Death is now my neighbour - Morse 12

by Colin Dexter

Julian Storrs closed the front door behind him, hung up his dripping plastic mac, and took his wife into his arms.

  'No external candidates - just the two of us.'

  'That's wonderful news!' Angela Storrs moved away from her husband's brief, perfunctory embrace, and led the way into the lounge of the splendidly furnished property in Polstead Road, a thoroughfare linking the Woodstock Road with Aristotle Lane (the latter, incidentally, Morse's favourite Oxford street-name).

  'Certainly not bad news, is it? If the gods just smile on us a little ...'

  'Drink?'

  'I think I may have earned a small brandy.' She poured his drink; poured herself a large Dry Martini; lit a cigarette; and sat beside him on the brown-leather settee. She clinked her glass with his, and momentarily her eyes gleamed with potential triumph. 'To you, Sir Julian!'

  'Just a minute! We've got to win the bloody thing first. No pushover, old Denis, you know: good College man -fine scholar - first-class brain—'

  'Married to a second-class tart!'

  Storrs shook his head with an uneasy smile.

  You're being a bit cruel, love.'

  'Don't call me "love" - as if you come from Rother-ham, or somewhere.'

  'What's wrong with Rotherham?' He put his left arm around her shoulders, and forced an affectionate smile to his lips as he contemplated the woman he'd married just over twenty years previously - then pencil-slim, fresh-faced, and wrinkle-free.

  Truth to tell, she was aging rather more quickly than most women of her years. Networks of varicose veins marred the long, still-shapely legs; and her stomach was a little distended around the waistband of the elegant trouser-suits which recently she almost invariably wore. The neck had grown rather gaunt, and there were lines and creases round her eyes. Yet the face itself was firmly featured still; and to many a man she remained an attractive woman - as she had appeared to Julian Storrs when first he had encountered her ... in those extraordinary circumstances. And few there were who even now could easily resist the invitation of those almond eyes when after some dinner party or drinks reception she removed the dark glasses she had begun to wear so regularly.

  Having swiftly swallowed her Martini, Angela Storrs got to her feet and poured herself another - her husband making no demur. In fact, he was quite happy when she decided to indulge her more than occasional craving for alcohol, since then she would usually go to bed, go to sleep, and reawaken in a far more pleasant frame of mind.

  'What are your chances - honestly?' 'Hope is a Christian virtue, you know that.' 'Christ! Can't you think of anything better to say than that?'

  He was silent awhile. 'It means a lot to you, Angela, doesn't it?'

  'It means a lot to you, too,' she replied, allowing her slow words to take their full effect. 'It does, doesn't it?'

  Yes,' he replied softly, 'it means almost everything to me.'

  Angela got up and poured herself another Martini.

  'I'm glad you said that You know why? Because it doesn't just mean almost everything to me - it means literally everything. I want to be the Master's Wife, Julian. I want to be Lady Storrs! Do you understand how much I want that?'

  Yes . .. yes, I think I do.'

  'So ... so if we have to engage in any "dirty-tricks" business...'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'Nothing specific'

  'What d'you mean?' he repeated.

  'As I say...'

  'Come on! Tell me!'

  'Well, let's say if it became known in the College that Shelly Cornford was an insadable nymphomaniac ... ?' 'That just isn't fair!’

  Angela Storrs got to her feet and drained the last drop of her third drink: 'Who said it was? 'Where are you going?'

  'Upstairs, for a lie-down, if you don't object. I'd had a few before you got back - hadn't you noticed? But I don't suppose so, no. You haven't really noticed me much at all recently, have you?'

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  But she was already leaving the room, and seemed not to hear.

  Storrs took another small sip of his brandy, and pulled the copy of the previous evening's Oxford Mail from the lower shelf of the coffee-table, its front-page headline staring at him again:

  MURDER AT KIDLINGTON

  Woman Shot Through Kitchen Window

  'What did you tell Denis?'

  'He's got a tutorial, anyway. I just said I'd be out shopping.'

  'He told you about the College Meeting?'

  She nodded.

  ‘You pleased?'

  'Uh,uh!'

