by Colin Dexter
'Well, that explains it, doesn't it?'
'Another peculiarity is that in all the other colleges they call the dons and the readers and the tutors and so on—they call them "Fellows". You with me? But at Wolsey they call them "Students''.'
'What do they call the students then?'
'Doesn't matter what they call 'em, does it? Look! Let's just consider where we are. We've discovered a couple of possible links in this case so far: McClure's fancy woman; and the Rodway woman, the mother of one of his former pupils. Now neither of 'em comes within a million miles of being a murderer, I know that; but they're both adding to what we know of McClure himself, agreed7 He's a respected scholar; a conscientious don—'
' ''Student", sir.'
'A conscientious Student; a man who's got every sympathy with his stu—'
Lewis looked across.
'—with the young people he comes into contact with; a founder member of a society to help dedicated druggies; a man who met Matthew's mum, and probably slipped in between the sheets with her—'
Lewis shook his head vigorously. 'You can't just say that sort of thing.'
'And why not? How the hell do you think we're going to get to the bottom of this case unless we make the odd hypothesis here and there? You don't know? Well, let me tell you. We think of anything that's unlikely. That's how. Any bloody idiot can tell you what's likely.'
'If you say so, sir.'
'I do say so,' snapped Morse. 'Except that what I say is not particularly unlikely, is it? They obviously got on pretty well, didn't they? Take that salutation and valediction, for instance.'
Lewis lifted his eyebrows.
'All Christian-name, palsy-walsy stuff, wasn't it? Then there's this business of her husband leaving her—you'll recall I pressed her on that point? And for a very good reason. It was November, a month or so after her precious Matthew had first gone up to Oxford. And it occurred to me, Lewis—and I'm surprised it didn't occur to you—that things may well have been the other way round, eh? She may have left him, and it was only then that he started playing around with his new PA.'
'We could always look at a copy of the divorce proceedings.'
'What makes you think they're divorced?'
Lewis surrendered, sipped his orange juice, and was silent.
'But it doesn't matter, does it? It's got bugger-all to do with McClure's murder. You can make a heap of all the money you've got and wager it on that. No risk there!'
Lewis fingered the only money he had left in his pockets—three pound coins—and decided that he was hardly going to become a rich man, however long the odds that Morse was offering. But it was time to mention something. Had Morse, he wondered, seen that oblong patch of pristine magnolia . . .?
'There was,' Lewis began slowly, 'a light-coloured patch on the wall in Mrs. Rodway's lounge, sir—'
'Ah! Glad you noticed that. Fiver to a cracked piss-pot that was a picture of him, Lewis—of McClure! That's why she took it down. She didn't want us to see it, but something like that's always going to leave its mark, agreed?'
'Unless she put something else up there to cover it.'
Morse scorned the objection. 'She wouldn't have taken a photo of her son down, would she? Where's the point of that? Very unlikely.'
'You just said that's exactly what we're looking for sir—something "unlikely''.'
Morse was spared any possible answer to this astute question by the arrival of the landlady, a slimly attractive brunette, with small, neat features, and an extra sparkle in her eyes as she greeted Morse with a kiss on his cheek.
'Not seen you for a little while, Inspector.'
'How's things, beautiful?'
'Another beer?'
'Well, if you insist.'
'I'm not really insisting—'
'Pint of the best bitter for me.'
'You, Sergeant?'
'He's driving,' said Morse.
Biff, the landlord, came over to join them, and the four sat together for the next ten minutes. Morse, after explaining that the word "Turf" had appeared in the margir of one of McClure's books, asked whether they, either land. lord or landlady, would have known the murdered man if they had seen him in the pub ('No'); whether they'd ever seen the young man from Wolsey who'd committed suicide ('Don't think so'); whether they'd ever seen a young woman with rings in her nose and red streaks in her hair ('Hundreds of 'em').
Yet the landlady had one piece of information.
'There's one of the chaps comes in here sometimes who was a scout on that staircase . . . when, you know . . . I heard him talking to somebody about it.'
