There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.
– Much Ado about Nothing Act II, scene iii
On Saturday, 13th 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.
He can't write, nor rade writing from his cradle, please your honour; but he can make his mark equal to another, sir.
– Maria Edgeworth, Love and Law
It was the same morning, the morning of Saturday, 13th October, that Charles Richards had received the letter at his home address. The postage stamp (first class) corner of the cover had been doubly cancelled-the first postmark clearly showing 'Oxford, 8 Oct.', with the second, superimposed mark blurred and illegible. Nor was the reason for the delayed delivery difficult to see, for the original address was printed as 61 (instead of 261) Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, Nr. Oxford, and someone (doubtless the householder at number 61) had been aware of the mistake, had re-addressed the envelope correctly, and had put the letter back in the pillar box. The clean, white envelope (with 'Private' printed across the top-left of the cover) was neatly sealed with Sellotape, with the name and address written in capital letters by what seemed a far from educated hand. 'Abingdon' was misspelt (the 'g' omitted), and each of the lines gradually veered from the horizontal towards the bottom of the envelope, as if the correspondent were not particularly practised in any protracted activity with the pen. Inside the cover was another envelope, of the same brand, folded across the middle, the name 'Charles Richards' printed on it in capitals, with the words 'Strictly Personal' written immediately above. Richards slit this second envelope with rather more care than he had done the first, and took out the single sheet of good-quality paper. There was no address, no signature, and no date:
Dear Mister Richards
Its about Missis Scott who died, I now all about you and her but does Missis Richards. I now ALL about it, I hope you believe me because if you don’t I am going to tell her everything, You dont want that. I am not going to tell her if you agree, You are rich and what is a thousand pounds. If you agree I will not bother to rite again, I keep all promises beleive that. The police dont now anything and I have never said what I now. Here is what you do, You go down to Walton Street in Jericho and turn left into Walton Well Road and then strate on over the little Canal brige and then over the railway brige and you come to a parking area where you cant go much further, then turn round and face Port Medow and you will see a row of willow trees, the fifth from the left has got a big hole in it about five feet from the ground. So put the money there and drive away, I will be waching all the time. I will give you a ring soon and that will be only once. I hope you will not try anything funny. Please remember your wife.
Although the writing was crudely printed, with several words written out in individual, unjoined characters, the message was surprisingly coherent-and disturbing. Yet as Charles Richards read it, his mind seemed curiously detached: it was almost as if the writing had been submitted to him as a piece of English prose that had to be corrected and commented upon-its message secondary and of comparatively little significance. He read the letter through a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth; but if a hidden observer had recorded the conflicting emotions of puzzlement, anger, and even anxiety, that played upon his face, there was never the slightest hint of panic or despair. For Charles Richards was a clever and resourceful man, and he now refolded the letter, replaced it in its envelope and put it, together with the outer cover, inside his wallet.
Five minutes later he waited for a few seconds by Celia's bedside as she sat up, drew a cardigan round her shoulders, and took the breakfast tray of orange juice, tea, and toast. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, told her that he had to go into Oxford, that he'd take the Mini, and that he'd certainly be home for lunch about one. Was there anything he could get her from the shops? He'd perhaps have to nip into Oxford again in the evening, too.
Celia Richards heard him go, a great burden of anxiety weighing on her mind. How could a man so treacherous seem so kind? It had been an extraordinary coincidence that the first copy of the Oxford Mail she'd read for months had contained that account of Anne Scott's death, and she felt quite sure that Charles had read the article, too. Had he been responsible for that terrible thing? She couldn't really know and, to be truthful, she didn't care much either. What she did know was that their life together just couldn't go on as it had been. Putting things off was merely aggravating that almost intolerable burden, and she would put it off no longer. He'd said he'd be in for lunch; and after lunch… Yes! She would tell him then. Tell him all she knew; tell him the truth. It was the only way-the only way for her. Conrad had counselled against it, but Conrad would understand. Conrad always understood… She munched the tasteless toast and drank the lukewarm tea. Oxford… He'd always insisted how important it was for him to put in a few hours at the office on Saturday mornings. So why Oxford? With Anne Scott dead, what could possibly be dragging him to Oxford?
In the Intensive Care Unit at the J.R.2, Doctor Philips walked from the side of the youth lying motionless beneath the startlingly white sheets, and pulled out the chart from the slot at the foot of the bed: temperature still high, pulse still rather disturbingly variable.
'Bloody fool!' he mumbled to the nurse who stood beside him.
'Will he be all right?' she asked.
Philips shrugged his shoulders. 'Doubt it. Once you start on that sort of stuff…'
'Do we know what stuff it was?'
'Can't be sure, really. Cocaine, I shouldn't wonder, though. High temperature, dilation of the pupils, sweating, gooseflesh, hypertension-all the usual symptoms. Took it intravenously, too, by the look of things. Which doesn't help, of course.'
'Will he get over this, I mean?'
'If he does it'll be thanks to you, Nurse-no one else.' Nurse Warrener felt pleased with the compliment, and just a little more hopeful than she had been. She thought she could perhaps get to like Michael Murdoch. He was only a boy really: well, nineteen according to the records-exactly the same age as she was-and a prospective undergraduate at Lonsdale College. What a tragedy it would be if his life were now to be completely ruined! She thought of Michael's mother, too-a brisk, energetic-looking woman who seemed on the face of it to be taking things none too badly, but who (as Nurse Warrener rightly suspected) was hiding behind that competent, no-nonsense mien the ghost of some distraught despair.
Sophocles lived through a cycle of events spatially narrow, no doubt, in the scale of national and global history, but without parallel in intensity of action and Demotion.
– From the Introduction to Sophocles, The Theban Plays, Penguin Classics
The gates of the boatyard were open as Morse moved swiftly along Canal Reach that night, no lights showing in the fronts of either 9 or 10. It was just before 9 p.m., and the Lancia stood on double yellow lines outside the Printer's Devil, into which Morse had slipped a quarter of an hour earlier, not only to establish some spurious raison d'être for his presence in the area, but also to down a couple of double Scotches. Once inside the yard, he turned immediately to his left and felt his way along the brick wall, treading cautiously amid the petrol drums, the wooden spars, and the assorted, derelict debris of old canal barges. There was no one about, and the boatman's hut just ahead of him was securely padlocked. The only noise was a single splash of some water bird behind the low bulk of the house-boat moored alongside the Canal, and the moon had drifted darkly behind the scudding clouds.
With the level of the wharf a foot or so higher than the street behind it, the wall was not going to pose such a problem as Morse had feared, and standing on one of the petrol drums, he peered cautiously over the recently repaired section of the wall. No lights shone in the back rooms of numbers 9, 7 or 5. He hoisted himself up and, keeping his body as close to the top of the wall as he could, dropped down on the other side, feeling a sharp spasm of pain as his right foot crushed a small, terra-cotta flower pot beneath. The noise startled him, and his heart pounded as he stood for several minutes beside the deep shadow of the wall. But nothing moved; no lights came on; and he stepped silently along to the back door, let himself in, stood inside the kitchen, and waited until his eyes could slowly accustom themselves to the darkness. The door immediately to his right would lead, he guessed, to a small bathroom and WC; to his left, the door at the other side of the kitchen would lead (he knew) directly into the lounge. And lifting the latch of the latter, he pulled it open, the bottom of the lower panel scraping raspingly along the floor. Inside the lounge, he felt on familiar territory, and taking a torch from his raincoat pocket he carefully shielded the light with his left hand as he made his way up to the back bedroom. He had already decided that it would be far too risky to venture into the front bedroom, let alone switch on any lights; and so he spent the next half hour by torchlight looking through the drawers of the desk in what had clearly been the woman's study, feeling like some scrawny bird of prey that is left with the offal after the depredations of the jackals and hyenas. Finally he pocketed one book, shone his torch timorously around the room, and nodded with sad approval as the light picked out the black spines of a whole shelf of Penguin Classical Authors, correctly ordered in alphabetical sequence through from Aeschylus to Xenophon. One little gap, though, wasn't there? And Morse frowned slightly as he shone the torch more closely. Yes, a gap between Seneca's Tragedies and Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars. What could that be? Sophocles, perhaps? Yes, almost certainly Sophocles. So what? So bloody what? Morse shrugged his shoulders, pulled the door to behind him, and stepped carefully down the narrow, squeaking stairs.
