It was on Wednesday, October 3rd, almost exactly six months after Mrs. Murdoch's party in North Oxford, that Detective Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police was driving from Kidlington to Oxford. He turned down into Woodstock Road, turned right into Bainton Road, and then straight down into Walton Street. As he drove the Lancia carefully through the narrow street, with cars parked either side, he noticed that Sex in the Suburbs was on at the Phoenix; but almost simultaneously the bold white lettering of a street sign caught his eye and any thoughts of an hour or two of technicolour titillation was forgotten: the sign read 'Jericho Street'. He'd thought of Anne Scott occasionally-of course he had!-but the prospect of a complicated liaison with a married woman had not, in the comparatively sober light of morning, carried quite the same appeal it had the night before; and he had not pursued the affair. But he was thinking of her now…
That morning, in Kidlington, his lecture on Homicide Procedures to a group of earnest, newly fledged detectives (Constable Walters amongst them) had been received with a polite [missing] of enthusiasm, and Morse knew that he had been far from good. How glad he was to have the afternoon free! Furthermore, for the first time in many months he had every reason to be in the precincts of Jericho. As a member of the Book Association he had recently received advanced notice of a talk (Oct. 3rd, 8 p.m.) by Dame Helen Gardner on The New Oxford Book of English Verse; and the prospect of that distinguished Oxford academic was quite sufficient in itself to stir an idle Morse to his first attendance of the year. But, in addition, the Association's committee had appealed to all members for any old books that might be finished with, because before Dame Helen's talk a sale of second-hand books had been arranged in aid of the Association's languishing funds. The previous night, therefore, Morse had decimated his shelves, selecting those thirty or so paperbacks which now lay in a cardboard box in the boot of the Lancia. All books were to be delivered to the Clarendon Press Institute in Walton Street (where the Association held its meetings) between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. that day. It was now twenty-five minutes past three.
For very good reasons, however, the delivery of Morse's offerings was temporarily postponed. Just before the OUP building, Morse turned right and drove slowly down Great Clarendon Street, crossed a couple of intersections, and noticed Canal Street on his right. Surely she must live somewhere very close? It had been raining intermittently all day, and heavy spots were spattering his windscreen as he turned into the deserted street and looked around for parking space. Difficult, though. Double yellow lines on one side of the street, with a row of notices on the other-a series of white Ps set against their blue backgrounds: 'Resident Permit Holders Only'. True, there was a gap or two here and there; but with a stubborn law-abiding streak within him-and with the added risk of a hefty parking fine-Morse drove on slowly round the maze of streets. Finally, beneath the towering Italianate campanile of St. Barnabas' Church, he found an empty space in a stretch of road by the canal, marked off with boxed white lines: 'Waiting limited to 2 hours. Return prohibited within 1 hour'. Morse backed carefully into the space and looked around him. Through an opened gate he glimpsed the blues, browns, and reds of a string of house-boats moored alongside the canal, whilst three unspecified ducks, long-necked and black against the late-afternoon sky, flapped away noisily towards a more northerly stretch of water. He got out of the car and stood in the rain a while, looking up at the dirtyish yellow tower that dominated the streets. A quick look inside, perhaps? But the door was locked, and Morse was reading the notice explaining that the regrettable cause of it all was adolescent vandalism when he heard the voice behind him.
'Is this your car?'
A young, very wet traffic warden, the yellow band round her hat extremely new, was standing beside the Lancia, trying bravely to write down something on a bedrenched page of her notebook.
'All right, aren't I?' mumbled Morse defensively, as he walked down the shallow steps of the church towards her.
'You're over the white line and you'll have to back it up a bit. You've plenty of room.'
Morse dutifully manoeuvred the Lancia until it stood more neatly within its white box, and then wound down the window. 'Better?'
'You ought to lock your doors if you're going to stay here-two hours, remember. A lot of cars get stolen, you know.'
'Yes, I always lock-'
'It wasn't locked just now!'
'I was only seeing if…'
But the young lady had walked on, apparently unwilling to discuss her edicts further, and was writing out a sodden ticket for one of the hapless non-permit holders just a little way up the street when Morse called out to her.
'Canal Reach? Do you know it?'
She pointed back up to Canal Street. 'Round the corner. Third on the left.'
In Canal Street itself, two parking tickets, folded in cellophane containers, and stuck beneath the windscreen wipers, bore witness to the conscientious young warden's devotion to her duties; and just across the road, on the corner of Victor Street, Morse thought he saw a similar ticket on the windscreen of an incongruously large, light blue Rolls Royce. But his attention was no longer focused on the problems of parking. A sign to his left announced 'Canal Reach'; and he stopped and wondered. Wondered why exactly he was there and what (if anything) he had to say to her… The short, narrow street, with five terraced houses on either side, was rendered inaccessible to motor traffic by three concrete bollards across the entrance, and was sealed off at its far end by the gates of a boat-builder's yard, now standing open. Bicycles were propped beside three of the ten front doors, but there was little other sign of human habitation. Although it was now beginning to grow dark, no light shone behind any of the net-curtained windows, and the little street seemed drab and uninviting. These were doubtless some of the cheaper houses built for those who once had worked on the canaclass="underline" two up, two down-and that was all. The first house on the left was number 1, and Morse walked down the narrow pavement, past number 3, past number 5, past number 7-and there he was, standing in front of the last house and feeling strangely nervous and undecided. Instinctively he patted the pocket of his raincoat for a packet of cigarettes, but found he must have left them in the car. Behind him, a car splashed its way along Canal Street, its sidelights already switched on.
Morse knocked, but there was no answer. Just as well, perhaps? Yet he knocked again, a little louder this time, and stood back to look at the house. The door was painted a rust-red colour, and to its right was the one downstairs window, its crimson curtains drawn across; and just above it, the window of the first-floor bedroom where- Just a minute! There was a light. There was a light here. It seemed to Morse that the bedroom door must be open, for he could see a dull glow of light coming from somewhere: coming from the other room across the landing, perhaps? Still he stood there in the drizzling rain and waited, noting as he did so the attractive brickwork of the terrace, with the red stretchers alternating in mottled effect with the grey-blue contrast of the headers.