by Colin Dexter
Janet (McQueen)
P.S. I looked through your old hospital records from many years ago. Know something? I found your Christian name!
“Why are you looking so cheerful?” asked Lewis.
But Morse made no answer, and indeed appeared to be reading the message again and again. Then he opened the letter from America.
Washington
March 4
Dear Morse,
Just read your thing in the Police Gazette. How did I know it was yours? Ah, I too was a detective! I’d have had the champagne myself. And I think the Fauré Requiem’s a bit lightweight compared with the Verdi—in spite of the imprimatur of the Papacy. I know you’ve always wept to Wagner but I’ve always wept to Verdi myself—and the best Xmas present I had was the Karajan recording of Don Carlos.
I know you’re frightened of flying, but a visit here—especially in the spring, they say—is something not to be missed in life. We’ll get together again for a jar on my return (April) and don’t leave it too long before you take your pension.
As aye,
Peter (Imbert)
Morse handed the letter across to Lewis.
“The old Metropolitan Commissioner!”
Morse nodded, rather proudly.
“Washington, D.C., that’ll be, sir.”
“Where else?”
“Washington, C.D.—County Durham, near enough.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your program today, sir?”
“Well, we’ve done most of the spadework—”
“Except the Harvey Clinic side of things.”
“And that’s in hand, you say?”
“Seeing the woman this morning. She’s just back from a few days’ holiday.”
“Who’s she again? Remind me.”
“I told you about her: Dawn Charles.”
“Mrs. or Miss or Ms.?”
“Not sure. But she’s the main receptionist there. They say if anybody’s likely to know what’s going on, she is.”
“What time are you seeing her?”
“Ten o’clock. She’s got a little flat out at Bicester on the Charles Church Estate. You joining me?”
“No, I don’t think so. Something tells me I ought to see Storrs again.”
Lovingly Morse put the “Girl Reading” (Perugini, 1878) back into her envelope, then looked through Sir Peter’s letter once again.
Don Carlos.
The two words stood out and stared at him, at the beginning of a line as they were, at the end of a paragraph. Not an opera Morse knew well, Don Carlos. Another “DC,” though. It was amazing how many DCs had cropped up in their inquiries—and still another one just now in the District of Columbia. And suddenly in Morse’s mind the name of the Verdi opera merged with a name he’d just heard: the “Don” chiming in with the “Dawn,” and the “Carlos” with the “Charles.”
Was it Dawn Charles (Mrs. or Miss or Ms.) who held the key to the mystery? Did they belong to her, that pair of initials in the manila file?
Morse’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
“I think,” he said slowly, “Mr. Julian Storrs will have to wait a little while. I shall be coming with you, Lewis—to Bicester.”
PART SIX
Chapter Fifty-eight
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
—SAMUEL BUTLER, Truth and Convenience
Dawn Charles looked nervous when she opened the door of her flat in Woodpecker Way and let the two detectives through into the gray-carpeted lounge, where the elder of the two, the white-haired one, was already complimenting her on such an attractive residence.
“Bit unlucky though, really. I bought it at the top of the property boom for fifty-eight thousand. Only worth thirty-four now.”
“Oh dear!”
The man made her feel uneasy. And her mind went back to the previous summer when on returning from France she’d put the Green Channel sticker on the windscreen—only to be diverted into the Red Channel; where pleasantly, far too pleasantly, she’d been questioned about her time abroad, about the weather, about anything and everything—except those extra thousand cigarettes in the back of the boot. It had been as if they were just stringing her along; knowing the truth all the time.
But these men couldn’t possibly know the truth, that’s what she was telling herself now; and she thought she could handle things. On Radio Oxford just before Christmas she’d heard P.D. James’s advice to criminal suspects: “Keep it short! Keep it simple! Don’t change a single word unless you have to!”
“Please sit down. Coffee? I’ve only got instant, I’m afraid.”
“We both prefer instant, don’t we, Sergeant?”
“Lovely,” said Lewis, who would much have preferred tea.
Two minutes later, Dawn held a jug suspended over the steaming cups.
“Milk?”
“Please,” from Lewis.
“Thank you,” from Morse.
“Sugar?”
“Just the one teaspoonful,” from Lewis.
But a shake of the head from Morse; a slight raising of the eyebrows as she stirred two heaped teaspoonfuls into her own coffee; and an obsequious comment which caused Lewis to squirm inwardly: “How on earth do you manage to keep such a beautiful figure—with all that sugar?”
She colored slightly. “Something to do with the metabolic rate, so they tell me at the clinic.”
“Ah, yes! The clinic. I’d almost forgotten.”
Again he was sounding too much like the Customs man, and Dawn was glad it was the sergeant who now took over the questioning.
A little awkwardly, a little ineptly (certainly as Morse saw things) Lewis asked about her training, her past experience, her present position, her relationships with employers, colleagues, clients.…
The scene was almost set.
She knew Storrs (she claimed) only as a patient; she’d known Turnbull (she claimed) only as a consultant; she knew Owens (she claimed) not at all.
