by Colin Dexter
“THIS IS A BOOK TO SAVOR.”
—The Virginian-Pilot & The Ledger-Star
“A remarkable talent … It’s not [Conan] Doyle who springs to mind as you browse through the collection, but O. Henry. Dexter’s tales, including the title story, have a wry twist of the kind made famous by that author.”
—Magazine (Baton Rouge)
“[Dexter] brings to these abbreviated police cases the same qualities that make his novels solid, literate, carefully crafted whodunits, boasting magnificent characterizations and vividly evoked academic milieus.”
—The Buffalo News
“A well-rounded collection, good for thumbing through a few stories at a time. But chances are, you’ll want to read the whole book.”
—Mostly Murder
“If you’re looking for fun and a handful of challenges that outdo even those posed by Morse’s adored crossword puzzles, Colin Dexter’s the bloke.”
—The Trenton Times
By Colin Dexter:
LAST BUS TO WOODSTOCK*
LAST SEEN WEARING
THE SILENT WORLD OF NICHOLAS QUINN
SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD*
THE DEAD OF JERICHO
THE RIDDLE OF THE THIRD MILE
THE SECRET OF ANNEXE 3
THE WENCH IS DEAD
THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS*
THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS*
THE DAUGHTERS OF CAIN*
MORSE’S GREATEST MYSTERY and Other Stories*
*Published by Ivy Books
This book contains an excerpt from the hardcover edition of Death Is Now My Neighbor by Colin Dexter. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the hardcover edition.
Ivy Books
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1993 by Colin Dexter
Excerpt from Death Is Now My Neighbor copyright © 1996 by Colin Dexter
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd. in 1993.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
http://www.randomhouse.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-94547
eISBN: 978-0-307-77896-3
This edition published by arrangement with Crown Publishers, Inc. Crown is a trademark of Crown Publishers, Inc.
v3.1
FOR MY GRANDSONS
THOMAS AND JAMES
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
AS GOOD AS GOLD
MORSE’S GREATEST MYSTERY
EVANS TRIES AN O-LEVEL
DEAD AS A DODO
AT THE LULU-BAR MOTEL
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
A CASE OF MIS-IDENTITY
THE INSIDE STORY
MONTY’S REVOLVER
THE CARPET-BAGGER
LAST CALL
AS GOOD AS GOLD
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world.
(2 Peter, ch. 1, v. 4)
(i)
Admiring friend: “My, that’s a beautiful baby you have there!”
Mother: “Oh, that’s nothing—you should see his photograph.”
(Anon)
Chief Superintendent Strange took back the snapshot of Grandson Number One (two years, three months) and lovingly looked at the lad once more.
“Super little chap. You can leave him with anybody. As good as gold.”
He poured a little more of the Macallan into each of the glasses.
Birthdays were becoming increasingly important for Strange as the years passed by—fewer and ever fewer of them left, alas. And he thought he was enjoying the little early-evening celebration with a few of his fellow senior officers.
Only two of them remaining now, though.
Quite predictably remaining, one of the two.
Musing nostalgically, Strange elaborated on memories of childhood.
“Huh! One of the first things I ever remember as a kid, that. This woman was looking after me when my ol’ mum had to go out somewhere—and when she came back she asked her whether I’d been a good boy while she’d been away and she’d been looking after me—and she said she could leave me with her any time she liked because I’d been as good as gold. Those were the very words—‘As good as gold.’ ”
There was a short silence, before he resumed, briefly.
“I’m not boring you by any chance, Morse?”
The white head across the desk jerked quickly to the vertical and shook itself emphatically. Seven—or was it eight?—“she”s. With one or two “her”s thrown in for good measure? Yet in spite of the bewildering proliferation of those personal pronouns (feminine), Morse had found himself able to follow the story adequately, feeling gently amused as he pictured the (now) grossly overweight Superintendent as a podgy but obviously pious little cherub happily burbling to his baby-sitter.
All a bit nauseating, but …
“Certainly not, sir,” he said.
“You know the origin of the phrase, of course?”
Oh dear. Just a minute …
But Strange was already a furlong ahead of him.
“All to do with the Gold Standard, wasn’t it? If you needed some gold—to buy something, say—well, it was going to be too heavy to cart around all the time—and there probably wasn’t enough in the bank anyway. So they gave you a note instead—a bit o’paper promising to “pay the bearer” and all that sort of thing—and that bit o’ paper was as good as gold. If you took that bit o’ paper to the Bank of England or somewhere, you could bet your bottom dollar—well, not “dollar” perhaps—you know what I mean, though—you could get your gold-bar—if you really wanted it. You could have all the confidence in the world in that bit o’ paper.”
Thank you, Mr. Strange.
