Chapter Three

   We saw a knotted pendulum, a noose: and a strangled woman swinging there

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex


   When Constable Walters closed the door, his eyes were puzzled, and the slight frown on his forehead was perpetuated for several minutes as he recalled the strange things that Morse had asked him. He'd heard of Morse many times, of course, albeit Morse worked up at the Thames Valley HQ in Kidlington whilst he himself was attached to the City force in St Aldates. Indeed, that very morning he'd heard Morse giving a lecture: just a little disappointing that had been, though. People said what an eccentric, irascible old sod he could be; they also said that he'd solved more murders than anyone else for many leagues around, and that the gods had blessed him with a brain that worked as swiftly and as cleanly as the lightning.
   'Chief Inspector Morse was here a few minutes ago.'
   Bell, a tall, black-haired man, looked across at Walters with a mixture of suspicion and distaste. 'What the 'ell did he want?'
   'Nothing really, sir. He just asked— '
   'What the 'ell was he doing here?'
   'Said he'd been to some do at the Oarendon Institute or something. I suppose he must have heard about it.'
   Bell's somewhat dour features relaxed into a hint of a grin, but he said nothing.
   'Do you know him well, sir?'
   'Morse? Ye-es, I suppose you could say that. We've worked together once or twice.'
   'They say he's an odd sort of chap.'
   'Bloody odd!' Bell shook his head slowly from side to side.
   'They say he's clever, though.'
   'Clever?' The tone of voice suggested that Bell was not firmly convinced of the allegation; but he was an honest man. 'Cleverest bugger I've ever met. I'm not saying he's always right, though - God, no! But he usually seems to be able to see things, I don't know, half a dozen moves ahead of most of us.'
   'Perhaps he's a good chess player.'
   'Morse? He's never pushed a pawn in his life! Spends most of his free time in the pubs - or listening to his beloved Wagner.'
   'He never got married, did he?'
   'Too lazy and selfish to be a family man, I reckon. But— ' Bell stopped and his eyes suddenly looked sharp. 'Perhaps you'd like to tell me, would you, Walters, exactly what this sudden interest in Morse is all about?'
   As well as he could remember them, Walters repeated the questions that Morse had asked him; and Bell listened in silence, his face showing no outward sign of interest or surprise. The fact of the front door being open was certainly a bit unusual, he realised that; and there was, of course, the question of who it was who'd rang the police and how it was that he (or she?) had come to find the grim little tragedy enacted in the kitchen behind him. Still, these were early hours yet, and many things would soon be clear. And what if they weren't? It could hardly matter very much either way, for everything was so pathetically simple. She'd made a neatly womanish job of fashioning a noose from strands of household twine, fastened the end to a ceiling-hook, fixed deep into the joist above to support a clothes-rack; then stood on a cheap-looking plastic-covered stool - and hanged herself, immediately behind the kitchen door. It wasn't all that uncommon. Bell had read the reports some dozens of times: 'Death due to asphyxia caused by hanging. Verdict: suicide.' And he was an experienced enough officer - a good enough one, too - to know exactly what had happened here. No note, this time; but sometimes there was, and sometimes there wasn't. Anyway, he'd not yet had the opportunity of searching the other rooms at all thoroughly; and there was every chance, especially in that back bedroom, that he'd find something tohelp explain it all. Just the one thing that was really worrying - just the one thing; and he was going to keep that to himself for the present. He'd said nothing to Walters about it, nothing to the police surgeon, nothing to the ambulance men - and, for the last hour, as things were slowly straightened out inside the kitchen, nothing much to himself, either. But it was very strange: how in heaven's name does a woman stand on a flimsy kitchen stool and then, at that terrible, irrevocable second of decision, kick it away from under her so that it lands, still standing four-square and upright, about two yards (well, 1.72 metres, according to his own careful measurement) from the suspended woman's left foot, itself dangling no more than a few inches above the white and orange floor-tiles? And that's where it had been, for it was Bell himself who had exerted his bulk against the sticking door, and there had been no stool immediately behind it: only a body, swaying slightly under the glaring light of the neon strip that stretched across the ceiling. A fluke, perhaps? Not that it affected matters unduly, though, since Bell was utterly convinced in his own mind (and the post mortem held the next morning was to corroborate his conviction) that Ms Anne Scott had died of asphyxiation caused by hanging. 'The police', as the Oxford Mail was soon to report, 'do not suspect foul play.'
   'C'mon,' said Bell, as he walked over to the narrow, carpeted stairs. 'Don't touch anything until I tell you, right? Let's just hope we find a note or something in one of the rooms. It'd pull the threads together all nice and tidy like, wouldn't it?'
   Bell himself, however, was to find no suicide note in the house that evening, nor any other note in any other place on any other evening. Yet there was at least one note which Anne Scott had written on the night before she died - a note which had been duly delivered and received...

   From number 10 Canal Reach, George Jackson continued to watch the house opposite. He was now 66 years old, a sparely built man, short in stature, with a sharp-featured face, and rheumy, faded-blue eyes. For forty-two years he had worked at Lucy's iron foundry in neighbouring Juxon Street and then, three years since, with the foundry's order books half-empty and with little prospect of any boom in the general economy, he had accepted a moderately generous redundancy settlement, and come to live in the Reach. He had a few local acquaintances - mostly one or two of his former work-mates; but no real friends. To many he appeared to exude an excessive meanness of soul, creating (as he did) the impression of being perpetually preoccupied with his own rather squalid self-interest. But he was not a particularly unpopular man, if only because he was good with his hands and had undertaken a good many little odd-jobs for his Jericho neighbours; and if the charges he made were distinctly on the steep side, nevertheless he was punctual, passably expeditious, and quite certainly satisfactory in his workmanship.
   He was a fisherman, too.

   Although he seldom drank much, Jackson stood at the back of his darkened front room that evening with a half-bottle of Teacher's whisky on the cupboard beside him and a tiny, grimy glass in his right hand. He had seen the police arrive: first two of them; then a doctor-looking man with a bag; then two other policemen; and after them a middle-aged man wearing a raincoat, a man with windswept, thinning hair, who was almost certainly a policeman, too, since he'd been admitted readily enough through the front door of the house opposite. A man Jackson had seen before. He'd seen him that very afternoon, and he felt more than a little puzzled… After that there'd been the ambulance men; then a good deal of activity with the lights throughout the house flicking on and off, and on and off again. And still he watched, slowly sipping the unwatered whisky and feeling far more relaxed, far less anxious than he'd felt a few hours earlier. Had anyone seen him? - that was his one big worry. But even that was now receding, and in any case he'd fabricated a neat enough little lie to cover himself.
   It was 3 a.m. before the police finally left, and although the whisky bottle had long since been drained Jackson maintained his static vigil, his slow-moving mind mulling over many things. He felt hungry, and on a plate in the kitchen behind him lay the fish he'd caught that morning. But when at last he could see no further point in staying where he was, the two rainbow trout remained untouched and he climbed the stairs to the front bedroom, where he pulled the flimsy floral-patterned curtains, jerking them into an ill-fitting overlap across the window, before kneeling down by his bed, putting his hand beneath it, and sliding out a large pile of glossy, pornographic magazines. Then he slipped his hand still further beneath the bed - and drew out something else.

   Earlier that same evening, in a posh-addressed and well-appointed bungalow on the outskirts of Abingdon, Mrs Celia Richards at last heard the crunch of gravel as the car drove up to the double garage. He was very late, and the chicken casserole had long been ready.
   'Hello, darling. Sorry I'm so late. God! What a foul evening!'
   'You might have let me know you were going to be— '
   'Sorry, darling. Just said so, didn't I?' He sat down opposite her, reached to his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
   'You're not going to smoke just before we eat, surely?'
   'All right.' He pushed a cigarette carefully back into its packet and stood up. Time for a quick drink though, isn't there, darling? I'll get them. What's yours? The usual?'
   Celia suddenly felt a little more relaxed and - yes! - almost happy to see him again; felt a little guilty, too, for she had already drunk a couple of jumbo gins herself.
   'You sit down, Charles, and have that cigarette. I'll get the drinks.' She forced herself to smile at him, fetched another gin for herself, a whisky for her husband, and then sat down once more.
   'You see Conrad today?'
   Charles Richards looked preoccupied and tired as he repeated the word absently: 'Conrad?'
   'Isn't it the duty of your dear little brother Conrad, as co-partner in your dear little company— ?'
   'Conrad! Sorry, yes, darling. I'm a bit whacked, that's all. Conrad's fine, yes. Sends his love, as always. Enjoyed his trip, he said. But the meeting finished at lunch time - well, the formal part of it - and then I had some er some rather delicate business to see to. That Swedish contract - you remember me telling you about it?'
   Celia nodded vaguely over her gin and said nothing. Her momentary euphoria was already dissipated, and with a blank look of resignation she sank back into her armchair, an attractive, smartly-dressed, and wealthy woman on whom the walls were slowly closing in. She knew, with virtual certainty, that Charles had been unfaithful to her in the past: it was an instinctive feeling - utterly inexplicable -  but she felt she almost always knew. Had he been with another woman today? Dear God, could she be wrong about it all? Suddenly she felt almost physically sick with worry again: so many worries, and none greater than her awareness that she herself was quite certainly the cause of some of Charles's orgiastic escapades. Sex meant virtually nothing to her - never had - and for various reasons the pair of them had never seriously considered having children. Probably too late now, anyway, with her thirty-eighth birthday shortly coming up...
   Charles had finished his whisky and she went out to the kitchen to serve the evening meal. But before she took the casserole out of the oven she saw the gentleman's black umbrella, opened and resting tentatively on two fragile points, in the broad passage-way that led to the rear door. The place for that (Charles could be so very fussy about some things!) was in the back of the Rolls - just as the place for her own little red one was in the back of the Mini. She furled the umbrella, walked quietly through into the double garage, flicked on the lights, opened a rear door of the Rolls, and placed the umbrella along the top of the back seats. Then she looked around quickly in the front of the car, sliding her hands down the sides of the beige leather upholstery, and looking into the two glove-compartments - both unlocked. Nothing. Not even the slightest trace of any scented lady lingering there.
   It was almost half-past eight when they finished their meal - a meal during which Celia had spoken not a single word. Yet so many, many thoughts were racing madly round and round her mind. Thoughts that gradually centred specifically around one person: around Conrad Richards, her brother-in-law.

