(Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard*)
IN HIS EARLIER years Geoffrey Owens had been an owl, preferring to pursue whatever tasks lay before him into the late hours of the night, often through into the still, small hours. But now, in his mid-forties, he had metamorphosed into a lark, his brain seeming perceptibly clearer and fresher in the morning. It had been no hardship, therefore, when he was invited, under the new flexi-time philosophy of his employers, to start work early and finish work early - thereby receiving a small bonus into the bargain. And, since the previous September, Owens had made it his regular practice to leave his home in Bloxham Drive just before 7 a.m., incidentally thus avoiding the traffic jams which began to build up in the upper reaches of the Banbury Road an hour or so later; and, on his return journey, missing the corresponding jams the other way, as thousands of motorists left the busy heart of Oxford for the comparative peace of the
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
northern outskirts, and the neighbouring villages - such as Kidlington.
It was, all in all, a happy enough arrangement. And one which had applied on Monday, 19 February.
Owens had left his house at about ten minutes to seven that morning, when he had, of course, passed the house on the corner, Number i, where a woman had watched him go. But if he in turn had spotted her, this was in no way apparent, for he had passed without a wave of recognition, and driven up to the junction, where he had turned right, on his way down into Oxford. But if he had not seen her, quite definitely she had seen him.
Traffic had been unusually light for a Monday (more often than not the busiest morning of the week) even at such a comparatively early hour; and without any appreciable hold-up Owens soon reached the entrance barrier of the large car park which serves the Oxfordshire Newspapers complex down in Osney Mead, just past the railway station along the Botley Road.
Owens had come to Oxford three years previously with an impressive-looking CV, in which the applicant asserted his 'all-round experience in the fields of reporting, copy-editing, advertising, and personnel management'. And he had been the unanimous choice of the four members of the interviewing panel. Nor had there been the slightest reason since for them to rue their decision. In fact, Owens had proved a profitable investment. With his knowledge of English grammar way above average, his job description had quickly been modified, with an appropriate increase in salary, to include responsibility
57
COLIN DEXTER
for recasting the frequently ill-constructed paragraphs of his junior colleagues, and for correcting the heinous errors in orthography which blighted not a few of their offerings; and, in addition to these new tasks, to stand in as required when the Personnel Manager was called away on conferences.
As a result of these changes, Owens himself, nominally the group's senior reporter, had become more and more desk-bound, venturing out only for the big stories. Like now. For as he stood hi Bloxham Drive that morning, he was never in doubt that this would be one of those 'big stories' - not just for himself but also for the steadily increasing number of media colleagues who were already joining him.
All of them waiting...
Waiting, in fact, until 11.30 a.m. - well before which time, as if by some sort of collective instinct, each was aware that something grotesque and gruesome had occurred in the house there numbered 17.
CHAPTER NINE
Instead of being arrested, as we stated, for kicking his wife down a flight of stairs and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Revd James P. Wellman died unmarried four years ago
(Correction in a US journal, quoted by Burne-Jones in a letter to Lady Horner)
AT 11.15 A.M. LEWIS suggested that someone perhaps ought to say something.
For the past hour and a half a group of police officers had been knocking on neighbourhood doors, speaking to residents, taking brief preliminary statements. But as yet nothing official had been released to the representatives of the media assembled in a street now increasingly crowded with curious onlookers.
'Go ahead!'said Morse.
'Shall I tell them all we know?'
'That won't take you long, will it?'
'No need to keep anything back?'
'For Chrissake, Lewis! You sound as if we've got something to hide. If we have, why don't you tell me?
'Just wondered.'
59
COLIN DEXTER
Morse's tone softened. 'It won't matter much what you tell 'em, will it?'
'All right'
'Just one thing, though. You can remind 'em that we'd all welcome a bit of accuracy for a change. Tell 'em to stick an "h" in the middle of Bloxham Close - that sort of thing.'
'Bloxham Drive, sir.'
'Thank you, Lewis.'
With which, a morose-looking Morse eased himself back in the armchair in the front sitting-room, and continued his cursory examination of the papers, letters, documents, photographs, taken from the drawers of a Queen-Anne-style escritoire - a rather tasteful piece, thought Morse. Family heirloom, perhaps.
Family...
Oh dear!
That was always one of the worst aspects of suicides and murders: the family. This time with Mum and Dad and younger sister already on their way up from Torquay. Still, Lewis was wonderfully good at that sort of thing. Come to think of it, Lewis was quite good at several things, really - including dealing with the Press. And as Morse flicked his way somewhat fecklessly through a few more papers, he firmly resolved (although in fact he forgot) to tell his faithful sergeant exactly that before the day was through.
Immediately on confronting his interlocutors, Lewis was invited by the TV crew to go some way along the street
60
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
so that he -could be filmed walking before appearing in front of the camera talking. Normal TV routine, it was explained: always see a man striding along somewhere before seeing his face on the screen. So, would Sergeant Lewis please oblige with a short perambulation?
No, Sergeant Lewis wouldn't.
What he would do, though, was try to tell them what they wanted to know. Which, for the next few minutes, he did.
A murder had occurred in the kitchen of Number 17 Bloxham Drive: &-L-O-X-H-A-M -
One of the neighbours (unspecified) had earlier alerted the police to suspicious circumstances at that address -
A patrol car had been on the scene promptly; forced open the front door; discovered the body of a young woman-
The woman had been shot dead through the rear kitchen window-
The body had not as yet been officially identified -
The property appeared to show no sign - no other sign - of any break-in -
That was about it, really.
Amid the subsequent chorus of questions, Lewis picked out the raucous notes of the formidable female reporter from the Oxford Star:
'What time was all this, Sergeant?'
As it happened, Lewis knew the answer to that question very well. But he decided to be economical with the details of the surprisingly firm evidence already gleaned...
COLIN DEXTER
The Jacobs family lived immediately opposite Number 17, where the lady of the house, in dressing-gown and curlers, had opened her front door a few minutes after 7 a.m. in order to pick up her two pints of Coop milk from the doorstep. Contemporaneously, exacdy so, her actions had been mirrored across the street where another woman, also in a dressing-gown (though widiout curlers), had been picking up her own single pint. Each had looked across at the other; each had nodded a matutinal greeting.
"You're quite sure? Lewis had insisted. 'It was still a bit dark, you know.'
'We've got some streetlamps, haven't we, Sergeant?'