by Colin Dexter
A further count, though this time only to ten, prolonged Morse's invariably slow reading of the two handwritten paragraphs, and he said nothing as he finally put the sheet aside.
It was Strange who spoke:
“Perhaps, you know, on second thoughts, we might, er … anither wee dram?”
“Not for me, sir.”
“That was meant to be the ‘royal we,’ Morse.”
Morse decided that a U-turn was merely a rational readjustment of a previously mistaken course, and he obliged accordingly—for both of them, with Strange's measure poured into one of the cheap-looking wineglasses he'd bought a few weeks earlier from the Covered Market, for only 50p apiece.
“Is this” (Morse pointed to the paper) “what our dutiful duty sergeant transcribed from the phone calls?”
“Well, not quite, no.” (Strange seemed curiously hesitant.) “That's what I wrote down, as far as I—we—could fix the exact words. Very difficult business when you get things secondhand, garbled—”
Morse interrupted. “No problem, surely? We do record everything that comes into HQ.”
“Not so easy as that. Some of these recordings are poor-quality reception; and when, you know, when somebody's speaking quietly, muffled sort of voice …”
Morse smiled thinly as he looked directly across at his superior officer. “What you're telling me is that the recording equipment packed up, and there's no trace.”
“Anything mechanical packs up occasionally.”
“Both occasions?”
“Both occasions.”
“So all you've got to rely on is the duty sergeant.”
“Right.”
“Atkinson, was that?”
“Er, yes.”
“Isn't he the one who's been taken off active duties?”
“Er, yes.”
“Because he's become half-deaf, I heard.”
“It's not a joke, Morse! Terrible affliction, deafness.”
“Would you like me to have a word with him myself?” For some reason Morse's smile was broader now.
“I've already, er …”
“Were you at home, sir, when this anonymous caller rang you?”
Strange shifted uncomfortably in the chair, finally nodding slowly.
“I thought you were ex-directory, sir.”
“You thought right.”
“How did he know your number then?”
“'ow the'ell do I know!”
“The only people who'd know would be your close friends, family… ?”
“And people at HQ,” added Strange.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Well, for starters … have you got my telephone number?”
Morse walked out into the entrance hall and returned with a white-plastic telephone index, on which he pressed the letter “S,” then pushed the list of names and numbers there under the half-lenses now perched on Strange's nose.
“Not changed, has it?”
“Got an extra ‘five’ in front of it. But you'd know that, wouldn't you?” The eyes over the top of the lenses looked shrewdly and steadily up at Morse.
“Yes. It's just the same with my number.”
“Do you think I should get a tap on my phone?”
“Wouldn't do any harm, if he rings again.”
“When he rings again.”
“Hoaxer! Sure to be.”
“Well-informed hoaxer, then.” Strange pointed to the paper still on the arm of Morse's chair. “A bit in the know, wouldn't you say? Someone on the inside, perhaps? You couldn't have found one or two things referred to there in any of the press reports. Only the police'd know.”
“And the murderer,” added Morse.
“And the murderer,” repeated Strange.
Morse looked down once more at the notes Strange had made in his appropriately outsized, spidery handwriting:
Call One
That Lower Swinstead woman—nickers up and down like a yo-yo—a lot of paying clients and a few non-paying clients like me. Got nowhere much with the case did you—incompetant lot. For starters you wondered if it was one of the locals, didn't you? Then for the main course you wasted most of your time with the husband. Then you didn't have any sweet because you'd run out of money. Am I right? Idiots, the lot of you. No! Don't interrupt! (Line suddenly dead.)
Call Two
Now don't interrupt this time, see? Don't say a dickybird! Like I said, that woman had more pricks than a secondhand dart-board, mine included, but it's not me who had anything to do with it. Want a clue? There's somebody coming out of the clammer in a fortnight—listen! He's one of your locals, isn't he? See what I mean? You cocked it all up before and you're lucky bastards to have another chance. (Line suddenly dead.)
Morse looked up to find himself the object of Strange's steady gaze.
“It's incompetent, sir, with an ‘e'.”
“Thank you very much!”
“And most people put a ‘k’ on ‘knickers.'”
Strange smiled grimly. “And Yvonne Harrison put an embargo on knickers, however you spell ‘em!”
He struggled to his feet. “My office Monday morning—first thing!”
“Eight o'clock?”
“Nine-thirty?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“Now get back to your Schubert—though I'm surprised you weren't listening to Wagner. Just the job, The Ring, for a long holiday, you know. Especially the Solti recording.”