'That's right.' The landlord was remembering, too. 'Said he used to go to the Bulldog—or was it the Old Tom, Pam?'
'Can't remember.'
'He was a scout, you say?' asked Morse.
'Yeah. Only started coming in here after he moved—moved to the Pitt Rivers, I think it was. Well, only just up the road, isn't it?'
'He still comes?'
Biff considered. 'Haven't seen him for a little while now you come to mention it. Have you, love?'
Pam shook her pretty head.
'Know his name?' asked Lewis.
'Brooks—Ted Brooks.'
'Just let me get this clear,' said Lewis, as he and Morse left the Turf Tavern, this time via St. Helen's Passage, just off New College Lane. 'You're saying that Mrs. Rodway misunderstood what McClure said to her—about the "students"?'
'You've got it. What he meant was that he blamed the dons, the set-up there, the authorities. He wasn't saying they were a load of crooks—just that they should have known what was going on there, and should have done something about it.'
'If anything was going on, sir.'
'Which'Il be one of our next jobs, Lewis—to find out exactly that.'
It was Lewis who spotted it first: the traffic-warden's notice stuck beneath the near-side windscreen-wiper of the unmarked Jaguar.
By three o'clock that afternoon, Mary Rodway had assembled the new passe-partout for the picture-frame. Like most things in the room (she agreed) it had been getting very dingy. But it looked splendid now, as she carefully replaced the re-mounted photograph, standing back repeatedly and adjusting it, to the millimetre—that photograph of herself and her son which Felix had sent to her as she'd requested.
Nothing further of any great moment occurred that day, except for one thing—something which for Lewis was the most extraordinary, the most 'unlikely' event of the past six months.
'Come in a minute and let me pay you for those cigarettes,' Morse had said, as the Jaguar came to a stop outside the bachelor flat in North Oxford.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
And sidelong glanced, as to explore,
In meditated flight, the door
(SIR WALTER SCOTT, Rokeby)
WHAT MORSE HAD vaguely referred to as the 'authorities' at Wolsey were immediately co-operative; and at 10 a.m. the following day he and Lewis were soon learning many things about the place: specifically, in due course, about Staircase G in Drinkwater Quad, on which Dr. McClure had spent nine years of his university life, from 1984 until his retirement from academe at the end of the Trinity Term, 1993.
From his rooms overlooking the expansive quad ('Largest in Oxford, gentlemen—264 by 261 feet') the Deputy Bursar had explained, rather too slowly and too pedantically for Morse's taste, the way things, er, worked in the, er, House, it clearly seeming to this former Air-Vice Marshal ('Often mis-spelt, you know—and more often mis-hyphenated') that these non-University people needed some elementary explanations.
Scouts?
Interested in scouts, were they?
Well, each scout ('Interesting word—origin obscure') looked after one staircase, and one staircase only—with that area guarded as jealously as any blackbird's territory in a garden, and considered almost as a sort of mediaeval fiefdom ('If you know what I mean?'). Several of the scouts had been with them, what, twenty, thirty years? Forty-nine years, one of them! What exactly di
d they do? Well, it would be sensible to go and hear things from the horse's mouth, as it were. What?
Escorted therefore through Great Quad, and away to the left of it into what seemed to Morse the unhappily named 'Drinkwater Quad,' the policemen thanked their cicerone, the Air-hyphen-Vice Marshal ('One "L" ') and made their way to Staircase G.
Where a surprise was in store for them.
Not really a scout at all—more a girl-guide.
Susan Ewers, too, was friendly and helpful—a married woman (no children yet) who was very happy to have the opportunity of supplementing the family income; very happy, too, with the work itself. The majority of scouts were women now, she explained: only three or four men still doing the job at Wolsey. In fact, she'd taken over from a man—a man who'd left to work at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
'Mr. Brooks, was that ?' asked Morse.
'Yes. Do you know him?'
'Heard of him, er . . . please go on.'
