The Secret of Annexe 3

'He's right, though. I tell everybody else to fill in the forms and follow the rules but...'

'Do you remember who brought it in?'

'Vaguely. One of the winos. We've probably got him on the books for pinching a bottle of cider from a supermarket or something. Poor sod! But the last thing we can cope with is having the likes of him here! I suppose he nicked the money when he "found" the bag and then just brought it in to square his conscience. I didn't discover where he found it, though - or when - or what his name was. I just thought - well, never mind!'

'He can't shoot you, Sam.'

‘It's not as if there's much in it to help, I don't think.'

Lewis opened the expensive-looking handbag and looked through its contents: as Vickers had said, there seemed little enough of obvious interest. He pulled out the small sheaf of cards from the front compartment of the wallet: the usual bank and credit cards, two library tickets, two creased first-class stamps, a small rectangular card advertising the merits of an Indian restaurant in Walton Street, Oxford, and an identity pass-card for the Locals, with a coloured photograph of Margaret Bowman on the left. One by one, Lewis picked them up and examined them, and was putting them back into the wallet when he noticed the few words written in red biro on the back of the white restaurant card:

M. I love you darling. T.

Obviously, thought Lewis, a memory from happier days, probably their first meal together, when Tom and Margaret Bowman had sat looking dreamily at each other over a Bombay curry, holding hands and crunching popadums.

A brighter-looking Morse returned.

An intelligent and resourceful Phillips, it appeared, had discovered that Margaret Bowman had gone back - not in her own car, of course - to Chipping Norton the previous lunchtime, and had withdrawn £920 of her savings in the Oxfordshire Building Society there - leaving only a nominal £10 in the account.

'It's all beginning to fit together, Lewis,' said Morse. 'She was obviously looking for her pay-in book when she got a taxi back there. And this clinches things of course' - he gestured to the handbag. 'Car keys there, I'd like to bet? But she must have had an extra house key on her-... Yes! Cheque card, I see, but I'd be surprised if she kept that and her chequebook together. Most people have more sense these days.'

Lewis, not overjoyed by the high praise bestowed upon his fellow sergeant, ventured his own comments on the one item in the handbag which had puzzled him - the (obviously very recently acquired) leaflet on St Mary the Virgin. 'I remember when I was a lad, sir, somebody jumped from the tower there, and I was wondering —'

'Nonsense, Lewis! You don't do that sort of thing these days. You take a couple of boxes of pills, don't you, Sergeant Vickers?'

The latter, so unexpectedly appealed to, decided to take this opportunity of putting the record straight. 'Er, about the handbag, sir. I wasn't exactly telling you the whole truth earlier—'

But Morse was not listening. His eyes were staring at the small oblong card which Lewis had just examined and which lay on top of the little pile of contents, the handwritten message uppermost.

'What's that?' he asked with such quietly massive authority in his voice that Vickers found the hairs rising up on his brawny forearms.

But neither of the two sergeants could answer, for neither knew what it was that the chief inspector had asked, nor why it was that his eyes were gleaming with such triumphant intensity.

Morse looked cursorily through the other items from the handbag, quickly deciding that nothing merited further attention. His face was still beaming as he clapped a hand on Lewis's shoulder. 'You are - not for the first time in your life - a bloody genius, Lewis! As for you, Vickers, we thank you for your help, my friend. Forget what I said about that idiot colleague of yours! Please, excuse us! We have work to do, have we not, Lewis?’

'The Indian restaurant, is it?’ asked Lewis as they got into the car.

'You hungry, or something?’ 'No, sir, but—'

'I wouldn't say no to a curry myself, but not just for the time being. Put your foot down, my son!’ 'Er - where to, sir?' 'Chipping Norton! Where else?'

Lewis saw that the fascia clock showed a quarter past twelve as the car passed through Woodstock.

'Fancy a pint?' asked a cheerful Lewis.

Morse looked at him curiously. 'What's the matter with you this morning? I hope you're not becoming an alcoholic?'

Lewis shook his head lightly.

'You want to be like me, Lewis. I'm a dipsomaniac'

'What's the difference?'

Morse pondered for a while. 'I think an alcoholic is always trying to give up drink.'

'Whereas such a thought has never crossed your mind, sir?'

'Well put!' said Morse, thereafter lapsing into the silence he habitually observed when being driven in a car.

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