by Colin Dexter
NEW CLUE TO OLD MURDER
Information received by son in. Nobody knows who he Thames Valley Police
seems was. Or she was. " 5 likely to prompt renewed en- ij^ difficult to
disagree. Would '% Qi^/ quir^jb into the bizzarre murder we still be reading
about the Ripof Mrs Yvonne Harrison just per if we knew who it was who over a
year ago. murdered and mutilated a sucResidents of the small hamlet cession
of prostitutes in the East of Lower Swinstead in Oxford- End of London in the
1870s? As shire are bracing themselves for it is, his ideality remains un-
Cy/ further statements and a fresh known, just like that of Yvonne's ^
upsurge of media interest in the murderer.
^L ghastl^y murder of their former The villagers themselves are '~q/
neighbour;' less than forthcoming, and seem Tom Biffen, landlord of the
dubious about any new break- Maidens Arms, remains phi lo through in the
case.
"Let's just sophical however
"You can't wish the police a bit better luck blame people, can you? Exactly
this time round," says Mrs May the same as Jack the Ripper. Kennedy, who
runs the surpris- Nobody knows who he was. ingly well-stocked village shop.
That's why he's so interesting. And so say all of us. All of us, Same with
who done Mrs Harri- that is, except the murderer.
Chief Inspector Morse had not as yet encountered Simon Harrison; but he would
have been reasonably impressed by the proof-reader's competence. Only
reasonably, of course, since he himself was a man who somewhere, somehow, had
acquired the aforementioned dimension of 'tedious pedandcism', and would have
made three further amendments.
And, of course, would have corrected that gross anachronism, since historical
accuracy had engaged him from the age of ten, when he had taken it upon
himself to memorize the sequence of the American presidents, and the dates
of the kings and queens of England.
37
chapter eight Bankers an just like anybody else, Except richer (Ogden
Nash, I'm a Stranger Here Myself) the london offices of the Swiss Helvetia
Bank are tucked away discreetly just behind Sloane Square. The brass plaque
pin-pointing visitors to these premises, albeit highly polished, is perhaps
disproportionately small. Yet in truth the Bank has little need to impress
its potential clients. On the contrary. Such clients have every need to
impress the Bank.
Just after 4 p. m. on Friday, 17 July, a smartly suited man in his late
forties waved farewell to the uniformed guard at the security desk and walked
out into the sunshine of a glorious summer's day.
Traffic was already heavy; but that was of no concern to Frank Harrison, one
of six Portfolio and Investment Managers of SHB (London). His company flat
was only a few minutes' walk away in Pavilion Road.
Earlier in the day he'd been very much what they paid him so handsomely for
being shrewd, superior, trustworthy when his secretary had poured coffee for
a small, grey-haired man and for his larger, much younger, cosmetically
exquisite wife.
"You realize that SHB deals principally with portfolio investments of, well,
let's say, over a million dollars? Is that, er . ..?"
The self-made citizen from South Carolina nodded. I think
you can feel assured, sir, that we shall be able to meet that figure ah!
fairly easily, shall't we, honey? "
He'd taken his wife's heavily diamonded left hand in his own and smiled,
smiled rather sweetly, as Harrison thought.
And he himself had smiled, too rather sweetly, as he hoped as mentally he
calculated the likely commission from his latest client.
Almost managed a smile again now, as he stopped outside Sloane Square
Underground Station and bought a copy of the Evening Standard, flicking
through the sheets, almost immedi- lately finding the only item that appeared
to interest him, then swiftly scanning the brief article before depositing
the paper in the nearest litter bin. Had he been at all interested in horse-
racing, he might have noticed that Carolina Cutie was running in the 4. 30
at Kempton Park. But it had been many years since he had placed a bet with
any bookie instead now spending many hours of each working day studying on
his office's computer-screens the odds displayed from the London, New York,
and Tokyo stock exchanges.
Considerably safer.
And recently he'd been rather lucky in the management of his clients'
investments.
And the bonuses were good.
He let himself into his flat, tapped in the numbers on the burglar alarm, and
walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large gin with a good deal
of ice and very little tonic. But he'd never had any drinking problem
himself. Unlike his wife. His murdered wife.
Lauren had promised to be along about 6 p. m. " and she'd never been late.
