by Colin Dexter
“What about the bones?”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Huh! Most of the bishops don’t believe in God.”
“And you used to accuse me of never answering questions!”
Morse hesitated. Then he looked down at his old friend and answered him: “No.”
Paradoxically perhaps, the police surgeon appeared comforted by the sincerity of the firm monosyllable; but his thoughts were now stuttering their way around a discontinuous circuit.
“You surprised, Morse?”
“Pardon?”
“You were, weren’t you? Admit it!”
“Surprised?”
“The bones! Not a woman’s bones, were they?”
Morse felt his heart pounding insistently somewhere—everywhere—in his body; felt the blood sinking down from his shoulders, past his heart, past his loins. Not a woman’s bones—is that what Max had just said?
It had taken the hump-backed surgeon some considerable time to say his say; and feeling a tap on his shoulder, Morse turned to find Nurse Shelick standing behind him. “Please!” her lips mouthed, as she looked anxiously down at the tired and intermittently closing eyes.
But before he left Morse leaned forward and whispered in the dying man’s ear: “I’ll bring us a bottle of malt in the morning, Max, and we’ll have a wee drop together, my old friend. So keep a hold on things—please keep a hold on things! … Just for me!”
It would have been a joy for Morse had he seen the transient gleam in Max’s eyes. But the surgeon’s face had turned away from him, towards the recently painted, pale-green wall of the CCU. And he seemed to be asleep.
Maximilian Theodore Siegfreid de Bryn (his middle names a surprise even to his few friends) surrendered to an almost totally welcome weariness two hours after Chief Inspector Morse had left; and finally loosed his grip on the hooks just after three o’clock that morning. He had bequeathed his mortal remains to the Medical Research Foundation at the JR2. He had earnestly wished it so. And it would be done.
Many had known Max, even if few had understood his strange ways. And many were to feel a fleeting sadness at his death. But he had (as we have seen) a few friends only. And there was only one man who had wept silently when the call had been received in his office in Thames Valley Police HQ at Kidlington at 9 A.M. on Sunday, 19 July, 1992.
Chapter Thirty-three
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary
(Richard Harkness, New York Herald Tribune, 15 June, 1960)
Sunday is not a good day on which to do business. Or to expect others to be at work—or even to be out of bed. But Dr. Laura Hobson was out of bed fairly early that morning, and awaiting Morse at the (deserted) William Dunn School of Pathology building at 9:30 A.M.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“You’re Inspector Morse?”
“Chief Inspector Morse.”
“Sorry!”
“And you’re Dr. Hobson?”
“I am she.”
Morse smiled wanly. “I applaud your grammar, my dear.”
“I am not your ‘dear’. You must forgive me for being so blunt: but I’m no one’s ‘luv’ or ‘dear’ or ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’. I’ve got a name. If I’m at work I prefer to be called Dr. Hobson; and if I let my hair down over a drink I have a Christian name: Laura. That’s my little speech, Chief Inspector! You’re not the only one who’s heard it.” She was smiling sufficiently as she spoke though, showing small, very white teeth—a woman in her early thirties, fair-complexioned, with a pair of disproportionately large spectacles on her pretty nose; a smallish woman, about 5 foot 4 inches. But it was her voice which interested Morse: the broad north-country vowels in ‘luv’ and ‘blunt’; the pleasing nairm she had—and perhaps the not unpleasant prospect of meeting her sometime orver a drink with her hair doon …
They sat on a pair of high stools in a room that reminded Morse of his hated physics lab at school, and she told him of the simple yet quite extraordinary findings. The report on which Max had been working, though incomplete, was incontestable: the bones discovered in Wytham Woods were those of an adult male, Caucasian, about 5 foot 6 inches in height, slimly built, brachycephalic, fair-haired …
But Morse’s mind had already leaped many furlongs ahead of the field. He’d been sure that the bones had been those of Karin Eriksson. All right, he’d been wrong. But now he knew whose bones they were—for the face of the man in the photograph was staring back at him, unmistakably. He asked only for a photocopy of Dr. Hobson’s brief, preliminary report, and rose to go.
The pair of them walked to the locked outer door in silence, for the death of Max was heavy on her mind too.
“You knew him well, didn’t you?”
Morse nodded.
“I feel so sad,” she said simply.
Morse nodded again. “ ‘The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is at its end.’ ”
She watched him, the slightly balding grey-haired man, as he stood for a few seconds beside his Jaguar. He held the photocopied report in his left hand, and raised it a few inches in farewell. She relocked the door, and walked thoughtfully back to the lab.
* * *
Morse wondered about driving up to the JR2, but decided against it. There was little time anyway. An urgent meeting of senior police officers had been summoned for 11 A.M. at the HQ building, and in any case there was nothing he could do. He drove along Parks Road, past Keble College, and then turned right into the Banbury Road. He had a few minutes to spare, and he took the second right turn now, and drove on slowly into Park Town, driving clockwise along the North Crescent, and along the South Crescent … There would be little chance of doing much that day though, and in any case it would be better to postpone things for twenty-four hours or so.
