by Colin Dexter
Two things may strike the reader immediately. First, the archaisms so prevalent in the verses (“tell’st”, “know’st”, “ ’Wither”, “thy”, “thee”, etc.) which strongly suggest that the author is wholly steeped in the language of Holy Writ. Second, the regular resort to hymno-logical vocabulary: “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended” (1. 11); “As pants the hart for cooling streams” (1. 15); “When I survey the wondrous cross” (1. 17)—all of which seem to corroborate the view that the author is a man regularly conditioned by such linguistic influences.
May I be allowed therefore to put two and two together and make, not a murderer, but a minister of God’s church? May I go even further? And suggest a minister in the Church of Rome, where the confessional is a commonplace, and where in rare circumstances a priest may be faced with a grievous dilemma—the circumstances, say, when a sinner confesses to an appalling crime, and when the priest may be tempted to compromise the sacred principle of confidentiality and to warn society about a self-confessed psychopath, especially so if the psychopath himself has expressed a wish for such a course of action to be pursued.
Might it not be worthwhile then for the Thames Valley CID to conduct some discreet enquiries among the RC clergy within, say, a ten-mile radius of Carfax?
Yours truly,
DAVID M. STURDY,
St. Andrew’s Vicarage,
Norwich.
This letter was also read by Inspector Harold Johnson on holiday with his wife on the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales. The small village store was not in the habit of stocking The Times, but he had picked up a copy on a shopping trip to Pwllheli that morning, and felt puzzled by the reference to “the findings of the police pathologist in Oxford”. Not just puzzled, either; a whole lot pleased, if he were honest with himself. It wasn’t very specific, but it must surely mean that the girl still hadn’t been found. They’d found some other poor sod. Huh! That must have shot bloody Morse in the foot. Shot him up the arse if Strange had his finger on the trigger. He was reading the letter again quickly as his wife was arranging the supermarket carrier bags in the boot of the Maestro.
“What are you smiling at, darling?” she asked.
On Broadmoor Lea, the erection of bollards and concrete blocks, the construction of humps across the streets, and the simpler expedient of digging several holes to the depth of several feet—these activities had put a virtual stop to any possibility of further joy-riding. All a bit makeshift, but all quite effective. There was revulsion too at the young girl’s death. And more public cooperation. The police were winning. Or so it appeared. Marion Bridewell had been knocked down by a car (a shiny new BMW stolen from High Wycombe) with four youths inside. The car itself had been abandoned on the neighbouring Blackbird Leys estate, but a good many of the local inhabitants knew who one or two of them were; and some few bystanders, and some few indeed who had earlier applauded the teenagers’ skills, were now semi-willing to testify to names and incidents. Earlier that week fourteen youths and two men in their early twenties had been arrested on the estate, and charged with a variety of motoring offences; six of them were still sitting in the cells. There would very soon be four more of them—the BMW four; and looking at things from the point of view of both the City and the County Constabularies, it was fairly certain that normal police duties could be resumed almost immediately.
The following day, Saturday, 25 July, Philip Daley had caught the bus into Oxford at 11 A.M., and his mother had watched him disappear up to the main road before venturing quietly, fearfully, into his bedroom with the hoover. The red-covered pocket diary she’d given him for Christmas had remained unused in his drawer until earlier that month, when the entries had started. The first had been on Saturday the 4th, the writing cramped and ill-fitted into the narrow daily space:
Another tonight. Wow!!! What a squeeler
what a bute. I never been so exited before.
And then the last, a fortnight later:
Finish Finis End! We never meant it
none of us. The screems sounded just like
the tires but we never meant it.
Margaret Daley looked down again at the date, Saturday, 18 July. Her heart was sinking again within her, and in her misery she wished that she were dead.
