Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

discussion there was one further almighty row; and this time it was Repp who

had his innards ripped open.  "

"You know who this " third" man was, you're saying?"

"So do you.  We mentioned him when you produced that admirable schema of

yours for the night of Yvonne murder."

"You're saying there was somebody else there that night?"

"There was always somebody else, Lewis, wasn't there?  The man in bed with

Yvonne Harrison."

"If you say so, sir."

"You see, the major problem our lads had was the timing of the murder.  Her

body wasn't examined until several hours later, and all the pathological

guesswork had to be married with the evidence gleaned at the time, or gleaned

later.  For example, with the fact that someone was in bed with Yvonne at

some specific time that night, although nobody really tried to discover who

that person was until I did.  For example, again,

with the fact that someone had tried to ring her twice that night, at 9 p.

m.  when the line was engaged, and again half an hour later when the phone

rang unanswered.  And if you add all this together, you'll find that the

person who sorely misled the police, the person who was in bed with her, and

the person who murdered both Paddy Flynn and Harry Repp was one and the same

man.  "

There fell a silence between the two of them, broken finally by Lewis.

"You're sure about all this?"

"Only ninety-five per cent sure."

"We'd better get our skates on then."

"Hold your horses!  One or two things I'd like you to check first, just to

make it one hundred per cent."

"So we've got a little while?"

"Oh, yes.  No danger of anyone murdering him- not today, anyway.  So this

afternoon'll be fine.  Get out to Lower Swinstead take someone with you,

mind!  - and bring him back here.  OK" ' "Fine.  Only one thing, sir.  You

forgot to tell me his name."

"Did I?  Well, you've guessed it anyway.  He's got a little business out

there, hasn't he?  A little building business.

"J.  Barren, Builder" , as it says on his van.  "

FR1;chapter forty-one But when he once attains the utmost round, He then

unto the ladder turns his hack, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base dimes

By which he did ascend (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) twenty miles west of

Oxford, twenty miles east of Cheltenham, lies the little Cotswold town of

Burford.  It owes its architectural attractiveness to the wealth of the wool-

merchants in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and up until the end of

the eighteenth century the small community there continued to thrive,

especially the coaching inns which regularly served the E-W travel.  But the

town was no longer expanding, with the final blow delivered in 1812, when the

main London road, which crossed the High Street (the present-day Sheep Street

and Witney Street), was rerouted to the southern side of the town (the

present-day A40).  But Burford remains an enchanting place, as summer

tourists will happily testify as they turn off at the A40 roundabout.

Picturesque tea shops, craft shops, public houses all built in the locally

quarried, pale- honey-coloured limestone line the steeply curving sweep of

the High Street that leads to the bridge at the bottom of the hill, under

which runs the River Windrush, with all the birds and the bright meadows and

corn fields around Oxfordshire.

Mrs Patricia Bayley, aged seventy, had lived for only three years in Sheep

Street {vide supra), a pleasingly peaceful, tree

lined road, first left as one descended the hill.  The house-date, 1687, had

been carved (now almost illegibly) in the greyish and pitted stone above the

front door of the three-storeyed, mullion-windowed building.  Her husband, a

distinguished anthropologist from University College, Oxford, had died (aged

sixty-seven) only two months after his retirement; and only four months after

buying the Sheep Street property.  Often, since then, she had considered

leaving the house and buying one of the older-persons' flats that had been

springing up for the last decade all over North Oxford, for her present house

was unnecessarily extensive and inappropriate for her solitary needs.  Yet

the children and the grandchildren (especially the latter) loved to stay

there with her and to find themselves lost amid the random rooms.  Only one

real problem: she'd have to do something about the windows.  There could be

no Council permission for replacement windows; but the casements were quite

literally falling apart.  And the whole of the exterior just had to be

repainted, from the gutterings along the top to the front door at the bottom.

Should she get it all done?  Three weeks earlier she'd stood and surveyed

the scene.  Could she ever find anywhere else so pleasingly attractive as

this?

No!  She'd stay.

She'd consulted the Yellow Pages and found Barron, J, Builder and Decorator;

not so far away, either at Lower Swinstead.  She'd rung him and he'd called

round to survey the job.  He'd seemed a personable sort of fellow; and when

he'd quoted a reasonable (if slightly steep) estimate for both the

restructuring and the repainting, she'd accepted.