Margaret Bowman said nothing, although clearly the man had expected — hoped? — that she would make some comment.

  'You had plenty of things to occupy you, I suppose,' continued Lewis. 'Christmas shopping, cooking the mince pies, all that sort of thing?'

  'Plenty of shopping, yes.'

  'Summertown's getting a very good shopping centre. I hear.'

  'Very good; yes.'

  'And the Westgate down in the centre — they say that's very good, too.'

  'Yes. it is.'

  'Did you shop in Summertown here — or down in Oxford?'

  'I did all my shopping at home.'

  'You didn't come into Oxford at all, then?'

  Why was she hesitating? Was she lying? Or was she just thinking back over things to make sure?

  'No — I didn't.'

  'You didn't go to the hairdressers'?'

  Margaret Bowman's right hand went up to the top of her head, gently lifting a few strands of her not-so-recently-dyed-blonde hair, and she permitted herself a vague and tired-looking smile: 'Does it look like it?'

  No, it doesn't, thought Lewis. 'Do you go to any beauty salons, beauty clinics, you know the sort of thing I mean?'

  'No. Do you think I ought to?' Miraculously almost, she was feeling very much more at ease now, and she took a paper handkerchief from her black leather handbag and held it under her nose as she snuffled away some of the residual phlegm from a recent cold.

  For his own part, Lewis was conscious that his questioning was not yet making much progress. 'Does your husband work in Oxford?'

  'Look! Can you please give me some idea of why you're asking me all these things? Am I supposed to have done something wrong?'

  'We'll explain later, Mrs. Bowman. We're trying to make all sorts of important inquiries all over the place, and we're very glad of your co-operation. So, please, if you don't mind, just answer the questions for the minute, will you?'

  'He works in Chipping Norton.'

  'What work does he do?'

  'He's a postman.'

  'Did he have the same time off as you over Christmas?'

  'No. He was back at work on Boxing Day.'

  'You spent Christmas Day together?'

  'Yes.'

  'And you celebrated the New Year together?'

  The question had been put, and there was silence in the Secretary's office. Even Morse who had been watching a spider up in the far corner of the ceiling stopped tapping his lower teeth with a yellow pencil he had picked up, its point needle-sharp. How long was the well nigh unbearable silence going to last?

  It was the Secretary herself who suddenly spoke, in a quiet but firm voice: 'You must tell the police the truth, Margaret — it's far better that way. You didn't tell the truth just now — about being in Oxford, did you? We saw each other in the Westgate Car Park on New Year's Eve, you'll remember. We wished each other a Happy New Year.'

  Margaret Bowman nodded. 'Oh yes! Yes, I do remember now.' She turned to Lewis. 'I'm sorry, I'd forgotten. I did come in that Tuesday — I went to Sainsbury's.'

  'And then you went back and you spent the New Year at home with your husband?'

  'No!'

  Morse, whose eyes had still been following the little spider as it seemed to practise its eight-finger exercises, suddenly shifted in his chair and turned round fully to face the woman.

  'Where is your husband, Mrs. Bowman?' They were the first six words he had spoken to her, and (as events were to work themselves out) they were to be the last six. But Margaret Bowman made no direct answer. Instead, she unfastened her bag, drew out a folded sheet of paper and handed it over to Lewis. It read as follows:

  31st December

  Dear Maggie

  You've gone into Oxford and I'm here sitting at home. You will be upset and disappointed I know but please try and understand. I met another woman two months ago and I knew straightaway that I liked her a lot. I've just got to work things out that's all. Please give me that chance and don't think badly of me. I've decided that if we can go away for a few days or so we can sort things out. You are going to want to know if I love this woman and I don't know yet and she doesn't know either. She is not married and she is thirty one. We are going in her car up to Scotland if the roads are alright. Nobody else need know anything. I got a week off work quite officially though I didn't tell you. I know what you will feel like but it will be better for me to sort things out.

  Tom

  Lewis read through the letter quickly — and then looked at Mrs. Bowman. Was there — did he notice — just a brief flash of triumph in her eyes? Or could it have been a glint of fear? He couldn't be sure, but the interview had obviously taken a totally unexpected turn, and he would have welcomed at that point a guiding hand from Morse. But the latter still appeared to be perusing the letter with inordinate interest.

  'You found this note when you got back home?' asked Lewis.

  She nodded. 'On the kitchen table.'

  'Do you know this woman he mentions?'

  'No.'

  'You've not heard from your husband?'

  'No.'

  'He's taking a long time to, er "sort things out".'

  'Has — has my husband had an accident — a car accident? Is that why—'

  'Not so far as we know, Mrs. Bowman.'

  'Is that — is that all you want me for?'

  'For the minute, perhaps. We shall have to keep the letter — I'm sure you'll understand why.'

  'No, I don't understand why!'

  'Well, it might not be from your husband at all — have you thought of that?' asked Lewis slowly.

