Morse's Greatest Mystery

by Colin Dexter

  At 11:20 A.M. the receiver once more crackled across the silence of the Governor’s office, and McLeery informed Evans that only five minutes remained. The examination was almost over now, but something still gnawed away quietly in the Governor’s mind. He reached for the phone once more.

  At 11:22 A.M. Jackson shouted along the corridor to Stephens. The Governor wanted to speak with him—“Hurry, man!” Stephens picked up the phone apprehensively and listened to the rapidly spoken orders. Stephens himself was to accompany McLeery to the main prison gates. Understood? Stephens personally was to make absolutely sure that the door was locked on Evans after McLeery had left the cell. Understood?

  Understood.

  At 11:25 A.M. the Governor heard the final exchanges.

  McLeery: “Stop writing, please.”

  Silence.

  McLeery: “Put your sheets in order and see they’re correctly numbered.”

  Silence.

  Scraping of chairs and tables.

  Evans: “Thank you very much, sir.”

  McLeery: “A’ right, was it?”

  Evans: “Not too bad.”

  McLeery: “Good … Mr. Stephens!” (Very loud)

  The Governor heard the door clang to for the last time. The examination was over.

  “How did he get on, do you think?” asked Stephen as he walked beside McLeery to the main gates.

  “Och. I canna think he’s distinguished hissel, I’m afraid.” His Scots accent seemed broader than ever, and his long black overcoat, reaching almost to his knees, fostered the illusion that he had suddenly grown slimmer.

  Stephens felt pleased that the Governor had asked him, and not Jackson, to see McLeery off the premises, and all in all the morning had gone pretty well. But something stopped him from making his way directly to the canteen for a belated cup of coffee. He wanted to take just one last look at Evans. It was like a programme he’d seen on TV—about a woman who could never really convince herself that she’d locked the front door when she’d gone to bed: often she’d got up twelve, fifteen, sometimes twenty times to check the bolts.

  He re-entered D Wing, made his way along to Evans’s cell, and opened the peep-hole once more. Oh no! CHRIST, NO! There, sprawled back in Evans’s chair was a man (for a semi-second Stephens thought it must be Evans), a grey regulation blanket slipping from his shoulders, the front of his closely cropped, irregularly tufted hair awash with fierce red blood which had dripped already through the small black beard, and was even now spreading horribly over the white clerical collar and down into the black clerical front.

  Stephens shouted wildly for Jackson: and the words appeared to penetrate the curtain of blood that veiled McLeery’s ears, for the minister’s hand felt feebly for a handkerchief from his pocket, and held it to his bleeding head, the blood seeping slowly through the white linen. He gave a long low moan, and tried to speak. But his voice trailed away, and by the time Jackson had arrived and despatched Stephens to ring the police and the ambulance, the handkerchief was a sticky, squelchy wodge of cloth.

  McLeery slowly raised himself, his face twisted tightly with pain. “Dinna worry about the ambulance, man! I’m a’ right … I’m a’ right … Get the police! I know … I know where … he …” He closed his eyes and another dip of blood splashed like a huge red raindrop on the wooden floor. His hand felt along the table, found the German question paper, and grasped it tightly in his bloodstained hand. “Get the Governor! I know … I know where Evans …”

  * * *

  Almost immediately sirens were sounding, prison officers barked orders, puzzled prisoners pushed their way along the corridors, doors were banged and bolted, and phones were ringing everywhere. And within a minute McLeery, with Jackson and Stephens supporting him on either side, his face now streaked and caked with drying blood, was greeted in the prison yard by the Governor, perplexed and grim.

  “We must get you to hospital immediately. I just don’t—”

  “Ye’ve called the police?”

  “Yes, yes. They’re on their way. But—”

  “I’m a’ right. I’m a’ right. Look! Look here!” Awkwardly he opened the German question paper and thrust it before the Governor’s face. “It’s there! D’ye see what I mean?”

  The Governor looked down and realized what McLeery was trying to tell him. A photocopied sheet had been carefully and cleverly superimposed over the last (originally blank) page of the question paper.