Standing motionless for a few seconds in the lounge, he was suddenly aware how very cold the house was, and his mind momentarily settled on the household's heating arrangements. No central heating system, that was clear. No night-storage heaters, either, by the look of things; and the only heating appliance so far encountered was that small electric fire upstairs. A coal fire, perhaps? Surely there'd be a grate here somewhere. His torch still turned off, Morse stepped across the carpeted floor-and there it was in the far wall, surrounded by the lightish-coloured tiles of the fixture. Yes, he remembered it now; and bending down he felt with his right hand along the iron grille. Something there. He switched the torch on right up against the back of the grate, and then slowly allowed the beam to illuminate whatever there was to be seen. It wasn't much: the blackened, curled remains of what had probably been a sheet of notepaper, the flimsy fragments floating down and disintegrating as his delicate fingers touched them. But even as they did so, the torchlight picked out a small piece of something white in the ash-pan below, and Morse pulled away the front and gently picked it out. It seemed to be part of the heading of an official letter, printed in small black capitals, and even now Morse could quite easily make out the letters: ICH. Then he found another tiny piece; and although the flames had obviously curled across it, leaving the surface a smoky brown, it seemed clear to him that it was probably part of the same line of print. KAT, was it? Or RAT, more likely? He inserted the pieces between two pages of the book he had pocketed from upstairs, and his mind was already bounding down improbable avenues. Many of the books and papers he'd looked through upstairs were linked in some way with German literature, and he remembered from his schooldays that 'Ich rat' meant 'I judged' or 'I thought'. Something like that anyway. He could always look it up later, of course, although it promptly occurred to him that he would hardly be overmuch enlightened if his memory proved to have been reliable. And then as he stood in that cold, dark room beside the fireless grate another thought occurred to him: what an idiot-what a stupid idiot he was! It was that first, cowardly evasion of the truth that had caused it all-all because he didn't want it to be known that he'd been floating around in Jericho looking for some necessary sex one afternoon. Suddenly, he felt a little frightened, too…
He locked the back door behind him, walked down the strip of garden, and looked for a place in the wall where he could get something of a foothold in order to scale what, from this side, appeared a most formidable precipice. What if he couldn't manage… But then Morse saw it. At the foot of the wall was a wooden board, about one foot square, on which someone had recently been mixing small quantities of cement, and beside it a bricklayer's trowel. The shudder that passed through Morse at that moment was not of fear-but of excitement. With his crisis of confidence now passed, his brain was sweetly clear once more. Spontaneously it told him, too, of a dustbin somewhere nearby; and he found it almost immediately, moved it against the wall, and standing on it clambered to the top. Easy! He breathed a great sigh of relief as he landed safely inside the boatyard, where the gates were still open, and whence he made his exit without further alarum.
As he walked into Canal Reach, keeping tightly to his right, a hand clamped upon his shoulder with an iron grip, and a voice whispered harshly in his ear: 'Just keep walking, mister!'
At about the same time that Morse was entering the house in Canal Reach, a Mini Clubman turned down into the northern stretch of the Woodstock Road, having travelled into Oxford from Abingdon via the western Ring Road. The car kept closely into the bus lane, crawling along at about 10 m.p.h. past the large, elegant houses, set back on higher ground behind the tall hedges that masked their wide fronts and provided a quiet privacy for their owners. The driver pulled the car completely over on to the pavement beside a telephone kiosk on his left, turned off the lights, got out, entered the kiosk, and picked up the receiver. The dialling tone told him that the phone was probably in working order, and keeping the instrument to his ear he turned round and looked up and down the road. No one was in sight. He stepped out and, as if searching his pockets for some coinage, carefully examined the surrounds of the kiosk. The stone wall behind it was luxuriantly clad with thick ivy, and he pushed his hands against it, seeming to be satisfied that all was well. He got back into the Mini and drove along the road for about fifty yards, before stopping again and taking note of the name of the road, that stretched quite steeply off on his left. He then drove the short distance down to Squitchey Lane, turned left, left at the Banbury Road, left into Sunderland Avenue, and finally left again into the Woodstock Road. For the moment there was no traffic and he drove slowly once more along the selfsame stretch of road. Then, nodding to himself with apparent satisfaction, he accelerated away.
The plan was laid.
Michael Murdoch opened his eyes at about ten minutes to ten that evening to find the same pretty face looking down at him. He noticed with remarkable vividness the strong white teeth, a gold filling somewhere towards the extremity of her smile, and he heard her speak.
'Feeling better?'
Momentarily he was feeling nothing, not even a sense of puzzlement, and in a dry-throated whisper he managed to answer 'Yes.' But as he lay back and closed his eyes again, his head was drifting off in a giddying whirl and the body it had left behind seemed slowly to be slipping from the sloping bed. He felt a cold, restraining hand on his drenched forehead, and immediately he was back inside his skull once more, with a giant, brown rat that sat at the entrance of his right ear, twitching its nose and ever edging menacingly forward, its long tail insinuating itself centimetre by centimetre into the gaping orifice, and the long white slits of teeth drawing nearer and nearer to a vast and convoluted dome of pale-white matter that even now he recognized: it was his own matter, his own flesh, his own brain.
He heard himself shriek out in terror.
Miss Catharine Edgeley returned to Oxford that night. Her mother had died of a brain tumour; her mother was now buried. And there was little room in Miss Edgeley's mind that night for any thoughts of the last time she had played bridge in North Oxford. Indeed, she had no knowledge at that time that Anne Scott, too, was dead.
Sit Pax in Valle Tamesis.
– Motto of the Thames Valley Police Authority
Morse's mind was curiously detached as he 'kept walking', eyes frozen forward, along the short length of Canal Reach. With Teutonic recollections the order of the night, he recalled that in Germany the situation might have been regarded as serious but not hopeless, in Austria, hopeless but not serious. Or was it the other way round? To his astonishment, however, he found himself being firmly manipulated towards a police car, parked just round the corner, its gaily-coloured emblem illuminated by the orange glare of a street lamp. And as he reached the car and turned about, he found himself looking slightly upwards into the face of a rather frightened-looking young man.
'You, sir!' It was Detective Constable Walters who was the first to speak, and Morse's shoulders sagged with a combination of relief and exasperation.
'Are you in the habit of arresting your superior officers, Constable?'
A flustered Walters followed the Lancia up to Morse's North Oxford flat, where over a few whiskies the two of them sat and talked until way after midnight. On his own side, Morse came almost completely clean, omitting only any mention of his bribing of the Jericho locksmith. For his part, Walters admitted to his own anxiety about Morse's behaviour, recounted in detail his own investigations, and revealed that after working late in St. Aldates that night he had been on his way to return the few items taken from Canal Reach when he had seen the yellow glow flitting about the dark and silent rooms. Throughout Walters' somewhat discontinuous narrative, Morse remained silent, attentive, and seemingly impassive. When Walters had mentioned the strange discoveries of the chair in the kitchen and the key on the door-mat, Morse had nodded noncommittally, as though the incidents were either of little moment or perfectly explicable. Only during Walters' account of his visit to the Summertown Bridge Club had Morse's eyes appeared to harden to a deeper blue.
'You're in a tricky position, young fellow,' said Morse finally. 'You find a superior officer snooping around in an empty house-a house in which he'd poked his nose the day the dead woman was found-an officer who had no more right to be there than a fourth-grade burglar-so what do you do, Walters?'
'I just don't know, sir.'
'I'll tell you what you ought to have done.' The sudden sharp edge on Morse's voice made Walters look up anxiously. 'If you had any nous at all you would have asked me how I got in. Not really good enough, was it?'
Walters opened his mouth to say something, but Morse continued. 'How long have you been in the Force?'
'Eighteen months altogether, but only three-'
'You've got a lot to learn.'
'I'm learning all the time, sir.'
Morse grinned at the young man. 'Well, you've got something else to learn; and that's exactly what your duty has got to be now. And in case you don't know, I'll tell you. It's your duty to report everything that's happened tonight to Chief Inspector Bell, agreed?'
Walters nodded. The point had been worrying him sorely, and he felt glad that Morse had made things so easy for him. Again he was about to say something, but again he was interrupted.
'But not just yet, understand? I'll see the Assistant Chief Constable first and explain the whole position. You see, Walters, there's something a bit odd about this business; something that needs an older and a wiser head than yours.'
He poured another liberal dose of whisky into Walters' glass, another into his own, and spent the next half-hour asking Walters about his training, his prospects and his ambition; and Walters responded fully and eagerly to such sympathetic interest. At half past midnight he felt the profound wish that he could work with this man; and at a quarter to one, when about to leave, he was only too happy to leave with Morse the items he had originally set out to deposit in the house on Canal Reach.
'How did you get in there, sir?' he asked on the doorstep. 'Did you have a key or-'
'When you've been around as long as I have, Constable, you'll find you don't need a key to get through most doors. You see, the lock on the back door there is a Yale, and with a Yale the bevel's always facing you when you're on the outside. So if you take a credit card and slip it in, you'll find it's just strong enough and just flexible enough to-'
'I know, sir. I've seen it done on the telly.'
'Oh.'
'And er the lock on the back door there isn't a Yale, is it? Goodnight, sir. And thanks for the whisky.'
Morse spent the next hour or so looking through the two Letts' diaries now in his possession, the one (for the current year) just handed to him by Walters, the other (for the previous year) taken a few hours earlier from Canal Reach. If Walters could be trusted, no letters of even minimal significance had been found in the drawers of the desk; and so the diaries were probably as near as anyone could ever come to unlocking the secret life of the late Anne Scott. Not that the entries seemed to Morse particularly promising. Times, mostly: times of trains; times of social events; times of pupils' lessons-yes, that was doubtless the meaning of those scores of initials scattered throughout the pages, several of them recurring at regular (often weekly) intervals over months, and in a few cases over a year or more. The 'E.M.' entry on the Wednesday she'd died held his attention for a while as he knew it must have held the attention of Walters and of Bell. But, like them, he could only think of one person with those same initials: himself. And he had never quite forgiven his parents for christening their only offspring as they had.
Morse slept soundly, and woke late next morning, his brain clear and keen. The images and impressions of all he had learned had flashed across his mind but once, yet already the hooks and eyes of his memories were beginning to combine in strange and varied patterns.
