by Colin Dexter
ill-being.
The illuminated green figures on the alarm clock showed 2. 42 a. m. when
he finally abandoned the unequal struggle. His mind was an uncontrollable
whirligig at St Giles' Fair, and the indigestion-pains in his chest and in
his arms were hard and unrelenting. He got up, poured himself a glass of
Alka-Seltzer, poured himself a glass of the single malt, took up his medium-
blue Parker pen, and resumed the exegesis he'd been writing when Lewis had
interrupted him, deciding however to cross out the last (and uncompleted)
sentence: "It was embarrassing for me to talk to you about this and I know
that you in turn found it equally embarrassing to There would be ample time
to put that part of the record straight in the days ahead.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . .
chapter sixty-five Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the
apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely
loves (Addison, The Spectator) Simon H is not a good liar, and I dragged some
of the truth out of him. He is genuinely very deaf, and the telephone must
always be a nightmare for him. So what's he got a mobile for? Even people
with good hearing often have trouble with one. But, remember, even someone
who's stone- deaf can communicate to some degree with someone on the other
end, because he's always able to speak if not to hear.
Many people must have wanted Barren dead. And no one more so than Frank
Harrison, who'd learned that Barren would soon be working up at some giddy
height in a quietish street in Burford. The job had been mentioned, among
other places no doubt, in the Maiden's Arms. And one person in that pub was
in regular communication with Frank H: Alien Thomas, that soon-to-be-married
youth who regularly wastes his substance on the fruit machine. How come?
Like so many others in this case, he's dependent on Frank H - his father,
remember! - who (rumour! ) has just bought him a small flat in Bicester,
and who has pretty certainly been making him a regular allowance for many
years.
The plan had been a reasonably simple one with one
snag. Both the Harrisons, Senior and Junior, had some knowledge of Ban-on's
ladder-technique from the several times he had worked at the family home:
specifically his habit of tying the top of his ladders to something firm up
there in the heights. It would seem likely that he'd do the same again, and
there'd be little point in giving the ladder one great hefty push if it
wouldn't topple to the ground. Some recce was therefore required; and Simon
picked up his father that Monday morning in Oxford and drove him the twenty
miles to Burford, leaving the car at the western end of Sheep Street, and
then jogging up and down the opposite side of the street in tracksuit and
trainers, noting that Barren was moving the ladder along every twelve minutes
or so, and predictably re- roping the top each time. The only possibility
then was to catch Barren after he'd re-climbed the ladder and was refix- ing
the rope. A minute or so? Not much more. But enough. Simon's job was to
phone his father, mobile to mobile, and just say
"Now!" Nothing else. He hadn't the spunk he says (I believe him) to perform
the deed himself; and it was his father, also in jogging kit, who would run
along the pathway there and topple Barron to a death that in Simon's view was
fully deserved and long overdue.
That was the plan. Something like it. So I believe. But the countdown had
been aborted because (Simon himself a witness) a bicycle, the front wheel
jerked up repeatedly from the ground, was lurching its way along the path,
and under the ladder, and into the ladder.
Surplus to requirements therefore was the plan the Harrisons had plotted. Or
so we are led to believe. Why such a proviso? Because I shall be surprised
if any plan devised by the opportunistic Frank Harrison has ever come to a
sorry nothing. Is it possible therefore that the accident of Barren's death
was not quite so 'accidental' after all? Already Frank Harrison had
accomplished something far more complex his manipulation of the evidence
surrounding his wife's murder, when it was
imperative for him to establish
one crucial fact: that no other living soul was present when he went into his
house that night. But three other people knew this fact was untrue; and all
three of them whichever way intercommunication was effected were subsequently
rewarded for their roles in the conspiracy of complicity and silence.
Back to my proviso.
Can it be that Frank Harrison trawled his net even wider and dragged in the
cyclist who sent Barren down to his death, the boy Holmes the brother of
Harrison's son Alien?
We turn now to the Harrison clan itself.
Our researchers have given us several pointers to the relationships within
that family. The marriage itself had long been loveless: he with a string of
mistresses in his Pavilion Road flat in London; she with a succession of
straight or kinky but always besotted bed mates with whom she fairly
regularly dallied with mutual delight. And, doubtless, profit. Of the two
children, Simon was clearly the mother's favourite - a boy who had battled
bravely with his disability; a boy for whom his mother had found an affection
considerably deeper than that for her daughter Sarah a young lady who was
very attractive physically, very bright academically, very talented
musically, who from her early years had almost everything going for her, and
who (unlike her brother) needed far less of her mother's tender loving care.
