Ten.
"You see, Lewis, we've perhaps been a little misled by these minor acts of vandalism here. We've got several houses minus the numbers originally screwed into their front gates - and their back gates. So we were understandably confused.'
Lewis agreed. 'I still am, sir.'
'How many odd numbers are there between one and twenty-one - inclusive?'
'I reckon it's ten, sir. So I suppose there must be -eleven.'
Morse grinned. 'Write 'em down!'
So Lewis did, in his notebook: i, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21. Then counted them.
'I was right, sir. Eleven.'
'But only ten houses, Lewis.'
'I don't quite follow.'
'Of course you do. It happens quite often in hotel floors and hotel room numbers ... and street numbers. They miss one of diem out'
Enlightenment dawned on Lewis's honest features.
'Number thirteen!'
'Exactly! Do you know there used to be people in France called "fourteeners" who made a living by going along to dinner parties where the number of guests was thirteen?'
'Where do you find all these bits and pieces?'
'Do you know, I think I saw that on the back of a matchbox in a pub in Grimsby. I've learned quite a lot in life from the back of matchboxes.'
'What's it all got to do with the case, though?'
Morse reached for Lewis's notebook, and put brackets round the seventh number. Then, underneath the first few numbers, he wrote in an arrow, -», pointing from left to right
'Lewis! If you were walking along the back of the houses, starting from Number i - she must be feeling a bit sore about the election, by the way ... Well, let's just go along there.'
The two men walked to the rear of the terrace, where (as we have seen) several of the back gates had been sadly, if not too seriously, vandalized.
'Get your list, Lewis, and as we go along, just put a ring round those gates where we haven't got a number, all right?'
At the end of the row, Lewis's original list, with its successive emendations, appeared as follows:
1, 3, 5, (7 ) 9, 11, (13), (15)(17) 19, (21]
"You see,' said Morse, 'the vandalism gets worse the further you get into the Close, doesn't it? As it gets further from the main road.'
/Yes.'
'So just picture things. You've got a revolver and you walk along the back here in the half-light. You know the number you want. You know the morning routine, too: breakfast at about seven. All you've got to do is knock on the kitchen window, wait till you see the silhouette behind the thin blind, the silhouette of a face with one distinctive feature - a pony-tail. You walk along the back; you see Number 11; you move along to the next house -Number 13 - you thinkl And so the house after that must be Number 15. And to confirm things, there's the pony-tailed silhouette. You press the trigger - and there you have it, Lewis! The Horseman passes by. But you've got it wrong, haven't you? Your intended victim is living at Number 15, not Number 17!'
'So,' said Lewis slowly, 'whoever stood at the kitchen window thought he - or she - was firing...'
Morse nodded sombrely. 'Yes. Not at Rachel James, but Geoffrey Owens.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Men entitled to bleat B A after their names (D. S. MacColl)
THE SENIOR COMMON Room at Lonsdale is comparatively small, and for this reason has a rather more intimate air about it than some of the spacious SCRs in the larger Oxford Colleges. Light-coloured, beautifully grained oak-panelling encloses the room on all sides, its colouring complemented by the light-brown leather sofas and armchairs there. Copies of almost all the national dailies, including the Sun and the Mirror, are to be found on the glass-topped coffee-tables; and indeed it is usually these tabloids which are flipped through first - sometimes intently studied - by the majority of the dons.
Forgathered here on the evening of Friday, 23 February (7.00 for 7.30) was a rather overcrowded throng of dons, accompanied by wives, partners, friends, to enjoy a Guest Night - an occasion celebrated by the College four times per term. A white-coated scout stood by the door with a silver tray holding thinly fluted glasses of sherry: either the pale-amber 'dry' variety or the darker brown 'medium', for it was a basic assumption in such a setting
that no one could ever wish for the deeply umbered 'sweet'.
A begowned Jasper Bradley took a glass of dry, drained it at a swallow, put the glass back on to the tray, and took another. He was particularly pleased with himself that day; and with the Classical Quarterly, whose review of Greek Moods and Tenses (J. J. Bradley, 204 pp, £45.50, Classical Press) contained the wonderful lines which Bradley had now by heart:
A small volume, but one which plumbs the unfathomed mysteries of the aorist subjunctive with imaginative insights into the very origins of language.
Yes. He felt decidedly chuffed.
'How's tricks?' he asked, looking up at Donald Franks, a very tall astrophysicist, recendy head-hunted from Cambridge, whose dark, lugubrious features suggested that for his part he'd managed few imaginative insights that week into the origins of the universe.
'So-so.'
'Who d'you fancy then?'
'What - of the women here?'
'For the Master's job.'
'Dunno.'
'Who'll you vote for?'
'Secret ballot, innit?'
Mr and Mrs Denis Cornford now came in, each taking a glass of die medium sherry. Shelly looked extremely attractive and perhaps a little skimpily dressed for such a chilly evening. She wore a lightweight white two-piece
suit; and as she bent down to pick up a cheese-nibble her low-cut, bottle-green blouse gaped open to reveal a splendid glimpse of her beautiful breasts.
'Je-sus!'muttered Bradley.
'She certainly flouts her tits a bit,' mumbled the melancholy Franks.
You mean "flaunts" 'em, I think.'
'If you say so,' said Franks, slightly wounded.
Bradley moved to die far end of the room where Angela Storrs stood talking to a small priest, clothed all in black, with buckled shoes and leggings.
'Ah, Jasper! Come and meet Father Dooley from Sligo.'
Clearly Angela Storrs had decided she had now done her duty; for soon she drifted away - tall, long-legged, wearing a dark-grey trouser-suit with a white high-necked jumper. There was about her an almost patrician mien, her face high-cheekboned and pale, with the hair swept back above her ears and fastened in a bun behind. It was obvious to all that she had been a very attractive woman. But she was aging a litde too quickly perhaps; and the fact that over the last two or three years she had almost invariably worn trousers did litde to discourage the belief that her legs had succumbed to an unsighdy cordage of varicose veins. If she were on sale in an Arab wife-market (in die cruel words of one of die younger dons) she would have passed her best-before date several years earlier.
'I knew die Master many years ago - and his poor wife. Yes ... diat was long ago,' mused die litde priest
Bradley was ready with the appropriate response of scholarly compassion.
'Times change, yes. Tempora mutantur: et nos mutamur inittis.'
'I think,' said the priest, 'that the line should read: Tempora mutantur: nos et mutamur in Mis. Otherwise the hexameter won't scan, will it?'
'Of course it won't, sorry.'
The scout now politely requested dons - wives - partners - guests - to proceed to the Hall. And Jasper Bradley, eminent authority on the aorist subjunctive in Classical Greek, walked out of the SCR more than slightly wounded.
Sir Clixby Bream brought up the rear as the room emptied, and lighdy touched the bottom of Angela Storrs standing just in front of him.
Sotto voce he lied into her ear: "You're looking ravishing tonight. And I'll tell you something else - I'd far rather be in bed with you now than face another bloody Guest Night'