Lewis produced the letter stating Julian Storrs’ prognosis.
“Do you think this photocopy was made at the clinic?”
“I didn’t copy it.”
“Someone must have done.”
“I didn’t copy it.”
“Any idea who might have done?”
“I didn’t copy it.”
It was hardly a convincing performance, and she was aware that both men knew she was lying. And quietly—amid a few tears, certainly, but with no hysteria—the truth came out.
Owens she had met when the Press had come along for the clinic’s 25th anniversary—he must have seen something, heard something that night, about Mr. Storrs. After Mr. Turn-bull had died, Owens had telephoned her—they’d met in the Bird and Baby in St. Giles’—he’d asked her if she could copy a letter for him—yes, that letter—he’d offered her £500—and she’d agreed—copied the letter—been paid in cash. That was it—that was all—a complete betrayal of trust, she knew that—something she’d never done before—would never have done in the normal course of events. It was just the money—nothing else—she’d desperately needed the money.…
Morse had been silent throughout the interrogation, his attention focused, it seemed, on the long, black-stockinged legs.
“Where does that leave me—leave us?” she asked miserably.
“We shall have to ask you to come in to make an official statement,” said Lewis.
“Now, you mean?”
“That’ll be best, yes.”
“Perhaps not,” intervened Morse. “It’s not all that urgent, Miss Charles. We’ll be in touch fairly soon.”
At the door, Morse thanked her for the coffee: “Not the best homecoming, I’m afraid.”
“Only myself to blame,” she said, her voice tight as she looked across at the Visitors’ parking lots, where the Jaguar stood.
“Where did you go?” asked Morse.
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“Yo
u stayed here—in your flat?”
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“What was that about?” asked Lewis as he drove back along the A34 to Oxford. “About her statement?”
“I want you to be with me when we see Storrs this afternoon.”
“What did you think of her?”
“Not a very good liar.”
“Lovely figure, though. Legs right up to her armpits! She’d have got a job in the chorus line at the Windmill.”
Morse was silent, his eyes gleaming again as Lewis continued:
“I read somewhere that they all had to be the same height and the same build—in the chorus line there.”
“Perhaps I’ll take you along when the case is over.”
“No good, sir. It’s been shut for ages.”
Dawn Charles closed the door behind her and walked thoughtfully back to the lounge, the suspicion of a smile about her lips.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
—E. B. WHITE, One Man’s Meat
Lewis had backed into the first available space on Polstead Road, the tree-lined thoroughfare that leads westward from Woodstock Road into Jericho; and now stood waiting while Morse arose laboriously from the low passenger seat of the Jaguar.
“Seen that before, sir?” Lewis pointed to the circular blue plaque on the wall opposite: “This house was the home of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) from 1896–1921.”
Morse grunted as he straightened up his aching back, mumbling of lumbago.
“What about a plaque for Mr. Storrs, sir? ‘This was the home of Julian Something Storrs, Master of Lonsdale, 1996 to … 1997’?”
Morse shrugged indifferently:
“Perhaps just 1996.”
The two men walked a little way along the short road. The houses here were of a pattern: gabled, redbricked, three-storied properties, with ashlared, mullioned windows, the frames universally painted white; interesting and amply proportioned houses built toward the end of the nineteenth century.
“Wouldn’t mind living here,” volunteered Lewis.
Morse nodded. “Very civilized. Small large houses, these, Lewis, as opposed to large small houses.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Something to do with the number of bathrooms, I think.”
“Not much to do with the number of garages!”
“No.”
Clearly nothing whatever to do with the number of garages, since the reason for the continuum of cars on either side of the road was becoming increasingly obvious: there were no garages here, nor indeed any room for such additions. To compensate for the inconvenience, the front areas of almost all the properties had been cemented, cobbled, graveled, or paved, in order to accommodate the parking of motor cars; including the front of the Storrs’ residence, where on the gravel alongside the front window stood a small, pale gray, D-registration Citroën, a thin pink stripe around its bodywork.
“Someone’s in?” ventured Morse.
“Mrs. Storrs, perhaps—he’s got a BMW. A woman’s car, that, anyway.”
“Really?”
Morse was still peering through the Citroën’s front window (perhaps for some more eloquent token of femininity) when Lewis returned from his ineffectual ringing.
“No one in. No answer, anyway.”
“On another weekend break?”
“I could ring the Porters’ Lodge.”
“You do that small thing, Lewis. I’ll be …” Morse pointed vaguely toward the hostelry at the far end of the road.
It was at the Anchor, a few minutes later, as Morse sat behind a pint of John Smith’s Tadcaster bitter, that Lewis came in to report on the Storrs: away again, for the weekend, the pair of them, this time though their whereabouts not vouchsafed to the Lodge.
Morse received the news without comment, appearing preoccupied; thinking no doubt, supposed Lewis, as he paid for his orange juice. Thinking and drinking … drinking and thinking … the twin activities which in Morse’s view were ever and necessarily concomitant.
Not wholly preoccupied, however.
