by Colin Dexter
It would be a good many hours into New Year’s Day itself before anyone discovered that the number of guests was down to thirty-seven.
CHAPTER SIX
December 31st/January 1st
Beware of all enterprises that require fancy clothes.
(THOREAU)
DURING THE TIMES in which these events are set, there occurred a quite spectacular renaissance in fancy-dress occasions of all types. In pubs, in clubs, in ballrooms, at discos, at dinner parties – it was as if a collective mania would settle upon men and women wherever they congregated, demanding that at fairly regular intervals each of them should be given an opportunity to bedeck the body in borrowed plumes and for a few hours to assume an entirely alien personality. Two years previously (the Haworth’s first such venture) the New Year’s party had taken ‘What we were wearing when the ship went down’ as its theme, with the emphasis very much upon the degree of imagination, humour and improvisation that could be achieved with a very minimum of props. The theme for the following New Year’s Eve had been ‘This Sporting Life’; and since this theme had been announced in the brochure, some of the guests had taken the challenge most seriously, had turned their backs on improvisation, and had brought appropriate costumes with them. This year, in accord with the temper of the times, participants had been given even wider scope than before, with ample time and opportunity to hire their chosen outfits and to acquire suitable make-up and accessories – in short, to take the whole thing far too seriously. The hotel’s ‘Rag Bag’ still stood in the games room, but only one or two had rummaged through its contents that afternoon. After all, the current theme had been likewise pre-announced, and all the guests knew exactly what was coming; and, to be fair, in many cases the fancy-dress evening was one of the chief reasons for them choosing the Haworth Hotel in the first place. On such occasions, the greatest triumph would be registered when a person went through the first part of the evening – sometimes a good deal longer – totally unrecognized even by close acquaintances: a feat which Binyon himself had accomplished the previous year when only by a process of elimination had even his hotel colleagues finally recognized the face of their proprietor behind the bushy beard and beneath the Gloucestershire cricket-cap of Dr W.G. Grace.
This year the enthusiasm of the guests was such – all but six had presented themselves in various guises – that even Sarah, not by nature one of the world’s obvious have-a-go extroverts, found herself wishing that she were one of the happy band drinking red or blue cocktails in the restaurant-cum-ballroom on the ground floor at the back of the hotel, where everything was now almost ready. The whole of the area was surprisingly warm, the radiators round the walls turned up to their maximum readings, and a log fire burning brightly in a large old grate that was simultaneously the delight of guests and the despair of management. But tonight the fire was dancing smokelessly and merrily, and the older folk there spoke of the times when their shadows had passed gigantic round the walls of their childhood, and when in the late hours of the night the logs had collapsed of a sudden in a firework of sparks. Abetting this fire, in a double illumination, were tall red candles, two on each of the tables, and all already lit, with the haloes that formed around them creating little pools of warm light amid the darkling, twinkling dining room, and reflecting their elongated yellow flames in the gleaming cutlery.
It would have been easiest to divide the original guest-list into three tables of thirteen; but in deference to inevitable superstition Binyon had settled for two tables of fourteen and one of eleven, with each place set only for two courses. At each place, a small white card denoted the seating arrangements for these first two courses, spouse duly positioned next to spouse; but each of these cards also had two numbers printed on it, denoting a different table for the third and fourth courses, and a different table again for the fifth and sixth. This system had been tried out the previous year; and although on that occasion one or two of the couples had failed to follow instructions too carefully, the social mix effected thereby had proved a huge success. The only real problem attendant upon such a system was the awkwardness of transferring side plates from one seat to another, but this had been solved by the supremely simple expedient of dispensing with rolls and butter altogether.
