Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

The two Anderson children had been putting the finishing touches to their snowman just as it was getting dark that afternoon when they were joined by their father, Mr. Gerald Anderson. And it had been he who had observed that one of the rear windows on the ground floor of the annexe was open; and who had been vaguely uneasy about this observation, since the weather was raw, with a cutting wind sweeping down from the north. He had finally walked closer and seen the half-drawn curtains flapping in the icy draught — although he had not gone all the way up to the window, under which (as he'd noticed) the snow was still completely undisturbed. He had mentioned this fact to his wife once he was back in the hotel, and it was at her instigation that he reported his disquiet to the proprietor himself — at about 5 p.m., that was; with the result that the pair of them, Anderson and Binyon, had walked across to the annexe and along the newly carpeted corridor to the second bedroom on the right, where over the doorknob was hooked a notice, written in English, French, and German, instructing potential intruders that the incumbent was not to be disturbed. After repeated knockings, Binyon had opened the door with his master-key, and had immediately discovered why the man they found there had been incapable (for some considerable time, it seemed) of responding to any knocking from within or to any icy blast from without.

For the man on the bed was dead and the room was cold as the grave.

The news of the murder was known almost immediately to everyone in the hotel; and despite Binyon's frenetic protestations, some few of the guests (including, it appeared, everyone from the annexe) had taken the law into their own hands, packed their belongings, strapped up their cases (and in one case not paid any part of the bill), and disappeared from the Haworth Hotel before Sergeant Phillips from St. Aldates had arrived at about 5.40 p.m.

'You what? ' bellowed Morse as Phillips explained how he'd allowed four more of the guests to leave the hotel when full names and addresses had been checked.

'Well, it was a very difficult situation, sir, and I thought—'

'Christ man! Didn't someone ever tell you that if you've got a few suspicious circumstances you're expected to hold on to a few of the suspects? And what do you do, Sergeant? You tell 'em all to bugger off!'

'I got all the details—'

'Bloody marvellous!' snapped Morse.

Binyon, who had been standing by in some embarrassment as Morse (not, it must be admitted, without just cause) lashed the luckless Phillips, decided to come to the rescue.

'It really was a very difficult situation, Inspector, and we thought—'

' Thought? ' Morse's instantaneous repetition of the monosyllable sounded like a whiplashed retaliation for such impertinence, and it was becoming abundantly clear that he had taken an instant dislike to the hotel proprietor. 'Mr. Binyon! They don't pay you, do they, for having any thoughts about this case? No? But they do pay me! They even pay Sergeant Phillips here; and if I was angry with him just now it was only because I basically respect what he thought and what he tried to do. But I shall be obliged if you will kindly keep your thoughts out of things until I ask for them — all right?'

In the latter part of this little homily, Morse's voice was as cool and as level as the snow upon which Sarah Jonstone had looked out early that same morning; and she herself as she sat silently at Reception was more than a little alarmed by this new arrival; more than a little upset by his harsh words. But gossip had it that the corpse found in the room called Annexe 3 had been horridly mutilated about the face; and she was relieved that the police seemed at least to have matched the gravity of the crime by sending a man from the higher echelons of its detective branch. But he was disturbingly strange, this man with the hard-staring, startling eyes — eyes that had at first reminded her of the more fanatical politicians, like Benn or Joseph or Powell, as she'd watched them on TV; eyes that seemed uncommunicative and unseeing, eyes fixed, it seemed, upon some distanced, spiritual shore. And yet that wasn't true, and she knew it; for after his initial ill-temper he had looked so directly and so daringly into her eyes that for a second or two she could have sworn that he was about to wink at her.

A man she'd seen three times now in three days!

Another man had come in — the humpbacked man she'd seen earlier — and he, too, was in Sarah's eyes one of the more unusual specimens of humankind. With a cigarette hanging down at forty-five degrees from a thin-lipped, mournful mouth, and with the few remaining strands of his lank, black hair plastered in parallels across a yellowish dome of a skull, anyone could perhaps be forgiven for supposing his profession to be that of a moderately unsuccessful undertaker. (Oddly enough, over the fifteen years they had known — and respected — each other, Morse had invariably addressed this police surgeon by his Christian name, whilst the surgeon had never addressed Morse by anything other than his surname.)

'I was here an hour ago," began the surgeon.

'You want me to give you a medal or something?' said Morse.

'You in charge?'

'Yes.'

'Well, go and have a look at things. I'll be ready when you want me.'

Following closely behind Binyon and Phillips and Lewis, Morse was walking over to the annexe when he stopped halfway and gazed up at the giant crane, its arm outstretched some hundred and twenty feet above the ground as if in benediction, or perhaps in bane, upon one or other of the two blocks of buildings between which it was positioned.

'Not a job they'd get me on, Lewis,' he said, as his eyes went up towards the precarious-looking box at the top of the structure, in which, presumably, some operator would normally sit.

'No need, sir. You can operate those things from the bottom.' Lewis pointed to a platform, only some six feet above the ground, on which a series of knobbed levers stuck up at various angles through the iron floor. Morse nodded; and averted his eyes from the crane's nest atop the criss-crossed iron girders that stood out black against the heavy, darkened sky.

Through the side door of the annexe they proceeded, where Morse looked along the newly carpeted passage that stretched some ten to twelve yards in front of him, its terminus marked by pieces of boarding, nailed (not too professionally) across an aperture which would, in due course, lead through to the front entrance hall of the annexe. Morse strode to the far end of the corridor and looked through the temporary slats to the foyer beyond, where rickety-looking planks, resting on pairs of red bricks, were set across the recently cemented floor. Dust from such activities had filtered through, and was now lying, albeit lightly, on the surfaces just a few feet inside the completed section of the ground-floor annexe, and it seemed clear that there had been no recent entrance, and no recent exit, from that particular point. Morse turned, and for a few seconds looked back up the short corridor down which they had walked; looked at the marks of many muddy shoes (including their own) on the purple carpeting — the latter seeming to Morse almost as distasteful as the reproduction of the late Renoir, 'Les nues dans l'herbe', which hung on the wall to his right.

As he stood there, still looking back up to the side entrance, he noted the simple geography of the annexe. Four doors led off the corridor: to his right were those numbered 2 and 1; immediately opposite 1 was 4; and then, set back behind a narrow, uncarpeted flight of stairs (temporarily blocked off but doubtless leading to the hitherto undeveloped first floor) a door numbered 3. From what he had already learned, Morse could see little hope of lifting any incriminatory fingerprints from the doorknob of this last room which had been twisted quite certainly by Binyon and probably by others. Yet he looked at the knob with some care, and at the trilingual notice that was still hooked over it.