The Wench is Dead

by Colin Dexter

  Morse flicked open the index of the stout volume recording the misdeeds of Old Salopians, and his eye caught ‘Shropshire Union Canal (The)’. He turned idly to the page reference, and there read through the paragraph, and with growing interest. (Well done, Mrs Lewis!) The author was still most horribly enmeshed in his barbed-wire style, still quite incapable of calling a spade anything else but a broad-bladed digging-tool; but the message was clear enough:

  ‘With such an incidence of crime on the canals, it can scarcely be a source of surprise that we find countless instances of evasiveness, on the part of many of the boatmen, in matters such as the registering of names, both those of the boats they crewed and of their own persons. Specifically, with regard to the latter of these deceptions, we discover that many of those working both on the water and on the wharfs had a duality of names, and were frequently considerably better known by their ‘bye-names’ than by their christened nomenclature. For varied sociological reasons (some of which we have yet to analyse) it can more than tentatively be suggested that boatmen as a generality were likely to be potentially predisposed to the regular commission of crime, and certain it must be held that their profession (if such it may be called) afforded ample opportunities for the realization of such potentiality. Sometimes they sold parts of their cargoes, replacing, for example, quantities of coal with similar quantities of rocks or stone; frequently we come across recorded instances (see esp. SCL, Canal and Navigable Waters Commission, 1842, Vol. IX, pp. 61–4, 72–5, 83–6, et passim) of crewmen drinking from their cargoes of fine wines and whiskies, and refilling the emptied bottles with water. Toll officials, too, do not always appear blameless in these affairs, and could occasionally be bribed into closing their eyes …’

  Morse’s eyes were beginning to close, too, and he laid the book aside. The point had been made: boatmen were a load of crooks who often nicked bits of their cargoes. Hence Walter Towns, aka Walter Thorold, and the rest. All as simple as that – once you knew the answers. Perhaps it would all be like that one day, in that Great Computer Library in the Sky, when the problems that had beset countless generations of sages and philosophers would be answered immediately, just by tapping in the questions on some celestial key-board.

  The youth with the portable saline-drip walked in, nodded to Morse, picked up a small TV control-panel from somewhere, and began flicking his way around the channels with, for Morse, irritating impermanence. It was time to get back to the ward.

  As he was leaving his eyes roamed automatically over the book-case, and he stopped. There, on the lower row, and standing side by side, were the titles Victorian Banbury and OXFORD (Rail Centres Series). Having extracted both, he walked back. Perhaps, if you kept your eyes open, you didn’t need any Valhallan VDUs at all.

  Walter Algernon Greenaway had been trying, with little success, to get going with the Oxford Times crossword. He had little or no competence in the skill, but it had always fascinated him; and when the previous day he had watched Morse complete The Times crossword in about ten minutes, he felt most envious. Morse had just settled back in his bed when Greenaway (predictably known to his friends, it appeared, as ‘Waggie’) called across.

  ‘You’re pretty good at crosswords—’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘You know anything about cricket?’

  ‘Not much. What’s the clue?’

  ‘“Bradman’s famous duck”.’

  ‘How many letters?’

  ‘Six. I saw Bradman at the Oval in 1948. He got a duck then.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about cricket,’ said Morse. ‘Just think about Walt Disney.’

  Greenaway licked the point of his pencil, and thought, unproductively, about Walt Disney.

  ‘Who’s the setter this week?’ asked Morse.

  ‘Chap called “Quixote”.’

  Morse smiled. Coincidence, wasn’t it! ‘What was his Christian name?’

  ‘Ah! I have you, sir!’ said Waggie, happily entering the letters at 1 across.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, it is all lying in magic preservation in the pages of books

  (Thomas Carlyle)

  EMBARRAS DE RICHESSES – for Morse couldn’t have chosen a more informative couple of books if he’d sauntered all day round the shelves in the local Summertown Library.

