Read Online The dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter - Free Book Online

mightn't it?'
    'You mean people here tend to er to pry on what all the others are doing?' Walters had chosen his words carefully, and he could see that his point had registered.
    'Only a tiny little street, isn't it? It's difficult not to— '
    'What I meant was, Mr Jackson, that perhaps — perhaps you might have seen someone — someone else — going over to number 9 when you got back from your fishing.'
    'Trouble is,' Jackson hesitated, 'one day seems just like any other when you're getting on a bit like I am.'
    'It was only two days ago, you know.'
    'Ye-es. And I think you're right. I can't be sure of the time and all that, like — but there was someone. It was just after I'd nipped over, I think — and — yes! I'm pretty sure it was. I'd just been up to the shop for a few things — and then I saw someone go in there. Huh! I reckon I'd have forgotten all about it if— '
    'This person just walked in?'
    'That's it. And then a few minutes later walked out.'
    Phew! Things had taken an oddly interesting turn, and Walters pressed on eagerly. 'Would you recognise him — it was a man, you say?'
    Jackson nodded. 'I didn't know him — never seen him before.'
    'What was he like?'
    'Middle-age, sort of — raincoat he had on, I remember — no hat — getting a bit bald, I reckon.'
    'And you say you'd never seen him before?'
    'No.'
    Walters was getting very puzzled, and he needed time to think about this new evidence. In a few seconds, however, his puzzlement was to be overtaken by an astonished perplexity, for Jackson proceeded to add a gloss on that categorically spoken 'no'.
    'I reckon I seen him later, though.'
    'You what? '
    'I reckon I seen him later, I said. He went in there again while you was there, officer. About quarter-past ten, I should think it was. You must have seen him because you let him in yourself, if me memory serves me right. Must have been a copper, I should think, wasn't he?'
     
    After Walters had left, Jackson sat in his back kitchen drinking a cup of tea and feeling that the interview had been more than satisfactory. He hadn't been at all sure about whether he should have mentioned that last bit, but now he felt progressively happier that he had in fact done so. His plan was being laid very carefully, but just a little riskily; and the more he could divert suspicion on to others, the better it would be. How glad he was he'd kept that key! At one point he'd almost chucked it into the canal — and that would have been a mistake, perhaps. As it was he'd just 'stuck it through the letter box' — exactly the words he'd used to the constable. And it was the truth, too! Telling the truth could be surprisingly valuable. Sometimes.

Chapter Seven
I say, 'Banish bridge'; let's find some pleasanter way of being miserable together
Don Herold
     
    The recently formed Summertown Bridge Club had advertised itself (twice already in The Oxford Times and intermittently in the windows of the local newsagents) as the heaven-sent answer to those hundreds of residents in North Oxford who had played the game in the past with infinite enjoyment but with rather less than infinite finesse, and who were now a little reluctant to join one of the city's more prestigious clubs, where conversation invariably hinged on trump-coups and squeezes, where county players could always be expected round the tables, and where even the poorest performer appeared to have the enviable facility of remembering all the fifty-two cards at a time. The club was housed in Middle Way, a road of eminently desirable residences which runs parallel to the Banbury Road and to the west of it, linking Squitchey Lane with South Parade. Specifically, it was housed at a large white-walled residence, with light-blue doors and shutters, some half-way down that road, where lived the chairman of the club (who also single-handedly fulfilled the functions of its secretary, treasurer, hostess, and general organiser), a gay and rather gaudy widow of some sixty-five