For the present, however, Bloxham Drive has been sealed off to everyone except local residents, official reporters and a team of police officers carefully searching the environs of No. 17.
But it seems inevitable that the street will soon be a magnet for sightseers, drawn by a ghoulish if natural curiosity, once police activity is scaled down and restrictions are lifted.
A grim-faced Sergeant Lewis, after once again examining the white Mini still parked outside the property, would make no comment other than confirming that various leads were being followed.
Rachel's parents, who live in Devon, have identified the body as that of their daughter, and a bouquet of white lilies bearing the simple inscription 'To our darling daughter' lies in cellophaned wrapping beside the front gate of No. 17.
The tragedy has cast a dark cloud over the voting taking place today for the election of a councillor to replace Terry Burgess who died late last year following a heart attack.
'Nicely writte
n,' conceded Morse. 'Bit pretenti
ous, perhaps
...
and I do wish they'd all stop
demoting
me!' 'No mistakes?'
Morse eyed his sergeant sharply. 'Have I missed something?'
Lewis said nothing, smiling inexplicably, as Morse read through the article again.
'Well, I'd've put a comma after "reporters" myself. Incidentally, do you know what such a comma's called?'
'Remind me.'
'The "Oxford Comma".'
'Of course.'
'Why are you grinning?'
'That's just it, sir. It's that "grim-faced". Should be "grin-faced", shouldn't it? You see, the missus rang me up half an hour ago: she's won fifty pounds on the Premium Bonds. Bond, really. She's only got one of
'em.'
'Congratulations!'
'Thank you, sir.'
For a final time Morse looked through the article, wondering whether the seventeenth word from the beginning and the seventeenth word from the end had anything to do with the number of the house in which Rachel James had been murdered. Probably not. (Morse's life was bestrewn with coincidences.)
'Is that pony-tailed ponce still out there?' he asked suddenly.
Lewis looked out of the front window.
'No, sir. He's gone.'
'Let's hope he's gone to one of those new barbers' shops you were telling me about?' (Morse's views were beset with prejudices.)
She is disturbed
When the phone rings at
5
a.m.
And with such urgency
Aware that one of these calls
Will summon her to witness another death
Commanding more words than she
The outside observer can provide — and yet
Note-pad poised and ready
She picks up the receiver
(Helen Peacocke,
Ace Reporter)
At
2.25
p.m. that
same day, Morse got into the maroon Jaguar and after looking at his wristwatch drove off. First, down
to the Cutteslowe Roundabout, th
ence straight over and along the Banbury Road to the Martyrs' Memorial, where he turned right into Beaumont Street, along Park End Street, and out u
nder the railway bridge into Botl
ey Road, where just beyond the river bridge he turned left into
the
Osney Industrial Estate.
There was, in fact, one vacant space in the limited parking-lots beside the main reception area to Oxford City and County Newspapers; but Morse pretended not
to notice it. Instead he asked the girl at the reception desk for the open-sesame to the large staff car-park, and was soon watching the black-and-white barrier lift as he inserted a white plastic card into some electronic contraption there. Back in reception, the same young girl retrieved the precious ticket before giving Morse a
visitor
badge, and directing him down a corridor alongside, on his left, a vast open-plan complex, where hundreds of newspaper personnel appeared too preoccupied to notice the 'Visitor'.
Owens (as Morse discovered) was one of the few employees granted some independent square-footage there, his small office hived off by wood-and-glass partitions.
'You live, er, she lived next-door, I'm told,' began Morse awkwardly. Owens nodded.
'Bit of luck, I suppose, in a way - for a reporter, I mean?'
'For me, yes. Not much luck for her, though, was it?'
'How did you first hear about it? You seem to have been on the scene pretty quickly, sir.'
'Delia rang me. She lives in the Drive - Number
1.
She'd seen me leave for work.'
'What time was that?'
'Must have been
...
ten to seven, five to seven?' "You usually leave about then?'
'I do now, yes. For the past year or so we've been working a fair amount of flexi-time and, well, the earlier I leave home the quicker I'm here. Especially in term-time when—' Owens looked shrewdly across his desk at
Morse. 'But you know as much as I do about the morning traffic from Kidlington to Oxford.'
'Not really. I'm normally going the other way - North Oxford to Kidlington.'
'Much more sensible.'
Yes
...'
Clearly Owens was going to be more of a heavyweight than he'd expected, and Morse paused awhile to take his bearings. He'd made a note only a few minutes since of exa
ctly
how long the same distance had taken him, from Bloxham Drive to Osney Mead. And even with quite a lot of early afternoon traffic about - even with a couple of lights against him - he'd done the journey in fourteen and a half minutes.
'So you'd get here at about
...
about
when,
Mr Owens?'
The reporter shrugged his shoulders. 'Quarter past? Twenty past? Usually about then.'
A nucleus of suspicion was beginning to form in Morse's brain as he sensed that Owens was perhaps exaggerating the length of time it had taken him to reach work that Monday morning. If he
had
left at, say, ten minutes to seven, he could well have been in the car park
at - what? - seven o'clock? With
a bit of luck? So why
...
why had Owens suggested quarter past - even twenty past?
You can't be more precise?'
