Death Is Now My Neighbor

by Colin Dexter

  They had been seated one Tuesday lunchtime in the Turf Tavern, he immediately opposite his wife as she sat in one of the wooden wall seats in the main bar, each of them enjoying a pint of London Pride. He was eagerly expounding to her his growing conviction that the statistical evidence concerning the number of deaths resultant from the Black Death in 1348 had been wildly misinterpreted, and that the supposed demographic effects consequent upon that plague were—most decidedly!—extremely suspect. It should all have been of some interest, surely? And yet Cornford was conscious of a semipreoccupied gaze in Shelly’s eyes as she stared over his left shoulder into some more fascinating area.

  All right. She ought to have been interested—but she wasn’t. Not everyone, not even a trained historian like his wife, was going to be automatically enthralled by any reevaluation of some abstruse medieval evidence.

  He’d thought little of it.

  And had drunk his ale.

  They were about to leave when a man, in his early thirties or so, walked over to them—a tall, dark, slimly built Arab with a bushy mustache. Looking directly into Shelly’s eyes, he spoke softly to her:

  “Madame! You are the most beautiful lady I see!”

  Then, turning to Cornford: “Please excuse, sir!” With which, picking up Shelly’s right hand, he imprinted his full-lipped mouth most earnestly upon the back of her wrist.

  After the pair of them had emerged into the cobbled lane that led up again into Holywell Street, Cornford stopped and so roughly pushed his wife’s shoulder that she had no choice but to stand there facing him.

  “You—are—a—bloody—flirt! Did you know that? All the time we were in there—all the time I was telling you—”

  But he got no further.

  The tall figure of Sir Clixby Bream was striding down toward them.

  “Hell-o! You’re both just off, I can see that. But what about another little snifter? Just to please me?”

  “Not for me, Master.” Cornford trusted that he’d masked the bitterness of his earlier tone. “But if …?” He turned to his wife.

  “No. Not now. Another time. Thank you, Master.”

  With Shelly still beside him, Cornford walked rather blindly on, suspecting (how otherwise?) that the Master had witnessed the awkward, angry scene. And then, a few steps later—almost miraculously—he felt his wife’s arm link with his own; heard the wonderful words spoken in her quiet voice: “Denis, I’m so very sorry. Do please forgive me, my darling.”

  As the Master stooped slightly to pass beneath the entrance of the Turf Tavern, an observer skilled in the art of labiomancy would have read the two words on his smoothly smiling mouth:

  “Well! Well!”

  Chapter Four

  Wednesday, February 7

  DISCIPLE (weeping): O Master, I disturb thy meditations.

  MASTER: Thy tears are plural; the Divine Will is one.

  DISCIPLE: I seek wisdom and truth, yet my thoughts are ever of lust and the necessary pleasures of a woman.

  MASTER: Seek not wisdom and truth, my son; seek rather forgiveness. Now go in peace, for verily hast thou disturbed my meditations—of lust and of the necessary pleasures of a woman.

  —K’UNG-FU-TSU, from Analects XXIII

  “Well, at least it’s left on time.”

  “Not surprising, is it? The bloody thing starts from Oxford. Give it a chance, though. We’ll probably run into signaling failure somewhere along the line.”

  She smiled, attractively. “Funny, really. They’ve been signaling on the railways for—what?—a hundred and fifty years, and with all these computers and things.…”

  “Over one hundred and seventy years, if we want to be accurate—and why shouldn’t we? Eighteen twenty-five when the Stockton to Darlington line was opened.”

  “Yeah. We learned about that in school. You know, Stephenson’s Rocket and all that.”

  “No, my dear girl. A few years later, that was. Stephenson’s first locomotive was called The Locomotive—not very difficult to remember, is it?”

  “No.”

  The monosyllable was quietly spoken, and he knew that he’d made her feel inadequate again.