Both children, as well as their parents, were probably fully aware of the
imbalance here; and tacitly and tactfully accepted it.
At the time of their mother's murder, both the children had left home several
years earlier. Sarah had already qualified as a doctor specializing with
considerable distinction in the treatment of diabetes. And Simon had landed
a surprisingly good job in publishing, and was now financially inde- pendent
if not emotionally independent, because he still yearned for that unique love
his mother had always shown him; a love that had meant everything to him in
those long
years of an ever-struggling school-life in which he knew with joyous
assurance that it was he Simon! - who'd acquired the monopoly of a mother's
love, more of it even than his father had ever had. He called to see her
regularly, of course he did. But she probably always insisted that he rang
her beforehand. No reason to ask why, surely? Simon was completely unaware
of his mother's vespertinal divertissements.
But Frank certainly knew all about them, and they served as some sort of
excuse and justification for his own adulterous liaisons. He didn't much
care anyway. Perhaps he could shrug things off fairly easily. But Simon
couldn't. Simon turned up unexpectedly one evening and found his mother
lying on that very same bed where as a young boy (perhaps as an older boy? )
he'd snuggled in beside her when his dad was away; and where he'd seen a man
straddled across her on his elbows and his knees.
I doubt it ha
d been exactly like diat, though. More likely he'd seen a man
bouncing down the stairs towards him, jerking up his trousers and fastening
up his flies. A man he knew: Barron! Then he'd found his mother lying in
the bedroom there: naked, gagged, handcuffed, with a porno- graphic video
probably still running on the TV.
Shellshocked with disbelief and disillusionment, in the white heat of a
furious jealousy yes! - he murdered his mother.
309
chapter SiXTY-SiX We might now be stepping through a dark door with no
bottom on the other side, and fall flat on our faces (A member of the
Honolulu City Council, quoted by the Press Corps) conscious that he was
writing with increasing fluency, Morse poured himself another tumbler of
single malt, and resumed his narrative: With regard to events immediately
thereafter, we can only guess. But at some point Simon rang his father in
predictable panic. He had very few people he could call on. But he could
call on his father and there was a special loop-system on the telephone
there. And Frank H got to the house as quickly as any man could have done
that night.
His BMW was in for servicing, that was checked; and I now believe (a bit late
in the day) that the sequence of events was precisely as he claimed: taxi >
Paddington; train > Oxford; Oxford (enter Flynn! ) > Lower Swinstead.
Then? Probably we'll never really know. But five people, three of them now
dead, they knew: Barren, who'd been disturbed in media coitu; Flynn, the
petty crook who just happened to be on hand; Repp, the burglar who'd been
watching the property all evening; Frank H; and Simon H himself. Simon
doesn't seem to me the calibre of fellow who could stay long at such a
ghastly scene on his own; and I
think it's more than likely that his father rang Sarah and told her to get
along there post-haste, on the way buying a cinema ticket as an alibi for
Simon. Certainly when I met Sarah I felt strongly that she probably knew who
had murdered her mother. The trouble was that the three outsiders also knew:
Repp and Ban-on, who were both local men and Flynn, who'd met Simon in the
lip-reading classes at Oxpens, and who must have seen him there that night.
What then was the family plan of campaign?
The two (or three) of them were determined to create the maximum amount of
confusion their only hope. The murder couldn't be concealed; but the waters
around it could be made so muddied that any investigation was likely to shoot
off into several blind alleys. We may postulate that a gag was tied around
Yvonne's mouth (as I recall the report: 'no longer tight as if she had worked
it looser in her desperation'); that a pair of handcuffs was snapped around
her wrists; that one of the panes of the french window was smashed in from
the outside. Why Yvonne's carefully folded clothes were not scattered all
over the floor, I just don't know, because 'attempted rape' would have seemed
a wholly probable explanation of the murder.
When and how the circling vultures closed in for their shares of the kill
your guess, Lewis, is (almost) as good as mine. Some early liaison there
must have been with Ban-on in order to establish the telephone alibi. Flynn
probably just stayed around that night a petty crook going through a bad
patch, and naming his price immediately. I suspect that Repp, a real pro,
held his hand for a couple of days or so before threatening to spill at least
half the can of beans . . . unless he could be persuaded otherwise.