  First, from Victorian Banbury, he gleaned the information that by about 1850 the long-distance stage-coach routes via Banbury to London had been abandoned, almost entirely as a result of the new railway service from Oxford to the capital. Yet, as a direct result of this service, coaches between Banbury and Oxford had actually increased, and regular and efficient transportation was readily available between Banbury and Oxford (only twenty miles to the south) during the 1850s and 1860s. Furthermore, the author gave full details of the actual stage-coaches that would have been available, on the day in question, and about which Joanna Franks must have made enquiry: quite certainly coach-horses would have been seen galloping southwards on three separate occasions in the earlier half of the following day, delivering passengers picked up at the Swan Inn, Banbury, to the Angel Inn in the High at Oxford. That for the sum of 2s/ld. Even more interesting for Morse was the situation pertaining at Oxford itself, where trains to Paddington, according to his second work of reference, were far more frequent, and far quicker, than he could have imagined. And presumably Joanna herself, at Banbury on that fateful day, had been presented with exactly the same information: no less than ten trains daily, leaving at 2.10 a.m., 7.50 a.m., 9 a.m., 10.45 a.m., 11.45 a.m., 12.55 p.m., 2.45 p.m., 4.00 p.m., 5.50 p.m., and 8.00 p.m. Embarras du choix. Admittedly, the fares seemed somewhat steep, with 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-class carriages priced respectively at 16s, 10s, and 6s, for the 60-odd-mile journey. But the historian of Oxford’s railways was fair-minded enough to add the fact that there were also three coaches a day, at least up until the 1870s, making the comparatively slow journey to London via the Henley and Reading turnpikes: The Blenheim and The Prince of Wales, each departing at 10.30 a.m., with The Rival an hour later, the fare being a ‘whole shilling’ less than the 3rd-class railway fare. And where did they finish up in the metropolis? It was quite extraordinary. The Edgware Road!

  So, for a few minutes Morse looked at things from Joanna’s point of view – a Joanna who (as he had no option but to believe) was in extremis. Arriving at Banbury, as she had, in the latish evening, she would very soon have seen the picture. No chance of anything immediately, but the ready opportunity of a stay overnight in Banbury, in one of the taverns along the quayside, perhaps. Not four-star AA accommodation – but adequate, and certainly costing no more than 2s or so. Then one of the coaches to Oxford next morning – the book of words mentioned one at 9.30 a.m., reaching Oxford at about 1 p.m. That would mean no difficulty at all about catching the 2.45 p.m. to Paddington – or one of the three later trains, should any accident befall the horses. Easy! If she had eventually made a firm decision to escape her tormentors for good, then the situation was straightforward. 2s overnight, say, 2s/1d coach-fare, 6s 3rd-class rail-fare – that meant that for about 10s she was offered a final chance of saving her life. And without much bother, without much expense, she could have done so.

  But she hadn’t. Why not? Received wisdom maintained that she hadn’t got a penny-piece to her name, let alone half a guinea. But had she nothing she could sell, or pawn? Had she no negotiable property with her? What had she got in those two boxes of hers? Nothing of any value whatsoever? Why, then, if that were so, could there ever have been the slightest suspicion of theft? Morse shook his head slowly. Ye gods! – how he wished he could have a quick look into one of those boxes!

  It was tea-time, and Morse was not aware that his wish had already been granted.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Magnus Alexander corpore parvus erat (Even Alexander the Great didn�
��t measure up to the height-requirement of the Police Force)

  (Latin Proverb)

  NORMAL SHIFTS FOR the staff at the JR2 were Early (07.45–15.45), Late (13.00–21.30) and Night (21.00– 08.15). Always more of an owl than a lark, Eileen Stanton shared none of the common objections that were levelled against the Night shift: born with a temperament slightly tinged with melancholy, she was perhaps a natural creature of the dark. But this particular week had been unusual. And that day she was on Late.

