Death is now my neighbour - Morse 12

by Colin Dexter

  'You're quite sure? Lewis had insisted. 'It was still a bit dark, you know.'

  'We've got some streetlamps, haven't we, Sergeant?'

  You are sure, then.'

  'Unless she's got - unless she had a twin sister.'

  'Sure about the time, too? That's very important.'

  She nodded. 'I'd just watched the news headlines on BBC1 - I like to do that. Then I turned the telly off. I might have filled the kettle again ... but, like I say, it was only a few minutes past seven. Five past, at the outside.'

  It therefore seemed virtually certain that there was a time-span of no more than half an hour during which the murder had occurred: between 7.05 a.m., when Mrs Jacobs had seen her neighbour opposite, and 7.35 a.m. or so, when Mrs Norris had first noticed the hole in the window. It was unusual - very unusual - for such exactitude to be established at so early a stage in a murder enquiry; and there would be little need in this case for the police to be dependent upon (what Morse always called) those prevaricating pathologists ...

  *

  'About quarter past seven,' answered the prevaricating Lewis.

  'You're quite sure}' It was exactly the same question Lewis himself had asked.

  'No, not sure at all. Next question?'

  'Why didn't everybody hear the shot?' (The same young, ginger-headed reporter.)

  'Silencer, perhaps?'

  'There'd be the sound of breaking glass surely?' (A logically minded man from the Oxford Star.)

  A series of hand gestures and silent lip-movements from the TV crew urged Lewis not to look directly into the camera.

  Lewis nodded. 'Yes. In fact several of the neighbours think they heard something - two of them certainly did. But it could have been lots of things, couldn't it?'

  'Such as?' (The importunate ginger-knob again.)

  Lewis shrugged. 'Could have been the milkman dropping a bottle—?'

  'No broken glass here, though, Sergeant.'

  'Car backfiring? We don't know.'

  'Does what the neighbours heard fit in with the time all right?' (The TV interviewer with his fluffy cylindrical microphone.)

  'Pretty well, yes.'

  The senior reporter from the Oxford Mail had hitherto held his peace. But now he asked a curious question, if it was a question:

  'Not the two immediate neighbours, were they?'

  Lewis looked at the man with some interest.

  'Why do you say that?'

  'Well, the woman who lives there' (a finger pointed to Number ig) 'she was probably still asleep at the time, and she's stone-deaf without her hearing-aid.'

  'Really?'

  'And the man who lives there' (a finger pointed to Number 15) 'he'd already left for work.'

  Lewis frowned. 'Can you tell me how you happen to know all this, sir?'

  'No problem,' replied Geoffrey Owens. ‘You see, Sergeant, I live at Number 15.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  Where lovers lie with ardent glow, Where fondly each forever hears The creaking of the bed below — Above, the music of the spheres (Viscount Mumbles, 1797—1821)

  WHEN LEWIS RETURNED from his encounter with the media, Morse was almost ready to leave the murder-house. The morning had moved towards noon, and he knew that he might be thinking a little more clearly if he were drinking a little - or at least be starting to think when he started to drink.

  ‘Is there a real-ale pub somewhere near?'

  Lewis, pleasantly gratified with his handling of the Press and TV, was emboldened to sound a note of caution.

  'Doesn't do your liver much good - all this drinking.'

  Surprisingly Morse appeared to accept the reminder with modest grace.

  ‘I'm sure you're right; but my medical advisers have warned me it may well be unwise to give up alcohol at my age.'

  Lewis was not impressed, for he had heard the same words - exactly the same words - on several previous occasions.

  'You've had a good look around, sir?'

  'Not really. I know I always find the important things. But I want you to have a look around. You usually manage to find the unimportant things - and often they're the things that really matter in the end.'

  Lewis made little attempt to disguise his pleasure, and straightway relented.

  'We could go up to the Boat at Thrupp?'

  'Excellent'

  You don't want to stay here any longer?'

  'No. The SOCOs'll be another couple of hours yet'

  You don't want to see ... her again?'

  Morse shook his head. 'I know what she looks like -looked like.' He picked up two coloured photographs and one postcard, and made towards the front door, handing over the keys of the maroon Jaguar to Lewis. You'd better drive - if you promise to stick to the orange juice.'

