by Colin Dexter
The damage had been done.
In the back of the police car as it returned to Oxford, Lewis realized, with
an added sadness, that Morse had been wholly wrong, as it now transpired, in
his final analysis of the Harrison murder.
Frank Harrison, if his lady-friend were to be believed, just could not have
murdered his wife that night; and the police must have been right, in the
original enquiry, to cross him off their suspect list.
It had all happened before, of course - many a time! - when Morse, after the
revelation of some fatal flaw in his earlier reasoning, would find his mind
leaping forward, suddenly, with inexplicable insight, towards the ultimate
solution.
But those days had now gone.
It was not until the car was passing through the cutting in the Chiltems by
Stokenchurch that Harrison spoke: "Red kite country this is now. Did you
know that, Sergeant?"
"As a matter of fact I did, yes. I'm not into birds myself though.
The wife puts some nuts out occasionally but. "
It may hardly be seen as a significant passage of conversation.
Harrison spoke again just after Dixon had turned off the M40 on to the A40
for Oxford.
"You know, I'm looking forward to seeing Morse again. I met him at Barren's
funeral, but I don't think we got on very well . . . My daughter, Sarah,
knows him though. He's one of her patients at the Radcliffe. She tells me
he's a strange sort of fellow in some ways interesting though, and very
bright, but perhaps not taking all that good care of himself."
Lewis remained silent.
"Why didn't he come up to Heathrow himself? Wasn't that the original idea?"
"Yes, I think it was."
"Are we meeting at St Aldate's or Kidlington?"
"He won't be meeting you anywhere, sir. Chief Inspector Morse is dead."
chapter seventy-seven Dear Sir/ Madam Please note that an entry on the
Register of Electors in your name has been deleted for the following reason:
DEATH
If you have any objections, please notify me, in writing, before the 25th
November, 1998, and state the grounds for your objection.
Yours faithfully (Communication from Carlow County Council to an erstwhile
elector) after returning to HQ Lewis gave Strange an account of the quite
extraordinary evidence so innocently (as it seemed) supplied by Maxine
Ridgway.
But he could do no more.
For he had nothing more to give.
Unlike Morse, who had always professed enormous faith in pills pills of all
colours, shapes, and sizes Lewis could hardly remember the last time he'd
taken anything apart from the Vitamin C tablet he was bullied to swallow each
breakfast-time. It had therefore been something of a surprise to learn that
Mrs L kept such a copious supply of assorted medicaments;
and retiring to bed unprecedentedly early that evening he had swallowed two
Nurofen Plus tablets, and slept like the legendary log.
At 10 a. m. the following morning he drove up to the mortuary attheJR2.
The eyes were closed, but the expression on the waxen face was hardly one of
great serenity, for some hint of pain still lingered there.
Like so many others contemplating a dead person, Lewis found himself
pondering so many things as he thought of Morse's mind within the skull.
Thought of that wonderful memory, of that sensitivity to music and
literature, above all of that capacity for thinking laterally, vertically,
diagonally whateverwhichway that extraordinary brain should decide to go.
But all gone now, for death had scattered that union of component atoms into
the air, and Morse would never move or think or speak again.
Feeling slightly guilty, Lewis looked around him. But at least for the
moment his only company was the dead. And bending down he put his lips to
Morse's forehead and whispered just two final words: "Goodbye, sir."
chapter seventy-eight . & that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground Ss~
that no sexton be asked to toll the bell &' that no murners walk behind me at
my funeral & that no flours he planted on my grave. (Thomas Hardy, The Mayor
of Casterbridge) morse had always been more closely attuned to life's adagios
than its allegros; and his home reflected such a melancholic temperament.
The pastel-coloured walls, haunted by the music of Wagner, Bruckner, and
Mahler, were deco- rated with sombre-toned reproductions of Rembrandt, Ver-
meer, and Atkinson Grimshaw; and lined, in most rooms both upstairs and down,
with long shelves of the poets and the novelists.
The whole place now seemed so very still as Lewis picked up two pints of
semi-skimmed Coop milk from the porch, picked up four letters from the
doormat, and entered.
In the study upstairs there were several signs (as Lewis already knew) of a
sunnier temperament: the room was deco- rated in a sun-bed tan, terra cotta
and white, with a bright Matisse hanging on the only wall free of the
ubiquitous books, CDs, and cassettes. A red angle-lamp stood on the desk
with, beside it, a bottle of Glenfiddich, virtually empty, and a cut- glass
tumbler, completely empty. Morse had timed his exit fairly satisfactorily.
