by Colin Dexter
‘I doubt it,’ said Morse. ‘Bartlett’s a very clever man, but basically he’s not as ruthless as someone like Roope. Anyway, he’s still got a lot on his mind. Certainly the trickier half of the plan is over, but he hasn’t finished yet. He must have left home at about ten past one, telling his wife – perfectly correctly – that he had to call in at the office before going off to his meeting in Banbury. But before he did that—’
‘He called in at Studio 2.’
‘Yes. Bartlett bought a ticket, had it torn through, asked the usherette where the “Gents” was, waited there a few minutes, and then nipped out when the girl in the ticket office was busy with one or two more clients. But after that things began to go awry. Not that Bartlett saw Monica Height – I’m pretty sure of that. But she saw him, coming out of Studio 2. Monica and Donald Martin, remember want to spend the afternoon together. They can’t go to her place, because her daughter’s home from school; they can’t go to his, because his wife’s there all the time; they can go somewhere in the car, but that’s hardly a romantic proposition on a rainy November afternoon. So they decide to go to the pictures. But they mustn’t be seen going in together; so Martin gets there fairly early, soon after the doors open, and buys a ticket for the rear lounge and sits there waiting. Monica’s due to come a few minutes later, and he’s straining his eyes and watching everybody who comes in. Now get this clear in your mind, Lewis. If Quinn had gone into Studio 2 that afternoon, Martin would certainly have seen him. He’d have seen Bartlett, too. And if he’d seen either of them, he wouldn’t have stayed. He’d have left immediately, waited discreetly outside for Monica, and told her the bad news. But he did no such thing! Now, put yourself in Monica’s shoes. When we questioned her – and Martin – one thing became quite clear: they’d seen the film; and they certainly wouldn’t have done that if any other member of the Syndicate had come in. There was only one explanation: Monica had seen something that, in the light of what she learned later, troubled her sorely. Yet whatever it was, it had not prevented her from joining Martin inside the cinema, all right? We can only draw one conclusion: she saw someone coming out. And that someone was Bartlett! He goes back to the Syndicate and he’s got a ticket. But where is he to leave it? He could leave it in Quinn’s room, because he’s got to go in there anyway to leave the note for Margaret Freeman, and to open the cabinets. Bit careless of Bartlett that, when you come to think of it . . .’ Morse shook his head as if a fly had alighted on his balding patch. But whatever was troubling him, he let it go. ‘Just remember that all this had to be planned meticulously in advance, and from this point onwards things had to be arranged to meet Roope’s convenience, not Bartlett’s. Roope has dutifully fixed himself up with a watertight alibi until late afternoon, but now he needs some plausible reason for visiting the Syndicate. He couldn’t know – nor could Bartlett – that not one of the graduate staff would be there; so it’s arranged that he will leave some papers in Bartlett’s office. You see, if anyone else is around, he hasn’t got much excuse poking around in Quinn’s office. He’ll have to go there later, of course, to get the anorak; but by then he’ll have been able to see the lie of the land and he can play things by ear. So they’ve decided between them that the cinema ticket and Quinn’s keys are to be left somewhere carefully concealed on Bartlett’s desk or in one of his drawers. Well? What happened then? Roope knocks on Bartlett’s door, gets no answer, goes in quickly, leaves his papers, and picks up the ticket and the keys. Easy. Originally the plan must have been for him to hang around somewhere, probably by the trees at the back, until the rest of the graduate staff went home. Then he would only have to nip in the back entrance, pick up the anorak from Quinn’s office, and drive off in Quinn’s car. But in fact it was easier than he could have hoped. Noakes, it’s true, was an unforeseen problem, but as things turned out this helped him enormously. Noakes was able to confirm that none of the graduate staff was in his office that afternoon. And when he told Roope that he was off upstairs for a cup of tea, the coast was clear – half an hour or so earlier than he’d expected it to be.’
‘And from then onwards it must have gone very much as you said before.’
