Death Is Now My Neighbour (38 page)

'Not much,' admitted Morse as he sought to rise from his deep, low chair. 'I've only been diagnosed a week.'

'Please don't get up!' It sounded more an order than a request.

She took a seat next to her husband on the sofa. 'I've had diabetes for ten years myself. But you'll learn soon enough. You see, one of the biggest dangers for insulin-dependent diabetics is not, as you might expect, excessively high levels of blood sugar, but excessively
low
levels: hypoglycaemia, it's called. Are you on insulin yourself?'

Yes, and they did try to tell me something about—' 'You're asking about last weekend. Let me tell you. On Saturday evening my blood sugar was low -
very
low; and when Julian asked me about breakfast I decided to play things safe. I did have some glucose with me; but I was still low on Sunday morning. And if it's of any interest, I thoroughly enjoyed my sugary breakfast A rare treat!'

The drinks had arrived.

'Look!' she continued, once the waiter had asked for her husband's signature on the bill. 'Let me be honest with you. Julian has just told me why you're here. He'd already told me about everything else anyway: about his ridiculous affair with that young Rachel woman; about that slimy specimen Owens.'

'Did you hate him enough to murder him?'

'I
did,' interrupted Storrs veheme
ntly
. 'God rot his soul!'

'And about this Mastership business?' Morse looked from one to the other. 'You were in that together?'

It was Julian Storrs who answered. Yes, we were. I told Angela
the
truth immediately, about my illness, and we agreed to cover it all up. You see' (suddenly he was look
ing very ti
red) 'I wanted it so much. I wanted it more than anything - didn't I, Angela?'

She smiled, and ge
ntly
la
id her own hand over his. 'And I
did too,Julian.'

Morse drained his whisky, and thirsted for another.

'Mrs Storrs, I'm going to ask you a very
blunt questi
on - and you must forgive me, because that's my job. What would you say if I told you that you didn't sleep with your husband last Saturday night - that you slept with another man?'

She smiled again; and for a few moments the angularity of her face had softened into
the
lineaments of a much younger woman.

'I'd just hope he was a good lover.'

'But you'd deny it?'

'A childish accusati
on like that? It's hardly worth denying!'

Morse turned to Storrs. 'And you, sir? What would you say if I told you that
you
didn't sleep with your wife last Saturday night - that you slept with another woman?'

'I'd just hope
she was
a good lover, I suppose.'

'But you'd deny it, too?'

'Of course.'

'Anything
else you
want to check?' asked Angela Storrs. 'Well, just the one thing really, because I'm still not quite sure that I've got it right' Morse took a deep breath, and exhaled rather noisily. "You say you came here w
ith your husband in his BMW, lati
sh last Saturday afternoon - stayed here together overnight - then drove straight back to Oxford together the next morning. Is
that
right, Mrs Storrs?'

'Not quite, no. We drove back via Cirencester and Burford. In fact, we had a bite of lunch at a pub in Burford and we had a look in two or three antiques shops there. I nearly bought a silver toast-rack, but Julian thought it was grossly overpriced.'

'I see
...
I see
...
In that case, it's about time we told you something else,' said Morse slowly. 'Don't you think so, Sergeant Lewis?'

'Is this a question?'

(from an Oxford entrance examination)

'If it is, this could be an answer.' (one candidate's reply)

Apart from
themselves and the two men still drinking coffee, the large lounge was now empty.

'Perhaps we could all do with another drink?' It was Morse's suggestion.

'Not for me,' said Angela Storrs.

'I'm all right, thank you,' said Julian Storrs.

'Still finishing this one,' said Lewis.

Morse felt for the cellophaned packet; and almost fell. He stared for a while out of the windows: heavy rain now, through which
a hotel guest occasionally scuttl
ed across to the Dower House, head and face wholly indistinguishable beneath one of the gay umbrellas. How easy it was to hide when it was raining!

Almost relucta
ntly
, it seemed, Morse made the penultimate revelation:

'There was someone else staying here last Saturday night, someone I think both of you know. She was staying - yes, it was a woman! - in the main part of the hotel, across there in Room fifteen. That woman was Dawn Charles, the receptionist at the Harvey Clinic in Banbury Road.'

Storrs turned to his wife. 'Good heavens! Did you realize that, darling?'

'Don't be silly! I don't even
know the
woman.'

'It's an extraordinarily odd coincidence, though,' persisted Morse. 'Don't you think so?'

'Of course it's odd,' replied Angela Storrs.
'All
coincidences are odd - by definition! But life's full of coincidences.'

(Lewis smiled inwardly. How often had he heard those self
-
same words from Morse.)

'But this
wasn't
a coincidence, Mrs Storrs.'

It was Julian Storrs who broke the awkward, ominous silence that had fallen on the group.

'I don't know what that's supposed to mean. All I'm saying is
that
I
didn't see her. Perhaps she's a Faure fan herself and came for the Abbey concert like we did. You'll have to ask
her,
surely?'

'If we do,' said Morse simply, confide
ntly
, 'it won't be long before we learn the truth. She's not such a competent liar as you are, sir - as the
pair
of
you are!'

