The Inside Story Colin Dexter

The Inside Story Colin Dexter
It was 8.50 on the morning of Monday, 15th February, 1993.
‘Hurry, Lewis!’ said Inspector Morse. Sergeant Lewis was driving him through the streets of Oxford and Morse was looking at a street plan. They were on their way to the scene of a murder.
‘That’s it, Lewis: Jowett Place. What number is it?’‘Fourteen. Where those two police cars are,sir.’
The Oxford City Police had received a telephone call an hour or two earlier from a man called Paul Bayley, living at 14 Jowett. Place, who had discovered a murder. That morning, he told them,
he had found that he had no milk for breakfast, so he had gone down to borrow some milk from the woman who lived in the. Flat below him, Sheila Poster. He had knocked on the door - foundthe door unlocked – walked in, and there.

Now it was Morse who looked down at the woman lying on her back, just inside the living room. She was lying in a very large pool of blood. It appeared that she had been killed by a knife through the heart.
Big brown eyes looked out at them from a pale face; her hair was long and dark. ‘Beautiful girl,’ said Lewis quietly. Morse turned his eyes away. Healways turned away from the sight of violent death. The police doctor had arrived, and was ready to examine the body. ‘You can look at her now,’ Morse said to her.
The house had been divided into two flats; Sheila Poster had rented the ground floor, and the floor above was rented by Paul Bayley. Morse and Lewis went upstair now to talk to him.
Bayley was sitting beside a policeman in hisuntidy living room. He was a young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight; he was tall, with long, dirty hair, but he was quite good-looking.
Morse disliked him immediately. He had studied History at one of the Oxford University colleges, he told them, but he didn’t have a job just now. As he spoke, his fingers were moving all the time – short, fat, rather dirty fingers they were.
Onthe evening before, he said, he had been out drinking with friends. He had not left the King’s Arms in Broad Street until it closed at ten o’clock, and then he had gone back with a friend to her flat. In fact he’d slept there, before returning to Jowett Place at about 7.15 that morning. He had already told the police the rest of the story. ‘You slept with a woman last night?’‘Yes.’ He looked at the floor.‘We shall have to know her name – the sergeant here will have
to check with her. Now, what can you tell us about Sheila poster?’ ‘She was at St Hilda’s College at one time – studied English Literature. I don’t think she had a job.’ Did you know her well?’ ‘Er . . . no, not really.’
Morse and Lewis went back toSheila Poster’s flat. The police doctor was still in the murder room, examining the body, so they had a look at the other rooms – a kitchen and a bedroom, both very small.
There was not much to see in the bedroom. The big cupboard contained her clothes and some cheap shoes. On the table beside the bed were a lamp, a clock, a box full of cheap jewellery and a book.
The title of the book wasThoughts on Writing Stories. When Morse picked it up, it opened at a page where a leather 75 bookmarker had been placed. Some sentences had been marked with a yellow pen: Of course the writer will make use of real people and events from his own experience. But to these he will add imaginary ones, which will give his story its special power.
Lewis picked up the bookmarker, which had‘Greetings from
Erzincan’ on it.
‘Where’s Erzincan?’
‘Eastern Turkey, I think. Wasn’t there an earthquake near there last year?’
From the room above they could hear the sound of someone walking up and down, up and down. Morse looked up at the ceiling. It must be Bayley. The doctor had finished her examination of the body, and Morse wanted to hear her opinion. ‘It was a sharp knife, I think. A...