by Colin Dexter
He reached for the binoculars now and focused on an interesting specimen pecking away at the grass below the peanuts: a small bird, with a greyish crown, dark-brown bars across the dingy russet of its back, and paler underparts. As he watched, he sought earnestly to memorize this remarkable bird's characteristics, so as to be able to match its variegated plumage against the appropriate illustration in the Guide.
Plenty of time for that though.
He leaned back once more and rejoiced in the radiant warmth of Schwarzkopf's voice, following the English text that lay open on his lap: “You holy Art, when all my hope is shaken …”
When, too, a few moments later, his mood of pleasurable melancholy was shaken by three confident bursts on a front-door bell that to several of his neighbors sounded considerably over-decibeled, even for the hard-of-hearing.
Chapter Two
When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for promotion, he was wont to scribble in the margin against any particular name: “Is he lucky, though?”
(Felix Kirkmarkham, The Genius ofNapoleon)
“Not disturbing you?”
Morse made no direct reply, but his resigned look would have been sufficiently eloquent for most people.
Most people.
He opened the door widely—perforce needed so to do—in order to accommodate his unexpected visitor within the comparatively narrow entrance.
“I am disturbing you.”
“No, no! It's just that…”
“Look, matey!” (Chief Superintendent Strange cocked an ear toward the lounge.) “I don't give a dam if I'm disturbing you; pity about disturbing old Schubert, though.”
For the dozenth time in their acquaintance, Morse found himself quietly re-appraising the man who first beached and then readjusted his vast bulk in an armchair, with a series of expiratory grunts.
Morse had long known better than to ask Strange whether he wanted a drink, alcoholic or nonalcoholic. If Strange wanted a drink, of either variety, he would ask for it, immediately and unambiguously. But Morse did allow himself one question:
“You know you just said you didn't give a dam. Do you know how you spell ‘dam’?”
“You spell it ‘d—a—m.’ Tiny Indian coin—that's what a dam is. Surely you knew that?”
For the thirteenth time in their acquaintance …
“Is that a single malt you're drinking there, Morse?”
It was only after Morse had filled, then refilled, his visitor's glass that Strange came to the point of his evening call.
“The papers—even the tabloids—have been doing me proud. You read The Times yesterday?”
“I never read The Times.”
“What? The bloody paper's there—there!—on the coffee table.”
“Just for the crossword—and the Letters page.”
“You don't read the obituaries?”
“Well, perhaps just a glance sometimes.”
“To see if you're there?”
“To see if some of them are younger than me.”
“I don't follow you.”
“If they are younger, so a statistician once told me, I've got a slightly better chance of living on beyond the norm.”
“Mm.” Strange nodded vaguely. “You frightened of death?”
“A bit.”
Strange suddenly picked up his second half-full tumbler of Scotch and tossed it back at a draught like a visitor downing an initiatory vodka at the Russian Embassy.
“What about the telly, Morse? Did you watch Newsroom South-East last night?”
“I've got a TV—video as well. But I don't seem to get round to watching anything and I can't work the video very well.”
“Really? And how do you expect to understand what's going on in the great big world out there? You're supposed to know what's going on. You're a police officer, Morse!”
“I listen to the wireless—”
“Wireless? Where've you got to in life, matey? ‘Radio’—that's what they've been calling it these last thirty years.”
It was Morse's turn to nod vaguely as Strange continued:
“Good job I got this done for you, then.”
Sorry, sir. Perhaps I am a bit behind the times—as well as The Times.
But Morse gave no voice to these latter thoughts as he slowly read the photocopied article that Strange had handed to him. Morse always read slowly.
Had Morse's eyes narrowed slightly as he read the last few lines? If they had, he made no reference to whatever might have puzzled or interested him there.
“I trust it wasn't you who split the infinitive, sir?”
“You never suspected that, surely? We're all used to sloppy reporting, aren't we?”
Morse nodded as he handed back the photocopied article.
“No! Keep it, Morse—I've got the original.”
“Very kind of you, sir, but…”
“But it interested you, perhaps?”
“Only the bit at the end, about the Radcliffe.”
“Why's that?”
“Well, as you know, I was in there myself—after I was diagnosed.”
“Christ! You make it sound as if you're the only one who's ever been bloody diagnosed!”
Morse held his peace, for his memory needed no jogging: Strange himself had been a patient in the selfsame Radcliffe Infirmary a year or so before his own hospitalization. No one had known much about Strange's troubles. There had been hushed rumors about “en-docrinological dysfunction”; but not everyone at Police HQ was happy about spelling or pronouncing or identifying such a polysyllabic ailment.
“You know why I brought that cutting, Morse?”
“No! And to be honest with you, I don't much care. I'm on furlough, you know that. The quack tells me I'm run down—blood sugar far too high—blood pressure far too high. Says I need to have a quiet little rest-cure and try to forget the great big world out there, as you call it.”