Whatever the case, financial arrangements were made, and as far as we know
faithfully met. After the murder of his wife, much money was diverted from
the assets of Frank H into other channels, although I'm still surprised to
learn that 311
there may well have been some serious misappropriation of
funds at the Swiss Helvetia Bank.
All of which leaves one or two (or three! ) points unresolved.
First, the burglar alarm. Now on his train-trip from London Frank H must
have had thoughts galore. Several times he would have phoned home from the
train, and Sarah must surely have been there to take the calls. And it was
probably from the back of the taxi that Frank had the clever idea of ringing
Sarah and telling her he would be ringing again, when the taxi was only half
a minute or so from home, and asking her (Flynn wouldn't have heard, would
he? ) to turn on the burglar alarm. It was a clever idea, let's agree on
that. It certainly and understandably caused huge confusion in the original
police enquiry. The only person not wholly confused was Strange. It was he,
from the word go, who suggested that the alarm might well have been set off
deliberately by the murderer himself. (Never under-rate that man, Lewis! )
The time, as Morse saw, was 3. 40 a. m. " almost exactly one hour after
he'd started writing. He was feeling pleasantly tired, and he knew he would
slip into sleep so easily now. Yet he wanted to go (as Flecker had said)
'always that little further'; and perhaps more immediately to the point he
wanted to pour himself a further Scotch which he did before resuming.
There is one more thing to consider, and it is of vital importance, as well
as being (almost! ) the only thing about which I was less than honest with
you. That is, the extraordinary relationship between a drink-doped,
drug-doped juvenile lout and an insignificant-looking little schoolma'am:
between Roy Holmes and Christine Coverley.
Something must have happened, probably at school, which had forged a wholly
improbable but strangely strong bond between them - including a sexual
relationship (she confessed as much). That's the
reason she stayed on in Burford after the end of the summer term. Why is
this important? Because we have been making one fundamental assumption in
our enquiries which thus far has been completely unverified by any single
independent witness. But truth will out! And first, and forthwith, we shall
call in on Ms Coverley for further questioning. How wise it was to hold our
horses before facing Frank Harrison with a whole (Here the narrative breaks
off. ) Morse, who had been deeply asleep at his study desk, his head
pillowed on folded arms, jerked awake just before 7. 30 a. m. " feeling
wonderfully refreshed. Life was a funny old business.
chapter sixty-seven To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice; and,
whilst it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some
noble object but to escape some ill (Aristotle, Nicimwiean Ethics) the
following morning Lewis was pleased with himself. Before Morse arrived, he'd
turned to the Police Gazette's
"Puzzle Corner', and easily solved the challenge there: What initially would
an intelligent cyclist's thought be on studying the following list of operas
by Verdi?
Tosca Aida Nabucco Don Carlos Emani Macbeth "Initially' - that was the clue;
and once you twigged it, the answer stared you in the face vertically.
Morse made an appearance at 9. 10 a. m. " looking (in Lewis's view) a
little fitter than of late.
"Want to test your brain, sir?"
"Certainly not!"
/>
Lewis pushed the puzzle across the desk, and Morse considered it, though for
no more than a few seconds: "Do you know the answer?"
"Easy!
"Initially" , sir that's what you've got to think about. Just look at the
first letters. Cyclist? Get it? "
"I thought the question was what would an intelligent cyclist's thought be."
"I don't quite follow."
"Not difficult surely, Lewis? You've just got the answer wrong, that's all.
Any intelligent cyclist, any bright bus-driver anyone! would think exactly
the same thing immediately."
"They would?"
"The question's phoney. Based on a false premise, isn't it? Based on the
assumption that the facts you've been given are true."
"You mean they're not?"
Tosca? Written by Verdif Oh dear!
"You were quick to spot that."
Morse grinned.
"Not really. They often ask me to submit a little brain-teaser to the
Gazette."
"You mean ?"
Morse nodded.
"And talking of false premises, that's been a big part of our trouble. We've
both been trying to check up on such a lot of things, haven't we? But
there's one thing we've been prepared to accept without one ha'poth of
evidence. So we'll get on to that without delay. Couple of cars we'll need.
I'll just give Dixon a ring ' Lewis got to his feet.
"I can deal with all that, sir."
"Si' down, Lewis! I want to talk to you."
Through the glass-panelled door Dixon finally saw the silhouette moving