‘Except for one thing. I suggested to Roope when we first brought him in that he’d pocketed the note from Quinn’s desk; but I don’t think he could have done. Otherwise I can think of no earthly reason why he had to phone Bartlett when he discovered the shattering information that Mrs Evans was going to return. It was the worst moment of the lot, I should think, and Roope almost panicked. The rain was sluicing down outside, and he couldn’t just dump the body and run for it. Mrs Greenaway – he must have seen her – was sitting in full view in the room upstairs with the curtains open, and there was only one way for Quinn’s body to be carted out, and that was by the front door of the garage. There was nothing to do but to wait; but he couldn’t wait there. He must have been feeling desperate when he rang up Bartlett; but Bartlett came up with the masterstroke – the note on Quinn’s desk! It was a wonderful piece of luck but, my God!, they needed some luck at that stage. Bartlett had only just got back from Banbury, but he drove off again almost immediately, called in at the Syndicate for the note, and met Roope as arranged at the shopping area behind Pinewood Close, where Roope had already bought the groceries. I suppose it must have taken Bartlett at least twenty minutes, but time was still on their side – just. Roope got back to Quinn’s, took off his muddy boots, left the note – and went out again. He must have got wet through; but imagine his immense relief, as he watched and waited, first to see Mrs Evans come and go, and then, almost miraculously, an ambulance draw up and take Mrs Greenaway off to the maternity hospital. The house was in darkness then; no one was about; the street lamp was broken; the curtain could go up on the last act. He carries Quinn’s body to the back door and into the house, puts it on the carpet by the chair in the living-room, arranges the sherry bottle and the glass on the coffee table, lights the fire – and Bob’s your uncle. He walks over the back field again, and catches a bus down to Oxford.’
Lewis reflected. Yes, that’s how it must have happened all right, but one thing still puzzled him mightily: ‘What about Ogleby? Where does he fit in?’
‘As I’ve told you, Lewis, a good deal of what Ogleby told us was true, and I think he was virtually certain that Bartlett had killed Quinn long before I ever—’
‘Why did he keep it all to himself, though?’
‘I dunno. I suppose he must have been trying to prove something to himself before—’
‘It doesn’t sound very convincing, sir.’
‘No, perhaps not.’ Morse stared out onto the yard and once again wondered why on earth Ogleby . . . Mm. There were still one or two loose ends that wouldn’t quite tie in. Nothing vital, though – and Lewis interrupted his thoughts.
‘Ogleby must have been a clever fellow, sir.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Remember he had a couple of leagues’ start on me.’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? He was in the office that afternoon.’
‘Must have been upstairs, then, because—’
‘No. That’s where you’re wrong. He must have been downstairs. And what’s more we know exactly where he was and when he was there. He must have realized when he finally got back from lunch that he was the only one of the graduates in the office, and that this was as good a chance as he was going to get to poke around in Bartlett’s room. Whether Quinn had told him that he suspected Bartlett and Roope, or just Bartlett – we can’t know for certain. But he’s got cause to suspect Bartlett, and he decides to do a bit of investigation. No one is going to come in, because no one’s there. At about 4.30 he hears voices outside – Roope’s and Noake’s – and he doesn’t want to get caught. Where’s the obvious place for him to hide, Lewis? In the small cloakroom just behind Bartlett’s desk, where I went the first afternoon we went to the office. Ideal! He just stands inside and waits; and he doesn’t have t
o wait long. But what does Ogleby find when he emerges from the cloakroom? He discovers that the cinema ticket and the keys which he’d found earlier have gone! His thoughts must have been in a complete whirl, and he daren’t leave Bartlett’s office. He hears Noakes in the corridor outside, and later he hears someone walking about, and a few doors opening and slamming to. And still he has to stay where he is. Anyway, he finally satisfies himself that it’s safe to come out, and the first thing he notices is that Quinn’s car has gone! Perhaps he looks into Quinn’s room, I don’t know. Has Quinn come in? And gone out again? I don’t know how much of the truth he suspected at that point – not much, perhaps; but he knows that Roope has taken some keys and a mysterious cinema ticket, a ticket which he has carefully copied into his diary. It’s his one piece of real evidence, and he does what I did. He rang Studio 2, and tried to find out—’
‘But he couldn’t. So he went along himself.’
