The Secret of Annexe 3

Alibi (n.) - the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.

(Chambers 20th Century Dictionary)

It was, in all, to be an hour or so before the interrogation of Wilkins was resumed. Morse had telephoned Max, but had learned only that if he, Morse, continued to supply the lab with corpses about twenty-four hours old, he, Max, was not going to make too many fanciful speculations: he was a forensic scientist, not a fortune teller. Lewis had contacted the Haworth Hotel to discover that one local call had in fact been made - untraceable, though - from Annexe 3 on New Year's Eve. Phillips, who had returned from Diamond Close with the not unexpected news that Margaret Bowman (if she had been there) had flown, now resumed his duties in the interview room, standing by the door, his feet aching a good deal, his eyes idly scanning the bare room once again: the wooden trestle-table, on which stood two white polystyrene cups (empty now) and an ashtray (rapidly filling); and behind the table, the fairish-haired, fresh-complexioned man accused of a terrible murder, who seemed to Phillips to look perhaps rather less dramatically perturbed than should have been expected.

'What time did you get to the Haworth Hotel on New Year's Eve?'

'Say that again?'

'What time did you get to the hotel?' 'I didn't go to any hotel that night —'. 'You were at the Haworth Hotel and you got there at—' 'I've never played there.' 'Never played what?’ 'Never played there!' 'I'm not quite with you, Mr Wilkins.' 'We go round the pubs - the group - we don't often go to hotels.' 'You play in a pop group?' 'A jazz group -1 play tenor sax.' ‘So what?'

'Look, Sergeant. You say you're not with me: I'm not with you, either.'

'You were at the Haworth Hotel on New Year's Eve. What time did you get there?' 'I was at the Friar up in North Oxford on New Year's Eve!' ‘Really?' 'Yes, really!' 'Can you prove it?’ ‘Not offhand, I suppose, but—' ‘Would the landlord remember you there?' 'Course he would! He paid us, didn't he?' The group you're in - was playing there?' ‘Yes.'

'And you were there all the evening!' Till about two o'clock the next morning.' 'How many others in the group?' ‘Four.’

‘And how many people were there at the Friar that night?’ 'Sixty? - seventy? on and off.’ ‘Which bar were you in?’

'Lounge bar.’

'And you didn't leave the bar all night?'

'Well, we had steak and chips in the back room at about half-past nine, I suppose it was.'

'With the rest of the group?'

'And the landlord - and the landlady.'

"This is New Year's Eve you're talking about?'

'Look, Sergeant, I've been here a long time already tonight, haven't I? Can you please ring up the Friar and get someone here straight away? Or ring up any of the group? I'm getting awfully tired - and it's been one hell of an evening for me - you can understand that, can't you?'

There was a silence in the room - a silence that seemed to Phillips to take on an almost palpable tautness, as the import of Wilkins's claim slowly sank into the minds of the detectives there.

'What does your group call itself, Mr Wilkins?' It was Morse himself who quietly asked the final question.

'The "Oxford Blues",’ said Wilkins, his face hard and unamused.

Charlie Freeman ('Fingers' Freeman to his musical colleagues) was surprised to find a uniformed constable standing on his Kidlington doorstep that evening. Yes, the 'Oxford Blues' had played the Friar on New Year's Eve; yes, he'd played there that night, with Ted Wilkins, for about five or six hours; yes, he'd be more than willing to go along to Police HQ immediately and make a statement to that effect. No great hardship for him, was it? After all, it was only a couple of minutes' walk away.