Morse watched his visitor waddling somewhat unsteadily toward the police car parked confidently in the “Resident's Only” parking area. (Yes! Morse had mentioned the apostrophe to the Chairman of the Residents' Welfare Committee.)
He closed the front door and for a few moments stood there motionless, acknowledging with a series of almost imperceptible nods the simple truth about the latest encounter between two men who knew each other well, both for good and ill:
Game, Set, Match, to Strange.
Or was it?
For there was something about what he had just learned, something he had not yet even begun to analyze, that was perplexing him slightly.
The following Sunday was a pleasant summer's day; and along with three-quarters of the population of Hampshire, Morse decided to go down to Bournemouth. It took him over an hour to park the Jaguar; and it was a further half-hour before he reached the seafront where carloads and busloads of formidable families were negotiating rights to a couple of square meters of Lebens-raum. But moving away from the ice-cream emporia, Morse found progressively fewer and fewer day-trippers as he walked toward the further reaches of the shoreline. He'd always told himself he enjoyed the changing moods of Homer's deep-sounding sea. And he did so now.
Soon, he found himself standing alongside the slowly lapping water, debating with himself whether the tide was just coming in or just going out, and staring down at the glasslike circular configuration of a jellyfish.
“Is it dead?”
Until she spoke, Morse had been unaware of the auburn-haired young woman who now stood beside him, almost wearing a bikini.
“I don't know. But in the absence of anything better to do, I'm going to stand here till the tide comes in and find out.”
“But the tide's going out, surely?”
Morse nodded somewhat wistfully. “You may be right.”
“Poor jellyfish!”
“Mm!” Morse looked down again at the apparently doomed, transparent creature at his feet: “How very sad to be a jellyfish!”
He'd sounded a comparatively interesting man, and the woman would have liked to stay there awhile. But she forced herself to forget the intensely blue eyes which momentarily had held her own and walked away without a further word, for she felt a sudden, slight suspicion concerning the sanity of the man who stood there staring at the ground.
Chapter Five
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
(Afghan proverb)
It was on Tuesday the 14th, the day before Strange'
s visit to Morse, that Lewis had presented himself at the Chief Superintendent's office in Thames Valley Police HQ, in punctual obedience to the internal phone call.
“Something for you, Lewis. Remember the Lower Swinstead murder?”
“Well, vaguely, yes. And I've seen the bits in the paper, you know, about the calls. I was never really on the case myself though. We were on another—”
“Well, you're on it now—from next Monday morning, that is—once Morse gets back from Bermuda.”
“He hasn't left Oxford, has he?”
“Joke, Lewis.” Strange beamed with bonhomie, settling his chin into his others.
“The Chief Inspector's agreed?”
“Not much option, had he? And you enjoy working with the old sod. I know you do.”
“Not always.”
“Well, he always enjoys working with you.”
A strangely gratified Lewis made no reply.
“So?”
“Well, if it's OK with Morse …”
“Which it is.”
“I'll give him a ring.”
“No, you won't. He's tired, isn't he? Needs a rest. Give him a bit of time to himself—you know, crosswords, booze …”
“Wagner, sir. Don't forget his precious Wagner. He's just bought another recording of that Ring Cycle stuff, so he told me.”
“Which recording's that?”
“Conductor called ‘Sholty,’ I think.”
“Mm …” Strange pointed to three bulging green box-files stacked on the side of his desk. “Little bit of reading there. All right? Chance for you to get a few moves ahead of Morse.”
Lewis got to his feet, picked up the files, and held them awkwardly in front of him, his chin clamping the top one firm.
“I've never been even one move in front of him, sir.”
“No? Don't you underestimate yourself, Lewis! Let others do it for you.”
Lewis managed a good-natured grin. “Not many people manage to get a move ahead of Morse.”
“Oh, really? Just a minute! Let me hold the door for you … And you're not quite right about what you just said, you know. There are one or two people who just occasionally manage it.”
“Perhaps you're right, sir. I've just not met one of ‘em, that's all.”
“You have though,” said Strange quietly.
Lewis's eyes turned quizzically as he maneuvered his triple burden through the door.
That same evening, Lewis had just finished his eggs and chips, had trawled the last slice of brown bread across the residual HP sauce, and was swallowing the last mouthful of full-cream cold milk, when he heard the call from above:
“Dad? Da—ad?”
Lewis looked down at the (presumably problematical) first sentence of his son's A-level French Prose Composition: “Another bottle of this excellent wine, waiter!”
“Easy enough, that, isn't it?”
“What gender's'bottle’?”