“I’ll have a refill while you’re at the bar, Lewis. Smith’s please.”
After a period of silence, Morse asked the question:
“If somebody came to you with a letter—a photocopied letter, say—claiming your missus was having a passionate affair with the milkman—”
Lewis grinned. “I’d be dead worried. We’ve got a woman on the milk float.”
“—what would you do?”
“Read it, obviously. See who’d written it.”
“Show it to the missus?”
“Only if it was a joke.”
“How would you know that?”
“Well, you wouldn’t really, would you? Not for a start. You’d try to find out if it was genuine.”
“Exactly. So when Storrs got a copy of that letter, a letter he’d pretty certainly not seen before—”
“Unless Turnbull showed it to him?”
“Doubt it. A death certificate, wasn’t it? He’d want to let Storrs down a bit more gently than that.”
“You mean, if Storrs tried to find out if it was genuine, he’d probably go along to the clinic …”
Morse nodded, like some benevolent schoolmaster encouraging a promising pupil.
“And show it to … Dawn Charles?”
“Who else? She’s the sort of Practice Manager there, if anybody is. And let’s be honest about things. You’re not exactly an expert in the Socratic skills yourself, are you? But how long did it take you to get the truth out of her? Three or four minutes?”
“You think Storrs did it as well?”
“Pretty certainly, I’d say. He’s nobody’s fool; and he’s not going to give in to blackmail just on somebody’s vague say-so. He’s an academic, and if you’re an academic you’re trained to check—check your sources, check your references, check your evidence.”
“So perhaps Storrs has been a few steps in front of us all the time.”
Morse nodded. “He probably rumbled our receptionist straightaway. Not many suspects there at the clinic.”
Slowly Lewis sipped his customary orange juice, his earlier euphoria fading.
“We’re not exactly galloping toward the finishing post, are we?”
Morse looked up, his blue eyes betraying some considerable surprise.
“Why do you say that, Lewis? That’s exactly what we are doing.”
Chapter Sixty
Saturday, March 9
Hombre apercebido medio combatido
(A man well prepared has already half fought the battle).
—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
Somewhat concerned about the adequacy of the Jaguar’s petrol allowance, Morse had requisitioned an unmarked police car, which just before 10 A.M. was heading south along the A34, with Sergeant Lewis at the wheel. As they approached Abingdon, Morse asked Lewis to turn on Classic FM, and almost immediately asked him to turn it off, as he recognized the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2.
“Somebody once said, Lewis, that it was not impossible to get bored even in the presence of a mistress, and I’m sorry to say I sometimes get a little bored even in the company of Johann Sebastian Bach.”
“Really. I thought it was rather nice.”
“Lew-is! He may be terrific; he may be terrible—but he’s never nice. Not Bach!”
Lewis concentrated on the busy road ahead as Morse sank back into his seat and, as was ever his wont in a car, said virtually nothing for the rest of the journey.
And yet Morse had said so many things—things upon which Lewis’s mind intermittently focused again, as far too quickly he drove down to the Chieveley junction with the M4….
* * *
Once back from Polstead Road, Friday afternoon had been very busy and, for Lewis, very interesting. It had begun with Morse asking about their present journey.
“If you had a posh car, which way would you go
to Bath?”
“A34, M4, A46—probably the best; the quickest, certainly.”
“What if you had an old banger?”
“Still go the same way, I think.”
“What’s wrong with the Burford-Cirencester way?”
“Nothing at all, if you like a bit of scenery. Or if you don’t like motorway driving.”
Then another question:
“How do we find out which bank the Storrs use?”
“Could be they have different banks, sir. Shouldn’t be too difficult, though: Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest, Midland … Shall I ring around?”
Morse nodded. “And try to find out how they’ve been spending their money recently—if it’s possible.”
“May take a bit of time, but I don’t see why not. Let me find out anyway.”
Lewis turned to go, but Morse had a further request.
“Before you do, bring me the notes you made about the Storrs’ stay in Bath last weekend. I’m assuming you’ve typed ’em up by now?”
“All done. Maybe a few spelling mistakes—a few grammatical lapses—beautifully typed, though.”
It had taken Lewis only ten minutes to discover that Mr. Julian Storrs and Mrs. Angela Storrs both banked at Lloyds. But there had been far greater difficulty in dealing with Morse’s supplementary request.
The Manager of Lloyds (Headington Branch) had been fully cooperative but of only limited assistance. It was very unusual of course, but not in cases such as this unethical, for confidential material concerning clients to be disclosed. But Lewis would have to contact Lloyds Inspection Department in Bristol.
Which Lewis had promptly done, again receiving every cooperation; also, however, receiving the disappointing news that the information required was unlikely as yet to be fully ready. With credit card facilities now almost universally available, the volume of transactions was ever growing; and with receipt items sometimes irregularly forwarded from retail outlets, and with a few inevitable checks and delays in processing and clearance—well, it would take a little time.
“Later this afternoon?” Lewis had queried hopefully.
“No chance of that, I’m afraid.”