'There'll be no funny business on my part, and there'd better be none on yours! You can pick up your money-it's yours. But there'll not be a penny more-you can take that as final. Absolutely final. And if you do try anything else like this again, I'll kill you, do you hear that? I'll kill you with my own hands, you snivelling swine!'
Throughout this monologue, Richards had been continuously aware of the harsh, wheezy breathing of the man on the other end of the line, and now he waited for whatever reply might be forthcoming. But there was none. 'Have you got it all straight?'
Finally, he heard the tight voice again. 'You'll be glad you done this, Mister Richards. So will Missis Richards.' With that, the line was dead.
Charles Richards put away the sheet of paper from which he had been reading, and immediately called in his secretary once more.
'Sorry about that. Where were we…?' He sounded completely at ease, but his heart was banging hard against his rib-cage as he dictated the next letter.
Mr. Parkes was old, and would soon die. For the last few years he had been drinking heavily, but he had no regrets about that. Looking back over his life, however, he felt it had been largely wasted. Even his twenty years as headmaster of a primary school in Essex seemed to him now a period of little real achievement. A great addict from his early boyhood of all types of puzzles-mathematical problems, crosswords, chess, bridge-he had never found his proper niche. And as he sat drinking another bottle of Diet lager he regretted for the millionth time that no academic body had ever offered him a grant to set his mind to Etruscan or Linear C. He could have cracked those stubborn codes, by now! Oh yes!
He had stopped thinking about Anne Scott several days ago.
Mrs. Raven was discussing with her husband the final stages of their long-drawn-out (but now at last successful) campaign to adopt a baby. Both of them had been much surprised at the countless provisos and caveats surrounding such an innocent and benevolent-sounding process: the forms in duplicate and triplicate; the statements of incomes, job prospects, religious persuasions, and family history; oaths and solemn undertakings that the prospective parents would 'make no attempt whatsoever to discover the names, dwellings, situations, or any other relevant details of the former parent(s), neither to seek to ascertain'-etc., etc., etc. Oh dear! Mrs. Raven had felt almost guilty about everything, especially since it was she herself, according to the gynaecologist, who was thwarting her husband's frequent and frenetic attempts to propagate the Raven species. Still, things were nearly ready now, and she was so looking forward to getting the baby. She'd have to stay at home much more, of course. No more badminton evenings for a while; no more bridge parties. She had stopped thinking about Anne Scott several days ago.
Catharine Edgeley was busy writing an essay on the irony to be found in Jane Austen's novels, and she was enjoying her work. There was little room in her mind for a dead woman whom she had met only twice, and of whom she could form only the vaguest visual recollection. She'd rather liked the policeman, though. Quite dishy, really-well, he would have been when he was fifteen or twenty years younger.
Gwendola Briggs sat reading Bridge Monthly: one or two pretty problems, she thought. She re-read an article on a new American bidding system, and felt happy. Only just over half an hour and the bridge players would be arriving. She'd almost forgotten Anne Scott now, though not that 'cocky and conceited officer' as she'd described Morse to her new and rather nice neighbour-a neighbour whom she'd promptly enrolled in the bridge club's membership. So fortunate. Otherwise, they might have been one short.
Mrs. Murdoch was another person that evening for whom Anne Scott was little more than a tragic but bearable memory. At a quarter to seven she received a telephone call from the J.R.2, and heard from a junior and inexperienced houseman (the young doctor had tried so hard to find some euphemistic guise for 'nearly poked his eyes out') that her son Michael had attempted to do… to do some damage to his sight. The houseman heard the poor woman's moan of anguish, heard the strangled 'No'-and wondered what else he could bring himself to say.
Charles Richards was not thinking of Anne Scott when he rang the secretary of the Oxford Book Association at nine o'clock to say that unfortunately he wouldn't be able to get to the pre-talk dinner which had been arranged for him in the Ruskin Room at the Clarendon Institute on Friday. He was very sorry, but he hoped it might save the Association a few pennies? He'd arrive at ten minutes to eight-if that was all right? The secretary said it was, and mumbled 'Bloody chap!' to himself as he replaced the phone.
It was only as he sat in a lonely corner of his local that evening that Morse's mind reverted to the death of Anne Scott. Again and again he came so near to cornering that single piece of information-something seen? something heard?-that was still so tantalisingly eluding him. After his fourth pint, he wondered if he ever would remember it, for he knew from long and loving addiction that his brain was never so keen as after beer.
Only Mrs. Scott, now back in her semi-detached house in Burnley, grieved ever for her daughter and could not be comforted, her eyes once more brimming with tears as she struggled to understand what could have happened and-most bitter thought of all-how she herself could surely have helped if only she had known. If only… if only…
Chapter Sixteen
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there.
– A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
After declining the Master of Lonsdale's invitation to lunch, Morse walked from the Mitre along the graceful curve of the High up to Carfax. He had turned right into Cornmarket and was crossing over the road towards Woolworths when he thought he recognised someone walking about fifteen yards ahead of him-someone carrying a brown brief-case, and dressed in grey flannels and a check-patterned sports coat, who joined the bus queue for Banbury Road; and as the boy turned Morse could see the black tie, with its diagonal red stripes, of Magdalen College School. Games afternoon, perhaps? Morse immediately stopped outside the nearest shop, and divided his attention between watching the boy and examining the brown shoes (left foot only) that rested on the 'Reduced' racks. Edward Murdoch himself seemed restless. He consulted his wristwatch every thirty seconds or so, punctuating this impatience with a craning-forward to read the numbers on the buses as they wheeled round Carfax into Cornmarket. Five minutes later, he felt inside his sports jacket for his wallet, picked up his briefcase, left the queue, and disappeared into a tiny side street between a jeweller's shop and Woolworths. There, pulling off his tie and sticking it in his pocket, he walked down the steps of the entrance to the Corn Dolly. It was just after ten minutes to one.
The bar to his right was crowded with about forty or fifty men, most of them appearing to be in their early twenties and almost all of them dressed in denims and dark-coloured anoraks. But clearly Edward was no stranger here. He walked through a wide porch-way into the rear bar-a more sedate area with upholstered wall-seats and low tables where a few older men sat eating sausages and chips.