While Lewis was getting the second statement typed, Morse retreated to his office. Had he been wrong all along? If what Jennifer now claimed was true, it would certainly account for several things. On the same road, on the same night and one of her own office friends murdered? Of course she would feel frightened. But was that enough to account for her repeated evasions? He reached for the phone and rang The Golden Rose at Begbroke. The jovial-sounding landlord was anxious to help. His wife had been on duty in the lounge on Wednesday. Could she possibly come down to Kidlington Police HQ? Yes. The landlord would drive her himself. Good. Quarter of an hour, then.
'Do you remember a young lady coming in to the lounge last Wednesday? On her own? About half past seven time?'
The richly ringed and amply bosomed lady wasn't sure.
'But you don't often get women coming in alone, do you?'
'Not often, no. But it's not all that unusual these days, Inspector. You'd be surprised.'
Morse felt that little would surprise him any more. 'Would you recognize someone like that? Someone who just dropped in one night?'
'I think so, yes.'
Morse rang Lewis, who was still waiting with Jennifer in the interview room.
'Take her home, Lewis.'
The landlady of The Golden Rose stood beside Morse at the inquiry desk as Jennifer walked past with Lewis.
'That her?' he asked. It was his penultimate question.
'Yes. I think it is.'
'I'm most grateful to you,' lied Morse.
'I'm glad I could help, Inspector.'
Morse showed her to the door. 'I don't suppose you happen to remember what she ordered, do you?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, I think I do, Inspector. It was lager and lime, I think. Yes, lager and lime.'
It was half an hour before Lewis returned. 'Did you believe her, sir?'
'No,' said Morse. He felt more frustrated than depressed. He realized that he had already landed himself in a good deal of muddle and mess by his own inadequacies. He had refused the offer of the auxiliary personnel available to him, and this meant that few of the many possible leads had yet been checked and documented. Sanders, for example — surely to any trained officer the most obvious target for immediate and thorough investigation — he had thus far almost totally ignored. Indeed, even a superficial scrutiny of his conduct of the case thus far would reveal a haphazardness in his approach almost bordering upon negligence. Only the previous month he had himself given a lecture to fellow detectives on the paramount importance in any criminal investigation of the strictest and most disciplined thoroughness in every respect of the inquiry from the very beginning.
And yet, for all this, he sensed in some intuitive way (a procedure not mentioned in his lecture) that he was vaguely on the right track still; that he had been right in allowing Jennifer to go; that although his latest shot had been kicked off the line, sooner or later the goal would come.
For the next hour the two officers exchanged notes on the afternoon's interrogation, with Morse impatiently probing Lewis's reactions to the girl's evasions, glances, and gestures.
'Do you think she's lying, Lewis?'
'I'm not so sure now.'
'Come off it, man. When you're as old as I am you'll recognize a liar a mile off!'
Lewis remained doubtful: he was by several years the older man anyway. Silence fell between them.
'Where do we go from here, then?' said Lewis at last.
'I think we attack down the other flank.'
'We do?'
'Yes. She's shielding a man. Why? Why? That's what we've been asking ourselves so far. And you know where we've got with that line of inquiry? Nowhere. She's lying, I know that; but we haven't broken her — not yet. She's such a good liar she'd get any damned fool to believe her.'
Lewis saw the implication. 'You could be wrong, sir.'
Morse blustered on, wondering if he was. 'No, no, no. We've just been tackling the case from the wrong angle. They tell me, Lewis, that you can climb up the Eiger in your carpet slippers if you go the easy way.'
'You mean we've been trying to solve this the hard way?'
'No. I mean just the opposite. We've been trying to solve it the easy way. Now we've got to try the hard way.'
'How do we do that, sir?'
'We've been trying to find out who the other girl was, because we thought she could lead us to the man we want.'
'But according to you we have found her.'
'Yes. But she's too clever for us — and too loyal. She's been warned to keep her mouth shut — not that she needed much telling, if I'm any judge. But we're up against a brick wall for the time being, and there's only one alternative. The girl won't lead us to the man? All right. We find the man.'
'How do we start on that?'
'I think we shall need a bit of Aristotelian logic, don't you?'
'If you say so, sir.'
'I'll tell you all about it in the morning,' said Morse.
Lewis paused as he reached the door. That identification of Miss Coleby, sir. Did you think it was satisfactory — just to take the landlady's word for it?'
'Why not?'
'Well, it was all a bit casual, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't exactly going by the book.'
'What book?' said Morse.
Lewis decided that his mind had got itself into a quite sufficient muddle for one day, and he left.
Morse's mind, too, was hardly functioning with crystalline lucidity; yet already emerging from the mazed confusion was the germ of a new idea. He had suspected from the start that Jennifer Coleby was lying; would have staked his professional reputation upon it. But he could have been wrong, at least in one respect. He had tried to break Jennifer's story, but had he been trying to break it at the wrong point?
What if all she had told him was perfectly true?. . The same revolving pro's and con's passed up and down before his eyes like undulating hobby-horses at a fairground, until his own mind, too, was in a dizzying whirl and he knew that it was time to give it all a rest.
CHAPTER TEN
Wednesday, 6 October