Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

But - yes, agreed! - Bloxham Drive and the surrounding streets was still an area a league and a league from the peaceful, leafy lanes of Gerrards Cross; and still the scene of some considerable crime.

Crime which now included murder...

The call had come through to Lewis at 8.40 a.m.

Just over one hour previously, whilst the sky was still unusually dark, Mrs Queenie Norris, from Number 11, had (as was her wont) taken out her eight-year-old Cavalier King Charles along the rear of the terrace, ignoring (as was her wont) the notices forbidding the fouling of pavements and verges. That was when she'd noticed it: noticed the cracked back window at Number 17 - yet failed to register too much surprise, since (as we have seen) vandalism there had become commonplace, and any missile, be it bottle or brick, would have left some similar traces of damage.

Back from her walk, Mrs Norris, as she was later to explain to the police, had felt increasingly uneasy. And just before the weather forecast on Radio 4, she had stepped out once again, now minus the duly defecated Samson, and seen that the light in the kitchen of Number 17 was still on, the blind still drawn down to the bottom of the casement

This time she had knocked quietly, then loudly, against the back door.

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COLIN DEXTER

But there had been no reply to her reiterated raps; and only then had she noticed that behind the hole in the kitchen window - immediately behind it - was a corresponding hole in the thin beige-brown material of the bund. It was at that point that she'd felt the horrid crawl of fear across her skin. Her near-neighbour worked in North Oxford, almost invariably leaving home at about a quarter to eight. And now it was coming up to the hour. Had reached the hour.

Something was wrong.

Something, Mrs Norris suspected, was seriously wrong; and she'd rung 999 immediately.

It had been ten minutes later when PCs Graham and Swift had finally forced an entry through the front door of the property to discover the grim truth awaiting them in the back kitchen: the body of a young woman lying dead upon her side, the right cheek resting on the cold red tiles, the light brown hair of her pony-tail soaked and stiffened in a pool of blood. Indeed it was not only the dreams of the two comparatively inexperienced constables, but also those of the hardened Scenes-of-Crime Officers, that would be haunted by the sight of so much blood; such a copious outpouring of blood.

And now it was Morse's turn.

'Oh dear,' said Lewis very quietly.

Morse said nothing, holding back (as ever) from any close inspection of a corpse, noting only the bullet wound, somewhere at the bottom of the neck, which clearly had been the cause of death, the cause of all the

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

blood. Yet (as ever, too) Morse, who had never owned a camera in his life, had already taken several mental flashes of his own.

It seemed logical to assume that die murder had occurred towards the end of a fairly conventional breakfast. On the side of a wooden kitchen table - the side nearest die window - a brown plastic-topped stool had been moved slightly askew. On die table itself was a plate, a small heap of salt sprinkled with pepper at its edge, on which lay a brown egg-shell beside a wooden egg-cup; and alongside, on a second plate, half a round of toasted brown bread, buttered, and amply spread from a jar of Frank Cooper's Oxford Marmalade. And one odier item: a white mug bearing die legend GREETINGS FROM GUERNSEY; bearing, too, die remains of some breakfast coffee, long since cold and muddily brown.

That was what Morse saw. And for die present diat was enough; he wished to be away from the dreadful scene.

Yet before he left, he forced himself to look once more at die woman who lay diere. She was wearing a white nightdress, widi a faded-pink floral motif, over which was a light blue dressing-gown, reaching about halfway down die shapely, slim, unstockinged legs. It was difficult to be sure about tilings, of course; but Morse suspected diat die twisted features of the face had been - until so very recendy - just as comely as die rest of her. And for a few seconds his own face twisted, too, as if in sympadiy widi die murdered woman lying at his feet

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COLIN DEXTER

The SOCOs had now arrived; and after brief, perfunctory greetings, Morse was glad to escape and leave them to it. Bidding Lewis to initiate some immediate house-to-house enquiries, on both sides of the street, he himself stepped out of the front door into Bloxham Drive, now the scene of considerable police activity, with checkered-capped officers, the flashing blue lights of their cars, and a cordon of blue-and-white tape being thrown round the murder-house. A knot of local inhabitants, too, stood whispering there, shivering occasionally in the early morning cold, yet determined to witness the course of events unfolding.

And the media.