  “Ye see what they’ve done, Governor. Ye see …” His voice trailed off again, as the Governor, dredging the layers of long-neglected learning, willed himself to translate the German text before him:

  Sie sollen dem schon verabredeten Plan genau folgen. Der wichtige Zeitpunkt ist drei Minuten vor Ende des Examens … “You must follow the plan already some-thinged. The vital point in time is three minutes before the end of the examination but something something—something something … Don’t hit him too hard—remember, he’s a minister! And don’t overdo the Scots accent when …”

  A fast-approaching siren wailed to its crescendo, the great doors of the prison yard were pushed back, and a white police car squealed to a jerky halt beside them.

  Detective Superintendent Carter swung himself out of the passenger seat and saluted the Governor. “What the hell’s happening, sir?” And, turning to McLeery: “Christ! Who’s hit him?”

  But McLeery cut across whatever explanation the Governor might have given. “Elsfield Way, officer! I know where Evans …” He was breathing heavily, and leaned for support against the side of the car, where the imprint of his hand was left in tarnished crimson.

  In bewilderment Carter looked to the Governor for guidance. “What—?”

  “Take him with you, if you think he’ll be all right. He’s the only one who seems to know what’s happening.”

  Carter opened the back door and helped McLeery inside; and within a few seconds the car leaped away in a spurt of gravel.

  “Elsfield Way,” McLeery had said; and there it was staring up at the Governor from the last few lines of the German text: “From Elsfield Way drive to the Headington roundabout, where …” Yes, of course. The Examinations Board was in Elsfield Way, and someone from the Board must have been involved in the escape plan from the very beginning: the question paper itself, the correction slip …

  The Governor turned to Jackson and Stephens. “I don’t need to tell you what’s happened, do I?” His voice sounded almost calm in its scathing contempt. “And which one of you two morons was it who took Evans for a nice little walk to the main gates and waved him bye-bye?”

  “It was me, sir,” stammered Stephens. “Just like you told me, sir. I could have sworn—”

  “What? Just like I told you, you say? What the hell—?”

  “When you rang, sir, and told me to—”

  “When was that?” The Governor’s voice was a whiplash now.

  “You know, sir. About twenty past eleven, just before—”

  “You blithering idiot, man! It wasn’t me who rang you. Don’t you realize—” But what was the use? He had used the telephone at that time, but only to try (unsuccessfully, once more) to get through to the Examinations Board.

  He shook his head in growing despair and turned on the senior prison officer. “As for you, Jackson! How long have you been pretending you’ve got a brain, eh? Well, I’ll tell you something, Jackson. Your skull’s empty. Absolutely bloody empty!” It was Jackson who had spent two hours in Evans’s cell the previous evening; and it was Jackson who had confidently reported that there was nothing hidden away there—nothing at all. And yet Evans had somehow managed to conceal not only a false beard, a pair of spectacles, a dog-collar, and all the rest of his clerical paraphernalia, but also some sort of weapon with which he’d given McLeery such a terrible blow across the head. Aurrgh!

  A prison van backed alongside, but the Governor made no immediate move. He looked down again at the last line of the German: “… to the Headington roundabout, where
you go straight over and make your way to … to Neugraben.” Neugraben? Where on earth—? ‘New’ something. Newgrave? Never heard of it. There was a Wargrave, somewhere near Reading, but … No, it was probably a code word, or—And then it hit him. Newbury! God, yes! Newbury was a pretty big sort of place but—

  He rapped out his orders to the driver. “St. Aidâtes Police Station, and step on it! Take Jackson and Stephens here, and when you get there ask for Bell. Chief Inspector Bell. Got that?”

  He leaped the stairs to his office three at a time, got Bell on the phone immediately, and put the facts before him.

  “We’ll get him, sir,” said Bell. “We’ll get him, with a bit o’luck.”

  The Governor sat back, and lit a cigarette. Ye gods! What a beautifully laid plan it had all been! What a clever sod Evans was! Careless leaving that question paper behind; but then, they all made their mistakes somewhere along the line. Well, almost all of them. That’s why they were doing their porridge, and that’s why very very shortly Mr. clever-clever Evans would be back inside doing his once more.