Clearly, in terms of frequency, the “bit o’ paper” had usurped the personal pronouns (feminine). But Morse was apparently unconcerned, and nodded his head encouragingly as the bottle, now at a virtually horizontal level, hovered over his empty glass.
“You’re not driving yourself home, Morse, I hope?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
“Little more for you, Crawford?”
Strange turned to the only other person there in the room, seated at the desk beside Morse.
“No more for me, thank you, sir. I shall have to get back to the office.”
“Still some work to do—this time of day?”
“Just a bit, sir.”
“Ah—the Muldoon business! Yes. Going all right?”
Detective Inspector Crawford looked rather less confident than Strange’s putative bearer of the promissory bank-note.
“We’re making progress, sir.”
“Good! Fine piece of work that, Crawford. Aggregation, accumulation of evidence—that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I know we’ve got a few smart alecs like Morse here who—you know, with all that top-of-the head stuff … but real police work’s just honest graft, isn’t it? And I mean honest. We’re winning back a lot of public support, that’s for sure. We’ve taken a few knocks recently, course we have. Bad apples—one or two in every barrel; in every profession. Not here though! Not in our patch, eh, Morse?”<
br />
“Certainly not, sir.”
“Above suspicion—that’s what we’ve got to be. Compromise on the slightest thing and you’re on the slope, aren’t you—on the slippery slope down to …”
Strange gulped back a last mouthful of Malt—clearly the name to be found at the bottom of the said slope temporarily eluding him. It was time to be off home. Almost.
“No, you can’t afford to start on that.”
“Certainly not,” agreed Morse with conviction, happily unaware that he was becoming almost as repetitive as Strange.
“It’s just like Caesar’s wife, isn’t it? ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.’ You’ll remember that, Morse. You were a Classics man.”
Morse nodded.
“What was her name?” asked Strange.
Oh dear. Just a minute …
Morse dredged his memory—unproductively. What was her name? She’d been accused (he remembered) of some extra-marital escapade, and Caesar had divorced her on the spot; not because he thought she was necessarily guilty, but because he couldn’t afford to have a wife even suspected of double-dealing. Well, that’s what Caesar said … Like as not he was probably just fed up with her; had some woman on the side himself … What was her name?
“Pomponia,” supplied Crawford.
Mentally Morse kicked himself. Of course it was.
“You all right, Morse?” Strange looked anxiously over his half spectacles, like a schoolmaster disappointed in a star pupil. “Not had too much booze, have you?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
“You know,” Strange sat back expansively in his chair, fingers laced over his great paunch, “you’re a couple of good men, really. I know you may have cut a few corners here and there—by-passed a few procedures. Huh! But we’ve none of us ever lost sight of what it’s really all about, have we? The Police Force? Integrity, fairness … honesty …”—then, after a deep breath, an impressive heptasyllabic finale—“incorruptibility.”
The Super had sounded fully sober now, and had spoken with a quiet, impressive dignity.
He rose to his feet.
And his fellow officers did the same.
In the corridor outside, as they walked away from Strange’s office, Crawford was clearly agitated.
“Can I speak to you, Morse? It’s very urgent.”
(ii)
“How did you get your wooden leg?”
Silas Wegg replied, (tartly to this personal inquiry), “In an accident.”
(Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend)
Oxford Prison, closed permanently a few years earlier, had recently been re-opened as a temporary measure. And with nothing in life quite so permanent as the temporary, the prison officers now temporarily posted there were fairly confidently expecting a permanent sojourn in Oxford.
On the evening of Strange’s birthday, a wretched man sat wretchedly on his bed in a cell on A-Wing. From what he had gathered so far, he feared that his own temporary accommodation there would very soon be exchanged for a far more permanent tenancy in one of Her Majesty’s top-security prisons somewhere else in the UK.
The man’s name was Kieran Dominic Muldoon.
The question at stake was not really one of innocence or guilt, since there was universal consensus in favour of the latter. Even at the age of sixteen, Muldoon had been flirting with terrorism; and now, twenty years later, she had long been his permanent mistress.
That much was known.
It was now only a question of evidence—of sufficient evidence to shore up a case for a prosecuting counsel.
So far he’d been lucky, Muldoon knew that. Both in Belfast and in Birmingham, when he’d been detained, incriminatory links between people and places and plans had proved too difficult to substantiate; and the authorities had released him.
Had been compelled to release him.
This time, though, he’d surely been a bit unlucky?
He’d been conscious of that when they’d arrested him three days earlier from his Cowley Road bed-sit and taken him to St. Aldate’s Police Station in the City Centre, when with conspicuous confidence they’d straightaway charged him, and when the Magistrates’ Court (immediately opposite) had granted a remand into custody without the slightest demur.
That, in turn, had been only a few hours after they’d discovered the explosive and the timers and the detonators out in the flat in Bannister Close on the Blackbird Leys Estate.
