by Colin Dexter
'All right. If you're not going to tell me, never mind.'
She stood up; and Morse stood up beside her. She held out the small parcel she had been carrying in her right hand and offered it to him.
'For you,' she said simply.
'What is it?'
'Promise me one thing?'
'If I can.'
'You won't open it till you get home tonight.'
'If you say so.'
Morse suddenly felt very moved; felt very lost, very helpless, very upset.
'Well—that's it then. That's all I came for . . . really.'
'I'll ring you when I've opened it, I promise.'
'Only when you get home.'
'Only when I get home.'
'You've got a note of my number, haven't you?'
'I have it by heart.'
'I have to go. Hope you'll like it.' She managed to speak the words; but only just as she picked up St. Anthony and fondled him between the thumb and forefinger of he left hand. And almost, for a moment or two, as they stood there, it was as if they might embrace; but the Assistant Chief Constable suddenly came through Reception, raising his hand to Morse in friendly greeting.
She turned away; and left.
As she stepped out of the building, a red BMW was beside her immediately; and she got in, casting one lingering look behind her as she locked her safety-belt.
'I was rather hoping you'd bring her up, sir. She's getting a bit of a smasher, that one, don't you think?'
But Morse, reclosing the door quietly behind him, made no reply. Suddenly his life seemed joyless and desolate.
'Coffee, sir? asked Lewis in a low voice, perhaps understanding many things.
Morse nodded.
After Lewis was gone, he didn't wait.
He couldn't wait.
Inside the bluebell-patterned wrapping-paper was a small, silver, delicately curving hip-flask.
Oh God!
The letter enclosed with it bore no salutation:
My mum rung me up and told me everything, but she never killed him. I know that better than anybody because I killed him.
I'm not much cop at writing but I wish we could have gone out for shampers together again. That was the happiest night of my life, because for some cockeyed reason I loved you with all the love I've got. I hope you like the little present. I wish I could finish this letter in the way I'd like to but I can't quite think of the right words, you know I'm trying though. If only you'd known how much I wanted you to kiss me in the taxi so some few kisses now from me
xxxx Ellie xxxx
Unmanned with anguish, Morse turned away as Lewis came back with the coffee, folded the letter carefully, and put it in a drawer of his desk.
Neither man spoke.
Then Morse opened the drawer, took out the letter, and passed it over to Lewis.
The silence persisted long after Lewis had read it.
Finally Morse got to his feet. 'If I ever see her again, Lewis, I shall have to tell her that "rang" is the more correct form of the past tense of the verb "to ring", when used transitively.'
'I don't think she'd mind very much what you told her,' said Lewis very quietly.
Morse said nothing.
'Mind if I have a look at the present, sir?'
Morse passed over the hip-flask.
'Remember that crossword clue, Lewis? "Kick in the pants?"—three-hyphen-five?'
Lewis nodded and smiled sadly.
Hip-flask.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Amongst the tribes of Central Australia, every person has, besides a personal name which is in common use, a secret name which was bestowed upon him or her soon after birth, and which is known to none but the fully initiated
(JAMES FRAZER, The Golden Bough)
'YOU MUST ADMIT what a trusting, stupid brain I've got, Lewis. "Don't open it till you get home", she said, and I just thought that . . .'
'Numquarn animus, sir, as you tell me the ancient Romans used to say.'
'We'd better get along there.'
'You think she's done a bunk?'
'Sure she has.'
'With Davies?'
'Has Davies got a red BMW?'
'Not unless he's changed his car.'
'I wonder if it's that randy sod from Reading. Where's his card?'
'The traffic boys'll be able to tell us in a couple ticks.'
'Can't wait that long.'
He found the card, the number—and dialled, informing the woman who answered that he was ringing from police HQ about a stolen car, a red BMW, and he was just checking to make sure . . .
Mr. Williamson was out, Morse learned. But there was no need to worry. He did have a red BMW all right, but it hadn't been stolen. In fact, she'd seen him get into it earlier that afternoon. Going to Oxford, he'd said.
