by Colin Dexter
of blood.
She thought she'd probably change things.
The phone rang.
She reached it at the sixth ring.
The arrangements, unusually involved, took a little while to get sorted out.
Once they were, she felt almost unprecedentedly excited.
210
chapter forty-five Nunquam ubi sub ubi!
after he had locked the door behind them she immedi- lately, albeit a little
nervously, commented upon the civilized appearance of the bachelor flat,
listening with half an ear to a love-duet from one of the operas, although
she had no idea which one; standing appreciatively for a while in front of a
reproduction of The Milkmaid, although she had only just heard of Vermeer;
looking wide-eyed along the shelves and shelves and shelves of books that
lined three of the walls there; noticing too, although not herself a
particularly house proud woman, the thin layer of dust on the CD player and
the thicker layer along the top of the skirting boards.
On the glass-topped coffee table there stood a chilled bottle of champagne,
with two sparklingly bright glasses on their coasters beside it.
As quietly bidden, she sat down, the hem of the mini-dress riding more than
halfway up her black-stockinged thighs as languidly she crossed her lengthy
legs. Then, as he untwisted the wire at the top of the bottle, she turned
away, holding the palms of her hands over her ears.
"No need for that," he said.
"I'm an expert."
Tilting the bottle to 45 degrees, he turned the cork sharply, pulling only
slightly and that was it. Out! He filled the two glasses, sat opposite her,
raised his glass, and said,
"Cheerio!"
It seemed to her a strange thing to say.
"Hello!" would surely
have been more appropriate? It was obviously
something he'd stored away in his verbal baggage from a period at least
twenty- five years (she decided) earlier than her own.
Not that that mattered.
She sipped the champagne; sipped it again; and concluded, although she knew
nothing whatever of Bruts and Crus, that it might well be fairly expensive
stuff.
"Specially bought for the occasion?"
"No. I won it in a raffle."
She took a further sip, then drank off the rest in a single draught.
"Lovely!"
He leaned forward and refilled her glass.
"Are you trying to get me drunk?"
"It might even things up a bit."
"Mind if I smoke?"
"No. I'll join you."
"You took a lot of trouble about getting' me here ' " Don't you like taxis? "
' - and I've never been told exactly what to wear before. "
He surveyed her vertically striped brown-and-white dress, and counted the
button-holes: seven of them, the top three straining across her breasts.
"I like buttons. I've read that " unbuttoning" was Philip Larkin's favourite
present participle."
She let it go, fairly certain that she understood, and slowly unfastened the
top button of her dress.
"I shall expect a fee, you know that."
"Fee? You mean as well as the taxi and the champagne?"
She nodded, and pointed to the bottle.
"Will one be enough, do you think?"
"I won two in the raffle. The other one's cooling in the fridge."
She drained her second glass, and sat back in the deeply comfortable set tee
unfastening the second button as he again refilled her glass.
She patted the cushion beside her.
"Come and sit next to me."
"In a little while. It's just that I'd like to get my fill of sitting here
and lusting after you."
She smiled.
"I wonder how we would have been together?"
"Know something? You've just quoted T. S. Eliot, virtually verbatim."
She let it go, fairly certain that Eliot was a poet. But there wasn't much
poetry out there not in the world in which she moved. It all made her feel
pleasingly important and decidedly sexy. Something more, too. As she tilted
the third glass of champagne into her lipstick-moistened mouth; as she worked
the third button of her dress loose; as she looked down at her bra-less
breasts now almost fully exposed, she felt an animal sense of her own power
and she felt good.
He was right, though. She was enjoying teasing him, and he was enjoying
being teased. No need for that rush to sexual congress the great majority of
men (she knew full well) preferred.
"You know," she said,
"I thought first of all when you rang that you wanted to ask me about the
murders."
"Afterwards, don't you think?"
She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward to light another cigarette.
"No. Let's get the inquisition over. Where's the bedroom, by the way?"
He pointed to a door on his left.
"Top sheet turned back in a very neat hypotenuse."
She let it go, for her own mathematics had stopped well short of Pythagoras.
"I didn't ask you here for any grilling you know that. But there is one
thing I'd like you to tell me."
"Fire away."
