'What about the photograph, sir? Mrs. Brooks's daugh ter?'
'Interesting question. I wonder. I wonder where tha yo, U, npeg ydy fits into the picture.' well everywhere, wouldn't you say?'
'Yees. 'Kay'--'K'--'Eleanor'--'Ellie'--we've got t( assume she's the same girl, I suppose: Mrs. B's daugh ter Mr. B's Stelydanghter--staircase-tart for Messrs Rod. way and Davies--mistress for Dr. Mc Clure...'
'She must be quite a girl.'
'But what about that other photograph, Lewis7 Thc schoolmistress? D'you know, I've got a feeling she migh be able to shed a little light'
But Morse was coughing uncontrollably now, finally dis appearing into the bathroom, whence was heard a series c revolting retches. - Lewis walked out into the entrance hall, where he flicke open Morse's black plastic telephone index to the lette 'S.' He was lucky. Under 'Summertown Health Centre' h found an 'Appointments' number; and an 'Emergency number.
He rang the latter.
That same afternoon, just after four o'clock, Dr. Rich Rayson, Chaucerian scholar, and fellow of Trinity Colleg{ Oxford, strolled round his garden in Daventry Avenue. Fc almost three weeks he had been away with his family in th Dolomites. Gardening, in troth, had never been the greater, passion of his life; and as he stood surveying the state c his neglected front lawn, the epithet which sprang mo readily to his literate mind was 'agrestal': somewhat ove grown; mn to seed; wild, as the Shorter Oxford might d fine it.
Yet strangely, for such an unobservant man, he'd spotte the knife almost immediately--a couple of feet or so insk the property, between an untrimmed laurel bush and t vertical slats of a front fence sorely in need of some n creosoting. There it was, lying next to a semi-squashed ti of Coca-Cola.
Nina Rayson, a compensatingly practical sort of partne had welcomed her husband's discovery, promptly washing it in Sainsbury's 'Economy' washing-up liquid, and forth-with adding it to her own canteen of cutlery. A good knife, it was: a fairly new, sturdy, unusually broad-bladed instmment, in no immediate need of any further sharpening.
That same evening, at nine-thirty, Brenda Brooks was aware that her jangled nerves could stand very little more that day. Paradoxically, though, she felt almost competent about coping with the loathsome man she'd just seen to bed, with a cup of tea, two digestive biscuits, and one sleeping tablet. At least she knew him: knew the worst about him--for there was nothing but the worst to know. It was now the unknown that was worrying her the more deeply: that strange technical jargon of the doctors and nurses at the hospital; the brusque yet not wholly unsympa-thetic questions of the two policemen who had earlier called there.
She found herself neurotically dreading any phone-call; any ringing of the door-bell. Anything. What was that? What was that?
Was she imagining things--imagining noises?
There it was again: a muffled, insistent, insidious, tap-ping Fearfully, she edged towards the front door.
And there, behind the frosted glass, she saw a vaguely human silhouette; and she turned the Yale lock, and opened the door, her heart fluttering nervously.
'You!' she whispered.
Chapter Thirty-three
It is an inexorable sort of festivity--in September 1914 they tried to cancel it, but the Home Secretary himself ad-mitted that he was powerless to do so (J^N MORRIS, Oxford)
Oxford's St. Giles's Fair is held annually on the fkst Mon-day and Tuesday after the first Sunday every September, with the whole area of St. Giles's brought into use, from the Martyrs' Memorial up to (and beyond) St. Giles's Church at the northern end, where the broad, tree-lined av-enue bifurcates to form the Woodstock Road to the left and the Banbury Road to the right.
In midaftemoon on Tuesday, September 6 (two days after Lewis had telephoned the Summertown Health Centre), Kevin Costyn was sauntering under the plane trees there, along the various rides and amusements and candy-floss stalls. Nothing could really kindle his imagination or interest, for the Naked Lady of earlier years, in her rat-infested cage, no longer figured in the fair's attractions. And as Kevin considered the jazzy, jolty, vertiginous cars and car-riages, he felt no real wish to part with any of his limited money.
That day the children in the state schools in Oxfordshire had returned to their classrooms; and for the first twelve years Costyn himself was not one of them. Notimemorein school. But no job yet, either. He'd signed on at the Job Centre. Even taken away some literature on Youth Employment Schemes and Opportunities. Not that he was going to a9 read that bumf. He wasn't interested in jobs. Just money. Well, not just money, no.
Smugly he grinned to himself as he stood outside the Bird and Baby and watched the gigantic, gyrating structure of the Big Wheel.
The previous month he'd been part of a three-man ram-raid at a Summertown supermarket, but it hadn't proved the windfall they'd expected. Shop windows--replaced shop windows--were being made of tougher glass; and several regular, and formerly profitable, targets were now protected by concrete frontal pillars. That wasn't the real trouble, though. It was getting rid of the stuff that was getting trick-ier all the time. Cigarettes had usually been the best bet: lightweight, handy to stack, easy to sell. But booze was be-coming one helluva job to sell; and the cases of whiskey, gin, and vodka they'd got away with then had changed hands for a miserly 850, pounds though according to Costyn's (admittedly less than competent) calculation their street-value would have been four times that amount. It was the police becoming far cannier at tracking down the whole-sale-market contacts--they were the real trouble.
There must be easier ways of being able to afford the life of Riley, surely?
Yes, occasionally there were....
It had been Kevin Costyn himself who had answered the door the previous afternoon, to find Mrs. Stevens standing there--a subtly scented Mrs. Stevens, with a moist, red beauty at her lips.
Could she come in? She'd come in.
Would he listen to what she had to say? He'd listened.
Would he be willing to do as she asked? He'd be wil-ling.
