by Colin Dexter
for?"
"Left it at school, didn't I!"
"So?"
"So you mean you don't know?"
"You're brighter than I thought, son."
"Can't you guess?"
"Either masculine or feminine, sure to be."
"That's great."
"Feminine, say? So it's, er,
"Garlon! Une autre bouteille de cette" --' "No! You're useless, Dad! If
you say
"Une autre bouteille" , you mean a different bottle of wine. "
"Oh."
"You say
"Encore une bouteille de" whatever it is. "
"Why do you ever ask me to help you?"
"Agh! Forget it! Like I say, you're bloody useless."
Lewis had never himself read Bleak House, and unlike Morse would not have
known the soothing secret of counting up to however-many. And in truth he
felt angry and belittled as he walked silently down the stairs, picked up the
box-files from the table in the entrance hall, walked past the living room,
where Mrs Lewis sat deeply submerged in a TV soap, and settled himself down
at the kitchen table, where he began to acquaint himself with the strangely
assorted members of the Harrison family wife, husband, daughter, son four of
the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.
He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still
echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively
engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the
husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne the mother,
who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead,
Oxon.
chapter Six The English country gentleman galloping after a fox the
unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable (Oscar Wilde) at first he'd felt
some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he
decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones
considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis
three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4. 30 P. M. At which
time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking
softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress's study.
"Come inl' She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him,
across the desk.
Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early
sixties the internationally renowned chief- guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary's
Diabetes Centre in Oxford.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.
"Look, we're probably going to be together at lots of do's these next few
months years, perhaps so, please, let's forget this
"Sir" business, shall we? Please call me
"Robert"
"
Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late
twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.
29
Not for long.
"I've sat in with you once or twice, haven't I?"
"Three times."
"And I think you're going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I
mean?"
"Thank you."
"But you're not quite good enough yet."
"I'd hoped I was improving."
"Certainly. But you're still strangely naive, I'm sorry to say. You seem to
believe everything your patients tell you!"
"There's not much else to go on, is there?"
"Oh, but there is! There's a certain healthy and necessary scepticism; and
then there's experience. You'll soon realize all this. What I'm saying is
that you might as well learn it now rather than later."
"Is there anything particular . . . ?"
"Things, plural. I'm thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar
records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their
alcohol-intake. You see, the only thing they can't fool you about is their
weight."
"And their blood pressure."
Turner smiled gently at his pupil.
"I haven't got quite as much faith as you in our measurements of blood
pressure."
"But they don't all of them make their answers up."
"Not all of them, no. It's just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all
tend to say we're fine, even if we're feeling lousy. Don't we?"
"I suppose so."
"And our main job' (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) 'is to give
information and to exert some sort of influence about the way our patients
cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness."
Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.
And he continued: "There are a good many patients here who are professional
liars. Some of them I've known for years,
and they've known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn't
matter because we know we're telling each other lies . . .
Anyway, that's enough about that. " (Turner looked down at her folder.) " I
see you've got Mr David Mackenzie on your list next Monday. I'll sit in with
you on him. I think he did once tell me his date of birth correctly, but he
makes everything else up as he goes along. You'll enjoy him! "
Again Sarah said nothing. And she was preparing to leave when Turner changed
the subject abruptly, and in an un- expected direction.
Or was it unexpected?
"I couldn't help seeing the articles in the newspapers . . . and the
department was talking about them."
Sarah nodded.
"Would it mean a lot to you if they found who murdered your mother?"
"What do you think?" The tone of her voice bordered almost on the insolent,
but Turner interpreted her reply tolerantly, for it was (he knew) hardly the
most intelligent question he'd ever formulated.
"Let's just wish them better luck," he said.
"Better brains, too!"
"Perhaps they'll put Morse on to it this time."
Sarah's eyes locked steadily on his.
"Morse?"
"You don't know him?"
"No."
"Heard of him, perhaps?" Turner's eyes grew suddenly shrewd on hers, and she
hesitated before answering: "Didn't my mother mention she'd nursed him
somewhere?"
"Would you like to meet him, next time he comes in?"
"Pardon?"
"You didn't know he was diabetic?"
"We've got an awful lot of diabetics here."
31
"Not too many like him, thank the Lord! Four hefty injections a day,
and he informs me that he's devised a carefully calibrated dosage that
exactly counterbalances his consider- able daily intake of alcohol. And when
I say considerable . . . Quite a dab hand, too, is Morse, at extrapolating
his blood- sugar readings backwards!"
"Isn't he worried about .. . about what he's doing to himself?"
"Why not ask him? I'll put him on your list."
"Only if you promise to come along to monitor me."
"With you around? Oh, no! Morse wouldn't like that."
"How old is he?"
"Too old for you."
"Single."
"Gracious, yes! Far too independent a spirit for marriage . ..
Anyway, have a goo
d weekend! Anything exciting on? "
"Important, perhaps, rather than exciting. We've got a meeting up at Hook
Norton tomorrow at the Pear Tree Inn. We're organizing another Countryside
March."
"That's the " rural pursuits" thing, isn't it? Fox-hunting ' " Among other
things. "
"The " toffs and the serfs"."
Sarah shook her head with annoyance.
"That's just the sort of comment we get from the urban chattering-classes!"
"Sorry!" Turner held up his right hand in surrender.
"You're quite right. I know next to nothing about fox-hunting, and I'm sure
there must be things to be said in favour of it. But please! don't go and
tell Morse about them. We just happened to be talking about fox-hundng the
last time he was here it was in the news and I can't help remembering what he
said."
"Which was?" she asked coldly.
"First, he said he'd never thought much of the argument that the fox enjoys
being chased and being pulled to little pieces by the hounds."