He would call a taxi .. . well, perhaps they'd spend an hour or so between
the sheets first, although (if truth were told) he was not quite so keenly
aware of her sexual magnetism as he had been a few months earlier. Passion
was coming off the boil. It usually happened.
On both sides, too. It had happened with Yvonne, with whom he'd scaled the
39
heights of sexual ecstasy, especially in the first few months of their
marriage. Yet even during those kingfisher days he had been intermittently
unfaithful to her; had woken with heart- aching guilt in the small hours of
so many worryful nights until, that is, he had discovered what he had
discovered about her; and until he had fallen in love with a woman who was
living so invitingly close to him in Lower Swinstead.
The front door-bell rang at 5. 50 p. m. Ten minutes early. Good sign!
He felt sexually ready for her now; tossed back the last mouthful of his
second gin; and went to greet her.
You're in the paper again! " she blurted, almost accusingly, brandishing the
relevant page of the Evening Standard in front of his face after the door was
closed behind them.
"Really?"
For the second time Harrison looked down at the headline, new clue to old
murder; and pretended to read the article through.
"Well?" she asked.
"Well, what?"
"What have you got to tell me?"
"I'm going to take you out for a meal and then I'm going to take you upstairs
to bed or maybe the other way round."
"I didn't mean that. You know I didn't."
"What are you talking about?"
"I want you to tell me what happened. You've never spoken about it, have
you? Not to me. And I want to know!" Her upper lip was suddenly tremulous.
"So before we do anything else, you'd better ' " Better what? " He snapped
the words and his voice seemed that of a different man.
"Listen, my sweetheart! The day you tell me what to do, that's the day we
finish, OK? And if you don't get that message loud and clear' (paradoxically
the voice had dropped to a whisper) 'you'd better bugger off and forget we
ever met."
There were no tears in her eyes as she replied: "I can't do
THE REMORSEFUL
DAY
that, Frank. Bu
t there's one thing I can do: I'm going, as you so delicately
put it, to bugger off! "
In full control of herself she turned the catch on the Yale lock, and the
door closed quietly behind her.
41
chapter nine He looked at me with eyes I thought I was not like to find
(A. E. Housman, More Poems, XLI) it had been the previous day, Thursday,
when after collecting her boss's mail Barbara Dean had walked along the
corridor, white blouse as ever perfectly pressed, flicking through the eleven
envelopes held in her left hand. And looking with particular attention
(again! ) at the one addressed with a scarlet felt-pen, in outsize capital
letters, to:
STRANGE (SUPER! ) POLICE KIDLINGTON OXFORD
The execution of this lettering gave her the impression of its being neither
the work of a particularly educated nor of a particularly uneducated
correspondent. Yet the lower-case legend along the top-left of the envelope
"Private and Confidencial' (sic) - would perhaps suggest the latter.
Whatever the case though, the envelope was always going to be noticed by
whomsoever. It was like someone entering a lucky-dip postal competition with
multicoloured sketches adorning the periphery of the envelope; or like a
lover mailing off a vastly outsize Valentine.
What would her boss make of it?
Barbara had been working at Police HQ for almost six years now, and had
enjoyed her time there especially these past three years working as the
personal secretary of Chief Superintendent Strange; and she was very sad that
he would be leaving at the end of the summer.
"Strange by name and strange by nature' - that's what she often said when
friends had asked about him: an oddly contradictory man, that was for sure.
He was a heavyweight, in every sense of the word; yet there were times when
he handled things with a lightness of touch which was as pleasing as it was
unexpected. His was the reputation of a blunt, no-nonsense copper who had
not been born with quite the IQ, of an Aristotle or an Isaac Newton; yet (in
Barbara's experience) he could on occasion exhibit a remarkably compassionate
insight into personal problems, including her own. All right (yes!) he was a
big, blundering, awkward teddy-bear of a man: a bit (a lot?) hen-pecked at
home until recently of course; a man much respected, if not particularly
liked, by his fellow officers; and (from Barbara's point of view) a man who
had never, hardly ever, sought to take the slightest advantage of her . . .
well, of her womanhood.
Just that once, perhaps?
It had been at the height of the summer heat-wave of 1995. One day when she
had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially
tolerate, she had seen in Strange's eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?
) were the signs of some mild, erode fantasy.
"You look very desirable, my girl!"
That's all he'd said.
Was that what people meant by 'sexual harassment'?
