The Secret of Annexe 3

Sarah Jonstone saw Lewis leave just before 6 p.m., his car headlights, as he turned in front of the annexe, sending revolving patches of yellow light across the walls and ceiling of her unlit room. Then the winter darkness was complete once more. She had never minded the dark, even as a little girl, when she'd always preferred the door of her-bedroom shut and the light on the landing switched off; and now as she looked out she was again content to leave the light turned off. She was developing a slight headache and she had dropped two soluble Disprin into a glass of water and was slowly swishing the disintegrating tablets round. Mr Binyon had asked her to stay on another night, and in the circumstances it would have been unkind for her to refuse. But it was an oddly unsatisfactory, anticlimactic sort of time: the night was now still after so many comings and goings; the lights in the annexe all switched off, including the light in the large back room which Morse and Lewis had been using; the press, the police, the public - almost everyone seemed to have gone; gone, too, were all the New Year revellers, all of them gone back home again - all except one, of course, the one who would never see his home again. The only signs left of all the excitement were the beribboned ropes that still cordoned off the annexe area, and the single policeman in the flat, black-and-white checked hat who still stood at the side entrance of the annexe, his breath steaming in the cold air, stamping his feet occasionally, and pulling his greatcoat ever more closely around him. She was wondering if she ought to offer him something - when she heard Mandy, from just below her window, call across and ask him if he wanted a cup of tea.

She herself drank the cloudy, bitter-tasting mixture from the glass, switched on the light, washed the glass, smoothed the wrinkled coverlet on which she had earlier been lying, turned on the TV, and listened to the main items of the six o'clock news. The world that day, that second day of the brand-new year, was familiarly full of crashes, hijackings, riots and terrorism; yet somehow such cataclysmic, collective disasters seemed far less disturbing to her than the murder of that one man, only some twenty-odd yards from where she stood.

She turned off the TV, and went over to the window to pull the curtains across; she would smarten herself up a bit before going down to have her evening meal with the Binyons. Odd!

A light was on again in the annexe, and she wondered who it could be. Probably the constable, for he was no longer standing by the side door. It was almost certainly in Annexe 2 that the light was on, she thought, judging from the yellow square of snow in front of the building. Then the light was switched off; and standing there at her window, arms outspread, Sarah was just about to pull the curtains across when she saw a figure, just inside the annexe doorway, pressed against the left-hand wall. Her heart seemed to miss a beat, and she felt a constriction somewhere at the back of her throat as she stood there for a few seconds completely motionless, mesmerized by what she had seen. Then she acted. She threw open the door, scampered down the stairs, rushed through to the main entrance and then along to the side door of the main building, where the constable stood talking with Mandy over a cup of steaming tea.

There's someone across there!' Sarah whispered hoarsely as she pointed over to the annexe block.

'Pardon, miss?'

'I just saw someone in the doorway!'

The man hurried across to the annexe, with Sarah and Mandy walking nervously a few steps behind. They saw him open the side door (it hadn't been locked, that much was clear) and then watched as the light flicked on in the corridor, and then flicked off.

There's no one there now,' said the worried-looking constable, clearly conscious of some potentially disastrous dereliction of duty.

There was someone,' persisted Sarah quietly. 'It was in Annexe 2- I'm sure of it. I saw the light on the snow.'

'But the rooms are all locked up, miss.'

Sarah said nothing. There were only two sets of master-keys, and Binyon (Sarah knew) had given one of those sets to Sergeant Lewis. But Sergeant Lewis had gone. Had Binyon used the other set himself! Had the slim figure she had seen in the doorway been Binyon's? And if so, what on earth—?

It was Binyon himself, wearing a raincoat but no hat, who had startlingly materialized from somewhere, and who now stood behind them, insisting (once he had asked about the nature of the incident) that they should check up on the situation forthwith.

Sarah followed him and the constable into the annexe corridor, and it was immediately apparent that someone had stood - and that within the last few minutes or so - in front of the door to Annexe 2. The carpet just below the handle was muddied with the marks of slushy footwear, and little slivers of yet unmelted snow winked under the neon lighting of the corridor.