  'It'll be a bit of a nerve-racking time for you.'

  You should know!'

  'Only a month of it, diough.'

  'What d'you think his chances are?'

  'Difficult to say.'

  'Will you vote for him?'

  ‘I don't have a vote.'

  'Unless it's a tie.'

  'Agreed. But that's unlikely, they tell me. Arithimetically quite impossible - if all twenty-three Fellows decide to vote.'

  'So you won't really have much say in things at all.'

  'Oh, I wouldn't say that. I'll be a bit surprised if one or two of the Fellows don't ask me for a little advice about, er, about their choice.'

  'And?'

  'And I shall try to be helpful.' 'To Denis, you mean?' 'Now I didn't say that, did I?'

  The great cooling-towers of Didcot power-station loomed into view on the left, and for a while little more was said as the two of diem continued the drive south along the A34, before turning off, just before the Ridge-way, towards the charming little village of West Ilsley.

  ‘I feel I'm letting poor old Denis down a bit,' he said, as the dark blue Daimler pulled up in front of the village pub.

  'Don't you think I do?' she snapped. 'But I don't keep on about it.'

  At the bar, he ordered a dry white wine for Shelly Cornford and a pint of Old Speckled Hen for himself; and the pair of them studied the Egon Ronay menu chalked up on a blackboard before making their choices, and sitting down at a window-table overlooking the sodden village green.

  'Do you think we should stop meeting?' He asked it quietly.

  She appeared to consider the question more as an exercise in logical evaluation than as any emotional dilemma.

  'I don't want that to happen.'

  She brushed the back of her right wrist down the front of his dark grey suit.

  'Pity we've ordered lunch,' he said quietly. 'We can always give it a miss.' 'Where shall we go?'

  'Before we go anywhere, I shall want you to do something for me.'

  "You mean something for Denis?' She nodded decisively.

  'I can't really promise you too much, you know that.'

  She looked swiftly around the tables there, before moving her lips to his ear. 'I can, though. I can promise you everything, Clixby,' she whispered.

  From his room in College, Denis Cornford had rung Shelly briefly just before 11 a.m. She'd be out later, as she'd mentioned, but he wanted to tell her about the College Meeting as soon as possible. He told her.

  He was pleased - she could sense that.

  She was pleased - he could sense that Cornford had half an hour to spare before his next tutorial with a very bright first-year undergraduette from Nottingham who possessed one of the most astonishingly retentive memories he had ever encountered, and a pair of the loveliest legs that had ever folded themselves opposite him. Yet he experienced not even the mildest of erotic day-dreams as now, briefly, he thought about her.

  He walked over to the White Horse, the narrow pub between the two Blackwell's shops just opposite the Sheldonian; and soon he was sipping a large Glenmorangie, and slowly coming to terms with the prospect that in a month's time he might well be the Master of Lonsdale College. By nature a diffident man, he was for some curious reason beginning to feel a little more confident about his chances. Life was a funny business - and the favourite often failed to win the Derby, did it not?

  Yes, odd things were likely to happen in life.


  Against all the odds, as it were.

  His black-stockinged student was sitting cross-legged on the wooden steps outside his room, getting to her feet as soon as she saw him. Being with Cornford, talking with him for an hour every week - that had become the highlight of her time at Oxford. But History was the great fascination in his life - not her.

  She knew that.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Prosopagnoia (n.): the failure of any person to recognize the face of any other person, howsoever recently the aforementioned persons may have mingled in each other's company

  (Small's Enlarged English Dictionary, 13th Edition, 1806)

  FROM OXFORD RAILWAY station, at 10.20 a.m., Lewis had tried to ring Morse at HQ. But to no avail. The dramatic news would have to wait awhile, and at least Lewis now had ample time to execute his second order of the day.

  There had been just the two of them at the Oxford Physiotherapy Centre - although 'Centre' seemed a rather grandiloquent description of the ground-floor premises of the large, detached red-brick house halfway down the Woodstock Road ('1901' showing on the black drainpipe): the small office, off the spacious foyer; the single treatment room, to the right, its two beds separated by mobile wooden screens; and an inappropriately luxurious loo, to the left.