Almost all of them wrong.
Chaos preceded Cosmos, and it is into Chaos without form and void that we have plunged.
– John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu
Mrs. Gwendola Briggs was very soon aware of the different nature of the beast when, on the following Monday, Morse, after a rather skimped day's work at the Thames Valley HQ, finally found time to pursue his unofficial and part-time course of enquiries. This man (it seemed to Gwendola) was quite unnecessarily objectionable and bullying in the series of questions he bombarded her with. Who was there that night? Where had they sat? What were the topics of conversation? Had anyone cancelled? Had anyone turned up at the last minute? Were the bridge-pads still there? Exactly what time had they finished? Where were the cars parked? How many cars? It was all quite flustering for her, and quite unlike the vague and pleasant questions that the big and gentle constable had asked her. This man irritated her, making her feel almost guilty about not quite being able to remember things. Yet it was surprising (as she later confessed to herself) how much he'd compelled her to remember; and as Morse prepared to take his leave, holding the list of the names and addresses of those who had attended the bridge evening, he felt adequately satisfied. With the losing pair of each rubber (as he had learned) staying at the same table, and the winning pair moving along, it seemed more than likely that Anne had spoken with everyone there, at least for some intermittent minutes.
'Oh, yes. There was something else a little unusual about that night, Inspector. You see, it was our first anniversary, and we had a break about eleven to celebrate. You know, a couple of glasses of sherry to mark the occasion-drink to our future success and-' Gwendola suddenly broke off, conscious of her tactlessness. But Morse refused to rescue her.
'I’m sorry. I didn't mean to- Oh dear! What a tragedy it all is!'
'Did you meet last week, Mrs. Briggs?'
'Yes, we did. We meet every-'
'You didn't feel that because of the er tragedy that-'
'Life must go on, mustn't it, Inspector?'
Morse's sour expression seemed to suggest that there was probably little justification for such continuance in the case of this mean-minded little woman, doubtless ever dreaming of over-tricks and gleefully doubling the dubious contracts of the recently initiated. But he made no answer as his eyes skimmed down the list she had given him. 'Mrs. Murdoch'! Was that the same one? The same Mrs. Murdoch who had invited him to the party when he and Anne…? Surely it was! His thoughts floated back to that first-no, that only-evening when he and Anne had met; the evening when but for the cussedness of human affairs he- Augh! Forget it! Should he forget it, though? Had there been something he had learned that evening that he should, and must, remember? Already he had tried to dredge up what he could, but the simple truth was that he'd drunk too much on that occasion. Come to think of it, though, there was that bit of research he'd heard of only the previous week. Some team of educational psychologists in Oxford was suggesting that if you'd revised whilst you were drunk, and turned up sober for the next day's examinations, you'd be lucky to remember anything at all. Likewise, if you'd revised in a comparatively sober state of mind and then turned up drunk, you'd hardly stand much chance of self-distinction. But (and this was the point) if you'd revised whilst drunk, and maintained a similar degree of inebriation during the examination itself, then all was likely to be well. Interesting. Yes. Morse felt sure there was something he'd heard from Anne that night. Something. Almost he had it as he stood there on the doorstep; but it slipped away and left him frustrated and irritated. The sooner he got drunk, the better!
As he finally took his leave, he realised how less than gracious he'd been to the chairman of the Summertown Bridge Club.
When the door opened, Morse recognised one of the Murdoch boys he'd seen at the party, and his memory struggled for the name.
'Michael, is it?'
'No. I'm Ted.'
'Oh, yes. Is your mother in, Ted?'
'No. She's gone down to the hospital. It's Michael.'
'Road accident?' What made Morse suggest such a possible cause of hospitalisation, he could not have said; but he noticed the boy's quite inexplicable unease.
'No. He's-he's been on drugs.'
'Oh dear! Bad, is he?'
The boy swallowed. 'Pretty bad, yes.'
Things were beginning to stir a little in Morse's mind now. Yes. This was the younger brother he was talking to, by quite a few inches the taller of the two and slightly darker in complexion, due to sit his A-level examinations-which year had Mrs. Murdoch said that was? Then it hit him. E.M… Edward Murdoch! Wednesday afternoons. And (it flooded back) for the latter part of the previous year and the present year up until June, the initials M.M., too, had appeared regularly in the diaries: Michael Murdoch.
Morse took the plunge. 'Weren't you due for a lesson with Ms. Scott the day she committed suicide?' His eyes left the boy's face not for the flutter of an eyelash as he asked the brutal question; but, in turn, the boy's brown eyes were unblinking as a chameleon's.
'Yes, I was.'
'Did you go?'
'No. She told me the previous week that she-wouldn't be able to see me.'
'I see.' Morse had noticed the hesitation, and a wayward fancy crossed his mind. 'Did you like her?' he asked simply.
'Yes, I did.' The voice, like the eyes, was firm-and oddly gentle.
Morse was tempted to pursue the theme, but switched instead to something different.
'A-levels this year?'
The boy nodded. 'German, French, and Latin.'
'You confident?'
'Not really.'
'Shouldn't worry too much about that,' said Morse in an objectionably avuncular tone. 'Overrated quality confidence is.' (Weren't those the words of Mrs. Murdoch, though? Yes, the memories of the night were stronger now.) 'Hard work-that's the secret. Put your foot through the telly, or something.' Morse heard himself drooling on tediously, and saw the boy looking at him with a hint of contempt in those honest eyes.
'I was working when you called, actually, Inspector.'
'Jolly good! Well, I er I mustn't interrupt you any longer, must I?' He turned to leave. 'By the way, did Ms. Scott ever say anything to you about her-well, her private life?'
'Is that what you wanted to see mum about?'
'Partly, yes.'
'She never said anything to me about it.' The boy's words were almost aggressive, and Morse felt puzzled.
'What about your brother? Did he ever say anything?'
'Say anything about what?'
'Forget it, lad! Just tell your mother I called, will you? And that I'll be calling again, all right?' For a few seconds his harsh blue eyes fixed Edward's, and then he turned around and walked away.
It says little for Morse's thoroughness that Miss Catharine Edgeley (next on his list and living so close to the Murdochs) was to be the last of the bridge party destined to be interviewed. Yes, she realised now, there was something that might be valuable for him to know: Anne had asked her to drop a note through the Murdochs' letter box, a note in a white, sealed envelope, addressed to Edward Murdoch.
'Why didn't you give it to Mrs. Murdoch?'
'I’m not sure, really. I think, yes, I think she left just a bit before the others. Perhaps her table had finished and if she wasn't in line for any of the prizes… I forget. Anyway, Anne wrote-'
'She wrote it there!'
'Yes, she wrote it on the sideboard. I remember that. She had a silver Parker-'
'Did she seem worried?'
'I don't think so, no. A bit flushed, perhaps-but we'd all had a few drinks and-'
'What were you all talking about? Try to remember, please!'
Catharine shook her pretty head. 'I can't. I'm sorry, Inspector, but-'
'Think!' pleaded Morse.
And so she tried to think: think what people normally spoke about-the weather, work, inflation, gossip, children… And slowly she began to form a hazy recollection about an interlude. It was about children, surely… Yes, they were talking at one stage about children: something to do with the Oxfam appeal for the Cambodian refugees, was it? Or Korean? Somewhere in that part of the world, anyway.
Morse groaned inwardly as she tried to give some sort of coherence to thoughts so inchoate and so confused, but she'd told him about the note, and that was something.
Unfortunately, the item of far greater importance she'd just imparted was completely lost on Morse. At least for the moment.
Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.
– Thomas Hardy, Wessex Heights
Over breakfast on Tuesday morning, Morse read his one item of mail with mild; half-engaged interest. It was the Oxford Book Association's monthly newsletter, giving a full account of Dame Helen's memorable speech, discussing the possibility of a Christmas Book Fair, reporting the latest deliberations of the committee, and then-Morse stopped and stared very hard. It was with deep regret that we heard of the death of Anne Scott. Anne had served on the committee only since the beginning of this year, but her good humour, constructive suggestions, and invariable willingness to help even in the most routine and humdrum chores-all these will be sadly missed. The chairman represented the Association at Anne's funeral. Well, that was news to Morse. Perhaps-no, almost certainly-he would have seen Anne at that last meeting if things had turned out differently. And if only he'd been a regular member, he would have seen her often. If only! He sighed and knew that life was full of 'if only' for everyone. Then he turned the page and the capital letters of the corrigendum jumped out at him. 'The next meeting NOTE THE CHANGE PLEASE will be on Friday, 19th October, when the speaker (this as previously advertised) will be MR. CHARLES RICHARDS. His subject Triumphs and Tribulations of the Small Publisher will be of particular interest to many of our members and we look forward to a large attendance. Mr. Richards apologises for the late notification of the change which is necessitated because of business commitments.' Morse made a brief note in his diary: there was nothing else doing that evening. He might go. On the whole, he thought not, though.
When the phone rang at 10.30 a.m. the same morning, Charles Richards was in his office. Normally the call would have filtered from the outer office through his secretary, but she was now sitting opposite him taking down shorthand (interspersed, Richards noticed, with rather too many pieces of longhand to give him much real confidence in her stenographic skills). He picked up the phone himself.
'Richards here. Can I help you?'
