Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

Lewis, a man not familiar with seventeenth-century love lyrics, read the lines, then read them again, with only semi-comprehension.

“Pity she didn’t get round to filling in the address, sir. Looks as if she might be proposing to somebody.”

“Aren’t you making an assumption?”

“Pardon?”

“Did you see a typewriter in the house?”

“She could have typed it at work.”

“Yes. You must get along there soon.”

“You’re the boss.”

“Nice drop o’ beer, this. In good nick.” Morse drained the glass and set it down in the middle of the slightly rickety table, while Lewis took a gentle sip of his orange juice; and continued to sit firmly fixed to his seat.

Morse continued:

“No! You’re making a false assumption — I think you are. You’re assuming she’d just written this to somebody and then forgotten the fellow’s address, right? Pretty unlikely, isn’t it? If she was proposing to him.”

“Perhaps she couldn’t find a stamp.”

“Perhaps...”

Reluctantly Morse got to his feet and pushed his glass across the bar. “You don’t want anything more yourself, do you, Lewis?”

“No thanks.”

“You’ve nothing less?” asked the landlady, as Morse tendered a twenty-pound note. “You’re the first ones in today and I’m a bit short of change.”

Morse turned round. “Any change on you, by any chance, Lewis?”

“You see,” continued Morse, “you’re still assuming she wrote it, aren’t you?”

“And she didn’t?”

“I think someone wrote the card to her , put it in an envelope, and then addressed the envelope — not the card.”

“Why not just address the card?”

“Because whoever wrote it didn’t want anyone else to read it.”

“Why not just phone her up?”

“Difficult — if he was married and his wife was always around.”

“He could ring her from a phone box.”

“Risky — if anyone saw him.”

Lewis nodded without any conviction: “And it’s only a bit of poetry.”

“Is it?” asked Morse quietly.

Lewis picked up the card again. “Perhaps it’s this chap called ‘Wilmot,’ sir — the date’s just there to mislead us.”

“Mislead you , perhaps. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a court poet to Charles II. He wrote some delightfully pornographic lyrics.”

“So it’s — it’s all genuine?”

“I didn’t say that, did I? The name’s genuine, but not the poem. Any English scholar would know that’s not seventeenth-century verse.”

“I’m sure you’re right, sir.”

“And if I’m right about the card coming in an envelope — fairly recently — we might be able to find the envelope, agreed? Find a postmark, perhaps? Even a bit of handwriting?”

Lewis looked dubious. “I’d better get something organized, then.”

“All taken care of! I’ve got a couple of the DCs looking through the wastepaper baskets and the dustbin.”

“You reckon this is important, then?”

“Top priority! You can see that. She’s been meeting some man — meeting him secretly. Which means he’s probably married, probably fairly well-known, probably got a prominent job, probably a local man—”

“Probably lives in Peterborough,” mumbled Lewis.

“That’s exactly why the postmark’s so vital!” countered an unamused Morse. “But if he’s an Oxford man...”

“Do you know what the population of Oxford is ?”

“I know it to the nearest thousand! ” snapped Morse.

Then, of a sudden, the Chief Inspector’s mood completely changed. He tapped the postcard.

“Don’t be despondent, Lewis. You see, we know just a little about this fellow already, don’t we?”

He smiled benignly after draining his second pint; and since no other customers had as yet entered the lounge, Lewis resignedly got to his feet and stepped over to the bar once more.

Lewis picked up the postcard again.

“Give me a clue, sir.”

“You know the difference between nouns and verbs, of course?”

“How could I forget something like that?”

“Well, at certain periods in English literature, all the nouns were spelled with capital letters. Now, as you can see, there are eight nouns in those six lines — each of them spelled with a capital letter. But there are nine capitals — forgetting the first word of each line. Now which is the odd one out?”

Lewis pretended to study the lines once more. He’d played this game before, and he trusted he could get away with it again, as his eyes suddenly lit up a little.

“Ah... I think— I think I see what you mean.”

“Hits you in the eye, doesn’t it, that ‘Wed’ in the first line? And that’s what it was intended to do.”

“Obviously.”

“What’s it mean?”

“What, ‘Wed’? Well, it means ‘marry’ — you know, get hitched, get spliced, tie the knot—”

“What else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“What else ?”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s Anglo-Saxon or something.”

“Not exactly. Not far off, though. Old English, in fact. And what’s it short for?”

“ ‘Wednesday?’ ” suggested Lewis tentatively.

Morse beamed at his sergeant. “Woden’s day — the fourth day of the week. So we’ve got a day , Lewis. And what else do you need, if you’re going to arrange a date with a woman?”

Lewis studied the lines yet again. “Time? Time, yes! I see what you mean, sir. ‘Ten Times’… ‘fifteen Bridesmaides’… Well, well, well! Ten-fifteen!”

Morse nodded. “With A.M. likelier than P.M. Doesn’t say where though, does it?”

Lewis studied the lines for the fifth time.

“ ‘Traine,’ perhaps?”

“Well done! ‘Meet me at the station to catch the ten-fifteen A.M. train’ — that’s what it says. And we know where that train goes, don’t we?”

“Paddington.”

“Exactly.”

“If only we knew who he was...”

Morse now produced his second photograph — a small passport-sized photograph of two people: the woman, Rachel James (no doubt of that), turning partially round and slightly upward in order to kiss the cheek of a considerably older man with a pair of smiling eyes beneath a distinguished head of graying hair.

“Who’s he, sir?”

“Dunno. We could find out pretty quickly, though, if we put his photo in the local papers.”

“ If he’s local.”

“Even if he’s not local, I should think.”

“Bit dodgy, sir.”

“Too dodgy at this stage, I agree. But we can try another angle, can’t we? Tomorrow’s Tuesday, and the day after that’s Wednesday — Woden’s day...”

“You mean he may turn up at the station?”

“If the card’s fairly recent, yes.”

“Unless he’s heard she’s been murdered.”

“Or unless he murdered her himself.”

“Worth a try, sir. And if he does turn up, it’ll probably mean he didn’t murder her...”

Morse made no comment.

“Or, come to think of it, it might be a fairly clever thing to do if he did murder her.”

Morse drained his glass and stood up.

“You know something? I reckon orange juice occasionally germinates your brain cells.”

As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun.

“You haven’t told me what you think about this fellow Owens — the dead woman’s next-door neighbor.”

“Death is always the next-door neighbor,” said Morse somberly. “But don’t let it affect your driving, Lewis!”