“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 Mom 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 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: B-L-O-X-H-A-M—
One of the neighbors (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...
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 Co-op milk from the doorstep. Contemporaneously, exactly so, her actions had been mirrored across the street where another woman, also in a dressing gown (though without 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 street lamps, haven’t we, Sergeant?”
“You are sure, then.”
“Unless she’s got — unless she had a twin sister.”
“Sure about the time, too? That’s very important.”
She nodded. “I’d just watched the news headlines on BBC1 — I like to do that. Then I turned the telly off. I might have filled the kettle again... but, like I say, it was only a few minutes past seven. Five past, at the outside.”
It therefore seemed virtually certain that there was a time span of no more than half an hour during which the murder had occurred: between 7:05 A.M., when Mrs. Jacobs had seen her neighbor opposite, and 7:35 A.M. or so, when Mrs. Norris had first noticed the hole in the window. It was unusual — very unusual — for such exactitude to be established at so early a stage in a murder inquiry; and there would be little need in this case for the police to be dependent upon (what Morse always called) those prevaricating pathologists...
“About quarter past seven,” answered the prevaricating Lewis.
“You’re quite sure?” It was exactly the same question Lewis himself had asked.
“No, not sure at all. Next question?”
“Why didn’t everybody hear the shot?” (The same young, ginger-headed reporter.)
“Silencer, perhaps?”
“There’d be the sound of breaking glass surely?” (A logically minded man from the Oxford Star.)
A series of hand gestures and silent lip movements from the TV crew urged Lewis to look directly into the camera.
Lewis nodded. “Yes. In fact several of the neighbors think they heard something — two of them certainly did. But it could have been lots of things, couldn’t it?”
“Such as?” (The importunate ginger knob again.)
Lewis shrugged. “Could have been the milkman dropping a bottle—?”
“No broken glass here, though, Sergeant.”
“Car backfiring? We don’t know.”
“Does what the neighbors heard fit in with the time all right?” (The TV interviewer with his fluffy cylindrical microphone.)
“Pretty well, yes.”
The senior reporter from the Oxford Mail had hitherto held his peace. But now he asked a curious question, if it was a question:
“Not the two immediate neighbors, were they?”
Lewis looked at the man with some interest.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, the woman who lives there,” a finger pointed to Number 19, “she was probably still asleep at the time, and she’s stone-deaf without her hearing aid.”
“Really?”
“And the man who lives there,” a finger pointed to Number 15, “he’d already left for work.”
Lewis frowned. “Can you tell me how you happen to know all this, sir?”
“No problem,” replied Geoffrey Owens. “You see, Sergeant, I live at Number 15.”
Chapter ten
Where lovers lie with ardent glow,
Where fondly each forever hears
The creaking of the bed below—
Above, the music of the spheres.
When Lewis returned from his encounter with the media, Morse was almost ready to leave the murder house. The morning had moved toward noon, and he knew that he might be thinking a little more clearly if he were drinking a little — or at least be starting to think when he started to drink.
“Is there a real-ale pub somewhere near?”
Lewis, pleasantly gratified with his handling of the Press and TV, was emboldened to sound a note of caution.
“Doesn’t do your liver much good — all this drinking.”
Surprisingly Morse appeared to accept the reminder with modest grace.
“I’m sure you’re right; but my medical advisers have warned me it may well be unwise to give up alcohol at my age.”
Lewis was not impressed, for he had heard the same words — exactly the same words — on several previous occasions.
“You’ve had a good look around, sir?”
“Not really. I know I always find the important things. But I want you to have a look around. You usually manage to find the unimportant things — and often they’re the things that really matter in the end.”