by Colin Dexter
“Who knifes her?” asked Lewis quietly.
Morse shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I know what, though. I know I’m missing something!”
For a few moments the look on Morse’s face was potentially belligerent—like that of Boswell in the story; and Lewis felt diffident about asking the favour.
Yet his wife had insisted that he did.
“I hope you won’t mind, sir, but if I could take a couple of hours off this lunchtime? The wife—”
Morse’s eyebrows rose. “Doesn’t she know you’re in the middle of a murder enquiry? What’s she want you to do? Take her a bag of spuds home?”
Lewis hesitated: “It’s just that, well, there’s this great big crack that’s appeared overnight in the kitchen wall and the wife’s worried stiff that if we don’t—”
“Bit of subsidence, you reckon?” (The pedantic Morse gave the stress to the first of the three syllables.)
“More like an earthquake, sir.”
For several seconds Morse sat utterly immobile in his chair, as if petrified before the sight of the Gorgon. And for the same several seconds Lewis wondered if his chief had suffered some facial paralysis.
Then Morse’s lips slowly parted in a beatific smile. “Lewis, my old friend, you’ve done it again! You’ve gone-and-done-it-once-again! I think I see it. Yes, I think I see all of it!”
The happily bewildered Lewis sat back to learn the nature of his latest involuntary feat; but any enlightenment would have to wait awhile—that much was clear.
“Don’t you let that missus of yours down!” beamed Morse. “She’s one in a million, remember that! Get off and sort things out with the surveyor or something—”
“Or the demolition squad.”
“—and get back here” (Morse looked at his watch) “two o’clock, say?”
“You’re sure—?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got a few important things to do here. And, er, just ask Dixon to come in, will you? And Palmer, if he’s there?”
Lewis’s euphoria was dissipating rapidly; but he had no opportunity to remonstrate, for Morse had already dialled a number and was asking if he was through to the Atlas Department of the Oxford University Press.
Sergeant Lewis returned to Kidlington HQ just before 2 P.M., almost three hours later, having finally received some reasonable reassurance that the Lewis residence was in minimal danger of imminent collapse. And at least Mrs. Lewis was now somewhat happier in her mind.
It soon became apparent to Lewis that during his absence someone—the doughnut-addicted Dixon? the pea-brained Palmer?—had been back out to Jowett Place; and Morse himself (what else had he been up to?) now sat purring like some cream-crammed orange-eyed longhair as he surveyed the evidence before him on his desk—ready, it appeared, to lead the way along the path of true enlightenment.
“Clue Number One.” Morse opened the magnum opus of Diogenes Small and lovingly contemplated the bookmark: “Greetings from Erzincan.” “All right, Lewis?”
“Clue Number Two.” He held up the postcard from Tashkent, turned it over, and read out its brief message once more:” “Travelling C 250 K E.” Not too bright, were we? It means exactly what it says: Travelling about two hundred and fifty kilometres east, east of Tashkent, where we find, Lewis—the Susamyr Valley in Kirgyzstan.
“Clue Number Three. Dear old Toot-and-come-in—another postcard, another message, pretty certainly in the same handwriting: ‘Cairo’s bloody hot but wish you were here.’ Remember? Signed ‘B.’
“Clue Number Four.” Morse picked up the couplet from “Last Poems.” “Lines from a love poem, Lewis—with the seas between the pair of them—written from Los Angeles—the place to which the letter was re-addressed by Mrs. S-G in the story. Remember? And we know why he went to all these places, don’t we?”
Lewis didn’t. But he nodded.
Why not?
“Then there was Clue Number Five—that walloping great clue you found straightaway: the fact that Sheila Poster had worked in the Geology Department here. Huh! I was blind.
“Then there was Clue Number Six … from The Times crossword yesterday … Well, no, perhaps that was just a coincidence.
“And to cap it all you tell me about those almighty cracks in your bedroom wall …”
“Crack—only one crack, sir—in the kitchen, actually.”
Morse waved his right hand as if dismissing such trivial inaccuracies as of minor moment.
“And, Lewis, the dates all match—all of ’em. In each case they fall about ten days or a fortnight after the events—I’ve checked ’em with a lovely girl called Eunice Gill in the OUP cartographical section.”
(What hadn’t Morse done, Lewis was beginning to wonder.)
“And she faxed me this,” continued Morse.
Lewis took the sheet and read a newspaper paragraph, dated 28.xi.92:
EARTHQUAKE SUMMIT
Following the major earth tremors which recently shook central Los Angeles, seismologists from all over the world, including the UK, will be assembling in Sacramento early in the new year to discuss improvements in the forecasting of potential disasters. No conference of similar scale has previously been held, and its anticipated 6-week duration reflects the urgency which is attached to this cosmic problem.
It had all taken Lewis far too long, of course; but now he let the information sink in. And finally he spoke:
“So what we need is a list of the delegates at the conference. Shouldn’t take—”
But he got no further, for Morse handed him a sheet on which the members of the UK delegation were listed.
“Good man—Sergeant Dixon—you know,” said Morse.
Lewis ignored the tribute. “None of ’em with the initial ‘B,’ though.”
