Death Is Now My Neighbour (7 page)
'Bought at the wrong time, sir. But some people
were
a bit irresponsible, don't you think?'
'I
'm not an economist, as you know, Lewis. But
I
'll tell you what would have helped her. Helped so many in her boots.'
'A win on the National Lottery?'
'Wouldn't help
many,
that, would it? No. What she could have done with is a healthy dose of inflation. It's a good thing - inflation - you know. Especially for people who've got nothing to start with. One of the best things that happened to some of us. One year I remember I had three jumps in salary.'
'Not many would agree with you on that, though, would they? Conservative and Labour both agree about inflation.'
'Ah! Messrs Bull and Thomas, you mean?' You noticed the stickers?'
'I notice most things. It's just that some of them don't register - not immediately.'
'What'll you have, sir?'
'Lew-is! We've known each other long enough, surely.'
As Morse tasted the hostelry's Best Bitter, he passed over a photograph of Rachel James.
'Best one of her I could find.'
Lewis looked down at the young woman.
'Real good-looker,' he said softl
y.
Morse nodded. 'I bet she'd have set a few hearts all a-flutter.'
'Including yours, sir?'
Morse drank deeply on his beer before replying. 'She'd probably have a good few boyfriends, that's all I'm suggesting. As for my own potential susceptibility, that's beside the point.'
'Of course.' Lewis smiled good-naturedly. 'What else have we got?'
'What do you make of this? One of the few interesting things
there
, as far as
I
could see.'
Lewis now considered the postcard handed to him. First, the picture on the front: a photograph of a woodland ride, with a sunlit path on the left, and a pool of azured bluebells to the right. Then turning over the card, he read the cramped lines amateurishly typed on the left-hand side:
Ten Times I beg, dear Heart, let's Wed!
(Thereafter long may Cupid reigne)
Let's tread the Aisle, where thou hast led
The fifteen Bridesmaides in thy Traine.
Then spend our honeyed Moon a-bed,
With Springs that creake againe — againe!
(John Wilmot, 1672)
That was all. No salutation. No valediction.
And on the right-hand side of the postcard - nothing: no address, with the four dotted, parallel lines devoid of any writing, the top right-hand rectangle devoid of any stamp.
Lewis, a man not familiar with seventeenth-century love-lyrics, read the lines, then read them again, with only semi-comprehension.
'Pity she didn't get round to filling in the address, sir. Looks as if she might be proposing to somebody.'
'Aren't you making an assumption?'
'Pardon?'
'Did you see a typewriter in the house?' 'She could have typed
it
at work.'
‘
Yes. You must get along there soon.'
‘
You're the boss.'
'Nice drop o' beer, this. In good nick.' Morse drained the glass and set it
down in the middle of the slightl
y rickety
table, whilst Lewis took a gentl
e s
ip of his orange juice; and conti
nued to sit firmly fixed to his seat
Morse conti
nued:
'No! You're making a false assumption - I
think
you are. You're assuming she'd just written this to somebody and then forgotten the fellow's address, right? Pretty unlikely, isn't it? If she was proposing to him.'
'Perhaps she couldn't find a stamp.'
'Perhaps
Reluctantl
y Morse got to his feet and pushed his glass across the bar.
‘
You don't want anything more yourself, do you, Lewis?'
'No thanks.'
‘
You've nothing less?' asked the landlady, as Morse tendered a twenty-pound note. "You're the first ones in today and I'm a bit short of change.'
Morse turned round. 'Any change on you, by any chance, Lewis?'
‘Y
ou see,' continued Morse, 'you're still assuming she wrote it, aren't you?' 'And she didn't?'
‘I
think someone wrote the card to
her,
put it in an
envelope, and then addressed the envelope - not the card.'
'Why not just address the card?'
'Because whoever wrote
it
didn't want anyone else to read it.'
'Why not just phone her up?'
'Difficult - if he was married and his wife was always around.'
'He could ring her from a phone-box.' 'Risky - if anyone saw him.'
Lewis nodded without any conviction: 'And it's only a bit of poetry.'
'Is it?' asked Morse quietl
y.
Lewis picked up
the
card again. 'Perhaps it's this chap called "Wilmot", sir - the date's just there to mislead us.'
'Mislead
you,
perhaps. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a court poet to Charles II. He wrote some delightfully pornographic lyrics.'
'So it's - it's all genuine?'
'I didn't say that, did I? The name's genuine, but not the poem. Any English scholar would know that's not seventeenth-century verse.'
'I'm sure you're right, sir.'
'And if I'm right about the card coming
in an envelope - fairly recentl
y - we might be able to find the envelope, agreed? Find a postmark, perhaps? Even a bit of handwriting?'
Lewis looked dubious. 'I'd better get something organized, then.'
'All taken care of! I've got a couple of the DCs looking through the wastepaper baskets and the dustbin.'
You reckon this is important, then?'
