by Colin Dexter
“I shall need me specs. They’re in the shed—”
“Don’t worry now! Better if you give yourself a bit of time. No rush. As I say, all I want you to do is to make sure everything’s there just as you said it, nothing’s been missed out. It’s often the little things, you know, that make all the difference.”
“If there was anythin’ else I’d’ve told the other inspector, wouldn’t I?”
Was it Lewis’s imagination, or was there a momentary glint of anxiety in the gardener’s pale eyes?
“Are you in this evening, Mr. Daley?” asked Morse.
“Wha’—Saturday? I usually go over the pub for a jar or two at the weekends but—”
“If I called at your house about—what, seven?”
George Daley stood motionless, his eyes narrowed and unblinking as he watched the two detectives walk away through the archway and into the visitors’ car park. Then his eyes fell on the photocopied statement once more. There was just that one thing that worried him, yes. It was that bloody boy of his who’d fucked it all up. More trouble than they were worth, kids. Especially him! Becomin’ a real troublemaker he was, gettin’ in all hours—like last night. Three bloody thirty A.M. With his mates, he’d said—after the end-of-term knees-up. He’d got a key all right, of course, but his mother could never sleep till he was in. Silly bitch!
“Where to, sir?” queried Lewis.
“I reckon we’ll just call round to see Mrs. Daley.”
“What do you make of Mr.?”
“Little bit nervous.”
“Most people get a bit nervous with the police.”
“Good cause, some of ’em,” said Morse.
Lewis had earlier telephoned Margaret Daley about her husband’s whereabouts, and the woman who opened the door of number 2 Blenheim Villas showed no surprise. She appeared, on first impressions, a decided cut or two above her horticultural spouse: neatly dressed, pleasantly spoken, well groomed—her light-brown hair professionally streaked with strands of blonde and grey.
Morse apologized for disturbing her, looked around him at the newly decorated, neatly furnished, through-lounge; offered a few “nice-little-place-you-have-here” type compliments; and explained why they’d called and would be calling again—one of them, certainly—at seven o’clock that evening.
“It was you, Mrs. Daley, wasn’t it, who got your husband to hand the rucksack in?”
“Yes—but he’d have done it himself anyway. Later on. I know he would.”
The shelves around the living area were lined with china ornaments of all shapes and sizes; and Morse walked over to the shelf above the electric fire, and carefully picked up the figure of a small dog, examining it briefly before replacing it on its former station.
“King Charles?”
Margaret Daley nodded. “Cavalier King Charles. We had one—till last February. Mycroft. Lovely little dog—lovely face! We all had a good cry when the vet had to put him down. Not a very healthy breed, I’m afraid.”
“People living next to us have one of those,” ventured Lewis. “Always at the vet. Got a medical history long as your arm.”
“Thank you, Lewis. I’m sure Mrs. Daley isn’t overanxious to be reminded of a family bereavement—”
“Oh, it’s all right! I quite like talking about him, really. We all—Philip and George—we all loved him. In fact he was about the only thing that’d get Philip out of bed sometimes.”
But Morse’s attention appeared to have drifted far from dogs as he gazed through the french windows at the far end of the room, his eyes seemingly focused at some point towards the back of the garden—a garden just over the width of the house and stretching back about fifty feet to a wire fence at the bottom, separating the property from the open fields beyond. As with the patch of garden in the front, likewise here: George Daley, it had to be assumed, reckoned he did quite enough gardening in the course of earning his daily bread at Blenheim, and carried little if anything of his horticultural expertise into the rather neglected stretch of lawn which provided the immediate view from the rear of number 2.
“I don’t believe it!” said Morse. “Isn’t that Asphodelina lutea?”
Mrs. Daley walked over to the window.
“There!” pointed Morse. “Those yellow things, just across the fence.”
“Buttercups!” said Lewis.
“You’ve, er, not got a pair of binoculars handy, Mrs. Daley?”
“No—I—we haven’t, I’m afraid.”
“Mind if we have a look?” asked Morse. “Always contradicting me, my sergeant is!”
The three of them walked out through the kitchen door, past the (open) out-house door, and on to the back lawn where the daisies and dandelions and broad-leaf plantain had been allowed a generous freedom of movement. Morse himself stepped up to the fence, looking down at the ground around him; then, cursorily, at the yellow flowers he had spotted earlier, and which he now agreed to be nothing rarer than buttercups. Mrs. Daley smiled vaguely at Lewis; but Lewis was now listening to Morse’s apparently aimless chatter with far greater interest.
“No compost heap?”
“No. George isn’t much bothered with the garden here, as you can see. Says he’s got enough, you know …” She pointed vaguely towards Blenheim, and led the way back in.
“How do you get rid of your rubbish then?”
“Sometimes we go down to the waste disposal with it.
Or you can buy those special bags from the council. We used to burn it, but a couple of years ago we upset the neighbours—you know, bits all over the washing and—”
“Probably against the bye-laws, too,” added Lewis; and for once Morse appeared to appreciate the addendum.
It was Lewis too, as they were leaving, who spotted the rifle amid the umbrellas, the walking sticks, and the warped squash racket, in a stand just behind the front door.
