He handed the card to Lewis.
And Lewis whistl
ed so
ftly
, incredulously, as he read the name.
Morse turned again to Sara. 'Can you let us have a copy of the bill - account, whatever you call it - for Room fifteen?'
You were right then, sir!' whispered Lewis excitedly. You always said it was "DC"!'
Sarah came back and laid the account in front
of
Morse.
'Single room - number fifteen. Just the one night. Paid by credit card.'
Morse looked through
the
items.
'No evening meal?'
'No.'
'No breakfast either?' 'No.'
'Look! Can we use your phone from here?'
'Of course you can. Shall I leave you?'
"Yes, I think so,' said Morse, 'if you don't mind.'
Morse and Lewis emerged from the office some twenty minutes later
; and were walking behind recepti
on when one of the guests came through from the entrance hall and asked for the key to Room
36.
Then he saw Morse.
'Good God! What are
you
doing here?' asked Julian Storrs.
'I was just going to ask you exa
ctly
the same question,' replied Morse, with a curiously confident smile.
'Why did you murder those workmen in
1893?'
'It wasn't in
1893.
It was in
'92.'
(Quoted by H. H. Asquith)
'Do
you want
my wife to be here as well? I dropped her in the city centre to do a bit of shopping. But she shouldn't be long - if that's what you want?'
'We'd rather talk to you alone, sir.'
'What's this bloody "sir" got to do with things?'
The three of them - Storrs, Morse, Lewis - were seated in Room
36,
a pleasingly spacious room, whose windows overlooked the hotel's pool and the sodden-looking croquet-green.
'What's all this about anyway?' Storrs' voice was already sounding a
little
weary, increasingly tetchy. 'Can we get on with it?'
So Morse got on with it, quickly sketching in the background to the two murders under investigation:
Storrs had been having an affair with Rachel James -and Rachel James had been murdered.
Storrs had been blackmailed by Owens - and Owens had been murdered.
The grounds for this bl
ackmail were three-fold: his ext
ramarital relationship with Ms James; his dishonest concealment of his medical prognosis; and his wife's earlier career as striptease dancer and Soho call-girl. For these reasons, it would surely have been very strange had Storrs not figured somewhere near the top of the suspect list.
As far as the first murder was concerned, Storrs - both the Storrs - had an alibi:
they
had been in bed with each other. How did one break that sort of alibi?
As far as the second murder was concerned, Storrs — again
both
Storrs - had their alibis: but this time not only were they in the same bedroom together, but also eighty-odd miles away from the scene of the crime. In fact, in the very room where they were now. But alibis could be fabricated; and if so, they could be broken. Sometimes they
were
broken.
(Storrs was listening in silence.)
Means? Forensic tests had established that both murders had been committed with the same weapon - a pistol known as the Howdah, often used by senior ranks in the armed forces, especially in India, where Storrs had served until returning to Oxford. He had acquired such a pistol; probably still had it, unless he had got rid of it rece
ntly
-
very
rece
ntly
.
The predominant cause -
the
Prime Mover - for the whole tragic sequence of events had been his obsessive, overweening ambition to gain the ultimate honour during what was left to him of his lifetime - the Mastership of Lonsdale, with the virtually inevitable accolade of a knighthood.
Motive, then? Yes. Means? Yes. Opportunity, though?
For the first murder, transport from Polstead Road to Kidlington was easy enough - there were
two
cars. But the target had not been quite so easy. In fact, it might well have been that Rachel James was murdered mistakenly, because of a mix-up over house-numbers and a pony-tailed silhouette.
But for the second murder, planning had to be far more complicated - and clever. Perhaps the 'in-bed-together' alibi might sound a
little
thin the second
time
. But not if he was in a bed in some distant place; not if he was openly
observed
in that distant place at the time the murder must have been committed. No one had ever been in two places at the same time: that would be an affront to the rules by which the Almighty had established the universe. But the distance from Oxford to Bath was only eighty-odd miles. And in a powerful car, along the motorway, on a Sunday morning, early
...
An hour, say? Pushing it, perhaps? An hour and a quarter,
then
- two and a half hours on the road. Then there was a murder to be committed, of course. Round it up to three hours, say.
During the last few minutes of Morse's exposition, Storrs had walked across to the window, where he stood looking out over the garden. The afternoon had clouded, with the occasional spatter of rain across the panes. Storrs was humming qui
etly
to himself; and Morse recognized the tune of 'September', one of Richard Strauss's
Four Last Songs:
Der Garten trauert
Kuhl sinkt in
the
Blumen der Regen . . .
Then, ab
ruptl
y, Storrs turned round.
You do realize what you're saying?' he asked qui
etly
.
‘I
think I do,' replied Morse.
'Well, let's get a few things straight, shall we? Last Sunday my wife Angela and I had breakfast here, in this room, at about a quarter to eight. The same young girl brought us breakfast this morning, as it happens. She'll remember.'
Morse nodded. 'She's not quite sure it was
you,
though, last Sunday. She says you were shaving at the
time
, in the bathroom.'
'Who the hell
was
it then? If it wasn't me?'
