Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

In mid-afternoon, he wandered slowly up the High to Carfax, and then turned left down past Christ Church and into St. Aldates Police Station where he handed the bag over to Lost Property.

'Where did you find it?' asked the sergeant on duty.

'Someone must have dropped it—'

'You better leave your name—'

'Nah! Don't fink so.'

'Might be a reward!'

'Cheers, mate!'

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Monday, 6th January: P.M.

Wordsworth recalls in 'The Prelude' how he was soothed by the sound of the Derwent winding among grassy holms.

( Literary Landscapes of the British Isles )

IT WAS SELDOM THAT Morse ever asked for more personnel. Indeed, it was his private view that the sight (as so often witnessed on TV) of a hundred or so uniformed policemen crawling in echelon across a tract of heathland often brought the force into something approaching derision. He himself had once taken part in such a massive sweep across a field in North Staffordshire, ending up, as he had done, with one empty packet of Featherlite Durex, one empty can of alcohol-free lager — and (the next morning) a troublesome bout of lumbago.

But he did ask for more personnel on the afternoon of January 6th; and Lewis, for one, was glad that much needed help (in the shape of Sergeant Phillips and two detective constables) had been summoned to follow up all inquiries regarding Margaret Bowman.

Oddly enough (yet almost everything about him was odd, as Lewis knew) Morse had shown no great surprise on hearing the news that the murdered man was Thomas Bowman; indeed, the only emotion he showed — and that of immense relief — was after learning that the other corpse on view that lunchtime was not Margaret Bowman's. In fact, Morse suddenly seemed much more at peace with himself as he sat with Lewis in the Royal Oak, just opposite the hospital — a circumstance (as Lewis rightly guessed) not wholly unconnected with the fact that after his Herculean efforts over Christmas and the New Year he had finally surrendered and bought himself a packet of cigarettes. At two-thirty, they were once more on the A34 to Chipping Norton, this time with a much firmer mission — to investigate the property at 6 Charlbury Drive, which had now quite definitely become the focus of the murder inquiry.

'Shall we break one of the front windows or one of the back ones?' Morse asked as they stood in front of the property, faces at a good many windows in the quiet cul-de-sac now watching the activity with avid curiosity. But such forcible ingress proved unnecessary. Lewis it was who suggested that most people ('Well, the missus does') leave a key with the neighbours: and so it proved in this case, with the elderly woman in number 5 promptly producing both a back-door and a front-door key. Mrs. Bowman, it appeared, had gone out on Friday evening, saying she wouldn't be back until Monday after work; hadn't been back, either — as far as the woman knew.

Finding nothing of immediate interest in the downstairs rooms, Lewis went upstairs where he found Morse in one of the two spare bedrooms looking into a cumbrous dark mahogany wardrobe which (apart from an old-fashioned armchair) was the only item of furniture there.

'Found anything, sir?'

Morse shook his head. 'Lots of shoes he had.'

'Not much help.'

'No help at all.'

'Can you smell anything, sir?'

'Such as?'

'Whisky?' suggested Lewis.

Morse's eyes lit up as he sniffed, and sniffed again.

'I reckon you're right, you know.'

There was a stack of white shoe boxes, and they found the half-full bottle of Bell's in the third box from the bottom.

'You think he was a secret drinker, sir?'

'What if he was? I'm a secret drinker — aren't you?'

'No, sir. And I wouldn't have got away with this. The missus cleans all my shoes.'

The other spare room upstairs (little more than a small boxroom) was similarly short on furniture, with three sheets of newspaper spread out across the bare floorboards on which ranks of large, green cooking apples were neatly arranged. They take the Sun ,' observed Lewis, as his eye fell on a young lady leaning forward to maximize the measurements of a mighty bosom. 'You think he was a secret sex maniac?'

' I'm a secret —' But Morse broke off as he saw the broad grin across his sergeant's face, and he found himself smiling in return.

The main bedroom, though furnished fully (even tastefully, as Morse saw it), seemed at first glance to offer little more of interest than the rest of the house. Twin beds, only a few inches apart, were neatly made, each covered with an olive-green quilt, each with a small bedside table — the feminine accoutrements on the one nearer the window clearly signifying 'hers'. Oh the right as one entered the room was a large white-wood wardrobe, again 'hers', and on the left a tallboy obviously 'his'. A composite piece of modem furniture, mirror in the middle, three shelves above (two of them full of books), with drawers below, stood just beyond the tallboy — at the bottom of Margaret Bowman's bed. Since there seemed about three times as much of her clothing as of his, Morse agreed that Lewis should concentrate on the former, he on the latter. But neither of them was able to come up with anything of value, and Morse soon found himself far more interested in the two shelves of books. The thick spines of four white paperbacks announced a sequence of the latest international best-sellers by Jackie Collins, and beside these stood two apparently unopened Penguins, Brideshead Revisited and A Passage to India . Then two large, lavishly illustrated books on the life and times of Marilyn Monroe; an ancient impression of the Concise Oxford Dictionary; and, a very recent purchase by the look of things, a book in the 'Hollywood Greats' series covering the career of Robert Redford (a star — unlike Miss Monroe — who had yet to swim into Morse's ken). On the wall beside this top shelf of books were two colour photographs cut from sporting periodicals: one of Steve Cram, the great middle-distance runner; the other of Ian Terence Botham, his blond locks almost reaching the top of his England cricket sweater. The title Sex Parties , on the lower shelf, caught Morse's eye and he took it out and opened a page a random:

Her hand slid across the gear-lever and touched his leg below the tennis shorts. 'Let's go to my place — quick!' she murmured in his ear.

'I shan't argue with that, my love!' he replied huskily as the powerful Maserati swerved across the street. .

As they lay there together the next morning—

Such anti-climactic pianissimo porn had no attraction whatever for Morse and he was putting the book back in its slot when he noticed that there was something stuck in the middle of the large volume next to it, a work entitled The Complete Crochet Manual . It was a holiday postcard from Derwentwater, addressed to Mrs. M. Bowman, the date stamp showing July 29th, the brief message reading:

Morse turned the card over and looked lovingly at the pale-green sweep of the hills before putting the card back in its place. An odd place, perhaps, his brain suggested gently? And not the sort of book, surely, that Tom Bowman would often dip into for amusement or instruction? Edwina was doubtless one of Margaret's friends — either a local woman or one of her colleagues at Oxford. For the moment, he thought no more about it.

Downstairs once more, Lewis collected up the pile of documents he'd already selected from the mass of letters and bills that appeared to have been stuffed haphazardly into the two drawers of the corner cabinet in the lounge — water, electricity, mortgage, HP, bank statements, car insurance. Morse, for his part, sat down in one of the two armchairs and lit a cigarette.