Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  Summer- town Pet Store and taken home a small wired cylinder packed with

  peanuts a cylinder now suspended from a branch overhanging his garden. From

  the branch overhanging his garden.

  He reached for the binoculars now and focused on an interesting specimen

  pecking away at the grass below the peanuts: a small bird, with a greyish

  crown, dark-brown bars across the dingy russet of its back, and paler

  underparts. As he watched, he sought earnestly to memorize this remarkable

  bird's characteristics, so as to be able to match its variegated plumage

  against the appropriate illustration in the Guide.

  Plenty of time for that though.

  He leaned back once more and rejoiced in the radiant warmth of Schwarzkopf's

  voice, following the English text that lay open on his lap: "You holy Art,

  when all my hope is shaken..."

  When, too, a few moments later, his mood of pleasurable melancholy was shaken

  by three confident bursts on a front- door bell that to several of his

  neighbours sounded consider- ably over-decibel led even for the

  hard-of-hearing.

  chapter Two When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers

  proposed for promotion, he was wont to scribble in the margin against any

  particular name: "Is he lucky, though?"

  (Felix Kirkmarkham, The Genius of Napokon) 'not DISTURBING YOU? "

  Morse made no direct reply, but his resigned look would have been

  sufficiently eloquent for most people.

  Most people.

  He opened the door widely perforce needed so to do in order to accommodate

  his unexpected visitor within the comparatively narrow entrance.

  "I am disturbing you."

  "No, no! It's just that.. ."

  "Look, matey!" (Chief Superintendent Strange cocked an ear towards the

  lounge. ) "I don't give a dam if I'm disturbing you; pity about disturbing

  old Schubert, though."

  For the dozenth time in their acquaintance. Morse found himself quietly

  re-appraising the man who first beached and then readjusted his vast bulk in

  an armchair, with a series of expiratory grunts.

  Morse had long known better than to ask Strange whether he wanted a drink,

  alcoholic or non-alcoholic. If Strange wanted a drink, of either variety, he

  would ask for it, immediately and unambiguously.

  But Morse did allow himself one question:

  "You know you just said you didn't give a dam. Do you know how you spell "

  dam"?"

  "You spell it " d - a - m". Tiny Indian coin that's what a dam is.

  Surely you knew that? "

  For the thirteenth time in their acquaintance . . .

  "Is that a single malt you're drinking there. Morse?"

  It was only after Morse had filled, then refilled, his visitor's glass that

  Strange came to the point of his evening call.

  "The papers even the tabloids have been doing me proud. You read The Times

  yesterday?"

  "I never read The Times."

  "What? The bloody paper's there there! - on the coffee table."

  "Just for the Crossword and the Letters page."

  "You don't read the obituaries?"

  "Well, perhaps just a glance sometimes."

  "To see if you're there?"

  "To see if some of them are younger than me."

  "I don't follow you."

  "If they are younger, so a statistician once told me, I've got a slightly

  better chance of living on beyond the norm."

  "Mm." Strange nodded vaguely.

  "You frightened of death?"

  "A bit."

  Strange suddenly picked up his second half-full tumbler of Scotch and tossed

  it back at a draught like a visitor downing an initiatory vodka at the

  Russian Embassy.

  "What about the telly, Morse? Did you watch Newsroom South- East last night?"

  "I've got a TV - video as well. But I don't seem to get round to watching

  anything and I can't work the video very well."

  "Really? And how do you expect to understand what's going on in the great

  big world out there? You're supposed to know what's going on.

  You're a police officer. Morse! "

  "I listen to the wireless--' " Wireless? Where 'we you got to in life, matey?

  "Radio" - that's what they've been calling it these last thirty years. "

  11

  It was Morse's turn to nod vaguely as Strange continued: "Good job I got

  this done for you, then."

  Sorry, sir. Perhaps I am a bit behind the times as well as The Times.

  But Morse gave no voice to these latter thoughts as he slowly read the

  photocopied article that Strange had handed to him. Morse always read slowly.

  MURDER POLICE SEEK ANONYMOUS CALLER

  A man has rung the police hear from this caller again as anonymously with

  in for- soon as possible. He can contact mat ion that could help identify us

  in the strictest confidence. We the killer of Mrs Yvonne Harrison, don't

  believe the calls are a hoax son who was found handcuffed and we don't

  believe the caller and battered to death a year ago. himself is the killer.