A rather faint, working-class voice replied that he (it was a 'he', surely?) was sure as 'ow Mister Charles Richards could 'elp: and at the first mention of his wife, Richards clamped his hand over the mouthpiece, told his secretary to leave him for a few minutes, waited for the door to close, and then spoke slowly and firmly into the phone.
'I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, you blackmailing rat! But I believe what you said in your letter and I've made arrangements to get the money-exactly one quarter of what you asked for, do you understand me?'
There was no reply.
'There's no chance of my agreeing to the arrangements you made-absolutely none. So listen carefully. Tomorrow night-got that?-tomorrow night I shall be driving slowly down the Woodstock Road-from the roundabout at the top-at half past eight. Exactly half past eight. I shall be driving a light blue Rolls Royce, and I shall stop just inside a road called Field House Drive-two words: "Field House". It's just above Squitchey Lane. I shall get out there and I shall be carrying a brown carrier bag. Then I shall walk up to the telephone kiosk about fifty yards north of Field House Drive, go into the kiosk, and then come out again and put the carrier bag behind the kiosk, just inside the ivy there. Behind the kiosk-got that?-not inside it. It will be absolutely safe, you can take my word on that. I shall then walk straight back to the car and drive back up the Woodstock Road. Do you understand all that?' Still no reply.
'There'll be no funny business on my part, and there'd better be none on yours! You can pick up your money-it's yours. But there'll not be a penny more-you can take that as final. Absolutely final. And if you do try anything else like this again, I'll kill you, do you hear that? I'll kill you with my own hands, you snivelling swine!'
Throughout this monologue, Richards had been continuously aware of the harsh, wheezy breathing of the man on the other end of the line, and now he waited for whatever reply might be forthcoming. But there was none. 'Have you got it all straight?'
Finally, he heard the tight voice again. 'You'll be glad you done this, Mister Richards. So will Missis Richards.' With that, the line was dead.
Charles Richards put away the sheet of paper from which he had been reading, and immediately called in his secretary once more.
'Sorry about that. Where were we…?' He sounded completely at ease, but his heart was banging hard against his rib-cage as he dictated the next letter.
Mr. Parkes was old, and would soon die. For the last few years he had been drinking heavily, but he had no regrets about that. Looking back over his life, however, he felt it had been largely wasted. Even his twenty years as headmaster of a primary school in Essex seemed to him now a period of little real achievement. A great addict from his early boyhood of all types of puzzles-mathematical problems, crosswords, chess, bridge-he had never found his proper niche. And as he sat drinking another bottle of Diet lager he regretted for the millionth time that no academic body had ever offered him a grant to set his mind to Etruscan or Linear C. He could have cracked those stubborn codes, by now! Oh yes!
He had stopped thinking about Anne Scott several days ago.
Mrs. Raven was discussing with her husband the final stages of their long-drawn-out (but now at last successful) campaign to adopt a baby. Both of them had been much surprised at the countless provisos and caveats surrounding such an innocent and benevolent-sounding process: the forms in duplicate and triplicate; the statements of incomes, job prospects, religious persuasions, and family history; oaths and solemn undertakings that the prospective parents would 'make no attempt whatsoever to discover the names, dwellings, situations, or any other relevant details of the former parent(s), neither to seek to ascertain'-etc., etc., etc. Oh dear! Mrs. Raven had felt almost guilty about everything, especially since it was she herself, according to the gynaecologist, who was thwarting her husband's frequent and frenetic attempts to propagate the Raven species. Still, things were nearly ready now, and she was so looking forward to getting the baby. She'd have to stay at home much more, of course. No more badminton evenings for a while; no more bridge parties. She had stopped thinking about Anne Scott several days ago.
Catharine Edgeley was busy writing an essay on the irony to be found in Jane Austen's novels, and she was enjoying her work. There was little room in her mind for a dead woman whom she had met only twice, and of whom she could form only the vaguest visual recollection. She'd rather liked the policeman, though. Quite dishy, really-well, he would have been when he was fifteen or twenty years younger.
Gwendola Briggs sat reading Bridge Monthly: one or two pretty problems, she thought. She re-read an article on a new American bidding system, and felt happy. Only just over half an hour and the bridge players would be arriving. She'd almost forgotten Anne Scott now, though not that 'cocky and conceited officer' as she'd described Morse to her new and rather nice neighbour-a neighbour whom she'd promptly enrolled in the bridge club's membership. So fortunate. Otherwise, they might have been one short.
Mrs. Murdoch was another person that evening for whom Anne Scott was little more than a tragic but bearable memory. At a quarter to seven she received a telephone call from the J.R.2, and heard from a junior and inexperienced houseman (the young doctor had tried so hard to find some euphemistic guise for 'nearly poked his eyes out') that her son Michael had attempted to do… to do some damage to his sight. The houseman heard the poor woman's moan of anguish, heard the strangled 'No'-and wondered what else he could bring himself to say.
Charles Richards was not thinking of Anne Scott when he rang the secretary of the Oxford Book Association at nine o'clock to say that unfortunately he wouldn't be able to get to the pre-talk dinner which had been arranged for him in the Ruskin Room at the Clarendon Institute on Friday. He was very sorry, but he hoped it might save the Association a few pennies? He'd arrive at ten minutes to eight-if that was all right? The secretary said it was, and mumbled 'Bloody chap!' to himself as he replaced the phone.
It was only as he sat in a lonely corner of his local that evening that Morse's mind reverted to the death of Anne Scott. Again and again he came so near to cornering that single piece of information-something seen? something heard?-that was still so tantalisingly eluding him. After his fourth pint, he wondered if he ever would remember it, for he knew from long and loving addiction that his brain was never so keen as after beer.
Only Mrs. Scott, now back in her semi-detached house in Burnley, grieved ever for her daughter and could not be comforted, her eyes once more brimming with tears as she struggled to understand what could have happened and-most bitter thought of all-how she herself could surely have helped if only she had known. If only… if only…
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there.
– A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
After declining the Master of Lonsdale's invitation to lunch, Morse walked from the Mitre along the graceful curve of the High up to Carfax. He had turned right into Cornmarket and was crossing over the road towards Woolworths when he thought he recognised someone walking about fifteen yards ahead of him-someone carrying a brown brief-case, and dressed in grey flannels and a check-patterned sports coat, who joined the bus queue for Banbury Road; and as the boy turned Morse could see the black tie, with its diagonal red stripes, of Magdalen College School. Games afternoon, perhaps? Morse immediately stopped outside the nearest shop, and divided his attention between watching the boy and examining the brown shoes (left foot only) that rested on the 'Reduced' racks. Edward Murdoch himself seemed restless. He consulted his wristwatch every thirty seconds or so, punctuating this impatience with a craning-forward to read the numbers on the buses as they wheeled round Carfax into Cornmarket. Five minutes later, he felt inside his sports jacket for his wallet, picked up his briefcase, left the queue, and disappeared into a tiny side street between a jeweller's shop and Woolworths. There, pulling off his tie and sticking it in his pocket, he walked down the steps of the entrance to the Corn Dolly. It was just after ten minutes to one.
The bar to his right was crowded with about forty or fifty men, most of them appearing to be in their early twenties and almost all of them dressed in denims and dark-coloured anoraks. But clearly Edward was no stranger here. He walked through a wide porch-way into the rear bar-a more sedate area with upholstered wall-seats and low tables where a few older men sat eating sausages and chips.
'A pint of bitter, please.'
Whether it was his upper-class accent, or the politeness of his request, or his somewhat youthful features, that caused the barmaid to glance at him-it made no difference. She pulled his pint, and the boy sauntered back to the main bar. Here, to his left, was a small dais, about one foot high and measuring some three yards by five, its dullish brown linoleum looking as if a group of Alpine mountaineers had walked across it in their crampons. Only a few chairs were set about the room, and clearly the clientele here was not the kind of sit quietly and discuss the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. And even had any wished to do so, such conversation would have been drowned instantly by the deafening blare of the jukebox. Edward sat on the edge of the dais, sipped his Worthington 'E', stared down at the red-and-black-patterned carpet-and waited. Most of the other men pulled fitfully and heavily upon their cigarettes, the smoke curling slowly to a ceiling already stained a deep tobacco-brown. These men were waiting, too.
Suddenly the blue and yellow spotlights were switched on, the jukebox switched off, and a buxom girl in a black cloak, who had hitherto been seated sipping gin in some dim alcove, stepped out on to the miniature stage. Like iron filings drawn towards a powerful magnet, fifty young men who a moment before had been lounging at the bar were now formed into a solid phalanx around the three sides of the dais.
At that second only one man in the room had his eyes on the large blackboard affixed to the whitewashed wall behind the dais-a blackboard whereon the management proudly proclaimed the programme for the week: go-go dancing every lunch time; live pop groups each evening; with 'Bar snacks always available' written in brackets at the bottom as an afterthought. But now a softer, more sensuous music filled the semi-subterranean vaults, and the girl billed as the 'Fabulous Fiona' was already unfastening the clasp at the top of her cloak. All eyes (without exception now) were riveted upon her as amateurishly but amiably enough she pranced about the floor, exhibiting a sequence of sequined garments, slowly divested and progressively piled on top of the cloak beneath the blackboard, until at last she was down to her panties and bra. A roar of approval greeted the doffing of this latter garment; but the former, its sequins glittering in the kaleidoscopic lights, remained staunchly in place, in spite of several quite unequivocal calls for its removal. She was a daring girl. With the palms of her hands supporting her weighty breasts, she paraded herself under the noses of several of the more proximate voyeurs-like a maiden holding up a pair of giant bowls in a ten-pin bowling alley. Then the record stopped, the synthetic smile was switched off, and with the cloak now covering all once more, the fabled girl retired to her alcove where she joined two bearded men whose functions in the proceedings had not been immediately apparent.
