Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

murdered the woman.  Disbelief?  Shock?  Outrage?  All three mixed together,

like a cocktail .  .  .  like a cocktail topped up with a little chilled

jealousy.

Simon appeared at 7.  48.  Like his father, not looking particularly in love

with life.

"You're both early?"  he ventured, as he took his seat.

"Seven- fifty, wasn't it?"

"Forget it!"  His father passed over a menu.

"I could do with a drink first, Dad."

"Just read the question-paper!"

Simon looked down at the succulent-sounding selections: To Start.  To

Continue .  .  .  Dessert.  .  .  Beverages and felt a little happier, until

Harrison pere, brusquely ruling out starters, called over the waiter and put

in their order for the main courses: Guinea Fowl; Calves' Liver; Steak

(medium).

"And a bottle of some decent Claret."

"Just one?"  queried Simon.

"Three of us?"

"Sarah's driving."

"Aren't you driving.  Dad?"  asked Sarah.

"I don't really need my daughter to tell me what I can drink, thank you very

much."

Sarah put down her menu and stood up slowly.

"Excuse me a minute!  I'm just off to .  .  ."

But before making her way to the Ladies' Powder Room, Sarah Harrison stopped

at Reception.

"Can I ring one of your guests from here?"

"Of course."  The young girl smiled.  Just ring the room number.  " She

pointed to the phone at the side of the desk.

"The name's Harrison F.  Harrison."

"The receptionist tapped a few keys and looked at her video- screen.

Yes.  That's right.  "

"Can you just give me the room number?"

"I'm sorry.  I can't do that.  It's strict company policy ' " I'm his

daughter, for God's sake!  "

"Just a minute!"  The girl moved away and the phone on the desk sprang to

life when she returned: "All yours."

Sarah picked up the phone and listened, wondering what on earth she was going

to say.  But she needn't have bothered.

"Helloho."  It was a female, husky, transatlantic voice.

Sarah put down the phone, a sudden glint of fury in her eyes.

She returned to the table to find father and brother, heads close together,

in what seemed a significant conversation.  But there the exchanges stopped

whether because of her own return or the contemporaneous arrival of the main

courses, Sarah was uncertain.

Thereafter the food was appreciatively consumed, the few trans mensal

exchanges wholly mundane and perfunctory, the bottle of Claret rapidly going

and going and soon wholly gone.

"Another bottle.  Dad?"  suggested Simon.

"No!"

"I came on the bus- I'm going back on the bus."

"But Dad's got to drive back to London, remember?  Anyway I thought we were

all supposed to keep sober tonight.  Isn't that why we're here?"

"It was, yes.  Just keep your voice down, will you?  And read this.

Simon's already seen it.  Pretty quick off the mark, some of these local

reporters.  "

Sarah looked down at the copy of the Oxford Mail passed across to her, the

lower half of the back page folded over to show the latest news column:

Thousands of families evacuated as Hurricane Georges lashes Florida Keys with

torrential downpours and winds of over 120 m.  p.  h.

Huge tailback on A40 as lorry carrying thousands of gallons of cows' blood

overturns near Eynsham Local builder John Ban-on of Lower Swinstead

pronounced dead on arrival at JR2 after falling from ladder in Sheep Street,

Burford 220

chapter forty-seven Different things can add up in different

ways whilst reaching an identical solution, just as 'eleven plus two forms an

anagram of 'twelve plus one' (Margot Gleave, A Classical Education) A wealth

of police personnel and well-targeted enquiries had borne swift if, here and

there, unexpected evidence evidence which Sergeant Lewis (alone in his office

late that Monday evening) was able to shift and to categorize at his own

pace.  Thus far, the facts, and the glosses on the facts, formulated

themselves as follows in Lewis's mind: First.  The shiny orange-red Stanley

knife had been purchased, together with other items, from a hardware shop in

Burford on the Saturday of the previous week (receipt unearthed in Barren's

Expenses File).  Barren could still have been a murderer of course, he could!

- but quite certainly not with the knife he'd used that same morning as he

stood almost atop the topmost section of the ladder and twisted the blade

into the rotting, unresisting sill of the dormer window in Sheep Street.

Second.  The stains on the overalls Ban-on had been wearing that morning had

quite certainly not been human blood; but almost certainly smears of paint

patented under the brand- name Cremosin, two-pint tins of which were found in

Barren's garage, a space now used exclusively for building and decorating

materials.

 Third.  On the morning of the Friday when Flynn and Repp had been murdered,

Barron had left home around his usual time to spend some of the morning in

Thame, where two properties were inviting tenders for renovation, for which

Barron had been keen to submit his own estimates.  Necessarily of course,

this evidence had been taken from Barren's wife, Linda; and yet (already) a

dated parking ticket for four hours that morning (South Oxon DC, Cattle