  She turned away from him to look through the carriage window, spotting the great sandstone house in Nuneham Park, up toward the skyline on the left. More than once he’d told her something of its history, and about Capability Brown and Somebody Adams; but she was never able to remember things as accurately as he seemed to expect. He’d told her on their last train journey, for example, about the nationalization of the railways after World War II: 1947 (or was it 1948?).

  So what?

  Yet there was one year she would never forget: the year the network changed its name to “British Rail.” Her father had told her about that; told her she’d been born on that very same day. In that very same year, too.

  In 1965.

  “Drinks? Refreshments?”

  An overloaded trolley was squeezing a squeaky passage along the aisle; and the man looked at his wristwatch (10:40 A.M.) as it came alongside, before turning to the elegantly suited woman seated next to him:

  “Fancy anything? Coffee? Bit too early for anything stronger, perhaps?”

  “Gin and tonic for me. And a packet of plain crisps.”

  Sod him! He’d been pretty insufferable so far.

  A few minutes later, after pouring half his can of McEwan’s Export Ale into a plastic container, he turned toward her again; and she felt his dry, slightly cracked lips pressed upon her right cheek. Then she heard him say the wonderful word that someone else had heard a month or two before; heard him say “Sorry.”

  She opened her white-leather handbag and took out a tube of lip salve. As she passed it to him, she felt his firm, slim fingers move against the back of her wrist; then move along her lower arm, beneath the sleeve of her light mauve Jaeger jacket: the fingers of a pianist. And she knew that very soon—the Turbo Express had just left Reading—the pianist would have been granted the licence to play with her body once more, as though he were rejoicing in a gentle Schubert melody.

  She had never known a man so much in control of himself.

  Or of her.

  The train stopped just before Slough.

  When, ten minutes later, it slowly began to move forward again, the Senior Conductor decided to introduce himself over the intercom.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen. Due to a signaling failure at Slough, this train will now arrive at Paddington approximately fifteen minutes late. We apologize to customers for this delay.”

  The man and the woman, seated now more closely together, turned to each other—and smiled.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “You often ask me that, you know. Sometimes I’m not thinking of anything.”

  “Well?”

  “I was only thinking that our Senior Conductor doesn’t seem to know the difference between ‘due to’ and ‘owing to.’ ”

  “Not sure I do. Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “But you won’t let it come between us?”

  “I won’t let anything come between us,” he whispered into her ear. For a few seconds they looked lovingly at each other. Then he lowered his eyes, removed a splayed left hand from her stockinged thigh, and drank his last mouthful of beer.

  “Just before we get into Paddington, Rachel, there’s something important I ought to tell you.”

  She turned to him—her eyes suddenly alarmed.

  He wanted to put a stop to the affair?

  He wanted to get rid of her?

  He’d found another woman? (Apart from his wife, of course.)

  “Tickets, please!”

  He looked as if he might be making his maiden voyage, the young ticket collector, for he was scrutinizing each ticket proffered to him with preternatural concentration.

  The man took both his own and the young woman’s ticket from his wallet: cheap day returns.

  “This yours, sir?”

/>   “Yes.”

  “You an OAP?”

  “As a matter of fact I am not, no.” The tone of his voice was quietly arrogant. “To draw a senior citizen pension in the United Kingdom a man has to be sixty-five years of age. But a Senior Railcard is available to a man who has passed his sixtieth birthday—as doubtless you know.”

  “Could I see your Railcard, sir?”

  With a sigh of resignation, the man produced his card. And the slightly flustered, spotty-faced youth duly studied the details.

  Valid: until MAY 7, 1996

  Issued to: Mr. J.C. Storrs

  “How the hell does he think I got my ticket at Oxford without showing that?” asked the Senior Fellow of Lonsdale.

  “He’s only doing his duty, poor lad. And he’s got awful acne.”

  “You’re right, yes.”

  She took his hand in hers, moving more closely again. And within a few minutes the PADDINGTON sign passed by as the train drew slowly into the long platform. In a rather sad voice, the Senior Conductor now made his second announcement: “All change, please! All change! This train has now terminated.”