Not that she'd mentioned it to anyone; but the phrase was much in the
headlines that long, hot summer, and she'd heard some of the girls talking in
the canteen about it.
'could do with a bi' o' that sexual harassment! " confessed Sharon, the
latest and youngest tyro in the typing pool.
43
That was the occasion when one of the senior CID officers seated at the
far end of the table had got to his feet, drained his coffee, and come across
to lay a gentle hand on Sharon's sun-tanned shoulder.
"You mean sexual harassment, I think. As you know, we usually exercise the
recessive accent in English; and much as I admire our American friends, we
shouldn't let them prostitute our pronunciation, young lady!"
He had spoken quietly but a little cruelly; and the uncomprehending Sharon
was visibly hurt.
"Pompous prick! Who the hell does he think he is?" she'd asked when he was
gone.
So Barbara told her.
Not that she knew him personally, although his blue eyes invariably smiled
into hers, a little wearily sometimes but ever interestedly, whenever the two
of them passed each other in the corridors; and when she sometimes fancied
that he looked at her as though he knew what she was thinking.
God forbid!
It was not of Morse, though, but of Strange that she was thinking that
morning when she tapped the customary twice on his office door and entered.
Sometimes, when he sat there behind his desk tie slightly askew, a light
shower of dandruff over the shoulders of his jacket, hairs growing a little
too prominently from his ears and from his nostrils, white shirt rather less
than white and less than smoothly ironed it was then, yes, that she wished to
mother him.
She Barbara! - less than half his age.
That he'd never had such a complicated effect on other women, she felt
completely convinced.
Well, no; not completely convinced . .
chapter ten He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody
(Joseph Heller, Catch-22') 'probably some nutter! " growled Strange as he
slipped a paper-knife inside the top of the envelope, and unfolded the
single, thin sheet of paper contained therein. And for a while frowned
mightily; then smiled.
"Have a look at that, Babs!" he said proudly, making as if to hand the sheet
across the desk.
"May well be what we've been waiting for from my appeal, you know."
"Won't there be some fingerprints on it?" she asked tentatively.
"Ah!"
"You can get fingerprints from paper?"
"Get almost anything from anything these days," mumbled Strange.
"And what with DNA, forensics, psychological pro- filing soon be no need for
us detectives any more!"
But in truth he appeared a little abashed as he held the top of the sheet
between his thumb and forefinger and leaned forward over the desk; and
Barbara Dean leaned forward herself, and read the undated letter, typed on a
patently antiquated machine through a red black ribbon long past its
operative sell-by date, with each keyed character unpredictably produced in
either colour.
45
You got it right when you said the calls wasn't from the person that
done it because thatwsame, see! I made them calls. But you got it wrong
when you didn' t look a bit longer in the village. Mister Strange. So you
want some help so there' s a fellow due out of Bullingdon Friday next week
24th OK. WATCH HIM CAREFULLY!
The Ringer.
PS You can buy me a pint of Bass in the Maidens if you recognize me.
"Bit illiterate?" suggested Strange.
"I wonder if he really is," said Barbara, replacing her spectacles in their
case.
"You should wear 'em more often. You've got just the face for specs, you
know. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"
No one ever had, and Barbara hoped she wasn't blushing.
"Thank you."
"Well?"
"I'm not in the Crime Squad, sir."
"But you don't think he'd last long in the typing-pool?"
"You fairly sure it's a " he"?"
"Sounds like it to me."
; Barbara nodded.
"Not much of a typist, like I say."
"Spelling's OK- " recognize", and so on."
"Can't spell " was"."
"That's not really spelling though, is it? You sometimes get typists who are
sort of dyslexic with some words. They try to type " was", say, and they hit
the " s" before the " a". Do things like that regularly but they don't seem
to notice."
"Ah!"
"Grammar's not so hot, I agree. Probably good enough to pass GCSE, I
suppose, sir."
"Does anyone ever/at/GCSE?"
"Could do with a bit more punctuation too, couldn't it?"
"Dunno. Not as much as Morse'd put in."
"Who do you think
"The Ringer" is? "
"Ringer? One who rings, isn't it? Chap who's been ringing us up, like as
not."
"Does the postmark help?"
"Oxford. Not that that means anything. It could have been posted anywhere
in our patch of the Cotswolds ... Carterton! Yes. That's where they take