The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

by Colin Dexter

  THE MAN INSIDE the house is anxious, but reasonably calm. The phone rings stridently, imperiously, several times during the late afternoon and early evening. But he does not answer it, for he has seen the post-office van repairing (repairing!) the telephone wires just along the road. Clumsy and obvious. They must think him stupid. Yet all the time he knows that they are not stupid, either, and the knowledge nags away in his mind. Over and over again he tells himself that they cannot know; can only guess; can never prove. The maze would defeat an indefatigable Ariadne, and the ball of thread leads only to blind and bricked-up alleyways. Infernal phone! He waits until the importunate caller has exhausted a seemingly limitless patience, and takes the receiver off its stand. But it purrs – intolerably. He turns on the transistor radio at ten minutes to six and listens, yet with only a fraction of his conscious faculties, to the BBC’s City correspondent discussing the fluctuations in the Financial Times index, and the fortunes of the floating pound. He himself has no worries about money. No worries at all.

  The man outside the house continues to watch. Already he has been watching for over three and a half hours, and his feet are damp and cold. He looks at his luminous watch: 5.40 p.m. Only another twenty minutes before his relief arrives. Still no movement, save for the shadow that repeatedly passes back and forth across the curtained window.

  If sleep be defined as the relaxation of consciousness, the man inside the house does not sleep that night. He is dressed again at 6 a.m. and he waits. At 6.45 a.m. he hears the clatter of milk bottles in the darkened road outside. But still he waits. It is not until 7.45 a.m. that the paper boy arrives with The Times. It is still dark, and the little business is speedily transacted. Uncomplicated; unobserved.

  The man outside the house has almost given up hope when at 1.15 p.m. the door opens and a man emerges and walks unhurriedly down towards Oxford. The man outside switches to ‘transmission’ and speaks into his mobile radio. Then he switches to ‘reception’, and the message is brief and curt: ‘Follow him, Dickson! And don’t let him see you!’

  The man who had been inside the house walks to the railway station, where he looks around him and then walks into the buffet, orders a cup of coffee, sits by the window, and looks out onto the car park. At 1.35 a car drives slowly past – a familiar car, which turns down the incline into the car park. The automatic arm is raised and the car makes for the furthest corner of the area. The car park is almost full. The man in the buffet puts down his half-finished coffee, lights a cigarette, puts the spent match neatly back into the box, and walks out.

  At 2.00 p.m. the young girl in the maroon dress can stand it no longer. The customers, too, though they are only few, have been looking at him queerly. She walks from behind the counter and taps him on the shoulder. He is not much above medium height. ‘Excuse me, sir. Bu’ have you come in for a coffee, or somethin’?’

  ‘No. I’ll have a cup o’tea, please.’ He speaks pleasantly, and as he puts down his powerful binoculars she sees that his eyes are a palish shade of grey.

  It is just after five when Lewis gets home. He is tired and his feet are like ice.

  ‘Are you home for the night?’

  ‘Yes, luv, thank goodness! I’m freezing cold.’

  ‘Is that bloody man, Morse, tryin’ to give you pneumonia, or somethin’?’

  Lewis hears his wife all right, but he is thinking of something else. ‘He’s a clever bugger, Morse is. Christ, he’s clever! Though whether he’s right or not . . .’ But his wife is no longer listening, and Lewis hears the thrice-blessed clatter of the chip pan in the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  IN THE SYNDICATE building on Wednesday morning, Morse told Bartlett frankly about the virtual certainty of some criminal malpractice in the administration of the examinations. He mentioned specifically his suspicions about the leakage of question papers to Al-jamara, and passed exhibit No 1 across the table.

  3rd March

  Dear George,

  Greetings to all at Oxford. Many thanks for your letter and for the summer examination package. All Entry Forms and Fees Forms should be ready for final dispatch to the Syndicate by Friday 20th or at the very latest, I’m told, by the 21st. Admin has improved here, though there’s room for improvement still; just give us all two or three more years and we’ll really show you! Please don’t let these wretched 16+ proposals destroy your basic O- and A-pattern. Certainly this sort of change, if implemented immediately, would bring chaos.

