by Colin Dexter
‘My God!’
For a few moments the two men stood looking down on the face that stared back up at them with open, bulging eyes.
‘Do you know who it is?’ croaked Morse.
‘I never seen him before, sir. I swear I ‘aven’t.’ The man was shaking all over, and Morse noticed the ashen-grey pallor in his cheeks and the beads of sweat upon his forehead.
‘Take it easy, old boy!’ said Morse in a kindly, understanding voice. ‘Just tell me where the nearest telephone is-then you’d better get off home for a while. We can always-’
Morse was about to lay a comforting hand upon the man’s shoulder; but he was already too late, for now he found another body slumped about his feet.
Five minutes later, after dialling 999 from the telephone in the sitting room, and after sending the old boy off home (having elicited a full name and home address from those gibbering lips), Morse stood once again looking down at the corpse in the cupboard recess. A tiny triangle of white card was showing above the top pocket of the jacket, and Morse bent down to extract it. There were a dozen or so similar cards there, but he took only one and read it-his face betraying only the grimmest -confirmation. He’d known anyway, because he’d recognized the face immediately. It was the face of the man whom Morse had last (and first) seen in the rooms of George Westerby, Geography don at Lonsdale College, Oxford: the face of A. Gilbert, Esq., late proprietor of the firm Removals Anywhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tuesday, 29th July
Morse meets a remarkable woman, and learns of another woman who might be more remarkable still.
On the left sat a very black gentleman in a very smart pin-striped suit, studying the pink pages of the Financial Times; on the right sat a long-haired young brunette, wearing enormous earrings, and reading Ulysses; in the middle sat Morse, impatiently fingering a small white oblong card; and all the while the tube-train clattered along the stations on the northbound Piccadilly line.
To Morse it seemed an inordinately long journey, and one during which he found it almost impossible to concentrate his mind. Perhaps it had been improper for him (as the plain-clothes sergeant had diffidently hinted) to have fled the scene of the recent crime so precipitately; quite certainly it had bordered upon the criminally negligent (as the plain-clothes sergeant had more forcefully asserted) that he had allowed the one and only other witness to have left the premises in Cambridge Way – whatever the state of shock that had paralysed the man’s frame. But at least Morse had explained where he was going-had even given the address and the telephone number. And he could always do his best to explain, to apologize… later.
Arsenal. (Nearly there.)
The brunette’s eyes flickered over Morse’s face, but flashed back immediately to Bloom, as though the latter were a subject of considerably greater interest.
Finsbury Park. (Next stop.)
Suddenly Morse stiffened bolt upright in his seat, and this time it was the gentleman from the city whose bloodshot eyes turned suspiciously towards his travelling companion, as though he half expected to find a man in the initial throes of an epileptic fit.
That screwdriver… and that small, round hole in the middle of those sagging shoulder-blades… and he, Morse, a man who had lectured so often on proper procedure in cases of homicide, he had just left his own fine set of fingerprints around the bulbous handle of-the murder-weapon! Oh dear! Yes, there might well come, and fairly soon, the time for more than an apology, more than a little explanation.
For the moment, however, Morse was totally convinced that be was right (as indeed for once he was) in recognizing the signs of a tide in the affairs of men that must be taken at the flood; and when he emerged from the underground into the litter-strewn streets of Manor House, he suspected that the gods were smiling happily upon him, for almost immediately he spotted Berry-wood Court, a tall tenement block only some hundred yards away down Seven Sisters Road.
Mrs Emily Gilbert, an unlovely woman in her late fifties (her teeth darkly stained) capitulated quickly to Morse’s urgent questioning. She’d known it was all silly; and she’d told her husband it might be dangerous as well. But it was just a joke, he’d said. Some joke! She’d met another woman there in Camabridge Way-an attractive Scandanavian-looking woman who (so Mrs G. had thought) had been hired from one of the beetter-class clubs in Soho. They’d both been briefed by Albert (her husband) and-well, that was it really. This man had come to the place, and she (Mrs G.) had left the pair of them together in a first-floor flat (yes, Mr Westerby’s flat). Then, after an hour or so, Albert had come up to tell her (she was waiting in an empty top-floor flat) that he was very pleased with the way things had gone, that she (Mrs G.) was a good old girl, and that the odd little episode could now be happily forgotten.
She had a strangely intense and rather pleasing voice, and Morse found himself gradually reassessing her. ‘This other woman,’ he asked, ‘what was her name?’
‘I was told to call her “Yvonne”.’
‘She didn’t tell you where she lived? Where she worked?’
‘No. But she was “class”-you know what I mean? She was sort of tasteful-beautifully made-up, lovely figure.’
‘You don’t know where she lives?’
‘No. Albert’ll probably be able to tell you, though.’
‘Do you know where he is, Mrs Gilbert?’
She shook her head. ‘In his sort of business you’re off all the time. I know he’s got a few jobs on in the Midlands-and one in Scotland-but he’s always on the move. He just turns up here when he gets back.’
At this point, Morse felt a curious compassion for Emily Gilbert, for she seemed to him a brave sort of woman-yet one who would need to be even braver very soon. He knew, too, that time was running out; knew he had to find out more before he broke the cruel news.