“Why not try ‘R’?” asked Morse quietly.
So an embarrassed Lewis tried “R,” and looked again at the middle name of the five: Robert Grainger, D.Phil., MA.
“So all we need is to find out his address—”
“Cumnor Hill, Lewis. Not far off, is it? Palmer traced him. Good man—Palmer—you know.”
Part Four
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born …
(James Elroy Flecker, The Golden Journey
to Samarkand)
“Why do you think he did it?” asked Lewis as they drove along the Botley Road.
“Grainger’s possible motives, you mean? Well, he was hot favourite for the chair in Geology—you’ve just discovered that for yourself. Great honour, you know, having a professorial chair at Oxford. Biggest prize of the lot. For some people.”
Lewis nodded, for he half understood now, and himself took up the thread: “And Sheila Poster was going to ruin it all. Just as he’s going to claim his birthright, he’s suddenly faced with the prospect of scandal and failure and divorce … and the nightmare of some squawking infant into the bargain.”
Morse was unusually slow in his reply as they started to climb Cumnor Hill. “I wouldn’t know about those last two things, Lewis.”
They walked along the flagged path that bisected the well-tended lawn, weedless even in winter, and knocked on a front door which was immediately opened by a prematurely grey-haired man, slimly built, in his late forties or so, his eyes looking at them over half-lensed spectacles.
“You’re the police, I suppose?”
Morse showed his warranty. “Dr. Grainger?”
For a few seconds the man hesitated. Then stood back and ushered his visitors into a well-appointed lounge, three of its walls completely lined with books.
“Yes. I suppose we’d better get it over with.”
He spoke quite slowly, and without emotion—at least to begin with. Yes, he knew that Sheila Poster had been murdered. He’d read it in the Oxford Mail. Yes, he’d had an affair with her; she’d been putting pressure on him to leave his wife and go to live with her; she’d told him
she was pregnant—though he’d doubted the claim. His wife now knew most of the truth, but had only become directly involved because Sheila had contrived somehow to get a job as a cleaning-woman in the house there, and then had sought to poison the marital relationship—what little there was left of it …
It was at this point that the belittled Lewis (seemingly to Morse’s mild amusement?) decided to assert himself.
“It’ll be up to Mrs. Grainger to give us details about her side of things, sir. You yourself weren’t here, were you, when Miss Poster was working for your wife?”
Grainger, who hitherto had been speaking directly to Morse, now turned his eyes upon Lewis.
“You mean you’re not prepared to take my word about what my wife has told me?”
“We’re not here to answer questions, Dr. Grainger—we’re here to ask them,” snapped Lewis.
Irritatedly, Grainger turned back to Morse. “Is it necessary for us to have this man with us, Inspector? I am not used to being spoken to in this way and I find it wholly and unnecessarily offensive!”
“This is a murder enquiry, sir,” began Morse rather lamely. “You must understand—”
“But I do understand. And I’m telling you you’re wasting your time if you think you’ll find any murderer in this house.”
“Where were you on Sunday night?” asked Morse quietly.
“Huh! I’ll tell you. I was in America—that’s where I was.”
“And you can prove that?”
Grainger stood up, and followed by Lewis walked over to a bureau on which, beside a framed wedding-photograph, lay an envelope (as it proved) of travel documents. He handed it to Morse.
“As you’ll see, I arrived back only yesterday afternoon—Monday. The plane, believe it or not, landed punctually at 4:15 P.M. I caught the Heathrow bus just after five o’clock, and I got to Oxford about quarter to seven.”
“It’ll certainly be pretty easy to check up, then,” said Lewis, smiling serenely; and it was Morse who now looked round at his sergeant, more in admiration than in anger. Yet he himself sat silent and listened only, as Grainger snarled at Lewis once more, the antagonism between the two men now almost physically tangible.
“Oh yes. It’ll hardly require a man of your calibre to check up on that. And it’ll be pretty easy to check up on my wife as well. But let me tell you something. Sergeant! It won’t be you who sees her. Is that clear? She’s extremely upset—and you can understand why, can’t you? Sheila was here working for her until a fortnight or so ago. All right? Now you might get a bit blasé about murders, Sergeant—but other people don’t. My wife is under sedation and she’s not going to see anyone—not today she isn’t. And she won’t see you, in any case! Your inspector here sounds a reasonably humane and civilized sort of fellow—and perhaps there are still a few others like him in the Force. So any of them can see my wife. All right? But it won’t be you, Sergeant. Why? Because I say so!”
Phew!
Morse now intervened between the warring parties: “That’ll be fine, sir. Have no fears! I’ll be interviewing your wife myself. But … but it would help us, sir, if you do happen to know where Mrs. Grainger was on Sunday night?”
“She went to some gala do in London with one of her friends—lady-friends. As I understand it, the pair of them missed the 11:20 from Paddington and had to catch the 12:20—the ‘milk-float,’ I think they call it—landing up here at about 2 A.M. They got a taxi home from the station. That’s all I know.”
“Have you got this friend’s telephone number?”
“You won’t need it. She lives next door.”
Grainger pointed vaguely to the right; and Morse nodded his unspoken instruction to Lewis.
