Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'No, why?'

'It's just that the New York publishers said they might be ringing. So, if they do, please make a note of the number and tell 'em I'll ring them back. All right?'

'Fine. Yes.'

'You having a nice evening?'

'Mm. It's lovely to sit and watch TV for a change. No engagements. No problems.'

'See you soon.'

'I hope so.'

Shelly put down the phone slowly. 'I've just noticed in my diary', he'd said. But he hadn't, she knew that. She'd looked in his diary earlier that day, to make sure of the time of the St Peter's do. That had been the only entry on the page for 26.2.96.

Or, as she would always think of it, 2/26/96.

Just before ten o'clock, Julian Storrs rang his wife from Reading; rang three times.

The number was engaged.

He rang five minutes later.

The number was still engaged.

He rang again, after a further five minutes.

She answered.

'Angie? I've been trying to get you these last twenty minutes.'

'I've only been talking to Mum, for Christ's sake!'

'It's just that I shan't be home till after midnight, that's all. So I'll get a taxi. Don't worry about meeting me.'

'OK.'

After she had hung up, Angela Storrs took a Thames Trains timetable from her handbag and saw that Julian could easily be catching an earlier train: the 22.40 from Reading, arriving Oxford 23.20. Not that it mattered. Perhaps he was having a few drinks with his hosts? Or perhaps - the chilling thought struck her - he was checking up on her?

Hurriedly she rang her mother in South Kensington. And kept on kept on kept on talking. The call would be duly registered on the itemized BT lists and suddenly she felt considerably easier in her mind.

Morse had caught the 23.48 from Paddington that night, and at 01.00 sat unhearing as the Senior Conductor made his lugubrious pronouncement: 'Oxford, Oxford. This train has now terminated. Please be sure to take all your personal possessions with you. Thank you.'

From a deeply delicious cataleptic state, Morse was

finally prodded into consciousness by no less a personage than the Senior Conductor himself.

'All right, sir?'

'Thank you, yes.'

But in truth things were not all right, since Morse had been deeply disappointed by his evening's sojourn in London. And as he walked down the station steps to the taxi-rank, he reminded himself of what he'd always known - that life was full of disappointments: of which the most immediate was that not a single taxi was in sight

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Tuesday, 27 February

Initium est dimidiumfacti (Once you've started, you're halfway there) (Latin proverb)

AN UNSHAVEN MORSE was still dressed in his mauve and Cambridge blue pyjamas when Lewis arrived at 10 o'clock the following morning. Over the phone half an hour earlier he had learned that Morse was feeling 'rough as a bear's arse' - whatever that was supposed to mean.

For some time the two detectives exchanged information about their previous day's activities; and fairly soon the obvious truth could be simply stated: Owens was a blackmailer. Specifically, as far as investigations had thus far progressed, with the Storrs' household being the principal victims: he, for his current infidelity; she, for her past as a shop-soiled Soho tart. One thing seemed certain: that any disclosure was likely to be damaging, probably fatally damaging, to Julian Storrs' chances of election to the Mastership of Lonsdale.

Morse considered for a while.

'It still gives us a wonderful motive for one of them

murdering Owens - not much of a one for murdering Rachel.'

'Unless Mrs Storrs was just plain jealous, sir?'

'Doubt it'

'Or perhaps Rachel got to know something, and was doing a bit of blackmailing herself? She needed the money all right.'

'Yes.' Morse stroked his brisdy jaw and sighed wearily. 'There's such a lot we've still got to check on, isn't there? Perhaps you ought to get round to Rachel's bank manager this morning.'