murders.'
'Afterwards, don't you think?'
She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward to light another cigarette.
'No. Let's get the inquisition over. Where's the bedroom, by the way?'
He pointed to a door on his left.
'Top sheet turned back in a very neat hypotenuse.'
She let it go, for her own mathematics had stopped well short of Pythagoras.
'I didn't ask you here for any grilling you know that. But there is one
thing I'd like you to tell me.'
'Fire away.'
'I think you've got a good idea who murdered Harry. And if you have, I'd
like you to tell me.'
'But I don't - not for certain, I don't.' She recrossed the legs that a
little earlier had been provocatively open.
'Go on!'
'It's just .. . well, I reckon perhaps it was Johnnie- might have been,
anyway.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Somethin' he said and . .. well, you get the vibes sometimes.'
He seemed to know nothing of 'vibes' -- interested only in strictly verbal
significations.
'What exactly did he say?'
'Nodiin' really. Nodiin' I'm going to tell you, anyway.'
'W^en was dlis?'
'Sat'day night.'
'He was with you then?'
'Yes.'
'Did he often call round?'
'Quite often.'
'He'd been taking his time with your building alterations?' He drank the
rest of the only glass of champagne he'd allowed himself drank it swiftly,
like a man in a pub who knows that if he stays any longer the next round will
surely be his, and who therefore decides to depart.
'And you went to bed quite often with Barren?'
What the hell! If this fellow just so happened to be more gentle , more
interesting, more articulate than some of her occasional partners so bloody
what!
'Yes!' She said it defiantly.
'Pretty good in bed he was, too!'
'I'm sorry,' he said slowly, 'but Mr Barren's dead. '
'You thought I didn't know?'
'How did you know?'
'Come off it! I wasn't born yesterday.'
He got to his feet and stepped over to sit beside her. For a while he held
her right hand lightly in his; then, with his own right hand he refastened
the top three buttons of the dress he'd specifically requested her to wear
above no underwear.
Then he left the room and she heard his voice on the
telephone: 'Radio Taxis? ... One of your drivers, as soon as you can to
Burford ... on my account, please . . . Morse.'
The two recently re-filled glasses of champagne the one for her, and the one
for him remained untasted on the top of the coffee-table that had been
polished so carefully before the arrival of Miss Debbie Richardson.
chapter forty-six For the clash between the Classical and the Gothic
revivals, visitors might go to the top end of Beaumont Street and compare the
Greek glory of the Ashmolean on the left with the Gothic push of the Randolph
Hotel on the right (Jan Morris, Oxford) the spires restaurant in the Randolph
Hotel is an impressively elegant affair. A full complement of Oxford Col-
lege crests is mounted in a frieze around the room, the regal ambience of the
place relieved by the soft lighting of flambeaux on the brown-papered walls,
and by two central chandeliers, holding similar flambeaux, that hang from the
high-beamed ceiling. Twenty or so tables are spaciously arranged there,
cross draped with maroon tablecloths, and laid with gleaming silver- ware,
sparkling wine glasses, and linen serviettes of a pale-ochre colour. The
chairs, of uniform style, are upholstered in a material of bottle-green; and
the colour combination of the room in toto has appealed to many (if not to
all) as an unusually happy one. Two large windows on the room's northern
side overlook Beaumont Street, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Taylorian
Institute just across the way; whilst those seated beside three equally large
windows on the eastern side look out on to the Martyrs' Memorial, with St
John's and Balliol Colleges beyond it, sharing with their fellow diners a
vista of St Giles', the widest street in Oxford and visually one of the most
attractive avenues in England.
At 7. 15 that same evening, a man in the company of a much younger woman
appeared to have eschewed either of these splendid views, for they had chosen