  Sincerely yours,

  Bartlett frowned deeply as he read the letter, then opened his desk diary and consulted a few entries. ‘This is, er, a load of nonsense – you realize that, don’t you? All entry forms had to be in by the first of March this year. We’ve installed a mini-computer and anything arriving after—’

  Morse interrupted him. ‘You mean the entry forms from Al-jamara were already in when that letter was written?’

  ‘Oh yes. Otherwise we couldn’t have examined their candidates.’

  ‘And you did examine them?’

  ‘Certainly. Then there’s this business of the summer examination package. They couldn’t possibly have received that before early April. Half the question papers weren’t printed until then. And there’s something else wrong, isn’t there, Inspector? The 20th March isn’t a Friday. Not in my diary, anyway. No, no. I don’t think I’d build too much on this letter. I’m sure it can’t be from one of our—’

  ‘You don’t recognize the signature?’

  ‘Would anybody? It looks more like a coil of barbed wire—’

  ‘Just read down the right-hand side of the letter, sir. The last word on each line, if you see what I mean.’

  In a flat voice the Secretary read the words aloud: ‘your – package – ready – Friday – 21st – room – three – Please – destroy – this – immediately.’ He nodded slowly to himself. ‘I see what you mean, Inspector, though I must say I’d never have spotted it myself . . . You mean you think that George Bland was—’

  ‘ – was on the fiddle, yes. I’m convinced that this letter told him exactly where and when he could collect the latest instalment of his money.’

  Bartlett took a deep breath and consulted his diary once more. ‘You may just be onto something, I suppose. He wasn’t in the office on Friday 21st.’

  ‘Do you know where he was?’

  Bartlett shook his head and passed over the diary, where among the dozen or so brief, neatly written entries under 21st March Morse read the laconic reminder: ‘GB not in office.’

  ‘Can you get in touch with him, sir?’

  ‘Of course. I sent him a telegram only last Wednesday – about Quinn. They’d met when—’

  ‘Did he reply?’

  ‘Hasn’t done yet.’

  Morse took the plunge. ‘Naturally I can’t tell you everything, sir, but I think you ought to know that in my view the deaths of both Quinn and Ogleby are directly linked with Bland. I think that Bland was corrupt enough to compromise the integrity of this Syndicate at every point – if there was money in it for him. But I think there’s someone here, too, not necessarily on the staff, but someone very closely associated with the work of the Syndicate, who’s in collaboration with Bland. And I’ve little doubt that Quinn found out who it was, and got himself murdered for his trouble.’

  Bartlett had been listening intently to Morse’s words, but he evinced little surprise. ‘I thought you might be going to say something like that, Inspector, and I suppose you think that Ogleby found out as well, and was murdered for the same reason.’

  ‘Could be, sir. Though you may be making a false assumption. You see, it may be the murderer of Nicholas Quinn has already been punished for his crime.’

  The little Secretary was genuinely shocked now. His eyebrows shot up an inch, and his frameless lenses settled even lower on his nose, as Morse slowly continued.

  ‘I’m afraid you must face the real possibility, sir, that Quinn’s murderer worked here under your very nose; t
he possibility that he was in fact your own deputy-secretary – Philip Ogleby.’

  Lewis came in ten minutes later as Morse and Bartlett were arranging the meeting. Bartlett was to phone or write to all the Syndicate members and ask them to attend an extraordinary general meeting on Friday morning at 10 a.m.; he was to insist that it was of the utmost importance that they should cancel all other commitments and attend; after all, two members of the Syndicate had been murdered, hadn’t they?

  In the corridor outside Lewis whispered briefly to Morse. ‘You were right, sir. It rang for two minutes. Noakes confirms it.’

  ‘Excellent. I think it’s time to make a move then, Lewis. Car outside?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you want me with you?’

  ‘No. You get to the car; we’ll be along in a minute.’ He walked along the corridor, knocked quietly on the door, and entered. She was sitting at her desk signing letters, but promptly took off her reading glasses, stood up, and smiled sweetly. ‘Bit early to take me for a drink, isn’t it?’

  ‘No chance, I’m afraid. The car’s outside – I think you’d better get your coat.’

