Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

“They did teach us English grammar at Roedean, yes.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

Adèle breathed deeply, and her gray eyes stared across almost fiercely.

“Once, yes.”

“But you didn’t repeat the experience?”

“I said ‘once’ — didn’t you hear me?”

“You still see him?”

“Occasionally. He’s all right: intelligent, pretty well read, quite good fun, sometimes — and he promised he’d vote Conservative today.”

“He sounds quite compatible.”

“Are you married, Inspector?”

“ Chief Inspector.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Do you wish you were?”

Perhaps Morse didn’t hear the question.

“Did you know Rachel James fairly well?”

“We had a heart-to-heart once in a while.”

“You weren’t aware of any one particular boyfriend?”

She shook her head.

“Would you say she was attractive to men?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I only saw her the once.”

“I’m sorry.” She said it quietly. “Please, forgive me.”

“Do you know a man called Storrs? Julian Storrs?”

“Good gracious, yes! Julian? He’s one of our Vice Presidents. We often meet at do’s. In fact, I’m seeing him next week at a fund-raising dinner at The Randolph. Would you like a complimentary ticket?”

“No, perhaps not.”

“Shouldn’t have asked, should I? Anyway,” she got to her feet, “I’ll have to be off. They’ll be starting the count fairly soon.”

They walked to the front door.

“Er... when you rang Mr. Owens on Monday morning, just after eight o’clock you say, you did speak to him, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

Morse nodded. “And one final thing, please. My sergeant found some French letters—”

“French letters? How old are you, Chief Inspector? Condoms, for heaven’s sake.”

“As I say, we found two packets of, er, condoms in one of her bedroom drawers.”

“Big deal!”

“You don’t know if she ever invited anyone home to sleep with her?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I thought,” said Morse hesitantly, “most women were on the pill these days?”

“A lot of them off it, too — after that thrombosis scare.”

“I suppose so, yes. I’m... I’m not really an expert in that sort of thing.”

“And don’t forget safe sex.”

“No. I’ll... I’ll try not to.”

“Did she keep them under her nighties?”

Morse nodded sadly, and bade goodnight to Adèle Beatrice Cecil.

ABC.

As he walked slowly along to the Jaguar, he felt a slight tingling behind the eyes at the thought of Rachel James, and the nightdress she’d been wearing when she was murdered; and the condoms so carefully concealed in her lingerie drawer — along with the hopes and fears she’d had, like everyone. And he thought of Auden’s immortal line on A. E. Housman:

Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer.

As he started the Jaguar, Morse noticed the semistroboscopic light inside the lounge; and trusted that PC Brogan had managed to activate the heating system in Number 17 Bloxham Drive.

O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass!

Names that should be on every infant’s tongue!

Morse headed south along the Banbury Road, turning left just after the Cutteslowe Roundabout, and through the adjoining Carlton and Wolsey Roads (why hadn’t the former been christened “Cardinal”?); then, at the bottom of the Cutteslowe Estate, down the steeply sloping entry to the Cherwell, a quietly civilized public house where the quietly civilized landlord kept an ever-watchful eye on the Brakspear and the Bass. The car phone rang as he unfastened his safety belt.

Lewis.

Speaking from HQ.

“I thought I’d told you to go home! The eggs and chips are getting cold.”

Lewis, as Morse earlier, showed himself perfectly competent at ignoring a question.

“I’ve had a session on the phone with Ox and Cow Newspapers, sir — still at work there, quite a few of them. Owens’ car park card is number 14922 and it was registered by the barrier contraption there at 7:04 on Monday morning. Seems he’s been in fairly early these last couple of months. Last week, for example, Monday to Friday, 7:37, 7:06, 7:11, 7:00, 7:18.”

“So what? Shows he can’t get up that early on Monday mornings.”

“That’s not all, though.”

“It is , Lewis! It’s still the card you’re on about — not the car ! Can’t you see that?”

“Please listen to me for a change, sir. The personnel fellow who looked out the car park things for me, he just happened to be in earlyish last Monday morning himself: 7:22. There weren’t many others around then, but one of the ones who was... Guess who, sir?”

“Oh dear!” said Morse for the second time that evening.

“Yep. Owens! Ponytail ’n all.”

“Oh.”

In that quiet monosyllable Lewis caught the depth of Morse’s disappointment. Yet he felt far from dismayed himself, knowing full well as he did, after so many murder investigations with the pair of them in harness, that Morse’s mind was almost invariably at its imaginative peak when one of his ill-considered, top-of-the-head hypotheses had been razed to the ground — in this case by some lumbering bulldozer like himself. And so he understood the silence at the other end of the line: a long silence, like that at the Cenotaph in commemoration of the fallen.

Lewis seldom expected (seldom received) any thanks. And in truth such lack of recognition concerned him little, since only rarely did Morse show the slightest sign of graciousness or gratitude to anyone.

Yet he did so now.

“Thank you, my old friend.”

At the bar Morse ordered a pint of Bass and proceeded to drink it speedily.

At the bar Morse ordered a second pint of Bass and proceeded to drink it even more speedily — before leaving and driving out once more to Bloxham Drive, where no one was abroad and where the evening’s TV programs appeared to be absorbing the majority of the households.

Including Number 17.

The Jaguar door closed behind him with its accustomed aristocratic click, and he walked slowly through the drizzle along the street. Still the same count: six for Labor; two for the Tories; and two apparently unprepared to parade their political allegiances.

Yes! YES!

Almost everything (he saw it now so clearly) had been pushing his mind toward that crucial clue — toward the break-through in the case.

It had not been Owens who had murdered Rachel James — almost certainly he couldn’t have done it, anyway.

And that late evening, as if matching his slow-paced walk, a slow and almost beatific smile had settled round the mouth of Chief Inspector Morse.

Thirteen Unlucky:The Turks so dislike the number that the word is almost expunged from their vocabulary. The Italians never use it in making up the numbers of their lotteries. In Paris, no house bears that number.

As Lewis pulled onto Bloxham Drive, he was faced with an unfamiliar sight: a smiling, expansive-looking Morse was leaning against the front gate of Number 17, engaged in a relaxed, impromptu press conference with one camera crew (ITV), four reporters (two from national, two from local newspapers — but no Owens), and three photographers. Compared with previous mornings, the turnout was disappointing.

It was 9:05 A.M.

Lewis just caught the tail end of things. “So it’ll be a waste of time — staying on here much longer. You won’t expect me to go into details, of course, but I can tell you that we’ve finished our investigations in this house.”