“How am I supposed to know? What do you think I bought you that dictionary for?”
“Left it at school, didn't I!”
“So?”
“So you mean you don't know?”
“You're brighter than I thought, son.”
“Can't you guess?”
“Either masculine or feminine, sure to be.”
“That's great.”
“Feminine, say? So it's, er, 'Garçon! Une autre bouteille de cette—’”
“No! You're useless, Dad! If you say 'Une autre bouteille,’ you mean a different bottle of wine.”
“Oh.”
“You say 'Encore une bouteille de’ whatever it is.”
“Why do you ever ask me to help you?”
“Agh! Forget it! Like I say, you're bloody useless.”
Lewis had never himself read Bleak House and, unlike Morse, would not have known the soothing secret of counting up to however-many. And in truth he felt angry and belittled as he walked silently down the stairs, picked up the box-files from the table in the entrance hall, walked past the living room, where Mrs. Lewis sat deeply submerged in a TV soap, and settled himself down at the kitchen table, where he began to acquaint himself with the strangely assorted members of the Harrison family—wife, husband, daughter, son—four of the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.
He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne, the mother, who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead, Oxon.
Chapter Six
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
(Oscar Wilde)
At first he'd felt some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4:30 P.M.
At which time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress's study.
“Come in!”
She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him, across the desk.
Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early sixties—the internationally renowned chief-guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary's Diabetes Centre in Oxford.
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.
“Look, we're probably going to be together at lots of do's these next few months—years, perhaps—so, please, let's forget this ‘Sir’ business, shall we? Please call me'Robert.'”
Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.
Not for long.
“I've sat in with you once or twice, haven't I?”
“Three times.”
“And I think you're going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I mean?”
“Thank you.”
“But you're not quite good enough yet.”
“I'd hoped I was improving.”
“Certainly. But you're still strangely naive, I'm sorry to say. You seem to believe everything your patients tell you!”
“There's not much else to go on, is there?”
“Oh, but there is! There's a certain healthy and necessary skepticism; and then there's experience. You'll soon realize all this. What I'm saying is that you might as well learn it now rather than later.”
“Is there anything particular… ?”
“Things, plural. I'm thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their alcohol intake. You see, the only thing they can't fool you about is their weight.”
“And their blood pressure.”
Turner smiled gently at his pupil. “I haven't got quite as much faith as you in our measurements of blood pressure.”
“But they don't all of them make their answers up.”
“Not all of them, no. It's just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all tend to say we're fine, even if we're feeling lousy. Don't we?”
“I suppose so.”
“And our main job” (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) “is to give information—and to exert some sort of influence—about the way our patients cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness.”
Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.
And he continued: “There are a good many patients here who are professional liars. Some of them I've known for years, and they've known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn't matter—because we know we're telling each other lies … Anyway, that's enough about that.” (Turner looked down at h
er folder.) “I see you've got Mr. David Mackenzie on your list next Monday. I'll sit in with you on him. I think he did once tell me his date of birth correctly, but he makes everything else up as he goes along. You'll enjoy him!”
Again Sarah said nothing. And she was preparing to leave when Turner changed the subject abruptly, and in an unexpected direction.
Or was it unexpected?
“I couldn't help seeing the articles in the newspapers … and the department was talking about them.”
Sarah nodded.
“Would it mean a lot to you if they found who murdered your mother?”
“What do you think?” The tone of her voice bordered almost on the insolent, but Turner interpreted her reply tolerantly, for it was (he knew) hardly the most intelligent question he'd ever formulated.
“Let's just wish them better luck,” he said.
“Better brains, too!”
“Perhaps they'll put Morse on to it this time.”
Sarah's eyes locked steadily on his.
“Morse?”
“You don't know him?”
“No.”
“Heard of him, perhaps?” Turner's eyes grew suddenly shrewd on hers, and she hesitated before answering:
“Didn't my mother mention she'd nursed him somewhere?”
“Would you like to meet him, next time he comes in?”
“Pardon?”
“You didn't know he was diabetic?”
“We've got an awful lot of diabetics here.”
“Not too many like him, thank the Lord! Four hefty injections a day, and he informs me that he's devised a carefully calibrated dosage that exactly counterbalances his considerable daily intake of alcohol. And when I say considerable … Quite a dab hand, too, is Morse, at extrapolating his blood-sugar readings—backwards!”
“Isn't he worried about… about what he's doing to himself?”
“Why not ask him? I'll put him on your list.”
“Only if you promise to come along to monitor me.”
“With you around? Oh, no! Morse wouldn't like that.”
“How old is he?”