The Secret of Annexe 3

Colin Dexter The Secret of Annexe 3

For Elizabeth, Anna, and Eve.

Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material:

George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, for a quotation by Bertrand Russell.

Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Estate of Ogden Nash for a quotation by him.

Peter Champkin for an extract from his book The Waking Life of Aspern Williams.

Faber and Faber Ltd, for an extract from 'La Figlia Che Piange' in Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot.

A. M. Heath & Company Ltd, on behalf of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell for an extract from Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, published by Secker & Warburg Ltd.

Henry Holt & Company Inc, for a quotation by Robert Frost.

A. D. Peters & Company and Jonathan Cape Ltd, on behalf of the Executors of the Estate of C. Day Lewis, for an extract from 'Departure in the Dark' in Collected Poems, 1954, published by the Hogarth Press.

The Society of Authors on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate for a quotation by Bernard Shaw.

A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, for an extract by Rudyard Kipling from The Thousandth Man.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER ONE

November

The pomp of funerals has more regard to the vanity of the living than to the honour of the dead.

(LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Maxims)

WHEN THE OLD man died, there was probably no great joy in heaven; and quite certainly little if any real grief in Charlbury Drive, the pleasantly unpretentious cul-de-sac of semi-detached houses to which he had retired. Yet a few of the neighbours, especially the womenfolk, had struck up some sort of distanced acquaintance with him as they pushed prams or shopping trolleys past his neatly kept front lawn; and two of these women (on learning that things were fixed for a Saturday) had decided to be present at the statutory obsequies. Margaret Bowman was one of them.

'Do I look all right?' she asked.

'Fine!' His eyes had not left the racing page of the tabloid newspaper, but he knew well enough that his wife would always be an odds-on favourite for looking all right: a tall, smart woman upon whom clothes invariably hung well, whether for dances, weddings, dinners — or even funerals.

'Well? Have a look then! Yes?'

So he looked up at her and nodded vaguely as he surveyed the black ensemble. She did look fine. What else was there to say? 'You look fine,' he said.

With a gaiety wholly inappropriate she twirled round on the points of her newly purchased black leather court shoes, fully aware, just as he was, that she did look rather attractive. Her hips had filled out somewhat alarmingly since that disappointing day when as a willowy lass of twenty (a year before marrying Tom Bowman) her application to become an air hostess had proved unsuccessful; and now, sixteen years later, she would have more than a little trouble (she knew it!) in negotiating the central aisle of a Boeing 737. Yet her calves and ankles were almost as slender as when she had slipped her nightgowned body between the stiff white sheets of their honeymoon bed in a Torquay hotel; it was only her feet, with a line of whitish nodules across the middle joints of her slightly ugly toes, that now presaged the gradual approach of middle age. Well, no. It wasn't only that — if she were being really honest with herself. There was that hebdomadal visit to the expensive clinic in Oxford. . But she cast that particular thought from her mind. ('Hebdomadal' was a word she'd become rather proud of, having come across it so often in her job in Oxford with the University Examining Board.)

'Yes?' she repeated.

He looked at her again, more carefully this time. 'You're going to change your shoes, aren't you?'

'What?' Her hazel eyes, with their markedly flecked irises, took on a puzzled, appealingly vulnerable aspect. Involuntarily her left hand went up to the back of her freshly brushed and recently dyed blonde hair, whilst the fingers of her right hand began to pluck fecklessly at some non-existent speck that threatened to jeopardize her immaculate, expensive nigritude.

'It's bucketing down — hadn't you noticed?' he said.

Little rivulets were trickling down the outside of the lounge window, and even as he spoke a few slanted splashes of rain re-emphasized the ugly temper of the windswept sky.

She looked down at the specially purchased black leather shoes — so classy-looking, so beautifully comfortable. But before she could reply he was reinforcing his line of argument.

'They're going to inter the poor sod, didn't you say?'