The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

by Colin Dexter

  Mrs Evans looked at him with a puzzled frown. ‘But I can tell you what time he got home.’

  The room was suddenly very quiet and Lewis looked up tensely from his notes. ‘Will you say that again, Mrs Evans?’

  ‘Oh yes, Sergeant. You see, I left this note for him and he must have seen it.’

  ‘He must have done, you say?’

  ‘Must have done. You just said it was in the wastepaper basket.’

  Lewis sank back in the sofa, his excitement ebbing away. ‘He could have found the note any time, I’m afraid, Mrs Evans.’

  ‘Oh no. You don’t understand. He’d seen the note before I got back at quarter past six.’ Lewis was sitting very still again and listening intently. ‘You see, he left a note for me, so—’

  ‘He left a note for you?’

  ‘Yes. Said he’d gone shopping, or something. I forget exactly – but something like that.’

  ‘So you—’ Lewis started again. ‘You left the note at four o’clock and went back there at quarter past six, you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So you think he must have got home – when? About five?’

  ‘Well, yes. He usually got home about then, I think.’

  ‘You’re sure the note was for you?’

  ‘Oh yes. It got me name on it.’

  ‘Can you – can you remember exactly what it said?’

  ‘Not really. But I tell you what, Sergeant: I might have still got it. I probably put it in me pinny, or something. I always wear—’

  ‘Can you try to find it for me?’

  As Mrs Evans went out into the kitchen, Lewis found himself praying to the gods that for once they would smile upon him, and he felt almost sick with relief when she came back with a small folded sheet of paper, and handed it to him. He read it with the awesome reverence of a druid brooding on the holy runes:

  Mrs E,

  Just off shopping – shan’t be long. NQ

  It couldn’t have been much briefer and it puzzled him a little; but he was fully aware of its huge importance.

  ‘“Shopping”, he says. Funny time for shopping, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really, sir. The supermarket’s open till nine of a Friday night.’

  ‘The Quality supermarket, is that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s only just behind the house, really. There’s a pathway by the side of the crescent, and now that the fence is down you can get on to it from the side of the garden.’

  Five minutes later Lewis thanked her fulsomely and left. By Jove, old Morse was going to be pleased!

  It was just after one then Monica walked into the lounge bar. She spotted Morse immediately (though he appeared not to notice her) and after buying a gin and Campari she walked across and stood beside him.

  ‘Can I get you a drink, Inspector?’

  Morse looked up and shook his head. ‘I seem to be off the beer today.’

  ‘You weren’t yesterday.’

  ‘I wasn’t?’

  She sat down beside him and brought her lips close to his ear. ‘I could smell your breath.’

  ‘You smelled pretty good, too,’ said Morse, but he knew that this was not to be a time for high romance. He could read the signs a mile away.

  ‘I thought I might find you here.’

  Morse shrugged non-committally. ‘What have you got to tell me?’

  ‘You don’t beat about the bush, do you?’

  ‘Sometimes I do.’

  ‘Well, it’s – it’s about Friday afternoon.’

  ‘News gets around.’

  ‘You wanted to know what we were all doing on Friday afternoon, is that right?’

  ‘That’s it. Seems none of you were in the office, wherever else you were.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about the others – no, that’s not quite true. You see – Oh dear! You don’t make it very easy for me. I was out all the afternoon and, well – I was with somebody else; and I suppose sooner or later you’ll have to know who I was with, won’t you?’

  ‘I think I know,’ said Morse quietly.

  Monica’s face dropped. ‘You can’t know. Have you already spoken—?’

  ‘Have I spoken to Mr Martin? No, not yet. But I shall be doing so very soon, and I suppose he’ll tell me the whole story, with the usual dose of reluctance and embarrassment – perhaps with a bit of anxiety, too. He is married, isn’t he?’

  Monica put her hand to her forehead and shook her head rather sadly. ‘Are you a clairvoyant?’

  ‘I’d solve all my cases a bit quicker if I were.’

  ‘Do you want to hear about it?’ She looked at him unhappily.

  ‘Not now. I’d rather hear it from your boyfriend. He’s not a very good liar.’ He stood up and looked down at her empty glass. ‘Gin and Campari, was it?’

  She nodded, and thanked him; and as Morse walked over to the bar, she lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, her immaculately plucked eyebrows narrowing into a worried frown. What on earth was she going to do if . . .?

  Morse was soon back again, and placed her drink neatly on to a beer mat. ‘I see what you mean about expensive tastes, Miss Height.’

  She looked up at him and smiled feebly. ‘But – aren’t you going to join me?’

  ‘No. Not now, thank you. I’m a bit busier than usual this week, you know. I’ve got a murder to investigate, and I don’t usually mix much with tarts, anyway.’

  After he had gone Monica felt utterly miserable, her thoughts a pallid multitude that drifted along the sunless waters. How cruel he had been just now! Only yesterday she had experienced an unwonted warmth of pleasure in his company. But how she hated him now!

