by Colin Dexter
‘Come on then, Richard.’ His mother said it pleasantly, but Morse could hear the underlying note of tension.
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m not hungry.’
‘But you must, Richard. I’ve—’
The young man stood up, and a strange light momentarily blazed in his eyes. ‘I’ve just told you, mother, I’m not hungry.’
‘But I’ve got it all ready for you. Just have a—’
‘I don’t want any bloody food. How many times do you want telling, you stupid woman?’ The words were cruel and harsh, the tone one of scarcely repressed fury. He stalked out of the room, and almost immediately the front door slammed with a thudded finality.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Inspector.’
‘Don’t worry about me, Mrs Bartlett. Some of the youngsters these days, you know—’
‘It’s not that, Inspector. You see . . . you see, Richard suffers from schizophrenia. He can be absolutely charming, and then – well, he gets like you saw him just now.’ She was very near to tears and Morse tried hard to say the right things; but inevitably the incident had cast its shadow deep across the evening, and for a while they ate in awkward silence.
‘Can it be treated?’
Mrs Bartlett smiled sadly. ‘Good question, Inspector. We’ve spent literally thousands, haven’t we, Tom? He’s a voluntary patient at Littlemore at the moment. Sometimes he comes home at the weekends, and just occasionally, like tonight, he’ll drop in and sit around or have something to eat.’ Her voice was wavering and her husband patted her affectionately on the shoulder.
‘Don’t worry about it, my dear. We didn’t ask the Inspector along to talk about our problems. He’s got enough of his own, I should think.’
Only when Mrs Bartlett was washing the pots were the two men able to talk, and Morse’s earlier impression that the Secretary knew exactly what was going on in his own office was cumulatively confirmed: if anyone had any ideas about who had been prepared to prostitute the integrity of the Syndicate, Morse felt it would be Bartlett. But he didn’t, it seemed. With every subtlety he knew, Morse tried to draw out any suspicion of secret doubts; but the Secretary was deeply loyal to his staff, and Morse knew that he was tiptoeing too delicately. He decided the time had come.
‘What did Mr Quinn want when he rang you up?’
Bartlett blinked behind the window frames; and then looked down at his coffee, and was silent for a while. Morse knew perfectly well that if Bartlett denied that Quinn had spoken to him, that would be the end of it, for there was no hard evidence on the point. Yet the longer Bartlett hesitated (surely Bartlett must realize it?), the more obvious it became.
‘You know that he did ring me, then?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He might as well push his luck a little.
‘Do you mind telling me how you know?’
It was Morse’s turn to hesitate, but he decided to come reasonably clean. ‘Quinn’s telephone is on a shared line. Someone overheard you.’
Did Morse catch a sudden flash of alarm behind the friendly lenses? If he did, it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
‘You want me to tell you what the conversation was about?’
‘I think you should have told me before, sir. It would have saved a great deal of trouble.’
‘Would it?’ Bartlett looked the Inspector in the eye, and Morse suspected that he was still a long, long way from reaching to the bedrock of the mystery.
‘The truth’s going to come out some time, sir. I honestly think you’d be sensible to tell me all about it.’
‘Haven’t you got that information, though? You say someone was listening in? Despicable attitude of mind, isn’t it? Eavesdropping on other people—’
‘Perhaps it is, sir; but, you see, the, er, person wasn’t really listening in at all – just trying to get a very important call through, that’s all. There was no question of deliberately—’
‘So you don’t know what we were talking about?’
Morse breathed deeply. ‘No, sir.’
‘Well, I’m er I’m not going to tell you. It was a very personal matter, between Quinn and myself—’
‘Perhaps it was a personal matter that led to him being murdered, sir.’
‘Yes, I realize that.’
‘But you’re not going to tell me?’
‘No.’
Morse slowly drained his coffee. ‘I don’t think you realize exactly how important this is, sir. You see, unless we can find out where Quinn was and what he was doing that Friday evening—’
Bartlett looked at him sharply. ‘You said nothing about Friday before.’
