Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

“You’ve finished everywhere else?”

“Pretty well.”

Morse got to his feet.

“Ah! Two cans of beer!” observed Andrews. “Think they may have had a drink together before...?”

“Not at that time of the morning, no.”

“I dunno. I used to have a friend who drank a pint of Guinness for breakfast every morning.”

“Sounds a civilized sort of fellow.”

“Dead. Cirrhosis of the liver.”

Morse nodded morosely.

“Anyway, we’ll give the cans a dusting over, just in case.”

“I shouldn’t bother,” said Morse.

“Won’t do any harm, surely?”

“I said, I shouldn’t bother ,” snapped Morse.

And suddenly Andrews understood.

Upstairs there was little to detain Morse. In the front room the bed was still unmade, a pair of pajamas neatly folded on the top pillow. The wardrobe appeared exactly as he’d viewed it earlier. Only one picture on the walls: Monet’s miserable-looking version of a haystack.

The “study” (Morse’s second visit there too!) was in considerable disarray, for the desk drawers, now liberally dusted with fingerprint powder, had been taken out, their contents strewn across the floor, including the book which had stimulated some interest on Morse’s previous visit. The central drawer likewise had been removed, and Morse assumed that after discovering the theft of the manila file Owens had seen no reason to repair the damaged lock.

Nothing much else of interest upstairs, as far as Morse could see; just that one, easy conclusion to be drawn: that the murderer had been looking for something — some documents, some papers, some evidence which could have constituted a basis for blackmail.

Exactly what Morse had been looking for.

Exactly what Morse had found.

He smiled sadly to himself as he looked down at the wreckage of the room. Already he had made a few minor blunders in the investigations; and one major, tragic blunder, of course. But how fortunate that he’d been able to avail himself of JJ’s criminal expertise, since otherwise the crucial evidence found in the manila file would have vanished now forever.

Downstairs, Morse had only the living room to consider. The kitchen he’d already seen; and the nominal “dining room” was clearly a room where Owens had seldom, if ever, dined — an area thick with dust and crowded with the sorts of items most householders regularly relegate to their lofts and garden sheds: an old electric fire, a coal scuttle, a box of plugs and wires, a traffic cone, an ancient Bakelite wireless, a glass case containing a stuffed owl, a black plastic lavatory seat, six chairs packed together in the soixante-neuf position — and a dog collar with the name “Archie” inscribed on its disc.

Perhaps, after all, there had been some little goodness somewhere in the man?

Morse had already given permission for the body to be removed, and now for the second time he ventured into the living room. Not quite so dust-bestrewn here, certainly; but manifestly Owens had never been a house-proud man. Surfaces all around were dusted with powder, and chalk marks outlined the body’s former configuration on the settee. But the room was dominated by blood — the stains, the smell of blood; and Morse, as was his wont, turned his back on such things, and viewed the contents of the room.

He stood enviously in front of the black, three-decked Revox CD-cassette player which stood on a broad shelf in the alcove to the left of the front window, with dozens of CDs and cassettes below it, including, Morse noted with appreciation, much Gustav Mahler. And indeed, as he pressed the “Play” panel, he immediately recognized Das Lied von der Erde.

No man is wholly bad, perhaps...

On the shelf beneath was an extended row of videos: Fawlty Towers, Morecambe and Wise Christmas Shows, Porridge , and several other TV classics. And two (fairly obviously) pornographic videos: Grub Screws , its crudely lurid, technicolor cover poses hardly promising a course in carpentry with the Open University; and the plain-covered, yet succinctly entitled Sux and Fux , which seemed to speak quite unequivocally for itself. Morse himself had no video mechanism on his rented TV set; but he was in the process of thinking about the benefits of such a facility when Lewis came in, the latter immediately instructed to have a look around.

Morse’s attention now turned to the single row of books in the opposite alcove. Mostly paperbacks: P. D. James, Jack Higgins, Ruth Rendell, Wilbur Smith, Minette Walters... RAC Handbook, World Atlas, Chambers Dictionary, Pevsner’s Oxfordshire ...

“See this?” Lewis suddenly raised aloft the Grub Screws. “The statutory porn video, sir. Good one, that! Sergeant Dixon had it on at his stag night.”

“You’d like to see it again, you mean?”

“ Again? Not for me, sir. Those things get ever so boring after a while. But don’t let me stop you if...”

“What? Me? I’ve got more important things to do than watch that sort of thing. High time I saw Cornford, for a start. Fix something up, Lewis. The sooner the quicker.”

After Lewis had gone, Morse felt unwilling to face the chorus of correspondents and the battery of cameras which awaited those periodically emerging from the front of Number 15. So he sat down, yet again, in the now empty kitchen; and pondered.

Always in his life, he had wanted to know the answers to things. In Sunday School he had once asked a question concerning the topographical position of Heaven, only to be admonished by an unimaginative middle-aged spinster for being so very silly. And he had been similarly discouraged when as a young grammar school boy he had asked his Divinity master who it was, if God had created the Universe, who in turn had created God. And after receiving no satisfactory answer from his Physics master about what sort of thing could possibly exist out there at the end of the world, when space had run out, Morse had been compelled to lower his sights a little, thereafter satisfying his intellectual craving for answers by finding the values of “x” and “y” in (ever more complicated) algebraic equations, and by deciphering the meaning of (ever more complicated) chunks of choruses from the Greek tragedies.

Later, from his mid-twenties onward, his need to know had transferred itself to the field of crossword puzzles, where he had so often awaited with almost paranoiac impatience the following day’s answer to any clue he’d been unable to solve the day before. And now, as he sat on Bloxham Drive on that overcast, chilly Sunday afternoon in early March, he was aware that there was an answer to this present puzzle: probably a fairly simple answer to the question of what exactly had taken place earlier that morning. For a sequence of events had taken place, perhaps about 7:30. Someone had knocked on the door; had gained entry; had shot Owens twice; had gone upstairs to try to find something; had left via the kitchen door; had gone away, on foot, on a bike, in a car.

Who?

Who , Morse? For it was someone — someone with a human face and with a human motive. If only he could put together all the clues, he would know. And even as he sat there some pattern would begin to clarify itself in his mind, presenting a logical sequence of events, a causative chain of reactions. But then that same pattern would begin to blur and fade, since there was destined to be no flash of genuine insight on that afternoon.

Furthermore, Morse was beginning to feel increasingly worried about his present failure — like some hitherto highly acclaimed novelist with a score of best-sellers behind him who is suddenly assailed by a nightmarish doubt about his ability to write that one further winner; by a fear that he has come to the end of his creative output, and must face the possibility of defeat.