Sylvia Marsden (née Prentice) was temporarily living with her mother in a pleasantly appointed semi on a housing estate at Witney. And it was her mother (Lewis had phoned earlier) who had answered the door and shown the two detectives into the lounge where the buxom Sylvia, blouse open, was breast-feeding a very new baby — not in the slightest degree disconcerted to be thus interrupted in her maternal ministrations, one hand splayed across an engorged nipple, the fingers of the other playing lovingly around the lips of the suckling infant.
An awkwardly embarrassed Morse moved slowly round the room, simulating deep interest in the tasteless bric-a-brac that cluttered every surface and shelf in the brightly decorated room; whilst Lewis stood above the mother and child, smiling quasi-paternally and drawing the back of his right index finger lightly across the cherubic cheek:
“Little treasure, isn’t he? What’s his name?”
“She’s a she, actually — aren’t you, Susie?”
“Ah yes, of course!”
Morse temporarily declined to take a seat but accepted, strangely enough, the offer of coffee, and began his questioning whilst looking through the window on to the neatly kept back garden.
“We’re just having to make one or two further inquiries, Mrs. Marsden—”
“Call me Sylvia!”
“It’s about one of your former boyfriends—”
“Simon, yes, I know. That Sergeant Dixon told me. Nice man, isn’t he? He got on ever so well with Mum.”
Morse nodded, aware of the probable reason. “It’s a long time ago now, I realize...”
“Not really. Not for me it isn’t. The night Simon’s mum was murdered? Can’t forget something like that, can you?”
“That’s good news, Sylvia. Now that night, that evening, the 9th—”
“Oh no! You’ve got it wrong. It was the 8th — the night Mrs. Harrison was murdered. I’m quite sure of that. My birthday, wasn’t it? Simon took me to the ABC in Oxford. Super film! All about these male strippers—”
“Did the police ever ask you about it?”
“No. Why should they?”
Sylvia rebuttoned her blouse, and as Morse turned at last to face her, Lewis could see the disappointment on his face.
Mrs. Prentice (née Jones), who had clearly been listening keenly from the adjacent kitchen, now brought in two cups of coffee. “I can remember that,” she volunteered. “Like she says, that was your birthday, wasn’t it, Sylv?”
“How did you find Simon, Mrs. Prentice?” asked Lewis.
“I liked him. He used to come in sometimes but I think he felt a bit... you know, with his hearing.”
“He didn’t come in that night?”
“No. I remember it well. Like Sylv says — well, not something you forget, is it? I saw him though, after he’d brought her back. And I heard the pair of ‘em whispering on the doorstep. Nice boy, really. Could have done worse, couldn’t you, Sylv?”
“I did better, Mum, OK?”
Clearly there was less than complete family agreement on the merits of baby Susie’s official father and Morse swallowed his coffee quickly and, as ever, Lewis followed his chief’s lead dutifully.
In the car outside they sat for some time in silence.
“You knew it was the 8th, sir. Why—?”
“Just to test her memory.”
There was another long silence.
“Looks as if we’ve been wrong, sir.”
“Looks as if I’ve been wrong.”
“Alibis don’t come much better than that.”
“No.”
“You know when Mrs. Whatshername said she heard the pair of ‘em whispering outside, she probably heard more of the conversation than Simon ever did!”
Morse nodded with a wry grin. “You don’t think there’s any chance that somebody bribed our Sylvia and Sylvia’s mum...?”
“Not the remotest. Do you?”
“No.”
“Where do we go from here, sir?”
“You can drop me off at the Woodstock Arms or...”
“No. I meant with the case, sir.”
“... or perhaps the Maiden’s Arms.”
It seemed that Morse was hardly listening.
“I know you’re disappointed, sir, but—”
“Disappointed? Nonsense!”
Some light-footed mouse had just scuttled across his scapulae; and when Lewis turned to look at him, it seemed as if someone had switched the electric current on behind his eyes.
“Yes, Lewis. Just drive me out to Lower Swinstead.”
Chapter seventy-two
Below me, there is the village, and looks how quiet and small!
And yet bubbles o ’er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite.
Unwontedly in a car, Morse was almost continuously talkative as they drove along: “Do you know that lovely line of Thomson’s about villages ‘embosomed soft in trees’?”
“Don’t even know Thomson,” mumbled Lewis.
“Remarkable things! Strange, intimate little places where there’s more going on than anybody ever dreams of. You get illicit liaisons, hopeless love affairs, illegitimate offspring, wife-swapping, interbreeding, neighborly spite, class warfare — all that’s for the insiders, though. If you’re on the outside, they refuse to have anything to do with you. They clamp up. They present a united defensive front because they’ve got one thing in common, Lewis: the village itself. They’re all members of the same football club. They may loathe each other’s guts for most of the week, but come Saturday afternoon when they put on the same football shirts... Well, the next village better look out!”
“Except Lower Swinstead doesn’t have a football team.”
“What are you talking about? They’re all in the football team.”
Lewis drove down the Windrush Valley into Lower Swinstead.
“They don’t all clamp up, anyway. Not to you, they don’t. Compared with some of our lads you’ve squeezed a carton of juice out of ‘em already.”
“But there’s more squeezing to do, Lewis — just a little.”
Unwontedly in a pub, Morse had already taken out his wallet at the bar, and Lewis raised no objection.
“Pint of bitter — whatever’s in the best nick.”
“It’s all in the best nick,” began Biffen.
“And... orange or grapefruit, Lewis?”
The fruit machine stood idle and the cribbage board was slotted away behind the bar. But the place was quite busy. Most of the customers were locals; most of them people who’d earlier been questioned about the Harrison murder; most of them members of the village team.
On the pub’s noticeboard at the side of the bar, underneath “Live Music Every Saturday,” was an amateurishly printed yellow poster advertising the current week’s entertainment:
“Popular?” asked Morse of the landlord.
“Packed out we are, every Sat’day.”
“Ever had Paddy Flynn and his group playing here?”
“Paddy who?”
“Flynn — the chap who was murdered.”
“Ah yes. Read about it, o’course. But I don’t think he were ever here, Inspector. You know, fifty-odd groups a year and — how many years is it I’ve—”
“Forget it!” snapped Morse.
“The beer OK?”
“Fine. How’s Bert, by the way? Any better?”
“Worse. Quack called to see him yesterday — just after we’d opened — told Bert’s boy the old man oughta go in for a few days, like — but Bert told ‘em he wasn’t going to die in no hospital.”