It was at about a quarter to eight (eating would begin at eight o’clock) when the nasty little episode occurred: Sarah could vouch for the time with reasonable confidence. One of the women guests from the annexe, one dressed in the black garb of a female adherent of the Ayatollah, informed Sarah in a voice muffled by the double veil of her yashmak that there was something rather unpleasant written on the wall of the Ladies’ lavatory, and Sarah had accompanied this woman to inspect the offending graffito. And, yes, she agreed with the voice behind the veils that it was not really very nice at all: ‘I’m nuts’ had been daubed on the wall over one of the washbasins in a black felt pen; and underneath had been added ‘So are Binyon’s B—’. Oh dear! But it had taken only a few minutes with sponge and detergent to expunge these most distressing words – certainly to the point of illegibility.
The cocktails turned out to be a huge success, for even the most weirdly bedizened strangers were already beginning to mix together happily. Binyon himself, gaudily garbed as the Lord High Executioner, was making no attempt this year to cloak his identity, and in a kindly way (so Sarah thought, as she looked in briefly) was making a successful fuss of one of the children, a small-boned nervous little girl dressed up prettily in Japanese costume. The mystical lure of the Orient had clearly provoked a colourful response, and there were one or two immediate hits – the most stunning being a woman with a lissomly sinuous figure, whose Turkish belly-dancer’s outfit (what little there was of it) was causing several pairs of eyes (besides Binyon’s) to sparkle widely with fornicatory intent. There was, as far as Sarah could see, only one real embarrassment amongst the whole lot, and that in the form of the gaunt-faced snooker king from Swindon, who had turned up as a rather too convincing version of Gandhi – a Gandhi, moreover, clearly in the latter stages of one of his emaciating fasts. But even he appeared happy enough, holding a cocktail in one hand, and ever hitching up his loin-cloth with the other.
It would not be long now before the guests began to drift to their places, to start on the Fresh Grapefruit Cerisette – already laid out (to be followed by the Consommé au Riz); and Sarah picked up a Tequila Sunrise and walked back through to Reception, where she locked the front door of the hotel. Her head was aching slightly, and the last thing she wanted was a six-course meal. An early night was all she really craved for; and that (she told herself) was what she would have, after giving a hand (as she’d promised) with the Grilled Trout with Almonds and then with the Pork Chop Normandy. (The Strawberry Gâteau, the cheese and biscuits and the coffee, Binyon had assured her, would be no problem.) She had never herself been a big eater, and for this reason she was always a little vexed that she could put on weight so easily; and unlike the Mahatma, perhaps, she most certainly did not wish to face the new year with a little extra poundage.
The cocktail tasted good; and with ten or fifteen minutes to spare before the grapefruit plates would need to be cleared Sarah lit one of the half-dozen cigarettes she allowed herself each day, enjoying the sensation as she sat back in her chair and inhaled deeply.
Ten minutes to eight.
It could have been only some two or three minutes later that she heard the noise, fairly near her. And suddenly, illogically – with the stillness of the half-lit, empty entrance hall somehow emphasized by the happy voices heard from the dining room – she experienced a sense of fear that prickled the roots of her honey-coloured hair. And then, equally suddenly, everything was normal once again. From the door of the Gents’ lavatory there emerged a gaily accoutred personage who on any normal evening might justifiably have been the cause of some misgiving on her part; but upon whom she now bestowed a knowingly appreciative smile. It must have taken the man some considerable time to effect such a conv
incing transformation into a coffee-coloured, dreadlocked Rastafarian; and perhaps he hadn’t quite finished yet, for even as he walked across to the dining room he was still dabbing his brown-stained hands with a white handkerchief that was now more chocolate than vanilla.
Sarah drank some more of the liberally poured cocktail – and began to feel good. She looked down at the only letter that had found its way into her tray that morning: it was from a Cheltenham lady thanking the hotel for the fact that her booking of a room had been answered with ‘laudable expedition’ (‘very quickly’, translated Sarah), but at the same time deploring the etiquette of these degenerate days that could allow the ‘Dear Madam’ of the salutation to be complemented by the ‘Yours sincerely’ of the valediction. Again, Sarah smiled to herself – the lady would probably turn out to be a wonderful old girl – and looked up to find the Lord High Executioner smiling down, in turn, at her.
