‘No! I’m just, well…’ Lewis didn’t quite know how to finish, but he felt more than a little pride in the shadow of the compliment. ‘Do you know him, then, miss?’
She shook her pretty head. ‘He spoke to me over the phone once, that’s all.’
‘Oh he’s terrible over the phone-always sounds so, I don’t know, so cocky and nasty, somehow.’
‘You mean… he’s not really like that?’
‘Not really,’ said Lewis quietly. Then he noticed that the gentle eyes of the college secretary had suddenly drifted away from himself, and out towards a man she had never known or even seen. Momentarily he felt a twinge of jealousy.
Morse!
Down the dingy red-carpeted stairs, through the dingy red curtains, Morse, at 11 a.m., followed the same path that Browne-Smith had trodden eighteen days before him. He sat at a table in the Flamenco Topless Bar, and transacted his business with a milky white maiden. It didn’t take him long; and, after that Browne-Smith’s spunky antagonist behind the bar had proved no match for him, since for some reason she could not conceive of suggesting to this man, with the blue-grey eyes and the thinning, grey-black hair, that he could go across the way to the Sauna if he wanted any further sexual gratification. He seemed to her coldly detached; and when he looked at her with eyes intensely still, she found herself answering his questions almost hypnotically. Thus it was that Morse, in a short space of time had penetrated the door marked “Private” at the rear of the drinking lounge.
At 1 p.m. he was riding in a taxi to an address he had known anyway -the address already pencilled firmly in his mind when that same morning he had left the Number One platform at Oxford on the 9.12 train. Perhaps he should have short-circuited the whole process; but on the whole he thought not, even though he had felt not the vaguest stir of virility as one of the girls had sat opposite him, sipping her exotic juice. So far so good; and comparatively easy. The outlines of the pattern had been confirmed at every stage: Gilbert (one of twins, as Lewis had told him-interesting!) had quite fortuitously found a client in Oxford; and opposite his client’s room he’d seen, in Gothic script, a name that for some reason was indelibly printed on his mind; with (doubtless) considerable ingenuity, had lured this man to London-lured him to the address which Morse had just given to his taxi-driver, the same address that Morse had memorized from the wooden crates in the rooms Westerby on Staircase T: 29 Cambridge Way, London, WC1. But what had happened after the suspicious and resourceful Browne-Smith had faced his second test of personal courage? What exactly had occurred when “Yvonne” had left… and someone else had entered?
Such thoughts occupied Morse’s mind as the taxi made its way (by an extremely circuitous route, it seemed to Morse) to Cambridge Way. Yet there were other thoughts, too: he could, of course, claim full expenses for his train fare (first class, although he usually travelled second), tube fare, taxi fare, subsistence… Yes, he might just make enough on the day to settle down happily in the buffet car on his return and enjoy a couple of Scotches at someone else’s expense. But would he be justified in sticking down on his claims-form such a ludicrous-looking item as “Flamenco Revenge-£6”? On the whole, he thought, probably not. He alighted, and stood alone in front of Number 29.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lewis retraces some of his steps, and makes some startling new discoveries.
Lewis was back at Police HQ by 11.30 a.m., sensing that without further directions from on high he had gone as far as he was likely to go. But just for the moment he felt a little resentful about taking too many orders; and by noon he had taken the firm decision to revisit the scene of the crime. He didn’t quite know why.
After drinking half a pint of bitter in the Boat Inn, he walked out along the road by the canal and up to Aubrey’s Bridge. But there were no fishermen there this morning, and he turned his attention to his left as he walked slowly along, noting once more the authoritative notices posted regularly along the low, neat terrace: ‘No mooring opposite these cottages.’ The people here here obviously jealous of their acquired territories-doubtless rich enough, too, to own boats of their own and to regard it as some divine right that they should moor such craft immediately opposite their neatly painted porches.
Then something stirred in Lewis’s mind__If all these people were so anxious to preserve their rights and their privacy; if all those sharp eyes there were jealously watching the waterfront for the first signs of any territorial trespass-then,
in this quiet cul-de-sac that led to nowhere, where there was hardly room enough to execute a six-point turn in a car… yes! Surely, someone must have seen something? For the body must quite certainly have been pushed into the canal from the back of a car. How else? And yet Lewis, who had himself earlier questioned the tenants, had learned nothing of any strange car. Understandably, not every cottage had been inhabited at the time; the owners of some had been away -boating, or shopping in Oxford, or waiting in high places in large cities to motor down for a weekend of rural relaxation in their quiet country cottages.
Lewis had now reached the end of his walk, looking down as he did so at the water wherein the hideous body had been found. From this perusal he learned nothing. As he made his way back, however, he saw that the third cottage from the far end was “For Sale”, and he began to wonder whether such a property might not perhaps make a nice little investment for himself and the missus when he retired. Retired… And suddenly an exciting thought occurred to him. He knocked loudly on the door of the house for sale. No answer. Then he knocked at the house next door, which was opened by a freckle-faced lad of about twelve years of age.
‘Is your mum in-or your dad?’
‘No.’
‘I was just trying to find out something about the house here.’ Lewis pointed to the empty property.
‘They want twenny thousand forrit-and it’s got a leaky roof.’
‘Lot of money,’ said Lewis.
‘Not worth it. It’s been on the market a couple of months.’
Lewis nodded, sizing up this embryo property-evaluator. ‘You live here?’
The boy nodded.
‘Did you know the people next door-before it was for sale?’
‘Not “people”.’
‘No?’
The young lad looked vaguely suspicious, but he blinked and agreed: ‘No.’
‘Look!’ said Lewis. ‘I’m a policeman and-’
‘I know. I saw you when you was here before.’
‘Shouldn’t you have been at school?’
‘I had the measles, didn’t I? I was watching from the bedroom.”
‘You didn’t see anything sort of suspicious-before that, I mean?’
The boy shook his head.
‘You say it wasn’t “people” next door?’
‘He’s not in any trouble, is he?’ The freckled face looked up at Lewis anxiously, as if it were a matter of deep concern to him that any trouble might have befallen the previous owner of the house next door.
‘Not so far as I know.’
The boy looked down at the threshold and spoke quietly: ‘He was good to me. Took me out in his Metro to King’s Weir, once. Super fisherman he was-Mr Westerby.’
A Jaguar’s horn blared imperiously as Lewis turned left on to the main road down to Kidlington, and he knew his mind was full of other things. He had just discovered a quite extraordinarily significant link between Westerby and the waterfront at Thrupp. And if someone had taken a body from London to Thrupp in a car (as someone must have done), there would have been no suspicions aroused by the familiar sight of a red Metro. No trouble at all. Not if that someone who had brought the body had lived there himself. What was more, this was the only car that had cropped up in the case so far, for Dr Browne-Smith had sold his large, black Daimler…