   It was three quarters of an hour later that someone had rung the Police in St Aldates and told them to go to Jericho.

Chapter Four

   I lay me down and slumber
   And every morn revive.
   Whose is the night-long breathing
   That keeps a man alive?

A. E. Housman, More Poems


   At exactly the same time that Bell and Walters were climbing the stairs in Canal Reach, Edward Murdoch, the younger of the two Murdoch brothers, was leaning back against his pillow with the light from his bedside table-lamp focused on the book he held in his hand: The Short Stories of Franz Kafka. Edward's prowess in German was not as yet distinguished and his interest in the language (until so recently) was only minimal; but during the previous summer term a spark of belated enthusiasm had been kindled - kindled by Ms Anne Scott. Earlier in the evening he had been planning the essay he had to write on Das Urteil, but he needed (he knew) to look more closely at the text itself before committing himself to print; and now he had just finished re-reading the fifteen pages which comprised that short story. His eyes lingered on the last brief paragraph - so extraordinarily vivid and memorable as now he saw it: In diesem Augenblick ging uber die Brucke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr. In his mind the familiar words slipped fairly easily from German into English: 'In this moment there went across the bridge a' (he had difficulty over that geradezu in its context and omitted it) 'a continuous flow of traffic'. Phew! That was while the hero (hero?) of the story was hanging by his faltering fingertips from the parapet, determined upon and destined for his death by suicide, whilst the rest of the world, unknowing and uncaring, passed him by, driving straight on across - Ah, yes! That was the point of geradezu, surely? He pencilled a note in the margin and closed the slim, orange volume, a cheap white envelope (its brief note still inside) serving to mark the notes at the back of the text. He put the book down on the table beside him, pressed the light-switch off, lay on his back, and allowed his thoughts to hover in the magic circle of the night…
   It was Anne Scott who dominated and monopolised those thoughts. His elder brother, Michael, had told him one or two stories about her, but surely he'd been exaggerating and romanticising everything? It was often difficult to believe what Michael said, and in this particular case quite out of the question until - until last week, that was. And for the hundredth encore Edward Murdoch re-enacted in his mind those few erotic moments...
   The door had been locked the previous Wednesday afternoon, and that was most unusual. With no bell to ring, he had at first tapped gently in a pusillanimous attempt to make her hear. Then he had rapped more sharply with his knuckles against the upper panel and, with a child-like surge of relief, he was aware of a stirring of activity within. A minute later he heard the scrape of the key in the lock and the noisy twang as the key was turned - and then he saw her there.
   'Edward! Come in! Oh dear, I must have overslept for hours.' Her hair, usually piled up high on the top of her head, was resting on her shoulders, and she wore a long, loose-fitting dressing-gown, its alternating stripes of black, beige, brown, and white reminding Edward vaguely of the dress of some Egyptian queen. But it was her face that he noticed: radiant, smiling - and somehow almost expectant, as if she was so pleased to see him. Him! She fussed for a further second or two with her hair before standing back to let him in.
   'Come upstairs, Edward. I shan't be a minute.' She laid her hand lightly on his arm and shepherdessed him up the stairs and into the back bedroom (the 'study', as she called it) where side by side they invariably sat at the roll-top desk while Edward ploughed his wobbling furrows through the fields of German literature. She came into the study with him now and, as she bent forward to turn on the electric fire, the front of her dressing-gown gaped wantonly open awhile, and he could see that she was naked beneath it. His thoughts clambered over one another in erotic confusion and the back of his mouth was like the desert as she left him there and walked across the little landing to the front bedroom.
   She had been gone for two or three minutes when he heard her.
   'Edward? Edward?'
   Her bedroom door was half open, and the boy stood beside it, hesitant and gauche, until she spoke again.
   'Come in! I'm not going to bite you, am I?'
   She was standing, with her back towards him, at the foot of a large double-bed, folding a light-grey skirt round her waist, and for some inconsequential reason Edward was always to remember the inordinately large safety-pin fixed vertically at its hem. With her hands at her waist, tucking, fastening, buckling, he was also to remember her, in those few moments, for a far more obvious cause: above the skirt her body was completely bare, and as she turned her head towards him, he could see the swelling of her breast.
   'Be a darling and nip down to the kitchen, will you, Edward? You'll find a bra on the clothes-rack - I washed it out last night. Bring it up, will you?'
   As he walked down the stairs like some somnambulant zombie, Edward heard her voice again. 'The black one!' And when he returned to her room she turned fully towards him still naked above the waist, and smiled gratefully at him as he stood there, his eyes seemingly mesmerised as he stared at her.
   'Haven't you seen a woman's body before? Now you be a good boy and run along - I'll join you when I've done my hair.'
   Somehow he had struggled through that next three-quarters of an hour, fighting to wrench his thoughts away from her, and seeking with all his powers to come to grips with Kafka's tale Das Urteil; and he could still recall how movingly she'd dwelt upon that final, awesome, terrifying sentence...

   He turned over on to his right side and his thoughts moved forward to the present, to the day that even now was dying as the clock ticked on to midnight. It had been a huge disappointment, of course, to find the note. The first of the household to arise, he had boiled the kettle, made himself two slices of toast, and listened to the 7 a.m. news bulletin on Radio 4. At about twenty-past seven the clatter of the front letter box told him that The Times had been pushed through; and when he went to fetch it he'd seen the small white envelope, face upwards, lying in the middle of the door-mat. It was unusually early for the mail to have been delivered, and in any case he could see immediately that the envelope bore no stamp. Picking it up he found that it was addressed to himself; and sticking an awkward forefinger under the sealed flap he opened it and read the few words written on the flimsy sheet inside.
   And now, as he turned over once again, his mind wandered back to those words, and he eased himself up on his arm, pressed the switch on the bedside lamp, slid the envelope out of the text book, and read that brief message once more:

   Dear Edward,
   I'm sorry but I shan't be able to see you for our usual lesson today. Keep reading Kafka - you'll discover what a great man he was. Good luck!
   Yours,
   Anne (Scott)

   He had never called her 'Anne' - always 'Miss Scott', and always slightly over-emphasising the 'Miss', since he was not at all in favour of the 'Ms' phenomenon; and even if he had been he would have felt self-conscious about pronouncing that ugly, muzzy monosyllable. Should he be bold next week - and call her 'Anne'? Next week... Had he been slightly brighter he might have been puzzled by that 'today', perhaps. Had he been slightly older than his seventeen years, he might, too, have marked the ominous note in that strangely final-sounding valediction. He might even have wondered whether she was thinking of going away somewhere: going away - perhaps for ever. As it was, he turned off the light and soon sank into a not-unpleasing slumber.

   Morse awoke at 7.15 a.m. the following morning feeling taut and unrefreshed; and half an hour later, in front of the shaving-mirror, he said 'Bugger!' to himself. His car, he suddenly remembered, was still standing in the court of the Clarendon Institute, and he had to get out to Banbury by 9 a.m. There were two possibilities: he could either catch a bus down into Oxford; or he could ring Sergeant Lewis.
   He rang Sergeant Lewis.
   To Morse's annoyance, he found that a sticker had been obstinately glued to the Jaguar's windscreen, completely obscuring the driver's view. It was an official notice, subscribed by the Publisher of the Oxford University Press:

   This is private property and you have no right to leave your vehicle here. Please remove it immediately. Note has been taken of your vehicle's registration number, and the Delegacy of the Press will not hesitate to initiate proceedings for trespass against you should you again park your vehicle within the confines of this property without official authorisation.

   It was Lewis, of course, who had to scrape it off, whilst Morse asked vaguely, though only once, if he could do anything to help. Yet even now Morse's mind was tossing as ceaselessly as the sea, and it was at this very moment that there occurred to him an extraordinarily interesting idea.

Chapter Five

   The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

Henry Thoreau


   Detective Constable Walters had been impressed by Bell's professionalism after the finding of Anne Scott. The whole grisly gamut of procedures had been handled with a quiet and practised authority, from the initial handling of the swinging corpse through to the post-mortem and inquest arrangements. And Walters admired professionalism.
   Upstairs in the two small bedrooms of 9 Canal Reach, Bell had shown (as it seemed to Walters) an enviable competence in sifting the relevant from the irrelevant and in making a few immediate decisions. The bed in the front room had not, it appeared, been slept in during the previous night, and after a quick look through the drawers of the dressing table and the wardrobe Bell had concluded that there was nothing there to detain him further. In the back room, however, he had stayed much longer. In the two bottom right-hand drawers of the roll-top desk they had found piles of letters in a state of moderate - though far from chaotic - confusion. At a recent stage, it appeared, Anne Scott had made an effort to sort some of the letters into vaguely definable categories and to tie them into separate bundles, since the bank statements from the previous two and a half years, conjoined with her mortgage receipts and electricity bills, were neatly stacked together and fastened with stout household twine, rather too thick for its modest purpose.
   'Recognise that, Walters?' Bell had asked quietly, flicking his finger under the knot.
   Two or three loops of the twine, also knotted, were to be seen loose amongst the scores and scores of envelopes, as though perhaps Ms Scott had recently been searching through the pre-tied bundles for some specific letters. Almost an hour had been spent on these two drawers, but Bell had finally left everything where it was. It was under the cover of the roll-top desk that he had found the only three items that held his attention: a recently dated letter headed from a Burnley address and subscribed 'Mum'; an address book; and a desk diary for the current year. Bell had looked through the address book with considerable care, but had finally laid it back on the desk without comment. The desk diary, however, he had handed to Walters.
   'Should be helpful, my son!'
   He had pointed to the entry for Tuesday, 2 October: 'Summer-town Bridge Club 8 p.m.'; and then to the single entry for the following day, Wednesday, 3 October - the day that Anne Scott had died. The entry read: 'E.M. 2.30'.