  The man inside does not go out this same Wednesday morning. The paper boy lingers for a few seconds as he puts The Times through the letter box, but no lucrative errand is commissioned this morning; the milkman delivers one pint of milk; the postman brings no letters; there are no visitors. The phone has gone several times earlier, and at twelve o’clock it goes again. Four rings; then, almost immediately it resumes, and mechanically the man counts the number of rings again – twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. The phone stops, and the man smiles to himself. It is a clever system. They have used it several times before.

  The man outside is still waiting; but expectantly now, for he thinks that the time of reckoning may be drawing near. At 4.20 p.m. he is conscious of some activity at the back of the house, and a minute later the man inside emerges with a bicycle, rides quickly away up a side turning, and in less than five seconds has completely disappeared. It has been too quick, too unexpected. Constable Dickson swears softly to himself and calls up HQ, where Sergeant Lewis is distinctly unamused.

  The car park is again very full today, and Morse is standing by the window in the buffet bar. He wonders what would happen if a heavy snow shower were to smother each of the cars in a thick white blanket; then each of the baffled motorists would need to remember exactly where he had left his car, and go straight to that spot – and find it. Just as Morse finds the spot again through his binoculars. But he can see nothing, and half an hour later, at 5.15 p.m., he can still see nothing. He gives it up, talks to the ticket collector, and learns beyond all reasonable doubt that Roope was not lying when he said he’d passed through the ticket barrier, as if from the 3.05 train from Paddington, on Friday, 21st November.

  As he steps out of his front door at 9.30 a.m. the next day, Thursday, 4th December, the man who has been inside is arrested by Sergeant Lewis and Constable Dickson of the Thames Valley Constabulary, CID Branch. He is charged with complicity in the murders of Nicholas Quinn and Philip Ogleby.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE CASE WAS over now, or virtually so, and Morse had his feet up on his desk, feeling slightly over-beered and more than slightly self-satisfied, when Lewis came in at 2.30 on Thursday afternoon. ‘I found him, sir. Had to drag him out of a class at Cherwell School – but I found him. It was just what you said.’

  ‘Well that’s the final nail in the coffin and—’ He suddenly broke off. ‘You don’t look too happy, Lewis. What’s the trouble?’

  ‘I still don’t understand what’s happening.’

  ‘Lewis! You don’t want to ruin my little party-piece in the morning, do you?’

  Lewis shrugged a reluctant consent, but he felt like an examinee who has just emerged from the examination room, conscious that he should have done very much better. ‘I suppose you think I’m not very bright, sir.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort! It was a very clever crime, Lewis. I was just a bit lucky here and there, that’s all.’

  ‘I suppose I missed the obvious clues – as usual.’

  ‘But they weren’t obvious, my dear old friend. Well, perhaps . . .’ He put his feet down and lit a cigarette. ‘Let me tell you what put me on to the track, shall I? Let’s see now. First of all, I think, the single most important fact in the whole case was Quinn’s deafness. You see Quinn was not only hard of hearing; he was very very deaf. But we learned that he was quite exceptionally proficient in the art of lip-reading; and I’m quite sure that because he could lip-read so brilliantly Quinn discovered the staggering fact that one of his colleagues was crooked. You see the real sin against the Holy Ghost for anyone in charge of public examinations is to divulge the contents of question papers beforehand; and Quinn discovered that one of his colleagues was doing precisely that. But, Lewis, I failed to take into account a much more obvious and much more important implication of Quinn’s being deaf. It sounds almost childishly simple when you think of it – in fact an idiot would have spotted it before I did. It’s this. Quinn was a marvel at reading from the lips of others – agreed? He might just as well have had ears, really. But he could only, let’s say, hear what others were saying when he could see them. Lip-reading’s absolutely useless when you can’t see the person who’s talking; when someone stands behind you, say, or when someone in the corridor outside shouts that there’s a bomb in the building. Do you see what I mean, Lewis? If someone knocked on Quinn’s office door, he couldn’t hear anything. But as soon as someone opened the door and said something – he was fine. All right? Remember this, then: Quinn couldn’t hear what he didn’t see.’