"Does he think the chickens enjoy being pulled to little pieces by the fox?"
"Second, that the sort of people who hunt do considerably more harm to
themselves than they do to the animals they hunt. He said they run a big
risk of brutalizing themselves . . . dehumanizing themselves."
The two of them, master and pupil, looked at each other over the desk for an
awkward while; and the Professor of Diabetes Studies thought he may have seen
a flash of some- thing approaching fury in the dark-brown eyes of his
probationary consultant.
It was the latter who spoke first: "Mind if I say something?"
"Of course not."
"I'm surprised, that's all. I fully, almost fully, accept your criticisms of
my professional manner and my strategy with patients.
But from what you've just said you sometimes seem to talk to your patients
about other things than diabetes. "
"Touche."
"But you're right .. . Robert. I've been getting too chatty, I realize
that. And I promise that when I see Mr Morse I'll try very hard, as you
suggest, to inst il some sort of disciplined regimen into his daily life."
Turner said nothing in reply. It was a good thing for her to have the last
word: she'd feel so much better when she came to think back on the interview.
As she would, he knew that. Many times. But he allowed himself a few
quietly spoken words after the door had closed behind her: "Oh Lady in Pink
Oh lovely Lady in Pink! There is very, very little chance of a disciplined
regimen in Morse's life."
33
chapter seven Whoever could possibly confuse
"Traffic Lights' and
"Driving Licence'? You could! Just stand in front of your mirror tonight
and mouth those two phrases silently to yourself (Lynne Dubin, The
Limitations of Lip-reading) disabilities, like many sad concomitants of life,
are often cloaked in euphemism. Thus it is that the 'blind' and the
'impotent' and the 'deaf' are happily no longer amongst us. Instead, in
their respective clinics, we know our fellow out-patients as those affected
by impaired vision; as victims of chronic erectile dysfunction; as citizens
with a serious hearing-impediment. The individual members of such groups,
however, know perfectly well what their troubles are. And in the latter
category, they tend to prefer the monosyllabic 'deaf', although they realize
that there are varying degrees of deafness; realize that some are very deaf
indeed.
Like Simon Harrison.
He had been a six-year-old (it was 1978) attending a village school in
Gloucestershire when an inexplicably localized out- break of meningitis had
given cause for most serious concern in the immediate vicinity. And in
particular to two families there: to the Palmer family in High Street, whose
only daughter had tragically died; and to the Harrison family in Church Lane,
whose son had slowly recovered in hospital after three
weeks of intensive care, but with irreversible long-term deafness:
twenty-five per cent residual hearing in the left ear; and almost nothing in
the right.
Thereafter, for Simon, social and academic progress had been seriously
curtailed and compromised: like an athlete being dined for the hundred-me tres
sprint over sand-dunes wearing army boots; like a pupil, with thick wadges of
cotton- wool in each ear, seeking to follow instructions vouchsafed by a
tutor from behind a thickly panelled door.
Oh God! Being deaf was such a dispiriting business.
But Simon was a fighter, and he'd tried hard to make the best of things.
Tried so hard to master the skills of lip-reading; to learn the complementary
language of 'signing' with movements of fingers and hands; to present a
wholly bogus facial expression of comprehension in the company of others;
above all, to come to terms with the fact that silence, for those who are
deaf, is not merely an absence of noise, but is a wholly passive silence, in
which the potential vibrancy of active silence can never again be appreciated.
Deafness is not the brief pregnant silence on the radio when the listener
awaits the Greenwich time-signal; deafness is a radio-set that is defunct,
its batteries dead and non-renewable.
Few people in Simon's life had understood such things; and in his early
teens, when the audio graphical readings had begun to dip even more
alarmingly, fewer and fewer people had been overly sympathetic.
Except his mother, perhaps.
And the reason for such lack of interest in the boy had not been difficult to
fathom. He was an unattractive, skinny-limbed lad, with rather protuberant
ears, and a whiny, nasal manner of enunciating his words, as though his
disability were not so much one of hearing as one of speaking.
Yet it would be an exaggeration to portray the young Harrison as a hapless
adolescent, so often mishearing, so often misunderstood. His school fellows
were not a gang of 35
unmitigated bullies; nor were his teachers an
uncaring crew. No. It was just that no one seemed to like him much;
certainly no one seemed to love him.
Except his mother, perhaps.
But Simon did have some residual hearing, as we have seen; and the powerful
hearing-aids he wore were themselves far more valuable than any sympathy the
world could ever offer. And when, after many a struggle, he left school with
two A- level certificates (a C in English and a D in History) he very soon
had a job.
Still had a job.
In the early 1990s, Oxfordshire's potential facilities for business and
industry had attracted many leading national and international companies.
During those years, for example, the county could boast the largest
concentration of printing and publishing companies outside the metropolis;
and it was to one of these, the Daedalus Press in North Oxford, that on
leaving school Simon had applied for the post of apprentice proof-reader.
And had been successful, principally (let it be admitted) because of the
employers' legal obligation to appoint a small percentage of semi-disabled
applicants.
Yet the 'apprentic
e' appellation was very soon to be deleted from Simon's job
description, for he was proving to be surprisingly and encouragingly
competent: accurate, careful, neat - a fair combination of qualities required
in a proof-reader. And with any luck (so it was thought) experience would
gradually bring with it that needful extra dimension of tedious pedanticism.
On the morning of Friday, 17 July, he found on his desk a photocopied extract
from some unspecified tabloid which some unspecified colleague had left, and
which he read through with keen attention; then read through a second time,
with less interest in its content, it appeared, than in its form, since his
proof-reading pen applied itself at five points in the article.