  Once on their way, Lewis reported the extraordinarily strange coincidence of the press-man, Owens, living next-door to the murdered woman. But Morse, who always looked upon any coincidence in life as the norm rather than the exception, was more anxious to set forth the firm details he had himself now gleaned about Ms Rachel James, for there could now be no real doubt of her identity.

  'Twenty-nine. Single. No offspring. Worked as a freelance physiotherapist at a place in the Banbury Road. CV says she went to school at Torquay Comprehensive; left there in 1984 with a clutch of competent O-levels, three A-levels - two Bs, in Biology and Geography, and an E in Media Studies.'

  'Must have been fairly bright.'

  'What do you mean? You need to be a moron to get an E in Media Studies,' asserted Morse, who had never seen so much as a page of any Media Studies syllabus, let alone a question paper.

  He continued:

  'Parents, as you know, still alive, on their way here—' "You'll want me to see them?'

  'Well, you are good at that sort of thing, aren't you? And if the mother's like most women she'll probably smell the beer as soon as I open the door.'

  'Good reason for you to join me on the orange juice.'

  Morse ignored the suggestion. 'She bought the property there just over four years ago for £65,000 and the value's been falling ever since by the look of things, so the poor lass is one of those figuring in the negative equity statistics; took out a mortgage of £55,000 - probably Mum and Dad gave her the other £10,000; and the saleable value of Number 17 is now £40,000, at the most.'

  'Bought at the wrong time, sir. But some people were a bit irresponsible, don't you think?'

  'I'm not an economist, as you know, Lewis. But I'll tell you what would have helped her. Helped so many in her boots.'

  'A win on the National Lottery?'

  'Wouldn't help many, that, would it? No. What she could have done with is a healthy dose of inflation. It's a good thing - inflation - you know. Especially for people who've got nothing to start with. One of the best things that happened to some of us. One year I remember I had three jumps in salary.'

  'Not many would agree with you on that, though, would they? Conservative and Labour both agree about inflation.'

  'Ah! Messrs Bull and Thomas, you mean?' You noticed the stickers?'

  'I notice most things. It's just that some of them don't register - not immediately.'

  'What'll you have, sir?'

  'Lew-is! We've known each other long enough, surely.'

  As Morse tasted the hostelry's Best Bitter, he passed over a photograph of Rachel James.

  'Best one of her I could find.'

  Lewis looked down at the young woman.

  'Real good-looker,' he said softly.

  Morse nodded. 'I bet she'd have set a few hearts all a-flutter.'

  'Including yours, sir?'

  Morse drank deeply on his beer before replying. 'She'd probably have a good few boyfriends, that's all I'm suggesting. As for my own potential susceptibility, that's beside the point.'

  'Of course.' Lewis smiled good-naturedly. 'What else have we got?'

  'What do you make of this? One of the few interesting things there, as far as I could see.'

&n
bsp; Lewis now considered the postcard handed to him. First, the picture on the front: a photograph of a woodland ride, with a sunlit path on the left, and a pool of azured bluebells to the right. Then turning over the card, he read the cramped lines amateurishly typed on the left-hand side:

  Ten Times I beg, dear Heart, let's Wed!

  (Thereafter long may Cupid reigne)

  Let's tread the Aisle, where thou hast led

  The fifteen Bridesmaides in thy Traine.

  Then spend our honeyed Moon a-bed,

  With Springs that creake againe — againe!

  (John Wilmot, 1672)

  That was all. No salutation. No valediction.

  And on the right-hand side of the postcard - nothing: no address, with the four dotted, parallel lines devoid of any writing, the top right-hand rectangle devoid of any stamp.

  Lewis, a man not familiar with seventeenth-century love-lyrics, read the lines, then read them again, with only semi-comprehension.

  'Pity she didn't get round to filling in the address, sir. Looks as if she might be proposing to somebody.'

  'Aren't you making an assumption?'

  'Pardon?'

  'Did you see a typewriter in the house?' 'She could have typed it at work.' ‘Yes. You must get along there soon.' ‘You're the boss.'