   When Walters reported to Bell on the Friday morning of the same week, he felt he'd done a good job. And so did Bell, for the picture was now pretty clear.
   Anne Scott had been the only child of the Revd Thomas Enoch Scott, a minister in the Baptist Church (deceased some three and a half years previously) and Mrs Grace Emily Scott, presently living in Burnley. At the time of Anne's birth and throughout her childhood, the family had lived in Rochdale, where young Anne had been a pupil at Rochdale Grammar School, and where she had shown considerable academic prowess, culminating in her gaining a place at Lady Margaret Hall to read Modern Languages. Then the cream had turned sour. At Oxford, Anne had met a fellow undergraduate, a Mr John Westerby, had fallen in love with him, fallen into bed with him, and apparently forgotten to exercise any of her contraceptual options. The Revd Thomas, mortified by his beloved child's unforgivable lapse, had refused to have anything whatsoever to do with the affair, and had dogmatically maintained to the end his determination never to see his daughter again; never to recognise the existence of any child conceived in such fathoms of fornication. Anne had attended the funeral service when her father's faithful soul had solemnly been ushered into the joyous company of the saints, and she had been corresponding regularly with her mother since that time, occasionally travelling up to Lancashire to see her. Anne and John had been married at a registry office, she 19, he 20; and then, almost immediately it seemed, they had left Oxford at the beginning of one long summer vac - no one knowing where they went - and when Anne returned some three and a half months later she told her few friends that she and John had separated. The gap of the lost months could be filled in only with guesswork, but Walters suggested (and Bell agreed) that the time was probably spent touting some back-street abortionist, followed by miserable weeks of squabble and regret, and finally by a mutual acceptance of their incompatibility as marriage partners. After that, Anne's career had been easy to trace and (in Walters' view) unexceptional to record. John Westerby was more of a mystery, though. A Barnardo boy who had made good (or at least started to make good) he had not finished his degree in Geography, and after the break-up of his marriage had lived in a succession of dingy digs in the Cowley Road area, carrying on a variety of jobs ranging from secondhand car salesman to insurance agent. He was well-liked by his landladies, popular enough with the girls, generous with his money; but also somewhat withdrawn, a little unpredictable, and - according to two former employers whom Walters had interviewed - almost totally lacking in drive or ambition. Anyway, that was all hearsay now, for John Westerby, too, was dead. He had been killed just over a year ago in a car crash on the Oxford-Bicester road - one of those accidents where it was difficult to apportion blame, although the inquest findings revealed that the quantity of beer in Westerby's belly placed him just beyond the limits of statutory sobriety. Unlike the young male driver of the other car, he had not been wearing his safety-belt - and his head had gone straight through the windscreen. Finis.
   'Type it all up,' said Bell. 'Nobody'll read it - but get it typed. There's not much else we can do.'
   Bell had a busy day ahead of him. Two more burglaries overnight, one a wholesale clear-out in North Oxford; an appearance before the magistrates' court in half an hour's time; lunch with the Chairman of Oxford United to discuss the recurring hooliganism of the club's ill-christened 'supporters'; and a good deal of unfinished business from the past week. No, he could hardly feel justified in allowing young Walters to worry much more about what might have happened many years ago to a woman who had just put herself out of whatever misery she was in. Anyway, Bell had a secret respect for suicides... But he couldn't just leave things where they were, he knew that. There was the inquest to think about. Why had she done it? - that would be the question nagging away in the minds behind those saddened, tense, and self-recriminating faces. Oh dear! It was always the same old questions. Was there anything that was worrying her? Anything at all? Health troubles? Money troubles? Sex troubles? Family troubles? Any bloody troubles? And the answer to most of these questions was always the same, too: it was 'yes', 'yes', 'yes', and so they all said 'no', 'no', 'no', because it seemed so much the kinder way. Bell shook his head sadly at his own thoughts. The real mystery to him was why so many of them thought fit to soldier on... He got up and lifted his overcoat from the hook behind the door.
   'Any luck with "E.M."?'
   'No, sir,' said Walters, with obvious disappointment. That Anne Scott had taken in several private pupils each week had been made perfectly clear to him, but there seemed to have been an ad hoc acceptance of fees in cash for the tutorials rendered. Certainly there was no formal record of names and receipts of monies, and doubtless the tax-man was far from well informed about the scope of Anne's activities. The neighbours had spoken of various visitors, usually young, usually with books, and almost always with bicycles. But such visits appeared to have been somewhat spasmodic, and none of the neighbours could promise to recognise any of the callers again, let alone recall their names. Pity! Walters was slowly coming to terms with the sheer volume of work associated with even the most mundane enquiries; beginning, too, to appreciate the impossibility of following up every little clue. Yet, all the same, he would have been much gratified to have come up with a name (if it was a name) for those tantalising initials.
   He found Bell looking at him with a half-smile on his lips.
   'Forget it, Walters! It was probably the electricity man! And just let me tell you one thing, my lad. That woman committed suicide - you can take the word of a man who's been finding 'em like that for the last twenty years. There is no way, no way, in which that suicide could have been rigged - have you got that? So. What are we left with? Why she did it, all right? Well, we may learn a few things at the inquest, but I doubt we're ever going to know for certain. It's usually cumulative, you know. A bit of disappointment and worry over this and that, and you sort of get a general feeling of depression about life that you just can't shake off, and sometimes you feel why the hell should you try to shake it off anyway.' Bell shrugged on his coat and stood holding the door-handle. 'And don't you go running around with the idea that life's some wonderfully sacred thing, my lad - because it ain't. There's thousands of unborn kids lying around in abortion clinics, and every second - every second, so they tell me - some poor little sod somewhere round the globe gets its merciful release from hunger. There's floods and earthquakes and disease and plane crashes and car crashes and people killed in wars and shot in prisons and - Agh! just don't feel too surprised, that's all, if you come across one or two people who find life's a bit too much for 'em, all right? This woman of yours probably put her bank balance on some horse at ten-to-one and it came past the post at twenty-to-six!'
   Walters didn't see the joke, although he took the general drift of Bell's philosophy. Would Morse though (he wondered) not have been slightly more anxious to probe more deeply?
   'You're not too worried about that chair in the— ?'
   The telephone rang on the desk, and whilst the outside call was switched through, Bell put his hand over the mouthpiece.
   'I'm not worried about anything. But if you are, you go and do something about it. And find me one or two people for the inquest, lad, while you're about it.'
   At that point, as Walters walked out into the bright, cold air of St Aldates, he had not the remotest notion of the extraordinary sequence of events which was soon to unfold itself

Chapter Six

   The fatal key,
   Sad instrument of all our woe

Milton, Paradise Lost


   Walters returned to Canal Reach at 2 p.m. the same day. It was the brief conversation with Morse that had given him the idea, and over a pint and a pork pie he had decided on his first move. Although he had already spoken to most of the residents in the Reach, he now knocked once again at the door of number 7, the house immediately adjacent to number 9.
   'I just wondered whether Ms Scott ever left a key with you, Mrs Purvis,' he asked of the little, grey-haired widow who stood in the slit of the hall - here leading directly to the staircase.
   'Well, as a matter of fact she did, yes. Left it about a year ago, she did. I always keeps it in me little pot on the - Just a minute, me dear.'
   Mrs Purvis retreated through one of the doors that led off the hall to the downstairs rooms, and returned with a key which Walters took from her and examined with interest.
   'Did she ever ask you for it?'
   'No, she didn't. But I know she were locked out once, poor soul, and it's always just as well to have a fail-back, isn't it? I remember once... ' Walters nodded understanding as the old girl recalled some bygone incident from the unremarkable history of the Purvis household.
   'Do you remember how many keys you had when you came here?'
   'Just the two, me dear.'
   Was Walters imagining things, or did Mrs Purvis seem rather more nervous than when he had interviewed her the day before? Imagining things, he decided, as he took his leave of her and walked along Canal Street to Great Clarendon Street where, turning left, he could see the sandstone, temple-like church of St Paul's, its fluted columns supporting the classical portico, facing him at the far end on the other side of Walton Street. Yes, he'd been right, and he felt pleased with himself for remembering. There it was, the corner shop he'd been looking for, only twenty-odd yards up the street on the left: A. Grimes, Locksmith.
   The proprietor himself, surrounded by a comprehensive array of keys, locks, and burglar-alarm devices, sat behind a yellow-painted counter sorting out into various boxes a selection of metal and plastic numerals such as are used for the numbering of street houses. Putting a large, white '9' into its appropriate box, he extended a dirt-ingrained hand as Walters introduced himself.
   'You cut quite a lot of extra keys, I suppose?'
   Grimes nodded cautiously, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses slightly further up his porous-looking nose. 'Steady old line, that sort of thing, officer. People are forever losin' 'em.'
   Walters held out the three keys now in his possession: the one (that found on the cupboard-top just inside Anne Scott's lounge) a dull, chocolate-brown in colour; the other two of newish, light-grey gun metal, neither of them looking as if it had often performed its potential function.
   'You think you cut those two?' asked Walters, nodding to the newer keys.
   'Could've done, I suppose.' The locksmith hesitated a moment. 'From Canal Reach, officer? Number 9, perhaps?'
   'Perhaps.'
   'Well, I did then.'
   'You've got a record of doing the job?'
   The man's eyes were guarded. 'Very doubtful, I should think, after all this time. It must have been eighteen months, coupla years ago. She locked herself out one day and came in to ask for help. So I went down there and opened up for her - and I suggested that she had a couple more keys cut.'
   'A couple, you say?'
   'That's it.'
   'I suppose most of the people round here have two to start with, don't they?'
   'Most of 'em.'
   'So she finished up with four,' said Walters slowly.
   'Let's say that one time or another she had four different keys in her possession. Wouldn't that be slightly more accurate, officer?'
   Walters was beginning to dislike the man. 'Nothing else you can tell me?'
   'Should there be?'
   'No, I'm sure there shouldn't.'
   But as Walters was half-way through the door, the locksmith decided that there might be a little more to tell after all. 'I shouldn't be surprised if somebody else in the Reach knows something about those keys.'
   'Really. Who— ?'
   But the locksmith had no further need of words. His right hand selected one of the numerals from the boxes in front of him, his left hand another. Then, like an international judge at a skating championship, he held his arms just above his head, and the number thus signalled was 10.

