“And you think you know who...?”
Morse nodded.
But Lewis shook his head. “It’s all so wishy-washy, what you’ve just said. I don’t know where to start. When was she murdered? Who rang her husband? Who set off the burglar alarm? Who—?”
“Lewis! We, remember, are investigating something else. But if any study of the first case facilitates the solving of the second? So be it! And it does, as you’ll agree.”
“I will?”
Morse nodded again. “Three people were coincidentally involved in a clever and profitable deception that night, each of them able and willing to throw his individual spanner into any reconstruction the CID could reasonably come up with. First, there was Flynn, our corpus primum, who told as many lies as anybody: both about the time he picked Frank Harrison up from Oxford Station, and about what he noticed — or more probably the person he saw — when he got to Lower Swinstead. Second, there was Repp, our corpus secundum, who told us no lies at all, but only because he told us nothing at all. Third...”
Morse hesitated, and Lewis looked across the desk expectantly.
“There’s this third man of ours, and a man most unlikely to become our corpus tertium. Once Repp was out of jail, the three of them — Repp himself, Flynn, and this third man — they all arranged to meet together. They’d done pretty well so far out of their conspiracy of silence, and they were all keen on continuing to squeeze the milk cow even drier. So they did meet — a meeting where things went tragically wrong. Greed... jealousy... personal antipathies... whatever! Two of them had an almighty row in the car in which they were traveling together. And one of them, probably in a lay-by somewhere, knifed one of the others: one of them knifed Flynn. And the remaining two disposed of the body neatly enough at Redbridge — the rubbish bags proving very handy, I should think. So any profits no longer needed to be split three ways. And now the talk between the two of them must have been all about a fifty-fifty share of the spoils, and how it could be effected. But somewhere in the discussion there was one further almighty row; and this time it was Repp who had his innards ripped open.”
“You know who this ‘third’ man was, you’re saying?”
“So do you. We mentioned him when you produced that admirable schema of yours for the night of Yvonne’s murder.”
“You’re saying there was somebody else there that night?”
“There was always somebody else, Lewis, wasn’t there? The man in bed with Yvonne Harrison.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“You see, the major problem our lads had was the timing of the murder. Her body wasn’t examined until several hours later, and all the pathological guesswork had to be married with the evidence gleaned at the time, or gleaned later. For example, with the fact that someone was in bed with Yvonne at some specific time that night, although nobody really tried to discover who that person was — until I did. For example, again, with the fact that someone had tried to ring her twice that night, at 9 P.M. when the line was engaged, and again half an hour later when the phone rang unanswered. And if you add all this together, you’ll find that the person who sorely misled the police, the person who was in bed with her, and the person who murdered both Paddy Flynn and Harry Repp — was one and the same man.”
There fell a silence between the two of them, broken finally by Lewis. “You’re sure about all this?”
“Only ninety-five percent sure.”
“We’d better get our skates on then.”
“Hold your horses! One or two things I’d like you to check first, just to make it one hundred percent.”
“So we’ve got a little while?”
“Oh, yes. No danger of anyone murdering him—not today, anyway. So this afternoon’ll be fine. Get out to Lower Swinstead — take someone with you, mind! — and bring him back here. OK?”
“Fine. Only one thing, sir. You forgot to tell me his name.”
“Did I? Well, you’ve guessed it anyway. He’s got a little business out there, hasn’t he? A little building business. ‘J. Barron, Builder,’ as it says on his van.”
Chapter forty-one
But when he once attains the utmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Twenty miles west of Oxford, twenty miles east of Cheltenham, lies the little Cotswold town of Burford. It owes its architectural attractiveness to the wealth of the wool merchants in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and up until the end of the eighteenth century the small community there continued to thrive, especially the coaching inns which regularly served the E-W travel. But the town was no longer expanding, with the final blow delivered in 1812, when the main London road, which crossed the High Street (the present-day Sheep Street and Witney Street), was rerouted to the southern side of the town (the present-day A40). But Burford remains an enchanting place, as summer tourists will happily testify as they turn off at the A40 roundabout. Picturesque tea shops, craft shops, public houses — all built in the locally quarried, pale-honey-colored limestone — line the steeply curving sweep of the High Street that leads to the bridge at the bottom of the hill, under which runs the River Windrush, with all the birds and the bright meadows and cornfields around Oxfordshire.
Mrs. Patricia Bayley, aged seventy, had lived for only three years in Sheep Street (vide supra), a pleasingly peaceful, tree-lined road, first left as one descended the hill. The house-date, 1687, had been carved (now almost illegibly) in the greyish and pitted stone above the front door of the three-storied, mullion-windowed building. Her husband, a distinguished anthropologist from University College, Oxford, had died (aged sixty-seven) only two months after his retirement, and only four months after buying the Sheep Street property. Often, since then, she had considered leaving the house and buying one of the older persons’ flats that had been springing up for the last decade all over North Oxford, for her present house was unnecessarily extensive and inappropriate for her solitary needs. Yet the children and the grandchildren (especially the latter) loved to stay there with her and to find themselves lost amid the random rooms. Only one real problem: she’d have to do something about the windows. There could be no Council permission for replacement windows, but the casements were quite literally falling apart. And the whole of the exterior just had to be repainted, from the gutterings along the top to the front door at the bottom. Should she get it all done? Three weeks earlier she’d stood and surveyed the scene. Could she ever find anywhere else so pleasingly attractive as this?
No! She’d stay.
She’d consulted the Yellow Pages and found Barron, J., Builder and Decorator; not so far away, either — at Lower Swinstead. She’d rung him and he’d called round to survey the job. He’d seemed a personable sort of fellow; and when he’d quoted a reasonable (if slightly steep) estimate for both the restructuring and the repainting, she’d accepted.
He’d promised to be with her at 7:30 A.M. on Monday, August 3. And it was precisely at that time that he knocked in civilized manner on the front door of “Collingwood,” again admiring as he did so the dripstone molding above it.
Born in North Oxford, Mrs. Bayley spoke her mind unapologetically: “You look as if you’ve just come straight from the abattoir, Mr. Barron!”