Chapter Forty-three
It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but those things of which we are ashamed
(Rousseau, Confessions)
Mrs. Margaret Daley pulled her white Mini into the tarmac-adamed area (“For Church Purposes Only”) just above St. Michael and All Angels at the northern end of the Woodstock Road in Oxford—a white, pebble-dashed edifice, with a steeply angled roof surmounted, at the apex of the gable, by a small stone cross. Although she was not a regular worshipper—once a month or so, with the occasional Easter or Whitsun or Christmas service—Margaret’s face was not unfamiliar there, and on the morning of Sunday, 26 July, she exchanged a few semi-smiling greetings; a few only, however, for the congregation was thin for the first Holy Mass at 8 A.M.
The car was George’s really, but so often he used the Blenheim Estate van for getting around that it was almost always possible for her to have the prior call; and especially so on Sunday mornings. There had been very few cars on the road as she had driven down the dual-carriageway to the Pear Tree roundabout—her mind deeply and agonizingly preoccupied.
It had begun two years earlier, when George had bought the video; a bit surprising in any case, because he was no great TV addict, preferring a pint in the Sun most evenings to a diet of soaps. But he had bought a video machine; and soon he’d bought a few videotapes to go with it—the highlights of great sporting occasions, mostly: England’s 1966 victory in the World Cup; Botham’s miracles against the Australians; that sort of thing. The machine had been a rather complex affair, and from the outset there had been a taboo on anyone else manipulating it without his lordship’s permission and supervision. It was his toy. Such pos-sessiveness had irked young Philip a little, but the situation had been satisfactorily resolved when the lad had been presented with a small portable TV of his own on his fifteenth birthday. But in spite of his growing collection of tapes, her husband seldom actually watched them. Or so she’d thought. Gradually, however, she’d begun to realize that he did watch them—when she was away from the house; and particularly so on the regular occasions she was out, twice a week: aerobics on Tuesdays; WI on Thursdays. It had been one Tuesday night when she had been feeling unwell and flushed that she had left the class early and returned home to find her husband jumping up from his seat on the floor beside the TV screen, hurriedly flicking the “Stop” switch on the video, turning over to the ITV channel, and taking out the tape. The next day, when he was at work, she had managed, for the first time, to get the wretched thing working—and had witnessed a few minutes of wholly explicit and (to her) monstrously disgusting pornography. She had said nothing though; had still said nothing.
But other things were fitting into place. About once every three weeks a brown, plain A4 envelope would be found among George’s limited mail, containing, as she’d guessed, some sort of magazine of about thirty or forty pages. Often the post would arrive before George left for work; but she had taken the next opportunity of a later delivery partially to steam open the flap on such a communication, and to discover more than sufficient to confirm her suspicions. But again she’d said nothing; had still said nothing; and would still say nothing. For although it was half of her trouble, it was the half of her trouble that she could the better bear …
Perhaps things were slightly easier as she followed the Order of Mass that early Sunday morning, glancing the whiles around her at the familiar stations of the cross as she sat in a pew at the rear of the church. She knew next to no Latin herself—only what she had learned as a young girl from the RC services in the Douay Martyrs’ Secondary School in Solihull. But especially had she then loved the sound of some of the long words they’d all sung: words like “immolatum” from the A
ve Verum Corpus—a serious-minded word, she’d always thought, sort of grand and sad and musical with all those “m”s in it. Although she’d never really known what it meant, she felt disappointed that they’d got rid of most of the Latin and gone for a thin kind of Englishness in the services; felt this disappointment again now as the Celebrant dismissed them:
“The Mass is ended. Go in peace.”
“Thanks be to God,” she’d replied, and waited in her place—until only one other solitary soul lingered there, still kneeling, head bowed, in one of the side pews.
After a few mild exhortations in the porchway to his departing flock, Father Richards re-entered the church; and as he did so Margaret Daley rose and spoke to him, requesting a confessional hearing at one of the appropriate times: Saturdays, 11–12 A.M.; 5:30–6:15 P.M. Perhaps it was the earnestness of her manner, perhaps the moist film of her incipient tears, perhaps her voice—unhappy, hesitant, and trembling … But whichever, it mattered not. Father Richards took her gently by the arm and spoke quietly into her ear.