The atmosphere had become almost dangerously tense as Storrs got to his feet 'I am
not
going to sit here one minute longer and listen—'

'Sit down!' said his wife, with an authority so assertive that one of the coffee-drinkers turned his head briefly in her direction as Morse continued:

You both deny seeing Miss Charles whilst she was here?' Yes.' Yes.'

'Thank you. Sergeant? Please?'

Lewis re-opened his notebook, and addressed Mrs Storrs dire
ctly
:

'So it couldn't possibly have been you, madam, who filled a car with petrol at Burford on that Saturday afternoon?'

'Last
Saturday? Certainly not!' She almost spat the words at her new interlocutor.

But Lewis appeared completely unabashed. 'Have you lost your credit card rece
ntly
?'

'Why do you ask that?'

'Because someone made a good job of signing your name, that's all. For twelve pounds of Unleaded Premium at the Burford Garage on the
A40
at about three o'clock last Saturday.'

'What exa
ctly
are you suggesting?' The voice sounded menacingly calm.

'I'm suggesting that you drove here to Bath that day in your own car, madam—'

But she had risen to her feet herself now.

You were right, Julian. We are
not
going to sit here a second longer. Come along!'

But she got no further than the exit, where two men stood barring her way: two dark-suited men who had been sitting for so long beneath the portrait of the bland Lord Ellmore.

She turned round, her nostrils flaring, her wide naked eyes now blazing with fury; and perhaps (as Morse saw them) with hatred, too, and despair.

But she said nothing further, as Lewis walked qui
etly
towards her.

'Angela Miriam Storrs, it is my duty as a police officer to arrest you on the charge of murder. The murder of Geoffrey Gordon Owens, on Sunday, the third of March
1996.
It is also my duty to warn you that anything you now say may be taken down in writing and used in evidence at any future hearing.'

She stood where she was; and still said nothing.

Chief Inspector Morse, too, stood where
he
was, wondering whether his sergeant had got the wording quite right, as Detective Inspector Briggs and Detective Constable Bott, both of the Avon CID, led Angela Miriam Storrs away.

Twas th
e first and last time that I'd e
ver known women to use the pistol. They fear the shot as a rule, but Di'monds-an'-Pearls she did not — she did not

(Rudyard Kipling,
Love-o'-Women)

(Being the
tape-recorded statement made by Angela Storrs at Thames Valley Police
HQ,
Kidlington, Oxon, on the morning of
11
March,
1996;
transcribed by Detective Sergeant Lewis; and subseque
ntly
amended -for minor orthographic and punctuational vagaries - by Detective Chief Inspector Morse.)

I murdered both of them, Rachel James and Geoffrey Owens. I'm a bit sorry about Rachel.

I was seventeen when I first started working as a stripper in Soho and then as a prostitute and in some porno flicks. Julian Storrs came along several times to the club where I was performing seven or eight times a night, and he arranged to see me, and we had sex a few times in the West End. He was a selfish sod as I knew from the start, especially in those early days, as far as I w
as concerned. Which was fine by
me. He was obsessively jealous about other men and this was something I wasn't used to. He wanted me body and soul, he said, and soon he asked me to marry him. Which was fine by me too.

I came from no family at all to speak of, but Julian came from a posh family and he had plenty of money. And he was a don at Oxford University and my mum was proud of me. She just wanted me to be somebody important like she'd never been.

I was unfaithful a few times after a few years, especially with some of the other dons who were about as pathetic as the old boys in the Soho basement who used to stick the odd fiver up your panties.

I enjoyed life at Oxford. But nobody took to me all that much. I wasn't quite in the same bracket as the others and I used to feel awkward when they asked me about where I'd been to university and all that jazz, because I couldn't even pretend I was one of them. I wanted to be one of them, though - God knows why! Ours wasn't a tight marriage even from the start. It wasn't too long before Julian was off with other women, and soon, as I say, I was off with other men. Including the Master. He needs his sheets changing every day, that man, like they do in the posh hotels. But he was going at last and that started things really, or is it finished things? Julian desperately wanted to be Master and only one person wanted that more than he did. Me!

In London I'd lived
a dodgy, dangerous sort of life
like any woman on the sex-circuit does. I'd been mauled about quite a few times, and raped twice, once by a white and once by a black, so I can't be accused of racial prejudice. One of the other girls had a water-pistol that fired gentian-blue dye over anybody trying it on. I don't know why it was that colour but I always remember it from the paint-box I had when I was a little girl, next to burnt Siena and crimson Lake. But Julian had something far better than that. He'd kept a pistol from his Army days and after I had a bit of trouble late one Saturday night in Cornmarket with some football thugs, he said he didn't mind me carrying it around sometimes if it made me feel better. Which it did. I had a new-found sense of confidence, and one weekend Julian took me with some of his TA friends out to the shooting-range on Otmoor and for the first time ever I actually fired a pistol. I was surprised how difficult it was, with the way it jerked back and upwards, but I managed it and I loved it. After that I got used to carrying it around with me - loaded! - when I was out alone late at night. I felt a great sense of power when I held it.

Then came our big opportunity. Julian was always going to be a good bet for the Master's job, and we only had Cornford to beat. I always quite liked Denis but he never liked me, and to make up for it I detested his American wife. But this one thing that stood in the way suddenly became two things, because we learne
d that Julian would probably be
dead within a year or so although we agreed never to say anything about it to anyone. Then there was that third thing - that bloody man Owens.