Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

By 9.30 p.m. Mr. Edward Wilkins had been driven back to his home in Diamond Close; Phillips, at long last, had been given permission to call it a day; and Lewis, tired and dejected, sat in Morse's office, wondering where they had all gone so sadly wrong. Perhaps he might have suspected — and he'd actually said so — that Morse's ideas had all been a bit too bizarre: a man murdered in fancy-dress outfit; and then another man spending the night of the party pretending he was the murdered man and dressed in a virtually identical outfit. Surely, surely, the simple truth was that Thomas Bowman had been the man at the party, as well as the man who'd been murdered! There would be (as Lewis knew) lots of difficulties in substantiating such a view; but none of them were anywhere near as insurmountable as trying to break Wilkins's alibi — an alibi which could be vouched for by sixty or seventy wholly disinterested witnesses. Gently, quietly, Lewis mentioned his thoughts to Morse — the latter sitting silent and morose in the old black leather armchair. 'You could be right, Lewis.' Morse rubbed his left hand across his eyes. 'Anyway, it's no good worrying about it tonight. My judgement's gone! I need a drink. You coming?'

'No. I'll get straight home, if you don't mind, sir. It's been a long day, and I should think the missus'll have something cooking for me.'

'I should be surprised if she hasn't.'

'You're looking tired, sir. Do you want me to give you a lift?'

Morse nodded wearily. 'Just drop me at the Friar, if you will.'

As he walked up to the entrance, Morse stopped. Red, blue, green and orange lights were flashing through the lounge windows, and the place was athrob with the live music of what sounded like some Caribbean delirium at the Oval greeting a test century from Vivian Richards. Morse checked his step and walked round to the public bar, where in comparative peace he sat and drank two pints of Morrell's bitter and watched a couple of incompetent pool-players pretending to be Steve Davises. On the wall beside the dartboard he saw the notice:

7th January

LIVE MUSIC 7-11 p.m.

Admission Free!!

The fabulous

CALYPSO QUARTET

Morse pondered a quick third pint; but it wanted only a couple of minutes to eleven, and he decided to get home — just a few minutes' walk away, along Carlton Road and thence just a little way down the Banbury Road to his bachelor flat. But something thwarted this decision, and he ordered another pint, a large Bell's Scotch and a packet of plain crisps.

At twenty minutes past eleven he was the last one in the public bar, and the young barman wiping the table-tops suggested that he should finish his drink and leave: it was not unknown (Morse learned) for the police to check up on over-liquored loiterers after a live music evening.

As he left, Morse saw the Calypso Quartet packing away its collection of steel drums and sundry other Caribbean instruments into the back of an old, oft-dented Dormobile. And suddenly Morse stopped. He stopped dead. He stopped as if petrified, staring at the man who had just closed the back door of the vehicle and who was languidly lolling round to the driving seat. Even in the bitter late-night air this man wore only a blood-red, open-necked shirt on the upper part of his loose-limbed body; whilst on his head he had a baggy black-and-white checked cap that covered all his hair apart from the beaded dreadlocks which dangled on either side of his face like the snakes that once wreathed the head of the stone-eyed Gorgon.

'You all right, man?' enquired the coloured musician, holding both hands up in a mock gesture of concern about a fellow mortal who seemed to have imbibed too freely perhaps and too well. And Morse noticed the hands — hands that were almost like the hands of a white man, as though the Almighty had just about run out of pigment when he came to the palms.

'You all right, man?' repeated the musician.

Morse nodded, and there appeared on his face a stupidly beatific smile such as was seldom seen there — save when he listened to the love duet from Act One of Die Walküre .

Morse should (he knew it!) not have left things where they were that night. But his eyelids drooped heavily over his prickly-tired eyes as he walked back to his flat; and in spite of his elation, he had little enough strength left, little appetite for anything more that day. But before throwing himself on the longed-for bed, he did ring Lewis; and prevailed upon Mrs. Lewis (still up) to rouse her husband (an hour abed) for a few quick words before January 7th drew to its seemingly interminable close. And when, after only a brief monologue from Morse, a weary-brained Lewis put his receiver down, he, too, knew the identity of the man who on New Year's Eve had walked back to the annexe of the Haworth Hotel with Helen Smith on the one side and Philippa Palmer on the other.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Wednesday, January 8th: A.M.

Matrimony is a bargain, and somebody has to get the worst of the bargain.

(HELEN ROWLAND)

AT THE DESK OF the Haworth Hotel the following morning, Sarah Jonstone greeted Sergeant Lewis as if she were glad to see him; which indeed she was, since she had at last remembered the little thing that had been troubling her. So early in the day (it was only eight thirty), her excessively circumferenced spectacles were still riding high upon her pretty little nose, and it could hardly be claimed, at least for the present, that she was being hectically overworked; in fact Lewis had already observed her none-too-convincing attempt to conceal beneath a pile of correspondence the book she had been reading when he had so unexpectedly walked in — on Morse's instruction — to interview her once again.

It was just a little corroboration (Lewis had pointed out) that was needed; and Sarah found herself once again seeking to stress the few unequivocally certain points she had made in her earlier statement. Yes, she did remember, and very clearly, the man coming out of the Gentlemen's lavatory just before the New Year's Eve party was due to begin; yes (now that Lewis mentioned it) perhaps his hands hadn't been blackened-over as convincingly as the rest of him; yes, the two of them, 'Mr. and Mrs. Ballard', had kept themselves very much to themselves for the greater part of the evening — certainly until that hour or so before midnight when a series of eightsome reels, general excuse-mes and old-time barn-dances had severed the last ties of self-consciousness and timidity; and when 'Mr. Ballard' had danced with her, his sweaty fingers leaving some of their dark stain on her own hands, and on her blouse; yes, without a shadow of doubt that last fact was true, because she remembered with a sweet clarity how she had washed her hands in the bedroom washbasin before going to bed that night, and how she had tried to sponge the stain off her blouse the following morning.

A middle-aged couple stood waiting to pay their bill; and while Sarah fetched the account from the small room at the back of Reception, Lewis turned his head to one side and was thus able to make out the title on the white spine of the book she had been reading: MILLGATE: Thomas Hardy — A Biography . O.U.P.

The bill settled, Sarah resumed her seat and told Lewis what she had remembered. It had been odd, though it didn't really seem all that important now. What had happened was that someone — a woman — had rung up and asked what the New Year's Eve menu was: that was all. As far as she could recall, the little incident had taken place on the Monday before — that would be December 30th.

Knowing how pleased Morse would be to have one of his hunches confirmed, Lewis was on the point of taking down some firm statement from Sarah Jonstone when he became aware of an extraordinarily attractive brunette standing beside him, shifting the weight of her beautifully moulded figure from one black-stockinged leg to the other.