  Morse, too, was far from happy with himself. He shouldn’t really have treated her as callously as that. How stupid it was, anyway – feeling so childishly jealous! Why, he’d only met her once before. He could go back, of course, and buy her another drink . . . and say he was sorry. Yes, he could do that. But he didn’t; for interwoven with the jealousy motif was something else: he sensed intuitively that Monica had lied to him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  APART FROM THE fact that Mrs Greenaway, the upstairs tenant, had been delivered of a baby boy the previous Friday evening, Lewis had learned nothing much of interest from Mrs Jardine. She was unable to add anything of substance to the statement made to Constable Dickson the previous day, and Lewis had stayed with her no more than ten minutes. But he’d had his earlier triumph. Oh yes! And as that same afternoon he recounted to Morse his interview with Mrs Evans – and presented his prize – he felt very pleased with himself indeed. Yet Morse’s reactions seemed decidedly lukewarm; certainly he’d looked long and hard at Quinn’s brief note, but in general he appeared preoccupied with other things.

  ‘You don’t seem very happy with life, sir.’

  ‘The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’

  ‘But if this doesn’t cheer you up—’

  ‘What? Don’t be daft!’ Almost physically Morse tried to shake off his mood of temporary gloom, and he looked down at the note once more. ‘I couldn’t have done much better myself.’ He said it flippantly, but Lewis knew him better.

  ‘Let’s have it, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What would you have asked her?’

  ‘Just what you did – I told you.’

  ‘What else?’

  Morse appeared to consider the question carefully. ‘Perhaps one or two other things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Perhaps I’d have asked her if she’d looked in the wastepaper basket.’

  ‘Really?’ Lewis sounded unimpressed.

  ‘Perhaps I’d have asked her if Quinn’s anorak was there.’

  ‘But—’ Lewis let it ride.

  ‘I’d certainly have asked her if the gas fire was on.’

  Lewis began to catch the drift of Morse’s mind, and he nodded slowly to himself. ‘I suppose we’d better see her again, sir.’

  ‘Oh,
yes,’ said Morse quietly. ‘We shall have to see her again. But that’s no problem, is it? The main thing is that we seem to have got Quinn alive till about six o’clock. I wonder . . .?’ His thoughts floated away again, but suddenly he sat upright and took out his Parker pen. ‘There’s still a good deal to do here, though, Lewis. Nip and see if he’s back from lunch.’

  ‘Who do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I just told you – Martin. You going deaf?’

  As Martin painfully corroborated Monica’s story, Morse’s facial expression was that of a man with a rotten egg stuck just beneath his nose. The pair of them had left the office at about 1.10 p.m. No, not together – in separate cars. Yes, to Monica’s bungalow. Yes, to bed. (Putrescent, fetid egg!) That was all really. (All! Christ! That was all, he’d said.)

  ‘What time did you leave?’

  ‘About a quarter to four.’

  ‘And you didn’t come back to the office at all?’

  ‘No. I went straight home.’

  ‘Nice little surprise for your wife.’

  Martin was silent.

  ‘Lewis! Go and see Miss Height. You’ve heard what this man says. Get her story, and see if it fits.’

  After Lewis had gone Morse turned to Martin and looked him hard in the eyes. ‘You’re a cock-happy young sod, aren’t you?’

  The young man shook his head sadly. ‘I’m not really, you know, Inspector. I’ve only been unfaithful with Monica, never anyone else.’

  ‘You in love with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. This business has – I don’t know, Inspector. She’s – Ah, what’s it matter now!’

  ‘Why did you leave so early?’

  ‘There’s Sally – that’s Monica’s daughter. She usually gets home from school about quarter past four.’

  ‘And you didn’t want her to find you shagging her mother, is that it?’

  Martin looked up miserably. ‘Haven’t you ever been unfaithful, Inspector?’

  Morse shook his head. ‘No, lad. I’ve never had to be faithful, you see.’

  ‘There’s – there’s no need for all this to come out, is there?’

  ‘Not really, no. Unless—’

  ‘Unless what?’ A look of alarm sprang into Martin’s eyes, and Morse did nothing to dispel it.

  ‘Tell me. This girl Sally: is she at school in Oxford?’

  ‘Oxford High School.’

  ‘Bit awkward with examinations, isn’t it? I mean, with her mother—’

  ‘No. You don’t quite understand, Inspector. This Board doesn’t examine in England at all.’

  ‘Who examines Oxford High?’

  ‘Oxford Locals, I think.’

  ‘I see.’

  After Martin had gone, Morse rang HQ and gave Constable Dickson his instructions; and he was smiling contentedly to himself when Lewis returned.

  ‘She confirms what Martin says, sir.’

  ‘Does she now?’

  ‘You sound a bit dubious.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You don’t believe ’em?’

  ‘For what it’s worth, Lewis, I think they’re a pair of bloody liars. But I may be wrong, of course. As you know, I often am.’ He had that deprecatingly conceited look on his face which many found the Chief Inspector’s least attractive trait, and Lewis was determined not to demean himself by trying to delve further into that cocky logic. For his part, he believed them, and high-and-mighty Morse could mumble away as he pleased.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, Lewis?’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘What the hell’s up with you today, man? I said go and get Ogleby. Can you do that small thing for me?’

  Lewis slammed the door behind him and walked out into the corridor.

