The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

by Colin Dexter

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Keep at it, Lewis! You see, whatever happened in the early afternoon of that Friday, Martin and Monica stayed to see the film. Do you understand that? Whatever upset them – or, as I say, upset one of them – it didn’t result in their leaving the cinema. Need I go on?’

  Need he go on! Huh! Lewis was more lost than ever, but his curiosity would give him no peace. ‘What about Ogleby, then?’

  ‘Ah. Now we’re coming to it. Ogleby lied to me, Lewis. He told me one or two lies of the first water. But the great majority of the things Ogleby said were true. You were there when I questioned him, Lewis, and if you want some of the truth, just look back to your notes. You’ll find he said some very interesting things. You’ll find, for example, that he said he was in the office that Friday afternoon.’

  ‘And you think he was?’

  ‘I know he was. He just had to be, you see.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lewis, unseeing. ‘And he went to Studio 2 as well, I suppose?’

  Morse nodded. ‘Later on, yes. And remember that he’d made a careful sketch of another ticket – the ticket that was found in Quinn’s pocket. Now. There’s a nice little poser for you, Lewis: when and why did Ogleby do that? Well?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I just get more confused the more I think about it.’

  Morse got up and walked across the room. ‘It’s easy when you think about it, Lewis. Ask yourself just one question: Why didn’t he just take the ticket? He must have seen it; must have had it in his hands. There’s only one answer, isn’t there?’

  Lewis nodded hopefully and Morse (praise be!) continued.

  ‘Yes. Ogleby wasn’t meant to find the ticket. But he did; and he knew that it had been placed wherever it was for a vital purpose, Lewis, and he knew that he had to leave it exactly where he’d found it.’

  The phone rang and Morse answered it, saying he’d be there straightaway. ‘You’d better come along, Lewis. His lawyer’s arrived.’ As they walked together down to the cellblock, Morse asked Lewis if he had any idea where the Islets of Langerhans were.

  ‘Sounds vaguely familiar, sir. Baltic Sea, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s in the pancreas – if you know where that is.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do, sir. It’s a large gland discharging into the duodenum.’

  Morse raised his eyebrows in admiration. One up to Lewis.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  AS MORSE LOOKED at the Thursday evening class with their hearing aids, private or NHS, plugged into their ears, he reminded himself that during the previous weeks of the term Quinn had sat there amongst his fellow students, sharing the mysteries and the silent manifestations. There were eight of them, sitting in a single row in front of their teacher, and at the back of the room Morse felt that he was watching a TV screen with the sound turned off. The teacher was talking, for her lips moved and she made the natural gestures of speech. But no sound. When Morse had managed to rid himself of the suspicion that he had suddenly been struck deaf, he watched the teacher’s lips more closely, and tried as hard as he could to read the words. Occasionally one or other of the class would raise a hand and voice a silent question, and then the teacher would write up a word on the blackboard. Frequently, it appeared, the difficult words – the words that the class were puzzled by – began with ‘p’, or ‘b’, or ‘m’; and to a lesser extent with ‘t’, ‘d’, or ‘n’. Lip-reading was clearly a most sophisticated skill.

  At the end of the class, Morse thanked the teacher for allowing him to observe, and spoke to her about Quinn. Here, too, he had been the star pupil, it seemed, and all the class had been deeply upset at the news of his death. Yes, he really had been very deaf indeed – but one wouldn’t have guessed; unless, that is, one had experience of these things.

  A bell sounded throughout the building. It was 9 p.m. and time for everyone to leave the premises.

  ‘Would he have been able to hear that?’ asked Morse.

  But the teacher had temporarily turned away to mark the register. The bell was still ringing. ‘Would Quinn have been able to hear that?’ repeated Morse.

  But she still didn’t hear him and, belatedly, Morse guessed the truth. When finally she looked up again, he repeated his question once more. ‘Could Quinn hear the bell?’

  ‘Could Quinn hear them all, did you say? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch—’

  ‘H-ear th-e b-e-ll,’ mouthed Morse, with ridiculous exaggeration.