  The phone on his desk erupted in a strident burst, and Superintendent Carter informed him that McLeery had spotted Evans driving off along Elsfield Way; they’d got the number of the car all right and had given chase immediately, but had lost him at the Headington roundabout; he must have doubled back into the city.

  “No,” said the Governor quietly. “No, he’s on his way to Newbury.” He explained his reasons for believing so, and left it at that. It was a police job now—not his. He was just another good-for-a-giggle, gullible governor, that was all.

  “By the way, Carter. I hope you managed to get McLeery to hospital all right?”

  “Yes. He’s in the Radcliffe now. Really groggy, he was, when we got to the Examination offices, and they rang for the ambulance from there.”

  The Governor rang the Radcliffe a few minutes later and asked for the accident department.

  “McLeery, you say?”

  “Yes. He’s a parson.”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone—”

  “Yes, there is. You’ll find one of your ambulances picked him up from Elsfield Way about—”

  “Oh, that. Yes, we sent an ambulance all right, but when we got there, the fellow had gone. No one seemed to know where he was. Just vanished! Not a sign—”

  But the Governor was no longer listening, and the truth seemed to hit him with an almost physical impact somewhere in the back of his neck.

  A quarter of an hour later they found the Reverend S. McLeery, securely bound and gagged, in his study in Broad Street. He’d been there, he said, since 8:15 A.M., when two men had called and …

  Enquiries in Newbury throughout the afternoon produced nothing. Nothing at all. And by tea-time everyone in the prison knew what had happened. It had not been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had walked out; it had been Evans, impersonating McLeery, who had stayed in.

  The fish and chips were delicious, and after a gentle stroll round the centre of Chipping Norton, Evans decided to return to the hotel and have an early night. A smart new hat concealed the wreckage of his closely cropped hair, and he kept it on as he walked up to the reception desk of the Golden Lion. It would take a good while for his hair to regain its former glories—but what the hell did that matter. He was out again, wasn’t he? A bit of bad luck, that, when Jackson had pinched his scissors, for it had meant a long and tricky operation with his only razor blade the previous night Ah! But he’d had his good luck, too. Just think! If Jackson had made him take his bobble hat off! Phew! That really had been a close call. Still, old Jackson wasn’t such a bad fellow … One of the worst things—funny, really!—had been the beard. He’d always been allergic to sticking plaster, and even now his chin was irritatingly sore and red.

  The receptionist wasn’t the same girl who’d booked him in, but the change was definitely for the better. A real honey, this one. As he collected his key, he gave her his sexiest smile, told her he wouldn’t be bothering with breakfast, ordered the Dally Express, and asked for an early-morning call at 6:45 A.M. Tomorrow was going to be another busy day.

  He whistled softly to himself as he walked up the broad stairs … He’d sort of liked the idea of being dressed up as a minister—dog-collar and everything. Yes, it had been a jolly good idea for “McLeery” to wear two black fronts, two collars. But that top collar! Phew! It had kept on slipping off the back stud; and there’d been that one panicky moment when “McLeery” had only just got his hand up to his neck in time to stop the collars springing apart before Stephens … Ah! They’d got that little problem worked out all right, though: a pen stuck in the mouth whenever the evil eye had appeared at the peep-hole. Easy! But all that fiddling about under the blanket with the black front and the stud at the back of the collar—that had been far more difficult than they’d ever bargained for … Everything else had gone beautifully smoothly, though. In the car he’d found everything they’d promised him: soap and water, clothes, the map—yes, the map, of course. The Ordnance Survey Map of Oxfordshire … He’d got some good friends; some very clever friends. Christ, ah!

  He unlocked his bedroom door and closed it quietly behind him—and then stood frozen to the spot, like a man who has just caught a glimpse of the Gorgon.

  Sitting on the narrow bed was the very last man in the world that Evans had expected—or wanted—to see.

