Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

84 West Street

Chipping Norton

Oxon

30th Nov

Dear Proprietor,

Please book in my husband and myself for the Haworth Hotel's New Year Package as advertised. We would particularly wish to take advantage of the rates offered for the 'annexe rooms'. As I read your brochure, it seems that each of these rooms is on the ground floor and this is essential for our booking since my husband suffers from vertigo and is unable to climb stairs. We would prefer twin beds if possible but this is not essential. Please answer as a matter of urgency by return (s.a.e. enclosed) since we are most anxious to fix things up immediately and shall not be at our present address (see above) after the 7th December, since we shall be moving to Cheltenham.

Yours sincerely,

Ann Ballard (Mrs.)

The prompt reply (dated 2nd December) was as follows:

Dear Mrs. Ballard,

Thank you for your letter of 30th November. We are glad to be able to offer you a double room on the ground-floor annexe, with twin beds, for our New Year Package.

We look forward to your confirmation, either by letter or by phone.

We very much look forward to meeting you and your husband, and we are confident that you will both greatly enjoy your stay with us.

Yours sincerely,

In biro across this letter, too, the word 'Accepted' was written, with the date '3rd Dec'.

Morse looked down again at the letter from Mrs. Ballard, and seemed (at least to Sarah Jonstone) to spend an inexplicably long time re-reading its meagre content. Finally he nodded very slowly to himself, put the two sheets of paper down, and looked up at her.

'What do you remember about that pair?'

It was the question Sarah had been afraid of, for her recollections were not so much vague as confused. She thought it had been Mrs . Ballard who had collected the key from Reception; Mrs. Ballard who had been nodded in the direction of the annexe at about 4 p.m. that New Year's afternoon; Mrs. Ballard who had appeared in her Iranian outfit just before the evening festivities were due to begin and pointed out the distasteful graffito in the Ladies' loo. And it had been Mr . Ballard, dressed in his distinctively Rastafarian outfit of light blue shirt, white trousers, baggy checked cap, and maroon knee-boots, who had emerged from the Gents' loo just before everyone was due to eat; Mr. Ballard who in fact had eaten very little at all that evening (indeed Sarah herself had cleared away his first two courses virtually untouched); Mr. Ballard who had kept very close to his wife throughout the evening, as if they were still in some lovey-dovey idyll of a recent infatuation; Mr. Ballard who had asked her — Sarah! — to dance in the latter part of an evening which was becoming less and less of a distinct sequence of events the more she tried to call it back to mind. .

All these things Sarah told a Morse intensely interested (it seemed) in the vaguest facts she was able to dredge up from the chaotic jumble of her memory.

'Was he drunk?'

'No. I don't think he drank much at all.'

'Did he try to kiss you?'

'No!' Sarah's face, she knew, was blushing again, and she cursed herself for such sensitivity, aware that Morse appeared amused by her discomfiture.

'No need to blush! Nobody'd blame a fellow for wanting to kiss someone like you after one of your boozy midnight parties, my love!'

'I'm not your "love"!' Her upper lip was trembling and she felt the tears beginning to brim behind her eyes.

But Morse was looking at her no more: he picked up the phone and dialled Directory Enquiries on 192.

'There's no Ballard at 84 West Street,' interrupted Sarah. 'Sergeant Phillips—'

'No, I know that,' said Morse quietly, 'but you don't mind if I just check up, do you?'

Sarah was silent as Morse spent a few minutes speaking to some supervisor somewhere, asking several questions about street names and street numbers. And whatever he'd learned, he registered no surprise, certainly no disappointment, as he put down the phone and grinned boyishly at her. 'Sergeant Phillips was right, Miss Jonstone. There isn't a Mr. Ballard of 84 West Street, Chipping Norton. There isn't even a number 84! Which makes you think, doesn't it?' he asked, tapping the letter that Sarah herself had written to precisely that non-existent address.

'I'm past thinking!' said Sarah quietly.

'What about Room 4?'

Here, the initiating letter, addressed from 114 Worcester Road, Kidderminster, and dated 4th December, was a model of supremely economical, no-nonsense English, and written in a small, neat hand:

Dear Sir,

Single — cheapest available — room for your New Year Package. Confirm, please.

Yours,

Doris Arkwright

Such confirmation had been duly forthcoming in the form of an almost equally brief reply, this time signed by the proprietor himself, and dated 6th December. But across this letter was now pencilled 'Cancelled 31st Dec — snow.'

'Did she ring up?' asked Morse.

'Yes, she must have rung Mr. Binyon, I think.'

'You don't ask for a deposit?'

She shook her head. 'Mr. Binyon doesn't think it's good business practice.'

'You don't get many cancellations?'

'Very few.'

'Really? But you've had two out of the four rooms in the annexe!'

Yes, he was right. And he looked like the wretched sort of man who would always be right.

'Have you ever had this old biddy staying with you before?' continued Morse.

'What makes you think she's an "old biddy", Inspector?'

'With a name like Doris Arkwright? Straight out of the Lancashire mills, isn't it? Pushing a sprightly ninety, I shouldn't wonder, and drives an ancient Austin.'

Sarah opened her mouth, but closed it again. Morse (as she watched him) had perched a pair of NHS half-lenses on his Jewish-looking nose and looked again at the short letter from Doris Arkwright.

'Do you think she's got anything to do with the case?' asked Sarah.

'Do I think so?' He waited for a few pregnant seconds before taking off his spectacles and looking at her quizzically. 'No, I don't think she's got anything at all to do with the murder. Do you , Miss Jonstone?'

CHAPTER TEN

Wednesday, January 1st: P.M.

He was once a doctor but is now an undertaker; and what he does as an undertaker he used to do as a doctor.

(MARTIAL)

FOR LEWIS, THE next two hours of the evening of New Year's Day were hardly memorable. A good deal of the earlier excitement had dissipated, with even the novelty of murder worn thin; and the Haworth Hotel now looked an uninviting place, its high-ceilinged rooms harshly lit by neon strips, its guests standing or sitting in small groups, quiet and unsmiling — and waiting. Morse had asked him to check (factually) with Phillips all the names and addresses of those staying in the hotel, and briefly himself to interview as many vital witnesses as he could find — with Phillips to take on the rest; to try to form a picture (synoptically) of the scene at the hotel on the previous evening; and to keep his antennae attuned (almost metaphysically, it appeared) for any signals from an unsuspected psychopath or any posthumous transmissions from the newly dead. Festivities — all of them, including the pantomine — had been cancelled, and the hotel was now grimly still, with not even the quiet click of snooker balls from the games room to suggest that murder was anything but a deadly serious matter.

Lewis himself had never spent a Christmas or a New Year away from home since his marriage; and although he knew that family life was hardly prize-winning roses all along the way, he had never felt the urge to get away from his own modest semi-detached house up in Headington over such holiday periods. Yet now — most oddly, considering the circumstances — he began to see for the first time, some of the potential attractions: no frenetic last-minute purchases from supermarkets; no pre-feastday preparations of stuffings and sauces; no sticky saucepans to scour; no washing-up of plates and cutlery. Yes! Perhaps Lewis would mention the idea to the missus, for it seemed perfectly clear to him as he spoke to guest after guest that a wondrously good time was being had by all — until a man had been found murdered.