   Walters walked thoughtfully back to Canal Reach and let himself into number 9 with the key that Mrs Purvis had kept for her neighbour. It slipped easily into the socket and the tongue of the lock sprang across with a smooth but solid twang. He walked through into the kitchen, every detail of death now removed, and looked out on to the narrow back garden, where he noticed that the wall fronting the canal had recently (very recently, surely?) been repaired, with thirty or so new rosy-red bricks and half a dozen coping stones - all most professionally pointed. Then he went upstairs into the front bedroom and looked around quietly, keeping as far as he could from the line of the curtainless window. The bed was just as he had seen it before, neatly made, with the edge of the purple quilt running uniformly parallel about three inches from the floor. Would Morse have noticed anything here, he wondered? Then he suddenly stepped boldly right in front of the window - and saw what he was half expecting to see. The floral curtains of the bedroom across in number 10 had moved, albeit very slightly, and Walters felt quite sure that the room in which he stood was under a steady and proximate surveillance. He smiled to himself as he looked more closely at the houses opposite - brick-built, slate-roofed, sash-windowed, with square chimneys surmounted by stumpy, yellow pots. No tunnel-backs to the houses, and so the bicycles had to be left outside: like the bicycle just opposite. Yes... perhaps it was high time to pay a brief call at number 10, one of only two houses in the Reach at which he'd received no answer to his knocks the day before.
   The door was opened almost immediately. 'Yes?'
   'I'm a police officer, Mr er— ?'
   'Jackson. Mr Jackson.'
   'Mind if I come in for a minute or two, Mr Jackson?'
   Here the ground floor of the house had (as at number 9) been converted into one large, single room, but in comparison it seemed crowded and dingy, with fishing paraphernalia - rods, baskets, keep-nets, boxes of hooks, and dirty-sided buckets - providing the bulk of the untidy clutter. Removing a copy of The Angler's Times, Walters sat down in a grubby, creaking armchair and asked Jackson what he knew about the woman who had lived opposite for the past two years.
   'Not much really. Nice woman - always pleasant - but I never knew her personally, like.'
   'Did she ever leave her key with you?'
   Was there a glimmer of fright in those small, suspicious eyes? Walters wasn't sure, but he felt a little surprised at the man's hesitant reaction; even more surprised at his reply.
   'As a matter of fact she did, yes. I do a few little jobs, you know - round about, like - and I did one or two things for Miss Scott.'
   'She used to let you have a key for that?'
   'Well, you see, she wasn't always in in the afternoons - and with me, well, not in much in the mornings, like - so I'd let meself in if— '
   'Was it you who did the brick-work?'
   There was no fright this time - Walters was sure of that - and perhaps he'd been wrong earlier. After all, most of the public get a little flustered when the police start questioning them.
   'You saw that?' Jackson's ratty-featured face was creased with pleasure. 'Neat little job, wasn't it?'
   'When did you do that?'
   'This week - Monday and Tuesday afternoons it was - not a big job - about four or five hours, that's all.'
   'You finished Tuesday afternoon?'
   'That's right - you can ask Mrs Purvis if you don't believe me. She was out the back when I was just finishing off, and I remember her saying what a nice and neat little job it was, like. You ask her!' The man's small eyes were steady and almost confident now.
   'You've still got the key?'
   Jackson shook his head. 'Miss Scott asked me to give it back to her when I'd finished and— '
   'You gave it back to her, then?'
   'Well, not exactly, no. She was there on the Tuesday afternoon and while she paid me, like, it must have slipped me memory - and hers, as well. But I remembered on the Wednesday, see. I'd been fishing in the morning and I got back about - oh, I don't know - some time in the afternoon, so I nipped over and— '
   'You did?' Walters felt strangely excited.
   '—just stuck it through the letter box.'
   'Oh.' It was all as simple and straightforward as that, then; and Walters suspected he'd been getting far too sophistical about the key business. Could Jackson clear up one or two other things, as well, perhaps? 'Was the door unlocked, do you remember?'
   Jackson closed his eyes for a few moments, inclining his head as though pondering some mighty problem. 'I didn't try it, I don't think. As I say, I just stuck— '
   'What time was that, do you say?'
   'I - I can't remember. Let's see, I must have slipped across there about - it must have been about half-past... No, I just can't seem to remember. When you're out fishing, you know, you lose all track of time, really.' Then Jackson looked up with a more obvious flash of intelligence in his eyes. 'Perhaps one or two of the neighbours might have seen me, though? Might be worth asking round, mightn't it?'
   'You mean people here tend to er to pry on what all the others are doing?' Walters had chosen his words carefully, and he could see that his point had registered.
   'Only a tiny little street, isn't it? It's difficult not to— '
   'What I meant was, Mr Jackson, that perhaps - perhaps you might have seen someone - someone else - going over to number 9 when you got back from your fishing.'
   'Trouble is,' Jackson hesitated, 'one day seems just like any other when you're getting on a bit like I am.'
   'It was only two days ago, you know.'
   'Ye-es. And I think you're right. I can't be sure of the time and all that, like - but there was someone. It was just after I'd nipped over, I think - and - yes! I'm pretty sure it was. I'd just been up to the shop for a few things - and then I saw someone go in there. Huh! I reckon I'd have forgotten all about it if— '
   'This person just walked in?'
   'That's it. And then a few minutes later walked out.'
   Phew! Things had taken an oddly interesting turn, and Walters pressed on eagerly. 'Would you recognise him - it was a man, you say?'
   Jackson nodded. 'I didn't know him - never seen him before.'
   'What was he like?'
   'Middle-age, sort of - raincoat he had on, I remember - no hat - getting a bit bald, I reckon.'
   'And you say you'd never seen him before?'
   'No.'
   Walters was getting very puzzled, and he needed time to think about this new evidence. In a few seconds, however, his puzzlement was to be overtaken by an astonished perplexity, for Jackson proceeded to add a gloss on that categorically spoken 'no'.
   'I reckon I seen him later, though.'
   'You what?'
   'I reckon I seen him later, I said. He went in there again while you was there, officer. About quarter-past ten, I should think it was. You must have seen him because you let him in yourself, if me memory serves me right. Must have been a copper, I should think, wasn't he?'

   After Walters had left, Jackson sat in his back kitchen drinking a cup of tea and feeling that the interview had been more than satisfactory. He hadn't been at all sure about whether he should have mentioned that last bit, but now he felt progressively happier that he had in fact done so. His plan was being laid very carefully, but just a little riskily; and the more he could divert suspicion on to others, the better it would be. How glad he was he'd kept that key! At one point he'd almost chucked it into the canal - and that would have been a mistake, perhaps. As it was he'd just 'stuck it through the letter box' - exactly the words he'd used to the constable. And it was the truth, too! Telling the truth could be surprisingly valuable. Sometimes.

Chapter Seven

   I say, 'Banish bridge'; let's find some pleasanter way of being miserable together

Don Herold


   The recently formed Summertown Bridge Club had advertised itself (twice already in The Oxford Times and intermittently in the windows of the local newsagents) as the heaven-sent answer to those hundreds of residents in North Oxford who had played the game in the past with infinite enjoyment but with rather less than infinite finesse, and who were now a little reluctant to join one of the city's more prestigious clubs, where conversation invariably hinged on trump-coups and squeezes, where county players could always be expected round the tables, and where even the poorest performer appeared to have the enviable facility of remembering all the fifty-two cards at a time. The club was housed in Middle Way, a road of eminently desirable residences which runs parallel to the Banbury Road and to the west of it, linking Squitchey Lane with South Parade. Specifically, it was housed at a large white-walled residence, with light-blue doors and shutters, some half-way down that road, where lived the chairman of the club (who also single-handedly fulfilled the functions of its secretary, treasurer, hostess, and general organiser), a gay and rather gaudy widow of some sixty-five summers who went by the incongruously youthful name of Gwendola Briggs and who greeted Detective Constable Walters effusively under the mistaken impression that she had a new - and quite handsome - recruit to a clientèle that was predominantly (much too predominantly!) female. Never mind, though! A duly identified Walters was anxious, it seemed, to talk about the club, and Gwendola, as publicity agent, was more than glad to talk about it. Ms Scott ('She wore a ring, though,') had been a member for about six months. She was quite a promising, serious-minded player ('You can never play bridge flippantly, you know, constable'), and her bidding was improving all the time. What a tragedy it all was! After a few years (who knows?) she might have developed into a very good player indeed. It was her actual playing of the cards that sometimes wasn't quite as sharp as... Still, that was neither here nor there, now, was it? As she'd said, it was such a tragedy. Dear, oh dear! Who would ever have thought it? Such a surprise. No. She'd no idea at all of what the trouble could have been. Tuesday was always their night, and poor Anne ('Poor Anne!') had hardly ever missed. They started at about 8 p.m. and very often played through until way past midnight - sometimes (the chairman almost smiled) until 3 or 4 a.m. Sixteen to twenty of them, usually, although one quite disastrous night they'd only had nine. ('Nine, constable!') Anne had moved round the tables a bit, but (Gwendola was almost certain) she must have been playing the last rubber with Mrs Raven ('The Ravens of Squitchey Lane, d'you know them?'), old Mr Parkes ('Poor Mr Parkes!') from Woodstock Road, and young Miss Edgeley ('Such a scatter-brain!') from Summertown House.
   Walters took down the addresses and walked across the paved patio towards the front gate with the strong impression that the ageing Gwendola was far more concerned about the re-filling of an empty seat at a green-baize table than about the tragic death of an obviously enthusiastic and faithful member of the club. Perhaps even such modest stakes as tuppence a hundred tended to make you mean deep down in the soul; perhaps with all those slams and penalty points and why-didn't-you-play-so-and-so, a bridge club was hardly the happiest breeding-ground for any real compassion and kindliness. Walters was glad he didn't play.