Half an hour later, in Princess Street, it became clear that Ellie Smith had decamped in considerable haste. In her bed-sit-cum-bathroom there had been little enough accomodation for many possessions anyway; yet much had be left behind: the bigger items (perforce)—fridge, TV, record player, microwave; a selection of clothing and shoes, ranging from the sedate to the sensational; pictures and posters by the score, including a life-sized technicolour photograph of Marilyn Monroe, a framed painting by Paul Klee, and (also framed) a fading Diploma from East Oxford Senior School, Prize for Art, awarded to Kay Eleanor Brooks, signed by C. P. Taylor (Head), and dated July 1983.
'Not much here in the drawers, sir. An Appointments' Book, though, stuck at the back.'
'Which I am not particularly anxious to see,' said Morse, sitting himself down on the bed.
'You know—if you don't mind me saying so, sir—it was a bit cruel, wasn't it? Her leaving her mum for all those years and not really getting in touch with her again until—'
He broke off.
'Sir?
Morse looked up.
'There's a telephone number here for that Tuesday the sixth, with something written after it: "GL"—and what looks like the figure "1''.'
Morse got up, and went to look over Lewis's shoulder. 'It could be a lower-case letter "l''.'
'Shall I give the number a go?'
Morse shrugged his shoulders disinterestedly. 'Please yourself.'
Lewis dialled the number, and a pleasing, clear Welsh voice answered, with an obviously well-practised formula:
'Gareth Llewellyn-Jones. Can I 'elp you?'
'Sergeant Lewis, Thames Valley Police, sir. We're investigating a murder, and think you might be able to help us confirm one or two things.'
'My goodness me! Well, I can't really, not for the moment, like. I'm in the middle of a tutorial, see?'
'Can you give me a time when you will be free, sir?'
'Could be important,' said Lewis, after putting down the phone. 'If she was . . . out all night—'
'Don't you mean "in" all night?' said Morse bitterly. 'In bed with some cock-happy client of hers—that's what you mean, isn't it? So stop being so bloody mealy-mouthed, man.'
Lewis counted up to seven. 'Well, if she was, she couldn't have had too much of a hand in things with Brooks.'
'Of course she did!' snapped Morse. 'I don't believe her though when she says she murdered him—she's just trying to shield her mother, that's all—because it was her mother who murdered him.'
'Isn't it usually the other way round, though?'
'What do you mean?'
'Isn't it usually mums who try to shield their kids?'
The word 'kid' did to Morse what 'scenario' did to Ellie Smith; and he was about to remonstrate—when suddenly he clapped a cupped right hand hard over his forehead.
'What year did the Brooks marry?'
'Can't remember exactly. Twelve years ago, was it? We can soon check.'
'What time are you seeing Armstrong-Jones?'
'Llewellyn-Jones, sir. Haft-past eight. After he's had dinner in Hall.'
'Good. I'm glad you're not letting our own enquiries interfere with his college r
outine.'
'It wasn't like that—'
'Come on, Lewis!' Morse pointed to the Diploma. 'When you said Ellie Smith must have been a bit cruel to run away from her mother, you were right, in a way. But she didn't run away from her mother at all, Lewis. She ran away from her father, her natural father.'
'But she could just have changed her name, surely?'
'Nonsense!'
Morse consulted the directory lying beside the phone: only one C. P. Taylor, with an Abingdon Road address. He rang the number, and learned, yes indeed, that he was speaking to the Former Head of East Oxford Senior School, who would willingly help if he could. That same evening? Why not?
After Lewis had dropped Morse ('I'll find my own way home') at a rather elegant semi-detached property in the Abingdon Road, he himself proceeded to Lonsdale College, where his mission was quietly and quickly productive.