‘You mean—?’
‘I mean that Quinn rang me up one evening last week, yes. But it wasn’t Friday.’
Clever little bugger! Morse had let the cat out of the bag – about not really knowing what the conversation had been about – and now the cat had jumped away over the fence. Bartlett was right, of course. He hadn’t actually mentioned Friday, but—
Mrs Bartlett came through with the coffee pot and refilled the cups. She appeared quite unaware of breaking the conversation at a vital point, sat down, and innocently asked Morse how he was getting on with his inquiries into the terrible terrible business of poor poor Mr Quinn.
And Morse was game for anything now. ‘We were just talking about telephone calls, Mrs Bartlett. The curse of the times, isn’t it? I should think you must get almost as many as I do.’
‘How right you are, Inspector. I was only saying last week – when was it, Tom? Do you remember? Oh yes. It was the day you went to Banbury. The phone kept ringing all the afternoon, and I said to Tom when he came in that we ought to get an ex-directory number and – do you know what? – just as I said it, the wretched thing rang again! And you had to go out again, do you remember, Tom?
The little Secretary nodded and smiled ruefully. Sometimes life could be very unfair. Very unfair indeed.
Just after 8.15 p.m. that same evening a man was taking the lid off the highly polished bronze coal scuttle when he heard the knock, and he got slowly to his feet and opened the door.
‘Well, well! Come on in. I shan’t be a minute. Take a seat.’ He knelt down again by the fire and extracted a lump of shiny black coal with the tongs.
In his own head it sounded as if he had taken an enormous bite from a large, crisp apple. His jaws seemed to clamp together, and for a weird and terrifying second he sought frantically to rediscover some remembrance of himself along the empty, echoing corridors of his brain. His right hand still held the tongs, and his whole body willed itself to pull the coal towards the bright fire. For some inexplicable reason he found himself thinking of the lava from Mount Vesuvius pouring in an all-engulfing flood towards the streets of old Pompeii; and even as his left hand began slowly and instinctively to raise itself towards the shattered skull, he knew that life was ended. The light snapped suddenly out, as if someone had switched on the darkness. He was dead.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MRS BARTLETT GOT up to answer the phone at a quarter to eleven and Morse realized that it would be as good an opportunity as he would get of taking a reasonably early leave of his hosts.
‘It’s probably Richard,’ said Bartlett. ‘He often feels a bit sorry later on, and tries to apologize. I shouldn’t be surprised if—’
Mrs Bartlett came back into the room. ‘It’s for you, Inspector.’
Lewis told him as quickly and as clearly as he could what had happened. The Oxford City Police had been called in about nine o’clock – Chief Inspector Bell was in charge. It was only later that they realized how it might all tie in, and they’d tried to get Morse, and had finally got Lewis. The man had been killed instantly by a savage blow with a poker across the back of the skull. No prints or anything like that. The drawers had been ransacked, but not in any methodical way, it seemed. Probably the murderer had been interrupted.
‘I’ll see you there as soon as I can manage it, Lewis.’
As Morse came back into
the room his face was pale with shock and he tried to keep his voice steady as he told the Bartletts the tragic news. ‘It’s Ogleby. He’s been murdered.’
Mrs Bartlett buried her head in her hands and wept, whilst the Secretary himself, as he showed Morse to the front door, had difficulty in putting his words together coherently. He suddenly seemed an old man, shattered and uncomprehending. ‘You asked about Quinn – when he rang – when he rang me – you asked about it – I said—’
Morse put his hand gently on the little man’s shoulders. ‘Yes. You tell me.’
‘He said that – he said that he’d found out something I ought to know – he said that – that someone from the office was deliberately leaking question papers.’
‘Did he say who it was?’ asked Morse.
‘Oh yes, Inspector. He said it was me.’
