The Secret of Annexe 3 (11 page)

‘Can I help you?’ It was Sarah Jonstone.

‘Do you know what’s the first thing they tell you if you go on a course for receptionists?’

‘Oh! It’s you.’

‘They tell you never to say “Can I help you?”’

‘Can I hinder you, Inspector?’

‘Did the Smiths make any telephone calls while they were here?’

‘Not from the bedroom.’

‘You’d have a record of it – on their bill, I mean – if they’d phoned anyone?’

‘Ye-es. Yes we would.’ Her voice sounded oddly hesitant, and Morse waited for her to continue. ‘Any phone call gets recorded automatically.’

‘That’s it then.’

‘Er – Inspector! We’ve – we’ve just been going through accounts and we shall have to check again but – we’re almost sure that Mr and Mrs Smith
didn’t square up their account before they left.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?’ snapped Morse.

‘Because – I – didn’t – know,’ Sarah replied, spacing the four words deliberately and quietly and only just resisting the impulse to slam the receiver down on
him.

‘How much did they owe?’

Again, there was a marked hesitation at the end of the line. ‘They had some champagne taken to their room – expensive stuff—’

‘Nobody’s ever had a
cheap
bottle of champagne – in a hotel – have they?’

‘And they had four bottles—’

‘
Four?
’ Morse whistled softly to himself. ‘What exactly was this irresistible vintage?’

‘It was Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin 1972.’

‘It it good stuff?’

‘As I say, it’s expensive.’

‘How expensive?’

‘£29.75 a bottle.’

‘It’s
what
?’ Again Morse whistled to himself, and his interest in the Smiths was obviously renascent. ‘Four twenty-nines are . . . Phew!’

‘Do you think it’s important?’ she asked.

‘Who’d pick up the empties?’

‘Mandy would – the girl who did the rooms.’

‘And where would she put them?’

‘We’ve got some crates at the back of the kitchen.’

‘Did anyone else raid the champagne cellar?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘So you ought to have four empty bottles of ’72 whatever-it-is out there?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘No “suppose” about it, is there?’

‘No.’

‘Well, check up – straight away, will you?’

‘All right.’

Morse walked back into the bathroom, and without picking up the tumblers leaned over and sniffed them one by one. But he wasn’t at all sure if either smelled of champagne, though one
pretty certainly smelled of some peppermint-flavoured toothpaste. Back in the bedroom, he sat down once more on the bed, wondering if there was something
in
the room, or something
about
the room, that he had missed. Yet he could find nothing – not even the vaguest reason for his suspicions; and he was about to go when there was a soft knocking on the door and
Sarah Jonstone came in.

‘Inspector, I—’ Her upper lip was shaking and it was immediately clear that she was on the verge of tears.

‘I’m sorry I was a bit short with you—’ began Morse.

‘It’s not that. It’s just . . .’

He stood up and put his arm lightly round her shoulders. ‘No need to tell me. It’s that penny-pinching Binyon, isn’t it? He’s not only lost the Smiths’ New Year
contributions, he’s an extra one hundred and nineteen pounds short – yes?’

She nodded, and as the eyes behind the large round lenses brimmed with glistening tears Morse lightly lifted off her spectacles and she leaned against his shoulder, the tears coursing freely
down her cheeks. And finally, when she lifted her head and smiled feebly, and rubbed the backs of her hands against her tear-stained face, he took out his only handkerchief, originally white and
now a dirty grey, and pushed it into her grateful hands. She was about to say something, but Morse spoke first.

‘Now don’t you worry, my girl, about Binyon, all right? Or about these Smiths, either! I’ll make sure we catch up with ’em sooner or later.’

Sarah nodded. ‘I’m sorry I was so silly.’

‘Forget it!’

‘You know the champagne bottles? Well, there are only
three
of them in the crate. They must have taken one away with them – it’s not here.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t quite finish it.’

‘It’s not very easy to carry a half-full bottle of bubbly around.’

‘No. You can’t get the cork back in, can you?’

She smiled, feeling very much happier now, and found herself looking at Morse and wondering if he had a wife or a series of women-friends or whether he just wasn’t interested: it was
difficult to tell. She was conscious, too, that his mind hadn’t seemed to be on her at all for the last few minutes. And indeed this was true.