Llewellyn-Jones freely admitted that he'd met the young woman he'd always known as 'Kay' fairly regularly for sexual purposes: never in his college rooms; more often than not in a hotel; and twice in her own little place—as was the case on Tuesday, September 6, when he'd spent the evening with her, and would have spent longer but for a phone-call—half-past nine? quarter-to ten?—which had galvanized her into panicky activity. She'd have to leave: he'd have to leave. Obviously some sort of emergency; but he knew no more, except perhaps that he thought the voice on the phone was that of a woman.
Lewis thanked the dark, dapper little Welshman, and assured him that the information given would of course be treated with the utmost confidentiality.
But Gareth Llewellyn-Jones appeared little troubled:
'I'm a bachelor, Sergeant, see? And I just loved being with her, that's all. In fact, I could've . . . But I don't think she's the sort of woman who could ever really fall arse-orver-tit for any man—certainly not for me.'
He smiled, shook his head, and bade farewell to Lewis from the Porters' Lodge.
As Lewis drove up to his home in Headington, he realized that Morse had almost certainly been right about Ellie Smith's involvement in the murder.
With a tumbler of most welcome Scotch beside him, Morse sat back to listen.
'Kay Brooks? Oh yes, I remember her,' said the ex-headmaster, a thin, mildly drooping man in his early seventies. 'Who wouldn't . . .?'
Aged eleven, she'd started at his school as a lively, slightly devil-may-care lass, with long dark hair and a sweet if somewhat cheeky sort of smile. Bright—well above average; and very good at sketching, painting, design, that type of thing. But . . . well, something must have gone a bit sour somewhere. By her mid-teens, she'd become a real handful: playing hookey, surly, inattentive, idle, a bit cruel, perhaps. Trouble at home, like as not? But no one knew. Kay's mother had come along to see him a couple of times but—
Morse intermpted:
'That's really what I've come about, sir. It may not be important, but I rather think you probably mean her step-mother, don't you?
'Pardon?' Taylor looked as if he had mis-heard.
'You see, I think Brooks, Edward Brooks, the man fished out of the Isis, could well have been her real father, not her step-father.'
'Nonsense!' (The second time the word had been used in the past half-hour.) 'I can understand what you're thinking, Inspector; but you're wrong. She changed her name when her mother got remarried; changed it to her mother's new name. You see, I knew her, knew her mother, well before then.'
Morse looked puzzled. 'Is that sort of thing usual?'
Taylor smiled. 'Depends, doesn't it? Some people would give an arm and a leg to change their names. Take me, for instance. My old mum and dad—bless their hearts but . . . you know what they christened me? "Cecil Paul", Would you credit it? I was "Cess-pool" before I'd been at school a fortnight. You know the sort of thing I mean?'
Oh, yes, Morse knew exactly the sort of thing he meant.
'And I'm afraid,' continued Taylor, 'that Kay got teased pretty mercilessly about her name—about her surname, that is. So it was only natural, really, that when the opportunity arose to change it . . .'
'What was her surname?' asked Morse.
Taylor told him.
Oh dear!
Poor Ellie!
After gladly becoming Eleanor 'Brooks' on her mother's remarriage, so very soon, it seemed, had she come to detest her newly-adopted name. And when she had left home, she had plumped for 'Smith'—a good, common-stock, unexceptionable sort of name that could cause her pain no more.
Yes, Morse knew all about being teased because of a name—in his own case a Christian name. And he felt so close to Ellie Smith at that moment, so very caring toward her, that he would have sacrificed almost anything in the world to find her there, waiting for him, when he got back home.
'Ellie Morse'?
'Eleanor Morse'?
Difficult to decide.
But gladly would Morse have settled for either as he walked slowly up into Cornmarket, where he stood waiting twenty-five minutes for a bus to take him up to his bachelor flat in North Oxford.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Then grief forever after; because forever after nothing less would ever do
(J. G. F. POTTER, Anything to Declare?)
THE SUBJECT OF each of these last two enquiries, the young woman who has been known (principally) in these pages as Ellie Smith, had hurriedly wiped her eyes and for a considerable time said nothing after getting into Mike Williamson's car. Her thoughts were temporarily concentrated not so much on Morse himself as on what she could have told him; or rather on what she could never have told him . . .
