by Colin Dexter
'So you see what it means, Sarge? Whoever murdered your fellow doesn't look as if he had any previous conviction.'
'Or she,' added Lewis, after putting down the phone.
Them was no need to relay the message, since a glum looking Morse had heard it all anyway.
In silence.
A silence that persisted.
The report that Lewis had written on the visit to Matthew Rodway's mother was on the top of Morse's pile.
'Hope I didn't make too many spelling mistakes, sir?' ventured Lewis finally.
'What? No, no. You're improving. Slowly.'
'I don't suppose she gives tuppence really—Mrs. Rodway, I mean about who killed Brooks. So long as somebody did.'
Morse granted inarticulately. His thoughts drifted back to their meeting with Mrs. Rodway. It seemed an age ago now; but as his eyes skimmed through the report once again he could clearly visualise that interview, and the room, and the slim and still embittered Mrs. Rodway . . .
'I know it's probably nonsense, sir, but you don't think that she could have murdered Brooks, do you?'
'She had as good a motive as anybody,' admitted Morse.
'Perhaps we ought to have another little ride ou there and take her fingerprints.'
'Not today, Lewis. I'm out for a meal, if you remember.'
'I'll see you there, sir, if you don't mind. About six, is that all right?
'What are you going to do?'
'Lots of little things. Make a bit more progress with the keys, for a start. I'm expected at the Pitt Rivers in twenty minutes.'
After Lewis had left, Morse lit yet another cigarette and leaned back in the black leather chair, looking purposelessly around his office. He noticed the thin patina of nicotine on the emulsioned walls. Yes, the place could do with a good wash-down and redecoration: the corners of the ceiling especially were deeply stained . . .
Suddenly, he felt a brief frisson of excitement as if there were something of vital importance in what he'd just read, or what he'd just thought, or what he'd just seen. But try as he might, he was unable to isolate the elusive clue; and soon he knew it was of no use trying any more.
It had gone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Fingerprints do get left at crime scenes. Even the craftiest of perpetrators sometimes forget to wipe up everywhere
(Murder Ink, Incriminating Evidence)
HER FIRST SENTENCE, spoken with an attractive Welsh lilt, was a perfect anapaestic pentameter:
'We shall have to eat here in the kitchen, Inspector, all right?'
'Wherever, Mrs. Lewis. Have no fears.'
'We've got the decorators in, see? But just go and sit down in the lounge—where I've put out some beer and a glass.' (Anapaestic hexameter.)
As he passed the dining-room, Morse stopped to look inside.
The decorators had finished for the day; almost finished altogether, it seemed, for only around the main window were some paint-stained white sheets still lying across the salmon-pink carpet, with all of the furniture now pushed back into place except for a bookcase, which stood awkwardly in mid-room, a wooden stepladder propped up against it. Clearly, though, there would be no problem about its own relocation, either, for the site of its former habitation was marked by an oblong of strawberry-red carpet to the left of the window.
Mrs. Lewis was suddenly behind him.
'You like the colour?'
'Very professionally painted,' said Morse, a man with no knowledge whatsoever of professionalism in painting and decorating.
'You were looking at the carpet, though, weren't you now?' she said shrewdly. 'Only had it five years—and they told us the colours in all of their carpets would last till eternity.' (Anapaests everywhere.)
'I suppose everything fades,' said Morse. It hardly seemed a profound observation—not at the time.
'It's the sun really, see. That's why you get most of your discolouration. In the cupboards—on the lining for the cupboards—you hardly get fading at all.'
Morse moved on into the lounge where he opened a can of Cask Flow Beamish, sat contentedly back in an arm-chair, and was watching the Six O'clock News when Lewis came in.
'You look pleased with yourself,' said Morse.
'Well, that's two more of the keys accounted for: that second Yale opens the staff entrance door at the back of the Pitt Rivers, just off South Parks Road; and that little "X 10" key—remember?—that's a Pitt Rivers key, too: it's a key to a wall-safe there that's got rows and rows of little hooks in it, with a key on each of 'em—keys to all the display-cabinets.'
Morse granted a perfunctory 'Well done!' as he reverted his attention to the news.
Mrs. Lewis produced a slightly unladylike whistle a few minutes later: 'On the table, boys!'
Morse himself had acquired one culinary skill only—that of boiling an egg; and he was not infrequently heard to boast that such a skill was not nearly so common as was generally assumed. But granted that Morse (in his own estimation) was an exemplary boiler of eggs, Mrs. Lewis (omnium consensu) was a first-class frier; and the milkily opaque eggs, two on each plate, set beside their mountains of thick golden chips, were a wonderful sight to behold.
As Morse jotted out some tomato sauce, Lewis picked up his knife and fork. 'You know, sir, if they ever find a body with an empty plate of eggs and chips beside it '
'I think you mean a plate empty of eggs and chips, Lewis.'
'Well, I reckon if the fingerprints on the knife don't match any of those in our criminal library, the odds are they'll probably be mine.'
Morse nodded, picked up his own knife and fork, found (blessedly!) that the plate itself was hot—and then he froze, as if a frame on the family video had suddenly been switched to 'Pause.'
