Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

Neighbors have been swift to pay their tributes. Mrs. Emily Jacobs, who waved a greeting just before Rachel was murdered, said she was a friendly, pleasant resident who would be sadly missed.

Similar tributes were paid by other local inhabitants who are finding it difficult to come to terms with their neighborhood being the scene of such a terrible murder and a center of interest for the national media.

For the present, however, Bloxham Drive has been sealed off to everyone except local residents, official reporters and a team of police officers carefully searching the environs of No. 17.

But it seems inevitable that the street will soon be a magnet for sightseers, drawn by a ghoulish if natural curiosity, once police activity is scaled down and restrictions are lifted.

A grim-faced Sergeant Lewis, after once again examining the white Mini still parked outside the property, would make no comment other than confirming that various leads were being followed.

Rachel’s parents, who live in Devon, have identified the body as that of their daughter, and a bouquet of white lilies bearing the simple inscription “To our darling daughter” lies in cellophaned wrapping beside the front gate of No. 17.

The tragedy has cast a dark cloud over the voting taking place today for the election of a councillor to replace Terry Burgess who died late last year following a heart attack.

“Nicely written,” conceded Morse. “Bit pretentious, perhaps... and I do wish they’d all stop demoting me!”

“No mistakes?”

Morse eyed his sergeant sharply. “Have I missed something?”

Lewis said nothing, smiling inexplicably, as Morse read through the article again.

“Well, I’d’ve put a comma after ‘reporters’ myself. Incidentally, do you know what such a comma’s called?”

“Remind me.”

“The ‘Oxford Comma’.”

“Of course.”

“Why are you grinning?”

“That’s just it, sir. It’s that ‘grim-faced.’ Should be ‘grin-faced,’ shouldn’t it? You see, the missus rang me up half an hour ago: She’s won fifty pounds on the Premium Bonds. Bond, really. She’s only got one of ’em.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thank you, sir.”

For a final time Morse looked through the article, wondering whether the seventeenth word from the beginning and the seventeenth word from the end had anything to do with the number of the house in which Rachel James had been murdered. Probably not. Morse’s life was bestrewn with coincidences.

“Is that ponytailed ponce still out there?” he asked suddenly.

Lewis looked out of the front window.

“No, sir. He’s gone.”

“Let’s hope he’s gone to one of those new barbers’ shops you were telling me about?” Morse’s views were beset with prejudices.

She is disturbed

When the phone rings at 5 A.M.

And with such urgency

Aware that one of these calls

Will summon her to witness another death

Commanding more words than she

The outside observer can provide — and yet

Notepad poised and ready

She picks up the receiver.

At 2:25 P.M. that same day, Morse got into the maroon Jaguar and after looking at his wristwatch drove off. First, down to the Cutteslowe Roundabout, then straight over and along Banbury Road to the Martyrs’ Memorial, where he turned right onto Beaumont Street, along Park End Street, and out under the railway bridge onto Botley Road, where just beyond the river bridge he turned left into the Osney Industrial Estate.

There was, in fact, one vacant space in the limited parking lots beside the main reception area to Oxford City and County Newspapers; but Morse pretended not to notice it. Instead he asked the girl at the reception desk for the open sesame to the large staff car park, and was soon watching the black-and-white barrier lift as he inserted a white plastic card into some electronic contraption there. Back in reception, the same young girl retrieved the precious ticket before giving Morse a VISITOR badge, and directing him down a corridor alongside, on his left, a vast open-plan complex, where hundreds of newspaper personnel appeared too preoccupied to notice the “Visitor.”

Owens, as Morse discovered, was one of the few employees granted some independent square-footage there, his small office hived off by wood-and-glass partitions.

“You live, er, she lived next door, I’m told,” began Morse awkwardly.

Owens nodded.

“Bit of luck, I suppose, in a way — for a reporter, I mean?”

“For me, yes. Not much luck for her, though, was it?”

“How did you first hear about it? You seem to have been on the scene pretty quickly, sir.”

“Della rang me. She lives on the Drive — Number 1. She’d seen me leave for work.”

“What time was that?”

“Must have been... ten to seven, five to seven?”

“You usually leave about then?”

“I do now, yes. For the past year or so we’ve been working a fair amount of flexitime and, well, the earlier I leave home the quicker I’m here. Especially in term time when—” Owens looked shrewdly across his desk at Morse. “But you know as much as I do about the morning traffic from Kidlington to Oxford.”

“Not really. I’m normally going the other way — North Oxford to Kidlington.”

“Much more sensible.”

“Yes...”

Clearly Owens was going to be more of a heavyweight than he’d expected, and Morse paused awhile to take his bearings. He’d made a note only a few minutes since of exactly how long the same distance had taken him, from Bloxham Drive to Osney Mead. And even with quite a lot of early afternoon traffic about — even with a couple of lights against him — he’d done the journey in fourteen and a half minutes.

“So you’d get here at about... about when , Mr. Owens?”

The reporter shrugged his shoulders. “Quarter past? Twenty past? Usually about then.”

A nucleus of suspicion was beginning to form in Morse’s brain as he sensed that Owens was perhaps exaggerating the length of time it had taken him to reach work that Monday morning. If he had left at, say, ten minutes to seven, he could well have been in the car park at — what? — seven o’clock? With a bit of luck? So why... why had Owens suggested quarter past — even twenty past?

“You can’t be more precise?”

Again Morse felt the man’s shrewd eyes upon him.

“You mean the later I got here the less likely I am to be a suspect?”

“You realize how important times are, Mr. Owens — a sequence of times — in any murder inquiry like this?”

“Oh yes, I know it as well as you do, Inspector. I’ve covered quite a few murders in my time... So... so why don’t you ask Della what time she saw me leave? Della Cecil, that is, at Number 1. She’ll probably remember better than me. And as for getting here... well, that’ll be fairly easy to check. Did you know that?”

Owens took a small white rectangular card from his wallet, with a number printed across the top — 008 14922 — and continued: “I push that in the thing there and the whatsit goes up and something somewhere records the time I get into the car park.”

Clearly the broad-faced, heavy-jowled reporter had about as much specialist knowledge of voodoo technology as Morse, and the latter switched the thrust of his questions.

“This woman who saw you leave, I shall have to see her — you realize that?”

“You wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t. Cigarette, Inspector?”

“Er, no, no thanks. Well, er, perhaps I will, yes. Thank you. This woman, as I say, do you know her well?”

“Only twenty houses in the Drive, Inspector. You get to know most people, after a while.”