up as soon as the curtain went up. Still, it was a little annoying. And it was hot in the New Theatre. He wondered if he should take his jacket off, and almost immediately became aware that one other member of the audience had already come to a firm decision on the same point. The mountain on his left began to quiver, and very soon Morse was a helpless observer as the fat man set about removing his jacket, which he effected with infinitely more difficulty than an ageing Houdini would have experienced in escaping from a straitjacket. Amid mounting shushes and clicking of tongues the fat man finally brought his monumental toils to a successful climax and rose ponderously to remove the offending garment from beneath him. The seat twanged noisily against the back rest, was restored to its horizontal position, and groaned heavily as it sank once more beneath the mighty load. More shushes, more clickings — and finally a blissful suspension of hostilities in Row J, disturbed only for Morse's sensitive soul by the lighthouse flashings of the Lady with the Lamp. Wagnerites were a funny lot!
Morse closed his eyes and the well-known chords at last engulfed him. Exquisite. .
For a second Morse thought that the dig in his left rib betokened a vital communication, but the gigantic frame beside him was merely fighting to free his handkerchief from the vast recesses of his trouser pocket. In the ensuing struggle the flap of Morse's own jacket managed to get itself entrapped, and his feeble efforts to free himself from the entanglement were greeted by a bleak and barren glare from Florence Nightingale.
By the end of Act 1, Morse's morale was at a low ebb. Siegmund had clearly developed a croaking throat, Sieglinde was sweating profusely, and a young philistine immediately behind him was regularly rustling a packet of sweets. During the first interval he retreated to the bar, ordered a whisky, and another. The bell sounded for the start of Act 2, and he ordered a third. And the young girl who had been seated behind Morse's shoulders during Act 1 had a gloriously unimpeded view of Act 2; and of Act 3, by which time her second bag of Maltesers had joined the first in a crumpled heap upon the floor.
The truth was that Morse could never have surrendered himself quite freely to unadulterated enjoyment that night, however propitious the circumstances might have been. At every other minute his mind was reverting to his earlier interview with Strange — and then to Ainley. Above all to Chief Inspector Ainley. He had not known him at all well, really. Quiet sort of fellow. Friendly enough, without ever being a friend. A loner. Not, as Morse remembered him, a particularly interesting man at all. Restrained, cautious, legalistic. Married, but no family. And now he would never have a family, for Ainley was dead. According to the eye-witness it was largely his own fault — pulling out to overtake and failing to notice the fast-closing Jaguar looming in the outside lane of the M40 by High Wycombe. Miraculously no one else was badly hurt. Only Ainley, and Ainley had been killed. It wasn't like Ainley, that. He must have been thinking of something else. . He had gone to London in his own car and in his own free time, just eleven days ago. It was frightening really — the way other people went on living. Great shock — oh yes — but there were no particular friends to mourn too bitterly. Except his wife. . Morse had met her only once, at a police concert the previous year. Quite young, much younger than he was; pretty enough, but nothing to set the heart a-beating. Irene, or something like that? Eileen? Irene, he thought.
His whisky was finished and he looked around for the barmaid. No one. He was the only soul there, and the linen wiping-towels were draped across the beer pumps. There was little point in staying.
He walked down the stairs and out into the warm dusking street. A huge notice in red and black capitals covered the whole of the wall outside the theatre: ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA Mon. 1 Sept — Sat. 13 Sept. He felt a slight quiver of excitement along his spine. Monday the first of September. That was the day Dick Ainley had died. And the letter? Posted on Tuesday, the second of September. Could it be? He mustn't jump to conclusions though. But why the hell not? There was no eleventh commandment against jumping to conclusions, and so he jumped. Ainley had gone to London that Monday and something must have happened there. Had he perhaps found Valerie Taylor at last? It began to look a possibility.
Morse walked back into the foyer, to be informed by a uniformed flunkey that the house was sold out and that the performance was half-way through anyway. Morse thanked him and stepped into the telephone kiosk by the door.
'I'm sorry, sir. That's for patrons only.' The flunkey was right behind him.
'I
Would she be in? It was already a quarter to nine. Irene or Eileen or whatever she was would probably be staying with friends. Mother or sister, most likely. Should he try? But what was he dithering about? He knew he would go anyway. He noted the address and walked briskly out past the flunkey.
'Goodnight, sir.'
As Morse walked to his car, parked in nearby St. Giles', he regretted his childish sneer of dismissal to this friendly valediction. The flunkey was only doing his job. Just as I am, said Morse to himself, as he drove without enthusiasm due north out of Oxford towards the village of Wolvercote.
CHAPTER THREE
A man is little use when his wife's a widow.
(Scottish proverb)
AT THE WOODSTOCK roundabout, on the northern ring-road perimeter of Oxford, Morse took the sharp left fork, and leaving the motel on his right drove over the railway bridge (where as a boy he had so often stood in wonder as the steam locomotives sped thunderously by) and down the hill into Wolvercote.
The small village consisted of little more than the square stone-built houses that lined its main street, and was familiar to Morse only because each of its two public houses boasted beer drawn straight from the wood. Without being too doctrinaire about what he was prepared to drink, Morse preferred a flat pint to the fizzy keg most breweries, misguidedly in his view, were now producing; and he seldom passed through the village without enjoying a jug of ale at the King Charles. He parked the Lancia in the yard, exchanged a few pleasantries with the landlady over his beer, and asked for Wytham Close.
He soon found it, a crescented cul-de-sac no more than a hundred yards back along the road on the right- hand side, containing ten three-storey terraced residences (pompously styled 'town houses'), set back from the adopted road, with steep concreted drives leading up to the built-in garages. Two street lamps threw a pale phosphorescence over the open-plan, well-tended grass, and a light shone from behind the orange curtains in the middle-storey window of № 2. The bell sounded harsh in the quiet of the darkened close.
A lower light was switched on in the entrance hall and a vaguely-lineated shadow loomed through the frosted
