Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

31st December

Dear Maggie

You've gone into Oxford and I'm here sitting at home. You will be upset and disappointed I know but please try and understand. I met another woman two months ago and I knew straightaway that I liked her a lot. I've just got to work things out that's all. Please give me that chance and don't think badly of me. I've decided that if we can go away for a few days or so we can sort things out. You are going to want to know if I love this woman and I don't know yet and she doesn't know either. She is not married and she is thirty one. We are going in her car up to Scotland if the roads are alright. Nobody else need know anything. I got a week off work quite officially though I didn't tell you. I know what you will feel like but it will be better for me to sort things out.

Tom

Lewis read through the letter quickly — and then looked at Mrs. Bowman. Was there — did he notice — just a brief flash of triumph in her eyes? Or could it have been a glint of fear? He couldn't be sure, but the interview had obviously taken a totally unexpected turn, and he would have welcomed at that point a guiding hand from Morse. But the latter still appeared to be perusing the letter with inordinate interest.

'You found this note when you got back home?' asked Lewis.

She nodded. 'On the kitchen table.'

'Do you know this woman he mentions?'

'No.'

'You've not heard from your husband?'

'No.'

'He's taking a long time to, er "sort things out".'

'Has — has my husband had an accident — a car accident? Is that why—'

'Not so far as we know, Mrs. Bowman.'

'Is that — is that all you want me for?'

'For the minute, perhaps. We shall have to keep the letter — I'm sure you'll understand why.'

'No, I don't understand why!'

'Well, it might not be from your husband at all — have you thought of that?' asked Lewis slowly.

'Course it's from him!' As she spoke these few words, she sounded suddenly sharp and almost crude after her earlier quietly civilized manner, and Lewis found himself wondering several things about her.

'Can you be sure about that, Mrs. Bowman?'

'I'd know his writing anywhere.'

'Have you got any more of his writing with you?'

'I've got the very first letter he wrote me — years ago.'

'Can you show it to us, please?'

From her handbag she brought out an envelope, much soiled, drew from it a letter, much creased, and handed it to Lewis, who cursorily compared the two samples of handwriting, and pushed them along the desk to Morse — the latter nodding slowly after a few moments: it seemed to him that by amateur and professional experts alike, the writing would pretty certainly be adjudged identical.

'Can I please go now?'

Lewis wasn't at all sure whether or not this oddly unsatisfactory interview should be temporarily terminated, and he turned to Morse — receiving only a non-committal shrug.

So it was that Margaret Bowman left the office, exhorted in a kindly way by the Secretary to get herself another cup of coffee from the canteen, and to be ready to come down again if the police needed her for further questioning.

'We're sorry to have taken so much of your time, Miss Gibson,' said Morse after Mrs. Bowman had left. 'And if we could have a room for an hour or so we'd be most grateful.'

'You can stay here if you like, Inspector. There are a good many things I've got to see to round the office.'

'What do you make of all that, sir?' asked Lewis when they were alone.

'We haven't got a thing to charge her with, have we? We can't take her in just for forgetting she bought a pound of sausages from Sainsbury's.'

'We're not getting far, are we, sir? It's all a bit disappointing.'

'What? Disappointing? Far from it! We've just been looking at things from the wrong end, Lewis, that's all.'

'Really?'

'Oh yes. And we owe a lot to Mrs. Bowman — it was about time somebody put me on the right track!'

'You think she was telling the truth?'

'Truth?' Morse shook his head. 'I didn't believe a word of her story, did you?'

'I don't know, sir. I feel very confused.'

'Confused? Surely not!' He turned to Lewis and put the yellow pencil down on the Secretary's desk. 'Do you want to know what happened in Annexe 3 on New Year's Eve?'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Monday, January 6th: A.M.

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

(PUBLILIUS SYRUS)

'LET ME EXPLAIN one thing from the start. I just said we've been looking at things from the wrong end and I mean just that. Max gave us a big enough margin for the time of death, and instead of listening to him I kept trying to pin him down. Even now it's taken a woman's pack of lies to put me on the right track, because the most important thing about Mrs. Bowman is that she was forced to show us the letter, supposedly from her husband, to give herself a reasonable alibi. It was the last shot in her locker; and she had no option but to use it, because we were getting — we are getting! — dangerously close to the truth. And I just said "supposedly from her husband" — but that's not the case: it was from her husband, you can be certain of that. Everything fits, you see, once you turn the pattern upside down . The man in Annexe 3 wasn't murdered after the party: he was murdered before the party . Let's just assume that Margaret Bowman has been unfaithful, and let's assume that she gets deeply involved with this lover of hers, and that he threatens to blackmail her in some way if she doesn't agree to see him again — threatens to tell her husband — to cut his own throat — to cut her throat — anything you like. Let's say, too, that the husband, Tom Bowman, deliverer of Her Majesty's mail at Chipping Norton, finds out about all this — let's say that he intercepts a letter; or, more likely, I think, she's desperate enough to tell him all about it — because there must have been some sort of reconciliation between them. Together, they decide that something has got to be done to get rid of the threat that now affects both of them; and at that point, as I see it, the plot was hatched. They book a double room for a New Year break at a hotel, using a non-existent accommodation address so that later on no one will be able to trace them; and Tom Bowman is exactly the person to cope with that problem — none better. So things really start moving. Margaret Bowman tells this dangerous and persistent lover of hers — let's call him Mr. X — that she can spend the New Year with him . He's a single man; he's head over heels about her; and now he's over the moon, too! He thought she'd ditched him. But here she is offering to spend a couple of whole days with him. She's taken the initiative; she's fixed it all up; she's booked the hotel; she wants him! She's even told him — and she must have expected he'd agree — that she'll provide the fancy-dress costumes they're going to wear at the New Year party. She tells him to be ready, let's say, from four o'clock on the 31st. She herself probably books in under her false name and a false address an hour or so earlier, but a bit later than most of the other guests. She wants to be seen by as few of the others as possible, but she's still got to give herself plenty of time. She finds herself alone at the reception desk, she turns up her coat and pulls her scarf around her face, she signs the form, she takes the room key, she takes her suitcase over to Annexe 3—and all is ready. She rings up X from the public phone-box just outside the hotel, tells him what their room number is, and he's on his way like a shot. And while the rest of the guests are playing Cluedo, he's spending the rest of that late afternoon and early evening with his bottom on the top sheet, as they say. Then, when most of the passion's spent itself, she tells him that they'd better start dressing up for the party; she shows him what she's brought for the pair of them to wear; and about 7 p.m. the pair of them are ready: she rubs a final bit of stage-black on his hands — makes some excuse about leaving her purse or her umbrella at Reception — says she'll be back in a minute — takes the key with her — pulls her mackintosh over her costume — and goes out bang on the stroke of seven. Tom Bowman, himself dressed in exactly the same sort of outfit as X, has been waiting for her, somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the hotel; and while Margaret Bowman spends the most nerve-racking few minutes of her life, probably in the bus shelter just across from the hotel, Tom Bowman lets himself into Annexe 3.