“Does your husband do a bit of shooting?”
“Oh that! George occasionally … yes …”
Gently, for a second time, Lewis reminded her of the law’s demands: “Ought to be under lock and key, that. Perhaps you’d remind your husband, Mrs. Daley.”
Margaret Daley watched them through the front window as they walked away to their car. Just a bit of a stiff-shirt, the sergeant had been, about their legal responsibilities. Whereas the inspector—well, he’d seemed much nicer with his interest in dogs and flowers and the decoration in the lounge—her decoration. Yet during the last few minutes she’d begun to suspect her judgement a little, and she had the feeling that it would probably be Morse who would be returning that evening. Not that there was anything to worry about, really. Well, just the one thing, perhaps.
In spite of that day being Saturday—and the first of the holidays—Mrs. Julie Ireson, careers mistress at the Cherwell School, Oxford, had been quite willing to meet Lewis just after lunch; and Lewis was anxious to get the meeting over as soon as possible, for he was desperately tired and had been only too glad to accept Morse’s strict directive for a long rest—certainly for the remainder of the day, and perhaps for the next day, Sunday, too—unless there occurred any dramatic development.
She was waiting in the deserted car park when Lewis arrived, and immediately took him up to her first-floor study, its walls and shelves festooned with literature on nursing, secretarial courses, apprenticeship schemes, industrial training, FE’s, poly’s, universities … For Lewis (whose only career advice had been his father’s dictum that he could do worse than to keep his mouth mostly shut and his bowels always open), a school-based advice centre for pupils leaving school was an interesting novelty.
A buff-coloured folder containing the achievements of Philip Daley was on the table ready for him. Non-achievements rather. He was now just seventeen years old, and had officially abandoned any potential advancement into further education w.e.f. 17 July—the previous day. The school was prepared to be not over-pessimistic about some minor success in the five GCSE subjects in which, the previous te
rm, he had tried (though apparently not overhard) to satisfy his examiners: English; Technical Drawing; Geography; General Science; and Communication Studies. Over the years, however, the reports from his teachers, even in non-academic subjects, had exhibited a marked lack of enthusiasm about his attitude and progress. Yet until fairly recently he appeared not to have posed any great problem to the school community: limited, clearly, in intellectual prowess; limited too in most technical and vocational skills; in general about average.
Current educational philosophy (Lewis learned) encouraged a measure of self-evaluation, and amongst other documents in the folder was a sheet on which eighteen months previously, in his own handwriting, Philip had filled in a questionnaire about his six main “Leisure Interests/Pastimes”, in order of preference. The list read thus:
Football
Pop music
Photography
Pets
Motorbikes
TV
“He can spell OK,” commented Lewis.
“Difficult to misspell ‘pets’, Sergeant.”
“Yes. But—well, ‘photography’ …”
“Probably had to look it up in the dictionary.”
“You didn’t like him?” said Lewis slowly.
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t. I’m glad he’s gone, if you must know.” She was younger than Lewis had expected: perhaps more vulnerable too?
“Any particular reason?”
“Just general, really.”
“Well, thanks very much, Mrs. Ireson. If I could take the folder?”
“Any particular reason you want to know about him?”
“No. Just general, really,” echoed Lewis.
He slept from 6:30 that evening through until almost ten the following morning. When he finally awoke, he learned there had been a telephone message the previous evening from Morse: on no account was he to come in to HQ that Sunday; it would be a good idea, though, to make sure his passport was in order.
Well, well!
Chapter Twenty-nine
Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience)
It was two minutes to seven by the Jaguar’s fascia clock when Morse pulled up in the slip-road outside number 2 Blenheim Villas. He was fairly confident of his ground now, especially after reading through the folder that Lewis had left. Certain, of course, about the electric fire in the Daleys’ main lounge; almost certain about the conversion of the old coal-house into a utility room, in which, as they’d walked out to the garden, he’d glimpsed the arrangement of washing-machine and tumble-drier on newly laid red tiles; not quite so certain about the treeless back garden though, for Morse was ridiculously proud about never having been a boy scout, and his knowledge of camp-fires and cocoa-barbecues, he had to admit, was almost nil.
For once he felt relieved to be on his own as he knocked at the front door. The police as a whole were going through a tough time in public esteem: allegations of corrupt officers, planted evidence, improper procedures—such allegations had inevitably created suspicion and some hostility. And—yes, Morse knew it—he himself was on occasion tempted to overstep the procedural boundaries a little—as shortly he would be doing again. It was a bit like a darts player standing a few inches in front of the oche as he threw for the treble-twenty. And Lewis would not have brooked this; and would have told him so.
In the lounge, in a less than convivial atmosphere, the Daleys sat side by side on the settee; and Morse, from the armchair opposite, got down to business.
“You’ve managed to go through the statement again, Mr. Daley?”
“You don’t mind the wife being here?”
“I’d prefer it, really,” said Morse innocently.
“Like I said, there’s nothin’ as I can add.”
“Fine.” Morse reached across and took the now rather grimy photocopy and looked through it slowly himself before lifting his eyes to George Daley.
