Death is Now My Neighbour

During her comparatively young life, Adele had been companionably attached to a couple of dozen or so men, of varying ages, with many of whom she had slept -though seldom more than once or twice, and never without some satisfactory reassurance about the availability and reliability of condoms, and a relatively recent check-up for AIDS.

They were all the same, men. Well, most of them. Fingers fumbling for hooks at the backs of bras, or at the front these days. So why was she looking forward just a little to her lunchtime rendezvous? She wasn't really, she told herself, as she parked the Rover, crossed the narrow readjust below the bridge, and entered the bar.

'What'll you have?'

'Orange juice and lemonade, please.'

They sat facing each other at a low wooden table, and Morse was immediately (and again) aware of her attrac-

tiveness. She wore a slimly tailored dark-grey outfit, with a high-necked Oxford blue blouse, her ash-blonde hair palely gleaming.

Morse looked down at his replenished pint of London Pride.

'Good time at the Conference?'

'I had a lovely time,' she lied.

'I'm glad it went well,' he lied.

'Do you mind?' She waved an unlit cigarette in the air.

'Go ahead, please.'

She offered the packet across.

'Er, not for the minute, thank you.'

'Well?'

'Just one or two questions.'

She smiled attractively: 'Go ahead.'

Morse experienced a sense of paramnesia. Dejd vu. 'You've already signed a statement - about the morning Rachel was murdered?'

You know that, surely?'

'And it was the truth?' asked Morse, starkly. "You couldn't have been wrong?'

'Of course not!'

"You told me you "had a heart-to-heart" with Rachel once in a while. I think those were your words?'

'So?'

'Does that mean you spoke about boyfriends - men-friends?'

'And clothes, and money, and work-'

'Did you know she was having an affair with Julian Storrs?'

She nodded slowly.

'Did you mention this to Mr Owens?' Morse's eyes, blue and unblinking, looked fiercely into hers.

And her eyes were suddenly fierce, too, as they held his. 'What the hell do you think I'd do that for?'

Morse made no direct answer as he looked down at the old flagstones there. And when he resumed, his voice was very quiet.

'Did you ever have an affair with Julian Storrs?'

She thought he looked sad, as if he hadn't really wanted to ask the question at all; and suddenly she knew why she'd been looking forward to seeing him. So many hours of her life had she spent seeking to discover what lay beneath the physical looks, the sexual prowess, the masculine charms of some of her lovers; and so often had she discovered the selfsame answer - virtually nothing.

She looked long into the blazing log-fire before finally answering:

'I spent one night with him - in Blackpool - at one of the Party Conferences.'

She spoke so softly that Morse could hardly hear the words, or perhaps it was he didn't wish to hear the words. For a while he said nothing. Then he resumed his questioning:

"You told me that when you were at Roedean there were quite a few daughters of service personnel there, apart from yourself?'

'Quite a few, yes.'

"Your own father served in the Army in India?'

'How did you know that5'

'He's in Who's Who. Or he was. He died two years ago. Your mother died of cancer twelve years ago. You were the only child of the marriage.'

'Orphan Annie, yeah!' The sophisticated, upper-crust veneer was beginning to crack.

"You inherited his estate?'

'Estate? Hah!' She laughed bitterly. 'He left all his money to the bookmakers.'

'No heirlooms, no mementoes - that sort of thing?'

She appeared puzzled.' What sort of thing?'

'A pistol, possibly? A service pistol?'

'Look! You don't seriously think /had anything to do with-'

'My job's to ask the questions-'

'Well, the answer's "no",' she snapped. 'Any more questions?'

One or two clearly:

'Where were you on Sunday morning - last Sunday morning?'

'At home. In bed. Asleep - until the police woke me up.'

'And then?

'Then I was frightened. And you want me to tell you the truth? Well, I'm still bloody frightened!'

Morse looked at her again: so attractive; so vulnerable; and now just a little nervous, perhaps? Not frightened though, surely.

Was she hiding something?

Ts there anything more,' he asked gently 'anything at all, you can tell me about this terrible business?'

And immediately he sensed that she could.

'Only one thing, and perhaps it's got nothing ... Julian asked me to a Guest Night at Lonsdale last November, and in the SCR after dinner I sat next to a Fellow there called Denis Cornford. I only met him that once - but he was really nice - lovely man, really - the sort of man I wish I'd met in life.'

'Bit old, surely?'

'About your age."

Morse's fingers folded round the cellophane, and he sought to stop his voice from trembling.

'What about him?'

'I saw him in die Drive, that's all. On Thursday night About eight. He didn't see me. I'd just driven in and he was walking in front of me - no car. He kept walking along a bit, and then he turned into Number 15 and rang the bell. Geoff Owens opened the front door - and let him in.'

"You're quite sure it was him?'

'Oh, yes,' replied Adele.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

He looked into her limpid eyes: 1 will turn this Mozart off, if you don't mind, my love. You see, I can never concentrate on two beautiful things at the same time'

(Passage quoted by Terence Benczik in The Good and the Bad in Mills and Boon)

WITH SUSPICIOUSLY extravagant caution Morse drove the Jaguar up towards Kidlington HQ, again conscious of seeing the name-plate of that particular railway station flashing, still unrecognizably, across his mind. At the Woodstock Road roundabout he waited patiently for a gap in the Ring-Road traffic; rather too patiendy for a regularly hooting hooligan somewhere behind him.

Whether he believed what his ABC girl had told him, he wasn't really sure. And suddenly he realized he'd forgotten to ask her whether indeed it was she who occasionally extended her literary talents beyond her humdrum political pamphlets into the fields of (doubtless more profitable) pornography.

But it was only for a few brief minutes that Morse considered the official confiscation of the titillatingly tided novel, since his car-phone had been ringing as he

finally crossed into Five Mile Drive. He pulled over to the side of the road, since seldom had he been able to discharge two simultaneous duties at all satisfactorily.

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! Wftafexacdywas 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 diat 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.'