  But we think Detectives yesterday appealed that he can give us more inforfor

  the caller to make contact mat ion to substantially further again. No clear

  motive has ever our enquiries into this brutal been established for the

  murder murder. "

  of the 48-year-old nurse who was At the time of the murder Mrs alone in her

  home in the Oxford- Harrison's husband Frank was in shire village of Lower

  Swinstead London where he works for the when her killer broke in through

  Swiss Helvetia Bank. Their son a ground-floor window. Simon works at the

  Daedalus Detective Chief Superintend- Press in Oxford; their daughter ent

  Strange of Thames Valley Sarah is a junior consultant in the CID said that a

  man had rung Diabetes Centre at the Radcliffe twice: "We are very anxious to

  Infirmary in Oxford.

  Had Morse's eyes narrowed slightly as he read the last few lines? If they

  had, he made no reference to whatever might have puzzled or interested him

  there.

  "I trust it wasn't you who split the infinitive, sir?"

  "You never suspected that, surely? We're all used to sloppy reporting,

  aren't we?"

  Morse nodded as he handed back the photocopied article.

  "No! Keep it. Morse I've got the original."

  "Very kind of you, sir, but..."

  "But it interested you, perhaps?"

  "Only the bit at the end, about the Radcliffe."

  "Why's that?"

  "Well, as you know, I was in there myself after I was diagnosed."

  "Christ! You make it sound as if you're the only one who's ever been bloody

  diagnosed!"

  Morse held his peace, for his memory needed no jogging: Strange himself had

  been a patient in the self-same Radcliffe Infirmary a year or so before his

  own hospitalization. No one had known much about Strange's troubles. There

  had been hushed rum ours about 'endocrinological dysfunction'; but not

  everyone at Police HQ, was happy about spelling or pronouncing or identifying

  such a polysyllabic ailment.

  "You know why I brought that cutting, Morse?"

  "No! And to be honest with you, I don't much care. I'm on furlough, you

  know that. The quack tells me I'm run down blood sugar far too high blood

  pressure far too high. Says I
need to have a quiet little rest-cure and try

  to forget the great big world out there, as you call it."

  "Some of us can't forget it though, can we?" Strange spoke the words very

  softly, and Morse got to his feet and turned off the CD player.

  "Not one of your greatest triumphs that case, was it?"

  "One of the few very few, Morse I got no-bloody-where with. And it wasn't

  exactly mine, either, as you know. But it was my responsibility, that's all.

  Still is."

  "What's all this got to do with me?"

  Strange further expanded his Gargantuan girth as he further expounded: i3

  "I thought, you know, with the wife . . . and all that ... I thought it'd

  help to stay in the Force another year. But. . ."

  Morse nodded sympathetically. Strange's wife had died very suddenly a year

  previously, victim of a coronary thrombosis which should surely never have

  afflicted one so slim, so cautious, so physically fit.

  She'd been an unlovely woman, Mrs Strange outwardly timid and inwardly

  bullying; yet a woman to whom by all accounts Strange had been deeply

  attached. Friends had spoken of a 'tight' marriage; and most agreed that the

  widower would have been wholly lost on his own, at least for some while, had

  he jacked things in (as he'd intended) the previous September. And in the

  end he'd been persuaded to reconsider his position and to continue for a

  further year. But he'd been uneasy back at HQ: a sort of supernumerary

  Super, feeling like a retired schoolmaster returning to a Com- mon Room. A

  mistake.

  Morse knew it. Strange knew it.

  "I still don't see what it's got to do with me, sir."

  "I want the case re-opened not that it's ever been closed, of course. It

  worries me, you see. We should have got further than we did."

  I still "I'd like you to look at the case again. If anyone can crack it, you

  can. Know why? Because you're just plain bloody lucky, Morse, that's why!

  And I want this case solved."

  chapter three Which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at

  midnight and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves. And Jiejrom within

  shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut; I cannot rise and

  give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he

  is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as

  many as he needeth (5( Luke, ch. XI, w. 5-8) lucky?

  Morse had always believed that luck played a bigger part in life than was

  acknowledged by many people certainly by those distinguished personages who

  saw their personal merit as the only cause of their appropriate eminence.