‘You feeling better?’ she heard him say; but he appeared no longer to have any interest in her well-being, and he said no more as she turned and left him in the bedroom.

A few minutes later he poked his head round the door of Annexe 1 and found Lewis on his hands and knees beside the dressing table.

‘Found anything?’ he asked.

‘Not yet, sir.’

Back in the temporary Operations Room, Morse rang the pathology lab and found the police surgeon there.

‘Could it have been a bottle, Max?’

‘Perhaps,’ admitted that morose man. ‘But if it was it didn’t break.’

‘You mean even you would have found a few lumps of glass sticking in the fellow’s face?’

‘Even me!’

‘Do you think with a blow like that a bottle
would
have smashed?’

‘
If
it was a bottle, you mean?’

‘Yes,
if
it was a bottle.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Well, bloody guess, then!’

‘Depends on the bottle.’

‘A champagne bottle?’

‘Many a day since I saw one, Morse!’

‘Do you think whoever murdered Ballard was left-handed or right-handed?’

‘If he was a right-handed tennis player it must have been a sort of backhand shot: if he was left-handed, it must have been a sort of smash.’

‘You’re not very often as forthcoming as that!’

‘I try to help.’

‘Do you think our tennis player was right-handed or left-handed?’

‘Don’t know,’ said the surgeon.

Lewis came in a quarter of an hour later to report to his rather sour-looking superior that his exhaustive search of the Palmer suite had yielded absolutely nothing.

‘Never mind, Lewis! Let’s try the Palmer number again.’

But Morse could hear the repeated ‘Brr-brrs’ from where he sat, and sensed somehow that for the moment at least there would be no answer to the call. ‘We’re not having a
great afternoon, one way or another, are we?’ he said.

‘Plenty of time yet, sir.’

‘What about old Doris? Shall we give her a ring? We know
she’s
at home – warming her corns on the radiator, like as not.’

‘You want me to try?’

‘Yes, I do!’

But there was no Arkwright of any initial listed in the Kidderminster area at 114 Worcester Road. But there
was
a subscriber at that address; and after some reassurance from Lewis about
the nature of the inquiry the supervisor gave him the telephone number. Which he rang.

‘Could I speak to Miss Doris Arkwright, please?’

‘I think you’ve got the wrong number.’

‘That
is
114 Worcester Road?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you haven’t got a Miss or a Mrs Arkwright there?’

‘We’ve got a butcher’s shop ’ere, mate.’

‘Oh, I see. Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘I just don’t believe it!’ said Morse quietly.

H
ELEN
S
MITH
’
S HUSBAND
, John, had told her he would be back at about one o’clock, and Helen
had the ingredients for a mushroom omelette all ready. Nothing for herself, though. She would have found it very difficult to swallow anything that lunchtime, for she was sick with worry.

The headlines on ‘The World at One’ had just finished when she heard the crunch of the BMW’s wheels on the gravel outside – the same BMW which had spent the New Year
anonymously enough in the large multi-storey car park in the Westgate shopping centre at Oxford. She didn’t turn as she felt his light kiss on the back of her hair, busying herself with
excessive fussiness over the bowl as she whisked the eggs, and looking down at the nails of her broad, rather stumpy fingers, now so beautifully manicured . . . and so very different from the time,
five years ago, when she had first met John, and when he had mildly criticized her irritating habit of biting them down to the quicks . . . Yes, he had smartened her up in more than one way in
their years of marriage together. That was certain.

‘Helen! I’ve got to go up to London this afternoon. I may be back later tonight; but if I’m not, don’t worry. I’ve got a key.’

‘Um!’ For the moment, she hardly dared risk a more fully articulated utterance.

‘Is the water hot?’

‘Mm!’

‘Will you leave the omelette till I’ve had a quick bath?’

She waited until he had gone into the bathroom; waited until she heard the splash of water; even then gave things a couple of minutes more, just in case . . . before stepping out lightly and
quietly across the drive and trying the front passenger door of the dark-blue BMW – almost whimpering with anticipation.

It was open.