Morse nodded. ‘And found nothing, poor blighter, except one thing: that in all probability the ticket he’d found must have been bought that very afternoon.’
‘Funny, isn’t it, sir? They were all there that afternoon.’
‘All except Quinn,’ corrected Morse sombrely. ‘Have you got your car here?’
‘Where are we going, sir?’
‘I think we’d better follow in Ogleby’s footsteps, and have a look around in Bartlett’s office.’
As Lewis drove him for the last time to the Syndicate building, Morse allowed his mind to come to tentative grips with the one or two slight inconsistencies (very slight, he told himself) that still remained. People did odd things on occasions; you could hardly expect a smoothly logical motive behind every action, could you? The machine was in good working order now, there was no doubt of that, the cogs fitting neatly and biting powerfully. Just a bit of grit in the works somewhere. Only a little bit, though . . .
In Cell No 2, the little Secretary sat on the bare bed, his mind, like Yeats’s long-legged fly, floating on silence.
WHO?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE SYNDICATE BUILDING had been locked up, and all the staff informed to stay away until further notice. Only Noakes was performing his wonted duties, and was on hand to let the two policemen in.
Seated at Bartlett’s desk, Morse amused himself by switching the red and green lights on and off. He seemed like a little lad with a new toy, and it was clear to Lewis that as usual he would have to do the donkey-work himself.
It was over half an hour later, after Lewis had methodically gone through the safe (and found nothing of interest) that Morse, who had hitherto been staring vacantly round the room, finally condescended to bestir himself. The top right-hand drawer of Bartlett’s desk had little to offer but neatly stacked piles of office notepaper, and Morse idly abstracted a sheet and surveyed the decimated graduate team:
T. G. Bartlett, PhD, MA Secretary
P. Ogleby, MA Deputy Secretary
G. Bland, MA
Miss M. M. Height, MA
D. J. Martin, BA
Mm. The typists had been instructed to strike through Bland’s name, and print in Quinn’s at the bottom. But that wouldn’t be necessary any longer. Just strike through the top three; much quicker . . . And then there were two . . . Would Miss Height be asked to take over? Advertise for new personnel? Or would the Syndicate just fold up? God knew that Donald Martin wasn’t going to make much of a Deputy if it were to carry on. What a wet he was! And God help the young men they might appoint if Monica twitched her bewitching backside at ’em! Morse took out his Parker pen and slowly crossed through the names: Dr Bartlett; Philip Ogleby; George Bland. Yes, just the two of them left – and now they could fornicate for a few months to their hearts’ content. A few months! Huh! That’s all Quinn had been there; not even long enough to get his name printed on the notepaper. Nicholas Quinn . . . Morse thought back for a few moments to the lip-reading class he’d attended. Would Quinn have been able to cope at the office if his hearing had failed him completely? No, perhaps not. Lip-reading might be a wonderful thing, but even the teacher of the class had made a mistake, hadn’t she? When he’d asked her . . .
Morse froze where he sat, and the blood seemed to surge away from his arms and from his shoulders, leaving the top of his body numbed and tingling. Oh God – no! No! Surely not! Oh Christ, oh Blessed Virgin Mary, oh all the Saints and all the Angels – no! His hand was shaking as he wrote out the two names on the notepaper, and he found it impossible to keep his voice steady.
‘Lewis! Drop whatever you’re doing. Go and stand over by the door and take this notepaper with you.’
A puzzled Lewis did as he was told. ‘What now, sir?’
‘I want you to read those two names to me – just using your lips. Don’t whisper them. Just mouth them, if you know what I mean.’
Lewis did his best.
‘Again,’ said Morse, and Lewis complied.
‘And again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again.’ Morse nodded and nodded and nodded and nodded, and there was a vibrant excitement in his voice as he spoke again. ‘Get your coat, Lewis. We’ve finished here.’
