he walked along the polished corridor he passed within two feet of the door that the sister had pointed out to him. And, if Walters had only known, he was at that very second within those same two feet of finding out the truth of what was later to be called The Case of the Jericho Killings.