Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

Nor indeed, for some considerable while, was he fully to understand the meaning of the neat bullet-hole in the centre of the shattered glass, and the cracks that radiated

49

COLIN DEXTER

from it regularly, like a young child's crayoning the rays of the sun.

Looking around him, Morse surveyed the area from the wobbly paving-slabs which formed a pathway at the rear of the row of terraced houses stretching along the northern side of Bloxham Drive, Kidlington, Oxfordshire. About half of the thirty-odd young trees originally planted in a staggered design beside and behind this path had been vandalized to varying degrees: some of them wholly extirpated; some cruelly snapped in the middle of their gradually firming stems; others, with many of their burgeoning branches torn off, standing wounded and forlorn amid the unkempt litter-strewn area, once planned by some Environmental Officer as a small addendum to England's green and pleasant land.

Morse felt saddened.

As did Sergeant Lewis, standing beside him.

Yet it is appropriate here to enter one important qualification. Bloxham Drive, in the view of most of its residents, was showing some few signs of unmistakable improvement The installation of sleeping-policemen had virtually eliminated the possibilities of joy-riding; many denizens were now lying more peacefully in their beds after the eviction of one notoriously anti-social household; and over the previous two or three years the properties had fallen in price to such an extent as to form an attractive proposition to those few of the professional classes who were prepared to give the street the benefit of the doubt. To be more specific, three such

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

persons had taken out mortgages on properties there: the properties standing at Number i, Number 15, and Number 17.

But - yes, agreed! - Bloxham Drive and the surrounding streets was still an area a league and a league from the peaceful, leafy lanes of Gerrards Cross; and still the scene of some considerable crime.

Crime which now included murder...

The call had come through to Lewis at 8.40 a.m.

Just over one hour previously, whilst the sky was still unusually dark, Mrs Queenie Norris, from Number 11, had (as was her wont) taken out her eight-year-old Cavalier King Charles along the rear of the terrace, ignoring (as was her wont) the notices forbidding the fouling of pavements and verges. That was when she'd noticed it: noticed the cracked back window at Number 17 - yet failed to register too much surprise, since (as we have seen) vandalism there had become commonplace, and any missile, be it bottle or brick, would have left some similar traces of damage.

Back from her walk, Mrs Norris, as she was later to explain to the police, had felt increasingly uneasy. And just before the weather forecast on Radio 4, she had stepped out once again, now minus the duly defecated Samson, and seen that the light in the kitchen of Number 17 was still on, the blind still drawn down to the bottom of the casement

This time she had knocked quietly, then loudly, against the back door.

51

COLIN DEXTER

But there had been no reply to her reiterated raps; and only then had she noticed that behind the hole in the kitchen window - immediately behind it - was a corresponding hole in the thin beige- brown material of the bund. It was at that point that she'd felt the horrid crawl of fear across her skin. Her near- neighbour worked in North Oxford, almost invariably leaving home at about a quarter to eight. And now it was coming up to the hour. Had reached the hour.

Something was wrong.

Something, Mrs Norris suspected, was seriously wrong; and she'd rung 999 immediately.

It had been ten minutes later when PCs Graham and Swift had finally forced an entry through the front door of the property to discover the grim truth awaiting them in the back kitchen: the body of a young woman lying dead upon her side, the right cheek resting on the cold red tiles, the light brown hair of her pony-tail soaked and stiffened in a pool of blood. Indeed it was not only the dreams of the two comparatively inexperienced constables, but also those of the hardened Scenes-of-Crime Officers, that would be haunted by the sight of so much blood; such a copious outpouring of blood.

And now it was Morse's turn.

'Oh dear,' said Lewis very quietly.

Morse said nothing, holding back (as ever) from any close inspection of a corpse, noting only the bullet wound, somewhere at the bottom of the neck, which clearly had been the cause of death, the cause of all the

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

blood. Yet (as ever, too) Morse, who had never owned a camera in his life, had already taken several mental flashes of his own.

It seemed logical to assume that die murder had occurred towards the end of a fairly conventional breakfast. On the side of a wooden kitchen table - the side nearest die window - a brown plastic-topped stool had been moved slightly askew. On die table itself was a plate, a small heap of salt sprinkled with pepper at its edge, on which lay a brown egg-shell beside a wooden egg-cup; and alongside, on a second plate, half a round of toasted brown bread, buttered, and amply spread from a jar of Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade. And one odier item: a white mug bearing die legend GREETINGS FROM GUERNSEY; bearing, too, die remains of some breakfast coffee, long since cold and muddily brown.

That was what Morse saw. And for die present diat was enough; he wished to be away from the dreadful scene.

Yet before he left, he forced himself to look once more at die woman who lay diere. She was wearing a white