Death Is Now My Neighbor

by Colin Dexter

  “Makes you wonder how Sir Clixby ever managed it!”

  Cornford’s answer was unexpected.

  “You know, as you get older it’s difficult for young people to imagine you were ever young yourself—good at games, that sort of thing. Don’t you agree?”

  “Fair point, yes.”

  “And the Master was a very fine hockey player—had an England trial, I understand.”

  The landlord came back with two pints of bitter; then returned to his bartending duties.

  Cornford was uneasy, Morse felt sure of that. Something regarding his wife, perhaps? Had she had anything to do with the murder of Geoffrey Owens? Unlikely, surely. One thing looked an odds-on certainty, though: If Denis Cornford had ever figured on the suspect list, he figured there no longer.

  Very soon, after a few desultory passages of conversation, Morse had finished his beer, and was taking his leave, putting Deborah’s card into the inside pocket of his jacket, and forgetting it.

  Forgetting it only temporarily, though; for later that same evening he was to look at it again—more carefully. And with a sudden, strange enlightenment.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

  —Lamentations, ch. 1, v. 12

  Feeling a wonderful sense of relief, Shelly Cornford heard the scratch of the key in the front door at twenty-five past eleven. For over two hours she had been sitting upright against the pillows, a white bed jacket over her pajamas, her mind tormented with the terrifying fear that her husband had disappeared into the dark night, never to return: to throw himself over Magdalen Bridge, perhaps; to lay himself across the railway lines; to slash his wrists; to leap from some high tower. And it was to little avail that she’d listened to any logic that her tortured mind could muster: that the water was hardly deep enough, perhaps; that the railway lines were inaccessible; that he had no razor in his pocket; that Carfax Tower, St. Mary’s, St. Michael’s—all were now long shut …

  Come back to me, Denis! I don’t care what happens to me; but come back tonight! Oh, God—please, God—let him come back safely. Oh, God, put an end to this, my overwhelming misery!

  His words before he’d slammed the door had pierced their way into her heart. “You hadn’t even got the guts to lie to me … You didn’t even want to spare me all this pain.”

  Yet how wrong he’d been, with both his accusations!

  Her mother had never ceased recalling that Junior High School report: “She’s such a gutsy little girl.” And the simple, desperately simple, truth was that she loved her husband far more than anything or anyone she’d ever loved before. And yet … and yet she remembered so painfully clearly her assertion earlier that same evening: that more than anything in the world she wanted Denis to be Master.

  And now? The center of her life had fallen apart. Her heart was broken. There was no one to whom she could turn.

  Except, perhaps …

  And again and again she recalled that terrible conversation:

  “Clixby?”

  “Shelly!”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. What a lovely surprise. Come over!”

  “Denis knows all about us!”

  “What?”

  “Denis knows all about us!”

  “ ‘All’ about us? What d’ you mean? There’s nothing for him to know—not really.”

  “Nothing? Was it nothing to you?”

  “You sound like the book of Proverbs—or is it Ecclesiastes?”

  “It didn’t mean anything to you, did it?”

  “It was only the once, properly, my dear. For heaven’s sake!”

  “You just don’t understand, do you?”

  “How did he find out?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “He just guessed. He was talking to you tonight—”

  “After Hall, you mean? Of course he was. You were there.”

  “Did you say anything? Please, tell me!”

  “What? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “Why did he say he knew, then?”

  “He was just guessing—you just said so yourself.”

  “He must have had some reason.”

  “Didn’t you deny it?”

  “But it was true!”

  “What the hell’s that got to do with it? Don’t you see? All you’d got to do was to deny it.”

  “That’s exactly what Denis said.”

  “Bloody intelligent man, Denis. I just hope you appreciate him. He was right, wasn’t he? All you’d got to do was to deny it.”

  “And that’s what you wanted me to do?”

  “You’re not really being very intelligent, are you?”

  “I just can’t believe what you’re saying.”

  “It would have been far kinder.”

  “Kinder to you, you mean?”

  “To me, to you, to Denis—to everybody.”

  “God! You’re a shit, aren’t you?”

  “Just hold your horses, girl!”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “What do you mean—‘do’ about it? What d’you expect me to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve no one to talk to. That’s why I rang you.”

  “Well, if there’s anything—”

  “But there is! I want help. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “But don’t you see, Shelly? This is something you and Denis have got to work out for yourselves. Nobody else—”

  “God! You are a shit, aren’t you! Shit with a capital ‘S.’ ”

  “Look! Is Denis there?”

  “Of course he’s not, you fool.”

  “Please don’t call me a fool, Shelly! Get a hold on yourself and put things in perspective—and just remember who you’re talking to!”

  “Denis!”

  “You get back to bed. I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

  “No. I’ll sleep in there—”

  “I don’t give a sod who sleeps where. We’re just not sleeping in the same room, that’s all.”

  His eyes were still full of anger and anguish, though his voice was curiously calm. “We’ve got to talk about this. For a start, you’d better find out the rights and wrongs and the rest of it about people involved in divorce on the grounds of adultery. Not tonight, though.”

  “Denis! Please let’s talk now—please!—just for a little while.”

  “What the hell about? About me? You know all about me, for Christ’s sake. I’m half-pissed—and soon I’m going to be fully pissed—and as well as that I’m stupid—and hurt—and jealous—and possessive—and old-fashioned—and faithful.… You following me? I’ve watched most of your antics, but I’ve never been too worried. You know why? Because I knew you loved me. Deep down I knew there was a bedrock of love underneath our marriage. Or I thought I knew.”

  In silence, in abject despair, Shelly Cornford listened, and the tears ran in furrows down her cheeks.