   It was not a good start, for Miss Catharine Edgeley was away from home. The young, attractive brunette who shared the fiat informed Walters that Cathy had left Oxford that same morning after receiving a telegram from Nottingham: her mother was seriously ill. Declining the offer of a cup of tea, Walters asked only a few perfunctory questions.
   'Where does Miss Edgeley work?'
   'She's an undergraduate at Brasenose.'
   'Do they have women there?'
   'They've always had women at Brasenose, haven't they?' said the brunette slowly.
   But Walters missed the second joke of the day, and drove down to Squitchey Lane, where he received from Mrs Raven an inordinately long and totally unhelpful account of the bridge evening; and thence to Woodstock Road, where he received from Mr Parkes an extremely brief but also totally unhelpful account of the same proceedings. So that was that.
   As it happened Walters had been unusually unlucky that day. But life can sometimes be a cussed business, and even a policeman with a considerably greater endowment of nous than Walters possessed must hope for a few lucky breaks here and there. And, indeed, Walters was no one's fool. As he lay beside his young wife in Kidlington that night, there were several points that now appeared clear to him. Bell was quite right - there was no doubt about it: the Scott woman had hanged herself, albeit for reasons as yet unapparent. But there were several fishy (fishy?) aspects about the affair. The bridge evening (evening?) had finally finished at about 2.45 a.m., and almost certainly Anne Scott had gone home shortly after that. How, though? Got a lift with someone? In a taxi? On a bicycle? (He'd forgotten to put the point to the garish Gwendola.) And then something had gone sadly wrong. Time of death could not be firmly established, but the medical report suggested she had been dead at least ten hours before the police arrived, and that meant... But Walters wasn't quite sure what it meant. Then again there was the business of the front door being left open. Why? Had she forgotten to lock it? Unlikely, surely. Had someone else unlocked it, then? If so, the key on the inside must first have been removed. Wasn't that much more likely, though? He himself always took the key out of his own front door and placed it by the telephone on the hall table. Come to think of it, he wasn't quite sure why he did it. Just habit, perhaps. Three keys... three keys... and one of them must have opened that door. And if it wasn't Anne Scott herself and if it wasn't Mrs Purvis... Jackson! What if Jackson had gone in, unlocking the door with his own key, called out for Ms Scott, heard no reply, and so walked through - into the kitchen! Jackson would know all about that sticking door because he'd been through it at least twice on each of the two previous days. And what if... what if he'd... Yes! The chair must have been in the way and he would almost certainly have knocked it over as he pushed the door inwards... would probably have picked it up and placed it by the kitchen table before turning round and - Phew! That would explain it all, wouldn't it? Well, most of it. Yet why, if that had happened, hadn't Jackson phoned the police immediately? There was a phone there, in number 9. Had Jackson felt guilty about something? Had there been something - money, perhaps? - in the kitchen that his greedy soul had coveted? It must have been something like that. Then, of course, there was that other mystery: Morse! For it must have been Morse whom Jackson had seen there that day. What on earth was he doing there earlier in the afternoon? Was he taking German lessons? Walters thought back to those oddly tentative, yet oddly searching questions that Morse had asked that night. 'Is she - is she dead?' Morse had asked him. Just a minute! How on earth...? Had one of the policemen outside mentioned who it was they'd found? But no one could have done, for there was no one else who knew... Suddenly Walters shot bolt upright, jumped out of bed, slipped downstairs, and with fingers all thumbs, riffled through the telephone directory until he came to the M's. Rubbing his eyes with disbelief he stared again and again at the entry he'd been looking for: 'Morse, E., 45 The Flats, Banbury Road'. Morse! 'E.M.'! Was it Morse who'd been expected that afternoon? Steady on, though! There were a thousand and one other people with those initials - of course there were. But Morse had been there that afternoon - Walters was now quite sure in his own mind of that. It all fitted. Those questions he'd asked about doors and locks and lights - yes, he'd been there, all right. Now if Morse had a key and if he, not Jackson, had found his way through into the kitchen... Why hadn't he reported it, then? Money wouldn't fit into the picture now, but what if somehow Morse had... what if Morse was frightened he might compromise himself in some strange way if he reported things immediately? He'd rung later, of course - that would have been his duty as a police officer... Walters returned to bed but could not sleep. He was conscious of his eye-balls darting about in their sockets, and it was in vain that he tried to focus them on some imaginary point about six inches in front of his nose. Only in the early hours did he finally drift off into a disturbed sleep, and the most disturbing thought of all was what, if anything, he was to say to Chief Inspector Bell in the morning.

Chapter Eight

   For he who lives more lives than one
   More deaths than one must die

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol


   It was not only Walters who slept uneasily that night, although for Charles Richards the causes of his long and restless wakefulness were far more anguished. The undertow of it all was what he saw as the imminent break-up of his marriage, and all because of that one careless, amateurish error on his own part. Why, oh why - an old campaigner like he! - when Celia had seen that long, blonde, curling hair on the back of his dark brown Jaeger cardigan, hadn't he shrugged her question off, quite casually and uncaringly, instead of trying (as he had) to fabricate that laboured, unconvincing explanation? He remembered - kept on remembering - how Celia's face, for all its fortitude, had reflected then her sense of anger and of jealousy, her sense of betrayal and agonised inadequacy. And that hurt him - hurt him much more deeply than he could have imagined. In the distant past she might have guessed; in the recent past she must, so surely, have suspected; but now she knew - of that there now was little doubt.
   And as he lay awake, he wondered how on earth he could ever cope with the qualms of his embering conscience. He could eat no breakfast when he got up the next morning, and after a cup of tea and a cigarette he experienced, as he sat alone at the kitchen table, a sense of helplessness that frightened him. His head ached and the print of The Times jumped giddily across his vision as he tried to distract his thoughts with events of some more cosmic implication. But other facts were facts as well: he was losing his hair, losing his teeth, losing whatever integrity he'd ever had as a civilised human being - and now he was losing his wife as well. He was drinking too heavily, smoking too addictively, fornicating far too frequently... Oh God, how he hated himself occasionally!
   Saturday mornings were hardly the most productive periods in the company's activities, but there was always correspondence, occasionally an important phone call, and usually a few enquiries at the desk outside; and he had established the practice of going in himself, of requiring his personal secretary to join him, and of expecting his brother Conrad to put in a brief appearance, too, so that before adjourning for a midday drink together they could have the opportunity of discussing present progress and future plans.
   On that Saturday morning, as often when he had no longer-ranging business commitments, Charles drove the five-minute journey to the centre of Abingdon in the Mini. The rain which had persisted through the previous few days had now cleared up, and the sky was a pale and cloudless blue. Not an umbrella day. Once seated in his office he called in his secretary and told her that he didn't wish to be disturbed unless it were absolutely necessary: he had, he said, some most important papers to consider.
   For half an hour he sat there and did nothing, his chin resting on his left hand as he smoked one cigarette after another. That could be a start, though! He vowed earnestly that as soon as he'd finished his present packet (Glory be! - it was still almost full) he would pack up the wretched, dirty habit, thereby deferring, at a stroke, the horrid threats to heart and lungs, with the additional sweet benefits of less expense and (as he'd read) a greater sexual potency in bed. Yes! For a moment, as he lit another cigarette, he almost regretted that there were so many left. By lunch time they'd be gone though, and that would be the time for his monumental sacrifice - yes, after he'd had a drink with Conrad. If Conrad were coming in that morning... He sank into further fathoms of self-pitying gloom and recrimination... He had tried so hard over the years. He had reformed and vowed to turn from his sinful ways as frequently as a regular recidivist at revivalist meetings, and the thought of some healing stream that could abound and bring, as it were, some water to the parched and withering roots of life was like the balm of hope and grace. Yet (he knew it) such hope was like the dew that dries so early with the morning sun. So often had his inner nature robbed him of his robe of honour that now he'd come to accept his weaknesses as quite incurable. So he safeguarded those weaknesses, eschewing all unnecessary risks, foregoing those earlier, casual liaisons, avoiding where he could the thickets of emotional involvement, playing the odds with infinitely greater caution, and almost persuading himself sometimes that in his own curious fashion he was even becoming a fraction more faithful to Celia. And one thing he knew: he would do anything not to hurt Celia. Well, almost anything.
   At ten-fifteen he rang his brother Conrad - Conrad, eighteen months younger than himself, not quite so paunchy, far more civilised, far more kindly, and by some genetic quirk a little greyer at the temples. The two of them had always been good friends, and their business association had invariably been co-operative and mutually profitable. On many occasions in the past Charles had needed to unbosom himself to his brother about some delicate and potentially damaging relationship, and on those occasions Conrad had always shown the same urbanity and understanding.
   'You thinking of putting in an appearance today, Conrad? It's after ten, you know.'
   'Twenty past, actually, and I'm catching the London train at eleven. Surprised you'd forgotten, Charles. After all, it was you who arranged the visit, wasn't it?'
   'Of course, yes! Sorry! I must be getting senile.'
   'We're all getting a little older day by day, old boy.'
   'Conrad - er - I want you to do me a favour, if you will.'
   'Yes?'
   'It'll be the last one, I promise you.'
   'Can I have that in writing?'
   'I almost think you can, yes.'
   'Something wrong?'
   'Everything's wrong. But I can sort it out, I think - if you can help me. You see, I'd - I'd like an alibi for yesterday afternoon.'
   'That's the second time this week!' (Was there an unwonted note of tetchiness in Conrad's voice?)
   'I know. As I say, though, I promise it won't— '
   'Where were we?'
   'Er - shall we say we had a meeting with some prospective— '
   'Whereabouts?'
   'Er - High Wycombe, shall we say?'
   'High Wycombe it shall be.'
   'The Swedish contract, let's say.'
   'Did I drive you there?'
   'Er - yes. I - er - we - er - finished about six.'
   'About six, I see.'
   'This is all just in case, if you see what I mean. I'm sure Celia wouldn't want to go into details, but— '
   'Understood, old boy. You can put your mind at rest.'
   'Christ, I wish I could!'
   'Look, Charles, I must fly. The train's— '
   'Yes, of course. Have a good day! And, Conrad - thanks! Thanks a million!'
   Charles put down the phone, but almost immediately it rang, and his secretary informed him that there was a call on the outside tine: personal and urgent.
   'Hello? Charles Richards here. Can I help you?'
   'Charles!' The voice was caressing and sensual. 'No need to sound quite so formal, darling.'
   'I told you not to ring— ' The irritation in his voice was obvious and genuine, but she interrupted him with easy unconcern.
   'You're on your own, darling - I know that. Your secretary said so.'
   Charles inhaled deeply. 'What do you want?'
   'I want you, darling.'
   'Look— '
   'I just wanted to tell you that I had a call from Keith this morning. He's got to stay in South Africa until a week tomorrow. A week tomorrow! So I just wondered whether to put the electric blanket on for half-past one or two o'clock, darling. That's all.'
   'Look, Jenny. I - I can't see you today - you know that. It's impossible on Saturdays. I'm sorry, but— '
   'Never mind, darling! Don't sound so cross about it. We can make it tomorrow. I was just hoping— '
   'Look!'
   'For God's sake stop saying "look"!'
   'I'm sorry; but I can't see you again next week, Jenny. It's getting too risky. Yesterday— '
   'What the hell is this?'
   Charles felt a rising tide of despair engulfing him as he thought of her long, blonde, curling hair and the slope of her naked shoulders. 'Look, Jenny,' he said more softly, 'I can't explain now but— '
   'Explain? What the hell is there to explain?
   'I can't tell you now.' He ground the words into the mouthpiece.
   'When shall I see you then?' Her voice sounded brusque and indifferent now.
   'I'll get in touch. Not next week, though. I just can't— '
   But the line was suddenly dead.
   As Charles sat back breathing heavily in his black-leather swivel chair, he was conscious of a hard, constricting pain between his shoulder-blades, and he reached into a drawer for the Opas tablets. But the box was empty.

