by Colin Dexter
Lewis picked up the phone and dialled the five-digit number—and was answered immediately.
'Yeah? Wha' d'ya wan'?' a woman's voice bawled at him.
'Hullo. Er—have I got the right number for "K"?'
'Yeah. You 'ave. Bu' she's no' 'ere, is she?'
'No, obviously not. I'll try again later.'
'You a dur'y ol' man, or sump'n?'
Lewis quickly replaced the receiver, the colour rising in his pale cheeks.
Morse, who had heard the brief exchange clearly, grinned at his discomfited sergeant. 'You can't win 'em all.'
'Waste of time, if that's anything to go by.'
'You think so?'
'Don't you?'
'Lewis! You were only on the phone for about ten seconds but you learned she was a "she", probably a she with the name of "Kay".'
'I didn't!'
'A she of easy virtue who old Felix here spent a few happy hours with. Or, as you'd prefer it, with whom old Felix regularly spent a few felicitous hours.'
'You can't just say that—'
'Furthermore she's a local lass, judging by her curly Oxfordshire accent and her typical habit of omitting all her "t"s.'
'But I didn't even get the woman!'
Morse was silent for a few seconds; then he looked up, his face more serious. 'Are you sure, Lewis? Are you quite sure you haven't just been speaking to the cryptic "K" herself?.'
Lewis shook his head, grinned ruefully, and said nothing. He knew—knew again now—why he'd never rise to any great heights in life himself. Morse had got it wrong, of course. Morse nearly always got things hopelessly, ridiculously wrong at the start of every case. But he always seemed to have thoughts that no one else was capable of thinking. Like now.
'Anyway, what's this other thing you've found?'
But before Lewis could answer, there was a quiet tap on the door and PC Roberts stuck a reverential, unhelmeted head into the room.
'Where's a Mrs. Wynne-Wilson here, sir, from one of the other flats. Says she wants a word, like.'
Morse looked up from his Thucydides. 'Haven't we already got a statement from her, Lewis?'
But it was Roberts who answered. 'She says she made a statement, sir, but when she heard someone else was in charge—well, she said Inspector Phillotson didn't really want to know, like.'
'Really?'
'And she's, well, she's a bit deaf, like.'
'Like what?' asked Morse.
'Pardon?'
'Forget it.'
'Shall I show her in, sir?'
'What? In here? You know what happened here, don't you? She'd probably faint, man.'
'Doubt it, sir. She says she was sort of in charge of nurses at some London hospital.'
'Ah, a matron,' said Morse.
'They don't call them "matrons" any longer,' interposed Lewis.
'Thank you very much, Lewis! Send her in.'
CHAPTER FIVE
O quid solutis est beatius curis,
Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum,
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?
(What bliss! First spot the house—and then
Flop down—on one's old bed again)
(CATULLUS, 31)
JULIA STEVENS HAD returned home that same afternoon.
The flight had been on time (early, in fact); Customs had been swift and uncomplicated; the Gatwick-Heathrow-Oxford coach had been standing them, just waiting for her, it seemed, welcoming her back to England. From the station at Gloucester Green she had taken a taxi (no queue) out to East Oxford, the driver duly helping her with two heavyweight cases right up to the front door of her house—a house which, as the taxi turned into the street, she'd immediately observed to he still standing there, unburned, unvandalised; and, as she could see as she stood inside her own living-room—at long last!—blessedly unburgled.
How glad she was to he back. Almost always, on the first two nights of any holiday away from home, she experienced a weepy nostalgia. But usually this proved to he only a re-adjustment. Usually, too, at least for the last two days of her statutory annual fortnight abroad, she felt a similar wrench on leaving her summer surroundings; on bidding farewell to her newly made holiday friends. One or two friends in particular.
One or two men, as often as not.
But such had not been the case this time on her package tour round the Swiss and Italian lakes. She couldn't explain why: the coach-driver had been very competent; the guide good; the scenery spectacular; the fellow-tourists pleasantly friendly. But she'd not enjoyed it at all. My God! What was happening to her?