Most of the audience drifted back to the bar; some of them left; and one of them resumed his seat on the dais. In five minutes the girl would be repeating her routine, Edward was aware of that-as he was also aware of someone who had just sat down beside him.
'Fancy another pint?' asked Morse.
Edward looked as guilty as someone just accused of stealing from a supermarket; but he nodded: 'Yes, please.' Morse was a little surprised at this; and as he stood waiting for two further pints he wondered if the boy would take his chance to get away. Somehow, though, he knew he wouldn't. He just managed to beat the second lunge of bodies to the dais, where he managed a considerably closer view of a now more sinuously synchronized Fiona. The beer, too, was beginning to encourage a rather more positive reaction amongst the ringside viewers, for this time there was even a smattering of applause as she finally turned away to find her cloak.
'Do you come here often?' asked the boy.
'Not every lunch-time,' Morse said lightly. 'What about you?'
'I've been once or twice before.'
'Shouldn't you be at school?'
'I've got the afternoon off. What about you?'
Morse was beginning to like the boy. 'Me? I do what I want to do every afternoon: watch the girls, drink a pint or two-anything. You see, I'm over eighteen, like you, lad. You are over eighteen, aren't you? For those who aren't, you know, "the girls and pints are out of order"-if you see what I mean. It's an anagram. "Striplings"-that's the answer. You interested in crosswords?'
But Edward ignored the question. 'Why did you follow me here?'
'I wanted to know why you lied to me, that's all-'
'Lied?'
'-about the note Ms. Scott left for you.'
The boy took a deep breath. 'Hadn't we better sit somewhere else?'
For a start he was evasive; truculent even. But he had little chance against Morse. In some strange way (the boy felt) Morse's eyes were looking straight into his thoughts, alerted immediately to the slightest deviation from the truth. It was almost as if the man had known this truth before he'd asked, and was doing little more than note the lies. So, in the finish, he told Morse everything about Anne Scott: told him about his brother's boasts; about that week before she died when he'd seen her semi-naked and lusted after her; about the note he'd found on the door-mat; even about his own thoughts, so adolescently confused and troublous. And, progressively, he found himself liking Morse; found himself taking to a man who seemed humane and understanding-a man who listened carefully and who seemed so ready to forgive. Perhaps he was almost like a father… and Edward had never known his own.
Two things surprised Morse about his time with Edward Murdoch. The first was to discover what a pleasant and engaging lad he was, and to realise that others must have found this, too: his mother, his friends, his teachers-including Ms. Anne Scott… The second cause of Morse's surprise was a more immediately personal one: during the energetic gyrations of the fair Fiona, he had felt not the slightest twinge of mild eroticism-and what would Freud have made of that? On second thoughts, however, he didn't much care; he'd come round to the view that Freud would have been a far more valuable citizen if he'd stuck to his research on local anaesthetics. Yet it was a bit worrying, all the same. As a boy, the apogee of any voyeuristic thrill had been the static nude, demurely sitting sideways on, and found about two-thirds of the way through the barber's copy of Lilliput. But now? The nudes were everywhere: on calendars, on posters, in fashion adverts, in newspapers-even on the telly. And the truth seemed to be that the naked female body was losing its magic. Understandable, yes; but for Morse, most disappointing. After all, he was only just past his fiftieth birthday.
The boy had gone now, and Morse debated whether he should stay on for Act V of the stripper's scheduled stint. But even the anticipation had now grown as cold as the experienced reality. And he left.
Go on; I'll follow thee.
– Hamlet Act I, scene iv
At eight thirty that evening, George Jackson was crouching behind a hedge, his bicycle lying a few yards away in the dark undergrowth. He had carefully reconnoitred the area, and chosen a large house standing well back from the western side of the Woodstock Road. No lights had shown in the front of the house on his two previous visits, and there were none tonight. No dogs, either. The hedge was high and thick, but where it reached the adjoining property it grew more thin and bedraggled. Ideal-affording a perfect view of the entrance to Field House Drive about thirty yards to the right and the telephone kiosk about twenty yards to the left, both illuminated adequately by the street lamp immediately opposite. Occasionally a solitary person strolled by. Once a young couple, their arms round each other's waists. A few cyclists, and an intermittent flow of traffic either way.
The light blue Rolls Royce appeared from the direction of the A40 roundabout, travelling slowly along the bus lane. Jackson could see the driver fairly clearly, and he felt the pulses jumping in his wrists as he moved slightly forward and watched intently. The Rolls was doing no more than 10 m.p.h. as it passed the kiosk and covered the short distance to Field House Drive, its left blinker startlingly bright as it turned into the Drive and stopped-still almost completely visible. The driver got out, slammed the door to, and locked it. With the car keys still in his hand, he walked to the boot of the car, unlocked it, peered inside, and closed and relocked it, without removing anything. Then he disappeared (though for no more than a few seconds) from Jackson's view, and must obviously have opened something on the obscured nearside of the car, for almost immediately another door was closed with an aristocratically engineered 'clunk'. The man was in full view again now, and this time he carried a brown carrier bag in his right hand. He appeared quite calm, glancing neither to his left nor right in curiosity or apprehension.
As he came directly opposite, Jackson could see him plainly beneath the street lamp: a thickset man of medium height, about forty to forty-five, his thick, dark hair going grey at the temples. He was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit, and looked exactly as Jackson thought he would-fortunate and prosperous. Not for a second did the staring eyes behind the hedge leave the man as he walked up to the kiosk, went inside, lifted the receiver, came out again, thrust a hand in his pocket as if to find loose change, and then re-entered the kiosk as a grey-haired woman went slowly by with her white-haired terrier. Jackson's body suddenly felt numb with panic as the man in the kiosk appeared to be speaking into the telephone receiver. Was he ringing the police? But, just as suddenly, all was normal again. The man came out of the kiosk, thrust the carrier bag swiftly into the ivy behind it, and then walked back to the Rolls, fingering his car keys as he did so. The Rolls turned in a slow and dignified sweep and, with a momentary flash from the polished silver of the bonnet's grill, accelerated away and disappeared towards the northern roundabout. The road was as still as the grave.
Jackson was now in a dilemma which his limited mental capacities had not foreseen. Was he to leave his vantage-point immediately, grab the bag, and cycle off as fast as he could down the nearest back streets into Jericho? Or was he to wait, take things coolly, saunter over the road when he could convince himself the coast was completely clear, and then cycle sedately down the well-lit reaches of the lower part of Woodstock Road as if nothing were amiss? He decided to wait. Five minutes; ten minutes; fifteen minutes. And still he waited. Suddenly a light flashed on in the front room of the house behind him, and he crouched down further as a young woman pulled the curtains across the window. He had to move. Feeling his way carefully along the inner side of the hedge, he reached the gate and walked down the grassy slope to the pavement. Cold sweat stood out on his brow, and he felt a prickling sensation along his shoulders as he crossed the road and walked the few yards to the kiosk. No one was in sight, and no car passed as he put his hand behind the kiosk and found the bag at once. He recrossed the road, put the bag inside the fishing-basket secured to the rack on his cycle, and rode down towards Jericho. Below South Parade the traffic was busier, and Jackson felt his confidence growing. He turned round as two youngsters behind him zoomed nearer on their L-plated motor-bikes, and saw them almost force off the road a middle-aged don-gown billowing out behind him, his left hand clutching a pile of books. But they were soon gone, searing through the streets and leaving a wake of comforting silence behind them. At the Horse and Jockey Jackson turned right and rode down Observatory Street; then straight over Walton Street and down into the familiar grid of the roads in Jericho. Outside 10 Canal Reach he padlocked the rear wheel of his cycle to the drain-pipe, unfastened the fishing-basket, and took out his door key. It had been more nerve-racking than he'd expected; easier, though, in a way. He looked up the Reach briefly before letting himself in. A few youngsters were fooling about outside the Printer's Devil, one of them jerking the front wheel of his cycle high into the air as he circled slowly round; two women pushed their way through the door marked 'Saloon'; a man was trying to back his car into a narrow space. Quite a bit of activity, really. But none of them had noticed him Jackson was confident of that. And what if someone had!
Jackson was quite right in believing that none of the people he had noticed so casually had noticed him, in turn. Yet someone had noticed him; someone whom Jackson could not possibly have seen; someone bending low behind one of the cars parked outside the Printer's Devil, getting his hands very dirty as he fiddled with the greasy chain of his bicycle-a chain that had been, and still was, in perfect working order. The gown this person had been wearing, together with the pile of books he had been carrying, was now stowed away in the basket affixed to the front of the new, folding bicycle which he held upright on the pavement as he watched the door of 10 Canal Reach close.