  Married at the age of nineteen and divorced at twenty, she was now, five years later, living out at Wantage with a man, fifteen years her senior, who had celebrated his fortieth birthday the previous evening (hence the re-arrangements). The party had gone splendidly until just after midnight when the celebrant himself had been involved in a pathetic little bout of fisticuffs, over her! Now, in films or on TV, after being knocked unconscious with a vicious blow from an iron bar, the hero has only to rub the sore spot for a couple of minutes before resuming his mission. But life itself, as Eileen knew, wasn’t like that – the victim was much more likely to end up in the ICU, with permanent brain-damage, to boot. Much more cruel. Like last night (this morning!) when her cohabitee had been clouted in the face, his upper lip splitting dramatically, and one of his front teeth being broken off at the root. Not good for his looks, or his pride, or the party, or Eileen, or anybody. Not good at all!

  For the umpteenth time her mind dwelt on that incident as she drove into Oxford, parked her applejack-green Metro in the Staff Only park of the JR2, and walked down to the Basement Cloak Room to change her clothes. It would do her good to get back on the Ward, she knew that. She’d found it easy enough so far to steer clear of any emotional involvement with her patients, and for the moment all she wanted was to get a few hours of dutiful nursing behind her – to forget the previous night, when she’d drunk a little too freely, and flirted far too flagrantly with a man she’d never even met before … No hangover – although she suddenly began to wonder if she did have a hangover after all: just didn’t notice it amid her other mental agitations. Anyway, it was high time she forgot all her own troubles and involved herself with other people’s.

  She’d noticed Morse (and he her) as he’d walked along to the Day Room; watched him walk back, half an hour later and spend the rest of the afternoon reading. Bookish sort of fellow, he seemed. Nice, though – and she would go and have a word with him perhaps once he put his books down. Which he didn’t.

  She watched him again, at 7.40 p.m., as he sat against the pillows; and more particularly watched the woman who sat beside him, in a dark-blue dress, with glints of gold and auburn in her hair, the regular small-featured face leaning forward slightly as she spoke to him. To Eileen the pair of them seemed so eager to talk to each other – so different from the conversational drought which descended on so many hospital visitations. Twice, even as she watched, the woman, in the middle of some animated little passage of dialogue, placed the tips of her fingers against the sleeve of his gaudy pyjamas, fingers that were slim and sinewy, like those of an executant musician. Eileen knew all about that sort of gesture! And what about him, Morse? He, too, seemed to be doing his level, unctuous best to impress her, with a combination of that happily manufactured half-smile and eyes that focused intently upon hers. Oh yes! She could see what each of them was feeling – nauseating couple of bootlickers! But she knew she envied them; envied especially the woman – Waggie’s clever-clogs of a daughter! From the few times she’d spoken to Morse, she knew that his conversation – and perhaps, she thought, his life, too – was so interesting. She’d met just a few other men like that – men who were full of fascinating knowledge about architecture, history, literature, music … all the things after which over these last few years she’d found herself yearning. How relieved she suddenly felt that most probably her swollen-lipped forty-year-old wouldn’t be able to kiss her that evening!

  A man (as she now realized) had been standing patiently at the desk.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Sergeant Lewis nodded and looked down at her. ‘Special instructions. I’ve got to report to the boss whenever I bring the Chief Inspector a bag of plastic explosive. You’re the boss tonight, aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on Sister Maclean!’

  Lewis bent forward and spoke softly. ‘It’s not me – it’s him! He says she’s an argumentative, bitchy old … old something.’

  Eileen smiled. ‘She’s not very tactful, sometimes.’

  ‘He’s, er – looks like he’s got a visitor for the moment.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better not interrupt, had I? He gets very cross sometimes.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Especially if …’

  Eileen nodded, and looked up into Lewis’s kindly face, feeling that menfolk weren’t quite so bad as she’d begun to think.

  ‘What’s he like – Inspector Morse?’ she asked.

  Christine Greenaway stood up to go, and Morse was suddenly conscious, as she stood so closely beside the bed, how small she was – in spite of the high-heeled shoes she habitually wore. Words came back to his mind, the words he’d read again so recently: ‘… petite and attractive figure, wearing an Oxford-blue dress …’

  ‘How tall are you?’ asked Morse, as she smoothed her dress down over her thighs.