   That day The Oxford Mail carried a page-two account (albeit a brief and belated one) of the death of Anne Scott at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho; and at various times in the day the account was noticed and read by some tens of thousands of people in the Oxford area, including the Murdoch family, George Jackson, Elsie Purvis, Conrad Richards, Gwendola Briggs, Detective Constable Walters and Chief Inspector Morse. It was quite by chance that Charles Richards himself was also destined to read it. After three double Scotches at the The White Swan, he had returned home to find the Rolls gone and a note from Celia saying that she had gone shopping in Oxford. 'Back about five - pork-pie in the frig.' And when she had returned home, she'd brought a copy of The Oxford Mail with her, throwing it down casually on the coffee table as Charles sat watching the football round-up.
   The paper was folded over at page two.

Chapter Nine

   Suicide is the worst form of murder, because it leaves no opportunity for repentance

John Collins


   The inquest on Ms Anne Scott was one of a string of such melancholy functions for the Coroner's Court on the Tuesday of the following week. Bell had spent the weekend arranging the massive security measures which had surrounded the visit to Oxfordshire of one of the Chinese heads of state; and apart from exhorting Walters to 'stop bloody worriting' he took no further part in the brief proceedings. He had already been informed of the one new - and quite unexpected - piece of evidence that had come to light, but he had betrayed little surprise about it; indeed, felt none.
   Walters took the stand to present a full statement about the finding of the body (including the one or two rather odd features of that scene), and about his own subsequent enquiries. The Coroner had only two questions to ask, which he did in a mournful, disinterested monotone; and Walters, feeling considerably less nervous than he'd expected to be, was ready with his firm, unequivocal replies.
   'In your opinion, officer, is it true to say that the jury can rule out any suspicion of foul play in the death of Ms Scott?'
   'It is, sir.'
   'Is there any doubt in your own mind that she met her death by her own hand?'
   'No, sir.'
   The hump-backed surgeon was the only other witness to be called, and he (as ever) delighted all those anxious to get away from the court by racing through the technical jargon of his medical report with the exhilarating rapidity of an Ashkenazy laying into Liszt. To those with acute hearing and micro-chip mentalities it was further revealed that the woman had probably died between 7 and 9.30 a.m. on the day she was found - that is, she had been dead for approximately eleven hours before being cut down; that her frame was well nourished and that her bodily organs were all perfectly sound; that she was 8-10 weeks pregnant at the time of death. The word 'pregnant' lingered for a while on the air of the still court-room as if it had been acoustically italicised. But then it was gone, and Bell as he stared down at the wooden flooring silently moved his feet a centimetre or two towards him.
   Only one question from the Coroner this time.
   'Is there any doubt in your own mind that this woman met her death by her own hand?'
   'That is for the jury to decide, sir.'
   At this point Bell permitted himself a saddened smile. The surgeon had answered the same question in the same courtroom in the same way for the last twenty years. Only once, when the present Coroner had just begun his term of office, had this guarded comment been queried, and on that occasion the surgeon had deigned to add an equally guarded gloss, at a somewhat decelerated tempo: 'My job, sir, is to certify death where it has occurred and to ascertain, where possible, the physical causes of that death.' That was all. Bell was sometimes surprised that the old boy ever had the temerity to certify death in the first place; and, to be fair, the surgeon himself had grown increasingly reluctant to do so over the past few years. But, at least, that was his province, and he refused to trespass into territory beyond it. As a scientist, he had a profound distrust of all such intangible notions as 'responsibility', 'motive', and 'guilt'; and as a man he had little or no respect for the work of the police force. There was only one policeman he'd ever met for whom he had a slight degree of admiration, and that was Morse. And the only reason for such minimal approbation was that Morse had once told him over a few pints of beer that he in turn had a most profound contempt for the timid twaddle produced by pathologists.
   The jury duly recorded a verdict of 'death by suicide', and the small band of variously interested parties filed out of the court-room. Officially, the case of Ms Anne Scott was filed and finished with.

   On the evening of the day of the inquest, Morse telephoned the hump-backed surgeon.
   'You fancy a drink in an hour or so, Max?'
   'No.'
   'What's up? You stopped boozing or something?'
   'I've started boozing at home. Far cheaper.'
   'No licensing hours, either.'
   'That's another reason.'
   'When do you start?'
   'Same time as you, Morse - just before breakfast.'
   'Did this Scott woman commit suicide, Max?'
   'Oh God! Not you as well!'
   'Did she commit suicide?'
   'I look at the injuries, Morse - you know that, and in this case the injuries were firm and fatal. All right? Who it is who commits the injuries is no concern of mine.'
   'Did she commit suicide, Max? It's important for me to have your opinion.'
   There was a long hesitation on the other end of the line, and the answer obviously cost the surgeon dearly. The answer was 'yes'.

   A little later that evening, Detective Constable Walters, in the course of his variegated duties, was seated by the bedside of a young girl in the Intensive Care Unit of the John Radcliffe Two. She had swallowed two bottles of pills without quite succeeding in cutting the thread - sometimes so fragile, sometimes so tough - that holds us all to life.
   'It's getting dreadful, all this drugs business,' said the sister as Walters was leaving. 'I don't know! We're getting them in all the time. Another one besides her today.' She pointed to a closed white door a little further down the corridor, and Walters nodded with a surface understanding but with no real sympathy: he had quite enough to cope with as it was. In fact, as he walked along the polished corridor he passed within two feet of the door that the Sister had pointed out to him. And, if Walters had only known, he was at that very second within those same two feet of finding out the truth of what was later to be called The Case of the Jericho Killings.