Lewis sat down and quickly looked through the letters: BT; British Diabetic
Association; Lloyds Bank; Oxford Brookes University.
Nothing too personal perhaps in any of them, but he left them there unopened.
He fully realized there would be quite a few details to be sorted out soon
by someone. Not by him though. He had but the single mission there.
In the second drawer down on the right, he found six photographs and took
them out. An old black-and-white snap of a middle-aged man and woman, the
man showing facial lineaments similar to Morse's. A studio portrait of a
fair-haired young woman, with a written message on the back: "Like you I wish
so much that things could have been different love always W. Another smaller
photograph, with a brief sentence in Morse's own hand: " Sue Widdowson before
she was arrested'. A holiday shot of a young couple on a beach somewhere,
the dark-headed bronzed young woman in a white bikini smiling broadly, the
young man's right arm around her shoulders, and (again) some writing on the
back
"I only look happy. I miss you like crazy!!! Ellie'. Clipped to a
photograph of a smartly attractive woman, in the uniform of a hospital
sister, was a brief letter under a Carlisle address and telephone number: " I
understand. I just can't help wondering how we would have been together,
that's all'd have had to sacrifice a bit of independence too you know!
Always remember my love for you. J. "
Only the one other photograph: that of Morse and Lewis standing next to each
other beside the Jaguar, with no writing on the back at all.
Lewis tried the Carlisle number; with no success.
On the floor to the right of the desk lay a buff-coloured folder, its
contents splayed out somewhat, as if perhaps it may have been knocked down
accidentally; and he picked it up. On the front was written: "For the attn.
of Lewis'.
The top sheet was the printed form D1/D2, issued by the Department of Human
Anatomy in Sout
h Parks Road, the second section duly signed by the donor; and
countersigned 359
by the same man who had witnessed the validity of the
second single sheet ofA4 to which Lewis now turned his attention: MY WILL I
expressly forbid the holding of any religious service to mark my death. Nor
do I wish any memorial service to be arranged thereafter. If any persons
wish to remember me in any way, let it be in their thoughts.
If these handwritten paragraphs have any legal validity, as I am assured they
do, my estate may be settled with little difficulty. I no longer have any
direct next-of-kin, and even if I have, it makes no difference.
My worldly goods and chattels comprise: my flat (now clear of mortgage); its
contents (including a good many rare first editions); two insurance policies;
and the monies in my two accounts with Lloyds Bank. The total assets
involved I take to be somewhere in the region of 150,000 at current rates and
values.
It is my wish that the said estate, after appropriate charges, be divided
(like Gaul) into three parts, in equal amounts (unlike Gaul) with the
beneficiaries as follows: (a) The British Diabetic Association (b) Sister
Janet McQueen (see address book) (c) Sergeant Lewis, my colleague in the
Thames Valley CID.
For several minutes, Lewis sat where he was, unmoving, but deeply moved. Why
in heaven Morse should have shown such bitterness toward the Church, he
couldn't know; and wouldn't know. And why on earth Morse had remembered him
with such . .
His thoughts still in confusion, Lewis tried the Carlisle number again; again
without success.
He washed out the empty tumbler in the bathroom, and returned to the study,
where he poured himself the last half- inch of Glenfiddich, sat down again,
silently raised his glass, and drained it.
He looked down at the several sheets of paper remaining in the folder, marked
on the first page
"Notes on the Harrison Case', and all written in Morse's hand, that same
small upright script that Lewis had found in the Harrison files. He'd go
through it all later though. For the moment he placed the other two single
sheets on the top, and was preparing to leave, when he opened the second
drawer down again, took out the photograph of the Jaguar, and slipped it into
the folder on top of everything else.
And noticed something else there, pushed to the back of the drawer.
A pair of handcuffs.
361
chapter seventy-nine Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor
hell a jury like a woman scorned (Congreve, The Mowmmg Bride) If you're
guilty, you'll have to prove it (Groucho Marx) lewis finished reading through
the folder early that same evening.
Most of it he'd known about already. It was only when he'd come to the last
three sheets that he was aware of the wholly new tenor of Morse's thinking.
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.