“Some of us can't forget it though, can we?” Strange spoke the words very softly, and Morse got to his feet and turned off the CD player.
“Not one of your greatest triumphs that case, was it?”
“One of the few—very few, Morse—I got no-bloody-where with. And it wasn't exactly mine, either, as you know. But it was my responsibility, that's all. Still is.”
“What's all this got to do with me?”
Strange further expanded his gargantuan girth as he further expounded:
“I thought, you know, with the wife … and all that… I thought it'd help to stay in the Force another year. But…”
Morse nodded sympathetically. Strange's wife had died very suddenly a year previously, victim of a coronary thrombosis which should surely never have afflicted one so slim, so cautious, so physically fit. She'd been an unlovely woman, Mrs. Strange—outwardly timid and inwardly bullying; yet a woman to whom by all accounts Strange had been deeply attached. Friends had spoken of a “tight” marriage; and most agreed that the widower would have been wholly lost on his own, at least for some while, had he jacked things in (as he'd intended) the previous September. And in the end he'd been persuaded to reconsider his position—and to continue for a further year. But he'd been uneasy back at HQ: a sort of supernumerary Super, feeling like a retired schoolmaster returning to a Common Room. A mistake. Morse knew it. Strange knew it.
“I still don't see what it's got to do with me, sir.”
“I want the case reopened—not that it's ever been closed, of course. It worries me, you see. We should have got further than we did.”
“I still—”
“I'd like you to look at the case again. If anyone can crack it, you can. Know why? Because you're just plain bloody lucky, Morse, that's why! And I want this case solved.”
Chapter Three
Which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him
at midnight and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves.
And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not:
the door is now shut; I cannot rise and give thee. I
say unto you, though he will not rise and give him,
because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity
he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.
(St. Luke, ch. XI, vv. 5-8
Lucky?
Morse had always believed that luck played a bigger part in life than was acknowledged by many people—certainly by those distinguished personages who saw their personal merit as the only cause of their appropriate eminence. Yet as he looked back over his own life and career Morse had never considered his own lot a particularly lucky one, not at least in what folk referred to as the affairs of the heart. Strange may have had a point though, for without doubt his record with the Thames Valley CID was the envy of most of his colleagues—his success rate the result, as Morse analyzed the matter, of all sorts of factors: a curious combination of hard thinking, hard drinking (the two, for Morse, being synonymous), hard work (usually undertaken by Sergeant Lewis), and, yes, a sprinkling here and there of good fortune. The Romans had poured their libations not only to Jupiter and Venus and their associate deities in the Pantheon, but also to Fortuna, the goddess of good luck.
Lucky, then?
Well, a bit.
It was high time Morse said something:
“Why the Lower Swinstead murder? What's wrong with the Hampton Poyle murder, the Cowley murder … ?”
“Nothing to do with me, either of ‘em.”
“That's the only reason then? Just to leave a clean slate behind you?”
For a few moments Strange appeared uncomfortable: “It's partly that, yes, but…”
“The Chief Constable wouldn't look at any new investigation—not a serious investigation.”
“Not unless we had some new evidence.”
“Which in our case, as the poet said, we have not got.”
“This fellow that rang—”
“No end of people ring. We both know that, sir.”
“—rang twice. He knows something. I'm sure of it.”
“Did you speak to him yourself?”
“No. He spoke to the girl on the switchboard. Didn't want to be put through to anybody, he said. Just wanted to leave a message.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
“A'he,'you say?”
“Not much doubt about that.”
“Surely from the recordings… ?”
“We can't record every crazy sod who rings up and asks what the bloody time is, you know that!”
“Not much to go on.”
“Twice, Morse? The first time on the anniversary of the murder? Come off it! We've got a moral duty to reopen the case. Can't you understand that?”
Morse shook his head. “Two anonymous phone calls? Just isn't worth the candle.”
And suddenly—why was this?—Strange seemed at ease again as he sank back even further in his chair:
“You're right, of course you are. The case wouldn't be worth re-opening—unless” (Strange paused for effect, his voice now affable and bland) “unless our caller—identity cloaked in anonymity, Morse—had presented us with some … some new evidence. And, after my appeal, my nationally reported appeal, we're going to get some more! I'm not just thinking of another telephone call from our friend either, though I'm hopeful about that. I'm thinking of information from members of the public, people who thought the case was forgotten, people whose memories have had a jog, people who were a bit reluctant, a bit afraid, to come forward earlier on.”
“It happens,” conceded Morse.
The armchair creaked as Strange leaned forward once more, smiling semibenignly, and holding out his empty tumbler: “Lovely!”
After refilling the glasses, Morse asked the obvious question:
“Tell me this, sir. You had two DIs on the case originally—”
“Three.”