  ‘How small am I, don’t you mean?’ Her eyes flashed and seemed to mock him. ‘In stockinged feet, I’m five feet, half an inch. And don’t forget that half-inch: it may not be very important to you, but it is to me. I wear heels all the time – so I come up to about normal, usually. About five three.’

  ‘What size shoes do you take?’

  ‘Threes. You wouldn’t be able to get your feet in them.’

  ‘I’ve got very nice feet,’ said Morse seriously.

  ‘I think I ought to be more worried about my father than about your feet,’ she whispered quietly, as she touched his arm once more, and as Morse in turn placed his own left hand so briefly, so lightly upon hers. It was a little moment of magic, for both of them.

  ‘And you’ll look up that—?’

  ‘I won’t forget.’

  Then she was gone, and only the smell of some expensive perfume lingered around the bed.

  ‘I just wonder,’ said Morse, almost absently, as Lewis took Christine’s place in the plastic chair, ‘I just wonder what size shoes Joanna Franks took. I’m assuming, of course, they had shoe-sizes in those days. Not a modern invention, like women’s tights, are they? – shoe-sizes? What do you think, Lewis?’

  ‘Would you like me to show you exactly what size she did take, sir?’

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others

  (La Rochefoucauld, Maxims)

  MORSE WAS INVARIABLY credited, by his police colleagues, with an alpha-plus intelligence, of a kind which surfaced rarely on the tides of human affairs, and which almost always gave him about six furlongs’ start in any criminal investigation. Whatever the truth of this matter, Morse himself knew that one gift had never been bestowed on him – that of reading quickly. It was to be observed, therefore, that he seemed to spend a disproportionately long time that evening – Christine gone, Lewis gone, Horlicks drunk, pills swallowed, injection injected – in reading through the photocopied columns from Jackson’s Oxford Journal. Christine had not mentioned to him that, dissatisfied with her hand-written notes, she had returned to the Central Library in the early afternoon and prevailed upon one of her vague acquaintances there to let her jump the queue and photocopy the original material directly from their bulky originals. Not that Morse, even had he known, would have exhibited any excessive gratitude. One of his weaknesses was his disposition to accept loyalty without ever really understanding, certainly not appreciating, the sacrifices that might be involved.

  When, as a boy, he had been shepherd
ed around various archaeological sites, Morse had been unable to share the passion of some fanatic drooling over a few (disintegrating) Roman bricks. Even then, it had been the written word, rather than the tangible artefact, which had pricked his curiosity, and promoted his subsequent delight in the ancient world. It was to be expected, therefore, that although Lewis’s quite extraordinary discovery was to prove the single most dramatic break-through in the supposed ‘case’, the sight of a sad-looking pair of shrivelled shoes and an even sadder-looking pair of crumpled knickers was, for Morse, a little anti-climactic. At least, for the present. As for Christine’s offerings, though, how wonderfully attractive and suggestive they were!

  From the newspaper records, it was soon clear that the Colonel had omitted no details of any obvious importance. Yet, as in most criminal cases, it was the apparently innocuous, incidental, almost irrelevant, details that could change, in a flash, the interpretation of accepted facts. And there were quite a few details here (to Morse, hitherto unknown) which caused him more than a millimetric rise of the eyebrows.

  First, reading between the somewhat smudged lines of the photocopied material, it seemed fairly clear that the charge of theft had probably been dropped at the first trial for the reason that the evidence (such as it was) had pointed predominantly to the youth, Wootton, therefore necessitating an individual prosecution – and that against a minor. If any of the other crewmen were involved, it was Towns (the man deported to Australia) who figured as the safest bet; and quite certainly no obvious evidence could be levelled against the two men eventually hanged for murder. What was it then that the young man’s covetous eyes may have sought to steal from Joanna Franks’s baggage? No answer emerged clearly from the evidence. But there was surely one thing, above all, that thieves went for, whether in 1859 or 1989: money.