  'Nice drop o' beer, this. In good nick.' Morse drained the glass and set it down in the middle of the slightly rickety table, whilst Lewis took a gentle sip of his orange juice; and continued to sit firmly fixed to his seat

  Morse continued:

  'No! You're making a false assumption - I think you are. You're assuming she'd just written this to somebody and then forgotten the fellow's address, right? Pretty unlikely, isn't it? If she was proposing to him.'

  'Perhaps she couldn't find a stamp.'

  'Perhaps

  Reluctantly Morse got to his feet and pushed his glass across the bar. ‘You don't want anything more yourself, do you, Lewis?'

  'No thanks.'

  ‘You've nothing less?' asked the landlady, as Morse tendered a twenty-pound note. "You're the first ones in today and I'm a bit short of change.'

  Morse turned round. 'Any change on you, by any chance, Lewis?'

  ‘You see,' continued Morse, 'you're still assuming she wrote it, aren't you?' 'And she didn't?'

  ‘I think someone wrote the card to her, put it in an envelope, and then addressed the envelope - not the card.'

  'Why not just address the card?'

  'Because whoever wrote it didn't want anyone else to read it.'

  'Why not just phone her up?'

  'Difficult - if he was married and his wife was always around.'

  'He could ring her from a phone-box.' 'Risky - if anyone saw him.'

  Lewis nodded without any conviction: 'And it's only a bit of poetry.'

  'Is it?' asked Morse quietly.

  Lewis picked up the card again. 'Perhaps it's this chap called "Wilmot", sir - the date's just there to mislead us.'

  'Mislead you, perhaps. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a court poet to Charles II. He wrote some delightfully pornographic lyrics.'

  'So it's - it's all genuine?'

  'I didn't say that, did I? The name's genuine, but not the poem. Any English scholar would know that's not seventeenth-century verse.'

  'I'm sure you're right, sir.'

  'And if I'm right about the card coming in an envelope - fairly recently - we might be able to find the envelope, agreed? Find a postmark, perhaps? Even a bit of handwriting?'

  Lewis looked dubious. 'I'd better get something organized, then.'

  'All taken care of! I've got a couple of the DCs looking through the wastepaper baskets and the dustbin.'

  You reckon this is important, then?'

  'Top priority! You can see that. She's been meeting some man - meeting him secretly. Which means he's probably married, probably fairly well known, probably got a prominent job, probably a local man—'

  'Probably lives in Peterborough,' mumbled Lewis.

  'That's exactly why the postmark's so vital!' countered an unamused Morse. 'But if he's an Oxford man ...'

  'Do you know what the population of Oxford is?'

  ‘I know it to the nearest thousand!' snapped Morse.

  Then, of a sudden, the Chief Inspector's mood completely changed. He tapped the postcard.

  'Don't be despondent, Lewis. You see, we know just a little about this fellow already, don't we?'

  He smiled benignly after draining his second pint; and since no other customers had as yet entered the lounge, Lewis resignedly got to his feet and stepped over to the bar once more.

  Lewis picked up the postcard again. 'Give me a clue, sir.'

  You know the difference between nouns and verbs, of course?'

  'How could I forget something like that?'

  'Well, at certain periods in English literature, all the nouns were spelt with capital letters. Now, as you can see, there are eight nouns in those six lines - each of them spelt with a capital letter. But there are nine capitals

  - forgetting the first word of each line. Now which is the odd one out?'

  Lewis pretended to study the lines once more. He'd played this game before, and he trusted he could get away with it again, as his eyes suddenly lit up a little.

  'Ah ... I think - I think I see what you mean.'

  'Hits you in the eye, doesn't it, that "Wed" in the first line? And that's what it was intended to do.'

  'Obviously.'

  'What's it mean?'

  'What, "Wed"? Well, it means "marry" - you know, get hitched, get spliced, tie the knot—' 'What else?' 'Isn't that enough?' 'What else?'

  'I suppose you're going to tell me it's Anglo-Saxon or something.'

  'Not exactly. Not far off, though. Old English, in fact. And what's it short for?'

  '"Wednesday"?' suggested Lewis tentatively.

