Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  NEW CLUE TO OLD MURDER

  Information received by son in. Nobody knows who he Thames Valley Police

  seems was. Or she was. " 5 likely to prompt renewed en- ij^ difficult to

  disagree. Would '% Qi^/ quir^jb into the bizzarre murder we still be reading

  about the Ripof Mrs Yvonne Harrison just per if we knew who it was who over a

  year ago. murdered and mutilated a sucResidents of the small hamlet cession

  of prostitutes in the East of Lower Swinstead in Oxford- End of London in the

  1870s? As shire are bracing themselves for it is, his ideality remains un-

  Cy/ further statements and a fresh known, just like that of Yvonne's ^

  upsurge of media interest in the murderer.

  ^L ghastl^y murder of their former The villagers themselves are '~q/

  neighbour;' less than forthcoming, and seem Tom Biffen, landlord of the

  dubious about any new break- Maidens Arms, remains phi lo through in the

  case.

  "Let's just sophical however

  "You can't wish the police a bit better luck blame people, can you? Exactly

  this time round," says Mrs May the same as Jack the Ripper. Kennedy, who

  runs the surpris- Nobody knows who he was. ingly well-stocked village shop.

  That's why he's so interesting. And so say all of us. All of us, Same with

  who done Mrs Harri- that is, except the murderer.

  Chief Inspector Morse had not as yet encountered Simon Harrison; but he would

  have been reasonably impressed by the proof-reader's competence. Only

  reasonably, of course, since he himself was a man who somewhere, somehow, had

  acquired the aforementioned dimension of 'tedious pedandcism', and would have

  made three further amendments.

  And, of course, would have corrected that gross anachronism, since historical

  accuracy had engaged him from the age of ten, when he had taken it upon

  himself to memorize the sequence of the American presidents, and the dates

  of the kings and queens of England.

  37

  chapter eight Bankers an just like anybody else, Except richer (Ogden

  Nash, I'm a Stranger Here Myself) the london offices of the Swiss Helvetia

  Bank are tucked away discreetly just behind Sloane Square. The brass plaque

  pin-pointing visitors to these premises, albeit highly polished, is perhaps

  disproportionately small. Yet in truth the Bank has little need to impress

  its potential clients. On the contrary. Such clients have every need to

  impress the Bank.

  Just after 4 p. m. on Friday, 17 July, a smartly suited man in his late

  forties waved farewell to the uniformed guard at the security desk and walked

  out into the sunshine of a glorious summer's day.

  Traffic was already heavy; but that was of no concern to Frank Harrison, one

  of six Portfolio and Investment Managers of SHB (London). His company flat

  was only a few minutes' walk away in Pavilion Road.

  Earlier in the day he'd been very much what they paid him so handsomely for

  being shrewd, superior, trustworthy when his secretary had poured coffee for

  a small, grey-haired man and for his larger, much younger, cosmetically

  exquisite wife.

  "You realize that SHB deals principally with portfolio investments of, well,

  let's say, over a million dollars? Is that, er . ..?"

  The self-made citizen from South Carolina nodded. I think

  you can feel assured, sir, that we shall be able to meet that figure ah!

  fairly easily, shall't we, honey? "

  He'd taken his wife's heavily diamonded left hand in his own and smiled,

  smiled rather sweetly, as Harrison thought.

  And he himself had smiled, too rather sweetly, as he hoped as mentally he

  calculated the likely commission from his latest client.

  Almost managed a smile again now, as he stopped outside Sloane Square

  Underground Station and bought a copy of the Evening Standard, flicking

  through the sheets, almost immedi- lately finding the only item that appeared

  to interest him, then swiftly scanning the brief article before depositing

  the paper in the nearest litter bin. Had he been at all interested in horse-

  racing, he might have noticed that Carolina Cutie was running in the 4. 30

  at Kempton Park. But it had been many years since he had placed a bet with

  any bookie instead now spending many hours of each working day studying on

  his office's computer-screens the odds displayed from the London, New York,

  and Tokyo stock exchanges.

  Considerably safer.

  And recently he'd been rather lucky in the management of his clients'

  investments.

  And the bonuses were good.

  He let himself into his flat, tapped in the numbers on the burglar alarm, and

  walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large gin with a good deal

  of ice and very little tonic. But he'd never had any drinking problem

  himself. Unlike his wife. His murdered wife.

  Lauren had promised to be along about 6 p. m. " and she'd never been late.