  Rachel James's distressed partner, a plain-featured, muscular divorcee in her mid-forties, could apparently throw little or no light on the recent tragedy. Each of them a fully qualified physiotherapist they had gone freelance after a difference of opinion with the Hospital Trust, and two years earlier had decided to join forces and form their own private practice: women for the most part, troubled with ankles and knees and elbows and shoulders. The venture had been fairly successful, although they would have welcomed a few more clients - especially Rachel, perhaps, who (as Lewis learned for a second time) had been wading deeper and deeper into negative equity.

  Boyfriends? - Lewis had ventured.

  Well, she was attractive - face, figure - and doubtless there had been a good many admirers. But no specific beau; no one that Rachel spoke of as anyone special; no incoming calls on the office phone, for example.

  "That hers?' Lewis had asked.

  Yes.'

  Lewis took down a white coat from its hook behind the door and looked at the oval badge: CHARTERED SOCIETY OF PHYSIOTHERAPY printed round a yellow crest He felt inside the stiffly starched pockets.

  Nothing.

  Not even Morse (Lewis allowed the thought) could have made much of that

  Each of the two women had a personal drawer in the office desk, and Lewis looked carefully through the items which Rachel had kept at hand during her own working hours: lip-stick; lip-salve; powder-compact; deodorant stick; a small packet of tissues; two Biros, blue and red; a yellow pencil; a pocket English dictionary (OUP); and a library book. Nothing else. No personal diary; no letters.

  Again Lewis felt (though wrongly this time) that Morse would have shared his disappointment.

  As for Morse, he had called in at his bachelor flat in North Oxford before returning to Police HQ. Always, after a haircut, he went through the ritual of washing his hair - and changing his shirt, upon which even a few stray hairs left clinging seemed able to effect an intense irritation on what, as he told himself (and others), was a particularly sensitive skin.

  When he finally returned to HQ he found Lewis already back from his missions.

  'You're looking younger, sir.'

  'No, you're wrong. I reckon this case has put years on me already.'

  'I meant the haircut.'

  'Ah, yes. Rather nicely done, isn't it?'

  ‘You had a good morning, sir - apart from the haircut?'

  'Well, you know - er - satisfactory. What about you?' Lewis smiled happily.

  'Do you want the good news first or the bad news?' 'The bad news.'

  'Well, not "bad" - just not "news" at all, really. I don't think we're going to get many leads from her work-place. In fact I don't think we're going to get any.' And Lewis proceeded to give an account of his visit to the Oxford Physiotherapy Centrre.

  'What time did she get there every morning?'

  Lewis consulted his notes. 'Five past, ten past eight -about then. Bit early. But if she left it much later she'd hit the heavy Kidlington traffic down into Oxford, wouldn't she?'

  'Mm ... The first treatments don't begin till quarter to nine, you say.'

  'Or nine o'clock.'

  'What did she do before the place opened?'

  'Dunno.'

  'Read, Lewis!'

  'Well, like I said, there was a library book in her drawer.'

  'What was it?'

  'I didn't make a note.'

  'Can't you remember?'

  Ye-es, Lewis thought he could. Yes!

  'Book called The Masters, sir - by P. C. Snow.'

  Morse laughed and shook his head.

  'He wasn't a bloody police constable, Lewis! You mean C. P. Snow.'

  'Sorry, sir.'

  'Interesting, though.' ‘In what way?'

  But Morse ignored the question.

  ' When did she get it from the library?'

  'How do I know?'

  You just,' said Morse slowly, sarcastically, 'take fourteen days from the date printed for the book's return, which you could have found, if you'd looked, by gently opening the front cover.'

  'Perhaps they let you have three weeks - at the library she borrowed it from.'

  'And which library was that?'

  Somehow Lewis managed to maintain his good humour.

  'Well, at least I can give you a very straight answer to that: I haven't the faintest idea.' 'And what's the good news?'

  This time, it was Lewis's turn to make a slow, impressive pronouncement:

  'I know who the fellow is - the fellow in the photo.'