'Top priority! Yo
u can see that. She's been meeti
ng some man - meeting him secretly. Which means he's probably married, probably fairly well known, probably got a prominent job, probably a local man—'
'Probably lives in Peterborough,' mumbled Lewis.
'That's exa
ctly
why the postmark's so vital!' countered an unamused Morse. 'But if he's an Oxford man
...'
'Do you know what the population of Oxford
is?'
‘I
know it to the nearest
thousand!'
snapped Morse.
Then, of a sudden, the Chief Inspector's mood completely changed. He tapped the postcard.
'Don't be despondent, Lewis. You see, we know just a
little
about this fellow already, don't we?'
He smiled benignly after draining his second pint; and since no other customers had as yet entered the lounge, Lewis resignedly got to his feet and stepped over to the bar once more.
Lewis picked up the postcard again. 'Give me a clue, sir.'
You know the difference between nouns and verbs, of course?'
'How could I forget something like that?'
'Well, at certain periods in English literature, all the nouns were spelt with capital letters. Now, as you can see, there are
eight
nouns in those six lines - each of them spelt with a capital letter. But there are
nine
capitals
- forgetting the first word of each line. Now which is the odd one out?'
Lewis pretended to study
the
lines once more. He'd played this game before, and he trusted he could get away with it again, as his eyes suddenly lit up a
little
.
'Ah
...
I think - I
think
I see what you mean.'
'Hits you in the eye, doesn't it, that "Wed" in the first line? And that's what it was intended to do.'
'Obviously.'
'What's it mean?'
'What, "Wed"? Well, it means "marry" - you know, get hitched, get spliced, tie the knot—' 'What else?' 'Isn't that enough?' 'What else
?
'
'I suppose you're going to tell me it's Anglo-Saxon or something.'
'Not exa
ctly
. Not far off, though. Old English, in fact. And what's it short for?'
'"Wednesday"?' suggested Lewis tentatively.
Morse beamed at his sergeant. 'Woden's day - the fourth day of the week. So we've got a day, Lewis. And what else do you need, if you're going to arrange a date with a woman?'
Lewis studied the lines yet again. 'Time? Time, yes! I see what you mean, sir. "Ten Times" ... "fifteen Brides-maides" ... Well, well, well! Ten-fifteen!'
Morse nodded. 'With a.m. likelier than p.m. Doesn't say where though, does it?'
Lewis studied the lines for the fifth time.
"Traine", perhaps?'
"Well done! "Meet me at the station
to catch the ten-fifteen a.m. T
rain" - that's what it says.
And we know where that T
rain goes, don't we?'
‘P
addington.'
'Exa
ctly
.'
‘I
f only we knew who he was
...'
Morse now produced his second photograph - a small passport-sized photograph of two people: the woman, Rachel James (no doubt of that), turning partially round and sli
ghtly
upward in order to kiss the cheek of a considerably older man with a pair of smiling eyes beneath a distinguished head of greying hair.
'Who's he, sir?'
'Dunno. We could find out pretty quickly, though, if we put his photo in the local papers.'
'If
he's local.'
'Even if he's not local, I should think.' 'Bit dodgy, sir.'
'Too dodgy at this stage, I agree. But we can try another angle, can't we? Tomorrow's Tuesday, and the day after that's Wednesday - Woden's day
...'
"You mean he may turn up at the station?'
'If the card's fairly recent, yes.'
'Unless he's heard she's been murdered.'
'Or unless he murdered her himself.'
'Worth a T
ry, sir. And if he
does
turn up, it'll probably mean he didn't murder her
...'
Morse made no comment.
'Or, come to think of it, it might be a fairly clever thing to do if he
did
murder her.'
Morse drained his glass and stood up.
'You know something?
I
reckon orange juice occasionally germinates your brain cells.'
As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun.
"You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens - the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'
'Death is always
the
next-door neighbour,' said Morse sombrely. 'But don't let
it
affect your driving, Lewis!'
Wednesday,
21
February
Orandum est ut sit mens saw in corpore sano
(Our aim? Just a brain that's not addled with pox, And a
guaranteed clean bill-of-health
from the docs)
(Juvenal,
Satires
X)
The next meeting
of the Lonsdale Fellows had been
convened for 10 a.m. In the Stamper Room.
William Leslie Stamper, b. 1880, had graduated from Oxford University in 1903 with the highest marks (it is said) ever recorded in Classical Moderations. The bracketed caveat in the previous sentence would be unnecessary were
it
not
that
the
claim for such distinction was perpetuated, in later years, by one person only - by W. L. Stamper himself. And
it
is pointl
ess to dwell upon the matter since no independent verification is available: the relevant records had been removed from Oxford to a safe place, thereafter never to be seen again, during the First World War - a war in which Stamper had not been an active participant, owing to an illness which was unlikely to prolong his eminently promising career as a don for more than a couple of years or so. Such nonparticipation in the great events of 1914-18 was a major sadness (it is said)
to Stamper himself, who was fre
que
ntly
heard to lament his own failure to figure among the casualty lists from the fields of Flanders or Passchendaele.