‘Another?’ he suggested, nodding to the cocktail.
‘Mm – that would be nice,’ she heard herself say.
What had she remembered then? She could recall, quite certainly, clearing away after the soup course; picking up the supernumerary spoons and forks that marked the place of that pusillanimous spirit from Solihull, Doris Arkwright; standing by in the kitchen as a Pork Chop Normandy had slithered off its plate to the floor, to be replaced thither after a perfunctory wipe; drinking a third cocktail; dancing with the Lord High Executioner; eating two helpings of the gâteau in the kitchen; dancing, in the dim light of the ballroom, a sort of chiaroscuro cha-cha-cha with the mysterious ‘Rastafarian’ – the latter having been adjudged the winner of the men’s fancy-dress prize; telling Binyon not to be so silly when he’d broached the proposition of a brief dive beneath the duvet in her temporary quarters; drinking a fourth cocktail, the colour of which she could no longer recall; feeling slightly sick; walking up the stairs to her bedroom before the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’; feeling very sick; and finally finding herself in bed. Those were the pretty definite events of a crowded evening. (‘But there must have been so many other little things, Miss Jonstone?’) And there were other things, yes. She remembered, for example, the banging of so many doors once the music and the singing had finally ended – half-past midnight, it must have been – when standing by her window (alone!) she had seen the guests from the annexe walking back to their rooms: two of the women, their light-coloured raincoats wrapped around them, with the prize-winning Rastafarian between them, a hand on either shoulder; and behind that trio, another trio – the yashmak’d, graffiti-conscious woman, with a Samurai on one side and Lawrence of Arabia on the other; and bringing up the rear the Lord High Executioner, with a heavy, dark coat over his eastern robes. Yes! And she remembered quite clearly seeing all of them, including Binyon, go into the annexe, and then Binyon, fairly shortly afterwards, coming out, and fiddling for a moment or two with the Yale lock on the side door of the annexe – presumably to secure the inmates against any potential intruders.
It was just before 7 a.m. when Sarah woke, for a few seconds finding some difficulty in recalling exactly where she was. Then, it had been with a wholly childlike delight that on opening her curtains she saw the canopy of snow that enveloped everything – four or five inches of it on the ledge outside her window, and lodging heavily along the branches of the trees. The world outside looked so bitterly chill. But she was happily conscious of the square little radiator, now boiling hot, that made her room under the eaves so snugly warm; and through the frost-whorled window-panes she looked out once more at the deep carpet of snow: it was as if the Almighty had taken his brush, after the last few hours of the death-struck year, and painted the earth in a dazzling Dulux Super-White. Sarah wondered about slipping back into bed for a brief while, but decided against it. Her head was beginning to ache a little, and she knew there were some aspirin in the kitchen. In any case she’d promised to help with the breakfasts. Much better to get up – even to go out and walk profanely across the virgin snow. As far as could be seen, there were no footprints, no indentations whatsoever, in the smooth surface of snow that surrounded the strangely still hotel, and a line from a poem she’d always loved came suddenly to mind: ‘All bloodless lay the untrodden snow . . .’
The water in the washbasin became very hot indeed after only ten or fifteen seconds, and she was taking her flannel from her washing bag when she noticed a creosote-looking stain on the palm of her right hand; and then noticed the same sort of stain on one of the fluffy white towels she must have used before going to bed. And, of course, she knew immediately where that had come from. Had that wretched Rastafarian stained her blouse as well, when his left hand had circled her waist (perhaps a fraction too intimately) above her black tight-fitting skirt? Yes! He had! Blast it! For a few minutes as her headache became gradually worse she moistened the offending patch on her cream blouse and cleaned off the stain as best she could. No one would notice it, anyway.