Her duties? Well, everything really. This immediate area outside; the entrance; the porchway; the stairs; the eight sets of rooms, all of them occupied during term-time, of course; and some of them during the vacs, like now, by delegates and visitors to various do's and conferences. Her first job each morning was to empty all the rubbish-baskets into black bags; then to clean the three WCs, one on each floor (no en suite facilities as yet); same with the wash-basins. Then, only twice a week, though, to Hoover all the floors, and generally to dust around, polish any brasswork, that sort of thing; and in general to see that the living quarters of her charges were kept as neat and tidy as could be expected with young men and young women who would (she felt) probably prefer to live in—well, to live in a bit of a mess, really. No bed-making, though. Thank goodness!
Willingly she showed the detectives the rooms at G4, on the second floor of her staircase, where until fourteen months previously the name 'Dr. F. F. McClure' had been printed in black Gothic capitals beside the Oxford-blue double doors.
But if Morse had expected to find anything of significance in these rooms, he was disappointed. All fixtures befitting the status of a respected scholar had been replaced by the furniture of standard undergraduate accommodation: a three-seater settee; two armchairs; two desks; two book-cases . . . It reminded Morse of his own unhappy, unsuccessful days at Oxford; but made no other impact.
It might have been helpful to move quietly around the lounge and the spacious bedroom there, and seek to detect any vibrations, any reverberations, left behind by a cultured and (it seemed) a fairy kindly soul.
But clearly Morse could see little point in such divination.
'Is G8 free? he asked.
'There is a gentleman there. But he's not in at the minute. If you want just a quick look inside?'
'It's where Matthew Rodway, the man who . . .'
'I know,' said Susan Ewers quietly.
But G8 proved to be equally disappointing: a three-seater settee, two (faded fabric) armchairs . . . cloned and cleaned of every reminder of the young man who had thrown himself down on to the paved area below the window there—the window at which Morse and Lewis now stood for a little while. Silently.
'You didn't know Mr. Rodway, either?' asked Morse.
'No. As I say, I didn't come till September last year.'
'Do people on the staircase still take drugs?
Mrs. Ewers was taken aback by the abruptness of Morse's question.
'Well, they still have parties, like, you know. Drink and . . . and so on.'
'But you've never seen any evidence of drugs—any packets of drugs? Crack? Speed? Ecstasy? Anything? Any thing at all?'
Had she?
'No,' she said. Almost truthfully.
'You've never smelt anything suspicious?'
'I wouldn't know what they smell like, drugs,' she said. Truthfully.
As they walked down the stairs, Lewis pointed to a door marked with a little floral plaque: 'Susan's Pantry'.
'That where you keep all your things, madam?'
She nodded. 'Every scout has a pantry.'
'Can we take a look inside?'
She unlocked the door and led the way into a fairly small, high-ceilinged room, cluttered—yet so neatly cluttered—with buckets, mops, bin-liners, black plastic bags, transparent polythene bags, light bulbs, toilet rolls, towels, sheets, two Hoovers. And inside the white-painted cupboards rows of cleaners and detergents: Jif, Flash, Ajax, Windolene . . . And everything so clean—so meticulously, antiseptically clean.
Morse had little doubt that Susan Ewers was the sort of housewife to polish her bath-taps daily; the sort to feel grieved at finding a stray trace of toothpaste in the wash-basin. If cleanliness were to next to saintliness, then this lady was probably on the verge of beatification.
So what?
Apart from mentally extending his lively sympathies to Mr. Ewers, Morse was aware that his thought-processes were hardly operating vivamente that morning; and he stood in the slightly claustrophobic pantry, feeling somewhat feckless.
It was Lewis who, as so frequently, was the catalyst.
'What's your husband do, Mrs. Ewers?'
'He's—well, at the minute he's unemployed, actually. did work at the old RAC offices in Summertown, but they made him redundant.'
'When was that?'
'Last year.'
'When exactly?' (If Morse could ask such questions, why not Lewis?)
'Last, er, August.'