Jesus! What a mistake that had been to tell them he’d never been anywhere near the flat; didn’t even know where the bloody block of flats was.
Why had they smiled at him?
Thinking back on things, he had felt uneasy that late afternoon a week ago when he’d gone along there—the only time he’d even gone along there. He’d heard neither the clicks of any hidden camera nor the tell-tale whirr of a Camcorder; had seen no flashes; had spotted no suspicious unmarked van. No. It must have been someone in one of the council houses opposite—if they’d got some photographic evidence against him.
Because the police had got something.
So calm, this time. Especially that bugger Crawford.
So bloody cocky.
It couldn’t be fingerprints, surely? As ever, the three of them had been almost neurotically finicky on that score; and the dozen or so cans of booze had been put into a black plastic bag and duly consigned (Muldoon had no reason to doubt) to one of the skips at the local Waste Reception Area.
But could they have been careless, and left something.
Because the police had got something.
Still, he’d kept his cool pretty well when they d grilled him on names, addresses, train-journeys, stolen cars, money-transfers, weapons, explosives … For apart from a few regular protestations of ignorance and innocence, he’d answered little.
Or nothing.
It was at a somewhat lower level of anxiety that he worried about the ransacking of his bed-sit. They must have found them all by now.
The videos.
Ever since he could remember, Muldoon had been preoccupied with the female body, in which (as he well knew) he joined the vast majority of the human race, masculine, and some significant few of the human race, feminine. But in his own case the preoccupation was extraordinarily obsessive and intense; and intensifying as the years passed by—frequently satisfied (oh, yes!) yet ever feeding, as it were, upon its own satiety.
Only thirteen, he had been, when the hard-eyed woman had ushered him through into the darkened warmth of the cinema where, as he groped for a seat, his young eyes had immediately been transfixed upon the luridly pornographic exploits projected on the screen there, his whole being jerked into an incredible joy …
Since he’d been in Oxford—three months now—he’d learned that the boss of the Bodleian Library was entitled to receive a copy of every single book published in the UK. And in his own darkly erotic fancies, Muldoon’s idea of Heaven was easily conceived: to be appointed Curator of some Ethereal Emporium receiving a copy of every hard-porn video passed by some Celestial Film Censor as “Suitable Only For Advanced Voyeurs,” with crates of Irish whiskey and trays of stout and cartons of cigarettes stacked double-deep all round his penthouse walls …
Jesus!
How could he even begin to cope if they put him inside for five—ten—years? Longer?
Please, God—no!
He’d not started off wanting too desperately to change the world; indeed not too troubled, in those early days, even about changing the borders of a divided Ireland. Certainly never positively wanting to kill civilians … women and children.
But he had done so. Twice now.
Or his bombs had.
He rose from his bed, lit another cigarette, and with the aid of an elbow-crutch stomped miserably around the small cell.
Sixteen years ago the accident had been, in Newry—when he’d crashed a stolen car at 96.5 mph (according to police evidence). Somehow a piece of glass had cut a neat slice from the top of his left ear; an
d the paramedics had had little option but to leave his right leg behind in the concertina’ed Cortina. All right, they’d given him an artificial leg; patiently taught him how to use it. But he’d always preferred the elbow-crutch; indoors, anyway. And no choice in the matter now, since the leg was back there in the bed-sit—in a cupboard—along with the videos.
Yes, they must have found them all by now.
And a few other things.
According to the solicitor fellow, they were still going through his room with a tooth-comb; still going through the flat in Bannister Close, too.
Jesus!
If they found him guilty—even on the possession of firearms and explosives charge …
Would he talk? Would he grass—if the police suggested some … some arrangement?
Course not!
He had a right to silence; he had a duty to silence.
Say nothing!
Let them do the talking.
He wouldn’t.
Unless things became unbearable, perhaps …
Muldoon sat down on the side of his bed once more, conscious that just a tiny corner of his resolution was starting to crumble.
(iii)
You may not drive straight on a twisting lane.
(Russian proverb)
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Lewis was still waiting patiently in the corridor outside the office of Detective Inspector Crawford. He could hear the voices inside: Morse’s, Crawford’s, and a third—doubtless that of Detective Sergeant Wilkins; but the general drift of the conversation escaped him. Only when (at last!) the door partially opened did individual words become recognizable—and those, Morse’s:
“No!” (fortissimo) “No!” (forte) “And if you take my advice, you’ll have nothing to do with it yourself, either. There are better ways of doing things than that, believe me.” (mezzo piano) “Cleverer ways, too.”
Looking unusually perturbed, his pale cheeks flushed, Morse closed the door behind him; and the words “Christ Almighty!” (pianissimo) escaped his lips before he was aware of Lewis’s presence.
“What the ’ell are you doing here?”