  'Course it's from him!' As she spoke these few words, she sounded suddenly sharp and almost crude after her earlier quietly civilized manner, and Lewis found himself wondering several things about her.

  'Can you be sure about that, Mrs. Bowman?'

  'I'd know his writing anywhere.'

  'Have you got any more of his writing with you?'

  'I've got the very first letter he wrote me — years ago.'

  'Can you show it to us, please?'

  From her handbag she brought out an envelope, much soiled, drew from it a letter, much creased, and handed it to Lewis, who cursorily compared the two samples of handwriting, and pushed them along the desk to Morse — the latter nodding slowly after a few moments: it seemed to him that by amateur and professional experts alike, the writing would pretty certainly be adjudged identical.

  'Can I please go now?'

  Lewis wasn't at all sure whether or not this oddly unsatisfactory interview should be temporarily terminated, and he turned to Morse — receiving only a non-committal shrug.

  So it was that Margaret Bowman left the office, exhorted in a kindly way by the Secretary to get herself another cup of coffee from the canteen, and to be ready to come down again if the police needed her for further questioning.

  'We're sorry to have taken so much of your time, Miss Gibson,' said Morse after Mrs. Bowman had left. 'And if we could have a room for an hour or so we'd be most grateful.'

  'You can stay here if you like, Inspector. There are a good many things I've got to see to round the office.'

  'What do you make of all that, sir?' asked Lewis when they were alone.

  'We haven't got a thing to charge her with, have we? We can't take her in just for forgetting she bought a pound of sausages from Sainsbury's.'

  'We're not getting far, are we, sir? It's all a bit disappointing.'

  'What? Disappointing? Far from it! We've just been looking at things from the wrong end, Lewis, that's all.'

  'Really?'

  'Oh yes. And we owe a lot to Mrs. Bowman — it was about time somebody put me on the right track!'

  'You think she was telling the truth?'

  'Truth?' Morse shook his head. 'I didn't believe a word of her story, did you?'

  'I don't know, sir. I feel very confused.'

  'Confused? Surely not!' He turned to Lewis and put the yellow pencil down on the Secretary's desk. 'Do you want to know what happened in Annexe 3 on New Year's Eve?'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Monday, January 6th: A.M.

  It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

  (PUBLILIUS SYRUS)

  'LET ME EXPLAIN one thing from the start. I just said we've been looking at things from the wrong end and I mean just that. Max gave us a big enough margin for the time of death, and instead of listening to him I kept trying to pin him down. Even now it's taken a woman's pack of lies to put me on the right track, because the most important thing about Mrs. Bowman is that she was forced to show us the letter, supposedly from her husband, to give herself a reasonable alibi. It was the last shot in her locker; and she had no option but to use it, because we were getting — we are getting! — dangerously close to the truth. And I just said "supposedly from her husband" — but that's not the case: it was from her husband, you can be certain of that. Everything fits, you see, once you turn the pattern upside down. The man in Annexe 3 wasn't murdered after the party: he was murdered before the party. Let's just assume that Margaret Bowman has been unfaithful, and let's assume that she gets deeply involved with this lover of hers, and that he threatens to blackmail her in some way if she doesn't agree to see him again — threatens to tell her husband — to cut his own throat — to cut her throat — anything you like. Let's say, too, that the husband, Tom Bowman, deliverer of Her Majesty's mail at Chipping Norton, finds out about all this — let's say that he intercepts a letter; or, more likely, I think, she's desperate enough to tell him all about it — because there must have been some sort of reconciliation between them. Together, they decide that something has got to be done to get rid of the threat that now affects both of them; and at that point, as I see it, the plot was hatched. They book a double room for a New Year break at a hotel, using a non-existent accommodation address so that later on no one will be able to trace them; and Tom Bowman is exactly the person to cope with that problem — none better. So things really start moving. Margaret Bowman tells this dangerous and persistent lover of hers — let's call him Mr. X — that she can spend the New Year with him. He's a single man; he's head over heels about her; and now he's over the moon, too! He thought she'd ditched him. But here she is offering to spend a couple of whole days with him. She's taken the initiative; she's fixed it all up; she's booked the hotel; she wants him! She's even told him — and she must have expected he'd agree — that she'll provide the fancy-dress costumes they're going to wear at the New Year party. She tells him to be ready, let's say, from four o'clock on the 31st. She herself probably books in under her false name and a false address an hour or so earlier, but a bit later than most of the other guests. She wants to be seen by as few of the others as possible, but she's still got to give herself plenty of time. She finds herself alone at the reception desk, she turns up her coat and pulls her scarf around her face, she signs the form, she takes the room key, she takes her suitcase over to Annexe 3—and all is ready. She rings up X from the public phone-box just outside the hotel, tells him what their room number is, and he's on his way like a shot. And while the rest of the guests are playing Cluedo, he's spending the rest of that late afternoon and early evening with his bottom on the top sheet, as they say. Then, when most of the passion's spent itself, she tells him that they'd better start dressing up for the party; she shows him what she's brought for the pair of them to wear; and about 7 p.m. the pair of them are ready: she rubs a final bit of stage-black on his hands — makes some excuse about leaving her purse or her umbrella at Reception — says she'll be back in a minute — takes the key with her — pulls her mackintosh over her costume — and goes out bang on the stroke of seven. Tom Bowman, himself dressed in exactly the same sort of outfit as X, has been waiting for her, somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the hotel; and while Margaret Bowman spends the most nerve-racking few minutes of her life, probably in the bus shelter just across from the hotel, Tom Bowman lets himself into Annexe 3.