'Good thing you getting the job then. Help tide things over a bit, like.'
Lewis smiled sympathetically.
And Morse smiled gratefully.
Bless you, Lewis—bless you!
Gestalt—that's what the Germans call it. That flash of unified perception, that synoptic totality which is more than the sum of the parts into which it may be logically analysable; parts, in this case, like drugs and scouts and suicide and a murder and a staircase and changing jobs and not having a job and retirement and money and times and dates . . . Yes, especially times and dates . . .
Most probably, in the circumstances, Matthew Rodway's rooms would not have been re-occupied for the few remaining weeks at the end of Trinity Term the previous year; and if (as now) only some of the rooms were in use during the Long Vac, it might well be that Mrs. Ewers had been the very first person to look closely around the suicide's chambers. But no; that was wrong. McClure had already gone through things, hadn't he? Mrs. Rodway had asked him to. But would he have been half as thorough as this newly appointed woman?
He'd questioned her on the point already, he knew that. But he hadn't asked the right questions, perhaps?. Not quite.
'Just going back a minute, Mrs. Ewers . . . When you got Mr. Rodway's old rooms ready for the beginning of the Michaelmas term, had anyone else been in there—during the summer?'
'I don't think so, no.'
'But you still didn't find anything?'
'No, like I just said—'
'Oh, I believe you. If there'd been anything to find, you'd have found it.'
She looked relieved.
'In his rooms, that is,' added Morse slowly.
'Pardon?'
'All I'm saying is that you've got a very tidy mind, haven't you? Let's put it this way. I bet I know the first thing you did when you took over here. I bet you gave this room the best spring-clean—best autumn-clean—it's ever had—last September—when you moved in—and the previous scout moved out.'
Susan Ewers looked puzzled. 'Well, I scrubbed and cleaned the place from top to bottom, yes—filthy, it was. Two whole days it took me. But I never found anything—any drugs—honest to God, I didn't!'
Morse, who had been seated on the only chair the room could offer, got to his feet, moved over to the door, and put his penultimate question:
'Do you have a mortgage?'
'Yes.'
'Big one?'
She nodded miserably.
As they stood there, the three of them, outside Susan's Pantry, Morse's eyes glanced back at the door, now closed ag
ain, fitting flush enough with the jambs on either side, but with a two-centimetre gap of parallel regularity showing between the bottom of the turquoise-blue door and the linoed floor of the landing.
Morse asked his last question simply and quietly: 'When did the envelopes first start coming, Susan?'
And Susan's eyes jumped up to his, suddenly flashing the unmistakable sign of fear.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Examination: trial; test of knowledge and, as also may be hoped, capacity; close inspection (especially med.)
(Small Enlarged English Dictionary, 1812 Edition)
ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, two days after Julia Stevens's return to Oxford, there were already three items of importance on her day's agenda.
First, school.
Not as yet the dreaded restart (three whole days away, praise be!) but a visit to the Secretary's Office to look through the GCSE and A-level results, both lists having been published during her fortnight's absence abroad. Like every self-respecting teacher, she wanted to discover the relative success of the pupils she herself had taught.
In former days it had often been difficult enough for some pupils to sit examinations, let alone pass them. And even in the comparatively recent years of Julia's girlhood several of her own classmates had been deemed not to possess the requisite acumen even to attempt the 11 Plus. It was a question of the sheep and the goats—just like the division between those who were lost and those who were saved in the New Testament—a work with which the young Julia had become increasingly familiar, through the crusading fervour of a local curate with whom (aged ten and a half) she had fallen passionately in love.
How things had changed.
Now, in 1994, it was an occasion for considerable surprise if anyone somehow managed to fail an examination. Indeed, to be recorded in the Unclassified ranks of the GCSE was, in Julia's view, a feat of quite astonishing incompetence, which carried with it a sort of bravura badge of monumental under-achievement. And as far as Christian doctrine was concerned, it was becoming far easier to cope with sin, now that Hell was (semi-officially) abolished.