  'You do?' Morse looked surprised. ‘You mean he turned up at the station?'

  'In a way, I suppose he did, yes. There was no one like him standing around waiting for his girlfriend. But I had a word with this ticket-collector - young chap who's only been on the job for a few weeks. And he recognized him straightaway. He'd asked to look at his rail pass and he remembered him because he got a bit shirty with him -and probably because of that he remembered his name as well.'

  'A veritable plethora of pronouns, Lewis! Do you know how many he's and him's and his's you've just used?'

  'No. But I know one thing - he told me his name!' replied Lewis, happily adding a further couple of potentially confusing pronouns to his earlier tally. 'His name's Julian Storrs.'

  For many seconds Morse sat completely motionless, feeling the familiar tingling across his shoulders. He picked up his silver Parker pen and wrote some letters on the blotting pad in front of him. Then, in a whispered voice, he spoke: 'I know him, Lewis.'

  'You didn't recognize him, though—?'

  'Most people,' interrupted Morse, 'as they get older, can't remember names. For them "A name is troublesome" - anagram - seven letters - what's that?'

  '"Amnesia"?'

  'Well done! I'm all right on names, usually. But as I get older it's faces I can't recall. And there's a splendid word for this business of not being able to recognize familiar faces—'

  ' "Pro-sop-a-something", isn't it?'

  Morse appeared almost shell-shocked as he looked across at his sergeant. 'How in heaven's name ... ?'

  'Well, as you know, sir, I didn't do all that marvellously at school - as I told you, we didn't even have a school tie - but I was ever so good at one thing' (a glance at the blotting pad) ‘I was best in the class at reading things upside-down.'

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Facing the media is more difficult than bathing a leper (Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

  THERE HAD BEEN little difficulty in finding out information on Julian Charles Storrs - a man to whom Morse (as he now remembered) had been introduced only a few months previously at an exhibition of Thesiger's desert photography in the Pitt Rivers Museum. But Morse said nothing of
this to Lewis as the pair of them sat together that same evening in Kidlington HQ; said nothing either of his discovery that the tie whose provenance he had so earnestly sought was readily available from any Marks & Spencer's store, priced £6.99.

  'We shall have to see this fellow Storrs soon, sir.'

  'I'm sure we shall, yes. But we've got nothing against him, have we? It's not a criminal offence to get photographed with some attractive woman ... Interesting, though, that she was reading The Masters.'

  'I've never read it, sir.'

  'It's about the internal shenanigans in a Cambridge College when the Master dies. And recently I read in the

  University Gazette that the present Master of Lonsdale is about to hang up his mortar-board - see what I mean?'

  'I think I do,' lied Lewis.

  'Storrs is a Fellow at Lonsdale - the Senior Fellow, I think. So if he suggested she might be interested in reading that book

  'Doesn't add up to much, though, does it? It's motive we've got to look for. Bottom of everything - motive is.'

  Morse nodded. 'But perhaps it does add up a bit,' he added quietly. 'If he wants the top job badly enough -and if she reminded him she could go and queer his pitch ...'

  'Kiss-and-tell sort of thing?'

  'Kiss-and-not-tell, if the price was right.'

  'Blackmail?' suggested Lewis.

  'She'd have letters.'

  'The postcard.'

  'Photographs.'

  ' One photograph.'

  'Hotel records. Somebody would use a credit card, and it wouldn't be her.'

  'He'd probably pay by cash.'

  You're not trying to help me by any chance, are you, Lewis?'

  'All I'm trying to do is be honest about what we've got - which isn't much. I agree with you, though: it wouldn't have been her money. Not exactly rolling in it, that's for sure. Must have been a biggish lay-out - setting up the practice, equipment, rent, and everything. And she'd got a mortgage on her own place, and a car to run.'

  Yes, a car. Morse, who never took the slightest interest in any car except his own, visualized again the white Mini which had been parked outside Number 17.

  'Perhaps you ought to look a bit more carefully at that car, Lewis.'

  'Already have. Log-book in the glove-compartment, road atlas under the passenger seat, fire-extinguisher under the back seat—'