  “It’s not worth trying anything,” said the Governor quietly, as Evans’s eyes darted desperately around the room. “I’ve got men all round the place.” (Well, there were only two, really: but Evans needn’t know that.) He let the words sink in. “Women, too. Didn’t you think the blonde girl in reception was rather sweet?”

  Evans was visibly shaken. He sat down slowly in the only chair the small room could offer, and held his head between his hands. For several minutes there was utter silence.

  Finally, he spoke. “It was that bloody correction slip, I s’pose.”

  “We-ell” (the Governor failed to mask the deep satisfaction in his voice) “there are a few people who know a little German.”

  Slowly, very slowly, Evans relaxed. He was beaten—and he knew it. He sat up at last, and managed to smile ruefully. “You know, it wasn’t really a mistake. You see, we ’adn’t been able to fix up any ’otel, but we could’ve worked that some other way. No. The really important thing was for the phone to ring just before the exam finished—to get the screws out of the way for a coupla minutes. So we ’ad to know exactly when the exam started, didn’t we?”

  “And, like a fool, I presented you with that little piece of information on a plate.”

  “Well, somebody did. So, you see, sir, that correction slip killed two little birds with a single stone, didn’t it? The name of the ’otel for me, and the exact time the exam started for, er, for, er …”

  The Governor nodded. “It’s a pretty common word, though, “Löwe.” It’s on the beer labels for a start.”

  “Good job it is pretty common, sir, or I’d never ’ave known where to come to, would I?”

  “Nice name, though: zum goldenen Löwen.”

  “ ’Ow did you know which Golden Lion it was? There’s ’undreds of ’em.”

  “Same as you, Evans. Index number 313; Centre number 271. Remember? Six figures? And if you take an Ordnance Survey Map for Oxfordshire, you find that the six-figure reference 313/271 lands you bang in the middle of Chipping Norton.”

  “Yea, you’re right. Huh! We’d ’oped you’d bugger off to Newbury.”

  “We did.”

  “Well, that’s something, I s’pose.”

  “That question paper, Evans. Could you really understand all that German? I could hardly—”

  “Nah! Course I couldn’t. I knew roughly what it was all about, but we just Oped it’d throw a few spanners in the works—you know, sort of muddle everybody a bit.”

  The Governor stood up. “Tell me one thing before we go. How on earth did you get all that blood to pour over
your head?”

  Evans suddenly looked a little happier. “Clever, sir. Very clever, that was—’ow to get a couple o’ pints of blood into a cell, eh? When there’s none there to start off with, and when, er, and when the ‘invigilator,’ shall we say, gets searched before ’e comes in. Yes, sir. You can well ask about that, and I dunno if I ought to tell you. After all, I might want to use that particular—”

  “Anything to do with a little rubber ring for piles, perhaps?”

  Evans grinned feebly. “Clever, though, wasn’t it?”

  “Must have been a tricky job sticking a couple of pints—”

  “Nah! You’ve got it wrong, sir. No problem about that.”

  “No?”

  “Nah! It’s the clotting, you see. That’s the big trouble. We got the blood easy enough. Pig’s blood, it was—from the slaughter’ouse in Kidlington. But to stop it clotting you’ve got to mix yer actual blood” (Evans took a breath) “with one tenth of its own volume of 3.8 per cent trisodium citrate! Didn’t know that, did you, sir?”

  The Governor shook his head in a token of reluctant admiration. “We learn something new every day, they tell me. Come on, m’lad.”

  Evans made no show of resistance, and side by side the two men walked slowly down the stairs.

  “Tell me, Evans. How did you manage to plan all this business? You’ve had no visitors—I’ve seen to that. You’ve had no letters—”

  “I’ve got lots of friends, though.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Me German teacher, for a start.”

  “You mean—? But he was from the Technical College.”

  “Was ’e?” Evans was almost enjoying it all now. “Ever check up on ’im, sir?”

  “God Almighty! There’s far more going on than I—”

  “Always will be, sir.”

  “Everything ready?” asked the Governor as they stood by the reception desk.

  “The van’s out the front, sir,” said the pretty blonde receptionist. Evans winked at her; and she winked back at him. It almost made his day.