  They waited until their fellow passengers had alighted; and happily, just as at Oxford, there seemed to be no one on the train whom either of them knew.

  In the Brunel Bar of the Station Hotel, Storrs ordered a large brandy (two pieces of ice) for his young companion, and half a pint of Smith’s bitter for himself. Then, leaving his own drink temporarily untouched, he walked out into Praed Street, thence making his way down to the cluster of small hotels in and around Sussex Gardens, several of them displaying VACANCIES signs. He had “used” (was that the word?) two of them previously, but this time he decided to explore new territory.

  “Double room?”

  “One left, yeah. Just the one night, is it?”

  “How much?”

  “Seventy-five pounds for the two—with breakfast.”

  “How much without breakfast?”

  Storrs sensed that the middle-aged peroxide-blonde was attuned to his intentions, for her eyes hardened knowingly behind the cigarette-stained reception counter.

  “Seventy-five pounds.”

  One experienced campaigner nodded to another experienced campaigner. “Well, thank you, madam. I promise I’ll call back and take the room—after I’ve had a look at it—if I can’t find anything a little less expensive.”

  He turned to go.

  “Just a minute! … No breakfast, you say?”

  “No. We’re catching the sleeper to Inverness, and we just want a room for the day—you know?—a sort of habitation and a place.”

  She squinted up at him through her cigarette smoke.

  “Sixty-five?”

  “Sixty.”

  “Okay.”

  He counted out six ten-pound notes as, pushing the register forward, she reached behind her for Key Number 10.

  It was, one may say, a satisfactory transaction.

  Her glass was empty, and without seating himself he drained his own beer at a draught.

  “Same again?”

  “Please!” She pushed over the globed glass in which the semi-melted ice cubes still remained.

  Feeling most pleasantly relaxed, she looked around the thinly populated bar, and noticed (again!) the eyes of the middle-aged man seated across the room. But she gave no sign that she was aware of his interest, switching her glance instead to the balding, gray-white head of the man leaning nonchalantly at the bar as he ordered their drinks.

  Beside her once more, he clinked their glasses, feeling (just as she did) most pleasantly relaxed.

  “Quite a while since we sat here,” he volunteered.

  “Couple o’ months?”

  “Ten weeks, if we wish to be exact.”

  “Which, of course, we do, sir.”

  Smiling, she sipped her second large brandy. Feeling good; feeling increasingly good.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “What for?”

  He grinned. “An hour in bed, perhaps—before we have a bite to eat?”

  “Wine thrown in?”

  “I’m trying to bribe you.”

  “Well … if you want to go to bed for a little while first …”

  “I think I’d quite enjoy that.”

  “One condition, though.”

  “What?”

  “You tell me what you were going to tell me—on the train.”

  He nodded seriously. “I’ll tell you over the wine.”

  It was, one may say, a satisfactory arrangement.

  As they got up to leave, Storrs moved ahead of her to push open one of the swing doors; and Rachel James (for such was she), a freelance physiotherapist practicing up in North Oxford, was conscious of the same man’s eyes upon her. Almost involuntarily she leaned her body backward, thrusting her breasts against the smooth white silk of her blouse as she lifted both her hands behind her head to tighten the ring which held her light brown hair in its ponytail.

  A ponytail ten inches long.

  Chapter Five

  Then the smiling hookers turned their attention to our shocked reporters.

  “Don’t be shy! You paid for a good time, and that’s what we want to give you.”

  Our men feigned jet lag, and declined.

  —Extract from the News of the World, February 5, 1995

  Geoffrey Owens had a better knowledge of Soho than most people.

  He’d been only nineteen when first he’d gone to London as a junior reporter, when he’d rented a room just off Soho Square, and when during his first few months he’d regularly walked around the area there, experiencing the curiously compulsive attraction of names like Brewer Street, Greek Street, Old Compton Street, Wardour Street … a sort of litany of seediness and sleaze.

