Lewis made little attempt to disguise his pleasure, and straightway relented.
“We could go up to the Boat at Thrupp?”
“Excellent.”
“You don’t want to stay here any longer?”
“No. The SOCOs’ll be another couple of hours yet.”
“You don’t want to see... her again?”
Morse shook his head. “I know what she looks like — looked like.” He picked up two colored photographs and one postcard, and made toward the front door, handing over the keys of the maroon Jaguar to Lewis. “You’d better drive — if you promise to stick to the orange juice.”
Once on their way, Lewis reported the extraordinarily strange coincidence of the pressman, Owens, living next door to the murdered woman. But Morse, who always looked upon any coincidence in life as the norm rather than the exception, was more anxious to set forth the firm details he had himself now gleaned about Ms. Rachel James, for there could now be no real doubt of her identity.
“Twenty-nine. Single. No offspring. Worked as a freelance physiotherapist at a place in the Banbury Road. CV says she went to school at Torquay Comprehensive; left there in 1984 with a clutch of competent O-levels, three A-levels — two Bs, in Biology and Geography, and an E in Media Studies.”
“Must have been fairly bright.”
“What do you mean? You need to be a moron to get an E in Media Studies,” asserted Morse, who had never seen so much as a page of any Media Studies syllabus, let alone a question paper.
He continued:
“Parents, as you know, still alive, on their way here—”
“You’ll want me to see them?”
“Well, you are good at that sort of thing, aren’t you? And if the mother’s like most women she’ll probably smell the beer as soon as I open the door.”
“Good reason for you to join me on the orange juice.”
Morse ignored the suggestion. “She bought the property there just over four years ago for £65,000 and the value’s been falling ever since by the look of things, so the poor lass is one of those figuring in the negative equity statistics; took out a mortgage of £55,000 — probably Mom and Dad gave her the other £10,000; and the salable value of Number 17 is now £40,000, at the most.”
“Bought at the wrong time, sir. But some people were a bit irresponsible, don’t you think?”
“I’m not an economist, as you know, Lewis. But I’ll tell you what would have helped her. Helped so many in her boots.”
“A win on the National Lottery?”
“Wouldn’t help many, that, would it? No. What she could have done with is a healthy dose of inflation. It’s a good thing — inflation — you know. Especially for people who’ve got nothing to start with. One of the best things that happened to some of us. One year I remember I had three jumps in salary.”
“Not many would agree with you on that, though, would they? Conservative and Labor both agree about inflation.”
“Ah! Messrs. Bull and Thomas, you mean?”
“You noticed the stickers?”
“I notice most things. It’s just that some of them don’t register — not immediately.”
“What’ll you have, sir?”
“Lew-is! We’ve known each other long enough, surely.”
As Morse tasted the hostelry’s best bitter, he passed over a photograph of Rachel James.
“Best one of her I could find.”
Lewis looked down at the young woman.
“Real good looker,” he said softly.
Morse nodded. “I bet she’d have set a few hearts all aflutter.”
“Including yours, sir?”
Morse drank deeply on his beer before replying. “She’d probably have a good few boyfriends, that’s all I’m suggesting. As for my own potential susceptibility, that’s beside the point.”
“Of course.” Lewis smiled good-naturedly. “What else have we got?”
“What do you make of this? One of the few interesting things there, as far as I could see.”
Lewis now considered the postcard handed to him. First, the picture on the front: a photograph of a woodland ride, with a sunlit path on the left, and a pool of azured bluebells to the right. Then turning over the card, he read the cramped lines amateurishly typed on the left-hand side:
Ten Times I beg, dear Heart, let’s Wed!
(Thereafter long may Cupid reigne)
Let’s tread the Aisle, where thou hast led
The fifteen Bridesmaides in thy Traine.
Then spend our honeyed Moon a-bed,
With Springs that creake againe— againe!
—John Wilmot, 1672
That was all.
No salutation.
No valediction.
And on the right-hand side of the postcard — nothing: no address, with the four dotted, parallel lines devoid of any writing, the top right-hand rectangle devoid of any stamp.
Lewis, a man not familiar with seventeenth-century love lyrics, read the lines, then read them again, with only semi-comprehension.
“Pity she didn’t get round to filling in the address, sir. Looks as if she might be proposing to somebody.”
“Aren’t you making an assumption?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you see a typewriter in the house?”
“She could have typed it at work.”
“Yes. You must get along there soon.”
“You’re the boss.”
“Nice drop o’ beer, this. In good nick.” Morse drained the glass and set it down in the middle of the slightly rickety table, while Lewis took a gentle sip of his orange juice; and continued to sit firmly fixed to his seat.
Morse continued:
“No! You’re making a false assumption — I think you are. You’re assuming she’d just written this to somebody and then forgotten the fellow’s address, right? Pretty unlikely, isn’t it? If she was proposing to him.”
“Perhaps she couldn’t find a stamp.”
“Perhaps...”
Reluctantly Morse got to his feet and pushed his glass across the bar. “You don’t want anything more yourself, do you, Lewis?”
“No thanks.”
“You’ve nothing less?” asked the landlady, as Morse tendered a twenty-pound note. “You’re the first ones in today and I’m a bit short of change.”
Morse turned round. “Any change on you, by any chance, Lewis?”
“You see,” continued Morse, “you’re still assuming she wrote it, aren’t you?”
“And she didn’t?”
“I think someone wrote the card to her, put it in an envelope, and then addressed the envelope — not the card.”
“Why not just address the card?”
“Because whoever wrote it didn’t want anyone else to read it.”
“Why not just phone her up?”
“Difficult — if he was married and his wife was always around.”
“He could ring her from a phone box.”
“Risky — if anyone saw him.”
Lewis nodded without any conviction: “And it’s only a bit of poetry.”
“Is it?” asked Morse quietly.
Lewis picked up the card again. “Perhaps it’s this chap called ‘Wilmot,’ sir — the date’s just there to mislead us.”
“Mislead you, perhaps. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a court poet to Charles II. He wrote some delightfully pornographic lyrics.”
“So it’s — it’s all genuine?”
“I didn’t say that, did I? The name’s genuine, but not the poem. Any English scholar would know that’s not seventeenth-century verse.”