  ‘Oh, the bell. Is it ringing? I’m afraid that none of us could ever hear that.’

  Thursday was guest night at Lonsdale College, but after a couple of post-prandial ports the Dean of the Syndicate decided he’d better get back to his rooms. He was decidedly displeased at having to rearrange his Friday morning programme, since one of the few duties he positively enjoyed was that of interviewing prospective entrants. As he walked along the quad he wondered morosely how long the Syndicate meeting would last, and why exactly Tom Bartlett had been so insistent. It was all getting out of hand, anyway. He was getting too old for the post, and he looked forward to his retirement in a year’s time. One thing was certain: he just couldn’t cope with events like those of the past fortnight.

  He looked through the pile of UCCA forms on his desk and read the fulsome praises heaped upon the heads of their pupils by headmasters and headmistresses, so desperately anxious to lift their schools a few paces up the table in the Oxbridge League. If only such heads would realize that all their blabber was, if anything, counter-productive! On the first form he read some headmistress’s report on a young girl anxious to take up one of the few places at Lonsdale reserved for women. The girl was (naturally!) the most brilliant scholar of her year and had won a whole cupboardful of prizes; and the Dean read the headmistress’s comments in the ‘Personality’ column: ‘Not unattractive and certainly a very vivacious girl, with a puckish sense of humour and a piquant wit.’ The Dean smiled slowly. What a sentence! Over the years he had compiled his own little book of synonyms:

  ‘not unattractive’

  = ‘hideous to behold’

  ‘vivacious’

  = ‘usually drunk’

  ‘puckish’

  = ‘batty’

  ‘piquant’

  = ‘plain rude’

  Ah well. Perhaps she wasn’t such a bad prospect after all! But he wouldn’t be interviewing her himself. Blast the Syndicate! It would have been interesting to test his little theory once more. So often people tried to create the impression of being completely different from their true selves, and it wasn’t all that difficult. A smiling face, and a heart as hard as a flintstone! The opposite, too: a face set as hard as a flint and . . . A vague memory stirred in the Dean’s mind. Chief Inspector Morse had mentioned something similar, hadn’t he? But the Dean couldn’t quite get hold of it. Never mind. It couldn’t be very important.

  Bartlett had received the call from Mrs Martin at eight o’clock. Did he know where Donald was? Had he got a meeting? She knew he had to work late some nights, but he had never been away as long as this. Bartlett tried to make the right noises; said not to worry; said he would ring her back; said there must be some easy explanation.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he said, after putting the receiver down.

  ‘What’s the matter, Tom?’ Mrs Bartlett had come through into the hall and was looking at him anxiously.

  He put his hand gently on hers, and smiled wearily. ‘How many times have I told you? You mustn’t listen in to my telephone calls. You’ve got enough—’

  ‘I never do. You know that, Tom. But—’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s not your problem; it’s mine. That’s what they pay me for, isn’t it? I can’t expect a fat salary for nothing, can I?’

  Mrs Bartlett put her arm lovingly on his shoulder. ‘I don’t know what they pay you, and I don’t want to know. If they paid you a million it wouldn’t be too much! But—’ She was worried, and the little Secretary knew it.

  �
�I know. The world suddenly seems to have gone crazy, doesn’t it? That was Martin’s wife. He’s not home yet.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Now, now. Don’t start jumping to silly conclusions.’

  ‘You don’t think—?’

  ‘You go and sit down and pour yourself a gin. And pour one for me. I shan’t be a minute.’ He found Monica’s number and dialled. And like someone else the day before, he found himself mechanically counting the dialling tones. Ten, twenty, twenty-five. Sally must be out, too. He let it ring a few more times, and then slowly replaced the receiver. The Syndicate seemed to be on the verge of total collapse.

