It was Lewis who, as so frequently, was the catalyst. 'What's your husband do, Mrs. Ewers?'
'He's--well, at the minute he's unemployed, actually. did work at the old RAC offices in Summertown, but th made him redundant.'
'When was that?'
'Last year.'
'when exactly?' (If Morse could ask such question -' why not Lewis?)
'Last, er, August.'
'Good thing you getting the job then. Help fide thin, over a bit, like.'
Lewis smiled sympathetically. And Morse smiled gratefully. Bless you, Lewis--bless you!
Gestalt--that's what the Germans call it. That flash of ur fled perception, that synoptic totality which is more th the sum of the parts into which it may be logicall analysable; pans, in this case, like drugs and scouts and suicide and a murder and a staircase and changing jobs u not having a job and retirement and money and times m dates... Yes, especially times and dates...
Most probably, in the circumstances, Matthew Rodway rooms would not have been re-occupied for the few r. maining weeks at the end of Trinity Term the previo year; and if (as now) only some of the rooms were in u during the Long Vac, it might well be that Mrs. Ewers h: been the very first person to look closely around the st cide's chambers. But no; that was wrong. Mc Clure had a ready gone through things, hadn't he*. Mrs. Rodway hi asked him to. But would he have been half as thorough. this newly appointed woman'?.
He'd questioned her on the point already, he knew thl But he hadn't asked the right questions, perhaps*. Not qui 'Just going back a minute, Mrs. Ewers... When yt got Mr. Rodway's old rooms ready for the beginning of ti Michaelmas term, had anyone else been in there--during the summer?'
'I don't think so, no.'
'But you still didn't find anything?'
'No, like I just said '
'Oh, I believe you. If there'd been anything to find, you'd have found it.'
She looked relieved.
'In his rooms, that is,' added Morse slowly. 'Pardon?'
'All I'm saying is that you've got a very tidy mind, haven't you? Let's put it this way. I bet I know the i'trst thing you did when you took over here. I bet you gave this room the best spring-clean best auturnn-clean--it's ever had-- last September--when you moved in--and the previous scout moved out.'
Susan Ewers looked puzzled. 'Well, I scrubbed and cleaned the place from top to bottom, yes--filthy, it was. Two whole days it took me. But I never found anything--any drugs honest to God, I didn't!'
Morse, who had been seated on the only chair the room could offer, got to his feet, moved over to the door, and put his penultimate question: 'Do you have a mortgage?'
'Yes.'
'Big one?'
She nodded miserably.
As they stood there, the three of them, outside Sus's Pantry, Morse's eyes glanced back at the door, now closed again, fitting flush enough with the jambs on either side, but with a two-centimetre gap of parallel regularity showing between the bottom of the turquoise-blue door and the linoed floor of the landing.
Morse asked his last question simply and quietly: 'When did the envelopes first start coming, Susan?'
And Susan's eyes jumped up to his, suddenly flashing the unmistakable sign of fear.
Chapter Seventeen
Examination: trial; test of knowledge and, as also may be hoped, capacity; close inspection (especially med.)
(Srnall Enlarged English Dictionary, 1812 Edition)
On Friday, September 2, two days after Julia Stevens's re-mm to Oxford, there were already three items of impor tance on her day's agenda.
First, school.
Not as yet the dreaded restart (three whole days away, praise be!) but a visit to the Secretary's Office to look through the GCSE and A-level results, both lists having been published during her formight's absence abroad. Like every self-respecting teacher, she wanted to discover the relative success of the pupils she herself had taught.
In former days it had often been difficult enough for some pupils to sit examinations, let alone pass them. And even in the comparatively recent years of Julia's girlhood several of her own classmates had been deemed not to pos-sess the requisite acumen even to attempt the 11 Plus. It was a question of the sheep and the goats--just like the di-vision between those who were lost and those who were saved in the New Testament--a work with which the young Julia had become increasingly familiar, through the crusading fervour of a local curate with whom (aged ten and a half) she had fallen passionately in love.
How things had changed.
Now, in 1994, it was an occasion for considerable sur-prise if anyone somehow managed to fail an examination.
;' Indeed, to be recorded in the Unclassified ranks of the GCSE was, in Julia's view, !?petenee, which,.,4,.a.. fet of qu, te astonlshm.