(But she knew exactly what was happening to her.)
Not that she'd said anything, of course. And Brenda Brooks had received a cheerful postcard from a multi-starred hotel on Lake Lucerne:
Wed.
Having a splendid time here with a nice lot of people. My room looks right across the lake. Tomorrow we go over to Triebschen (hope I've spelt that right) where Richard Wagner spent some of his life. There was a firework display last night—tho' nobody told us why. Off to Lugano Friday.
Love Julia
P. S. Give St. Giles a big hug for me.
As Julia walked through her front door that afternoon, her house smelt clean and fragrant; smelt of pine and polish and Windolene. Bless her—bless Brenda Brooks!
Then, on the kitchen table, there was a note—the sort of note that she, Julia, had ever come to expect:
Dear Mrs. S,
I got your card thankyou & I'm glad you had a good time. St. Giles has been fine, there are two more tins of Whiskas in the fridge. See you Monday. There's something I want to tell you about & perhaps you can help I hope so. Welcome home!!
Brenda (Brooks)
Julia smiled to herself. Brenda invariably appended her (bracketed) surname as though the household boasted a whole bevvy of charladies. And always that deferential 'Mrs. S.' Brenda had worked for her for four years now, and at fifty-two was nearly seven years her senior. Again Julia smiled to herself. Then, as she re-read the penultimate sentence, for a moment she found herself frowning slightly.
It was a pleasant sunny day, with September heralding a golden finale to what had been a hot and humid summer. Indeed, the temperature was well above the average for an autumn day. Yet Julia felt herself shivering slightly as she unlocked and unbolted the rear door. And if a few moments earlier she may have looked a little sad, a little strained—behold now a metamorphosis! A ginger cat parted the ground-cover greenery at the bottom of the small garden and peered up at his mistress; and suddenly Julia Stevens looked very happy once again.
And very beautiful.
CHAPTER SIX
Envy and idleness married together beget curiosity
(THOMAS FULLER, Gnomologia)
MORSE DECIDED TO interview Laura Wynne-Wilson, should that good lady allow it, in her own ground-floor apartment. And the good lady did so allow.
She was, she admitted, very doubtful about whether that previous policeman had attended to her evidence with sufficient seriousness. Indeed, she had formed the distinct impression that he had listened, albeit politely, in a wholly perfunctory way to what she had to say. Which was? Which was to do with Dr. McClure—a nice gentleman; and a very good neighbour, who had acted as Secretary of the Residents' Action Committee and written such a splendid letter to that cowboy outfit supposedly responsible for the upkeep of the exterior of the properties.
She spoke primly and quietly, a thin smile upon thin lips.
'And what exactly have you got to tell us?' bawled Morse.
'Please don't shout at me, Inspector! Deaf people do not require excessive volume—they require only clarity of speech and appropriate lip-movement.'
Lewis smiled sweetly to himself as the small, white-haired octogenarian continued:
'What I have to tell you is this. Dr. McClure had a fairly regular visitor here. A . . . a lady-friend.'
'Not all that unusual, is it
?' suggested Morse, with what he hoped was adequate clarity and appropriate lip-movement.
'Oh, no. After all, it might well have been some female relative.'
Morse nodded. Already he knew that McClure had no living relatives apart from a niece in New Zealand; but still he nodded.
'And then again, Inspector, it might not. You see, he had no living relatives in the United Kingdom.'
'Oh.' Morse decided that, unlike Phillotson, he at least would treat the old girl with a modicum of respect.
'No. It was his "fancy woman", as we used to call it. By the way, I quite like that tern myself, don't you?'
'Plenty of worse words, madam,' interposed Lewis, though apparently with less than adequate clarity.
'Pardon?' Laura W-W turned herself in the approximate direction of the man taking notes, as if he were merely some supernumerary presence.
And now it was Morse's turn to smile sweetly to himself.