It was seven forty-five when she walked into the kitchen. Seemingly, she was the only person stirring in the whole hotel. And, had Sarah Jonstone known it at that time, there was a person in the same hotel who never would be seen to stir again. For in the room designated, on the key-hook board behind Reception, as ‘Annexe 3’, a man lay stiffly dead – the window of his ground-floor room thrust open, the radiator switched completely off, and the temperature around the body as icily frigid as an igloo’s.
The end of the year had fallen cold; and the body that lay across the top of the coverlet on one of the twin beds in Annexe 3 was very, very cold indeed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wednesday, January 1st: p.m.
But if he finds you and you find him,
The rest of the world don’t matter;
For the Thousandth Man will sink or swim
With you in any water.
(RUDYARD KIPLING, The Thousandth Man)
FOR THE CHIEF Constable of Oxfordshire, a man internationally renowned for his handling of terrorist sieges, the new year dawned upon fewer problems than had been anticipated. With the much-publicized CND march from Carfax to Greenham Common badly hit by the weather, and with the First Division game between Oxford United and Everton inevitably postponed, many of the extra police drafted in for special duties in both the city and the county had not been required. There had been, it was true, a whole string of minor accidents along the A40, but no serious injuries and no serious hold-ups. Indeed, it had been a very gentle New Year’s Day; and at 6.30 p.m. the Chief Constable was just about to leave his office on the second floor of the Kidlington Police HQ when Superintendent Bell rang from the City Police HQ in St Aldates to ask whether among extra personnel available that day there happened to be any spare inspectors from the CID division.
The phone had been ringing for a good while before the sole occupant of the bachelor flat at the top of the Banbury Road in North Oxford turned down the mighty volume of the finale of Die Walküre and answered it.
‘Morse!’ he said curtly.
‘Ah, Morse!’ (The Chief Constable expected his voice to be instantly recognized, and it almost always was.) ‘I suppose you’ve just staggered out of bed all ready for another night of debauchery?’
‘A Happy New Year to you, too, sir!’
‘Looks like being a pretty good new year for the crime rate, Morse: we’ve got a murder down at the bottom of your road. I’m assuming you had nothing to do with it, of course.’
‘I’m on furlough, sir.’
‘Well, never mind! You can make up the days later in January.’
‘Or February,’ mumbled Morse.
‘Or February!’ admitted the Chief Constable.
‘Not tonight, I’m afraid, sir. I’m taking part in the final of the pub quiz round at the Friar.’
‘I’m glad to hear others have got such confidence in your brains.’
‘I’m quite good, really – apart from Sport and Pop Music.’
‘Oh, I know that, Morse!’ The Chief Constable was speaking very
slowly now. ‘And I have every confidence in your brains, as well.’
Morse sighed audibly into the phone and held his peace as the Chief Constable continued: ‘We’ve got dozens of men here if you need ’em.’
‘Is Sergeant Lewis on duty?’ asked a Morse now fully resigned.
‘Lewis? Ah yes! As a matter of fact he’s on his way to pick you up now. I thought, you know, that er . . .’
‘You’re very kind, sir.’
Morse put down the phone and walked to the window where he looked down on the strangely quiet, muffled road. The Corporation lorries had gritted for a second time late that afternoon, but only a few carefully driven cars were intermittently crawling past along the icy surfaces. Lewis wouldn’t mind coming out, though. In fact, thought Morse, he’d probably be only too glad to escape the first night of the new year television.
And what of Morse himself? There was perhaps just a hint of grim delight to be observed on his features as he saw the police car pull into the gutter in a spurt of deep slush, and waved to the man who got out of it – a thick-set, slightly awkward-looking man, for whom the only blemishes on a life of unexciting virtuousness were a gluttonous partiality for egg and chips, and a passion for fast driving.
Sergeant Lewis looked up to the window of the flat, and acknowledged Morse’s gesture of recognition. And had Lewis been able to observe more closely at that moment he might have seen that in the deep shadows of Morse’s rather cold blue eyes there floated some reminiscences of an almost joyful satisfaction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday, January 1st: p.m.