The Secret of Annexe 3

Helen had spent a brief but successful time in Selfridges (she had bought herself a new white mackintosh) and was back in the house just after noon, when she immediately saw the note beside the telephone.

Helen, my love!

They are on to us, and there's little option for me but to get away. I never told you quite everything about myself but please believe that if they catch up with me now I shall be sent to prison for a few years — I can't face that. I thought they might perhaps confiscate the little savings we managed to put together, and so I cashed the tot and you'll find thirty ?20 notes in your favourite little hiding place — that's a precaution just in case the police get here before you find this! If I ever loved anyone in the world, I loved you. Remember that! I'm sorry it's got to be like this.

Ever yours,

John

She read the brief letter without any sense of shock — almost with a sense of resigned relief. It couldn't have gone on for ever, that strange life she'd led with the oddly maverick confidence-man who had married her, and who had almost persuaded her at times that he loved her. Yes, that was the only really deep regret: if he had stayed—stayed with her and faced the music whatever tune they played — then life would indeed have been an undoubted triumph for the dark young lady from Yugoslavia.

She was upstairs in the front bedroom, changing her clothes, when she heard the front-door bell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Friday, January 3rd: mostly A.M.

As when heaved anew

Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to shore

Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar

Burst gradual, with a wayward indolence.

(JOHN KEATS)

MORSE HAD FELT tempted to ring Lewis to tell him not to bother with their original plan of meeting in Eddleston Road at 11 a.m. But he didn't so do. The prospect of more trains and more taxis was an intolerable one; and in any case he was now almost completely out of ready cash. At 10.50 he was again knocking on the door of the Smiths' house; once again without getting any reply. The road was part of a reasonably elegant residential quarter. But heading off from it, on the southern side, were smaller, meaner streets of Victorian two-storey red- brick terraced houses; and as Morse strolled through this area he began to feel pleasantly satisfied with life, a state of mind that may not have been unconnected with the fact that he was in unfamiliar circumstances, with nothing immediately or profitably to be performed, with a small public house on the next corner facing him and with his wrist-watch showing only a minute or so short of opening time.

The Peep of Dawn (as engagingly named a pub as Morse could remember) boasted only one bar, with wooden wall-seats, and after finding out from the landlord which bitter the locals drank he sat with his pint in the window alcove and supped contentedly. He wasn't quite sure whether his own oft-repeated insistence that he could always think more lucidly after an extra ration of alcohol was wholly true. He certainly believed it to be true, though; and quite certainly many a breakthrough in previous investigations had been made under such attendant circumstances. It was only in recent months that he had found himself querying his earlier assumption about such a post hoc, ergo propter hoc proposition; and it had occasionally occurred to him that fallacious logic was not infrequently the offspring of wishful thinking. Yet for Morse (and he quite simply accepted the fact) the world did invariably seem a much warmer, more manageable place after a few pints of beer; and quite certainly he knew that (for himself, at any rate) it was on such occasions that the imaginative processes usually started. It may have been something to do with the very liquidity of alcohol, for he had often seen these processes in terms of just such a metaphor. It was as if he were lulled and sitting idly on the sea-front, and watching, almost entranced, as some great Master of the Tides drew in the foam-fringed curtains of the waters towards his feet and then pulled them back in slow retreat to the creative sea.

But whatever the truth of the matter, he knew he would have to do some serious thinking very soon, and for the moment the problem that was uppermost in his mind was how a letter which had been written from a non- existent address had also been received at the very same non-existent address. It was easy of course to write anything from anywhere in the world-say from 'Buckingham Palace, Kidlington'; but how on earth, in turn, was it possible for a letter to be delivered to such improbably registered premises? Yet that is what had happened, or so it seemed. The man who had been murdered was, on the face of things, the husband of a woman who had booked a room from an address which did not exist; had booked the room by letter; and had received confirmation of the booking, also by letter — with the pair of them duly arriving on December 31st, taking part in the evening's festivities (incidentally, with outstanding success), and finally, after joining their fellow guests in wishing themselves, one and all, a happily prosperous new year, walking back to their room in the annexe. And then. .

'You'd not forgotten me, had you?' said a voice above him.

'Lewis! You're a bit late aren't you?'

'We agreed to meet at the house, if you remember, sir!'

'I went there. There's no one at home.'

'I know that. Where do you think I've been?'

'What's the time now?'

'Twenty past eleven.'

'Oh dear! I am sorry! Get yourself a drink, Lewis — and a refill for me, please. I'm a bit short of cash, I'm afraid.'

'Bitter, was it?'

Morse nodded. 'How did you find me?'