Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  "No."

  "Where do we go from here, sir?"

  "You can drop me off at the Woodstock Arms or . . ."

  "No. I meant with the case, sir."

  '. . . or perhaps the Maiden's Arms. "

  It seemed that Morse was hardly listening.

  "I know you're disappointed, sir, but ' " Disappointed? Nonsense! "

  Some light-footed mouse had just scuttled across his scapu- lae; and when

  Lewis turned to look at him, it seemed as if someone had switched the

  electric current on behind his eyes.

  "Yes, Lewis. Just drive me out to Lower Swinstead."

  334

  chapter seventy-two Below me, there is tie village, and looks how quiet

  and small! And yet buhbks o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite

  (Tennyson, Maua) unwontedly in a car. Morse was almost continuously

  talkative as they drove along: "Do you know that lovely line of Thomson's

  about villages " embosomed soft in trees"?"

  "Don't even know Thomson,"

  mumbled Lewis. "Remarkable things! Strange, intimate little places where

  there's more going on than anybody ever dreams of. You get illicit liaisons,

  hopeless love affairs, illegitimate offspring, wife swopping interbreeding,

  neighbourly spite, class warfare all that's for the insiders, though. If

  you're on the outside, they refuse to have anything to do with you. They

  clamp up. They present a united defensive front because they've got one

  thing in common, Lewis: the village itself. They're all members of the same

  football club. They may loathe each other's guts for most of the week, but

  come Saturday afternoon when they put on the same football shirts . .

  Well, the next village better look out! "

  "Except Lower Swinstead doesn't have a football team."

  "What are you talking about? They're all in the football team."

  Lewis drove down the Windrush Valley into Lower Swinstead.

  "They don't all clamp up, anyway. Not to you, they don't.

  Compared with some of our lads you've squeezed a carton of juice out of 'em

  already. "

  "But there's more squeezing to do, Lewis -just a little."

  Unwontedly in a pub. Morse had already taken out his wallet at the bar, and

  Lewis raised no objection.

  "Pint of bitter whatever's in the best nick."

  "It's all in the best nick," began BifF en

  "And . . . orange or grapefruit, Lewis?"

  The fruit machine stood idle and the cribbage-board was slotted away behind

  the bar. But the place was quite busy. Most of the customers were locals;

  most of them people who'd earlier been questioned about the Harrison murder;

  most of them members of the village team.

  On the pub's notice board at the side of the bar, underneath "Live Music Every

  Saturday', was an amateurishly printed yellow poster advertising the current

  week's entertainment:

  8. 30-11. 30 P. M.

  DON'T MISS IT

  The widely acclaimed folk-singer

  CYNDICOOK

  with the ever popular 3R's Randy, Ray, Rick "Popular?" asked Morse of the

  landlord.

  "Packed out we are, every Sat'day."

  "Ever had Paddy Flynn and his group playing here?"

  "Paddy who?"

  "Flynn the chap who was murdered."

  "Ah yes. Read about it, o'course. But I don't think he were

  ever here, Inspector. You know, fifty-odd groups a year and how many years

  is it I've ' "Forget it!" snapped Morse.

  The beer OK? "

  "Fine. How's Bert, by the way? Any better?"

  "Worse. Quack called to see him yesterday -just after we'd opened told

  Bert's boy the old man oughta go in for a few days, like but Bert told 'em he

  wasn't going to die in no hospital."

  For someone who knew almost nothing about some things, Thomas Biffen seemed

  to know an awful lot about others.

  "Where does he live?" asked Morse.

  It was Bert's son, a man already in his late fifties, who showed Morse up the

  narrow steepish steps to the bedroom where Bert himself lay, propped up

  against pillows, the backs of his hands, purple-veined and deeply foxed,

  resting on the top of the sheet.

  "Missing the cribbage, I bet!" volunteered Morse. The old face, yellowish

  and gaunt, lit up a little.

  "Alf'll be glad of a rest.

  Hah! " He chuckled deeply in his throat.

  "Lost these last five times, he has."

  "You're a bit under the weather, they tell me."

  "Sdll got me wits about me though. More'nAlfhas sometimes." "Still got a

  good memory, you mean?" "Allus had a good memory since I were at school."

  "Mind if I ask you a few things? About the village? You know . ..

  gossip, scandal . . . that sort of thing? I had a few words with Alf,

  but I reckon his memory's not as sharp as yours." "Never was, was it?

  Just you fire away. Inspector. Pleasure!"

  Lewis, who had been left in the car, leaned across and opened the passenger

  door.

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  "Another member of the local football team?" Morse smiled sadly and

  shook his head.

