'What was it about exactly?'
'University admissions. Arguing the toss about A-level requirements. We're not very popular with the Schools Council, you know. They think Oxford is the last bastion of academic elitism. Still, I suppose it is really. .' He had no chance to develop his theme. Lewis came in with Jennifer Coleby, and Crowther got to his feet.
'You two know each other?' asked Morse. There was not a hint of cynicism in his voice. Strangely, or so it seemed to Morse, Jennifer and Crowther shook hands. 'Good mornings' were exchanged, and Morse, a trifle nonplussed, poured two more coffees.
'You do know each other?' He sounded rather unsure of himself.
'We live fairly near each other, don't we, Mr. Crowther?'
'We do, yes. I've often seen you on the bus. It's Miss Coleby, I think, isn't it? You come round for the SPCC.'
Jennifer nodded.
Morse got up and passed the sugar basin round. He felt he couldn't sit still.
During the next few minutes Lewis was forced to wonder if the Inspector had lost his grip completely. He um'd and ah'd and said 'to be honest with you' and 'we have some reason to suppose' and finally managed to suggest to his pair of prime suspects, almost apologetically, that they might be having an affair with each other.
Jennifer laughed almost aloud and Bernard smiled shyly. It was Bernard who spoke first. 'I'm sure I feel very flattered, Inspector, and I very much wish perhaps that I was having some secret affair with Miss Coleby. But I'm afraid the answer's no. What else can I say?'
'Miss Coleby?'
'I think I have spoken to Mr. Crowther twice in my life — to ask him for a donation to the SPCC. I sometimes see him on the bus going into town — we get on and off at the same stops. But I think he always goes upstairs and I never do. I hate the smell of cigarettes.'
Morse, who was smoking his third cigarette, felt once more that he was getting the worst of things with Jennifer Coleby. He turned to Crowther.
'I must ask you this, sir. Please think very carefully before you answer, and remember that you are here in connection with a murder, the murder of the girl who was travelling in your car.' Morse saw a look of surprise on Jennifer's face. 'Was Miss Coleby here the other passenger you picked up that night?'
Bernard replied with an immediacy and conviction that sorely troubled Morse. 'No, Inspector, she wasn't. Of that you can be completely assured.'
'And you, Miss Coleby. Do you deny that you were the other passenger in Mr. Crowther's car?'
'Yes. I do deny it. Absolutely.'
Morse drained his coffee.
'Do you want us to sign anything, Inspector?' There was a deep cynicism in Jennifer's voice.
Morse shook his head. 'No. Sergeant Lewis has made notes on what you've both said. One more question though, Miss Coleby, if you don't mind. Can you give me the address of the friends you stayed with in London this weekend?'
Jennifer took a plain envelope from her handbag and wrote down an address in Lancaster Gardens. As an afterthought she added the telephone number, and handed the envelope to Morse.
They're lying — both of 'em,' said Morse when they had gone.
Crowther had to get to the centre of Oxford and had gallantly offered a lift to his fellow-suspect. Morse wondered what they would be talking about. Lewis had said nothing.
'Did you hear me?' Morse was angry.
'Yes, sir.'
'I said they're a pair of prize liars. LIARS.' Lewis remained silent. He thought the Inspector was wrong, terribly wrong. He himself was no stranger to interviewing liars and he had the firm conviction that both Crowther and Coleby were telling the plain truth.
Morse looked hard at his sergeant. 'Come on! Out with it!'
'What do you mean, sir?'
'What do I mean? You know what I mean. You think I'm up the bloody pole, don't you? You think
I'm going bonkers. You're willing to believe what everyone else says, but you don't believe me. Come on. Tell me! I want to know.'
Lewis was upset. He didn't know what to say, and Morse was losing the last remnants of his self-control, his eyes blazing and his voice growing vicious and deadly. 'Come on. You tell me. You heard what I said. I want to know!'
Lewis looked at him and saw the bitter failure in the Inspector's eyes. He wished he could put things right, but he couldn't. It had been the quality in him that from the start had endeared him to Morse. It was his basic honesty and integrity.
'I think you're wrong, sir.' It took a lot of saying, but he said it, and he deserved better than Morse's cruel rejoinder.
'You think I'm wrong? Well let me tell you something, Lewis. If anyone's wrong here, it's not me — it's you. Do you understand that? YOU — not me. If you've not got the nous to see that those two slimy toads are lying, lying to save their own necks, you shouldn't be on this case. Do you hear me? You shouldn't be on this case.'