Two hours after Mr John Smith had stretched himself out in his bath at Reading, Philippa Palmer lay looking up at the ceiling of her own bedroom in her tastefully furnished,
recently redecorated, first-floor flat in Chiswick. The man who lay beside her she had spotted at 12.30 p.m. in the Cocktail Lounge of the Executive Hotel just off Park Lane – a tall,
dark-suited, prematurely balding man, perhaps in his early forties. To Philippa, he looked like a man not short of a few pounds, although it was always difficult to be certain. The exorbitant
tariffs at the Executive (her favourite hunting-ground) were almost invariably settled on business expense accounts, and bore no necessary correlation with the apparent affluence of the
hotel’s (largely male) cliente`le. She’d been sitting at the bar, nylon-stockinged, legs crossed, split skirt falling above the knee; he’d said ‘Hullo’, pleasantly;
she’d accepted his offer of a drink – gin and tonic; she’d asked him, wasting no time at all, whether he wanted to be ‘naughty’ – an epithet which, in her wide
experience, was wonderfully efficacious in beguiling the vast majority of men; he had demurred, slightly; she had moved a little closer and shot a sensual thrill throughout his body as momentarily
she splayed a carmine-fingered hand along his thigh. The ‘How much?’ and the ‘When?’ and the ‘Where?’ had been settled with a speed unknown in any other
professional negotiating body; and now here she lay – a familiar occurrence! – in her own room, in her own bed, waiting with ineffable boredom for the two-hour contract (at £60
per hour) to run its seemingly interminable course. She’d gauged him pretty well correctly from the start: a man of rather passive, voyeuristic tendencies rather than one of the more
thrusting operatives in the fornication field. Indeed, the aggregate time of his two (hitherto) perfunctory penetrations could hardly have exceeded a couple of minutes; and of that Philippa had
been duly glad. He might, of course, ‘after a few minutes’ rest’ as the man had put it, rise to more sustained feats of copulatory stamina; but blessedly (from Philippa’s
point of view) the few minutes’ rest had extended itself to a prolonged period of stertorous slumber.

The phone had first rung at about 2.30 p.m., the importunate burring making the man quite disproportionately nervous as he’d undressed. But she had told him that it would only be her
sister; and he had appeared to believe her, and to relax. And as she herself had begun unzipping her skirt, he had asked if she would wear a pair of pyjamas while they were in bed together –
a request with which she was not unfamiliar, knowing as she did that more than a few of her clients were less obsessed with nudity than with
semi
-nudity, and that the slow unbuttoning of a
blouse-type top, with its tantalizing lateral revelations, was a far more erotic experience for almost all men than the vertically functional hitch of a nightdress up and over the thighs.

It was 3.15 p.m. when the phone rang again, and Philippa felt the man’s eyes feasting on her body as she leaned forward and picked up the receiver.

‘Mrs Palmer? Mrs Philippa Palmer?’ The voice was loud and clear, and she knew that the man at her side would be able to hear every word.

‘Ye-es?’

‘This is Sergeant Lewis here, Thames Valley Police. I’d like to have a word with you about—’

‘Look, Sergeant. Can you ring me back in ten minutes? I’m just having a shower and—’

‘All right. You’ll make sure you’re there, Mrs Palmer?’

‘Of course! Why shouldn’t I be?’

The man had been sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on his socks with precipitate haste from the words ‘Sergeant Lewis’ onwards, and Philippa was relieved that (as always)
pecuniary matters had been fully settled before the start of the performance. Seldom had Philippa seen a man dress himself so quickly; and his hurried goodbye and immediate departure were a relief
to her, although she knew he was probably quite a nice sort of man, really. She admitted to herself that his underclothes had been the cleanest she had seen in weeks; and he hadn’t mentioned
his wife, if he had one, once.

It was a different voice at the end of the line when the telephone rang again ten minutes later: an interesting, educated sort of voice that she told herself she rather liked the sound of,
announcing itself as Chief Inspector Morse.

Morse insisted that it would be far more sensible for himself (not Lewis) to go to interview the woman finally found at the other end of a telephone line in Chiswick. He fully
appreciated Lewis’s offer to go, but he also emphasized the importance of someone (Lewis) staying at the hotel and continuing to ‘sniff around’. Lewis, who had heard this sort of
stuff many times, was smiling to himself as he drove Morse down to Oxford station to catch the 4.34 train to Paddington that afternoon.