Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

Now thus far readings had been roughly what Morse had been led to expect (the highest 15.5): It would take some little while — and then only if he promised to do as he was told — to achieve that “balance,” which is the aim of every diabetic. More than disappointing to him therefore had been the “HI” registered at lunchtime that day. In fact, more of a surprise than a disappointment, since momentarily he was misled into believing that “HI” was analogous to the greeting from a fruit machine: “Hello And Welcome!”

But it wasn’t; and Morse was rather worried about himself; and returned to his flat, where he took two further Nurofen Plus for his persisting headache, sat back in his armchair, decided he lacked the energy to do The Times crossword or even to turn on the CD player — and fairly soon fell fast asleep.

At six o’clock he rang Lewis to say he would be doing nothing more that day. Just before seven o’clock he measured his blood sugar once again; and finding it somewhat dramatically reduced, to 14.3, had decided to celebrate with a small glass of Glenfiddich before he listened to The Archers .

The following morning, feeling much refreshed, feeling eager to get on with things, Morse had been at his desk in Police HQ for half an hour before Lewis entered, holding a report.

“Ballistics, sir. Came in last night.”

Morse could no more follow the technical terminology of ballistics reports than he could understand a paragraph of Structural Linguistics or recall the configuration of the most recent map of Bosnia. To be sure he had a few vague notions about “barrels” and “grooves” and “cylinders” and “calibers”; but his knowledge went no further, and his interest not quite so far as that. Cursorily glancing therefore through the complex data assembled in the first five pages, he acquainted himself with the short, simply written summary on page six:

Rachel James was fatally shot by a single bullet fired from a range of c. 45 cms.; Geoffrey Owens was fatally shot by two bullets fired from a range of c. 100 cms. The pistol used in each case, of .577 in. caliber, was of the type frequently used by HM Forces. Quite certainly the same pistol was used in each killing.

ASH: 3-4-96

Morse sat back in the black-leather armchair and looked mildly satisfied with life.

“Ye-es. I think I’m beginning to wake up at last in this case, Lewis. You know, it’s high time we got together, you and me. We’ve been doing our own little things so far, haven’t we? You’ve gone off to see somebody — I’ve gone off to see somebody — and we’ve not got very far, have we? It’s the same as always, Lewis. We need to do things together from now on.”

“No time like the present.”

“Pardon?”

Lewis pointed to the ballistics report. “What do you think?”

“Very interesting. Same revolver.”

“ Pistol, sir.”

“Same difference.”

“I think most of us had assumed it was the same, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s what most of the lads think.”

Morse’s smile was irritatingly benign. “Same revolver — same murderer. Is that what, er, most of the lads think as well?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you?”

Lewis considered the question. It either was — or it wasn’t. Fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, Lewis. Go for it!

“Yes!”

“Fair enough. Now let’s consider a few possibilities. Rachel was shot through the kitchen window when she was standing at the sink. The blind was old and made of thinnish material and the silhouette was pretty clear, perhaps; but the murderer was taking a risk. Revolvers,” Lewis had given up, “are notoriously inaccurate even at close range, and the bullet’s got to penetrate a reasonably substantial pane of glass — enough perhaps to knock the aim off course a bit and hit her in the neck instead of the head. Agreed?”

Lewis nodded at what he saw as an analysis not particularly profound. And Morse continued:

“Now the shooting of Owens took place inside the house — from a bit further away; but no glass this time, and a very clear target to aim at. And Owens is shot in the chest, not in the head. A modus operandi quite different from the first.”

Lewis smiled. “So we’ve got two moduses operandi.”

“Modi, Lewis! So it could be that we’ve two murderers. But that would seem on the face of it highly improbable, because it’s not difficult to guess the reason for the difference... Is it?”

“Well, as I see things, sir, Owens was probably murdered by somebody he knew. He probably invited whoever it was in. Perhaps they’d arranged to meet anyway. Owens was dressed and—” Lewis stopped a moment. “He hadn’t shaved though, had he?”

“He was the sort of fellow who always looked as if he needed a shave.”

“Perhaps we should have checked more closely.”

“You don’t expect me to check that sort of thing, do you? I’m a necrophobe — you’ve known me long enough, surely.”

“Well, that’s it then, really. But Rachel probably didn’t know him.”

“Or her.”

“She must have been really scared if she heard a tap on the window that morning and went to open the blind—”

“You’re still assuming that both murders were committed by the same person, Lewis.”

“And you don’t think so?”

Morse shrugged. “Could have been two lovers or partners or husband and wife — or two completely separate people.”

Lewis was beginning to sound somewhat exasperated. “You know, I shall be much happier when we’ve got a bit more of the routine work done, sir. It’s all been a bit ad hoc so far, hasn’t it?” (Morse raised his eyebrows at the Latinism.) “Can’t we leave a few of the ideas until we’ve given ourselves a chance to check everything a bit?”

“Lewis! You are preaching to the converted. That’s exactly what we’ve got to do. Go back to the beginning. ‘In our beginning is our end,’ somebody said — Eliot, wasn’t it? Or is it ‘In our end is our beginning’?”

“Where do you suggest we begin then, sir?”

Morse considered the question.

“What about you fetching me a cup of coffee? No sugar.”

The overworked man who agrees to any division of labor always gets the worst share.

“Where do you suggest we begin then?” repeated Lewis, as Morse distastefully sipped his unsweetened coffee.

“When we do start again, we’ll probably find that we’ve been looking at things from the wrong angle. We’ve been assuming — I have, anyway — that it was Owens who was pulling all the strings. As a journalist, he’d often been in a privileged position with regard to a few juicy stories; and as a man he pretty clearly gloried in the hold he could have on other people: blackmail. And from what we learned, I thought it was likely that the two candidates for the Mastership at Lonsdale were being blackmailed; I thought that they’d have as good a motive, certainly Storrs, as anybody for wishing Owens out of the way. But I never dreamed that Owens was in danger of being murdered, as you know…

“There’s just the one trouble about following up that particular hypothesis though, isn’t there? It’s now clear that neither of those two, neither Storrs nor Cornford — nor their wives for that matter — could have been responsible for both murders. And increasingly unlikely, perhaps, that any of them could have been responsible even for one of the murders. So where does this all leave us? It’s a bit like a crossword clue you sometimes get stuck with. You think one bit of the clue’s the definition, and the other bit’s a buildup of the letters. Then suddenly you realize you’ve got things the wrong way round . And perhaps I’m reading the clue the wrong way round here, Lewis. What if someone was blackmailing Owens — the exact opposite of our hypothesis? What if — we’ve spoken about it before — what if Rachel James came to discover something that would upset his carefully loaded applecart? And blackmailed him ?”