Lewis felt a deep hurt; but not for himself. 'Perhaps you ought to have someone else with you, sir. On the case, I mean.'
'You may be right.' Morse was calming down a little and Lewis sensed it.
'There's this man Newlove, sir. Shouldn't we. .'
'Newlove? Who the hell's he?' Lewis had said the wrong thing, and Morse's latent anger and frustration rose to fever pitch again. 'Newlove? We've never heard of the bloody man before. All right — he's got a typewriter. That's not a sin, is it? He didn't write that letter. CROWTHER DID! And if you don't see that you must be blind as a bloody bat!'
'But don't you think. .'
'Oh, bugger off, Lewis. You're boring me.'
'Does that mean I'm off the case, sir?'
'I don't know. I don't care. Just bugger off and leave me alone.' Lewis went out and left him alone.
The phone rang a few minutes later. Morse picked the receiver up and closed his mind to everything. 'I'm not here,' he snapped, 'I've gone home.' He slammed down the receiver and sat brooding savagely within himself. He even forgot Sue. The last castle had finally collapsed. Having stood the flood so long, it was now a flattened heap of formless sand. But even as it fell a curious clarification was dawning across his mind. He got up from his leather chair, opened the cabinet and took out the file on Sylvia Kaye. He opened it at the beginning and was still reading it late into the afternoon, when the shadows crept across the room and he found it difficult to read, and a new and horrifying thought was taking birth in the depths of his tortured mind.
The dramatic news broke at a quarter-past seven. Margaret Crowther had committed suicide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Monday, 18 October
BERNARD CROWTHER, AFTER dropping Jennifer Coleby in the High, had been lucky in finding a parking space in Bear Lane. Not even the dons were permitted to park outside the college now. He had lunched in the Senior Common Room and spent the afternoon and early evening working. Both the children were away for a week on a school camping holiday in nearby Whitham Woods. On such ventures it was customary for the parents to visit their children on one evening during the week, but the young Crowthers had told their parents not to bother; and that was that. At least it would be a chance for Bernard and Margaret to have a few decent meals, instead of the inevitable chips and tomato sauce with everything.
Bernard left college at about twenty-past six. The roads were getting free again by now and he had an easy journey home. He let himself in with his Yale key and hung up his coat. Funny smell. Gas? 'Margaret?' He put his brief-case in the front room. 'Margaret?' He walked to the kitchen and found the door locked. 'Margaret!' He rattled the knob of the kitchen door, but it was firmly locked on the other side. He banged on the door. 'Margaret! Margaret! Are you there?' He could smell the gas more strongly now. His mouth went completely dry and there was wild panic in his voice. 'MARGARET!' He rushed back to the front door, through the side gate, and tried the back door. It was locked. He whimpered like a child. He looked into the kitchen through the large window above the sink. The electric light was on and for a fraction of a second a last ember of hope flared up, and glowed, and then was gone. The surrealistic sight that met his eyes was so strangely improbable that it registered itself blankly as a meaningless picture on the retina of his eyes — a sight without significance — a waxwork model, bright-eyed and brightly hued, with a fixed, staring smile. What was she doing sitting on the floor like that? Cleaning the oven?
He picked up a house-brick lying by the side of the wall, smashed a pane in the window, and cut his fingers badly as he reached for the catch and opened the window from the inside. The nauseating smell of gas hit him with an almost physical impact, and it was some seconds before, holding his handkerchief to his face, he climbed awkwardly in through the window and turned off the gas. Margaret's head was just inside the oven, resting on a soft red cushion. In a numbed, irrational way he thought he should put the cushion back where it came from; it was from the settee in the lounge. He looked down with shocked, zombie-like eyes at the jagged cuts on his hand and mechanically dabbed them with his handkerchief. He saw the sticky brown paper lining the gaps by the door-jambs and the window, and noticed that Margaret had cut the ends as neatly as she always did when she wrapped the children's birthday presents. The children! Thank God they were away! He saw the scissors on the formica top over the washing machine, and like an automaton he picked them up and put them in the drawer. The smell was infinitely sickly still, and he felt the vomit rising in his gorge. And now the horror of it all was gradually seeping into his mind, like a pool of ink into blotting paper. He knew that she was dead.