  In those days, the midseventies, the striptease parlors, the porno cinemas, the topless bars—all somehow had been more wholesomely sinful, in the best sense of that word (or was it the worst?). Now, Soho had quite definitely changed for the better (or was it the worse?): more furtive and tawdry, more dishonest in its exploitation of the lonely, unloved men who would ever pace the pavements there and occasionally stop like rabbits in the headlights.

  Yet Owens appeared far from mesmerized when in the early evening of February 7 he stopped outside Le Club Sexy. The first part of this establishment’s name was intended (it must be assumed) to convey that je-ne-sais-quoi quality of Gallic eroticism; yet the other two parts perhaps suggested that the range of the proprietor’s French was somewhat limited.

  “Lookin’ for a bit o’ fun, love?”

  The heavily mascara’d brunette appeared to be in her early twenties—quite a tall girl in her red high-heels, wearing black stockings, a minimal black skirt, and a low-cut, heavily sequined blouse stretched tightly over a large bosom—largely exposed—beneath the winking lightbulbs.

  Déjà vu.

  And, ever the voyeur, Owens was momentarily aware of all the old weaknesses.

  “Come in! Come down and join the fun!”

  She took a step toward him and he felt the long, blood-red fingernails curling pleasingly in his palm.

  It was a good routine, and one that worked with many and many a man.

  One that seemed to be working with Owens.

  “How much?”

  “Only three-pound membership, that’s all. It’s a private club, see—know wha’ I mean?” For a few seconds she raised the eyes beneath the empurpled lids toward Elysium.

  “Is Gloria still here?”

  The earthbound eyes were suddenly suspicious—yet curious, too.

  “Who?”

  “If Gloria’s still here, she’ll let me in for nothing.”

  “Lots o’ names ’ere, mistah: real names—stage names …”

  “So what’s your name, beautiful?”

  “Look, you wanna come in? Three pound—okay?”

  “You’re not being much help, you know.”

  “Why don’t you just fuck off?”

>   “You don’t know Gloria?”

  “What the ’ell do you want, mate?” she asked fiercely.

  His voice was very quiet as he replied. “I used to live fairly close by. And she used to work here, then—Gloria did. She was a stripper—one of the best in the business, so everybody said.”

  For the second time the eyes in their lurid sockets seemed to betray some interest.

  “When was that?”

  “Twenty-odd years ago.”

  “Christ! She must be a bloody granny by now!”

  “Dunno. She had a child, though, I know that—a daughter.…”

  A surprisingly tall, smartly suited Japanese man had been drawn into the magnetic field of Le Club Sexy.

  “Come in! Come down and—”

  “How much is charge?”

  “Only three pound. It’s a private club, see—and you gotta be a member.”

  With a strangely trusting, wonderfully polite smile, the man took a crisp ten-pound note from his large wallet and handed it to the hostess, bowing graciously as she reached a hand behind her and parted the multicolored vertical strips which masked from public view the threadbare carpeting on the narrow stairs leading down to the secret delights.

  “You give me change, please? I give you ten pound.”

  “Just tell ’em downstairs, okay?”

  “Why you not give me seven pound?”

  “It’ll be okay—okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Halfway down the stairs, the newly initiated member made a little note in a little black book, smiling (we may say) scrutably. He was a member of a Home Office Committee licensing all “entertainment premises” in the district of Soho.

  His expenses were generous: needed to be.

  Sometimes he enjoyed his job.

  “Don’t you ever feel bad about that sort of thing?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “He’ll never get his change, will he?”

  “Like I said, why don’t you just fuck off!”

  “Gloria used to feel bad sometimes—quite a civilized streak in that woman somewhere. You’d have liked her.… Anyway, if you do come across her, just say you met me, Geoff Owens, will you? She’ll remember me—certain to. Just tell her I’ve got a little proposition for her. She may be a bit down on her luck. You never know these days, and I wouldn’t want to think she was on her uppers … or her daughter was, for that matter.”