The Secret of Annexe 3

Monday, January 6th: P.M.

Everything comes to him who waits — among other things, death.

(F. H. BRADLEY)

MORSE WAS DISSATISFIED and restless — that much was obvious as they sat outside the Bowmans' house in Charlbury Drive. Ten minutes they waited, Morse just sitting there in the passenger seat, his safety-belt still on, staring out of the window. Then another ten minutes, with Morse occasionally clicking his tongue and taking sharp audible breaths of impatient frustration.

'Think she's coming back?' said Lewis.

'I dunno.'

'How long are we going to wait?'

'How do I know!'

'Just asked.'

'I tell you one thing, Lewis. I'm making one bloody marvellous mess of this case!'

'I don't know about that, sir.'

'Well you should know! We should never have let her out of our sight.'

Lewis nodded, but said nothing; and for a further ten minutes the pair of them sat in silence.

But there was no sign of Margaret Bowman.

'What do you suggest we do, Lewis?' asked Morse finally.

'I think we ought to go to the post office: see if we can find some of Bowman's handwriting — there must be something there; see if any of his mates know anything about where he is or where he's gone; that sort of thing.'

'And you'd like to get somebody from there to go and look at the body, wouldn't you? You think it is Bowman!'

'I'd just like to check, that's all. Check it isn't Bowman, if you like. But we haven't done anything at all yet, sir, about identification.'

'And you're telling me it's about bloody time we did!'

'Yes sir.'

'All right. Let's do it your way. Waste of time but —' His voice was almost a snarl.

'Are you feeling all right, sir?'

'Course I'm not feeling all right! Can't you see I'm dying for a bloody cigarette, man?'

The visit to the post office produced little information that was not already known. Tom Bowman had worked on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday following Christmas Day, and then had taken a week's holiday. He should have been back at work that very day, the 6th; but as yet no one had seen or heard anything of him. It seemed he was a quiet, punctual, methodical sort of fellow, who had been working there for six years now. No one knew his wife Margaret very well, though it was common knowledge that she had a job in Oxford and took quite a bit of trouble over her clothes and her personal appearance. There were two handwritten letters from Bowman in the personnel file: one dating back to his first application to join the PO; the second concerning itself with his options under the PO pension provisions. Clearly there had been little or no calligraphic variance in Bowman's penmanship over the years, and here seemed further evidence — if any were required — that the letter Margaret Bowman had produced from her handbag that morning was genuinely in her husband's hand. Mr. Jeacock, the co-operative and neatly competent postmaster, could tell them little more; but, yes, he was perfectly happy for one of Bowman's colleagues to follow the police officers down into Oxford to look at the unidentified body.

'Let's hope to God it's not Tom!' he said as Morse and Lewis got up and left his small office.

'I honestly don't think you need to worry about that, sir,' said Morse.

As always, the cars coming up in the immediate rear had all decelerated to the statutory speed limit; and by the time the police car reached the dual carriageway just after Blenheim Palace, with Mr. Frederick Norris, sorter of Her Majesty's mail in Chipping Norton, immediately behind, there was an enormous tailback of vehicles. Morse, who had told Lewis to take things quietly, sat silent throughout the return journey, and Lewis too held his peace. At the bottom of the Woodstock Road he turned right into a narrow road at the Radcliffe Infirmary and stopped on an 'Ambulances Only' parking lot outside the mortuary to which the body found in the Haworth annexe had now been transferred. Norris got out of the car that pulled up behind them.

'You coming, sir?' asked Lewis.

But Morse shook his head.

Fred Norris stood stock-still for a few seconds, and then — somewhat to Lewis's bewilderment — nodded slowly, his own pallor only a degree less ghastly than the skin that backed the livid bruising of the murdered man's features. No words were spoken; but as the mortuary attendant replaced the white sheet, Lewis put a kindly, understanding hand on Norris's shoulder, and then gently urged him out of the grim building into the bright January air.

An ambulance had pulled in just ahead of the police car, and Lewis, as he stood fixing a time with Norris for an official statement, saw the ambulance driver unhurriedly get out and speak to one of the porters at the Accident entrance. From the general lack of urgency, Lewis gathered that the man was probably delivering some fussy octogenarian for her weekly dose of physiotherapy. But the back doors were suddenly opened to reveal the body of a woman covered in a red blanket, with only the shoeless stockinged feet protruding. Lewis's throat was dry as he walked past the police car, and saw Morse (the latter still unaware of the dramatic news that Lewis was about to impart) point to the back of the ambulance.

'Who is she?' asked Lewis as the two ambulance men prepared to fix the runners for the stretcher.