  Yet as he looked back over his own life and career Morse had never considered

  his own lot a particularly lucky one, not at least in what folk referred to

  as the affairs of the heart. Strange may have had a point though, for

  without doubt his record with the Thames Valley CID was the envy of most of

  his colleagues his success- rate the result, as Morse analysed the matter, of

  all sorts of factors: a curious combination of hard thinking, hard drinking

  (the two, for Morse, being synonymous), hard work (usually undertaken by

  Sergeant Lewis), and, yes, a sprinkling here and there of good fortune. The

  Romans had poured their libations not only to Jupiter and Venus and their

  associate deities in the Pantheon; but also to Fortuna, the goddess of good

  luck.

  i5

  Lucky, then?

  Well, a bit.

  It was high time Morse said something: "Why the Lower Swinstead murder?

  What's wrong with the Hampton Poyle murder, the Cowley murder . . . ?"

  "Nothing to do with me, either of 'em."

  "That's the only reason then? Just to leave a clean slate behind you?"

  For a few moments Strange appeared uncomfortable: "It's partly that, yes,

  but. .."

  "The Chief Constable wouldn't look at any new investigation - not a serious

  investigation."

  "Not unless we had some new evidence."

  "Which in our case, as the poet said, we have not got."

  "This fellow that rang ' " No end of people ring. We both know that, sir. "

  ' - rang twice. He knows something. I'm sure of it. "

  "Did you speak to him yourself?"

  "No. He spoke to the girl on the switchboard. Didn't want to be put through

  to anybody, he said. Just wanted to leave a message."

  "For you?"

  "Yes."

  "A " he", you say?"

  "Not much doubt about that."

  "Surely from the recordings . .. ?"

  "We can't record every crazy sod who rings up and asks what the bloody time

  is, you know that!"

  "Not much to go on."

  "Twice, Morse? The first time on the anniversary of the murder? Come off

  it! We've got a moral duty to re-open the case. Can't you understand that?"

  Morse shook his head.

  "Two anonymous phone calls? Just isn't worth the candle."

  And suddenly why was this? - Strange seemed at ease again as he sank back

  even further in his chair: "You're right, of course you are. The case

  wouldn't be worth re-opening unless' (Strange paused for effect, his voice

  now affable and bland) 'unless our caller identity cloaked in anonymity,

  Morse- had presented us with some . . . some new evidence. And, after my

  appeal, my nationally reported appeal, we're going to get some more! I'm not

  just thinking of another telephone call from our friend either, though I'm

  hopeful about that. I'm thinking of information from members of the public,

  people who thought the case was forgotten, people whose memories have had a

  jog, people who were a bit reluctant, a bit afraid, to come forward earlier

  on."

  "It happens," conceded Morse.

  The armchair creaked as Strange leaned forward once more, smiling

  semi-benignly, and holding out his empty tumbler: "Lovely!"

  After refilling the glasses, Morse asked the obvious question: "Tell me this,

  sir. You had two DIs on the case originally ' " Three. "

  ' - several DSs, God knows how many DCs and PCs and WPCs--' "No such thing

  now. All the women are PCs no sex discrimination these days. By the way,

  you were never guilty of sexual harassment, were you?"

  "Seldom. The other way round, if anything."

  Strange grinned as he sipped his Scotch.

  "Go on!"

  "As I say, you had all those people on the case. They studied it.

  They lived with it. They--' "Got nowhere with it."

  "Perhaps it wasn't altogether their fault. We're never going to solve

  everything. It's taken these mathematicians over three hundred years to

  solve Fermat's Last Theorem."

  "Mm." Strange waggled his tumbler in front of him, holding i7

  it up

  towards the light, like a judge at the Beer Festival at Olympia.

  "Just like the colour of my urine specimens at the Radcliffe."

  "Tastes better, though."

  "Listen. I'm not a crossword wizard like you. Sometimes I can't even finish

  the Mirror coffee-break thing. But I know one thing for sure.

  If you get stuck over a clue ' "As occasionally even the best of us do."

  ' - there's only one way to solve it. You go away, you leave it, you forget

  it, you think of the teenage Brigitte
Bardot, and then you go back to it and

  Eureka! It's like trying to remember a name: the more you think about it the

  more the bloody thing sinks below the horizon. But once you forget about it,

  once you come to it a second time, fresh--' "I've never come to it a first

  time, apart from those early couple of days you know that. I was on another

  case! And not particularly in the pink either, was I? Not all that long out

  of hospital myself."

  "Morse! I've got to re-open this case. You know why."

  "Try someone else!"

  "I want you to think about it."

  "Look." A note of exasperation had crept into Morse's voice. "I'm on

  furlough I'm tired I'm sleeping badly I drink too much I'm beholden to no one

  I've no relatives left I can't see all that much purpose in life ' " You'll