When Morse arrived at the neat little terraced house in Walton Street, Lewis was engaged in low conversation with Bell. It was an ugly sight, and Morse turned his head away, closed his eyes, and felt the nausea rising in his gorge. ‘Look, Lewis. I want you to get on to one or two things straight away. Phone, if you like, or go around to see ’em – but I want to know exactly where Roope was tonight, where Martin was, where Miss Height was, where—’
Bell interrupted him. ‘I’ve just been telling the Sergeant. We know where Miss Height was. She was here. She was the one who found him.’
It was not what Morse had expected, and the news appeared to confound whatever provisional procedure he had planned. ‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s in a pretty bad way, I’m afraid. She rang through on a 999 call and then fainted, it seems. Somebody found her slumped by the public telephone box just up the road. She’s been seen by the doc and they’ve taken her to the Radcliffe for the night.’
‘She’s got a young daughter.’
Bell put his hand on Morse’s shoulder. ‘Relax, old boy. We’ve seen to all that. Give us a bit of credit.’
Morse sat down in an armchair and wondered about himself. He seemed to be losing his grip. He closed his eyes again, and breathed deeply several times. ‘Do as I tell you, anyway, Lewis. Get on to Roope and Martin straight away. And there’s something else. You’d better go up to the Littlemore hospital sometime, and find out what you can about Richard Bartlett – got that? Richard Bartlett. He’s a volunteer patient there. Find out what time he got in tonight – if he got in, that is.’
Morse forced himself to look once more at the liquid squelch of brains and blood commingled on the carpet, beyond which the fire was now no more than an ashen glow. ‘And try to find out if any of them changed their clothes, tonight. What do you think, Bell? Blood must have spurted all over the place, mustn’t it?’
Bell shrugged his shoulders. ‘The girl had blood on her hands and sleeves.’
‘I’d better see her,’ said Morse.
‘Not tonight, old boy, I’m afraid. Doc says she’s to see nobody. She’s in a state of deep shock.’
‘Why did she come here? Did she say?’
‘Said she wanted to talk to him about something important.’
‘Was the door unlocked?’
‘‘No. She says it was locked.’
‘How the hell did she get in then?’
‘She’s got a key.’
Morse let it sink in. ‘Has she now! She certainly spreads the joys around, doesn’t she?’
‘Pardon?’ said Bell.
It was in the early hours of Saturday morning that Morse found what he was looking for and he whispered incredulously. Only he and Lewis remained, apart from the two Oxford City constables standing guard outside.
‘Come here, Lewis. Look at this.’ It was the diary found in Ogleby’s hip pocket. Bell had earlier flipped cursorily through it, but had found no entries whatsoever, and had put it down again. It was a blue University diary with a small flap at the back which could be used for railway tickets and the like. And as Morse had prised open the flap, he could hardly believe his eyes. It was a ticket, torn roughly in half, with IO 2 printed across the top, ‘Rear Lounge’ beneath it, and along the right edge, running down, the numbers 93592.
‘What do you make of it?’
‘He was there after all, then, sir.’
‘Four of them. Just think of it. Four out of the five!’
Lewis himself picked up the diary and looked with his usual thorough care at every page in turn. It was clear that Ogleby had never used the diary during the year. But on a page headed ‘Notes’ at the back of the diary, Lewis saw something that made his eyeballs bulge. ‘Sir!’ He said it very quietly, as though the slightest noise might frighten it away. ‘Look at this.’
Morse looked at the diary, and felt the familiar constriction of the temples as an electric charge seemed to flash across his head. There, drawn with accuracy and neatness, was a small diagram:
‘My God!’ said Morse. ‘It’s the same number as the ticket we found on Quinn.’
Half an hour later, as the two policemen left the house in Walton Street, Morse found himself recalling the words of Dr Hans Gross, one-time Professor of Criminology at the University of Prague. He had them by heart: ‘No human action happens by pure chance unconnected with other happenings. None is incapable of explanation.’ It was a belief that Morse had always cherished. Yet as he stepped out into the silent street, he began to wonder if it were really true.