  "I think he's in for a transfer."

  "What exactly did he ?" "Get me home, Lewis."

  On the speedy journey back to Oxford, the pair spoke only once, and then in a

  fairly brief exchange: "Listen, Lewis! We know exactly where Frank Harrison

  is; who's with him; how long he's booked in at his hotel; when his return

  flight is. So. I want you to make sure he's met at Heathrow."

  "If he comes back."

  "He'll be back. I want you to meet him. Charge him with anything you like,

  complicity in the murder of his missus; complicity in the murder of Barren

  please yourself. Any- thing! But bring him back to me, all right? I've

  seldom looked forward ' Morse suddenly rubbed his chest vigorously.

  "You OK, sir?"

  Morse made no reply immediately. But after a few miles had perked up

  considerably.

  "Just drop me at the Woodstock Arms!"

  "Do you think ?"

  "And present my apologies to Mrs Lewis. As per usual."

  Lewis nodded as he turned right at the Woodstock Road roundabout.

  As per usual.

  In Paris, in the Ritz, later that same evening a good deal later Marine

  Ridgway was finding it difficult to finish the lobster dish and almost

  impossible to drink another mouthful of the expensive white wine that looked

  to her exactly the

  colour and gravity of urine. She was tired; she was more than a little

  tipsy; she was slightly less than breathlessly eager for another bout of

  sexual frolicking on their king-size bed. And Frank, too, (she'd sensed it

  all evening) had been strangely reticent and surprisingly sober.

  She braved the exchange: You're not quite your usual self tonight, Frank. "

  "Why do you say that?"

  "It's that business at Heathrow, isn't it?"

  Frank leaned across the table and placed his right hand on her arm.

  "I'll be OK soon, sweetheart. Don't worry! And I ought to tell you

  something: you're looking absolutely gorgeous!"

  "You think so?"

  "Why do you reckon all the waiters keep making detours round our table?"

  "Tell me!"

  "To have a look down the front of your dress."

  "Don't be silly!"

  "You
hadn't noticed?"

  "Frank! It's been a long day and I'm just so fared ... so dred."

  "Not too dred, I hope? Night zu miideif' " No, darling. "

  "You don't want a sweet? A coffee?"

  "No."

  "Well, you go up. I'll be with you soon. I've just got a couple of private

  phone calls to make. And I want to dunk for a little while on my own, if you

  don't mind? And make sure you put dial see-through thing on, all right? The

  one that'll send the garcon gaga when he brings our breakfast in the morning."

  "You've arranged diat?"

  Frank Harrison nodded; and watched the backs of her legs as she left the

  table.

  Yes, he'd arranged for breakfast in their room.

  He'd arranged everything.

  Almost.

  chapter seventy-three When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen

  has glean'd my teeming brain. (Keats, Sonnet) slowly morse walked homeward

  from the Woodstock Arms, disappointed (as we have seen) if not wholly

  surprised, that the favourite in the Harrison Stakes had fallen (like Devon

  Loch) within sight of the winning-post. But now, at last (or so he told

  himself) Morse guessed the whole truth. And feeling pleasingly over-bee red

  he had earlier taken the unusual step of ordering a bar snack, and had

  enjoyed his liberally horse- radished beef sandwiches. He thought he would

  probably sleep well enough that night. After a while. Not just for a minute

  though. Truth was that he felt eager to continue (to finish off? ) the

  notes he'd already been making on the Harrison murder, just in case something

  happened; just in case no one would be aware of the sweetly logical solution

  that had formulated itself in his mind that day.

  Much earlier (Morse knew it) he should have paid far more attention to the

  thing that had puzzled him most about the Harrison murder: motive. Until

  now, Simon had fitted that bill pretty well, since Morse was sure that the

  mother-son relation- ship had been very close; much too close. Good

  thinking, that! Then, that very afternoon, a busty lusty lass sitting with

  Simon in the three-and-six pennies had innocently scuppered his care- fully

  considered scheme of things.

  Once home. Morse poured himself a modestly liberal measure of Glenfiddich,

  and changed into a gaudily striped pair of pyjamas that blossomed in white

  and purple and red . . before continuing, indeed completing, his written

  record.

  This evening in Lower Swinstead I spoke at quite some length with Mr Bert

  Bagshaw. Why did I not follow nay first instincts? Had I done so, I would

  have realized that any clues to that (most elusive) motivation for the murder

  of Yvonne Harrison would ever be likely to lie in the immediate locality

  itself, rather than in some external rape or alien burglary. Hardy's yokels

  usually knew all about the goings on in the Wessex villages; and their role

  is paralleled today by the likes of the Alfs and the Berts in the Cotswold

  public houses.