From the start of this case, one person stood out high above the others in
firmness of purpose, daring, and clarity of mind: Frank Harrison. He was
still sexually attracted to Yvonne, but she was no longer attracted to him;
indeed one night in hospital she told me that she used to hook her foot over
her own side of the mattress to establish a sort of no man land between
them. But she remained a woman obsessively interested in sex, both as
practising participant and addicted voyeur. (She had mentioned to me some
Amster- dam videos. But although I looked quite carefully through
the scores of videos there, I could find nothing. I suspect they were
innocently disguised under such labels as The Jungle Book or Cooking with
Herbs. ) Now clearly Frank Harrison was is someone with a very strong sexual
drive, and doubtless he claimed his marital rights on his spasmodic periods
at home. But inevitably, when they were away from each other, Yvonne knew
what he was up to, just as he knew what she was up to. And for that reason,
I can find no compelling motive for Frank Harrison to have murdered his wife.
There might have been the opportunity, for all we know. But his alibi was
uncontested, since there seemed no reason to suspect the firm and explicit
evidence of the man Flynn, who claimed to have picked him up from Oxford
Station and driven him out to his home to Lower Swinstead.
It is now my view (I look forward to interviewing Frank H on the matter) that
Flynn was not in fact paid for fixing his taxi-times for the purpose of
Harrison's alibi. He was paid for something different.
Until so very recently I thought that Simon must have murdered his mother.
He had ample motive if he found his beloved mum in bed with the local,
builder God help us! And the other facts fitted that hypothesis neatly: he
was known to Repp, the local shady character familiar to everyone around, as
well as being a regular at the Maiden's Arms; known to Barren, of course; and
also known to Flynn, because the pair of them had attended lip-reading
classes together.
As you know, I was wrong.
But there was someone else who had an even more compelling motive, with the
other facts fitting equally convincingly: Sarah Harrison.
What motive could she have had? Simply this: that she and Barren had been
secret lovers for a year or so before Yvonne's murder. I learned something
about this from two most unlikely witnesses from Alf and Bert, denizens of the
Maiden's Arms. Particularly from Bert, 36^
who had seen the two of them
together, both at the Three Pigeons in Witney and at the White Hart in
Wolvercote, when he was playing away in the cribbage-league. I've little
doubt that others in Lower Swinstead knew about it too, but they all kept
their mouths shut. On that fateful evening, Sarah called home unexpectedly,
and found her secret lover in bed with her mother God help us! She was
already known to Repp, as well as to Barren, of course. But where does that
opportunistic fellow Flynn fit into the picture this time? There is now
ample proof that he knew Sarah fairly well, because in the years before the
murder the pair of them had performed in a pop group together in several pubs
and clubs in West Oxfordshire (some details are known) although never as it
happens at the Maiden's Arms.
And that's almost it, Lewis.
There remains just the one final matter to settle. The murder weapon was
never found. But the path-report, as you'll recall, gave some indication of
the type of weapon used. There were perhaps two blows only to Yvonne's head.
The first rendered the right cheek-bone shattered and the bridge of the nose
broken. The second, the more vicious and it seems the fatal blow, crashed
across the base of the skull, doubtless as Yvonne tried to turn her head away
in desperate self-defence. The suggestion made was that some sort of
'tubular metal rod' was in all probability the cause of such injuries.
An arm-crutch!
How do I know this? I don't. But I shall be inordinately
surprised if I am
not very close indeed to the truth. And how many times this has happened? -
it was you, Lewis, who did the trick for me again!
Remember? You were reining back some fanciful notions of mine about Sarah
tearing down to the cinema to buy a ticket, and you said that she wasn't
going to be tearing about anywhere that night, because she'd sprained her
ankle rather badly; and that if she were doing
anything it would be hobbling about. Yes. Hobbling about on one of those
metal arm-crutches they'd probably issued her with from the Physiotherapy
Department. (Will you find out, Lewis, if and when the arm-crutch was
returned? ) I realize that it won't be easy to establish Sarah's guilt, but
we've got the long-awaited interview with her father to look forward to.
He'll be a worthy opponent, I know that, but I'm beginning to suspect that
even he has almost had enough by now. If I'm over-optimistic about such an
outcome, there'll still be Sarah herself. It will be a surprise if the pair
of them haven't been in close touch in recent days and weeks, and I've got a
feeling that like her father she's almost ready herself to emerge from the
hell she must have been going through for so long. Quite apart from judicial
convictions and punishments, guilt brings its own moral retribution. We all
know that.
One thing is certain. This will be has been my last case. I am now