'As I was saying, this . . . this woman came to see him several times—certainly three or four times during the last month.'
'What time of day was that?'
'Always at about half-past seven.'
'And you, er, you actually saw her?'
' ''Actually" is a ridiculous word, isn't it? It's a weasel word, Inspector. It means nothing whatsoever. It's a space-filler. Whether I actually saw her, I don't know. What I do know is that I saw her. All right?'
Touché.
Morse's eyes wandered over to the wooden-frame casement, where the thin white lace curtains were pulled back in tight arcs at each side, with potted geraniums at either end of the window ledge, and three tasteful pieces of dark-blue and white porcelain positioned between them. But nothing there to clutter the clear view, from where Morse was sitting, over the whole front area of the apartments, especially of the two square, yellow-brick pillars which stood at either side of the entrance drive; and through which, perforce, everyone coming into Daventry Court must surely pass. Everyone except a burglar, perhaps. Or a murderer . . . And this nosey old woman would delight in observing the visitors who called upon her fellow residents, Morse felt confident of that.
'This could be very helpful to our enquiries, you realise that, don't you? If you saw her clearly . . .?'
'My eyesight is not what it was, Inspector. But I had a good view of her, yes.' She glanced keenly at Morse. 'You see, I'm a nosey old woman with very little ele to do— that's what you're thinking, anyway.'
'Well, I—we all like to know what's going on. It's only human nature.'
'Oh, no. I know several people who aren't in the slightest bit interested in "what's going on", as you put it. But I'm glad you're nosey, like me. That's good.'
Lewis was enjoying the interview immensely.
'Can you tell us something about this woman? Anything?'
'Let's say I found her interesting.'
'Why was that?'
'Well, for a start, I envied her. She was less than half his age, you see—good deal less, I shouldn't doubt.'
'And he,' mused Morse, 'was sixty-six . . .'
'Sixty-seven, Inspector, if he'd lived to the end of the month.'
'How—?'
'I looked him up in Distinguished People of Today. He's a Libra.'
Like me, thought Morse. And I wonder how old you are, you old biddy.
'And I'm eighty-three in December,' she continued, 'just in case you're wondering.'
'I was, yes,' said Morse, smiling at her, and himself now beginning to enjoy the interview.
'The other thing that struck me was that she wasn't at all nice-looking. Quite the opposite, in fact. Very shabbily dressed—darkish sort of clothes. Sloppy loose blouse, mini-skirt right up to . . .'
'The top of her tibia,' supplied Morse, enunciating the 't' of the last word with exaggerated exactitude.
'Absolutely! And she had a big old shoulder-bag, too.'
I wonder what was in that, thought Morse.
'Anything else you can remember?'
'Long—longish—dark hair. Earrings—great brassy-looking things about the size of hula-hoops. And she had a ring in her nose. I could see that. For all I know, she could have had two rings in her nose.'
God helps us all, thought Morse.
'But I'm not sure about that. As I say, my eyesight isn't what it used to be.'
I wonder what it used to be like, thought Lewis.
'Did she come by car?' asked Morse.
'No. If she did, she left it somewhere else.'
'Did she come in from . . .?' Morse gestured vaguely to his left, towards the Banbury Road.
'Yes. She came from the Banbury Road not the Woodstock Road.'
'Would you recognise her again?'
For the first time the old lady hesitated, robbing the thin ringless fingers of her left hand with her right.
'Oh dear. Do you think she may have murdered him? I only—'
'No, no. I'm sure she didn't.' Morse spoke with the bogus confidence of a man who was beginning to wonder if she had.
'I only wanted to help. And I'm not at all sure if I would recognise her. Perhaps if she dolled herself up in some decent outfit and . . .'
Took that bull-ring out of her nose, thought Morse.
'. . . and took that ring out of her nose.'
Phew!
But some of the bounce had gone out of the old girl, Morse could see that. It was time to wind things up.
'Do you think they went to bed when she came?'
'I expect so, don't you?'