BOOK TWO

Chapter Ten

   There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting

Much Ado About Nothing Act II, scene iii


   On Saturday, 13th October, four days following the inquest on Anne Scott, a man knocked on the door of 2 Canal Reach, and told the heavily pregnant, nervous-looking young woman who answered the door that he was writing an article for the Bodleian archives on the socio-economic development of Jericho during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, he elicited little information likely to further his researches, and was soon knocking at number 4: this time with no answer. At number 6 he was brusquely told to 'bugger off' by a middle-aged giant of a man, heavily tattooed from wrists to muscular shoulders, who supposed the caller to be some peripatetic proselytiser. But at number 8, the slim, pale-faced, bespectacled young man who opened the door proved a gushing fount of information on the history of the area, and very soon the researcher was filling his amateurish-looking, red-covered Cash Book with rapid notes and dates: 'Key decade 1821-31 - see monograph Eliza M. Hawtrey (? 1954) Bodleian - if they'd ever let me in - variable roof lines, brick built, sash-windowed - I went down to Jericho and fell among thieves - artisan dwellings - there was a young fellow from Spain - Lucy's Iron Works 1825 - who enjoyed a tart - OUP to its pres. site 1826 - now and again - Canal: Oxford-Banbury-Coventry-Midlands, compl. 1790 - not just now and again but - St Paul's begun 1835 - now and again and - St Barnabas 1869 - again and again and again'.
   'Marvellous, marvellous!' said the researcher as the young man at last showed the first welcome signs of flagging. 'Most interesting and - and so valuable. You're a local historian, I suppose?'
   'Not really, no. I work on the line up at Cowley.'
   With further profuse expressions of gratitude for a lengthy addendum on the construction of the railway, the researcher finally saw the door to number 8 close - and he breathed a sigh of relief. Most of the other residents in the Reach would now have seen him, and his purpose was progressing nicely. No answer from number 10; no bicycle there, either. Over the narrow - ridiculously narrow - street, and no answer from number 9, either, in spite of three fairly rigorous bouts of knocking, during the third of which he had surreptitiously tried the door-knob. Locked. At number 7 he introduced himself with a most ingratiating smile, and Mrs Purvis, on hearing of his projected monograph for the Royal Architectural Society on the lay-out of the two-up, two-down, dwellings of the mid-Victorian era, duly invited him into her home. Ten minutes later he was seated in the little scullery at the back of the house drinking a cup of tea and (as Mrs Purvis was to tell her married daughter the next day) proving to be 'such a charming, well-educated sort of person'.
   'I see you grow your own vegetables,' said Morse, getting to his feet and looking out onto the narrow garden plot beyond the dark-green doors of what looked like an outside lavatory-cum-coal-shed. 'Very sensible, too! Do you know, I bought a caulie up in Summertown the other day and it cost me...'
   Willingly, it appeared, Mrs Purvis would have spent the rest of the day discussing the price of vegetables, and Morse had no difficulty in pressing home his advantage.
   'What's your soil like here, Mrs Purvis? Sort of clayey, is it? Or,' - Morse hunted around in his mind for some other vaguely impressive epithet - 'alkaline, perhaps?'
   'I don't really know too much about that sort of thing.'
   'I could tell you if...'
   They were soon standing in the garden, where Morse scooped up a handful of soil from a former potato furrow and let it trickle slowly through his fingers. His eyes missed nothing. The wall between number 7 and number 9 was a lowish red-brick affair, flaked into lighter patches by the tooth of countless frosts; and beyond that wall... Morse could see it all now. What, in Mrs Purvis's house, had been the original low-ceilinged scullery had there been converted into a higher, longer extension, with the line of the slates carried forward, albeit at a shallower angle, to roof it. Beyond that, and shielding the plot from the boat-building sheds which fronted the canal, was a wall some eight feet high - a wall (as Morse could see) which had recently been repaired at one point.
   Interesting... Tonight, perhaps?
   It says something for Morse that he proceeded to knock (though very gently) on the doors of numbers 5, 3, and 1 of the Reach, and he was fortunate to the extent that the first two were either at that moment empty or tenanted by the slightly hard-of-hearing. At number 1 he satisfied his talent for improvisation by asking the very old man who answered the door if a Mr-Mr er-Green lived anywhere about; and was somewhat taken aback to see an arthritic finger pointing firmly across to number 8 - the abode of the polymath from the car-line at Cowley.
   'Haven't I seen you somewhere afore, mister?' asked the old man, peering closely at him.
   A rather flustered Morse confessed that he'd often been in the district doing a bit of local research ('For the library, you know'), and stayed talking long enough to learn that the old boy spent a couple of hours across at the Printer's Devil every evening. 'Eight o'clock to ten o'clock, mister. Reg'lar as clockwork - like me bowels.'
   If it was going to be tonight, it had better be between 8 and 10 p.m., then. Why not? Easy!
   Morse was more honest (well, a little more honest) with the locksmith - the same locksmith whom Walters had visited and questioned a week earlier. Introducing himself as a chief inspector of police. Morse stated (which was quite true) that he had to get into number 9 Canal Reach again, and (which, of course, was quite untrue) that he'd left his key at the police station. It was a bit of a nuisance, he knew, but could... ? Mr Grimes, however, was unable to oblige: there wasn't a single key in the shop that could fit the front door of number 9. He could always open the lock himself, though; could open any door. Did Morse want him to... ? No! That was the last thing Morse wanted.
   'Look,' said Morse. 'I know I can trust you. You see, we've had some outside information about the trouble there - you remember? - the suicide. The big thing is that we don't want the neighbours to be worried or suspicious at all. And the truth is that my incompetent sergeant has er temporarily misplaced both the keys— '
   'You mean three keys, don't you, Inspector?'
   The locksmith proceeded to give an account of his earlier visit from Walters, and Morse listened and learned - and wondered.
   'I didn't tell him about the back door key, though,' continued the locksmith. 'It didn't seem important, if you follow me, and he didn't ask me, anyway.'
   Two minutes and one £5 note later, Morse left the shop with a key which (he was assured) would fit the back door lock of number 9: Grimes himself had fitted the lock some six months earlier and could remember exactly which type it was. 'Keep all this quiet, won't you?' Morse had said, but he'd found no kindred spirit in the locksmith. And how foolish and risky it all was! Yet so much of Morse's life was exactly that, and now, at least, his mind was urgently engaged. It made him feel strangely content. He walked up Great Clarendon Street and saw (as Walters had seen) St Paul's now facing him at the top of Walton Street. 'Begun 1835,' he said to himself. Even his memory was sharpening up again.

Chapter Eleven

   He can't write, nor rade writing from his cradle, please your honour; but he can make his mark equal to another, sir

Maria Edgeworth, Love and Law


   It was the same morning, the morning of Saturday, 13th October, that Charles Richards had received the letter at his home address. The postage stamp (first class) corner of the cover had been doubly cancelled - the first postmark clearly showing 'Oxford, 8 Oct.', with the second, superimposed mark blurred and illegible. Nor was the reason for the delayed delivery difficult to see, for the original address was printed as 61 (instead of 261) Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, Nr. Oxford, and someone (doubtless the householder at number 61) had been aware of the mistake, had re-addressed the envelope correctly, and had put the letter back in the pillar box. The clean, white envelope (with 'Private' printed across the top-left of the cover) was neatly sealed with Sellotape, with the name and address written in capital letters by what seemed a far from educated hand. 'Abingdon' was misspelt (the 'g' omitted), and each of the lines gradually veered from the horizontal towards the bottom of the envelope, as if the correspondent were not particularly practised in any protracted activity with the pen. Inside the cover was another envelope, of the same brand, folded across the middle, the name 'Charles Richards' printed on it in capitals, with the words 'Strictly Personal' written immediately above. Richards slit this second envelope with rather more care than he had done the first, and took out the single sheet of good quality paper. There was no address, no signature, and no date:

   Dear Mister Richards
   Its about Missis Scott who died, I now all about you and her but does Missis Richards. I now ALL about it, I hope you believe me because if you don’t I am going to tell her everything, You dont want that. I am not going to tell her if you agree, You are rich and what is a thousand pounds. If you agree I will not bother to rite again, I keep all promises beleive that. The police dont now anything and I have never said what I now. Here is what you do, You go down to Walton Street in Jericho and turn left into Walton Well Road and then strate on over the little Canal brige and then over the railway brige and you come to a parking area where you cant go much further, then turn round and face Port Medow and you will see a row of willow trees, the fifth from the left has got a big hole in it about five feet from the ground. So put the money there and drive away, I will be waching all the time. I will give you a ring soon and that will be only once. I hope you will not try anything funny. Please remember your wife.

   Although the writing was crudely printed, with several words written out in individual, unjoined characters, the message was surprisingly coherent - and disturbing. Yet as Charles Richards read it, his mind seemed curiously detached: it was almost as if the writing had been submitted to him as a piece of English prose that had to be corrected and commented upon - its message secondary and of comparatively little significance. He read the letter through a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth; but if a hidden observer had recorded the conflicting emotions of puzzlement, anger, and even anxiety, that played upon his face, there was never the slightest hint of panic or despair. For Charles Richards was a clever and resourceful man, and he now refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope and put it, together with the outer cover, inside his wallet.
   Five minutes later he waited for a few seconds by Celia's bedside as she sat up, drew a cardigan round her shoulders, and took the breakfast tray of orange juice, tea, and toast. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, told her that he had to go into Oxford, that he'd take the Mini, and that he'd certainly be home for lunch about one. Was there anything he could get her from the shops? He'd perhaps have to nip into Oxford again in the evening, too.
   Celia Richards heard him go, a great burden of anxiety weighing on her mind. How could a man so treacherous seem so kind? It had been an extraordinary coincidence that the first copy of the Oxford Mail she'd read for months had contained that account of Anne Scott's death, and she felt quite sure that Charles had read the article, too. Had he been responsible for that terrible thing? She couldn't really know and, to be truthful, she didn't care much either. What she did know was that their life together just couldn't go on as it had been. Putting things off was merely aggravating that almost intolerable burden, and she would put it off no longer. He'd said he'd be in for lunch; and after lunch... Yes! She would tell him then. Tell him all she knew; tell him the truth. It was the only way-the only way for her. Conrad had counselled against it, but Conrad would understand. Conrad always understood... She munched the tasteless toast and drank the lukewarm tea. Oxford... He'd always insisted how important it was for him to put in a few hours at the office on Saturday mornings. So why Oxford? With Anne Scott dead, what could possibly be dragging him to Oxford?