"I think you've got a good idea who murdered Harry. And if you have, I'd
like you to tell me."
"But I don't - not for certain, I don't." She recrossed the legs that a
little earlier had been provocatively open.
"Go on!"
"It's just .. . well, I reckon perhaps it was Johnnie- might have been,
anyway."
"Why do you think that?"
"Somethin' he said and . .. well, you get the vibes sometimes."
He seemed to know nothing of 'vibes' -- interested only in strictly verbal
significations.
"What exactly did he say?"
"Nodiin' really. Nodiin' I'm going to tell you, anyway."
"W^en was dlis?"
"Sat'day night."
"He was with you then?"
"Yes."
"Did he often call round?"
"Quite often."
"He'd been taking his time with your building alterations?" He drank the
rest of the only glass of champagne he'd allowed himself drank it swiftly,
like a man in a pub who knows that if he stays any longer the next round will
surely be his, and who therefore decides to depart.
"And you went to bed quite often with Barren?"
What the hell! If this fellow just so happened to be more gentle , more
interesting, more articulate than some of her occasional partners so bloody
what!
"Yes!" She said it defiantly.
"Pretty good in bed he was, too!"
"I'm sorry," he said slowly, 'but Mr Barren's dead. "
"You thought I didn't know?"
"How did you know?"
"Come off it! I wasn't born yesterday."
He got to his feet and stepped over to sit beside her. For a while he held
her right hand lightly in his; then, with his own right hand he refastened
the top three buttons of the dress he'd specifically requested her to wear
above no underwear.
Then he left the room and she heard his voice on the
telephone: "Radio Taxis? ... One of your drivers, as soon as you can to
Burford ... on my account, please . . . Morse."
The two recently re-filled glasses of champagne the one for her, and the one
for him remained untasted on the top of the coffee-table that had been
polished so carefully before the arrival of Miss Debbie Richardson.
chapter forty-six For the clash between the Classical and the Gothic
revivals, visitors might go to the top end of Beaumont Street and compare the
Greek glory of the Ashmolean on the left with the Gothic push of the Randolph
Hotel on the right (Jan Morris, Oxford) the spires restaurant in the Randolph
Hotel is an impressively elegant affair. A full complement of Oxford Col-
lege crests is mounted in a frieze around the room, the regal ambience of the
place relieved by the soft lighting of flambeaux on the brown-papered walls,
and by two central chandeliers, holding similar flambeaux, that hang from the
high-beamed ceiling. Twenty or so tables are spaciously arranged there,
cross draped with maroon tablecloths, and laid with gleaming silver- ware,
sparkling wine glasses, and linen serviettes of a pale-ochre colour. The
chairs, of uniform style, are upholstered in a material of bottle-green; and
the colour combination of the room in toto has appealed to many (if not to
all) as an unusually happy one. Two large windows on the room's northern
side overlook Beaumont Street, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Taylorian
Institute just across the way; whilst those seated beside three equally large
windows on the eastern side look out on to the Martyrs' Memorial, with St
John's and Balliol Colleges beyond it, sharing with their fellow diners a
vista of St Giles', the widest street in Oxford and visually one of the most
attractive avenues in England.
At 7. 15 that same evening, a man in the company of a much younger woman
appeared to have eschewed either of these splendid views, for they had chosen
a table (set for three) on the restaurant's west and windowless side, and now
sat with their backs partly turned on the sprinkling of other early diners
like people who had no real objections to being seen, perhaps, but equally
had no wish to draw attention to themselves.
At 7. 25 p. m. " the man was again consulting his wristwatch when a
black-tied waiter asked if they would like a further drink while they waited.
Though expensive, the cocktail they had each been drinking was, in the young
woman's judgement, 'absolutely yummy' - Cognac, Kummel, Fraise Liqueur,
topped with chilled champagne - and she nodded.
Might just as well be happy about something.
"Same again," said Frank Harrison.
"Ailish cocktails." And when the waiter was gone: "Where the hell's he got
to? I've not got all bloody evening."
"You've got to get back tonight. Dad?"
"That's got nothing to do with it. Seven-fifteen is seven- fifteen!"
"His hearing's not getting any better, you know. He probably thought you
said seven-fifty."
"Who's ever ordered a dinner for seven-fifty, for Christ's sake?"