  ‘Am I supposed to see why all that’s important, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes. And you will do, Lewis, if only you think back to the Friday when Quinn was murdered.’

  ‘He was definitely murdered on the Friday, then?’

  ‘I think if you pushed me I could tell you to within sixty seconds!’ He looked very smug about the whole thing, and Lewis felt torn between the wish to satisfy his own curiosity and a reluctance to gratify the chief’s inflated ego even further. Yet he thought he caught a glimpse of the truth at last . . . Yes, of course. Noakes had said . . . He nodded several times, and his curiosity won.

  ‘What about all this business at the cinema, though? Was that all a red herring?’

  ‘Certainly not. It was meant to be a red herring, but as things turned out – not too luckily from the murderer’s point of view – it presented a series of vital clues. Just think a minute. Everything we began to learn about Quinn’s death seemed to take it further and further forward in time: he rang up a school in Bradford at about 12.20; he went to Studio 2 at about half-past one, after leaving a note in his office for his secretary; he came back to the office about a quarter to five, and drove home; he left a note for his cleaning woman and got some shopping in; he’s heard on the phone about ten past five; certainly no one except Mrs Evans comes to see him before six-thirty or so, because Mrs Greenaway is keeping an eagle eye on the drive. So? So Quinn must have been murdered later that evening, or even on the following morning. The medical report didn’t help us much either way, and we had little option but to follow our noses – which we did. But when you come to add all the evidence up, no one actually saw Quinn after midday on Friday. Take the phone call to Bradford. If you’re a schoolmaster – and all of the staff at the Syndicate had taught at one point – you know that 12.20 is just about the worst time in the whole day to try to get a member of staff. School lessons may finish earlier in a few schools but the vast majority don’t. In other words that call was made with not the least expectation that its purpose would be successful. That is, unless the purpose was to mislead me – in which case I’m afraid it was highly successful. Now, take the note Quinn left. We know that Bartlett is a bit of a tartar about most aspects of office routine; and one of his rules is that his assistant secretaries must leave a note when they go out. Now, Quinn had been with the Syndi
cate for three months, and being a keen young fellow and anxious to please his boss, he must have left dozens of little notes during that time; and anyone, if he or she was so minded, could have taken one, especially if that someone needed one of the notes to further an alibi. And someone did. Then there’s the phone call Mrs Greenaway heard. But note once again that she didn’t actually see him making it. She’s nervous and anxious: she thinks the baby’s due, and the very last thing she wants to indulge in is a bit of eavesdropping. All she wants is the line to be free! When she hears voices she doesn’t want to listen to them – she wants them to finish. And if the other person – the one she thinks Quinn is ringing – is doing most of the talking at that point . . . You see what I was getting at with Roope, Lewis? If Roope were talking – putting in just the occasional “yes” and “no” and so on – Mrs Greenaway, who says she doesn’t hear too well anyway, would automatically assume it was Quinn. Both Quinn and Roope came from Bradford, and both spoke with a pretty broad northern accent, and all Mrs Greenaway remembers clearly is that one of the voices was a bit cultured and donnish. Now, that doesn’t take us much further, I agree. At the most it tells us that the telephone conversation wasn’t between Quinn and Roope. But I knew that, Lewis, because I knew that Quinn must have been dead for several hours when someone spoke from Quinn’s front room.’

  ‘It was a bit of luck for him that Mrs Greenaway didn’t—’

  Morse was nodding. ‘Yes. But the luck wasn’t all on his side. Remember that Mrs Evans—’

  ‘You’ve explained how that could have happened, sir. It’s just this Studio 2 business I can’t follow.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. We had everybody telling us lies about it. But let me give you one or two clues. Martin and Monica Height had decided to go to the pictures on Friday afternoon, and yet they stupidly tried to change their alibi – change a good alibi for a lousy alibi. Just ask yourself why, Lewis. The only sensible answer that I could think of was that they had seen something – or one of them had seen something – which they weren’t prepared to talk about. Now, I think that Monica, at least on this point, was prepared to tell me the truth – the literal truth. I asked her whether she had seen someone else going in; and she said no.’ Morse smiled slowly: ‘Do you see what I mean now?’