The Secret of Annexe 3

At half-past seven it was John Binyon, the hotel proprietor, who was the first of many that day to sit opposite the two detectives at a rickety trestle table.

'It's a terrible thing,' said Binyon. 'Terrible! Just when we'd started getting things going nicely, too.'

'Never mind, sir,' said Morse, calling upon all his powers of self-control to force the last of these three words through the barrier of his teeth. 'Perhaps you'll have a long queue of people waiting to sleep in the famous room.'

'Would you queue for it, Inspector?'

'Certainly not!' said Morse.

The talk turned to the subject of guests in general, and Binyon admitted that things had changed a good deal, even during his own limited experience. 'They don't even pretend these days, some of them — don't even put a ring on, some of the women. Mind you, we turn one or two away — well, you know, make out we're full up.'

'Do you think you could always spot them — if they weren't married?'

Binyon gave the question serious thought. 'No! No — I wouldn't say that. But I think I'd know if they were staying together for the first time.'

'How so?'

'Lots of things. The way they act, I suppose — and they always pay by cash — and they often get addresses wrong. For example, we had a fellow last month who came with his girlfriend, and he put down his address as Slough, Berks!'

'What did you do?' asked Morse, frowning.

'Nothing. I wasn't on the desk when he signed in; but I was when he booked out, and I told him straight that the next hotel he went to it might be valuable to know that Slough was in Bucks.'

'What did he say?' asked Morse, frowning more than ever.

'He just grinned — as if he hadn't heard me.'

'But Slough is in Berks!' said Morse.

The proprietor's general grasp of hotel procedures was clearly considerably in advance of his knowledge of geography, and Morse found himself not unfavourably impressed by his succinct account of current practice at the Haworth Hotel. Normally, between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the guests contacted the hotel, in the first instance, by phone. Often, there would be insufficient time to seek or to obtain confirmation by letter. Most usually, a credit-card number was sufficient warranty from the hotel's point of view to establish a bona fides; but for something so specifically pre-planned and widely advertised as a Christmas or a New Year function, obviously the great majority of guests had some correspondence with the hotel. As far as actual registration was concerned, the pattern was (the two detectives learned) exactly what any seasoned traveller would expect at any established hostelry: 'Name?' would be the first question; and, when this was checked against the booking list, a card would be handed over which asked for surname, forename(s), company, company address, home address, method of settling account, nationality, car registration, passport number, and finally signature. Such a fairly straightforward task completed, the guest (or guests) would be given a card showing details of room number, tariff, type of breakfast, type of room, and the like. With a room key handed over from one of the hooks behind Reception, 'registration' was now appropriately effected, with only a final negotiation remaining about the choice of a morning newspaper. And that was that. In such a comparatively small hotel, no porter was employed to carry cases, although the management was of course always on the lookout to ensure suitable assistance for any ageing couples who appeared at risk from cardiac arrest at the prospect of lugging their belongings to the first-floor landing.

At eight fifteen, confirmation was received from Chipping Norton that none of the five Ballard couples on the local Electoral Register had a wifely component answering to the name Ann; and that the town's official archivist, after delving as far back towards Domesday as local records allowed, was prepared to state quite categorically that there was not, nor ever had been, a number 84 along the thoroughfare now known, and always known, as West Street, Chipping Norton.

At eight forty-five, Superintendent Bell rang through from St. Aldates to ask if Morse required any further men to help him. But Morse declined the offer; for the moment he could think of nothing he could profitably effect with a posse of policemen, except perhaps to conduct some inevitably futile house-to-house inquiries in and around Chipping Norton to ascertain whether anyone had knowledge of a man of indeterminate age, partner to a pseudonymous Ann Ballard, with neither a club-foot, nor a withered arm, nor a swastika tattooed on his forehead to assist any possible identification. Further, it became quite clear from the guests interviewed later that morning that none of them would with any certitude be able to recognize Mr. Ballard again. Such diffidence (as Morse saw things) was hardly surprising: the only time the other guests had met Ballard was during that one evening; up until then he had been a complete stranger to them; and he had spent most of the evening closely shielded and chaperoned by what others had taken to be a jealously possessive wife. Indeed the only reason that many could recall him at all was the extremely obvious one: he had won first prize in the men's fancy-dress competition, dressed in the consummately skilful disguise of a West Indian reggae musician. The only new fact of any substance to emerge was that he had, certainly in the later part of the evening, drunk more than one glass of whisky — Bell's, according to Mandy, the stand-in barmaid. But there was also general agreement, fully corroborating Sarah Jonstone's earlier evidence, that Ballard had eaten very little indeed. Several witnesses had a clear recollection of him dancing with his yashmak'd companion (lover? mistress? wife?), and only with her, for most of the evening;but Mr. Dods ('With t'one 'd' ') was almost prepared to swear on Geoffrey Boycott's batting average that Ballard had also danced, towards midnight, with an animated youngish woman named Mrs. Palmer—'Philippa' or 'Pippa' Palmer, as he recalled — as well as with the hotel receptionist ('A little tipsy, Inspector, if ah mair sair sor!'). And that was about that. And towards the end of the morning it was becoming increasingly obvious to both Morse and Lewis that the only firm and valuable testimony they were going to get was that given the previous evening by Sarah (tipsy or not!) Jonstone, who had claimed in her statement to Lewis that she had peeped out of her window at about 1 a.m. and seen at that late, flake-falling, whitely covered hour, the prize-winning Rastafarian walking back across to the annexe with an arm around each of the women on either side of him. It seemed good to Morse, therefore, to summon the fair Miss Jonstone once again.

She sat there, her legs crossed, looking tired, every few moments pushing her spectacles up to the top of her nose with the middle finger of her ringless left hand — and thereby irritating Morse to a quite disproportionate extent — as he himself hooked his half-lenses behind his ears and trusted that he projected an appropriate degree of investigative acumen.

'After the annexe lot left the party, the others finished too — is that right?'

'I think so.'