The Secret of Annexe 3

people ' would — if she was a little bit older than he was: let's say, six months or a year, perhaps. Now, Margaret Bowman — I've found out, sir — was thirty-six last September. So let's put our prime suspect in the thirty-five age- bracket then, all right?' (Lewis could recall few occasions on which he had seemed to be speaking with such fluent authority.) 'Then there's a third point, sir. He asks her to meet him outside the library at ten minutes to one — so he must know it takes about five minutes for her to get there from the Locals — and five minutes to get back. That leaves us with fifty minutes from the hour they're given at the Locals for a lunch-break. But he mentions 'forty minutes': so, as I see things' (how happy Lewis felt!) 'he must live only about five minutes' drive away from South Parade. I don't think they just went to a pub and held hands, sir. I think, too, that this fellow probably lives on the west side of Oxford — let's say off the Woodstock Road somewhere — because Summertown Library would be a bit of a roundabout place to pick her up if he lived on the east side, especially with such a little time they've got together.'

Morse had nodded agreement at several points during this exposition; and had been on the point of congratulating his sergeant when Lewis resumed — still in full spate.

'Now if we add these new facts to what we've already discovered, sir, I reckon we're not all that far off from knowing exactly who he is. We can be far more precise about where he lives — within five minutes' drive, at the outside, from Summertown; and we can be far more precise about his age — pretty certainly thirty-four or thirty- five. So if we had a computerized file on everybody, I think we could spot our man straight away. But there's something else — something perhaps much more helpful than a computer, sir: that night-school class! It won't be difficult to trace the people in Mrs. Bowman's class; and I'd like to bet we shall find somebody who had a vague sort of inkling about what Margaret Bowman was up to. Seems to me a good line of inquiry; and I can get on with it straight away if you agree.'

Morse was silent for a little while before replying. 'Yes, I think I do agree.'

Yet Lewis was conscious of a deeper undercurrent in Morse's tone: something was worrying the chief, pretty surely so.

'What's the matter, sir?'

'Matter? Nothing's the matter. It's just that — well, tell me what you make of that letter as a whole, Lewis. What sort of man is he, do you think?'

'Bit of mixture, I'd say. Sounds as if he's genuinely fond of the woman, doesn't it? At the same time it sounds as if he's got quite a cruel streak in him — bit of a coarse streak, too. As if he loved her — but always in a selfish sort of way: as if perhaps he might be prepared to do anything just to keep her.'

Morse nodded. 'I'm sure you're right. I think he was prepared to do almost anything to keep her.'

'Have you got any idea of what really happened?' asked Lewis quietly.

'Yes! — for what it's worth, I have. Clearly Bowman found this letter somewhere, and he realized that his wife was going with another fellow. I suspect he told her what he knew and gave her an ultimatum. Most men perhaps would have accepted the facts and called it a day — however much it hurt. But Bowman didn't! He loved his wife more than she could ever have known, and his first instinctive reactions mustered themselves — not against his wife—but against her lover. He probably told her all this, in his own vague way; and I think he decided that the best way to help Margaret and, at the same time, to save his own deeply injured pride, was to get rid of her lover! We've been on a lot of cases together, Lewis — with lots of people involved; but I don't reckon the motives are ever all that different — love, hate, jealousy, revenge. . Anyway, I think that Bowman got his wife to agree to collaborate with him in a plot to get rid of the man who — at least for the moment — was a threat to both of them. What exactly that plan involved, we may never know — unless Margaret Bowman decides to tell us. The only firm thing we know about it so far is that Bowman himself wrote a wholly genuine letter which would rather cleverly serve two purposes when lover-boy was found murdered — that is, if any suspicion were ever likely to fall on either of the Bowmans: first, it would put Margaret Bowman in a wholly sympathetic light; second, it would appear to put Tom Bowman some few hundreds of miles away from the scene of the immediate crime.'

'Didn't we know most of that already—'

'Let me finish, Lewis! At some particular point — I don't know when—the plan was switched, and it was switched by the only person who could switch it — by Margaret Bowman, who decided that if she had to take a profoundly important decision about life (as she did!) she would rather throw in her lot with her illicit lover than with her licit husband. Is that clear? Forget the details for the minute, Lewis! The key thing to bear in mind is this: instead of having a plot involving the death of a troublesome lover, we have a plot involving the death of an interfering husband!'

'You don't think the letter helps much at all, then?' Lewis's initial euphoria slipped a notch or two towards his wonted diffidence.

'My goodness, yes! And your own reading of that letter was a model of logic and lucidity! But. .'

Lewis's heart sank. He knew what Morse was going to say, and he said it for him. 'But you mean I missed some vital clue in it — is that right?'

Morse waited awhile, and then smiled with what he trusted was sympathetic understanding: 'No, Lewis. You didn't miss one vital clue, at all. You missed two.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Tuesday, January 7th: P.M.

Small>Stand on the highest pavement

of the stair—

Lean on a garden urn—

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair

(T. S. ELIOT)

'APART FROM YOUR own admirable deductions, Lewis, there are, as I say, a couple of other things you could have noticed, perhaps. First' (Morse turned to the letter and found the appropriate reference) 'he says, 'You remember how careful I always was and how none of your colleagues ever knew'. Now that statement's very revealing. It suggests that this fellow could have been very careless about meeting Margaret Bowman; careless in the sense that, if he'd wanted to, he could easily have made Margaret's colleagues aware of what was going on between them — pretty certainly by others actually seeing