It had been that terrible Tuesday night, when her mother had phoned, pleading in such deep anguish for her daughter's help; when she'd got rid of that quite likable cock-happy little Welshman; and finally reached the house—a full five minutes before that other woman had arrived in a car—to find her mother standing like a zombie in the entrance hall, continuously massaging a gloved right hand with her left, as if she had inflicted upon it some recent and agonising injury; and when, after going into the kitchen, she'd looked down on her step-father lying prone on the lino there, a strange-looking, wooden-handled knife stuck—so accurately it had seemed to her—halfway between the shoulder-blades. Strangely enough, there hadn't been too much blood. Perhaps he'd never had all that much blood in him. Not warm blood, anyway.
Then the red-headed woman had arrived, and taken over—so coolly competent she'd been, so organised. It was as if the plot of the drama had already been written, for clearly the appropriate props had been duly prepared, waiting only to be fetched from the back-garden shed. Just the timing, it appeared, had gone wrong, as if a final rehearsal had suddenly turned into a first-night performance. And it was her mother surely who'd been responsible for that: jumping the starting-gate and seizing the reins in her own hands—her own hand, rather (singular).
Then, ten minutes later, following a rapidly spoken telephone conversation, the young man had appeared, to whom the red-headed woman had spoken in hushed tones in the hallway; a young man whom, oddly enough, she knew by sight, since the two of them had attended the same Martial Arts classes together. But she said nothing to him. Nor he to her. Indeed he seemed hardly aware of her presence as he began to manoeuvre the awkward corpse into its polythene winding sheet—sheets, rather (plural).
She'd even found herself remembering his name.
Kevin something . . .
As the car turned right from Park End Street into the railway station, Ellie's mind jerked back to the present, aware that Williamson's left hand had crept above the top of her suspendered right-stocking. But she would always be able to handle people like WiIliamson, who now reminded her of their proposed agreement as he humped the two large suitcases from the boot.
'You ring me, like you said, OK?'
Ellie nodded, adding a verbal gloss to her unspoken promise as she took his business card from her handbag and mechanically recited the telephone number.
'Right, then. And
don't forget we can do real business with a body like yours, kid.'
It would have been a nice gesture if he had offered to carry her case up the steps to the automatic doors; or even as far as the ticket window. But he didn't; and of that she was glad. Had he done so she would probably have felt obliged to buy a ticket for Paddington, for she had spoken to him vaguely of 'friends in London'. As it was, once he had driven off, she bought a single ticket to Liverpool, and with aching arms crossed over the footbridge to Platform Two—where she stood for twenty-five minutes, forgetting for a while the future plight of her mother; forgetting the minor role she herself had played in the murder of a man she had learned to hate; yet remembering again now, as she fingered the gold pendant, the man who had given it to her, the man for whom she would have sacrificed anything. If only he could have loved her.
EPILOGUE
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment
(SAMUEL JOHNSON, in Boswell's
The Life of Samuel Johnson)
IT IS NOW FRIDAY, October 28, 1994, the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude, and this chronicle has to be concluded, wis brief space only remaining to record a few marginal notes on some of the characters who played their roles in these pages.
On Thursday, October 20, Mrs. Brenda Brooks was re-arrested, additionally charged with the murder of her husband, Mr. Edward Brooks, and remanded in custody a Holloway Prison. From which institution, four days later, she was granted temporary leave of (escorted) absence to attend a midday funeral service at the Oxford Crematorium, where many teachers from the Proctor Memorial School were squeezed into the small chapel there, together with a few relatives, and a few friends—though the couple from California were unable to make the journey at such short notice.
Two others completed (almost completed) the saddened congregation: the facially scarred Kevin Costyn and a pale looking Chief Inspector Morse, neither of whom participated in (what seemed to the latter) the banal revision of Archbishop Cranmer's noble words for the solemn service of the dead.
