Christine Coverley was clearly surprised to see him, and clearly not happy.
“It’s all a bit untidy—”
Morse smiled. “Can I come in?”
“I haven’t got long, I’m afraid.”
“It won’t take long, I promise.”
“How can I...?”
“What were you doing last Monday morning? Between, say, nine and eleven?”
“Not the faintest, have I? Nobody could remember exactly—”
“Did you go out — for a newspaper, shopping, seeing someone?”
“I don’t know. Like I say—”
“Can you have a look in your diary for me?”
“That wouldn’t help.”
“What wow Whelp?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Look, Inspector.” She glanced down at her wristwatch with what appeared incipient panic. “Could we talk some other time, please? You see I’ve got—”
But it was too late.
There was the scratch of a key in the Yale lock and the front door was quickly opened and as quickly closed, and a youth entered from the narrow hallway to stand in the doorway of the single bedsit room.
With staring eyes he looked first at Morse and then at Christine Coverley: “What the fuck?”
“ You haven’t increased your word power much since we last—” began Morse. But Roy Holmes had disappeared even more rapidly than he’d appeared.
In the stillness that followed the crash of the front door closing, Morse sat down in one of the armchairs, and gestured the speechless schoolmistress to seat herself in the other.
“Please tell me all about it,” he said, with no hint of aggressiveness or any of its synonyms. “If you don’t, I’m sorry but I shall have to take you down to Police HQ.”
After his twinkling Irish eyes had scrutinized Lewis’s ID, Mr. Tony Marrinan, the manager of The Randolph, was wholly cooperative; and very soon the outline of Frank Harrison’s recent stay was revealed. Double-room booked with, as staff recalled her, a sultrily attractive if less than attractively mannered partner — late twenties, perhaps; meals taken together quite regularly in the Spires Restaurant — details available, if Sergeant Lewis wanted to see them.
As Sergeant Lewis did.
The pair had breakfasted together on each morning except the Monday, and Lewis was fairly soon looking at that day’s Good Morning Breakfast chit, its details having been transferred immediately to the hotel’s computer before being placed on a spike and then at the end of the day transferred to the accounts department upstairs for a limited period, as a check if any guest should query an entry on the final bill.
Interesting! Especially the bottom half of the chit:
“Covers,” as Lewis learned, signified how many had been at the table: on the other chits it had the figure “2” beside it. But on the Monday morning just the one of them, and the restaurant manager remembered which one of them: “It was the lady. I think Mr. Harrison may have been feeling a little tired.”
Before he left the hotel, Lewis had a word with the chambermaid who had looked after Room 210, discovering that for much of the time over the period in question the do not disturb notice had hung over the outside door-knob.
“And the bed looked as if it had been slept in each night?” (Lewis tried to smile knowingly.)
“Oh yes, sir. Oh yes.”
Perhaps the restaurant manager was right. Perhaps Mr. Harrison’s stay in Oxford had been a busy and tiring one.
For one reason or another.
Before driving back to HQ, Morse called in at the Maiden’s Arms, in the hope of finding Alf and Bert, Lower Swinstead’s answer to “Bill and Ben.” The time was now just after 2:30 P.M.; and Morse expected that they would be gone by then. But he was lucky; or at least half-lucky.
Bert, it seemed, had “got the screws,” and Alf was sitting alone by the window, slowly sipping the last of his beer, and readily accepting Morse’s offer of “one for the road.”
“Lost his nerve!” confided Alf. “Lost the last five times we’ve a’been playing. Lost his nerve!”
“Like me to give you a quick game? Just the one?”
Morse had determined to lose the challenge in as swift and incompetent a manner as possible. But unfortunately the gods were smiling broadly on his hands; and very soon, malgré lui, he had won the single encounter by the proverbial street.
Unfortunately?
Oh no. For Alf appeared to recognize in his opponent a player of supreme skills; and instead of his wonted sullen silence on such occasions, he was soon speaking with unprecedented candor about life there in the village in general, and in particular about the Harrisons — with the result that after twenty minutes Morse had learned more than any other police officer before him from any of the locals in Lower Swinstead.
“Did Frank ever come in the pub here with other women?”
“Never. In Lon’on most of his time, weren’t he?”
“What about Simon?”
“He come in sometimes, but he never had no reg’lar girlfriend. Bit of a loner, Simon.”
“What about Sarah?”
“ Lovely, she were — not seen her though this last coupla years. In fact, last time I seen her was here in the pub — sort of guest appearance singing with a pop group. Nice voice, she had, young Sarah.”
“Did she come in with any boyfriends?”
“Did she? I’ll tell you summat — she did. Could’ve had anybody she wanted, I reckon.”
“Who did she want?”
Alf chuckled. “Didn’t want me — Bert neither! One or two was luckier though, mister.”
The light in Alf’s old eyes suddenly sparked, like the coals on a fire that were almost ready to sink back to an ashen grey; and he nodded his head — just as Bert, in his turn, would have nodded across the cribbage board.
Enviously.
With the consulting rooms all taken up with a series of interviews for diabetes students, Lewis sat with Sarah Harrison behind a curtain in the Blood-Testing Room.
“Did you see your father while he was staying at The Randolph last week?”
“I always see my father when he comes to Oxford. In fact, I had a meal with him one evening.”
“So you get on well with him?”
Lewis’s smile was not reciprocated, and she almost spat her reply at him: “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure really. It’s just that I’ve got a list of questions here from Chief Inspector Morse — by the way, I think you know him...?”
“I’ve met him once.”
“Well he’s asked me to ask you — not very well phrased, that—”
“What’s he want to know?”
“What the relationships were like in your family.”
“I can’t speak for Simon — you must ask him. If you mean did I have any preference? No. I loved Mum, and I loved, love, Dad. Some children love both their parents, you know.”
“You never felt that your mother loved Simon a bit more than she loved you — you know, because he was a bit handicapped, perhaps because he needed more affection than you did?”
There was a silence before Sarah answered the question; and as Lewis looked at her he realized how attractive she must have appeared to all the men and boys in the village; how attractive she was now, and would be for many years to come, in whatever place she found herself.
“You know I’ve never thought of it quite like that before, but yes... I suppose you could be right, Sergeant Lewis.”
After leaving the Maiden’s Arms, where the fruit machine had stood unwontedly and unprofitably silent, Morse called on Allen (sic) Thomas at his home in Lower Swinstead. Alf had told him where to go: the lad was sure to be there. He’d not be at work, because he’d never done a hand’s turn in his life.