'Everything all right, sir?'
Morse made no reply.
'You—you're feeling all right, sir?' persisted a slightly anxious Lewis.
'Bloody 'ell!' whispered Morse tremulously to himself in a voice just below audible range. Then, louder: 'Bloody 'ell! You've done it again, Lewis. You've done it again!'
Unprecedentedly Lewis was moved to lay down both knife and fork.
'You know we had a little bet . . .' Morse's voice was vibrant now.
'When we both lost.'
'No. When to be more accurate neither of us won. Well, I'd like to bet you something else, Lewis. I'd like to bet you that I know whose fingerprints are on that knife in Brooks's back!'
'That's more than the fingerprint-boys do.'
Morse snorted. 'I'm very tempted to report them for professional incompetence.' Then his voice softened. 'But I can forgive them. Yes, I can understand them.'
'I'm lost, sir, I'm afraid.'
'Shall I tell you,' asked Morse, 'whose fingerprints we found on that knife?'
His blue eyes looked so fiercely across the kitchen table that for a few moments Lewis wondered whether he was suffering from some slight stroke or seizure.
'Shall I tell you?' repeated Morse. 'You see, there's a regular procedure which you know all about; which every CID man knows all about. A procedure that wasn't—couldn't have been—followed in this case: that when you take fingerprints from the scene of any murder you take everybody's—including the corpse's.'
Lewis felt the blood in his veins growing cold—like the plate in front of him.
'You can't mean . . .?'
'But I do, Lewis. That's exactly what I do mean. The prints are those of Edward Brooks himself.'
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Gestalt (n): chiefly Psychol. An integrated perceptual structure or unity conceived as functionally more than the sum of its parts
(The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary)
AS MORSE WELL knew, it was difficult enough to describe to someone else such a comparatively simple physical action as walking, say—let alone something considerably more complicated such as serving a ball in a game of tennis, How much more difficult then, later that same evening, for him to answer Lewis's direct quest
ion about the cerebral equivalent of such a process.
'What put you on to it, sir?'
What indeed?
It was perhaps perfectly possible to describe the menta! gymnastics involved in the solving of a cryptic crossword clue. But how did one explain those virtually inexplicable convolutions of the mind which occasionally led to some dramatic, some penny-dropping moment, when the answers to a whole series of cryptic clues—and those not of the cruciverbalist but of the criminological variety—combined to cast some completely new illumination on the scene? How did one begin to explain such a sudden, almost irrational, psychological process?
'With difficulty,' was the obvious answer; but Morse was trying much harder than that, as he now sought to identify the main constituents which had led him to his quite exlraordinary conclusion.
It was all to do with the fortuitous collocation of several memories, several recollections, which although occurring at disparate points in the case—and before had suddenly come together in his mind, and coalesced.
There had been the report (Lewis's own) on the interview with Mrs. Rodway, when he had so easily been able to re-visualise some of the smallest details of the room in which they had spoken with her, and particularly that oblong patch above the radiator where a picture had been hanging.
Then there had been (only that very evening) a second oblong, prompting memory further, when he had looked down at the pristine strawberry-red in the lounge there, and when Mrs. Lewis had spoken of the unfading linings in her cupboards.
And then, working backwards (or was it forwards?) there had been the visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, when the Administrator had pointed with pride to the fine quality of the hessian lining for her cabinet-exhibits, with its optimistic guarantee of Tithonian immortality.
Then again, a much more distant memory from his child-hood of a case of cutlery, a family heirloom, where over the years each knife, each fork, each spoon, had left its own imprint, its own silhouette, on the blue plush-lining of the case. Things always left their impressions, did they not?
Or did they?
Perhaps in the Pitt Rivers cabinets, in those slightly sombre, sunless galleries, the objects displayed there the artefacts, the relics from the past—were leaving only very faint impressions, like the utensils in Mrs. Lewis's kitchen-cupboards.
No impressions at all, possibly . . .
Then, and above all, the discrepancy between the pathologist's report on the knife used to murder McClure, and the statement given by the Raysons about the knife found in their own front garden: the 'blade not really sharp', in the former; the 'blade in no immediate need of sharpening', in the latter. Not a big discrepancy, perhaps; but a hugely significant one—and one which should never, never have passed unnoticed.
Yes, all the constituents were there: separate, though, and unsynthesized—waiting for a catalyst.
Lewis!
Lewis the Catalyst.
For it was Lewis who had returned from his p.m. investigations with the information that one of the small keys found in Brooks's pocket fitted a wall-safe in the museum; in which, in turn, were to be found row upon row of other keys, including the key to Cabinet 52. It was Lewis, too, who so innocently had asserted, as he picked up a knife with which to eat his meal, that his own fingerprints would soon be found thereon . . .