  Although I now know who murdered Yvonne Harrison, it will not be easy to

  prove the guilt of the accused party. I am reminded of the Greek philosopher

  Protagoras, who found it difficult to be dogmatic about the existence of the

  gods, partly because of the obscurity of the subject matter, and partly

  because of the brevity of human life.

  But herewith I give my final thoughts on the murder of Yvonne Harrison, that

  crisply uniformed nurse who looked after me in hospital once (but once! )

  with such tempting, loving care . . .

  He finished writing an hour later at 12. 45 a. m. Or perhaps, to be

  accurate, he wrote no more thereafter.

  At which hour Lewis was somewhat uneasily asleep, not at all sure in his mind

  whether things were going well or going ill. Morse had insisted that it

  should be he, Lewis, who would be on hand when Frank Harrison and his lady

  passed through Arrivals at Heathrow. No problem there though. Still

  thirty-six hours to go before the scheduled British Airways flight was 341

  due to land, and Morse had been adamant that Harrison would be on that

  flight, and not flitting off to Katmandu or the Cayman Islands.

  Yet one thing was ever troublously disturbing Lewis's thoughts: the real

  nature of the puzzling and secret relationship that had clearly existed

  between Morse and Yvonne Harrison, 342

  chapter seventy-four We are adhering

  to life now with our last muscle the heart (Djuna Barnes, Nightwood) morse

  awoke at 2. 15 a. m. " his forehead wet with sweat, an excruciating ache

  along the whole of his left arm running up as far as his neck and jaw, a

  tightly constricting corselet of pain around his chest. He managed to reach

  the bathroom sink where he vomited copiously. Thence, in pathetically slow

  degrees, he negotiated the stairs, one by one finally reaching the

  ground-floor telephone, where he dialled 999, and in a remarkably steady

  voice selected the first of the Ambulance Fire Police options. He was seated

  on the lime-green carpet beside the front door, its Yale lock and bolts now

  opened, when the ambulance arrived six minutes later.

  It all happened so quickly.

  After being attached to a portable heart-monitor, after a pain-killing

  injection, after chewing an aspirin, after having his blood pressure taken.

  Morse found himself lying, contentedly almost, eyes open, on a stretcher in

  the back of the ambulance.

  Beside him a paramedic was looking down with well-disguised anxiety at the

  ghastly pallor of the face and the lips of a purple- blue: "We'll just get

  the docs to have a look at you. We'll soon be there.

  Don't worry. "

  Morse closed his eyes, conscious that life had always been a bit of a worry

  and seemed to have every likelihood of so continuing now . .

  343

  He should perhaps have rung Lewis from upstairs Lewis had a flat-key

  instead of ringing 999.

  But then, he realized, Lewis wouldn't have had all that medical equipment,

  now would he?

  He'd been a little disappointed that he'd heard no ambulance siren.

  But then, he realized, there wouldn't be all that much traffic, even in

  Oxford, at such an early hour, now would there?

  Soon, he knew it, they'd be asking for his

  "Religion'.

  But then, he realized, it wouldn't take too long for him (or them) to write

  down

  "None' in some appropriate box, now would it?

  "Next of Kin', too. Trickier that though, because the pen- ultimate member

  of the Morse clan had recently died, aged ninety-two.

  But then it wouldn't take too long to write down

  "None' again.

  And there were more cheerful things to contemplate. Perhaps Nurse Harrison

  would be there in the ward again to sit by his bed in the small hours . . .

  But then, he realized, Yvonne Harrison was now dead.

  Perhaps Sister McQueen would be on duty to pull him through again?

  But then, he realized, she was away for a month in far Carlisle, tending a

  frail, demanding mother.

  The kindly paramedic held him down gently as he tried to sit up on the

  stretcher.

  "Lewis! I must see Sergeant Lewis."

  "Of cour
se. We'll make sure you see him as soon as they've had a quick look

  at you. We're nearly there."

  The night nurse in the 'goldfish-bowl', at the right of the Emergencies

  Entrance, watched as the automatic double-doors opened and the paramedics

  wheeled the latest casualty through, deciding immediately that Resuscitation

  Room B was

  the place for the newcomer. Quickly she bleeped the Senior House Officer.

  The next ten minutes saw swift and methodical action: blood samples were

  promptly despatched some whither chest X-rays were taken; an

  electrocardiograph test had firmly established that the patient had suffered

  a hefty anterior myocardial infarct. But it was time for another move; and

  the activities of a young and kindly nurse with a clipboard, dutifully