The Way Through The Woods

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chapter four

The morning is wiser than the evening

(Russian proverb)

morse rose at 6.45 the following morning, switched on his room-kettle, and made himself a cup of coffee from one of the several sachets and small milk-tubs provided. He opened the curtains and stood watching the calm sea, and a fishing boat just leaving the Cobb. Blast! He'd meant to bring his binoculars.

The gulls floated and wheeled across the esplanade, occasionally hanging motionless, as if suspended from the sky, before turning away like fighter-aircraft peeling from their formation and swooping from his vision.

The sun had already risen, a great ball of orange over the cliffs to the east, over Charmouth – where they said someone had discovered a dinosaur or a pterodactyl, or something, that had lived in some distant prehistoric age, some figure with about twelve noughts after it. Or was it twenty?

Deciding that he really ought to learn more about the world of natural history, Morse drained his coffee and without shaving walked down to the deserted ground floor, out of the hotel, and left along Marine Parade – where his search began.

The newsagent on the corner felt pretty sure that he hadn't got a previous day's Times: Sun, yes; Mirror, yes; Express, yes… but. no – no Times. Sorry, mate. Turning left, Morse struggled up the steep incline of Broad Street. Still out of breath, he enquired in the newsagent's shop halfway up on the left. Telegraph, Guardian, Independent – any good? No? Sorry, sir. Morse got another 'sir' in the newsagent's just opposite – but no Times. He carried on to the top of the hill, turned left at a rather seedy-looking cinema, then left again into Cobb Road, and down to the western end of Marine Parade – where a fourth newsagent was likewise unable to assist, with the chief inspector reduced in rank to 'mate' once more.

Never mind! Libraries kept back numbers of all the major dailies; and if he were desperate – which he most certainly wasn't he could always go down on his knees and beg Mrs Misery-guts to let him take a peek at her newspaper. If she'd still got it… Forget it, Morse! What's it matter, anyway?

What's she matter?

Strolling briskly now along the front, Morse breathed deeply on the early-morning air – cigarettes were going to be out that day. Completely out. He had, he realized, just walked a sort of rectangle; well, a 'trapezium' really – that was the word: a quadrilateral with two parallel sides. And doubtless he would have told himself it wouldn't be a bad idea to brush up on his geometry had he not caught sight of a figure in front of him, about two hundred yards distant. For there, beneath the white canopy of the buff-coloured Bay Hotel, with its yellow two-star AA sign, stood Mrs Hardinge, Mrs Crabcrumpet herself, dressed in a full-length black leather coat, and searching in a white shoulder-bag. For a purse, probably? But before she could find it she raised her right hand a greeting as a taxi drew up along the lower road, its driver manoeuvering 180 degrees in the turning area, then getting out and opening the near-side rear door for the elegant, luggageless woman who had just walked down the ramp. Morse, who had stopped ostensibly to survey the ranks of fruit machines in the Novelty Emporium, looked down at his wrist-watch: 7.50 a.m.

The ground floor was still deserted, and as yet no delicious smell fried bacon betrayed the opening of the hostelry's daily routine. Morse passed by the giant potted-palm, passed by the statue of a maiden perpetually pouring a slow trickle from her water-jug into the pool at her feet, and was starting up the stairs when his eye fell on the reception desk to his right: a jar of artificial flowers; a tray of mineral water; a yellow RNLI collecting box; and below a stack of brochures and leaflets – the hotel register.

He glanced: _ad him. No one. He looked swiftly along the linear information once again:

3.7.92 – Mr and Mrs ?. A Hardinge – 16 Cathedral Mews, Salisbury – H 35 LWL – British – Rm 14

It had been the Oxfordshire letter-registration, LWL, which had [caught his eye that previous evening. Now it was something else: ?. It was her all right though, for he'd seen the room number her key-ring at dinner. And frowning slightly as he mounted the stairs, he found himself wondering how many married women were unable to write out the accepted formula for their wedded state without getting the wrong initial. Perhaps she was only recently married? Perhaps she was one of those liberated ladies who had suddenly decided that if only one initial were required it was going to be hers? Perhaps… perhaps they weren't 'Mr and Mrs' at all, and she had been momentarily confused about what names they were going under this time?

The latter, he thought – a little sadly.

Breakfast (8.45 a.m.-9.30 a.m.) was for Morse a solitary affair, yet he was finding it, as ever, the biggest single joy of any holiday. After some Kellogg's Corn Flakes and a mixed grill, he strolled along the edge of the sea once more, feeling pleasantly replete and (he supposed) about as content as he was ever likely to be. The weather forecast was good, and he decided that he would drive out west to Ottery St Mary and then, if the mood took him, north up to Nether Stowey, and the Quantocks.

As he reached the second-floor landing after his return to the hotel, Room 14 was almost directly in front of him; and with the door slightly ajar, as one blue-uniformed room-maid came out with a hoover, he could see another maid inside the room replenishing the sachets of coffee and tea and the little tubs of milk. He took his chance. Knocking (not too hesitantly), he put his head round the door.

'Mrs Hardinge in?'

'No, sur.' She looked no more than eighteen, and Morse felt emboldened.

'It's just that she promised to keep yesterday's newspaper for me – we had dinner here together last night. The Times, it was.'

The maid gave Morse a dubious look as he cast a swift glance over the room. The bed nearer the window had been slept in -the pillow deeply indented, a flimsy black negligee thrown carelessly over the duvet. But had Mr Hardinge slept in the other? The bed could have been made up already, of course… but where was his case and his clothes and his other impedimenta?

'I'm afraid there's no newspaper as I can see 'ere, sur. In any case, I wouldn't-'

'Please, please! I fully understand. I mean, if it's not in the waste-paper basket…'

'No, it's not.'

'There'd be another basket, though? In the bathroom? It's just that she did say…'

The young girl peered cautiously round the bathroom door, but shook her head.

Morse smiled affably. 'It's all right. She must have left it somewhere else for me. Probably in my room. Huh! Sorry to have bothered you.'

Back in Room 27, he found his own bed made up, the floor hoovered, and his coffee cup washed and placed upside-down on it’s matching saucer. He stood for several minutes looking out at the sea again, telling himself he must re-read The Odyssey; and soon, almost unconsciously, finding himself smoking one of his forbidden cigarettes and wondering why the brown leather suitcase he had just seen lying closed on the set of drawers in Room 14 bore, in an attractive Gothic script, the gilt letters 'C S O'. The only thing he knew with such initials was Community Service Order – but that seemed wholly unlikely. Must be her initials, surely. But whatever the C stood for – Carole? Catherine? Claire? Celia? Constance? – it was going to be obvious even to an under-achiever in the new seven-year-old reading tests that the O didn't stand for 'Hardinge'. It may reasonably have been the lady's name before she got married. But the case was a new one – a very new one…

So what, Morse! So bloody whatl

He sat down and wrote a note.