And Lewis left.
Morse was already seated in the Jaguar when Lewis rejoined him ten minutes later.
“He’s right, sir. They got back here to Cumnor about half-past two in the early hours of Monday morning.”
Morse showed no emotion, for he’d fully expected confirmation of Mrs. Grainger’s alibi.
And he began to explain.
“You see, Lewis, it’s not the who-dunnit aspect of this particular case that’s really important—but the why-dunnit. Why was Sheila Poster murdered? She must surely have posed a threat to someone, either a man or a woman. And more likely a man, I’m thinking. She must have stood in the way of some man’s hopes and calculated advancement. So much of a threat that when she refused to compromise, at some show-down between them, she was murdered precisely for that refusal of hers. So we’d no option but to work backwards—agreed? And we knew her side of things, to some extent, from the story she wrote. Now some things in that story reflected actuality fairly closely, didn’t they? The Graingers’ house—‘The Grange,’ huh!—her job there—her affair with the husband—her overwhelming wish to force the issue with the wife—”
“Don’t forget the baby, sir!”
“No, I won’t forget the baby. But Grainger didn’t seem to think she was telling the truth about that, did he?”
“She was pregnant, though.”
“Yes, she was telling the truth about being pregnant. In fact, she was telling a whole lot more of the truth perhaps than she was prepared to admit—even to herself. Let’s make a hypothetical case. What, say, if she really wanted to murder not the married couple she was telling herself she hated? What if—in her story—she wanted to murder the very people she did in fact murder: the lady-of-the-house and that lady’s lover? What if the pair of them had fallen deeply in love? What if—again as in the story—the lady-of-the-house had been only too glad to learn of her husband’s infidelity? Because then she could divorce him, and marry her new lover … the man who stood by the flower-beds and tended the lawns there …”
“The man who came in for a cup of coffee, sir.”
“Perhaps so. But don’t forget she wasn’t just telling us a string of facts in the story—she was making a whole lot of it up as she went along.”
“Really, sir?”
Lewis, as Morse could just about make out in the gloaming, was smiling quietly to himself.
“What the hell’s got into you, Lewis? You antagonize one of our leading witnesses; you go off and find an unshakeable alibi for his missus; and now you sit there grinning like a Cheshire—”
“By the way, sir, they do have a cat—I asked next door. ‘Johnson,’ its name is.”
“You’ve nothing else to tell me, have you?” asked Morse, looking curiously at his sergeant.
“Actually, there is, sir—yes.”
“Out with it, man!”
“Yesterday, sir, when we interviewed Paul Bayley, he said he’d been with his girlfriend all night.”
“You told me that. You told me you’d checked.”
“I did check. Bayley told me she was in the middle of moving flats that very day—seemed she’d been a little bit too generous with her favours for the landlord’s liking; and—just temporarily, mind—she was registered as of no fixed address. But Bayley said she’d almost certainly be in the City Centre Westgate Library—where she went most mornings—in the Local History Section—”
“Where she was!”
Lewis nodded. “Doing some research on Nuneham Courtenay and the Deserted Village. So she told me.”
“Well?”
“Well … that’s about it.”
“Is it?”
“She’s a very beautiful woman, sir.”
“More beautiful than Sheila Poster?”
“I’d say so. More to my taste, anyway.”
“And most men would fancy her?”
“If they had the chance.”
“And Bayley did have the chance.”
“I’m pretty sure he did. He’s been in Jowett Place for about four months or so now. Unemployed for a start; but then in work—so his landlord says.”
“His landlord? When did you see him?”
“He called in yesterday lunchtime, when you were in the pub. And from what he said—”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
“Thought I’d just do a bit of investigation off my own bat, sir. You didn’t mind?”
“See if you could solve the case, you mean?”
“Try to, yes. And the landlord said it was Sheila Poster who’d told Bayley about the vacancy in the flat upstairs and who’d put in a good word for him, you know—gave him a good-behaviour reference. Not only that, though. I reckon she was the one who told Bayley about the odd-job vacancy going up at the Graingers’ place.”
“Phew!” Morse whistled quietly. “You’re saying Bayley was the odd-job man?”
“I’m saying exactly that, sir!”
“You’re sure of this?”
“Not yet,” replied Lewis, beaming happily.
“Let me get this clear. You’re suggesting that Bayley goes to work for Mrs. Sylvia Grainger—she falls for him—he falls for her—she knows her husband’s having an affair with the charwoman—she’s proof of it. Then” (Morse paused slightly for dramatic effect) “just when things are looking hunky-dory, this charwoman claims she’s pregnant. Not by Grainger, though …”
“… but by Bayley. Yes, sir.”
“And Bayley goes down on Sunday night—has it out with her—she refuses to play ball—and she gets herself murdered. Is that the idea?”
“Exactly!”
“But Bayley’s got an alibi! This local history woman of yours—she says she was with him all night.”
“From about nine P.M. to seven A.M. the following morning. Correct. Slept on the floor together in a friend’s house in Cowley somewhere—she refuses to say exactly where.”
“She’s probably trying to protect her friends or something.”
“Or something,” repeated Lewis.