Death Is Now My Neighbor

by Colin Dexter

  Chapter Forty-three

  Horse sense is something a horse has that prevents him from betting on people.

  —FATHER MATHEW

  Morse was still seated at the kitchen table in Number 15 when Lewis rang through.

  “So it looks,” concluded Lewis, “as if they’re in the clear.”

  “Ye-es. How far is it from Oxford to Bath?”

  “Seventy, seventy-five miles?”

  “Sunday morning. No traffic. Do it in an hour and a half—no problem. Three hours there and back.”

  “There’s a murder to commit in the middle, though.”

  Morse conceded the point. “Three and a half.”

  “Well, whatever happened, he didn’t use his own car. That was in the hotel garage—keys with the porter.”

  “Haven’t you heard of a duplicate set of car keys, Lewis?”

  “What if he was locked in—or blocked in?”

  “He unlocked himself, and unblocked himself, all right?”

  “He must have left about four o’clock this morning then, because he was back in bed having breakfast with his missus before eight.”

  “Ye-es.”

  “I just wonder what Owens was doing, sir—up and about and dressed and ready to let the murderer in at half past five or so.”

  “Perhaps he couldn’t sleep.”

  “You’re not taking all this seriously, are you?”

  “All right. Let’s cross ’em both off the list, I agree.”

  “Have we got a list?”

  Morse nodded. “Not too many on it, I know. But I’d like to see our other runner in the Lonsdale Stakes.”

  “Do you want me to see him?”

  “No. You get back here and look after the shop till the SOCOs have left—they’re nearly through.”

  With which, Morse put down the phone, got to his feet, and looked cautiously through into the hallway; then walked to the front door, where a uniformed PC stood on guard.

  “Has the Super gone?” asked Morse.

  “Yes, sir. Five minutes ago.”

  Morse walked back to the kitchen and opened the door of the refrigerator. The usual items: two pints of Co-op milk, Flora margarine, a packet of unsmoked bacon rashers, five eggs, a carton of grapefruit juice, two cans of Courage’s bitter…

  Morse found a glass in the cupboard above the draining board, and poured himself a beer. The liquid was cool and sharp on his dry throat; and very soon he had opened the second can, his fingers almost sensuously feeling the cellophane-wrapped cigarettes in his pocket, still unopened.

  By the time the SOCOs were ready to move into the kitchen, the glass had been dried and replaced on its shelf.

  “Can we kick you out a little while, sir?” It was Andrews, the senior man.

  “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.

  Lewis came back into the kitchen once more.

  Dr. Cornford would be happy to meet Morse whenever it suited. Five o’clock that afternoon? Before Chapel? In his room in Lonsdale?

  Morse nodded.

  “And I rang the Storrs again, sir. They’re back in Oxford. Seems they had a bit of lunch in Burford on the way. Do you want me to go round?”

  Morse looked up in some puzzlement.

  “What the hell for, Lewis?”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The bells would ring to call her

  In valleys miles away:

  “Come all to church, good people;

  Good people, come and pray.”

  But here my love would stay.

  —A. E. HOUSMAN, A Shropshire Lad XXI

  Morse inquired at the Lodge, then turned left and walked along the side of the quad to the Old Staircase, where on the first floor he saw, above the door to his right, the Gothic-style white lettering on its black background: DR. D. J. CORNFORD.

  “I suppose it’s a bit early to offer you a drink, Chief Inspector?”

  Morse looked at his wristwatch.

  “Is it?”

  “Scotch? Gin? Vodka?”

  “Scotch, please.”

  Cornford began to pour an ever increasingly liberal tot of Glenmorangie into a tumbler.

  “Say ‘when’!”

  It seemed that the Chief Inspector may have had some difficulty in enunciating the monosyllable, for Cornford paused when the tumbler was half filled with the pale-golden malt.

  “When!” said Morse.

  “No ice here, I’m afraid. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to adulterate it, anyway.”

  “Yes, I would, if you don’t mind. Same amount of water, please. We’ve all got to look after our livers.”

  Two doors led off the high-ceilinged, oak-paneled, book-lined room; and Cornford opened the one that led to a small kitchen, coming back with a jug of cold water.

