On Saturday, 13^th October, four days following the inquest on Anne Scott, a man knocked on the door of 2 Canal Reach, and told the heavily pregnant, nervous-looking young woman who answered the door that he was writing an article for the Bodleian archives on the socio-economic development of Jericho during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, he elicited little information likely to further his researches, and was soon knocking at number 4: this time with no answer. At number 6 he was brusquely told to 'bugger off' by a middle-aged giant of a man, heavily tattooed from wrists to muscular shoulders, who supposed the caller to be some peripatetic proselytiser. But at number 8, the slim, pale-faced, bespectacled young man who opened the door proved a gushing fount of information on the history of the area, and very soon the researcher was filling his amateurish-looking, red-covered Cash Book with rapid notes and dates: 'Key decade 1821-31-see monograph Eliza M. Hawtrey (? 1954) Bodleian-if they'd ever let me in-variable roof lines, brick built, sash-windowed-I went down to Jericho and fell among thieves-artisan dwellings-there was a young fellow from Spain-Lucy's Iron Works 1825-who enjoyed a tart-OUP to its pres. site 1826-now and again-Canal: Oxford-Banbury-Coventry-Midlands, compl. 1790-not just now and again but-St. Paul's begun 1835-now and again and-St. Barnabas 1869-again and again and again.'

'Marvellous, marvellous!' said the researcher as the young man at last showed the first welcome signs of flagging. 'Most interesting and-and so valuable. You're a local historian, I suppose?'

'Not really, no. I work on the line up at Cowley.'

With further profuse expressions of gratitude for a lengthy addendum on the construction of the railway, the researcher finally saw the door to number 8 close-and he breathed a sigh of relief. Most of the other residents in the Reach would now have seen him, and his purpose was progressing nicely. No answer from number 10; no bicycle there, either. Over the narrow-ridiculously narrow-street, and no answer from number 9, either, in spite of three fairly rigorous bouts of knocking, during the third of which he had surreptitiously tried the doorknob. Locked. At number 7 he introduced himself with a most ingratiating smile, and Mrs. Purvis, on hearing of his projected monograph for the Royal Architectural Society on the layout of the two-up, two-down, dwellings of the mid-Victorian era, duly invited him into her home. Ten minutes later he was seated in the little scullery at the back of the house drinking a cup of tea and (as Mrs. Purvis was to tell her married daughter the next day) proving to be 'such a charming, well-educated sort of person'.

'I see you grow your own vegetables,' said Morse, getting to his feet and looking out onto the narrow garden plot beyond the dark-green doors of what looked like an outside lavatory-cum-coal-shed. 'Very sensible, too! Do you know, I bought a caulie up in Summertown the other day and it cost me…'

Willingly, it appeared, Mrs. Purvis would have spent the rest of the day discussing the price of vegetables, and Morse had no difficulty in pressing home his advantage.

'What's your soil like here, Mrs. Purvis? Sort of clayey, is it? Or,'-Morse hunted around in his mind for some other vaguely impressive epithet-'alkaline, perhaps?'

'I don't really know too much about that sort of thing.'

'I could tell you if…'

They were soon standing in the garden, where Morse scooped up a handful of soil from a former potato furrow and let it trickle slowly through his fingers. His eyes missed nothing. The wall between number 7 and number 9 was a lowish red-brick affair, flaked into lighter patches by the tooth of countless frosts; and beyond that wall… Morse could see it all now. What, in Mrs. Purvis's house, had been the original low-ceilinged scullery had there been converted into a higher, longer extension, with the line of the slates carried forward, albeit at a shallower angle, to roof it. Beyond that, and shielding the plot from the boat-building sheds which fronted the canal, was a wall some eight feet high-a wall (as Morse could see) which had recently been repaired at one point.

Interesting… Tonight, perhaps?

It says something for Morse that he proceeded to knock (though very gently) on the doors of numbers 5, 3, and 1 of the Reach, and he was fortunate to the extent that the first two were either at that moment empty or tenanted by the slightly hard-of-hearing. At number 1 he satisfied his talent for improvisation by asking the very old man who answered the door if a Mr.-Mr. er-Green lived anywhere about; and was somewhat taken aback to see an arthritic finger pointing firmly across to number 8-the abode of the polymath from the car-line at Cowley.

'Haven't I seen you somewhere afore, mister?' asked the old man, peering closely at him.

A rather flustered Morse confessed that he'd often been in the district doing a bit of local research ('For the library, you know'), and stayed talking long enough to learn that the old boy spent a couple of hours across at the Printer's Devil every evening. 'Eight o'clock to ten o'clock, mister. Reg'lar as clockwork-like me bowels.'

If it was going to be tonight, it had better be between 8 and 10 p.m., then. Why not? Easy!

Morse was more honest (well, a little more honest) with the locksmith-the same locksmith whom Walters had visited and questioned a week earlier. Introducing himself as a chief inspector of police. Morse stated (which was quite true) that he had to get into number 9 Canal Reach again, and (which, of course, was quite untrue) that he'd left his key at the police station. It was a bit of a nuisance, he knew, but could…? Mr. Grimes, however, was unable to oblige: there wasn't a single key in the shop that could fit the front door of number 9. He could always open the lock himself, though; could open any door. Did Morse want him to…? No! That was the last thing Morse wanted.

'Look,' said Morse. 'I know I can trust you. You see, we've had some outside information about the trouble there-you remember?-the suicide. The big thing is that we don't want the neighbours to be worried or suspicious at all. And the truth is that my incompetent sergeant has er temporarily misplaced both the keys-'

'You mean three keys, don't you, Inspector?'

The locksmith proceeded to give an account of his earlier visit from Walters, and Morse listened and learned-and wondered.

'I didn't tell him about the back door key, though,' continued the locksmith. 'It didn't seem important, if you follow me, and he didn't ask me, anyway.'

Two minutes and one £5 note later, Morse left the shop with a key which (he was assured) would fit the back door lock of number 9: Grimes himself had fitted the lock some six months earlier and could remember exactly which type it was. 'Keep all this quiet, won't you?' Morse had said, but he'd found no kindred spirit in the locksmith. And how foolish and risky it all was! Yet so much of Morse's life was exactly that, and now, at least, his mind was urgently engaged. It made him feel strangely content. He walked up Great Clarendon Street and saw (as Walters had seen) St. Paul's now facing him at the top of Walton Street. 'Begun 1835,' he said to himself. Even his memory was sharpening up again.