  Morse had spoken no more than half a dozen words to Ogleby when they had been formally introduced the previous day, yet he had felt an instinctive liking for the man; and his impression was confirmed as Ogleby began to chat informatively and authoritatively about the work of the Syndicate.

  ‘What about security?’ asked Morse cautiously, like a timid skater testing the ice.

  ‘It’s a constant problem, of course. But everyone’s conscious of it, and so in an odd sort of way the problem solves itself – if you see what I mean.’

  Morse thought he did. ‘I gather the Secretary’s pretty keen on that side of things.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’

  Morse eyed him sharply. Had there been a tinge of irony – or even jealousy, perhaps – in Ogleby’s reply? ‘Is there never any malpractice?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But that’s a completely different question.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You see if a candidate decided to cheat in the examination room, either by taking notes in with him or copying from someone else, then we’ve just got to rely on the invigilators keeping a very careful eye on things, and reporting anything suspicious directly to us.’

  ‘That happens, does it?’

  ‘Two or three times a year.’

  ‘What do you do about it?’

  ‘We disqualify the candidates concerned from every subject in the examinations.’

  ‘I see.’ Morse tried another angle. ‘You send out the question papers before the examination, don’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be much good holding the examinations if we didn’t, would it?’

  Morse realized what a stupid question he’d asked, and continued rather hastily. ‘No. I mean – if one of the teachers was dishonest, or something?’

  ‘The question papers are sent out directly to examination departments, and then distributed to heads of centres – not to individual teachers.’

  ‘But let’s take a headmaster, then. If he was a crook – let’s say he opened a particular package of question papers and showed them to his pupils—’

  ‘It’s as good a way as any for the headmaster to slit his throat.’

  ‘You’d know, you mean?’

  Ogleby smiled. ‘Gracious, yes. We’ve got examiners and awarders who’d smell anything like that a mile away. You see we’ve got records going back over the years of percentage passes for all the subjects examined, and so we know the sort of pupils we’re examining, the types of schools – all that sort of thing. But that’s not really the point. Like all the examining Boards we inspect our centres regularly after they’ve been accepted, and they have to meet pretty high standards of integrity and administrative competence before they’re recognized in the first place.’

  ‘The schools are regularly inspected then?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Is that the sort of job Mr Bland does in Al-jamara?’

  Morse watched Ogleby carefully, but the deputy sailed serenely on. ‘Among other things, yes. He’s in charge of the whole administrative set-up there.’

  Morse decided that he might as well tackle the problem from the other end, and he delicately tiptoed his way over the ice again.

  ‘Would it be possible for an outsider, one of the cleaners, say, to get into the cabinets in this office? And get the papers he wanted?’

  ‘Technically, I suppose, yes. If he had the keys, knew where to look, knew the complicated system of syllabus numbering, had the intelligence to understand the various amendments and printing symbols. Then he’d have to copy what he’d got, of course. Every page of proofs and revises is carefully numbered, and no one could get away with just pinching a page.’

  ‘Mm. What about examiners? Let’s say they put a high mark down for a particular candidate who’s as thick as a plank.’

  ‘Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid. The arithmetic of every single script is checked against the marksheet.’

  ‘Well, let’s say an examiner gives high marks for all of the answers on the script – even if they’re rubbish.’

  ‘If an examiner did that, he would have been kicked out years ago. You see the examiners are themselves examined by a team of what we call “awarders”, who report on all the members of the variou
s panels after each examination.’

  ‘But the awarders could . . .’ No, Morse, let it go. He began to see that it was all far more complex that he had imagined.

  But Ogleby finished the thought for him. ‘Oh, yes, Inspector. If one of the people at the top was crooked, it would be very easy. Very easy indeed. But why are you asking me all this?’

  Morse pondered a while, and then told him. ‘We’ve got to find a motive for Quinn’s murder, sir. There are a hundred and one possibilities, of course, but I was just wondering if – if perhaps he’d found some er some suggestion of jiggery-pokery, that’s all. Anyway, you’ve been very helpful.’

  Ogleby stood up to go, and Morse too rose from his chair. ‘I’ve been asking the others what they were doing last Friday afternoon. I suppose I ought to ask you too. If you can remember, that is.’

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s easy enough. I went down to the Oxford University Press in the morning, had a pretty late lunch at the Berni place there with the chief printer, and got back here about, oh, about half-past three, I should think.’

  ‘And you spent the rest of the afternoon in the office here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, sir?’

  Ogleby looked at him with steady eyes. ‘Quite sure.’

  Morse hesitated, and debated whether to face it now or later.

  ‘What is it, Inspector?’

  ‘It’s a bit awkward, sir. I understand from, er, from other sources that there was no one here in the latter part of Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Well, your sources of information must be wrong.’

  ‘You couldn’t have slipped out for a while? Gone up to see the chief clerk or something?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t go out of the office. I might have gone upstairs, but I don’t think so. And if I had, it would only have been for a minute or two, at the very outside.’

  ‘What would you say, then, sir, if someone said there was no one here on Friday afternoon between a quarter past four and a quarter to five?’

  ‘I’d say this someone was mistaken, Inspector.’