  'Exactly what happened then, we don't know — and we may never know. But very soon the Bowmans are playing out the rest of the evening as best they can — pretending to eat, pretending to be lovey-dovey with each other, pretending to enjoy the festivities. There's little enough chance of them being recognized, anyway: she's hiding behind her yashmak, and he's hiding behind a coat of dark greasepaint. But they both want to be seen going into the annexe after the party's over, and in fact Tom Bowman performs his role with a bit of panache. He waits for the two other women he knows are lodged in the annexe, throws an arm across their shoulders — incidentally ruining their coats with his greasy hands — and gives the impression to all and sundry that he's about to hit the hay. As it happens, Binyon was bringing up the rear — pretty close behind them. But the lock on the side door is only a Yale; and after Binyon had made sure all was well, the Bowmans slipped out quietly into the winter's night. They went down and got their car from the Westgate — or wherever it was parked — and Tom Bowman dropped Margaret back to Charlbury Drive, where she'd left the lights on anyway so that the neighbours would assume she was celebrating the New Year. And then Bowman himself took off into the night somewhere so that if ever the need arose he could establish an alibi for himself up in Inverness or wherever he found himself the next morning, leaving Margaret the pre-planned note about his fictitious girlfriend. And that's about it, Lewis! That's about what happened, as far as I can make out.'

  Lewis himself had listened with great interest, and without interruption, to what Morse had said. And although, apart from the time of the murder, it wasn't a particularly startling analysis, it was just the sort of self-consistent hypothesis that Lewis had come to expect from the chief inspector, bringing together, as it did, into one coherent scheme all the apparently inconsistent clues and puzzling testimony. But there were one or two weaknesses in Morse's argument: at least as Lewis saw things.

  'You said they spent the afternoon in bed, sir. But we didn't, to be honest, find much sign of anything like that, did we?'

  'Perhaps they performed on the floor — I don't know. I was just telling you what probably happened.'

  'What about the maid, sir — Mandy, wasn't it? Doesn't someone usually come along about seven o'clock or so and turn down the counterpane—'

  'Counterpane? Lewis! You're still living in the nineteenth century. And this wasn't the Waldorf Astoria, you know.'

  'Bit of a risk, though, sir — somebody coming in and finding—'

  'They were short-staffed, Lewis — you know that.'

  'But the Bowmans didn't know that!'

  Morse nodded. 'No-o. But they could have hung one of those "Do Not Disturb" signs on the door. In fact, they did.'

  'Bit risky, though, hanging out a sign like that if you're supposed to be at a party.'

  'Lewis! Don't you understand? They were taking risks the whole bloody time.'

  As always when Morse blustered on in such fashion, Lewis knew that it was best not to push things overmuch. Obviously, what Morse had said was true; but Lewis felt that some of the explanations he was receiving were far from satisfactory.

  'If, as you say, sir. Bowman was dressed up, all ready to go, in exactly the same sort of clothes as the other fellow, where was he—?'

  'Where? I dunno. But I'm sure all he had to do was put a few finishing touches to things.'

  'Do you think he did that in Annexe 3?'

  'Possibly. Or he could have used the Gents' just off Reception.'

  'Wouldn't Miss Jonstone have seen him?'

  'How am I supposed to know? Shall we ask her, Lewis? Shall I ask her? Or what about you asking her — you're asking me enough bloody questions.'

  'It's only because I can't quite understand things, that's all, sir.'.

  'You think I've got it all wrong, don't you?' said Morse quietly.

  'No! I'm pretty sure you're on the right lines, sir, but it doesn't all quite hang together, does it?'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Monday, January 6th: A.M.

  What is the use of running when we are not on the right road?

  (GERMAN PROVERB)

  THERE WAS A KNOCK on the door and Judith, the slimly attractive personal assistant to the Secretary, entered with a tray of coffee and biscuits.

  'Miss Gibson thought you might like some refreshment.' She put the tray on the desk. 'If you want her, she's with the Deputy — the internal number's 208.'

  'We don't get such VIP treatment up at HQ,' commented Lewis after she'd left.

  'Well, they're a more civilized lot here, aren't they? Nice sort of people. Wouldn't harm a fly, most of them.'

 

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