The Secret of Annexe 3

'Just finish off what you were saying, will you, sir?' 'Nothing more to say, really. Winston Grant must have been pretty carefully briefed, that's for sure. In the first place he'd be coming into the hotel directly from the street, and it was absolutely essential that he should wait his time, to the second almost, until Margaret Bowman had created the clever little distraction of taking Sarah Jonstone away from the reception desk to inspect the graffito in the Ladies' - a graffito which she, Margaret Bowman, had herself just scrawled across the wall. Then, I'm sure he must have been told to say as little as possible to anyone else all the evening and to stick close to Margaret Bowman, as if they were far more interested in each other than in the goings-on around them. But there was no chance of him opting out of the fancy-dress competition! I suspect, too, that he was told not to eat anything - if he could manage not to without drawing too much attention to himself; and remember, he was helped in this by the way Binyon had scheduled the various courses at different tables. But it may well be, Lewis, that we're overestimating the extent to which the plan was completely thought out. Above all, though, he had to carry through that final, extraordinarily clever, little deception: he was to make every effort to pretend that he was a black man - even though he was a black man. And there was one wonderfully simple way in which such a pretence could be sustained, and that was by rubbing dark-stain on to his hands - hands that were already black - so that everyone who came into physical contact with him should believe that he was not a black man - but a white man. And that, Lewis, in the later stages of that New Year's party is what he did, making sure he left a few indelible marks on the most obvious places - like the shoulders of the light-coloured winter mackintoshes worn by both Miss Palmer and Mrs Smith—'

‘— and the white blouse of Sarah Jonstone.'

'Cream-coloured actually,' said Morse.

For Sergeant Phillips it was all somewhat deja vu as he resumed his vigil at the door of the interview room, his feet still aching, his eyes scanning the bare room once again: the wooden trestle-table on which stood a white polystyrene coffee cup (full) and an ash-tray (as yet empty); and behind the table, the same fairish-haired, fresh-complexioned man who had sat there the previous evening - Mr Edward Wilkins.

Chapter Forty-four

Wednesday, January 8th: p.m.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

(VIRGIL, Georgics)

At 5 p.m., Mr James Prior, Security Officer at the Locals, put on his bicycle clips and prepared to leave. Before he did so he had a final look round Reception to make sure that everything that should be locked up was locked up. It was odd though, really, to think that the only thing the police had been interested in was the one drawer that wasn't locked up - the drawer in which he kept all the out-of-date security passes, elastic-banded into their various bundles. Like the bundle for the last lot of building workers from which the police had already taken two passes away: that of Winston Grant, a Rastafarian fellow whom Prior remembered very well; and that of a man called Wilkins, who'd operated the giant yellow crane that had towered over the Delegacy building throughout the summer months. After Morse's call early that morning, Prior had looked briefly through the rest of that particular bundle, and had wondered whether there were any other criminals lurking among those very ordinary-looking faces. But the truth was that one could never tell: he, far more than most people, was fully aware of that.

That afternoon, Wilkins had been resignedly co-operative about every detail of the whole case - with the exception of the act of murder itself, which he stubbornly and categorically refused to discuss in any respect whatsoever: it was as if that single, swift dispatch (to which he now confessed) had paralysed his capacity to accept it as in any way a piece of voluntary, responsible behaviour. But for the rest, he spoke fully and freely; and there was nothing surprising, nothing new, that emerged from his statement. Naturally enough, perhaps, he expressed the hope that Winston Grant should be treated with appropriate leniency, although it seemed to others (certainly to Lewis) that such an accomplice must have been rather more aware of the nature of his assignment than either Grant or Wilkins was prepared to admit.