“—several DSs, God knows how many DCs and PCs and WPCs—”
“No such thing now. All the women are PCs—no sex discrimination these days. By the way, you were never guilty of sexual harassment, were you?”
“Seldom. The other way round, if anything.”
Strange grinned as he sipped his Scotch. “Go on!”
“As I say, you had all those people on the case. They studied it. They lived with it. They—”
“Got nowhere with it.”
“Perhaps it wasn't altogether their fault. We're never going to solve everything. It's taken these mathematicians over three hundred years to solve Fermat's Last Theorem.”
“Mm.” Strange waggled his tumbler in front of him, holding it up toward the light, like a judge at the Beer Festival at Olympia.
“Just like the color of my urine specimens at the Radcliffe.”
“Tastes better, though.”
“Listen. I'm not a crossword wizard like you. Sometimes I can't even finish the Mirror coffee-break thing. But I know one thing for sure. If you get stuck over a clue—”
“As occasionally even the best of us do.”
“—there's only one way to solve it. You go away, you leave it, you forget it, you think of the teenage Brigitte Bardot, and then you go back to it and—Eureka! It's like trying to remember a name: the more you think about it the more the bloody thing sinks below the horizon. But once you forget about it, once you come to it a second time, fresh—”
“I've never come to it a first time, apart from those early couple of days—you know that. I was on another case! And not particularly in the pink either, was I? Not all that long out of hospital myself.”
“Morse! I've got to reopen this case. You know why.”
“Try someone else!”
“I want you to think about it.”
“Look.” A note of exasperation had crept into Morse's voice. “I'm on furlough—I'm tired—I'm sleeping badly—I drink too much—I'm beholden to no one—I've no relatives left—I can't see all that much purpose in life—”
“You'll have me in tears in a minute.”
“I'm only trying to say one thing, sir. Count me out!”
“You won't even think about it?”
“No.”
“You do realize that I don't need to plead with you about this? I don't want to pull rank on you, Morse, but just remember that I can. All right?”
“Try someone else, sir, as I say.”
“OK. Forget what I just said. Let's put it this way. It's a favor I'm asking, Morse—a personal favor.”
“What makes you think I'll still be here?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
But Morse, it appeared, was barely listening as he stared out of the window on to his little patch of greenery where a small bird with a grey crown and darkish-brown bars across its back had settled beneath the diminishing column of peanuts.
“Look!” (He handed the binoculars to Strange.) “Few nuts—and some of these rare species decide to take up special residence. I shall have to check up on the plumage but…”
Strange had already focused the binoculars with, as it seemed to Morse, a practiced familiarity.
“Know anything about bird-watching, sir?”
“More than you, I shouldn't wonder.”
“Beautiful little fellow, isn't he?”
“She!”
“Pardon?”
“Immature female of the species.”
“What species?”
“Passer domesticus, Morse. Can't you recognize a bloody house sparrow when you see one?”
For the fourteenth time Morse found himself reappraising the quirkily contradictory character that was Chief Superintendent Strange.
“And you'll at least think about things? You can promise me that, surely?”
Morse nodded weakly.
And Strange smiled comfortably. “I'm glad about that. And you'll be pleased about one thing. You'll have Sergeant Lewis along with you. I… did have a word with him, just before I came here, and he's—”
“You mean
you've already …”
Strange flicked a stubby finger against his empty, expensive, cut-glass tumbler: “A little celebration, perhaps?”
Chapter Four
He and the sombre, silent Spirit met—
They knew each other both for good and ill;
Such was their power, that neither could forget
His former friend and future foe; but still
There was a high, immortal, proud regret
In either's eye, as if ‘twere less their will
Than destiny to make the eternal years
Their date of war, and their “Champ Clos” the spheres.
(Byron, The Vision of Judgment, XXXII)
It is possible for persons to be friendly toward each other without being friends. It is also possible for persons to be friends without being friendly toward each other. The relationship between Morse and Strange had always been in the latter category.
“Read through this as well!” Strange's tone was semiperemptory as he thrust a folded sheet of ruled A4 across at Morse, in the process knocking his glass on to the parquet flooring. Where it broke into many pieces.
“Ah! Sorry about that!”
Morse rose reluctantly to fetch brush and pan from the kitchen.
“Could have been worse, though,” continued Strange. “Could have been full, eh?”
As Morse carefully swept up the slivers of the cut-glass tumbler—originally one of a set of six (now three) which his mother had left him—he experienced an irrational anger and hatred wholly disproportionate to the small accident which had occurred. But he counted up to twenty and was gradually feeling better, even as Strange extolled the bargain he'd seen in the Covered Market recently: glasses for only 50p apiece.
“Better not have any more Scotch, I suppose.”
“Not if you're driving, sir.”
“Which I'm bloody not. I'm being driven. And if I may say so, it's a bit rich expecting me to take lessons in drink-driving from you! But you're right, we've had enough.”