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
– Mark Twain, Private History of a Campaign that Failed
The Chairman of the Oxford Book Association was relieved to see the Rolls Royce edge slowly through the narrow entrance to the Clarendon Institute car park. It was six minutes to eight, and he was having an anxious evening all round. Only about fifteen members had so far turned up, and already two of the committee were hastily removing many of the chairs in the large upstairs hall reserved for the meeting. Friday was never a good night, he knew that, and the late change of date could hardly have helped; but it was embarrassing, for everyone, to have an attendance as meagre as this.
Morse counted twenty-five in the audience when he tiptoed into the back row at five-past eight. After listening to The Archers he had felt restless, and the thought that he might be able to have a word with the chairman of the OBA about Anne Scott had finally tilted the balance in favour of 'Charles Richards: Triumphs and Tribulations of the Small Publisher. It took only a few minutes for Morse to feel glad he had made the effort to attend. It was not (in Morse's eyes) that this thickishly set man, of medium height, had a particularly forceful presence-although, to be fair, his expensively cut dark blue suit lent a certain air of elegance and rank. It was his manner of speaking that was impressive. In his quietly spoken, witty, tolerant, self-deprecatory way, Richards spoke of his early days as a schoolmaster, his life-long interest in books, the embryonic idea of starting up for himself as a small publisher, his first, fairly disastrous months, his ladling of luck as time went by, with a few minor coups here and there, and finally the expansion of his company and the recent move to Abingdon. In his peroration he quoted Kipling (much to Morse's delight), and exhorted his listeners to treat that poet's 'twin impostors' with the same degree of amused-or saddened-cynicism.
He'd been good-there was no doubt of that-possessing as he did that rare gift of speaking to an audience in an individualised, personal sort of way, as if he were somehow interested in each of them. Afterwards there were a lot of questions, as if the audience, in its turn, was directly interested in the man who had thus addressed them. Too many questions, for Morse's liking. It was already half-past nine, and he hadn't drunk a pint all day.
'One more question-we really must make this the last, I'm afraid,' said the chairman.
'You said you were a schoolmaster, Mr. Richards,' said a woman in the front row. 'Were you a good schoolmaster?'
Richards got to his feet and smiled disarmingly. 'I was rather hoping no one would ask me that. The answer is "no", madam. I was not a roaring success as a schoolmaster, I'm afraid. The trouble was, I'm sorry to say, that I just wasn't any good at keeping discipline. In fact, my lessons sounded rather like those recordings on the radio of Mrs. Thatcher addressing the House of Commons.'
It was a good note on which to end, and the excellent impression the speaker had made was finally sealed and approved. The audience laughed and applauded all the audience except one, that was, and that one man was Morse. He sat, the sole occupant of the back row, frowning fiercely, for the suspicion was slowly crossing his mind that this man was talking a load of bogus humbug.
At the bar downstairs, the chairman greeted Morse and said how glad he was to see him again. 'You've not met our speaker before, have you? Charles Richards-Chief Inspector Morse.'
The two men shook hands.
'I enjoyed your talk-' began Morse.
'I’m glad about that.'
'-except for the last bit.'
'Really? Why-?'
'I just don't believe you were a lousy Schoolmaster, that's all,' said Morse simply.
Richards shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, let's put it this way: I soon realised I wasn't really cut out for the job. But why did you mention that?'
Morse wasn't quite sure. Yet the truth was that Richards had just held a non-captive audience for an hour and a half with ridiculous ease, an audience that had listened to this virtually unknown man with a progressively deeper interest, respect, and enthusiasm. What could the same man have done with the receptive, enquiring minds of a class of young schoolboys?
'I think you were an excellent schoolmaster, and if I were a headmaster now, I'd appoint you tomorrow.'
'I may have exaggerated a bit,' conceded Richards. 'It's always tempting to play for a laugh, though, isn't it?'
Morse nodded. That was one way of putting it, he supposed. The other way was that this man could be a formidable two-faced liar. 'You've not been here-near Oxford-very long?'
'Three months. You couldn't have been listening very carefully, Inspector-'
'You knew Anne Scott, didn't you?'
'Anne?' Richards' voice was very gentle. 'Yes, I knew Anne all right. She used to work for us. You know, of course, that she's dead.'
The chairman apologised for butting in, but he wished to introduce Richards to the other committee members.
'You won't perhaps know…?' Morse heard the chairman say.
'No, I'm afraid I don't get over to Oxford much. In fact…'
Morse drifted away to drink his beer alone, feeling suddenly bored. But boredom was the last thing that Morse should have felt at that moment. Already, had he known it, he had heard enough to put him on the right track, and, indeed, even now his mind was beginning to stir in the depths, like the opening keys of Das Rheingold in the mysterious world of the shadowy waters.
When Richards took his leave, just on ten o'clock, Morse insinuated himself into a small group gathered round the bar, and lost no time in asking the bearded chairman about Anne Scott.
'Poor old Anne! She wasn't with us long, of course, but she was a jolly good committee member. Full of ideas, she was. You see, one of our big problems is getting some sort of balance between the literary side of things-you know, authors, and so on and the technical side-publishing, printing, that sort of thing. We're naturally a bit biased towards the literary side, but an awful lot of our members are more interested in the purely technical, business side-and it was Anne, actually, who suggested we should try to get Charles Richards. She used to work for him once and she-well, we left it to her. She fixed it all up. I thought he was good, didn't you?'
Morse nodded his agreement. 'Very good, yes.' But his mind was racing twenty furlongs ahead of his words.
'Pity we didn't get a decent turn-out. Still, it was their loss. Perhaps with the change of date and everything…'
Morse let him go on, then drained his beer, and stood silently at the corner of the bar with a replenished pint. His mind, which had been so obtuse up until this point in the case, was now extraordinarily clear-and he felt excited.
It was then that he heard the whine of the police and ambulance sirens. Déjà acouté. How long was it since Charles Richards had left? Quarter of an hour, or so? Oh God! What a fool he'd been not to have woken up earlier. The light blue Rolls Royce he'd seen outside the Printer's Devil that day when he'd tried to call on Anne, the parking ticket on the windscreen; the reminder of that incident the following morning (that had almost clicked!), with the notice pasted on the Lancia's windscreen in the car park of the Clarendon Institute; the recollection (only now!) of what it was that Anne had told him… All these thoughts now shifted into focus, all projecting the same clear picture of Charles Richards-that fluently accomplished liar he'd been listening to less than an hour ago. It was Charles Richards who had visited 9 Canal Reach the day Anne Scott had died, for when Morse had parked in the comparatively empty yard of the Clarendon Institute more than a couple of hours ago he had reversed the Lancia into a space next to a large and elegantly opulent Rolls. A light blue Rolls.
Morse pushed a 5p piece into the payphone in the foyer and asked for Bell. But Bell wasn't in, and the desk sergeant didn't know exactly where he was. He knew where Bell was making for though: there'd been a murder and-
'You got the address, Sergeant?'
'Just a minute, sir. I've got it here… it was somewhere down in Jericho… one of those little roads just off Canal Street, if I remember…'
But Morse had put down the phone several words ago.
'Don't tell me you've had another meeting at the Clarendon Institute, sir,' said Walters.
Morse ignored the question. 'What's the trouble?'
'Jackson, sir. He's dead. Been pretty badly knocked about.'
He pointed a thumb towards the ceiling. 'Want to see him?'
'Bell here yet?'
'On his way. He's been over to Banbury for something, but he knows about it. We got in touch with him as soon as we heard.'
'Heard?'
'Another anonymous phone call.'
'When was that?'
'About a quarter past nine.'
'You sure of that?' Morse sounded more than a little puzzled.
'It'll be booked in-the exact time, I mean. But the message was pretty vague and…'
'Nobody took much notice, you mean?'
'It wasn't that, sir. But you can't expect them to follow up everything-you know, just like that. I mean…'
'You mean they're all bloody incompetent,' snapped Morse. 'Forget it!'
Morse ascended the mean, narrow, little flight of stairs and stood on the miniature landing outside the front bedroom. Jackson's body lay across the rumpled bedclothes, his left leg dangling over the side, his bruised and bleeding head turned towards the door. The floor of the small room at the side of the single bed was strewn with magazines.
'I've not really had a good look around, sir,' ventured Walters. 'I thought I'd better wait for the inspector. Not much we could have done for him, is there?'
Morse shook his head slowly. The man's head lay in a large sticky-looking stain of dark red blood, and to Morse George Jackson appeared very, very dead indeed.
'I'll tell you exactly when he died, if you like,' volunteered Morse. But before he could fill in the dead man's timetable, the door below was opened and slammed, and Bell himself was lumbering up the stairs. His greeting was predictable.
'What the 'ell are you doing here, Morse?'
For the next hour the biggest difficulty was for the three policemen, the two fingerprint men, and the photographer to keep out of one another's way in the rooms of the tiny house. Indeed, when the humpbacked police surgeon arrived, he flatly refused to look at the corpse unless everyone else cleared out and went downstairs; and when he finally descended from his splendid isolation, his findings appeared to have done little to tone down his tetchiness.
'Between half-past seven and nine, at a guess,' he replied to Bell's inevitable question.
Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs.
'You still sex-mad, I see, Morse,' said the surgeon.
'I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max.' Morse turned over a page. 'And you don't improve much, either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.'
'When do you think he died?' From his tone the surgeon seemed far more at ease than at any time since he'd entered.
'Me? What's it matter what I think? But if you want me to try to be a fraction more precise than you, Max, I'd say-mm-I'd say between a quarter past seven and a quarter to eight.'