“If it will help, my child, come now! Let Christ, through His cross and through His resurrection, set you free from all your sins!”
* * *
It was not in the normal confessional box at all; but in a small study in the Manse behind the church that Father Richards heard as much as Margaret Daley felt willing to tell him. But even then she lied—lied when she said she had gone into her son’s bedroom to collect his dirty washing, lied about her deepest and most secret fears.
Twice, surreptitiously, Father Richards had looked down at his wrist-watch as he listened. But he refrained from interrupting her until she had told him enough, until he thought he understood enough. The burden of her sin was heavy; yet even heavier (he sensed it) was her guilt at prying into the affairs of others; her anguished conviction that it was precisely because of her prying, because of her snooping, that there had been such terrible secrets to discover. Had she not done so … the secrets themselves might not have existed. This was her punishment. Oh God! What could she do?
For a while Father Richards offered no words of consolation; it was important, he knew, for the waters to be drained from the poisoned cistern. But soon—soon he would speak to her. And so it was that he sat and waited and listened until she was dry-eyed again; until her guilt and humiliation and self-pity were for the moment spent. She may have told him a lot or a little, she wasn’t sure; but she had told him enough, and now it was time for him to speak.
“You must talk to your son, my child, and you must feel able to forgive him; and you must pray to God for guidance and strength. And this I promise—that I too will pray to God for you.” Momentarily there was a twinkle in the old priest’s eyes. “You know, with the two of us praying for the same thing, He might just listen a little bit harder.”
“Thank you, Father,” she whispered.
The priest placed his hand gently on hers, and closed his eyes as he recited the absolution: “May God Almighty have mercy on you, forgive your sins, and lead you in the paths of righteousness.”
An “Amen” was called for, but Margaret Daley had been unable to enunciate a single word, and now walked out of the Manse, and fiddled in her handbag for the car keys. The Mini was the only car remaining on the parking area, but another person was standing there, probably waiting for a lift, it seemed; the person who had been kneeling in the church after everyone else had gone; a person who now turned round and looked into Margaret’s face—then looked past her face, unrecognizing, and turned away. The look had lasted but a second, yet in that second Margaret Daley’s scalp had thrilled with sudden fear.
Chapter Forty-four
Impressions there may be which are fitted with links and which may catch hold on each other and render some sort of coalescence possible
(John Livingstone Lowes, The Road to Xanadu)
On the morning of Monday, 27 July, Morse and Lewis were back in business at Kidlington HQ: Lewis (at Morse’s insistence) once more going through his Swedish trip in meticulous detail—especially through the furnishings and the photographs on view in Irma Eriksson’s living room; and Morse (as always) seeking to convince himself that there was probably some vital clue he’d already missed; or, if not missed exactly, some clue whose true significance had hitherto eluded him. Since early that morning he had, as it were, been shaking the atoms laterally in the frying pan, hoping that a few hooks and eyes might link together and forge some new chain of thought; a new train of thought … train spotting … bird-spotting … birds … Yes, birds (like dogs!) had figured all over the place so far, especially the lesser-spotted woodpecker—“spotted” (that word again!)—yet still the link refused to make itself. He considered once again Karin’s list of hopefully-soon-to-be-identified British birds, and realized that as yet he had made no contact with the woman who lived down near Llandovery … the home of the red kites … Llandovery, out into Wales along the A40 … A40, the third of the possibilities … the third of the roads that led off from the Woodstock Road roundabout. Inspector Johnson had done his pedestrian best with the road out to Blenheim Park; and he himself, Morse, had done his (equally pedestrian?) best with the road posted down to Wolvercote and Wytham. But what if both of them had been wrong? Morse had re-read the statement made by Mrs. Dorothy Evans (not an aunt, it appeared, but some second or third cousin, twice or thrice removed) in which she’d affirmed quite simply that Karin Eriksson had never visited her, never even telephoned her at that time; in fact had not seen “little Karin” since that now largish girl was ten years old. No! The solution to the murder lay there in Oxford, in the environs of Oxford, Morse was convinced of that.
