the washing machine, and like an automaton he picked them up and put them in the drawer. The smell was infinitely sickly still, and he felt the vomit rising in his gorge. And now the horror of it all was gradually seeping into his mind, like a pool of ink into blotting paper. He knew that she was dead.
He unlocked the kitchen door, picked up the phone in the hall and in a dazed, uncomprehending voice he asked for the police. A letter addressed to him was lying beside the telephone directory. He picked it up and put it in his breast pocket and returned to the kitchen.
Ten minutes later the police found him there, sitting on the floor beside his wife, his hand on her hair, his eyes bleak and glazed. He had been deaf to the strident ringing of the front doorbell.
Morse arrived only a few minutes after the police car and the ambulance. It was Inspector Bell of the Oxford City Police who had called Morse; Crowther had insisted on it. The two Inspectors had met several times before and stood in the hallway talking together in muted voices. Bernard had been led unresistingly from the kitchen by a police doctor and was now sitting in the lounge, his head sunk into his hands. He appeared unaware of what was going on or what was being said, but when Morse came into the lounge he seemed to come to life again.
'Hullo, Inspector.' Morse put his hand on Crowther's shoulder, but could think of nothing to say that might help. Nothing could help. 'She left this, Inspector.' Bernard reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the sealed envelope.
'It's for you, you know, sir; it's addressed to you — not to me,' said Morse quietly.
'I know. But you read it. I can't.' He put his head in his hands again, and sobbed quietly.
Morse looked enquiringly at his fellow-Inspector. Bell nodded and Morse carefully opened the letter.
Dear Bernard,
When you read this I shall be dead. I know what this will mean to you and the children and it's only this that has kept me from doing it before — but I just can't cope with life any longer. I am finding it so difficult to know what to say — but I want you to know that it's not your fault. I have not been all that a wife should be to you and I have been a miserable failure with the children, and everything has built up and I long for rest and peace away from it all. I just can't go on any longer. I realize how selfish I am and I know that I'm just running away from everything. But I shall go mad if I don't run away. I must run away — I haven't the courage to stand up to things any longer.
On your desk you will find all the accounts. All the bills are paid except Mr. Andersen's for pruning the apple trees. We owe him ?5 but I couldn't find his address.
I am thinking of the earlier times when we were so happy. Nothing can take them from us. Look after the children. It's my fault — not theirs. I pray that you won't think too badly of me and that you can forgive me.
Margaret.
It wasn't going to be much comfort, but Crowther had got to face it some time.
'Please read it, sir.'
Bernard read it, but he showed no emotion. His despair could plumb no lower depths. 'What about the children?' he said at last.
'Don't worry yourself about that, sir. We'll look after everything.' The police doctor's voice was brisk. He was no stranger to such situations, and he knew the procedure from this point on. It wasn't much that he could do — but it was something.
'Look, sir, I want you to take. .'
'What about the children?' He was a shattered, broken man, and Morse left him to the ministrations of the doctor. He retired with Bell to the front room, and noticed the list of the accounts, insurances, mortgage repayments, and stock-exchange holdings which Margaret had left so neatly ordered under a paper-weight on the desk. But he didn't touch them. They were something between a husband and his wife, a wife who had been alive when he had interviewed Crowther earlier that day.
'You know him, then?' asked Bell.
'I saw him this morning,' said Morse. 'I saw him about the Woodstock murder.'
'Really?' Bell looked surprised.
'He was the man who picked up the girls.'
'You think he was involved?'
'I don't know,' said Morse.
'Has this business got anything to do with it?'
'I don't know.'
The ambulance was still waiting outside and curious eyes were peeping from all the curtains along the road. In the kitchen Morse looked down at Margaret Crowther. He had never seen her before, and he was surprised to realize how attractive she must have been. Fortyish? Hair greying a little, but a good, firm figure and a finely featured face, twisted now and blue.
'No point in keeping her here,' said Bell.
Morse shook his head. 'No point at all.'
'It takes a long time, you know, this North Sea gas.'
The two men talked in a desultory way for several minutes, and Morse prepared to leave. But as he walked out to his car, he was called back by the police doctor.
'Can you come back a minute, Inspector?' Morse re-entered the house.
'He says he must talk to you.'
Crowther sat with his head against the back of the chair. He was breathing heavily and the sweat stood out upon his brow. He was in a state of deep shock, and was already under sedation.