She would say nothing at all for a start, but Morse was merciless. ‘Did you clean the blood off?’ (He’d asked the question a dozen times already.) ‘My God, you must be blind if you can’t see what’s been happening. How many other women has he had? Who was he with last night? Don’t you know? Have you never suspected? Did you clean the blood off? Did you? Or did he? Don’t you understand? – I’ve got to know. Did you clean it off? I’ve got to know.’
Suddenly she broke down completely and burst into bitter, hysterical tears. ‘He said – there’d been – an accident. And he – he said he’d – tried – tried to help – until – the ambulance came. It was – it was in – in the Broad – just opposite – opposite Blackwells – and—’
The door opened and a man came in. ‘What the hell?’ His voice had the lash of a whip, and his eyes shone with a primitive, blazing madness. ‘What’s that fucking man Roope been telling you, you snooping bastard?’ He advanced on Morse, and lashed out wildly, whilst Mrs Martin rushed from the room with a piercing scream.
‘You should get yourself into better shape, Morse. You’re pretty flabby, you know.’
‘It’s the beer,’ mumbled Morse. ‘Ouch!’
‘That’s the last one. See me in a week’s time, and we’ll take ’em out. You’re all right.’
‘Bloody good job I had Lewis with me! Otherwise you’d have had another corpse.’
‘Good, was he?’
Morse smiled crookedly and nodded. ‘Christ, you should have seen him, doc!’
In Morse’s office the next morning it was Lewis’s turn to grin. ‘Must be a bit tricky talking, sir – with all those stitches round your mouth.’
‘Mm.’
‘Well? Tell me, then.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘What finally put you on to Martin?’
‘Well, it’s what I said before, though I didn’t really have a clue what I was talking about. I told you the key to this case lay in the fact that Quinn was deaf. And so it was. But I kept on thinking what a marvel he must have become at lip-reading, and I overlooked the most obvious thing of all: that even the best lip-reader in the world is sometimes going to make a few mistakes; and Quinn did just that. He saw Roope talking to the sheik, and he read a name wrongly on his lips. I learned from the lip-reading class that the commonest difficulty for the deaf is between the consonants “p”, “b” and “m”, and if you mouth the words “Bartlett” and “Martin”, there’s very little difference on the lips. The “B” and the “M” are absolutely identical, and the second part of each of the names gets swallowed up in the mouth somewhere. But that’s not all. It was Doctor Bartlett, and Donald Martin. Just try them again. Very little difference to see; and if you put the two names together, there’s every excuse for a deaf person mixing them up. You see, Roope would never have called th
e Secretary “Tom”, would he? He’d never been on Christian name terms with him, and he never would be. He’d have called him “Bartlett” or “Doctor Bartlett”. And the sheik would almost certainly have given him his full title. But Martin – well, he was one of them; one of the boys. He was Donald Martin.’
‘Bit of a jump in the dark, if you ask me.’
‘No, it wasn’t. Not really. There were one or two loose ends that somehow refused to tuck themselves away, and I had an uneasy feeling that I might have got it all wrong. As you yourself said, it was so much out of character. Bartlett’s spent so much of his life building up the work of the Syndicate that it’s very difficult to see him stooping to the sort of corruption we’ve got in this case – let alone murder. But I still couldn’t see in what other direction the facts were pointing. Not, that is, until I suddenly saw the light as we sat in Bartlett’s office, and then all the loose ends seemed to tidy themselves up automatically. Just think. Quinn discovered – or so he believed – that Bartlett was crooked, and he rang him up. Rang him up, Lewis! You can guess how Quinn dreaded ringing anyone up. The fact of the matter was that he couldn’t face Bartlett with it any other way, because he just couldn’t believe that he was guilty.’
‘Did Quinn tell Bartlett that he suspected Roope as well?’
‘I should think so. Quinn must have been a man remarkably free from any deception, and he probably told both Bartlett and Roope everything he suspected.’
‘But why didn’t Bartlett do something about it?’
‘He must have thought that Quinn had got everything cock-eyed, mustn’t he? Quinn was accusing him – the Secretary! – of swindling the Syndicate; and if Quinn was totally wrong about himself, why should he think that Quinn was right about Roope?’
Lewis shook his head slowly. ‘All a bit thin, if you ask me, sir.’