  “We’re finished. The two of us are finished, Shelly—do you know, I can hardly bring myself to call you by your name? Our marriage is over and done with—make no mistake about that. You can feel free to do what you want now. I just don’t care. You’re a born flirt! You’re a born prick-teaser! And I just can’t live with you any longer. I just can’t live with the picture of you lying there naked and opening your legs to another man. Can you try to get that into your thick skull?”

  She shook her head in utter anguish.

  “You said,” Cornford continued, “you’d have given anything in life to see me become Master. Well, I wouldn’t—do you understand that? But I’d have given anything in life for you to be faithful to me—whatever the prize.”

  He turned away from her, and she heard the door of the spare bedroom close; then open again.

>   “When was it? Tell me that. When?”

  “This morning.”

  “You mean when I was out jogging?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He turned away once more; and she beheld and could see no sorrow like unto her own sorrow.

  The keys to her car lay on the mantelpiece.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Monday, March 4

  I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

  Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

  In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

  Till then I see what’s really always there:

  Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

  Making all thought impossible but how

  And where and when I shall myself die.

  —PHILIP LARKIN, Aubade

  Never, in his lifetime of muted laughter and occasional tears, had Morse spent such a horrifying night. Amid fitful bouts of semislumber—head weighted with pain, ears throbbing, stomach in spasms, gullet afire with bile and acidity—he’d imagined himself on the verge of fainting, of vomiting, of having a stroke, of entering cardiac arrest. One of Ovid’s lovers had once besought the Horses of the Night to slacken their pace and delay thereby the onset of the Dawn. But as he lay turning in his bed, Morse longed for a sign of the brightening sky through his window. During that seemingly unending night, he had consumed several glasses of cold water, Alka-Seltzer tablets, cups of black coffee, and the equivalent of a weekly dosage of Nurofen Plus.

  No alcohol, though. Not one drop of alcohol.

  At last Morse had decided to abandon alcohol.

  Lewis looked into Morse’s bedroom at 7:30 A.M. (Lewis was the only person who had a key to Morse’s flat.)

  In the prestigious area of North Oxford, most householders had long since fitted their homes with antiburglar devices, with neighbors holding the keys to the alarm mechanism. But Morse had little need of such a device, for the only salable, stealable items in his flat were the CDs of all the operas of the man he regarded as a towering genius, Richard Wagner; and his earnestly assembled collection of first editions of the greatest hero in his life, the pessimistic poet A. E. Housman, who, like Morse, had left St. John’s College, Oxford, without obtaining a degree.

  But not even North Oxford burglars had tastes that were quite so esoteric.

  And in any case, Morse seldom spoke to either of his immediate neighbors.

  “You look awful, sir.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lewis! Don’t you know if somebody says you look awful, you feel awful?”

  “Didn’t you feel awful before I said it?”

  Morse nodded a miserable agreement.

  “Shall I get you a bit of breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I reckon we can eliminate the Storrs—both of ’em. I’ve checked with the hotel as far as possible. And unless they hired a helicopter …”

  “We can cross off the Cornfords, too—him, anyway. He’s got four witnesses to testify he was running around Oxford pretending to be Roger Bannister.”

  “What about her?”

  “I can’t really see why … or how.”

  “Owens could have been blackmailing her?”

  Morse fingered his stubbled chin. “I don’t think so somehow. But there’s something there … something Cornford didn’t want to tell me about.”

  “What d’ you think?”

  But Morse appeared unable to answer, as he swung his legs out of bed and sat for a while, alternately turning his torso to left and right.

  “Just easing the lumbago, Lewis. Don’t you ever get it?”

  “No.”

  “Just nip and get me a glass of orange juice from the fridge. The unsweetened orange juice.”

  As he walked into the kitchen, Lewis heard the post slither through the letter-box.

  So did Morse.

  “Lewis! Did you find out what time the postman usually calls on Polstead Road?”

  “I’ve already told you. You were right.”

  “About the only bloody thing I have been right about.”

  “Arrghh! Cheer up, sir!”

  “Just turn out those pockets, will you?” Morse pointed to the suit and shirt thrown carelessly over the only chair in the bedroom. “Time I had a change of clothes—maybe bring me a change of luck.”

  “Who’s your new girlfriend?” Lewis held up the invitation card. “ ‘Make it, Morse! DC.’ ”

  “That card is wholly private and—”

  But Morse got no further.

  He felt the old familiar tingling across the shoulders, the hairs on his lower arms standing up, as if a conductor had invited his orchestra to arise after a concert.

  “Christ!” whispered Morse irreverently. “Do you know what, Lewis? I think you’ve done it again!”

  Chapter Fifty

  Monday-Tuesday, March 4-5

  The four-barreled Lancaster Howdah pistol is of .577 in caliber. Its name derived from the story that it was carried by tiger hunters who traveled by elephant and who kept the pistol as a defense against any tiger that might leap on to the elephant’s back.

  —Encyclopedia of Rifles and Handguns, ed. SEAN CONNOLLY

  For the relatives, for the statement takers and the form fillers, for the boffins at ballistics and forensics, the murder of Geoffrey Owens would be a serious business. No less than for the detectives. Yet for Morse himself the remainder of that Monday had been unproductive and anticlimactic, with a morning of euphoria followed by an afternoon of blood trouble.

  Hospital instructions had been for him to take four daily readings of his blood sugar level, using a slim, penlike appliance into which he inserted a test strip duly smeared with a drop of his blood, with each result appearing, after only thirty seconds, in a small window on the side of the pen. While the average blood sugar level of the healthy person is about 4.5, the pen is calibrated from 1 to 25, since the levels of diabetic patients often vary very considerably. Any level higher than 25 is registered as “HI.”

  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 pis
tol 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.”