It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.
(PUBLILIUS SYRUS)
‘LET ME EXPLAIN one thing from the start. I just said we’ve been looking at things from the wrong end and I mean just that. Max gave us a big enough margin for the time of death, and instead of listening to him I kept trying to pin him down. Even now it’s taken a woman’s pack of lies to put me on the right track, because the most important thing about Mrs Bowman is that she was forced to show us the letter, supposedly from her husband, to give herself a reasonable alibi. It was the last shot in her locker; and she had no option but to use it, because we were getting – we are getting! – dangerously close to the truth. And I just said “supposedly from her husband” – but that’s not the case: it was from her husband, you can be certain of that. Everything fits, you see, once you turn the pattern upside down. The man in Annexe 3 wasn’t murdered after the party: he was murdered before the party. Let’s just assume that Margaret Bowman has been unfaithful, and let’s assume that she gets deeply involved with this lover of hers, and that he threatens to blackmail her in some way if she doesn’t agree to see him again – threatens to tell her husband – to cut his own throat – to cut her throat – anything you like. Let’s say, too, that the husband, Tom Bowman, deliverer of Her Majesty’s mail at Chipping Norton, finds out about all this – let’s say that he intercepts a letter; or, more likely, I think, she’s desperate enough to tell him all about it – because there must have been some sort of reconciliation between them. Together, they decide that something has got to be done to get rid of the threat that now affects both of them; and at that point, as I see it, the plot was hatched. They book a double room for a New Year break at a hotel, using a non-existent accommodation address so that later on no one will be able to trace them; and Tom Bowman is exactly the person to cope with that problem – none better. So things really start moving. Margaret Bowman tells this dangerous and persistent lover of hers – let’s call him Mr X – that she can spend the New Year with him. He’s a single man; he’s head over heels about her; and now he’s over the moon, too! He thought she’d ditched him. But here she is offering to spend a couple of whole days with him. She’s taken the initiative; she’s fixed it all up; she’s booked the hotel; she wants him! She’s even told him – and she must have expected he’d agree – that she’ll provide the fancy-dress costumes they’re going to wear at the New Year party. She tells him to be ready, let’s say, from four o’clock on the 31st. She herself probably books in under her false name and a false address an hour or so earlier, but a bit later than most of the other guests. She wants to be seen by as few of the others as possible, but she’s still got to give herself plenty of time. She finds herself alone at the reception desk, she turns up her coat and pulls her scarf around her face, she signs the form, she takes the room key, she takes her suitcase over to Annexe 3 – and all is ready. She rings up X from the public phone-box just outside the hotel, tells him what their room number is, and he’s on his way like a shot. And while the rest of the guests are playing Cluedo, he’s spending the rest of that late afternoon and early evening with his bottom on the top sheet, as they say. Then, when most of the passion’s spent itself, she tells him that they’d better start dressing up for the party; she shows him what she’s brought for the pair of them to wear; and about 7 p.m. the pair of them are ready: she rubs a final bit of stage-black on his hands – makes some excuse about leaving her purse or her umbrella at Reception – says she’ll be back in a minute – takes the key with her – pulls her mackintosh over her costume – and goes out bang on the stroke of seven. Tom Bowman, himself dressed in exactly the same sort of outfit as X, has been waiting for her, somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the hotel; and while Margaret Bowman spends the most nerve-racking few minutes of her life, probably in the bus shelter just across from the hotel, Tom Bowman lets himself into Annexe 3.
‘Exactly what happened then, we don’t know – and we may never know. But very soon the Bowmans are playing out the rest of the evening as best they can – pretending to eat, pretending to be lovey-dovey with each other, pretending to enjoy the festivities. There’s little enough chance of them being recognized, anyway: she’s hiding behind her yashmak, and he’s hiding behind a coat of dark greasepaint. But they both want to be seen going into the annexe after the party’s over, and in fact Tom Bowman performs his role with a bit of panache. He waits for the two other women he knows are lodged in the annexe, throws an arm across their shoulders – incidentally ruining their coats with his greasy hands – and gives the impression to all and sundry that he’s about to hit the hay. As it happens, Binyon was bringing up the rear – pretty close behind them. But the lock on the side door is only a Yale; and after Binyon had made sure all was well, the Bowmans slipped out quietly into the winter’s night. They went down and got their car from the Westgate – or wherever it was parked – and Tom Bowman dropped Margaret back to Charlbury Drive, where she’d left the lights on anyway so that the neighbours would assume she was celebrating the New Year. And then Bowman himself took off into the night somewhere so that if ever the need arose he could establish an alibi for himself up in Inverness or wherever he found himself the next morning, leaving Margaret the pre-planned note about his fictitious girlfriend. And that’s about it, Lewis! That’s about what happened, as far as I can make out.’
Lewis himself had listened with great interest, and without interruption, to what Morse had said. And although, apart from the time of the murder, it wasn’t a particularly startling analysis, it was just the sort of self-consistent hypothesis that Lewis had come to expect from the chief inspector, bringing together, as it did, into one coherent scheme all the apparently inconsistent clues and puzzling testimony. But there were one or two weaknesses in Morse’s argument: at least as Lewis saw things.
‘You said they spent the afternoon in bed, sir. But we didn’t, to be honest, find much sign of anything like that, did we?’
‘Perhaps they performed on the floor – I don’t know. I was just telling you what probably happened.’
‘What about the maid, sir – Mandy, wasn’t it? Doesn’t someone usually come along about seven o’clock or so and turn down the counterpane—’
‘Counterpane? Lewis! You’re still living in the nineteenth century. And this wasn’t the Waldorf Astoria, you know.’
‘Bit of a risk, though, sir – somebody coming in and finding—’
‘They were short-staffed, Lewis – you know that.’
‘But the Bowmans didn’t know that!’
Morse nodded. ‘No-o. But they could have hung one of those “Do Not Disturb” signs on the door. In fact, they did.’
‘Bit risky, though, hanging out a sign like that if you’re supposed to be at a party.’
‘Lewis! Don’t you understand? They were taking risks the whole bloody time.’
As always when Morse blustered on in such fashion, Lewis knew that it was best not to push things overmuch. Obviously, what Morse had said was true; but Lewis felt that some of the explanations he was receiving were far from satisfactory.
‘If, as you say, sir, Bowman was dressed up, all ready to go, in exactly the same sort of clothes as the other fellow, where was he—?’
‘Where? I dunno. But I’m sure all he had to do was put a few finishing touches to things.’
‘Do you think he did that in Annexe 3?’
‘Possibly. Or he could have used the Gents’ just off Reception.’
‘Wouldn’t Miss Jonstone have seen him?’
‘How am I supposed to know? Shall we ask her, Lewis? Shall I ask her? Or what about you asking her – you’re asking me enough bloody questions.’
‘It’s only because I can’t quite understand things, that’s all, sir.’
‘You think I’ve got it all wrong, don’t you?’ said Morse quietly.
‘No! I’m pretty sure you’re on the right lines, sir, but it doesn’t all quite hang together, does it?’