Death Is Now My Neighbour (26 page)
Latest check-out from the hotel (as officially specified in the brochure) was noon. But the Storrs had left a good while before then. As with the other details (the Manager explained) some of the times given were just a
little
vague, since service personnel had changed. But things could very soon be checked. The accoun
t had been settl
ed by Mr Storrs himself on a Lloyds Bank Gold Card (the receptionist recalled this clearly), and one of the porters had driven the Storrs' BMW round to the front of the hotel from the rear garage - being tipped (it appeared) quite liberally for his services.
So that was that.
Or
almost
so - since Lewis was very much aware that Morse would hardly be overjoyed
with
such findings; and he now asked a few further key questions.
‘I
know it's an odd thing to ask, sir, but are you completely sure that these people
were
Mr and Mrs Storrs?'
'Well, I
...'
The Manager hesitated long enough for Lewis to jam a metaphoric foot inside the door.
"You knew th
em - know them -
personally?
'I've only been Manager here for a couple of years. But, yes - they were here twelve months or so ago.'
'People change, though, don't they?
He
might have changed quite a bit, Mr Storrs, if he'd been ill or
...
or something?'
'Oh, it was
him
all right. I'm sure of that. Well,
almost
sure. And he signed the credit-card bill, didn't he? It should be quite easy to check up on that.'
'And you're quite sure it was
her,
sir? Mrs Storrs? Is there any possibility at all that he was spending the night with someone else?'
The laugh at the other end of
the
line was full of relief and conviction.
'Not - a - chance! You can be one hundred per cent certain of that. I think everybody here remembers her. She's, you know, she's a bit sharp, if you follow my meaning. Nothing unpleasant - don't get me wrong! But a
little
bit, well,
severe.
She dressed that way, too: white trouser-suit, hair drawn back high over the ears, beauty-parlour face. Quite the lady, really.'
Lewis drew on his salient reminiscence of Angela Storrs:
'It's not always easy to recognize someone who's wearing sunglasses, though.'
'But she wasn't wearing sunglasses. Not when I saw her, anyway. I just happened to be in reception when she booked in. And it was
she
recognized
me’
You see, the last
time
they'd been with us,
she
did the sign
ing in, while Mr Storrs was sorti
ng out the luggage and the parking. And I noticed the registration number of their BMW and I mentioned the coincidence that we were both
"188J".
She reminded me of it yesterday. She said they'd still got the same car.'
You can swear to all this?'
'Certainly. We had quite a
little
chat. She told me they'd spent their honeymoon in the hotel - in the Sarah Siddons suite.'
Oh.
So that was that.
An alibi - for both of them.
Lewis thanked the Manager. 'But please do keep all this to yourself, sir. It's always a tricky business when we're trying to eliminate suspects in a case. Not
suspects,
though,just
..
.just people.'
A few minutes later Lewis again rang the Storrs' residence in Polstead Road; again listening to Mrs Storrs on the answerphone: 'If the caller will please speak clearly after the long tone
...'
The voice was a
little
-what had
the
Manager said? - a
little
'severe', yes. And quite certainly (Lewis thought) it was a voice likel
y to intimidate a few of the stu
dents if she became the new Master's wife. But after waiting for the 'long tone', Lewis put down the phone without leaving any message. He always felt awkward and tongue-tied at such moments; and he suddenly realized
that
he hadn't got a message to leave in any case.
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.'
‘Y
e-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.
'An
yway, we'll give the cans a dusti
ng over, just in case.'
‘I
shouldn't bother,' said Morse. 'Won't do any harm, surely?'
‘I
said, I shouldn't
both
er,'
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 pyjamas neatl
y folded on the top pillow. The wardrobe appeared exa
ctly
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 sti
mulated 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.
Exa
ctly
what Morse had been looking for.
Exa
ctly
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 for ever.
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 scuttl
e, a box of plugs and wires, a traffic cone, an ancient Bakelite wireless, a glass case contain
ing a stuffed owl, a black plasti
c 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 manife
stly
Owens had never been a houseproud man. Surfaces all around were dusted
with powder, and chalk-marks outl
ined 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 succin
ctly
entided
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 attenti
on now turned to the single row of books in the opposite alcove. Mo
stly
paperbacks: P. D. James, Jack Higgins, Ruth Rendell, Wilbur Smith, Minette Walters .
..
RAC Handbook, World Atlas, Chambers Dictionary, Pevsners 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.'