Again Morse felt the man's shrewd eyes upon him. You mean the later I got here the less likely I am to be a suspect?'
You realize how important times are, Mr Owens - a sequence of times - in any murder enquiry like this?'
'Oh yes, I know it as well as you do, Inspector. I've covered quite a few murders in my
time
...
So
...
so why don't you ask Delia what
time
she saw me leave? Delia Cecil, that is, at Number
1.
She'll probably remember better than me. And as for getting here
...
well, that'll be fairly easy to check. Did you know that?'
Owens took a small white rectangular card from his wallet, with a number printed across the top -
008 14922
- and continued: 'I push that in the thing there and the whatsit goes up and something somewhere records the time I get into the car park.'
Clearly the broad-faced, heavy
-
jowled reporter had about as much specialist knowledge of voodoo-technology as Morse, and the latter switched the thrust of his questions.
'This woman who saw you leave, I shall have to see her - you realize that?'
You wouldn't be doing your job if you didn't. Cigarette, Inspector?'
'Er, no, no thanks. Well, er, perhaps I will, yes. Thank you. This woman, as I say, do you know her well?'
'Only twenty houses in the Drive, Inspector. You get to know most people, after a while.'
You never became, you know, more friendly? Took her out? Drink? Meal?'
'Why do you ask that?'
'I've just got to find out as much as I can about everybody there, that's all. Otherwise, as you say, I wouldn't be doing my
job, would I, Mr Owens?'
'We've had a few dates, yes - usually at the local.'
'Which is?'
'The Bull and Swan.'
'Ah, "Brakspear", "Bass", "Bishop's Finger"
...'
‘I
wouldn't know. I'm a lager man myself.'
‘I
see,' said a sour-faced Morse. Then, after a pause, 'What about Rachel James? Did you know her well?'
'She lived next-door, dammit! Course I knew her fairly well.'
'Did you ever go inside her house?'
Owens appeared to co
nsider the questi
on carefully. 'Just the twice, if I've got it right. Once when I had a few people in for a meal and I couldn't find a corkscrew and I knocked on her back door and she asked me in, because it was pissing the proverbials, while she looked around for hers. The other time was one hot day last summer when I was mowing the grass at the back and she was hanging out her smalls and I asked her if she wanted me to do her patch and she said she'd be grateful, and when I'd done it she asked me if I'd like a glass of something and we had a drink together in the kitchen there.'
'Lager, I suppose.'
'Orangeade.'
Orangeade, like water, had never played any significant role in Morse's dietary, but he suddenly realized that at that moment he would have willingly drunk a pint of anything, so long as it was ice-cold.
Even lager.
'It was a hot day, you say?' 'Boiling.'
'What was she wearing?' 'Not much.'
'She was an attractive girl, wasn't she?'
'To me? I'm always going to be attracted to a woman with not much on. And, as I remember, most of what she'd got on that day was mo
stly
off, if you follow me.'
'So she'd have a lot of boyfriends?'
'She was the sort of woman men would lust after, yes.'
'Did you?'
'Let's put it this way, Inspector. If she'd invited me to bed that afternoon, I'd've sprinted up
the
stairs.' 'But she didn't invite you?' 'No.'
'Did she invite other men?'
'I doubt it. Not in Bloxham Drive, anyway. We don't just have Neighbourhood Watch here; we've got a continuous Nosey-Parker Surveillance Scheme.'
'Even in the early morning?'
'As I told you, somebody saw me go to work on Monday morning.'
'You think others may have done?' 'Bloody sure
they
did!'
Morse switched tack again. "You wouldn't remember - recognize - any of her occasional boyfriends?' 'No.'
'Have you heard of a man called Julian Storrs?' Yes.'
You know him?'
'Not really, no. But he's from Lonsdale, and I interviewed him for the
Oxford Mail
last year - December, I think it was - when he gave the annual Pitt Rivers Lecture. On Captain Cook, as I recall. I'd
never realized how much the nati
ves hated that fellow's guts — you know, in the Sandwich Islands or somewhere.'
‘I
forget,' said Morse, as if at some point in his life he
had
known
...
At his local grammar school, the young Morse had been presented with a choice of the
3
Gs: Greek, Geography, or German. And since Morse had joined
the
Greek opti
on, his knowledge of geography had ever been fatally flawed. Indeed, it was only in his late twenties
that
he had discovered
that
the Balkan States and the Baltic States were not synonymous. Yet about Captain Cook's voyages Morse should (as we shall see) have known at least a
little
-
did
know a
little
- since his fath
er had adopted that renowned British navigator, explorer, and cartographer as his greatest hero in life - unlike (it seemed) the natives of those 'Sandwich Islands or somewhere'.. .
‘
You never saw Mr Storrs in Bloxham Drive?'
In their sockets, Owens' eyes shot from bottom left to top right, like those of a deer that has suddenly sniffed a predator.
'Never. Why?'
'Because' (Morse leaned forward a few inches as he summoned up all his powers of creative ingenuity) 'because someone in the Drive - this is absolutely confidential, sir! - says that he was seen, fairly rece
ntly
, going into, er, another house there.'
'Which
house?' Owens' voice was suddenly sharp.