The surgeon allowed himself a lop-sided grin. 'Want a bet, Morse?'
'You can't loose with your bloody bets, can you? What's your bet? He died sometime tonight-is that it?'
'I think-think, mind you, Morse-that he might well have died a little later than you're suggesting; though why anyone should take an atom of notice of your ideas, God only knows. What really astounds me is that with your profound ignorance of pathology and its kindred sciences you have the effrontery to have any ideas at all.'
'What's your bet, Max?' asked Morse in the mildest tones.
The surgeon mused. 'Off the record, this is agreed? I'll say between er- No! You only allowed yourself half an hour, didn't you? So, I’ll do the same. I'll say between a quarter past eight and a quarter to nine. Exactly one hour later than you.'
'How much?'
'A tenner?'
The two men shook hands on it, and the surgeon left.
'Very interesting!' mumbled Bell, but Morse appeared to have resumed his reading. In fact, however, Morse's mind was peculiarly active as he turned the pages of the lurid and crudely explicit magazine. After all, he was at least contemplating one of the few clues furnished at the scene of the crime: mags (pornographic); mags (piscatorial); fingerprints (Jackson's); body (Jackson's)-and little else of much importance. A bare, stark murder. No obvious motive; no murder weapon; a crudely commonplace scene; well, that was what Bell would be thinking. With Morse it was quite different. He was confident he knew the solution even before the problem had been posed, and his cursory look round Jackson's bedroom had done little more than to corroborate his convictions: he knew the time of the murder, the weapon of the murder, the motive of the murder-even the name of the murderer. Poor old Bell!
Morse was still thinking, ten minutes later, that he had probably missed the boat in life and should have been a very highly paid and inordinately successful writer of really erotic pornography-when Walters came back into the room and reported to Bell.
Jackson, it appeared, had been seen around in Jericho that evening: at half-past five he had called in the corner grocery store for a small loaf of brown bread; at a quarter to seven he had gone across to Mrs. Purvis's to try to normalise the flushing functions of her recently installed water closet; at above five past eight-
'What!' cried Morse.
'-at about five past eight, Jackson went across to the Printer's Devil and bought a couple of pints of-'
'Nonsense.'
'But he did, sir! He was there. He played the fruit-machine for about ten minutes and finally left about twenty past eight.'
Morse's body sank limply into the uncomfortable armchair. Had he got it all wrong? All of it? For if Jackson was blowing the froth off his second pint and feeding l0p's into the slot after eight o'clock, then without the slimmest shadow of doubt it could assuredly not have been Charles Richards who murdered George Alfred Jackson, late resident of 10 Canal Reach, Jericho, Oxford.
'Better have that tenner ready, Morse!' said Bell.
Alibi: (L. 'alibi', elsewhere); the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.
– Oxford English Dictionary
In the current telephone directory, neither Richards (C.) nor Richards Publishing Company (or whatever) of Abingdon was listed, and Morse realised he would have saved himself the bother of looking if he had remembered Richards' recent arrival in Oxfordshire. But the supervisor of Telephone Enquiries was able, after finally convincing herself of Morse's bona fides, to give him two numbers: those of Richards, C., 261 Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, and of Richards Press, 14 White Swan Lane, Abingdon. Morse tried the latter first, and heard a recorded female voice inform him that in gratitude for his esteemed enquiry the answering machine was about to be activated. He tried the other number. Success.
'I was just on my way to the office, Inspector, but I don't suppose you've rung up about a printing contract, have you?'
'No, sir. I just wondered if you'd heard about the trouble in Jericho last night.'
'Trouble? You don't mean my vast audience rioted after my little talk?'
'A man was murdered in Jericho last night.'
'Yes?' (Had Charles Richards' tone inserted the question-mark? The line was very crackly.)
'Pardon?'
'I didn't say anything, Inspector.'
'His name was Jackson-George Jackson, and I think you may have known him, sir.'
'I'm afraid you're mistaken, Inspector. I don't know any Jackson in Jericho. In fact, I don't think I know anyone in Jericho.'
'You used to, though.'
'Pardon, Inspector?' (Surely the line wasn't all that bad?)
'You knew Anne Scott-you told me so.'
'What's that got to do with this?'
'Jackson lived in the house immediately opposite her.'
'Really?'
'You didn't know where she lived?'
'No, I didn't. You tell me she lived in Jericho but-well, to be truthful, I thought Jericho was somewhere near Jerusalem until…' Charles Richards hesitated.
'Until what?'
'Until I heard of Anne's-suicide.'
'You were, shall we say, pretty friendly with her once?'
'Yes, I was.'
'Too friendly, perhaps?'
'Yes, you could say that,' said Richards quietly.
'You never visited her in Jericho?'
'No, I did not!'
'But she got in touch with you?'
'She wrote-yes. She wrote on behalf of the Book Association, asking me if I'd talk about-well, you know that. I said I would-that's all.'
'She must have known you were coming to Abingdon.'
'We're beating about the bush, aren't we, Inspector? Look, I was very much in love with her once, and we-we nearly went off together, if you must know. But it didn't work out like that. Anne left the company-and then things settled down a bit.'
'A bit.'
'We wrote to each other.'
'Not purely casual, chatty letters, though?'
Again Richards hesitated and Morse heard the intake of breath at the other end. 'I loved the girl, Inspector.'
'And she loved you in return.'
'For a long time, yes.'
'You've no idea why she killed herself?'
'No, I haven't.'
'Do you remember where you were on the afternoon of the day she died?'
'Yes, I do. I read about her death in the Oxford Mail and-'
'Where were you, sir?'
'Look, Inspector, I don't want to tell you that. But, please believe me, if it really-'
'Another girl friend?'
'It could have been, couldn't it? But I'm-'
'You deny your car was parked in Jericho at the bottom of Victor Street that afternoon?'
'I certainly do!'
'And what if I told you I could prove that it was?'
'You'd be making one almighty mistake, Inspector.'
'Mm.' It was Morse's turn to hesitate now. 'Well, let's forget that for the minute, sir. But it's my official duty, I'm afraid, to ask you about er about this person you saw that afternoon. You see-'
'All right, Inspector. But you must promise me on your honour that this whole thing won't go an inch further if-'
'I promise that, sir.'
Morse rang the girl immediately, and she sounded a honey-although a progressively angrier honey. She was reluctant to answer any of Morse's questions for a start, but she slowly capitulated. Yes, if he must know, she'd been in bed with Charles Richards. How long for? Well, she'd tell him how long for. From about eleven thirty in the morning to after five in the afternoon. All the bloody time! So there! As he put down the phone Morse wondered what she was like, this girl. She sounded sensuous and passionate, and he thought perhaps that it might be in the long-term interests of justice as well as to his own short-term benefit if he kept a note of her address and telephone number. Yes. Mrs. Jennifer Hills who lived at Radley-just between Oxford and Abingdon: Jennifer Hills… yet another part of the new picture that was gradually forming in his mind. It was rather like the painting by numbers he'd seen in the toy shops: some areas were numbered for green, some for orange, some for blue, some for red, some for yellow-and, suddenly, there it was! The picture of something you'd little chance of guessing if you hadn't known: 'Sunset over Galway Bay', perhaps-or 'Donald Duck and Goofy'.
If Morse had but known it, Jennifer Hills was thinking along very similar lines. Her husband, Keith, a representative for the Gulf Petroleum Company, was still away in South Africa, and she herself, long-legged, lonely, randy and ready enough this featureless Saturday morning, had liked the sound of the chief inspector's voice. Sort of educated-but sort of close, too, and confidential-if only she could have explained it. Perhaps he might call and give her some 'inter-' something. Interrogation, that was it! And possibly some inter-something-else as well… How silly she'd been to get so cross with him! It was all Charles Richards' fault! She'd heard nothing from him since that exasperating phone call, and instinct told her to keep well away-at least for the time being. Yes… it might be nice, though, if the inspector called, and she found herself willing the phone to ring again. But it didn't.
Certum est quia impossibile est.
– Tertullian, De Came Christi
'You were quite right, you know,' conceded Bell, when Morse looked into his office in the middle of that Saturday afternoon. 'Jackson had been bashed about the head quite a bit, it seems, but nothing all that serious. Certainly not serious enough to give him his ticket. The real trouble was the edge of that head-post on the bed-just like you said, Morse. Someone must have tried to shake his teeth out and cracked his skull against the upright.'
'You make it sound like a football match.'
'Boxing match, more like.'
'Blood all over the other fellow?'
'Pretty certainly, I'd think. Wouldn't you?'
Morse nodded. 'Accidental, perhaps?'
'Accidentally bloody deliberate, Morse-and don't you forget it.'
Morse nodded again. As soon as the surgeon had mentioned 'a squarish sharp-edged weapon', it had merely corroborated the suspicion he'd originally formed when he'd examined the bedpost, only about a foot from Jackson's head. To his naked eye, at the time, there had been nothing to confirm the suspicion, but he was as happy as the rest of them to rely upon the refinements of forensic tests. The weapon was settled then, and Morse felt he ought to put his colleague on the right lines about motive, too.
'Whoever killed him was pretty obviously looking for something, don't you think, Bell? And not just the address of some deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac, or the results of the latest pike-angling competition.'
'You think he found what he was looking for?'
'I dunno,' said Morse.