  Morse beamed at his sergeant. 'Woden's day - the fourth day of the week. So we've got a day, Lewis. And what else do you need, if you're going to arrange a date with a woman?'

  Lewis studied the lines yet again. 'Time? Time, yes! I see what you mean, sir. "Ten Times" ... "fifteen Brides-maides" ... Well, well, well! Ten-fifteen!'

  Morse nodded. 'With a.m. likelier than p.m. Doesn't say where though, does it?'

  Lewis studied the lines for the fifth time.

  "Traine", perhaps?'

  "Well done! "Meet me at the station to catch the ten-fifteen a.m. Train" - that's what it says. And we know where that Train goes, don't we?'

  ‘Paddington.'

  'Exactly.'

  ‘If only we knew who he was ...'

  Morse now produced his second photograph - a small passport-sized photograph of two people: the woman, Rachel James (no doubt of that), turning partially round and slightly upward in order to kiss the cheek of a considerably older man with a pair of smiling eyes beneath a distinguished head of greying hair.

  'Who's he, sir?'

  'Dunno. We could find out pretty quickly, though, if we put his photo in the local papers.' 'If he's local.'

  'Even if he's not local, I should think.' 'Bit dodgy, sir.'

  'Too dodgy at this stage, I agree. But we can try another angle, can't we? Tomorrow's Tuesday, and the day after that's Wednesday - Woden's day...'

  "You mean he may turn up at the station?'

  'If the card's fairly recent, yes.'

  'Unless he's heard she's been murdered.'

  'Or unless he murdered her himself.'

  'Worth a Try, sir. And if he does turn up, it'll probably mean he didn't murder her...'

  Morse made no comment.

  'Or, come to think of it, it might be a fairly clever thing to do if he did murder her.'

  Morse drained his glass and stood up.

  'You know something? I reckon orange juice occasionally germinates your brain cells.'

  As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun.

  "You h
aven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens - the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'

  'Death is always the next-door neighbour,' said Morse sombrely. 'But don't let it affect your driving, Lewis!'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wednesday, 21 February

  Orandum est ut sit mens saw in corpore sano

  (Our aim? Just a brain that's not addled with pox, And a guaranteed clean bill-of-health from the docs)

  (Juvenal, Satires X)

  THE NEXT MEETING of the Lonsdale Fellows had been convened for 10 a.m. In the Stamper Room.

  William Leslie Stamper, b. 1880, had graduated from Oxford University in 1903 with the highest marks (it is said) ever recorded in Classical Moderations. The bracketed caveat in the previous sentence would be unnecessary were it not that the claim for such distinction was perpetuated, in later years, by one person only - by W. L. Stamper himself. And it is pointless to dwell upon the matter since no independent verification is available: the relevant records had been removed from Oxford to a safe place, thereafter never to be seen again, during the First World War - a war in which Stamper had not been an active participant, owing to an illness which was unlikely to prolong his eminently promising career as a don for more than a couple of years or so. Such nonparticipation in the great events of 1914-18 was a major sadness (it is said) to Stamper himself, who was frequently heard to lament his own failure to figure among the casualty lists from the fields of Flanders or Passchendaele.

  Now, the reader may readily be forgiven for assuming from the preceding paragraph that Stamper had been a time-server; a dissembling self-seeker. Yet such an assumption is highly questionable, though not necessarily untrue. When, for example, in 1925, the Mastership of Lonsdale fell vacant, and nominations were sought amid the groves of Academe, Stamper had refused to let his name go forward, on the grounds that if ten years earlier he had been declared unfit to fight in defence of his country he could hardly be considered fit to undertake the governance of the College; specifically so, since the Statutes stipulated a candidate whose body was no less healthy than his brain.

  Thereafter, in his gentle, scholarly, pedantic manner, Stamper had passed his years teaching the esoteric skills of Greek Prose and Verse Composition - until retiring at the age of sixty-five, two years before the statutory limit, on the grounds of ill-health. No one, certainly not Stamper himself (it is said), anticipated any significant continuation of his life, and the College Fellows unanimously backed a proposal that the dear old boy should have the privilege, during the few remaining years of his life, of living in the finest set of rooms that the College had to offer.