  He thought back on the years during which he had worked so hard to build it all up. And somehow, at some point, the foundation had begun to shift and cracks to appear in the edifice above. He could almost put the exact time to it: the time when Roope had been elected on to the Board of the Syndics. Yes. That was when things had started crumbling. Roope! For a few minutes the little Secretary stood indecisively by the phone, and knew that he could willingly murder the man. Instead he rang Morse’s number at the Thames Valley HQ, but Morse was out, too. Not that it mattered much. He’d mention it to him in the morning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MRS SETH ARRIVED at a quarter to ten and made her way upstairs to the Board Room. She was the first of the Syndics to arrive, and as she sat down her thoughts drifted back . . . back to the last time she had sat there, when she had recalled her father . . . when Roope had spoken . . . when Quinn had been appointed . . . The room was gradually filling up, and she acknowledged a few muted ‘good mornings’; but the atmosphere was one of gloom, and the other Syndics sat down silently and let their own thoughts drift back, as she had done. Sometimes one or two of the graduate staff attended Syndics’ meetings, but only by invitation; and none was there this morning except Bartlett, whose tired, drawn face did little more than reflect the communal mood. A man was sitting next to Bartlett, but she didn’t know him. Must be from the police. Pleasant-looking man: about her own age – mid-, late-forties, going a bit thin on top; nice eyes, though they seemed to look at you and through you at the same time. There was another man, too – probably another policeman; but he was standing diffidently outside the magic circle, with a notebook in his hands.

  At two minutes past ten, when all except one of the chairs were occupied, Bartlett stood up and in a sad and disillusioned little speech informed the assembly of the police suspicions – his own, too – that the integrity of their own foreign examinations had been irreparably impaired by the criminal behaviour of one or two people, people in whom the Syndicate had placed complete trust; that it was the view of Chief Inspector Morse (‘on my right’) that the deaths of Quinn and Ogleby were directly connected with this matter; that, after the clearing-up of the comparatively small autumn examination, the activities of the Syndicate would necessarily be in abeyance until a complete investigation had been made; that the implications of a possible shutdown were far-reaching, and that the full co-operation of each and every member of the Syndicate would be absolutely essential. But such matters would have to wait; the purpose of their meeting this morning was quite different, as they would see.

  The Dean thanked the Secretary and proceeded to add his own lugubrious thoughts on the future of the Syndicate; and as he tediously ummed and ahed his way along, it became clear that the Syndics were getting rather restless. Words were whispered along the tables: ‘One or two, didn’t Bartlett say?’ ‘Who do you think?’ ‘Why have we got the police here?’ ‘They are the police, aren’t they?’

  The Dean finished at last, and the whispering finished, too. It was a strange reversal of the natural order, and Mrs Seth thought it had everything to do with the man seated on Bartlett’s right, who thus far had sat impassively in his chair, occasionally running the index finger of his left hand along the side of his nose. She saw Bartlett turn towards Morse and look at him quizzically; and in turn she saw Morse nod slightly, before slowly rising to his feet.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I asked the Secretary to call this meeting because I thought it only proper that you should all know something of what we’ve discovered about the leakage of question papers from this office. Well, you’ve heard something about that and I think’ (he looked vaguely at the Dean and then at Bartlett) ‘I think that we may say that officially the meeting is over, and if any of you have commitments that can’t wait, you should feel free to go.’ He looked around the tables with cold, grey eyes, and the tension in the room perceptibly tautened. No one moved a muscle, and the stillness was profound. ‘But perhaps it’s proper, too,’ resumed Morse, ‘that you should know something about the police investigations into the deaths of Mr Quinn and Mr Ogleby, and I’m sure you will all be very glad to know that the case is now complete – or almost complete. Let’s put it in the official jargon, ladies and gentlemen, and say that a man has been arrested and is being held for questioning in connection with the murders of Quinn and Ogleby.’