'Well, I'll tell you one thing. We've been over the house with a nit-comb, and-nothing! Nothing that's going to help us. Fishing tackle galore, tools, drills, saws-you name it, he's got it in the do-it-yourself line. So what, though? He goes fishing most days, and he does a few handyman jobs round the streets. Good luck to him!'
'Did you find a trowel?' asked Morse quietly.
'Trowel? What's that got to-'
'He mended the Scott woman's wall-did you know that?'
Bell looked up sharply. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And if I may say so, Morse. I'm beginning to wonder-'
'What about bird watching?'
'What the 'ell's-'
'There was a pair of binoculars in the bedroom, you knew that.'
'All right. He went fishing, and he occasionally had a look at the kingfishers.'
'Why keep 'em in the bedroom, though?'
'You tell me!'
'I reckon he used to have a look at the bird across the way every now and then.'
'You mean, he-'
'No curtains, were there?'
'The dirty little sod!'
'Come off it! I'd have done the same myself.'
'Funny, isn't it? The way you just happened to be in Jericho. Both times, too.'
'Coincidence. Life's full of coincidences.'
'Do you appreciate, Morse, what the statistical chances are of you-'
'Phooey! Let me tell you something, Bell. Statistically, a woman should have her first baby at the age of nineteen, did you know that? But she shouldn't really start copulating before the age of twenty-six!'
Bell let it go, and his shoulders sagged as he sat at his desk. 'It's going to be one helluva job getting to the bottom of this latest business, you know. Nothing to go on, really. No one saw anybody go into the house-no one! It's that bloody boatyard, you see. All of 'em there just get used to seeing people drifting in and out all the time. Augh! I don't know!'
'You interviewed the people who saw Jackson in the pub that night?'
'Most of 'em. The landlord sets his clock about five minutes fast, but you can take it from me that Jackson was there until about twenty past eight.'
Morse pursed his lips. Charles Richards certainly seemed to have provided himself with a krugerrand alibi, for he-Morse himself-had been sitting in the audience listening to the beggar, from about five past eight to way gone half past nine. It was absolutely and literally impossible for Richards to have murdered Jackson! Shouldn't he accept that indisputable fact? But Morse enjoyed standing face-to-face with the impossible, and his brain kept telling him he could-and must-begin to undermine that impregnable-looking alibi. It was the second telephone call that worried him: someone had been anxious for the police to have a very definite idea indeed of the time when Jackson had died-a time that put Charles Richards completely in the clear. And who was it who had made that call? It couldn't, quite definitely, have been Jackson this time. But, just a minute. Could it just conceivably have been Jackson? What if…?
Bell's thoughts had clearly been following along a parallel track. 'Who do you think phoned us about it, Morse? Do you think it was the same person who rang us about the Scott woman?'
'I don't think so, somehow.'
'Morse! Have you got any ideas about this whole business?'
Morse sat silently for a while, and then decided to tell Bell everything he knew, starting with the evening when he'd met Anne Scott, and finishing with his telephone call to Jennifer Hills. He even told Bell about the illicit fiver handed over to the Jericho locksmith. And, in fact (could the two men but have realised it) several of the colours in the pattern were already painted in, although the general picture seemed obstinately determined not to reveal itself.
'If you can help me in any way,' said Bell quietly, 'I'll be grateful-you know that, don't you.'
'Yes, I know that, my old friend,' said Morse. 'And I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll try to think a bit more. Because there's something, somewhere, that we're all missing. God knows what it is, though-I don't.'
I have already chose my officer.
– Othello Act I, scene i
Sunday-working was nothing particularly unusual for Bell, but as he sat in his office the following afternoon he knew that he would have been more gainfully employed if he had stayed at home to rake the autumn leaves from his neglected lawn. Reports were still filtering through to him, but there seemed little prospect of any immediate break in the case. After the initial spurt of blood and splurge of publicity, the murder of George Jackson was stirring no ripples of any cosmic concern. Apart from a few far-flung cousins, the man had left behind him neither any immediate family nor any traceable wake of affection. To those who had known him vaguely, he had been a mean and unloved little man, and to the police the manner of his death had hardly risen to the heights of inglorious wickedness. Yet several facts were fairly clear to Bell. Someone had managed to get into number 10 between half-past eight and nine that Friday evening, had probably argued with Jackson in a comparatively pacific way, then threatened and physically intimidated the man, and finally-accidentally or deliberately-cracked his thinly boned skull against the bedpost in his bedroom. The evidence strongly suggested, too, that Jackson's visitor had been looking for something specific, since the contents of all the drawers and cupboards in the house had been methodically and neatly examined; only in the bedroom were there the signs of frenetic haste and agitation. But of the identity of this visitor, or of the object of his quest, the police as yet had no real ideas at all. No one in the Reach or in the neighbouring streets appeared either to have seen or heard anything or anyone suspicious, and the truth was that only the sudden and disastrous blowing of a TV valve would have caused the majority of Jackson's fellow-citizens to look out into the darkened streets that night: for from 8.30 to 10.30 p.m. that evening, viewing all over Britain was monopolised by the Miss World Competition. Poor Jackson, alas, had missed the final adjudication, and faced instead the final judgement.
Walters called in at the office in mid-afternoon, after yet another fruitless search for the smallest nugget of gold. He was fairly sure in his own mind that they were trying to drive a motorway through a cul-de-sac, and that the solution to Jackson's murder was never going to be discovered in isolation from the death of Ms. Scott. He told Bell so, too, but the answer he received was callous and unkind.
'You don't need to be a bloody genius to come to that conclusion, lad.'
Bell was weary and dejected, Walters could see that, and there seemed little point in staying. But there was one further point he thought he might mention: 'Did you know, sir, that there wasn't a single book in Jackson's house?'
'Wasn't there?' said Bell absently.
Mr. Parkes felt happy that Sunday afternoon. One of the social workers from the Ferry Centre had brought a cake for him, and there were tears of gratitude in his old eyes as he asked the young lady inside and poured two glasses of dry sherry. It had been several years since anyone had remembered his birthday. After his visitor had left, he poured himself a second glass and savoured his little happiness. How had she known it was his birthday? And suddenly something clicked-birthdays! That's what they'd been talking about when Gwendola had laid on her little treat with the sherry. Talk of the Bridge Club's anniversary must have led on to birthdays, he was sure of it now-although it seemed a trivial remembrance. Yet the police had asked him to let them know if he could recall anything about that night, and he rang up St. Aldates immediately.
'Ah, I see,' said Bell. 'Yes, that's very interesting. Birthdays, eh?'
The old man elaborated as far as he could, and Bell thanked him with a fair show of simulated gratitude. It was good of the old boy to ring up, really. Birthdays! He made a note of the call and put the sheet of paper in his tray: Walters could stick it with the rest of the stuff.
In fact, the note just written was to be the final contribution of Chief Inspector Bell to the riddle of the Jericho Killings.
Morse had been a little surprised when earlier in the week, after seeking an interview with his Assistant Chief Commissioner, he learned that the ACC, in turn, would welcome a little chat with Morse, and that 'a cup of tea up at my little place up at Beckley' would make a pleasant rendezvous. At four-thirty, therefore, on that sunny October afternoon, the two men sat on a weedless lawn overlooking the broad, green sweep of Otmoor, and Morse recounted to his senior officer the irregularities and improprieties of his own investigations, over the previous fortnight. The ACC was silent for a long time, and the answer, when it finally came from those rather bloated lips, was unexpected.
'I want you to take over the case, Morse. You're quite good at that sort of thing; Bell isn't.'
'But I didn't come to ask-'
'It's what you've got.'
'Well, I'm sorry, sir, but I can't accept the case. It's just not fair to belittle Bell-'
'Belittle?' The ACC smiled curiously, and Morse knew he'd missed a point somewhere. 'Don't worry about Bell! I'll ring him and put things straight myself.'
'But I just-'
'Shut your mouth a minute, Morse, will you?' (That maddening smile again!) 'You see, you've done me a good turn in a way. I know you didn't apply for the vacant super's post, but I was er thinking of recommending you, actually. On second thoughts, though, I don't think I shall bother. The job's going to involve an awful lot of public relations-very important these days, Morse!-and er I just don't think you're cut out for that sort of thing. Do you?'
'Well, I don't know, really.'
'Anyway, Bell applied-and he's senior to you anyway, isn't he?'
'Only just,' mumbled Morse.
'He's a good man. Not the greatest intellect in the Force-but neither are you, Morse. So I can work things very sweetly for you, can't I? I can let Bell know he's got promotion and tell him to drop this Jericho business straight away.'
'I'd rather think things over, sir, if you don't mind.'
'No sense, old chap. We made the appointment yesterday, actually.'
'Oh.' Morse felt a twinge of envy and regret; but all that public relations stuff would have bored him to death, he knew that.
The ACC interrupted his thoughts. 'You know, Morse, you don't go about things in the right way, do you? With your ability you could have been sitting in my chair, and earning a sight more-'
'I've got a private income, sir-and a private harem.'
'I thought your father was a taxi driver?'
Morse stood up. 'That's right, sir. He used to drive the Aga Khan.'
'You got any of your private harem to spare?'
'Sorry, sir. I need 'em all.'
'You'll need Lewis, too, I suppose?'
For the first time that afternoon Morse looked happy.