It was Lewis on the line — an excited Lewis.
Calling from the newspaper offices.
“I just spoke to the Personnel Manager, sir. It was him!”
“Lew-is! Your pronouns! What exactly was who?”
“It wasn’t Owens I spoke to on the phone. It was the Personnel Manager himself!”
Morse replied only after a pause, affecting a tone of appropriate humility: “I wonder why I don’t take more notice of you in the first place.”
“You don’t sound all that surprised?”
“Little in life surprises me any longer. The big thing is that we’re getting things straight at last. Well done!”
“So your girl wasn’t involved.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did she tell you anything important?”
“I’m not sure. We know Owens had got something on Storrs, and perhaps... it might be he had something on Cornford as well.”
“Cornford? How does he come into things?”
“She tells me, our Tory lass, that she saw him going into Owens’ house last Thursday.”
“Phew!”
“I’m just going back to HQ, and then I’ll be off to see our friends the Cornfords — both of ’em — if I can park.”
“Last time you parked on the pavement in front of the Clarendon Building.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Lewis. I’d almost forgotten that.”
“Not forgotten your injection, I hope?”
“Oh no. That’s now become an automatic part of my lifestyle,” said Morse, who had forgotten all about his lunch-time jab.
The phone was ringing when Morse opened the door of his office.
“Saw you coming in,” explained Strange.
“Yes, sir?”
“It’s all these forms I’ve got to fill in — retirement forms. They give me a headache.”
“They give me a headache.”
“At least you know how to fill ’em in.”
“Can we leave it just a little while, sir? I don’t seem able to cope with two things at once these days, and I’ve got to get down to Oxford.”
“Let it wait! Just don’t forget you’ll be filling in the same forms pretty soon.”
Bloxham Drive was still cordoned off, the police presence still pervasively evident. But Adèle Beatrice Cecil — alias Ann Berkeley Cox, author of Topless in Torremolinos — was waved through by a sentinel PC, just as Geoffrey Owens had been waved through over a fortnight earlier, on the morning that Rachel James had been murdered.
As she let herself into Number 1, she was immediately aware that the house was (literally) almost freezing. Why hadn’t she left the heating on? How good to have been able to jump straight into a hot bath; or into an electric-blanketed bed; or into a lover’s arms...
For several minutes she thought of Morse, and of what he had asked her. What on earth had he suspected? And suddenly, alone again now, in her cold house, she found herself shivering.
Chapter fifty-five
To an outsider it may appear that the average Oxbridge don works but twenty-four weeks out of the annual fifty-two. If therefore at any point in the academic year it is difficult to locate the whereabouts of such an individual, most assuredly this circumstance may not constitute any adequate cause for universal alarm.
Just after 4 P.M. that same day, Morse rang the bell beside the red-painted front door of an elegant, ashlared house just across from the Holywell Music Room. It was the right house, he knew that, with the Lonsdale Crest fixed halfway between the neatly paned windows of the middle and upper stories.
There was no answer.
There were no answers.
Morse retraced his steps up to Broad Street and crossed the cobbles of Radcliffe Square to the Porters’ Lodge at Lonsdale.
“Do you know if Dr. Cornford’s in College?”
The duty porter rang a number; then shook his head.
“Doesn’t seem to be in his rooms, sir.”
“Has he been in today?”
“He was in this morning. Called for his mail — what, ten? Quarter past?”
“You’ve no idea where he is?”
The porter shook his head. “Doesn’t come in much of a Wednesday, Dr. Cornford. Usually has his Faculty Meeting Wednesdays.”
“Can you try him for me there? It’s important.”
The porter rang a second number; spoke for a while; put down the phone.
“They’ve not seen him today, sir. Seems he didn’t turn up for the two o’clock meeting.”
“Have you got his home number?”
“He’s ex-directory, sir. I can’t—”
“So am I ex-directory. You know who I am, don’t you?”
The young porter looked as hopefully as he could into Morse’s face.
“No, sir.”
“Forget it!” snapped Morse.
He walked back up to Holywell Street, along to the red door, and rang the bell.
There was no answer.
There were no answers.
An overlipsticked middle-aged traffic warden stood beside the Jaguar.
“Is this your vehicle, sir?”
“Yes, madam. I’m just waiting for the Chief Constable. He’s,” Morse pointed vaguely toward the Sheldonian, “nearly finished in there. At any rate, I hope he bloody has! And if he hasn’t, put the bill to ’im, love — not to me!”
“Sorry!”
Morse wandered across to the green-shuttered Blackwell’s, and browsed awhile; finally purchasing the first volume of Sir Steven Runciman’s History of the Crusades.
He wasn’t quite sure why.
Then, for the third time, he walked up to the red door in Holywell Street and rang the bell.
Morse heard the news back in HQ.
From Lewis.
A body had been found in a car, on a narrow lane off New Road, in a garage rented under the name of Dr. Cornford.
For a while Morse sat silent.
“I only met him the once you know, Lewis. Well, the twice, really. He was a good man, I think. I liked him.”
“It isn’t Dr. Cornford though, sir. It’s his wife.”
Chapter fifty-six
Thursday, March 7
Is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death
Ere death dare come to us?
“Tell me about it,” said Morse.
Seated opposite him, in the first-floor office in St. Aldates Police Station, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Warner told the story sadly and economically.
Mrs. Shelly Cornford had been found in the driving seat of her own car, reclining back, with a hosepipe through the window. The garage had been bolted on the inside. There could be little doubt that the immediate cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes. A brief handwritten note had been left on the passenger seat: “I’m so sorry, Denis, I can’t forgive myself for what I did. I never loved anyone else but you, my darling — S.” No marks of violence; 97 mg blood alcohol — the equivalent (Warner suggested) of two or three stiffish gins. Still a few unanswered questions, of course: about her previous whereabouts that day; about the purchase of the green hosepipe and the connector, both new. But suspicion of foul play? None.
“I wonder where she had a drink?” asked Morse.