   In the Intensive Care Unit at the J.R.2, Doctor Philips walked from the side of the youth lying motionless beneath the startlingly white sheets, and pulled out the chart from the slot at the foot of the bed: temperature still high, pulse still rather disturbingly variable.
   'Bloody fool!' he mumbled to the nurse who stood beside him.
   'Will he be all right?' she asked.
   Philips shrugged his shoulders. 'Doubt it. Once you start on that sort of stuff...'
   'Do we know what stuff it was?'
   'Can't be sure, really. Cocaine, I shouldn't wonder, though. High temperature, dilation of the pupils, sweating, gooseflesh, hypertension - all the usual symptoms. Took it intravenously, too, by the look of things. Which doesn't help, of course.'
   'Will he get over this, I mean?'
   'If he does it'll be thanks to you, Nurse - no one else.' Nurse Warrener felt pleased with the compliment, and just a little more hopeful than she had been. She thought she could perhaps get to like Michael Murdoch. He was only a boy really: well, nineteen according to the records - exactly the same age as she was - and a prospective undergraduate at Lonsdale College. What a tragedy it would be if his life were now to be completely ruined! She thought of Michael's mother, too - a brisk, energetic-looking woman who seemed on the face of it to be taking things none too badly, but who (as Nurse Warrener rightly suspected) was hiding behind that competent, no-nonsense mien the ghost of some distraught despair

Chapter Twelve

   Sophocles lived through a cycle of events spatially narrow, no doubt, in the scale of national and global history, but without parallel in intensity of action and Demotion

From the Introduction to Sophocles, The Theban Plays, Penguin Classics


   The gates of the boat-yard were open as Morse moved swiftly along Canal Reach that night, no lights showing in the fronts of either 9 or 10. It was just before 9 p.m., and the Lancia stood on double yellow lines outside the Printer's Devil, into which Morse had slipped a quarter of an hour earlier, not only to establish some spurious raison d'etre for his presence in the area, but also to down a couple of double Scotches. Once inside the yard, he turned immediately to his left and felt his way along the brick wall, treading cautiously amid the petrol drums, the wooden spars, and the assorted, derelict debris of old canal barges. There was no one about, and the boatman's hut just ahead of him was securely padlocked. The only noise was a single splash of some water bird behind the low bulk of the house-boat moored alongside the Canal, and the moon had drifted darkly behind the scudding clouds.
   With the level of the wharf a foot or so higher than the street behind it, the wall was not going to pose such a problem as Morse had feared, and standing on one of the petrol drums, he peered cautiously over the recently repaired section of the wall. No lights shone in the back rooms of numbers 9, 7 or 5. He hoisted himself up and, keeping his body as close to the top of the wall as he could, dropped down on the other side, feeling a sharp spasm of pain as his right foot crushed a small, terra-cotta flower pot beneath. The noise startled him, and his heart pounded as he stood for several minutes beside the deep shadow of the wall. But nothing moved; no lights came on; and he stepped silently along to the back door, let himself in, stood inside the kitchen, and waited until his eyes could slowly accustom themselves to the darkness. The door immediately to his right would lead, he guessed, to a small bathroom and WC; to his left, the door at the other side of the kitchen would lead (he knew) directly into the lounge. And lifting the latch of the latter, he pulled it open, the bottom of the lower panel scraping raspingly along the floor. Inside the lounge, he felt on familiar territory, and taking a torch from his raincoat pocket he carefully shielded the light with his left hand as he made his way up to the back bedroom. He had already decided that it would be far too risky to venture into the front bedroom, let alone switch on any lights; and so he spent the next half hour by torchlight looking through the drawers of the desk in what had clearly been the woman's study, feeling like some scrawny bird of prey that is left with the offal after the depredations of the jackals and hyenas. Finally he pocketed one book, shone his torch timorously around the room, and nodded with sad approval as the light picked out the black spines of a whole shelf of Penguin Classical Authors, correctly ordered in alphabetical sequence through from Aeschylus to Xenophon. One little gap, though, wasn't there? And Morse frowned slightly as he shone the torch more closely. Yes, a gap between Seneca's Tragedies and Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars. What could that be? Sophocles, perhaps? Yes, almost certainly Sophocles. So what? So bloody what? Morse shrugged his shoulders, pulled the door to behind him, and stepped carefully down the narrow, squeaking stairs.
   Standing motionless for a few seconds in the lounge, he was suddenly aware how very cold the house was, and his mind momentarily settled on the household's heating arrangements. No central heating system, that was clear. No night-storage heaters, either, by the look of things; and the only heating appliance so far encountered was that small electric fire upstairs. A coal fire, perhaps? Surely there'd be a grate here somewhere. His torch still turned off, Morse stepped across the carpeted floor-and there it was in the far wall, surrounded by the lightish-coloured tiles of the fixture. Yes, he remembered it now; and bending down he felt with his right hand along the iron grille. Something there. He switched the torch on right up against the back of the grate, and then slowly allowed the beam to illuminate whatever there was to be seen. It wasn't much: the blackened, curled remains of what had probably been a sheet of notepaper, the flimsy fragments floating down and disintegrating as his delicate fingers touched them. But even as they did so, the torch-light picked out a small piece of something white in the ash-pan below, and Morse pulled away the front and gently picked it out. It seemed to be part of the heading of an official letter, printed in small black capitals, and even now Morse could quite easily make out the letters: ICH. Then he found another tiny piece; and although the flames had obviously curled across it, leaving the surface a smoky brown, it seemed clear to him that it was probably part of the same line of print. KAT, was it? Or RAT, more likely? He inserted the pieces between two pages of the book he had pocketed from upstairs, and his mind was already bounding down improbable avenues. Many of the books and papers he'd looked through upstairs were linked in some way with German literature, and he remembered from his schooldays that 'Ich rat' meant 'I judged' or 'I thought'. Something like that anyway. He could always look it up later, of course, although it promptly occurred to him that he would hardly be overmuch enlightened if his memory proved to have been reliable. And then as he stood in that cold, dark room beside the fireless grate another thought occurred to him: what an idiot - what a stupid idiot he was! It was that first, cowardly evasion of the truth that had caused it all - all because he didn't want it to be known that he'd been floating around in Jericho looking for some necessary sex one afternoon. Suddenly, he felt a little frightened, too...
   He locked the back door behind him, walked down the strip of garden, and looked for a place in the wall where he could get something of a foothold in order to scale what, from this side, appeared a most formidable precipice. What if he couldn't manage... But then Morse saw it. At the foot of the wall was a wooden board, about one foot square, on which someone had recently been mixing small quantities of cement, and beside it a bricklayer's trowel. The shudder that passed through Morse at that moment was not of fear - but of excitement. With his crisis of confidence now passed, his brain was sweetly clear once more. Spontaneously it told him, too, of a dustbin somewhere nearby; and he found it almost immediately, moved it against the wall, and standing on it clambered to the top. Easy! He breathed a great sigh of relief as he landed safely inside the boat-yard, where the gates were still open, and whence he made his exit without further alarum.
   As he walked into Canal Reach, keeping tightly to his right, a hand clamped upon his shoulder with an iron grip, and a voice whispered harshly in his ear: 'Just keep walking, mister!'

   At about the same time that Morse was entering the house in Canal Reach, a Mini Clubman turned down into the northern stretch of the Woodstock Road, having travelled into Oxford from Abingdon via the western Ring Road. The car kept closely into the bus lane, crawling along at about 10 m.p.h. past the large, elegant houses, set back on higher ground behind the tall hedges that masked their wide fronts and provided a quiet privacy for their owners. The driver pulled the car completely over on to the pavement beside a telephone kiosk on his left, turned off the lights, got out, entered the kiosk, and picked up the receiver. The dialling tone told him that the phone was probably in working order, and keeping the instrument to his ear he turned round and looked up and down the road. No one was in sight. He stepped out and, as if searching his pockets for some coinage, carefully examined the surrounds of the kiosk. The stone wall behind it was luxuriantly clad with thick ivy, and he pushed his hands against it, seeming to be satisfied that all was well. He got back into the Mini and drove along the road for about fifty yards, before stopping again and taking note of the name of the road, that stretched quite steeply off on his left. He then drove the short distance down to Squitchey Lane, turned left, left at the Banbury Road, left into Sunderland Avenue, and finally left again into the Woodstock Road. For the moment there was no traffic and he drove slowly once more along the selfsame stretch of road. Then, nodding to himself with apparent satisfaction, he accelerated away.
   The plan was laid.

   Michael Murdoch opened his eyes at about ten minutes to ten that evening to find the same pretty face looking down at him. He noticed with remarkable vividness the strong white teeth, a gold filling somewhere towards the extremity of her smile, and he heard her speak.
   'Feeling better?'
   Momentarily he was feeling nothing, not even a sense of puzzlement, and in a dry-throated whisper he managed to answer 'Yes.' But as he lay back and closed his eyes again, his head was,drifting off in a giddying whirl and the body it had left behind seemed slowly to be slipping from the sloping bed. He felt a cold, restraining hand on his drenched forehead, and immediately he was back inside his skull once more, with a giant, brown rat that sat at the entrance of his right ear, twitching its nose and ever edging menacingly forward, its long tail insinuating itself centimetre by centimetre into the gaping orifice, and the long white slits of teeth drawing nearer and nearer to a vast and convoluted dome of pale-white matter that even now he recognized: it was his own matter, his own flesh, his own brain.
   He heard himself shriek out in terror.

   Miss Catharine Edgeley returned to Oxford that night. Her mother had died of a brain tumour; her mother was now buried. And there was little room in Miss Edgeley's mind that night for any thoughts of the last time she had played bridge in North Oxford. Indeed, she had no knowledge at that time that Anne Scott, too, was dead.