'Things must have changed a good deal since your day, Miss Wynne-Wilson.'
'Don't be silly, Inspector! I could teach some of these young flibbertigibbets a few things about going to bed with men. After all, I spent most of my life looking after men in bed, now didn't I? And, by the way, it's Mrs. Wynne Wilson. I don't wear a wedding ring any longer . . .'
Phew!
Morse got to his feet. He had only one more question: 'Were you looking out of the window on Sunday morning—you know, about the time perhaps when Dr. McClure was murdered?'
'No. On Sunday mornings I always hear the omnibus edition of The Archers on the wireless, that's from ten to eleven. Lovely. I have a really good long soak and hear everything again.'
Dangerous thing that—having a radio in the bathroom, thought Lewis.
'It's dangerous they tell me—having a wireless propped up on the bath-rail. But I do so enjoy doing silly things, now that I'm so old.'
Phew!
It had not been much of a contest, Lewis appreciated that; but from his scorecard he had little hesitation in declaring Mrs. W-W the winner, way ahead of Morse on points.
Quite mistakenly, of course.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For 'tis in vain to think or guess
At women by appearances
(SAMUEL BUTLER, Hudibras)
'WHAT DID YOU make of that, then?' asked Lewis, when the two detectives had returned to McClure's apartment.
Morse appeared disappointed. 'I'd begun to think he was a civilised sort of fellow—you know . . .' Morse gestured vaguely around the bookshelves.
'But he wasn't?'
'We-ell.'
'You mean . . . this woman he was seeing?'
Morse's features reflected disapproval. 'Rings in her nose, Lewis? Pretty tasteless, isn't it? Like drinking lager with roast beef.'
'For all you know she may be a lovely girl, sir. You shouldn't really judge people just by appearances.'
'Oh?' Morse's eyes shot up swiftly. 'And why the hell not?'
'Well . . .' But Lewis wasn't sure why. He did have a point, though; he knew he did. Morse was always making snap judgements. All right, one or two would occasionally turn out to be accurate; but most of them were woefully wide of the mark—as, to be fair, Morse himself readily acknowledged.
Lewis thought of events earlier in the day; thought of Phillotson's withdrawal from the present case; thought of Morse's almost contemptuous dismissal of the man's excuses. Almost automatically,
it seemed, Morse had assumed him to be parading a few phoney pretexts about his wife's hospitalisation in order to avoid the humiliation of failure in a murder case. Agreed, Phillotson wasn't exactly Sherlock Holmes, Lewis knew that. Yet Morse could be needlessly cruel about some of his colleagues. And why did he have to be so sharp? As he had been just now?
Still, Lewis knew exactly what to do about his own temporary irritation. Count to ten!—that's what Morse had once told him—before getting on to any high horse; and then, if necessary, count to twenty. Not that there was much sign that Morse ever heeded his own advice. He usually only counted to two or three. If that.
Deciding, therefore, the time to be as yet inopportune for any consideration of the old lady's testimony, Lewis reverted to his earlier task. There was still a great deal of material to look through, and he was glad to get down to something whose purpose he could readily grasp. The papers there, all the papers in the drawers and those stacked along the shelves, had already been examined—clearly that was the case. Not radically disturbed, though; not taken away to be documented in some dubious filing-system until sooner or later, as with almost everything in life, being duly labelled 'OBE.'
Overtaken By Events.
Glancing across at Morse, Lewis saw the chief abstracting another book from a set of volumes beautifully bound in golden leather; a slim volume this time; a volume of verse by the look of it. And even as he watched, he saw Morse turning the book through ninety degrees and apparently reading some marginalia beside one of the poems there. For the present, however, the Do Not Disturb sign was prominently displayed, and with his usual competence Lewis resumed his own considerable task.
Thus it was that for the next half-hour or so the two men sat reading their different texts; preparing (as it were) for their different examinations; each conscious of the other's presence; yet each, for the moment, and for different reasons, unwilling to speak his own immediate thoughts.