For the moment Sarah said nothing further, looking around her and enjoying
the regal dignity of the restaurant. And in truth her father's tetchy
impatience with Simon was not wholly displeasing to her. There had ever been
a closer bond between herself and her father than with her mother; and, in
turn, a very much closer bond between Simon and his mother than with his
father. But such things were not spoken of freely in families; and it was
better that way. Quite why she had always felt possessive about her father,
she could not explain well
even to herself. But she remembered clearly
when she'd first been conscious of it: when she had crept silently downstairs
late one night with a party in full swing below; and when, unseen herself,
she'd watched her father kissing a young woman in the kitchen. She had cried
herself to sleep that night. Only six, she'd been, but she could have
murdered the woman. Disbelief? Shock? Outrage? All three mixed together,
like a cocktail . . . like a cocktail topped up with a little chilled
jealousy.
Simon appeared at 7. 48. Like his father, not looking particularly in love
with life.
"You're both early?" he ventured, as he took his seat.
"Seven- fifty, wasn't it?"
"Forget it!" His father passed over a menu.
"I could do with a drink first, Dad."
"Just read the question-paper!"
Simon looked down at the succulent-sounding selections: To Start. To
Continue . . . Dessert. . . Beverages and felt a little happier, until
Harrison pere, brusquely ruling out starters, called over the waiter and put
in their order for the main courses: Guinea Fowl; Calves' Liver; Steak
(medium).
"And a bottle of some decent Claret."
"Just one?" queried Simon.
"Three of us?"
"Sarah's driving."
"Aren't you driving. Dad?" asked Sarah.
"I don't really need my daughter to tell me what I can drink, thank you very
much."
Sarah put down her menu and stood up slowly.
"Excuse me a minute! I'm just off to . . ."
But before making her way to the Ladies' Powder Room, Sarah Harrison stopped
at Reception.
"Can I ring one of your guests from here?"
"Of course." The young girl smiled. Just ring the room number. " She
pointed to the phone at the side of the desk.
"The name's Harrison F. Harrison."
"The receptionist tapped a few keys and looked at her video- screen.
Yes. That's right. "
"Can you just give me the room number?"
"I'm sorry. I can't do that. It's strict company policy ' " I'm his
daughter, for God's sake! "
"Just a minute!" The girl moved away and the phone on the desk sprang to
life when she returned: "All yours."
Sarah picked up the phone and listened, wondering what on earth she was going
to say. But she needn't have bothered.
"Helloho." It was a female, husky, transatlantic voice.
Sarah put down the phone, a sudden glint of fury in her eyes.
She returned to the table to find father and brother, heads close together,
in what seemed a significant conversation. But there the exchanges stopped
whether because of her own return or the contemporaneous arrival of the main
courses, Sarah was uncertain.
Thereafter the food was appreciatively consumed, the few trans mensal
exchanges wholly mundane and perfunctory, the bottle of Claret rapidly going
and going and soon wholly gone.
"Another bottle. Dad?" suggested Simon.
"No!"
"I came on the bus- I'm going back on the bus."
"But Dad's got to drive back to London, remember? Anyway I thought we were
all supposed to keep sober tonight. Isn't that why we're here?"
"It was, yes. Just keep your voice down, will you? And read this.
Simon's already seen it. Pretty quick off the mark, some of these local
reporters. "
Sarah looked down at the copy of the Oxford Mail passed across to her, the
lower half of the back page folded over to show the latest news column:
Thousands of families evacuated as Hurricane Georges lashes Florida Keys with
torrential downpours and winds of over 120 m. p. h.
Huge tailback on A40 as lorry carrying thousands of gallons of cows' blood
overturns near Eynsham Local builder John Ban-on of Lower Swinstead
pronounced dead on arrival at JR2 after falling from ladder in Sheep Street,
Burford 220
chapter forty-seven Different things can add up in different
ways whilst reaching an identical solution, just as 'eleven plus two forms an
anagram of 'twelve plus one' (Margot Gleave, A Classical Education) A wealth
of police personnel and well-targeted enquiries had borne swift if, here and
there, unexpected evidence evidence which Sergeant Lewis (alone in his office
late that Monday evening) was able to shift and to categorize at his own