No more than fifty or sixty yards down the street he saw the building which housed both Studio 1 and Studio 2. The neon lighting still illuminated the white boards above the foyer, the red and royal-blue lettering garish and bright in the almost eerie stillness: The Nymphomaniac X (Strictly Adults Only). Was she trying to tell him something? He walked down to the cinema with Lewis and stood looking at the stills outside. She was certainly a big and bouncy girl, although a series of five-pointed stars had been superimposed by some incomparable idiot over the incomparable Inga’s nipples.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MORSE WAS IN his office at 7.30 a.m. the next morning, tired and unshaven. He had tried to catch a few hours’ sleep, but his mind would give him no rest, and he had finally given up the unequal struggle. He knew that he would be infinitely better able to cope with his problems if he had a complete change. But while there was no chance of that, at least he could sharpen his brain on the crossword; and he folded over the back page of The Times, looked at his watch, wrote the time in the left-hand margin, and began. It took him twelve and a half minutes. Not his best, this week; but not bad. And barring that one clue, he would have been within ten minutes: In which are the Islets of Langerhans (8). –A–C–E–S had been staring him in the face for well over two minutes before he’d seen the answer. He’d finally remembered it from a quiz programme on the radio: one contestant had suggested the South China Sea, another the Baltic, and a third the Mediterranean; and what a laugh from the radio audience when the question master had told them the answer!
During the morning the seemingly endless flood of news poured in. Lewis had managed to see Martin who (so he said) had felt restless and worried the previous evening, gone out about 7.30 p.m., and got back home at about a quarter to eleven. He had taken his car, called at several pubs near Radcliffe Square, and on his return had been banished by his wife to the doghouse. Roope (so he said) had been at home working all evening. No callers – seldom did have any callers. He was preparing a series of lectures on some aspect of Inorganic Chemistry which Lewis had been unable to understand at the time, and was unable to remember now. ‘So far as I can see, sir, they’re both very strongly in the running. The trouble is we seem to be running out of suspects. Unless you think Miss Height—’
‘It’s a possibility, I suppose.’
Lewis grudgingly conceded the point. ‘That’s still only three, though.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting Ogleby?’
Lewis stared at him. ‘I don’t follow you, sir.’
‘He’s still on my list, Lewis, and I see no earthly or heavenly reason
why I should cross him off. Do you?’
Lewis opened his mouth but shut it again. And the phone went.
It was the Dean of the Examinations Syndicate, phoning from Lonsdale. Bartlett had rung him up the previous evening. What a terrible business it all was! Frightening. He just wanted to mention a little thing that had occurred to him. Did Morse remember asking about relationships within the Syndicate? Well, somehow the murders of Quinn and Ogleby had brought it all back. It had been just a little odd, he’d thought. It was the night when they’d had the big do at the Sheridan, with the Al-jamara lot. Some of them had stayed very late, long after the others had gone off to bed. Quinn was one of them, and Ogleby another; and the Dean had felt at the time (he could be totally wrong, of course) that Ogleby had been waiting for Quinn to go; had been watching him in a rather curious way. And when Quinn had left, Ogleby had followed him out almost immediately. It was only a very small thing, and actually putting it into words made it seem even smaller. But there it was. The Dean had now unburdened himself, and he hoped he hadn’t wasted the Inspector’s time.
Morse thanked him and put the phone down. As the Dean said, it didn’t seem to add up to much.
In mid-morning Bell rang from Oxford. The medical evidence suggested that Ogleby had died only minutes before he was found. There were no prints other than Ogleby’s on the poker or on the desk where the papers had been strewn around; Morse could re-examine whatever he wanted at any time, of course, but there seemed (in Bell’s view) little that was going to help him very much. The blow that had crushed Ogleby’s thin skull must have been struck with considerable ferocity, but may have required only minimal strength. It had probably been delivered by a right-handed person, and the central point of impact was roughly five centimetres above the occipital bone, and roughly two centimetres to the right of the parietal foramen. The result of the blow—