The dead of Jericho Read Online Free Page A

wave of eroticism which invariably washed over him after such mild excess had no doubt been responsible for his drive through Jericho that day... And then he thought he heard a noise from within the house. She was there. He knocked again, very loudly now, and after waiting half a minute he tried the door. It was open.
    'Hello? Anyone there?' The street door led directly into the surprisingly large downstairs room, carpeted and neatly decorated, and the camera in Morse's mind clicked and clicked again as he looked keenly around.
    'Hello? Anne? Anne?'
    A staircase faced him at the far left-hand corner of the room, and at the foot of the stairs he saw an expensive-looking, light-brown leather jacket, lined with sheep's wool, folded over upon itself, and flecked with recent rain.
    But even leaning slightly forward and straining his ears to the utmost, Morse could hear nothing. It was strange, certainly, her leaving the door unlocked like that. But then he'd just done exactly the same with his own car, had he not? He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out on to the wet pavement. The house immediately opposite to him was number 10, and he was reflecting vaguely on the vagaries of those responsible for the numbering of street houses when he thought he saw the slightest twitch of the curtains behind its upper-storey window. Perhaps he was mistaken, though... Turning once more, he looked back at the house he had come to visit, and his thoughts lingered longingly on the woman he would never see again...
    It was many seconds later that he noticed the change: the light on the upstairs floor of number 9 was now switched off — and the blood began to tingle in his veins.

Chapter Two
Towards the door we never opened
T. S. Eliot , Four Quartets
     
    She seemed on nodding terms with all the great, and by any standards the visit of Dame Helen, emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature, to the Oxford Book Association was an immense success. She wore her learning lightly, yet the depths of scholarship and sensitivity became immediately apparent to the large audience, as with an assurance springing from an infinite familiarity she ranged from Dante down to T. S. Eliot. The texture of the applause which greeted the end of her lecture was tight and electric, the crackling clapping of hands seeming to constitute a continuous crepitation of noise, the palms smiting each other as fast as the wings of a humming bird. Even Morse, whose applause more usually resembled the perfunctory flapping of a large crow in slow flight, was caught up in the spontaneous appreciation, and he earnestly resolved that he would make an immediate attempt to come to terms with the complexities of the Four Quartets. He ought, he knew, to come along more often to talks such as this; keep his mind sharp and fresh — a mind so often dulled these days by cigarettes and alcohol. Surely that's what life was all about? Opening doors; opening doors and peering through them — perhaps even finding the rose gardens there... What were those few lines that Dame Helen had just quoted? Once he had committed them to memory, but until tonight they had been almost forgotten:
Footfalls echo in the memory
    Down the passage which we did not take
    Towards the door we never opened.
    That was writing for you! Christ, ah!
    Morse recognised no one at the bar and took his beer over to the corner. He would have a couple of pints and get home reasonably early.
    The siren of a police car (or was it an ambulance?) whined past outside in Walton Street, reminding him tantalisingly of the opening of one of the Chopin nocturnes. An accident somewhere, no doubt: shaken, white-faced witnesses and passengers; words slowly recorded in constables' notebooks; the white doors of the open ambulance with the glutinous gouts of dark blood on the upholstery. Ugh! How Morse hated traffic accidents!
    'You look lonely. Mind if I join you?' She was a tall, slim, attractive woman in her early