‘Just tell me anything you can, please, about this other woman-this “Yvonne”. Anything you can remember.’
‘I’ve told you-I don’t-’
‘Didn’t you talk together?’
‘Well, yes-but-’
‘You don’t have any idea where I can find her?’
‘I think she lives south of the Thames somewhere.’
‘No name of the road? No number of the house? Come on! Think, woman!’
But Morse had pushed things too far, for Mrs Gilbert now broke down and wept, and Morse was at a loss as to what to do, or what to say. So he did nothing; and such masterly inactivity proved to be the prudent course, for very soon she had wiped her wide and pleasing eyes and apologized sweetly for what she called her “silliness”.
‘Have you any children?’ asked Morse.
She shook her head sadly.
It was hardly the most propitious moment, but Morse now rose from the sofa and placed his right hand firmly on her shoulder. ‘Please be brave, Mrs Gilbert! I’ve got to tell you, I’m afraid, that your husband is dead.’
With a dramatic, convulsive jerk, her right hand snapped up to meet Morse’s, and he felt the sinewy vigour of her fingers as they sought to clutch the comfort of his own. Then Morse told her, in a very quiet, gentle voice, as much (and as little) as he knew.
When he had finished, Mrs Gilbert asked him no questions, but got up from her chair, walked over to the window, lit a cigarette, and stared out over the long, bleak reservoir that lay below, where a swan glided effortlessly across the still waters. Then, finally, she turned towards him, and for the first time Morse realized that she must have been an adequately attractive woman… some few little summers ago. Her eyes, still glistening with tears, sought his.
‘I lied to you, Inspector, and I shouldn’t have done that. I know that other woman, you see. My husband occasionally gets-got involved in his brother’s-well, let’s say his brother’s… side of things, and he met her in one of the clubs a few weeks ago. I-I found out about it. You see-he wanted to leave me and -and-and go and live with her.
‘But she-’
Mrs Gilbert broke o
ff, and Morse nodded his understanding.
‘But she didn’t want him.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘Did you tell him you’d found out?’
Mrs Gilbert smiled a wan sort of smile and she turned back to the window, her eyes drifting over and beyond the reservoir to where a DC10 droned in towards Heathrow. ‘No! I wanted to keep him. Funny, isn’t it? But he was the only thing I had.’
‘It blew over?’
‘Not really very much time for that, was there?’
Morse sat and looked once more at this very ordinary woman he had come to visit, and his mind drifted back to Molly Bloom in Ulysses, and he knew that Mrs Gilbert, too, was a woman who had offered, once, a presence and a bosom and a rose.
‘Please tell me about this other woman.’
‘I don’t know her real name-they call her “Yvonne” at the clubs. But I know her initials-W.S.-and I know where she lives – 23A Colebourne Road, just south of Richmond Road. It’s only about five minutes walk from the tube-station…’
‘You went to see her?’
‘You don’t know much about women, do you?’
‘No, perhaps not,’ agreed Morse. But he was impatient now. He felt like a man with an enormously ‘distended bladder who has been kept talking on the phone for half an hour, and he walked across to the door. ‘Will you be all right, Mrs Gilbert?’
‘Don’t worry about me, Inspector. I’ll give the GP a ring when you’ve gone, and he’ll give me a few tablets. They should take care of me for a little while, shouldn’t they?’
‘Yes, I’m sure they will. I know how you must be feeling-’
‘Of course you don’t! You’ve not the faintest idea. It’s not today-it’s not tonight. It’s tomorrow. Can’t you see that? You tell me Albert’s dead, and in an odd sort of way it doesn’t register. It’s a shock, isn’t it? And I’d be more than happy to live through one shock after another, but…’
The tears were running freely again, and suddenly she moved towards him and buried her head on his shoulder. And Morse stood there by the door, awkward and inept; and (in his own strange way) almost loving the woman who was weeping out her heart against him.
It was several minutes before he was able to disengage himself and finally to stand upon the threshold of the opened door. ‘Please look after yourself, Mrs Gilbert.’
‘I will. Don’t worry about that.’
‘If there’s anything I can do to help…’
She almost smiled. ‘Be gentle with the girl, Inspector. You see, I know you’re anxious to get away from here and see her, and I just want you to know that she’s the loveliest girl-woman-I’ve ever met in all my life-that’s all.’
Tears were spurting again now, and Morse leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead, in the sure knowledge that this woman had somewhere touched his feelings deeply. And as he walked slowly away up the road towards Manor House tube-station he doubted whether Albert Gilbert had ever really known the woman he had asked to marry him.
For all his conviction that the tide was running fully in his favour, the open doors of the Manor Hotel proved irresistible, and Morse wondered as he drained his pints and watched the pimps and prostitutes walk by whether, in a life so full of strange coincidence, he might at last be facing the wildest and most wonderful coincidence of them all: “W.S”! Browne-Smith had mentioned those initials… and Emily Gilbert had just repeated them… and those were the selfsame glorious initials of a girl whom once he’d known, and loved too well.