  “I would have joined you normally—without the water!—but I’m reading the Second Lesson in Chapel tonight,” it was Cornford’s turn to consult his wristwatch, “so we mustn’t be all that long. It’s that bit from the Epistle to the Romans, Chapter thirteen—the bit about drunkenness. Do you know it?”

  “Er, just remind me, sir.”

  Clearly Cornford needed no copy of the text in front of him, for he immediately recited the key verse, with appropriately ecclesiastical intonation:

  Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.…

  “You’ll be reading from the King James version, then?”

  “Absolutely! I’m an agnostic myself; but what a tragedy that so many of our Christian brethren have opted for these new-fangled versions! ‘Boozing and Bonking,’ I should think they translate it.”

  Morse sat sipping his Scotch contentedly. He could have suggested “Fux and Sux”; but decided against it.

  Cornford smiled. “What do you want to see me about?”

  “Well, in a way it’s about that last bit of your text: the ‘strife and envying’ bit. You see, I know you’re standing for the Mastership here …”

  “Yes?”

  Morse took a deep breath, took a further deepish draught, and then told Cornford of the murder that morning of Geoffrey Owens; told him that various documents from the Owens household pointed to a systematic campaign of blackmail on Owens’ part; informed him that there was reason to believe that he, Cornford, might have been—almost certainly would have been—one of the potential victims.

  Cornford nodded quietly. “Are you sure of this?”

  “No, not sure at all, sir. But—”

  “But you’ve got your job to do.”

  “You haven’t received any blackmail letters yourself?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be quite blunt, if I may, sir. Is there anything you can think of in the recent past, or distant past, that could have been used to compromise you in some way? Compromise your candidature, say?”

  Cornford considered the question. “I’ve done a few things I’m not very proud of—haven’t we all?—but I’m fairly sure I got away with them. That was in another country, anyway …”

  Morse finished the quotation for him: “… and, besides, the wench is dead.”

  Cornford’s pale gray eyes looked across at Morse with almost childlike innocence.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to tell me about them?”

  “No. But only because it would be an embarrassment for me and a waste of time for you.”

  “You’re a married man, I understand.”

  “Yes. And before someone else tells you, my wife is American, about half my age, and extremely attractive.” The voice was still pleasantly relaxed, yet Morse sensed a tone of quiet, underlying strength.

  “She hasn’t been troubled by letters, anonymous letters, anything like that?”

  “She hasn’t told me of anything.”

  “Would she tell you?”

  Did Morse sense a hint of uneasy hesitation in Cornford’s reply?

  “She would, I think, yes. But you’d have to ask her.”

  Morse nodded. “I know it’s a bit of a bother—but I shall have to do that, I’m afraid. She’s, er, she’s not around?”

  Cornford again looked at his wristwatch.

  “She’ll be coming over to Chapel very shortly.”

  “Has there been much feeling—much tension—between you and the, er, other candidate?”

  “The atmosphere on High Table has been a little, let’s say, uncomfortable once or twice, yes. To be expected,
though, isn’t it?”

  “But you don’t throw insults at each other like those boxers before a big fight?”

  “No, we just think them.”

  “No whispers? No rumors?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware, no.”

  “And you get on reasonably well with Mr. Storrs?”

  Cornford got to his feet and smiled again, his head slightly to one side.

  “I’ve never got to know Julian all that well, really.”

  The Chapel bell had begun to ring—a series of monotonous notes, melancholy, ominous almost, like a curfew.

  Ten minutes to go.

  “Come ye to church, good people,

  Good people, come and pray,”

  quoted Cornford.

  Morse nodded, as he ventured one final question:

  “Do you mind me asking you when you got up this morning, sir?”

  “Early. I went out jogging—just before seven.”

  “Just you?”

  Cornford nodded vaguely.

  “You didn’t go out after that—for a paper? In the car, perhaps?”

  “I don’t have a car, myself. My wife does, but it’s garaged out on New Road.”

  “Quite a way away.”

  “Yes,” repeated Cornford slowly, “quite a way away.”

  As Morse walked down the stairs, he thought he’d recognized Cornford for exactly what he was: a civilized, courteous, clever man; a man of quiet yet unmistakable resolve, who would probably make a splendid new Master of Lonsdale.

  Just two things worried him, the first of them only slightly: If Cornford was going to quote Housman, he jolly well ought to do it accurately.

  And he might be wholly wrong about the second…