  He would call a taxi .. . well, perhaps they'd spend an hour or so between

  the sheets first, although (if truth were told) he was not quite so keenly

  aware of her sexual magnetism as he had been a few months earlier. Passion

  was coming off the boil. It usually happened.

  On both sides, too. It had happened with Yvonne, with whom he'd scaled the

  39

  heights of sexual ecstasy, especially in the first few months of their

  marriage. Yet even during those kingfisher days he had been intermittently

  unfaithful to her; had woken with heart- aching guilt in the small hours of

  so many worryful nights until, that is, he had discovered what he had

  discovered about her; and until he had fallen in love with a woman who was

  living so invitingly close to him in Lower Swinstead.

  The front door-bell rang at 5. 50 p. m. Ten minutes early. Good sign!

  He felt sexually ready for her now; tossed back the last mouthful of his

  second gin; and went to greet her.

  You're in the paper again! " she blurted, almost accusingly, brandishing the

  relevant page of the Evening Standard in front of his face after the door was

  closed behind them.

  "Really?"

  For the second time Harrison looked down at the headline, new clue to old

  murder; and pretended to read the article through.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "Well, what?"

  "What have you got to tell me?"

  "I'm going to take you out for a meal and then I'm going to take you upstairs

  to bed or maybe the other way round."

  "I didn't mean that. You know I didn't."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I want you to tell me what happened. You've never spoken about it, have

  you? Not to me. And I want to know!" Her upper lip was suddenly tremulous.

  "So before we do anything else, you'd better ' " Better what? " He snapped

  the words and his voice seemed that of a different man.

  "Listen, my sweetheart! The day you tell me what to do, that's the day we

  finish, OK? And if you don't get that message loud and clear' (paradoxically

  the voice had dropped to a whisper) 'you'd better bugger off and forget we

  ever met."

  There were no tears in her eyes as she replied: "I can't do

  THE REMORSEFUL

  DAY

  that, Frank. Bu
t there's one thing I can do: I'm going, as you so delicately

  put it, to bugger off! "

  In full control of herself she turned the catch on the Yale lock, and the

  door closed quietly behind her.

  41

  chapter nine He looked at me with eyes I thought I was not like to find

  (A. E. Housman, More Poems, XLI) it had been the previous day, Thursday,

  when after collecting her boss's mail Barbara Dean had walked along the

  corridor, white blouse as ever perfectly pressed, flicking through the eleven

  envelopes held in her left hand. And looking with particular attention

  (again! ) at the one addressed with a scarlet felt-pen, in outsize capital

  letters, to:

  STRANGE (SUPER! ) POLICE KIDLINGTON OXFORD

  The execution of this lettering gave her the impression of its being neither

  the work of a particularly educated nor of a particularly uneducated

  correspondent. Yet the lower-case legend along the top-left of the envelope

  "Private and Confidencial' (sic) - would perhaps suggest the latter.

  Whatever the case though, the envelope was always going to be noticed by

  whomsoever. It was like someone entering a lucky-dip postal competition with

  multicoloured sketches adorning the periphery of the envelope; or like a

  lover mailing off a vastly outsize Valentine.

  What would her boss make of it?

  Barbara had been working at Police HQ for almost six years now, and had

  enjoyed her time there especially these past three years working as the

  personal secretary of Chief Superintendent Strange; and she was very sad that

  he would be leaving at the end of the summer.

  "Strange by name and strange by nature' - that's what she often said when

  friends had asked about him: an oddly contradictory man, that was for sure.

  He was a heavyweight, in every sense of the word; yet there were times when

  he handled things with a lightness of touch which was as pleasing as it was

  unexpected. His was the reputation of a blunt, no-nonsense copper who had

  not been born with quite the IQ, of an Aristotle or an Isaac Newton; yet (in

  Barbara's experience) he could on occasion exhibit a remarkably compassionate

  insight into personal problems, including her own. All right (yes!) he was a

  big, blundering, awkward teddy-bear of a man: a bit (a lot?) hen-pecked at

  home until recently of course; a man much respected, if not particularly

  liked, by his fellow officers; and (from Barbara's point of view) a man who

  had never, hardly ever, sought to take the slightest advantage of her . . .

  well, of her womanhood.

  Just that once, perhaps?

  It had been at the height of the summer heat-wave of 1995. One day when she

  had been wearing the skimpiest outfit the Force could ever officially

  tolerate, she had seen in Strange's eyes what she thought (and almost hoped?

  ) were the signs of some mild, erode fantasy.

  "You look very desirable, my girl!"

  That's all he'd said.

  Was that what people meant by 'sexual harassment'?