“Let me be honest with you, sir. It’s this camera business that’s worrying me.”
“Wha’ abou’ i’?” (If the dietitian sometimes had paid overnice attention to her dental consonants, Daley himself almost invariably ignored them.)
Morse moved obliquely into the attack: “You interested in photography yourself?”
“Me? Not much, no.”
“You, Mrs. Daley?”
She shook her head.
“Your son Philip is though?”
“Yeah, well, he’s got fairly interested in it recently, hasn’t he, luv?” Daley turned to his wife, who nodded vaguely, her eyes on Morse continuously.
“Bit more than ‘recently’, perhaps?” Morse suggested. “He put it down on his list of hobbies at school last year—early last year—a few months before you found the camera.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, we was going to get him one anyway, for his birthday. Wasn’t we, luv?” Again, apart from a scarce-discernible nod, Margaret Daley appeared reluctant verbally to confirm such an innocent statement.
“But you’ve never had a camera yourself, you say.”
“Correck!”
“How did you know the film in the camera was finished then?”
“Well, you know, it’s the numbers, innit? It tells you, like, when you’ve got to the finish.”
“When it reads ‘ten’, you mean?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“What if there are twelve exposures on the reel?”
“Dunno.” Daley appeared not to be at all flustered by the slightly more aggressive tone of the question. “It was probably Philip as said so.” Again he turned to his wife. “Was his ten or twelve, luv? D’you remember?”
Morse pounced on the answer: “So he had a camera before?”
“Yeah, well, just an el cheapo thing we bought him—”
“From Spain.” (Mrs. Daley had broken her duck.)
“Would you know how to get the film out of a camera, Mr. Daley?”
“Well, not unless, you know—”
“But it says here”—Morse looked down at the statement again—“it says here that you burnt the film.”
“Yeah, well, that’s right, isn’t it, luv? We shoulda kept it, I know. Still, as I said—well, we all do things a bit wrong sometimes, don’t we? And we said we was sorry about everything, didn’t we, luv?”
Morse was beginning to realize that the last three words, with their appropriate variants, were a rhetorical refrain only, and were not intended to elicit any specific response.
“Where did you burn it?” asked Morse quietly.
“Dunno. Don’t remember. Just chucked it on the fire, I suppose.” Daley gestured vaguely with his right hand.
“That’s electric,” said Morse, pointing to the fireplace.
“And we got a grate for a coal-fire next door. All right?” Daley’s voice was at last beginning to show signs of some exasperation.
“Did you have a fire that day?”
“How the ’ell am I supposed to remember that?”
“Do you remember, Mrs. Daley?”
She shook her head. “More than a year ago, isn’t it? Could you remember that far back?”
“I’ve not had a coal-fire in my flat for fifteen years, Mrs. Daley. So I could remember, yes.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said quietly, “I can’t.”
“Did you know that the temperature in Oxfordshire that day was seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit?” (Morse thought he’d got it vaguely correct.)
“Wha’! At ten o’clock at night?” Clearly Daley was losing his composure, and Morse took full advantage.
“Where do you keep your coal? Your coal-house has been converted to a utility-room—your wife showed—”
“If it wasn’t here—all right, it wasn’t here. Musta been in the garden, mustn’t it?”
“What do you burn in the garden?”
“What do I burn? What do I burn? I burn bloody twigs
and leaves and—”
“You haven’t got any trees. And even if you had, July’s a bit early for leaves.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Look—”
“No!” Suddenly Morse’s voice was harsh and authoritative. “You look, Mr. Daley. If you do burn your rubbish out there in the garden, come and show me where!” All pretence was now dropped as Morse continued: “And if you make up any more lies about that, I’ll bring a forensic team in and have ’em cart half your lawn away!”
They sat silently, the Daleys, neither looking at the other.
“Was it you who got the film developed, Mr. Daley? Or was it your son?” Morse’s voice was quiet once more.
“It was Philip,” said Margaret Daley, finally, now assuming control. “He was friendly with this boy at school whose father was a photographer and had a dark-room an’ all that, and they developed ’em there, I think.” Her voice sounded to Morse as if it had suddenly lost its veneer of comparative refinement, and he began to wonder which of the couple was potentially the bigger liar.
“You must tell me what those photographs were.” Morse made an effort to conceal the urgency of his request, but his voice betrayed the fear that all might well be lost.
“He never kept ’em as far as I know—” began Daley.
But his wife interrupted him: “There were only six or seven out of the twelve that came out. There were some photos of birds—one was a pinkish sort of bird with a black tail—”
“Jay!” said Daley.
“—and there was two of a man, youngish man—probably her boyfriend. But the others, as I say … you know, they just didn’t … come out.”
“I must have them,” said Morse simply, inexorably almost.
“He’s chucked ’em out, surely,” observed Daley. “What the ’ell would he keep ’em for?”
“I must have them,” repeated Morse.
“Christ! Don’t you understand? I never even saw ’em!”
“Where is your son?”
Husband and wife looked at each other, and husband spoke: “Gone into Oxford, I should think—Sa’day night …”
“Take me to his room, will you?”
