The Secret of Annexe 3

'About sixteen to twenty-four hours before the body was found — at a guess. But the room temperature is only just above freezing point — which could upset calculations either way.'

'So?'

For the first time, the surgeon seemed slightly less than happy with himself: 'As I say, Morse, it's very difficult.'

'But you never come up with a plain statement of when—'

'They pay me to report facts.'

'And they pay me to find out who killed the poor sod, Max.' But Morse, it seemed, was making little impression upon the mournful man who lit another cigarette before continuing.

'Eighteen — cause of death? A mighty whack, probably only one, across the front of the skull, with the bone smashed in from the top of the right eye across the nasal bridge to the left cheekbone.'

Morse was silent.

'Nineteen — he wasn't a navvie, judging from his fingernails.'

'Now you're getting down to things.'

'No I'm not, Morse. I've nearly finished.'

'You're going to tell me who he is, you mean?'

'Twenty — he had flat feet.'

'You mean he has flat feet?'

The surgeon permitted himself a bleak smile. 'Yes, Morse. When he was alive he had flat feet, and in death those feet were not unflattened.'

'What does that suggest, Max?'

'Perhaps he's a policeman, Morse.' The surgeon stood up, the cigarette ash dropping on to his black waistcoat. 'I'll let you have the written report as soon as I can. Not tonight though.' He looked at his watch. 'We've got half an hour if you want to nip up to the Gardeners'? I've got a car.'

For a moment or two, Lewis almost thought that Morse was going to resist the temptation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wednesday, January 1st: P.M.

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.

(RABELAIS)

'GIN AND CAMPARI for me, Morse, and buy yourself one as well. My GP keeps on telling me it's sensible to keep off the spirits.'

Soon the two old friends were seated facing each other in the lounge bar, the surgeon resting his heavy-looking dolichocephalic skull upon his left hand.

'Time of death!' said Morse. 'Come on!'

'Nice drink this, Morse.'

'The science of thanatology hasn't advanced a millimetre in your time, has it?'

'Ah! Now you're taking advantage of my classical education.'

'But nowadays, Max, you can look down from one of those space-satellite things and see a house fly rubbing its hands over a slice of black pudding in a Harlem delicatessen — you know that? And yet you can't —'

'The room was as cold as a church, Morse. How do you expect—'

'You don't know anything about churches!'

'True enough.'

They sat silently for a while, Morse looking at the open fire where a log suddenly shifted on its foundations and sent a shower of red-glowing sparks against the back of the old grate, beside which was a stack of wood, chopped into quartered segments.

'Did you notice they'd chopped down a couple of trees at the back of the annexe, Max?'

'No.'

Morse sipped his gin. 'I could develop quite a taste for this.'

'You think it might have been the branch of a tree or something. .? Could have been, I suppose. About two feet long, nice easy grip, couple of inches in diameter.'

'You didn't see any wood splinters?'

'No.'

'What about a bottle?'

'No broken glass on his face, either, as far as I could see.'

'Tough things, though. Some of these people who launch battleships have a hell of a job breaking champagne bottles.'

'We may find something, Morse.'

'When can you let me have a report?'

'Not tonight.'

'Much blood, would there have been?'

'Enough. No spurting though.'

'No good asking the guests if they saw a fellow walking around with blood all over his best shirt?'

'What about a woman, Morse? With blood all over her liberty bodice?'

'Perhaps, I suppose.'

The surgeon nodded non-committally and looked into the fire: 'Poor sod. . Do you ever think of death? Mors, mortis, feminine — remember that?'

'Not likely to forget a word like that, am I? Just add on "e" to the end and. .'

The surgeon smiled a sour acknowledgement of the point and drained his glass. 'We'll just have the other half. Then we'll get back, and show you round the scene of the crime again.'

'When the body's out of the way?'

'You don't like the sight of blood much, do you?'

'No. I should never have been a policeman.'

'Always turned me on, blood did — even as a boy.'

'Unnatural!'

'Same again?'

'Why not?'

'What turns you on?' asked the surgeon as he picked up the two glasses.

'Somebody from the Oxford Times asked me that last week, Max. Difficult, you know — just being asked out of the blue like that.'

'What did you say?'

'I said I was always turned on by the word "unbuttoning".'

'Clever!'

'Not really. It comes in one of Larkin's poems somewhere. It's just that you know nothing about the finer things in life. .'

But the surgeon, apparently unhearing, was already standing at the bar and rattling an empty glass imperiously on the counter.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wednesday, January 1st: P.M.

Close up the casement, draw the blind,

Shut out that stealing moon.

(THOMAS HARDY)

UNDER THE SURGEON'S supervision, the frozen-footed ambulancemen had finally stretchered away the white-sheeted corpse to the morgue at the Old Radcliffe at 11.30 p.m., and Lewis was glad that the preliminaries of the case were now almost over. The two fingerprint men had departed just after eleven, followed ten minutes later by the spiky-haired young photographer, clutching the neck of his flash-bulb camera as if it were some poisonous serpent. The surgeon himself had driven off in his old black Ford at a quarter to midnight, and the hotel seemed strangely still as Lewis followed Morse across the slush and blackened snow to the room called Annexe 3, where the two men stood for the second time that evening, and where, each in his own way, they now took a more detailed mental inventory of what they saw.

Immediately to the left in the spacious room (about twenty feet by fourteen feet) stood a built-in wardrobe of white wood, in which nine plastic coat-hangers hung from the cross-rail; beyond it stood a dressing table, its drawers (as we have seen) quite empty, with a brochure of the hotel lying on its top, next to a card with the handwritten message: 'Welcome — your room has been personally prepared by Mandy'; a colour TV set stood in the corner; and, between it and the dressing table, a ledge some four feet from the floor held a kettle, a small teapot, two cups and two saucers, and a rectangular plastic tray, on which, in separate compartments, were.small cellophaned packets of biscuits, sachets of Nescafe, sachets of sugar, teabags, and little squat tubs of Eden Vale milk.