  The silence of the room was broken only by the rustle of paper as Lewis turned over a page in his notebook: Morse held the ring and the assembled Syndics hung on his every word. ‘You will know, or most of you will, that last Monday one of your own colleagues, Mr Christopher Roope, was detained in connection with Quinn’s murder. You will know, too, I think, that he was released shortly afterwards. The evidence against him appeared to us insufficient to warrant further detention, and everything seemed to point to the fact that he had a perfectly valid alibi for the period of time on Friday, 21st November, when in the view of the police Quinn must have been murdered. Yet I must tell you all here and now that without a shadow of doubt, Roope was the person responsible for selling the soul of the Syndicate – certainly in Al-jamara, and for all I know in several of your other overseas centres as well.’ Some of the Syndics drew in their breaths, some opened their mouths slightly, but never for a second did their eyes leave Morse. ‘And, ladies and gentlemen, in all this his principal lieutenant was your former colleague, Mr George Bland.’ Again the mingled surprise and shock around the table; but again the underlying hush and expectation. ‘The whole thing was brought to light by the vigilance and integrity of one man – Nicholas Quinn. Now, precisely when Quinn made his discovery we shall perhaps never know for certain; but I should guess it may well have been at the reception given by the Al-jamara officials, when the drink was flowing freely, when some of the guilty were less than discreet, and when Quinn read things on the lips of others so clearly that they might just as well have been shouted through a megaphone. And it was, I believe, as a direct result of Quinn’s deeply disturbing discovery that he was murdered – to stop him talking, and so ensure that those guilty of betraying public confidence should continue to draw their rewards – very considerable rewards, no doubt – from their partners in crime abroad. Furthermore, I think that in addition to telling the guilty party of what he knew, or at least of what he strongly suspected, Quinn told someone else: someone he firmly believed had absolutely nothing to do with the crooked practices that were going on. That someone was Philip Ogleby. There is evidence that Quinn had far too much to drink at the reception, and that Ogleby followed him out as he left. Again I am guessing. But I think it more than likely that Ogleby caught up with Quinn, and told him that he would be a fool to drive himself home in such a drunken condition. He may have offered to drive him home, I don’t know. But what is almost certain is that Quinn told Ogleby what he knew. Now, if Ogleby were in the racket himself, many of the things which were so puzzling about Quinn’s murder would begin to sort themselves out. Of all Quinn’s colleagues, Ogleby was the one person who had no alibi for the key period of Friday afternoon. He went back to the office after lunch, and he was there – or so he said – the rest of the afternoon. Now whoever killed Quinn had to be in the office both in the latter part of the morning, and again between half past-four and five; and if any single person from the office was guilty of murdering Quinn, there was only one genuine sus
pect – Ogleby, the very man in whom Quinn had confided.’

  There was a slight murmur around the table and one or two of the Syndics stirred uneasily in their chairs; but Morse resumed, and the effect was that of a conductor tapping his baton on the rostrum.

  ‘Ogleby lied to me when I questioned him about his exact whereabouts that Friday afternoon. I’ve been able to look back on the evidence he gave, since my Sergeant here’ – a few heads turned and Lewis sheepishly acknowledged his moment of glory – ‘took full notes at the time, and I can now see where Ogleby lied – where he had to lie. For example, he insisted that he was in the office at about 4.30 p.m., when not only Mr Roope but also Mr Noakes, the caretaker, could swear quite categorically that he wasn’t. Now, this I find very strange. Ogleby lied to me on the one point which seemed to prove his guilt. Why? Why did he say he was here all that afternoon? Why did he begin to tie the noose round his own neck? It’s not an easy question to answer, I agree. But there is an answer; a very simple answer: Ogleby was not lying. On that point, at least, he was telling the truth. He was here, although neither Roope nor Noakes saw him. And when I looked back on his evidence, I began to ask myself whether one or two other things, which on the face of it seemed obvious lies, were in fact nothing of the sort. So it was that I gradually began to understand exactly what had happened that Friday afternoon, and to realize that Ogleby was entirely innocent of the murder of Nicholas Quinn. The fact of the matter is that precisely because Ogleby was in the office on the afternoon of Friday, 21st November, he knew who had murdered Quinn; and because of this knowledge, he was himself murdered. Why Ogleby didn’t confide his virtually certain suspicions to me, I shall never really know. I think I can guess, but . . . Anyway, we can only be grateful that the murderer has been arrested and is now in custody at Police Headquarters. He has made a full statement.’ Morse pointed dramatically to the empty chair. ‘That’s where he usually sits, I believe. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, your own colleague, Christopher Roope.’