Twenty minutes after Morse had left the seventh floor of Berrywood Court, a key was inserted into the outer door of the Gilberts’ flat, and a man walked in and flung his jacket carelessly down upon the sofa.
Two minutes later, Albert Gilbert, of Removals Anywhere, was talking (somewhat incoherently) over the phone to his GP, explaining how, for no apparent reason, his wife had fainted quite away on his return, and desperately demanding some instructions, since even now she showed no signs of sense or sanity returning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tuesday, 29th July
All men, even those of a pessimistic nature, fall victim at certain points in their lives to the most extravagant of hopes.
As Mrs Gilbert had told him, Colebourne Road was no more than five minutes’ walk from East Putney tube station. But Morse appeared in no hurry, and when he reached the street-sign he stopped awhile and stood beneath it, deep in thought. Surely he couldn’t be so utterly and stupidly sentimental as to harbour even the faintest hope that he was just about to see once more the woman whom he’d worshipped all those years ago. No, he told himself, he couldn’t. And yet a wild, improbable hope lived on; and as if to nourish the hope, he entered the Richmond Arms on the corner of the street and ordered a double Scotch. As he drank, his thoughts went back to the time when he’d visited his old mother in the Midlands, and gone off to an evening Methodist service to see if a girl, a very precious girl, was still in her place in the choir-stalls, still raising her eyes to his at the end of each verse of every hymn and smiling at him sweetly and seraphically. But she hadn’t been there-hadn’t been there for thirty years, perhaps-and he’d sat by a pillar alone that night. Morse walked to the bar, (‘Same again, please-Bell’s’), and the name of Wendy Spencer tripped trochaically across his brain… It couldn’t be the same woman, though. It wasn’t the same woman. And yet, ye gods-if gods ye be-please make it her!
Morse’s heart was beating at an alarming rate and his throat felt very dry as he rang the bell of Number 23. There was a light downstairs, a light upstairs; and the odds were very strongly on her being in.
‘Yes?’ The door was opened by a youngish, dark-complexioned woman.
‘I’m a police inspector, Miss-’
‘Mrs-Mrs Price.’
‘Ah yes-well, I’m looking for someone I think lives here. I’m not quite sure of her name but -’
‘I can’t help you much then, can I?’
‘I think she’s sometimes called “Yvonne”.’
‘There’s no one here by that name.’
‘The door had already closed an inch or two, but now there was another voice. ‘Anything I can do to help?’
A taller woman was standing behind Mrs Price, a woman in a white bathrobe, a woman with freshly showered and almost shining skin, a woman awkwardly re-making the tumbled beauty of her hair.
‘He says he’s a police inspector-says he’s looking for someone called “Yvonne”,’ explained an aggressive Mrs Price.
‘Do you know her surname. Inspector?’
Morse looked at the white-clad woman who now had moved towards the centre of the doorway, and a crushing wave of disappointment broke over him. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. But I know she lives here-or she was staying-staying here until very recently.’
‘Well you must have got it wrong-’ began Mrs Price.
But the woman in white was interrupting her: ‘Leave this to me Angela-it’s all right. I think I may be able to help you, inspector. Won’t you come in?’
Morse climbed the narrow stairs, noting the slim ankles of the woman who preceded him.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked, as they sat opposite each other in the small but beautifully furnished living-room.
‘Er-no. Perhaps not.’
‘You’ve had enough already, you mean?’
‘Does it show?’
She nodded-a faint smile upon lips that were thin and completely devoid of make-up. ‘It’s the “s”s that are always difficult, isn’t it? When you’ve had too much drink, I mean-or when you begin wearing false teeth.”
Morse looked at her own, most beautifully healthy teeth. ‘How would you know about that?’
‘I sometimes drink too much.’
Morse let it go, for things were going very nicely-the conversation moving already on to a plane of easy familiarity. But it wasn’t to last.
‘What do you want, Inspector?’ A hard, no-nonsense tone had come into her voice.
/> So Morse told her; and she listened in silence, occasionally crossing one naked leg over the other and then covering her knees with a sharp little tug at the robe, like some puritanical parson’s wife at a vicarage tea-party. And almost from the start Morse felt the virtual certainty that “Yvonne” had now been found-found sitting here in front of him, her head slightly to one side, sweeping up her blonde hair with her left hand and reinserting a few of the multitudinous pins with her right.
When Morse had finished the first part of his tale, she reached for her handbag. ‘Do you smoke, Inspector?’
Morse patted his jacket pocket, and suspected that he must have left his own recently purchased packet in the pub.
‘Here, have one of these.’ Her bag was open now, the flap towards him; and seeing the faded gilt initials Morse knew that his silly hope was finally extinguished.
‘You’re very kind,’ he heard himself say.
Had she seen something vulnerable in this strange inspector of police? In his mien? In his eyes? On his lips? Perhaps, indeed, she had, for her voice had been more gentle, and she now stood up and lit his cigarette, unconscious (or uncaring) that her robe was partly open at the top as she leaned towards him. Then she sat back in her chair again, and told him her own side of the story, still occasionally recrossing her lovely legs, but now no longer too concerned about concealing them.