And whither had such ratiocination finally led the Chief Inspector, as, like Abraham, he had made his way forth from his tent in the desert knowing not whither he went? To that strangest of all conclusions: that on Wednesday, September 7, from Cabinet 52 in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford—nothing whatsoever had been stolen.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Behold, I shew you a mystery
(ST. PAUL, I Corinthians, ch. 15, v. 51)
A COUNCIL OF WAR was called in Caesar's tent two days later, Sunday, October 2, with three other officers joining Chiief Superintendent Strange in the latter's Kidlington HQ office at 10 a.m.: Chief Inspector Morse, Chief Inspector Phillotson, and Sergeant Lewis. Morse, invited to put a case for a dramatic intensification of enquiries, for a series of warrants, and for a small cohort of forensic specialists, did so with complete conviction.
He knew now (or so he claimed) what had been the circumstanees of each of the murders, those of McClure and Brooks; and he would, with his colleagues' permission, give an account of those circumstances, not seeking to dwell on motives (not for the present) but on methods—on modi operandi.
Strange now listened, occasionally nodding, occasionally lifting his eyebrows in apparent incredulity, to the burden of Morse's reconstructions.
McClure lived on a staircase where Brooks was the scout. The latter had gained access to drugs and became a supplier to several undergraduates, one of whom, Matthew Rodway, had become very friendly with McClure—probably not a homosexual relationship, though—before committing suicide in tragic and semi-suspicious circumstances. As a result of this, McClure had insisted that Brooks resign from his job; but agreed that he, McClure, would not report the matter to the Dean, and would even provide a job-testimonial, provided that Brooks foreswore his dealings in drugs.
Feelings between the two men were bitter.
Things settled down, though.
Then it came to McClure's notice that Brooks had not finished with his drug-dealing after all; that some of the junkies were still in touch with him. A furious McClure threatened disclosure to Brooks's new employers and to the police, and a meeting between the two was arranged (or not arranged—how could one know?). Certain it was, however, that Brooks went to visit McClure. And murdered him.
On the way home, on his bicycle, Brooks suddenly became aware that he was seriously ill. He managed to get as far as St. Giles's, but could get no further. He left his bicycle outside St. Mary Mags, without even bothering to lock it, perhaps, and covering himself as best he could, got a taxi from the rank there up to East Oxford—and very soon got an ambulance up to the JR2, minus the bloodstained clothing which his wife disposed of.
One thing above all must have haunted Brooks's mind once he knew he would recover from his heart attack: he was still in possession of the knife he'd used to murder McClure, because whatever happened he couldn't throw it away. He ordered his wife to lock it up somewhere, probably in the box in his bedroom, and she did as he asked, surely having enough common sense to handle the knife—both then and later—with the greatest delicacy, pretty certainly wearing the glove she'd taken to using to protect her injured right hand. She was terrified—certainly at that point—of incurring the anger of a fearsomely cruel man who had physically maltreated her on several occasions, and who in earlier years had probably abused his step-daughter—the latter now putting in an appearance after many moons away from home, no doubt after somehow learning of Brooks's illness.
Brenda Brooks had an ally.
Two allies, in fact: because we now become increasingly aware of the unusually strong bond of friendship and affection between her and the woman for whom she cleaned, Mrs. Julia Stevens, a schoolma'am who, although this fact has only recently become known to us, was suffering from an inoperable brain-tumor.
A plot was hatched, an extraordinarily clever plot, designed to throw the police on to the wrong track; a plot which succeeded in so doing.
'Let me explain.'
'At last,' mumbled Strange.
Brenda Brooks took Mrs. Stevens wholly into her confidence, with both now knowing perfectly well not only who had murdered McClure but also exactly where the knife had come from—and why Brooks was unable to get rid of it.
On the Saturday before McClure's murder, the very last thing in the afternoon, Brooks had taken the knife from Cabinet 52 in the Pitt Rivers Museum, fully intending to replace it the very first thing on the following Monday morning, when he planned to turn up for work half an hour or so early and to restore it to its position amongst the fifty-odd other knives there. Nobody would have missed it; nobody could have missed it, since the museum was closed on Sundays.
'Why—?' Strange had begun. But Morse had anticipated the question.
Why Brooks should have acted in such a devious way, or whether he had taken the knife with the deliberate intention of committing murder, it was now only possible to guess. The only slight clue (thus far) was that one of the few books found in the Brooks's virtually illiterate household was a library copy of The Innocence of Father Brown, in which Chesterton suggested a battlefield as the safest place to conceal a corpse . . . with the possible implication that a cabinet of weapons might be the safest place to conceal a knife.
But Brooks couldn't restore the knife. Not yet.
His great hope was that no one would notice its absence. And no one did. Apart from the attendant circumstance of so many other knives, one further factor was greatly in his favour: the cabinet had been recently re-lined, and there was no outwardly physical sign that any object could be missing. The normal routine, when anything was taken out, was for a printed white card—'Temporarily Removed'—to be inserted over the space left vacant. But there was no space left vacant, since Brooks had only to move two or three other knives along a little to effect a balanced row of exhibits. And as day followed day, no one in fact noticed that anything at all was missing.
But, apart from Brooks, two other persons now knew of all this.
One of whom was Julia Stevens.
And the beautifully clever idea was born: if . . . if Brooks were to be murdered with the very same knife which he himself had stolen . . .