'Perhaps you'd got back by then.'
'Back? Back from Oxford? How did I manage that? Three hours, you say? I must have left at half past four!'
You had a car—'
'Have you checked all this? You see, my car was in the hotel garage - and God knows where
that
is. I left it outside when we booked in, and gave the keys to one of the porters. That's the sort of thing you pay for in places like this - didn't you know that?'
Again Morse nodded. You're right. The garage w
asn't opened up that morning unti
l ten minutes to nine.'
'So?' Storrs looked puzzled.
You could have driven someone else's car.'
'Whose, pray?'
"Your wife's, perhaps?'
Storrs snorted. 'Which just
happened
to be standing outside the hotel - is that it? A helicopter-lift from Polstead Road?'
‘I
don't know,' admitted Morse.
'All right. Angela's car's there waiting for me, yes? How did I get out of the hotel? There's only the one exit, so I must have slipped unnoticed past a sleeping night-porter—' He stopped. 'Have you checked up whether the front doors are locked after midnight?'
‘
Yes, we've checked.'
'And are they?'
'They are.'
'So?' Again Storrs appeared puzzled.
'So the only explanation is that you weren't in the hotel
that
night at all,' said Morse slowly.
'Really? And who signed the bloody bill on Sunday -what - ten o'clock? Quarter past?'
'Twenty pas
t. We've tried to check everyth
ing. You signed
the
bill, sir, using your own Lloyds Visa Card.'
Suddenly Storrs turned his back and stared out of the rain-flecked window once more:
'Look! You must forgive me. I've been leading you up the garden path, I'm afraid. But it was extremely interesting hearing your story. Outside, just to the left - we can't quite see it from here - is what the splendid brochure calls its "outdoor heated exercise plunge pool". I was there
that
morning. I was there just after breakfast -about half past eight. Not just me, either. There was a rich American couple who were staying in the Beau Nash suite. They came from North Carolina, as I recall, and we must have been there together for twenty minutes or so. Want to know what we were talking about? Bosnia. Bloody Bosnia! Are you satisfied? You say you've tried to check everything. Well, just - check - that! And now, if you don't mind, my dear wife appears to be back. I just hope she's not spent— Good God! She's bought herself
another
coat!'
Lewis, wh
o had himself remained silent th
roughout the interview, walked across to the rain-flecked window, and saw Mrs Storrs standing beneath the porchway across the garden, wearing a headscarf, dark glasses, and a long expensive-looking white mackintosh. She appeared to be having some
little
difficulty unfurling one of the large gaudy umbrellas which the benevolent management left in clumps around the buildings for guests to use when needed - needed as now, for the rain had come on more heavily.
Morse, too, got to his feet and joined Lewis at the window, where Storrs was qui
etly
humming that tune again.
Der Garten trauert. . .
The garden is mourning
...
'Would you and your good lady like to join me for a drink, sir? In the bar downstairs?'
Hypoglycaemia (n): abnormal reduction of sugar content of the blood — for Diabetes sufferers a condition more difficult to spell than to spot
(Small's Enlarged English Dictionary,
17th
Edition)
'What do you
think they're talking about up there, sir?'
'He's probably telling her what to say.'
Morse and Lewis were seated side-by-side in the Dower House lounge - this
time
with their backs turned on Lord Ellmore, since two dark-suited men sat drinking coffee in front of the fireplace.
Julian Storrs and a black-ti
ed waiter appeared almost simultaneously.
'Angela'll be down in a minute. Just changing. Got a bit wet shopping.'
'Before
she bought the coat,
i
hope, sir,' said Lewis.
Storrs gave a wry smile, and
the
waiter took their order.
'Large Glenfiddich for me,' said Storrs. 'Two pieces of ice.'
Morse clearly approved. 'Same for me. What'll you have, Lewis?'
'Does the budget run to an orange juice?'
'And' (Morse turned to Storrs) 'what can we get for your wife?'
'Large gin and slim-line tonic. And put 'em all on my bill, waiter. Room thirty-six.'
Morse made no protestation; and Lewis smiled qui
etly
to himself. It was his lucky day.
'Ah! "Slim-line tonic",' repeated Morse. 'Cuts out the sugar, I believe.'
Storrs made no comment, and Morse continued:
‘I
know your wife's diabetic, sir. We checked up. We even checked up on what you both had to eat last weekend.'
'Well done!'
'Only one thing puzzles me really: your wife's breakfast on Sunday morning.' He gestured to Lewis, the latter now reading from his notebook:
'Ricicles - that's sort of sugar-frosted toasted rice - my kids used to love 'em, sir - toast and honey, a fruit cocktail, orange juice, and then some hot chocolate.'
'Not, perhaps,' added Morse, 'the kind of breakfast a diabetic would normally order, is it? All that sugar? Everything else she ate here was out of the latest diabetic cook-book.'
'Do you know anything
about
diabetes, Chief Inspector?'
It was a new voice, sharp and rather harsh - for Angela Storrs, dressed in the inevitable trouser-suit (lime-green, this time), but most unusually minus the dark glasses, had obviously caught some (most?) of the previous conversation.