At 10:30 A.M. he decided that he had to speak to David Michaels once more; the man who had pointed the way—almost literally so—to the body found in Pasticks; the man who knew the woodland ridings out at Wytham better than almost any man alive.
From the very roundabout where Karin Eriksson might well have made her fatal decision, Lewis drove down through the twisting road of Lower Wolvercote, past the Trout Inn, and then up the hill towards Wytham village.
“What exactly is a handbrake-turn?” Morse had asked suddenly.
“Don’t you know—really?”
“Well, of course, I’ve got a vague idea …”
“Just a minute, sir. Wait till we’re round this next bend and I’ll show you.”
“No! I didn’t—”
“Only a joke, sir.”
Lewis laughed at his chief’s discomfiture, and even Morse managed to produce a weak smile.
The police car drove up to the T-junction at Wytham village, turned left, then immediately right, past the dovecote in the car park of the White Hart, then right again into the lane that led up into Wytham Woods. On a gate-post to the right was fixed a bold notice, black lettering on an orange background:
WYTHAM AMATEUR OPERATIC SOCIETY
presents
THE MIKADO
BY
GILBERT & SULLIVAN
Thursday July 30th, Friday
July 31st, & Saturday August 1st
TICKETS £3.50
(Senior Citizens & Children £2.50)
“The wife’s very fond of Gilbert and Sullivan. Far better than all your Wagner stuff, that,” ventured Lewis.
“If you say so, Lewis.”
“Full o’ tunes—you know what I mean?”
“We don’t go in for ‘tunes’ in Wagner—we go in for ‘continuous melody’.”
“If you say so, sir.”
They drove up to the semi-circular clearing at the edge of the Great Wood.
“We did it at school. I wasn’t in it myself, but I remember, you know, everybody dressing up in all that oriental clobber.”
“The Mikado, you mean? Oh, yes. Well done!”
Morse seemed for a while almost half asleep, as Lewis stopped the car and looked across at the stone cottage where Michaels lived.
“We’re in luck, sir.” Lewis wound down his window and poi
nted to the forester, a rifle under his right arm, its barrel tilted earthwards at 45 degrees, the black and white Bobbie happily sniffling the route ahead of him.
“Start the car up again, Lewis,” said Morse very quietly.
“Pardon?”
“Back to the village!” ’ hissed Morse.
As the car momentarily drew alongside, it was Morse’s turn to wind his window down.
“Morning, Mr. Michaels. Lovely morning!”
But before the forester could reply, the car had drawn away; and in his rear-view mirror Lewis could see Michaels standing and staring after them, a look of considerable puzzlement on his face.
They were almost the first customers in the White Hart, and Morse ordered a pint of Best Bitter for himself.
“Which would you prefer, sir? We’ve got—”
“Whatever the locals drink.”
“Straight glass or handle?”
“Straight. Optical illusion, I know, but it always looks as if it holds more.”
“Both hold exactly—”
But Morse had turned to Lewis: “You’d better not have too much. You’re driving, remember.”
“Orange juice—that’ll be fine, sir.”
“And, er …” Morse fiddled in his trouser pockets. “I don’t seem to have any coins on me. I’m sure the landlord doesn’t want to change a twenty this early in the day.”
“Plenty of change—” began the landlord, but Morse had turned to the wall with his pint and was studying a medieval map of the old parishes around Wytham …
* * *
At the time Morse was lifting his first pint, Alasdair McBryde was standing beside reception at the Prince William Hotel in Spring Street, just opposite Paddington railway station. After leaving Oxford—with what a frenetic burst of mental and physical energy!—he had driven the swiftly, chaotically loaded van via the M40 up to London, where he’d parked it in a lock-up garage off the Seven Sisters Road before taking the tube, and a suitcase, to Paddington—to the Prince William. It gave him considerable confidence that he could, if necessary, be standing in front of the departure board of the mainline BR station within one minute of stepping outside his hotel—or if need be by jumping outside it, for the sole window of his en suite bedroom was no more than six feet above the pavement.