  Not that she'd mentioned it to anyone; but the phrase was much in the

  headlines that long, hot summer, and she'd heard some of the girls talking in

  the canteen about it.

  'could do with a bi' o' that sexual harassment! " confessed Sharon, the

  latest and youngest tyro in the typing pool.

  43

  That was the occasion when one of the senior CID officers seated at the

  far end of the table had got to his feet, drained his coffee, and come across

  to lay a gentle hand on Sharon's sun-tanned shoulder.

  "You mean sexual harassment, I think. As you know, we usually exercise the

  recessive accent in English; and much as I admire our American friends, we

  shouldn't let them prostitute our pronunciation, young lady!"

  He had spoken quietly but a little cruelly; and the uncomprehending Sharon

  was visibly hurt.

  "Pompous prick! Who the hell does he think he is?" she'd asked when he was

  gone.

  So Barbara told her.

  Not that she knew him personally, although his blue eyes invariably smiled

  into hers, a little wearily sometimes but ever interestedly, whenever the two

  of them passed each other in the corridors; and when she sometimes fancied

  that he looked at her as though he knew what she was thinking.

  God forbid!

  It was not of Morse, though, but of Strange that she was thinking that

  morning when she tapped the customary twice on his office door and entered.

  Sometimes, when he sat there behind his desk tie slightly askew, a light

  shower of dandruff over the shoulders of his jacket, hairs growing a little

  too prominently from his ears and from his nostrils, white shirt rather less

  than white and less than smoothly ironed it was then, yes, that she wished to

  mother him.

  She Barbara! - less than half his age.

  That he'd never had such a complicated effect on other women, she felt

  completely convinced.

  Well, no; not completely convinced . .

  chapter ten He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody

  (Joseph Heller, Catch-22') 'probably some nutter! " growled Strange as he

  slipped a paper-knife inside the top of the envelope, and unfolded the

  single, thin sheet of paper contained therein. And for a while frowned

  mightily; then smiled.

  "Have a look at that, Babs!" he said proudly, making as if to hand the sheet

  across the desk.

  "May well be what we've been waiting for from my appeal, you know."

  "Won't there be some fingerprints on it?" she asked tentatively.

  "Ah!"

  "You can get fingerprints from paper?"

  "Get almost anything from anything these days," mumbled Strange.

  "And what with DNA, forensics, psychological pro- filing soon be no need for

  us detectives any more!"

  But in truth he appeared a little abashed as he held the top of the sheet

  between his thumb and forefinger and leaned forward over the desk; and

  Barbara Dean leaned forward herself, and read the undated letter, typed on a

  patently antiquated machine through a red black ribbon long past its

  operative sell-by date, with each keyed character unpredictably produced in

  either colour.

  45

  You got it right when you said the calls wasn't from the person that

  done it because thatwsame, see! I made them calls. But you got it wrong

  when you didn' t look a bit longer in the village. Mister Strange. So you

  want some help so there' s a fellow due out of Bullingdon Friday next week

  24th OK. WATCH HIM CAREFULLY!

  The Ringer.

  PS You can buy me a pint of Bass in the Maidens if you recognize me.

  "Bit illiterate?" suggested Strange.

  "I wonder if he really is," said Barbara, replacing her spectacles in their

  case.

  "You should wear 'em more often. You've got just the face for specs, you

  know. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

  No one ever had, and Barbara hoped she wasn't blushing.

  "Thank you."

  "Well?"

  "I'm not in the Crime Squad, sir."

  "But you don't think he'd last long in the typing-pool?"

  "You fairly sure it's a " he"?"

  "Sounds like it to me."

 
; Barbara nodded.

  "Not much of a typist, like I say."

  "Spelling's OK- " recognize", and so on."

  "Can't spell " was"."

  "That's not really spelling though, is it? You sometimes get typists who are

  sort of dyslexic with some words. They try to type " was", say, and they hit

  the " s" before the " a". Do things like that regularly but they don't seem

  to notice."

  "Ah!"

  "Grammar's not so hot, I agree. Probably good enough to pass GCSE, I

  suppose, sir."

  "Does anyone ever/at/GCSE?"

  "Could do with a bit more punctuation too, couldn't it?"

  "Dunno. Not as much as Morse'd put in."

  "Who do you think

  "The Ringer" is? "

  "Ringer? One who rings, isn't it? Chap who's been ringing us up, like as

  not."

  "Does the postmark help?"

  "Oxford. Not that that means anything. It could have been posted anywhere

  in our patch of the Cotswolds ... Carterton! Yes. That's where they take