Senior personnel from both the City and the County Forces were meeting at a time of considerable public disquiet—and criticism. Hitherto the impression had been abroad that known ringleaders were joy-riding and shop-ramming almost with impunity; and that the police were doing little to check the teenage tearaways who were terrifying many sections of the community on the Broadmoor Lea estate. There was little justification for such a view, since the police were continually finding themselves hamstrung by the refusal of the local inhabitants to come out and name names and co-operate in seeking to clean up their crime-ridden neighbourhood. But the death of Marion Bridewell had changed all that.
During this Sunday, 19 July, major decisions were taken, and their immediate implementation planned: a string of arrests would be made in a co-ordinated swoop the following morning, with special sittings of magistrates’ courts scheduled for the following two evenings; council workmen would be sent in during the next few days to erect bollards and to construct sleeping-policeman humps across selected streets; police presence on the estate during the next week would be doubled; and a liaison committee of police officers, local head-teachers, social workers, and church ministers would be constituted forthwith.
It was a long and sometimes ill-humoured meeting; and Morse himself contributed little of any importance to the deliberations, for in truth his mind was distanced, and only once had his interest been fully engaged. It had been Strange’s inveterate cynicism about committees which had occasioned the little contretemps:
“Give us a week or two at this rate,” he growled, “and we’ll have a standing committee, a steering committee, an ad hoc committee—every committee you can put a name to. What we should be doing is hitting ’em where it hurts. Fining ’em; fining their dads; docking it off their dads’ wages. That’s what I reckon!”
The Chief Constable had agreed quietly. “Splendid idea—and the new legislation, I think, is going to be a big help to us. But there’s just one snag, isn’t there? You see, a good many of these young lads haven’t got any fathers, Superintendent.”
Strange had looked disconcerted then.
And Morse had smiled hi
s second smile of the day.
Chapter Thirty-four
The newly arrived resident in North Oxford is likely to find that although his next-door neighbour has a first-class degree from some prestigious university this man is not quite so clever as his wife
(Country Living, January 1992)
Morse was on his own when finally, in mid-morning the following day, he drove down to Park Town, this time again slowly circling the two crescents on either side of the elliptical central garden, well stocked with trees and flowering shrubs. There were plenty of parking spaces, and after his second circuit he pulled in the Jaguar along the south side and walked past the fronts of the dozen Italianate properties which comprised the attractive stone-faced terrace. At the eastern end he turned down an alley-way, and then into the lane, about three yards wide, which ran behind the properties. To his right the continuous brick wall which protected the small back gardens was only about five feet in height, and he realized that it would not even be necessary to enter any of the gardens to find the one he was looking for. It was all childishly easy—no Holmesian intellect needed here; indeed a brief Watsonian reconnoitre would have established the spot almost immediately. Thus it was that after only a couple of minutes Morse found himself leaning over the curved coping-stones of the westernmost property, and finding the details on his photographs so easily matchable here: the configuration of the black drainpipes, the horizontal TV aerial, and then, crucially, the tree upon whose lower bough a child’s red swing was now affixed. At the left of the garden, as Morse observed it, was a wooden garden seat, its slats disintegrating; and he felt thrillingly certain that it was from this seat, in this very garden, that someone—and most probably Karin Eriksson herself—had taken the two photographs of the fair-headed, brachycephalic, slimly built … what else had Dr. Hobson said? He couldn’t remember. And it didn’t matter. Not at all.
He walked to the imposing front door of the end property, designated “Seckham Villa” by a small plaque on the right-hand wall of the porch; and below it, three bells: second floor Dr. S. Levi; first floor Ms. Jennifer Coombs; ground floor Dr. Alasdair McBryde. An area clearly where D. Phils and Ph.D.s proliferated. He rang the bottom bell.
The door was opened by a tallish, heavily bearded man in his mid-thirties, who studied Morse’s authorization cautiously before answering any questions. He was over from Ostrylia (he said) with his wife, to pursue some research project in micro-biology; they had been in the flat since the previous August, and would be returning home in two weeks’ time; he’d learned of the property from a friend in Mansfield College who had been keeping an eye open for suitable accommodation the previous summer.
The previous August …
Was this to be Morse’s lucky day?
“Did you know the people—did you meet the people who were here before you?”
“Fried not,” said the Australian.
“Can I—have a quick look inside?”
Rather unenthusiastically, as it seemed, McBryde led the way into the lounge, where Morse looked around the rather splendid, high-ceilinged room, and tried to attune his senses to the vaguest vibrations. Without success. It was only when he looked out through the french window at the sunlit patch of lawn that he felt a frisson of excitement: a dark-haired little girl in a pink dress was swinging idly to and fro beneath the tree, her white ankle-socked feet just reaching the ground.
“Your daughter, sir?”
“Yeah. You got any kids yourself, Inspector?”
Morse shook his head. “Just one more thing, sir. Have you got your book, you know, your rent-book or whatever handy? It’s important I get in touch with the, er, people who were here just before you last year …”
McBryde stepped over to an escritoire beside the french window and found his Property Payment book, the legend “Finders Keepers” on the cover.
“I’m not in arrears,” said McBryde with the suggestion of his first smile.
“So I see. And I’m not a bailiff, sir,” said Morse, handing back the book.
The two men walked back towards the entrance, and McBryde knocked very gently on the door to his right, and put his ear to the panel.
“Darling? Darling?”
But there was no reply.
At the front door Morse asked his last question.
“Finders Keepers—that’s the Banbury Road office, is it?”
“Yeah. You off there now?”
“I think I’ll drop in straightaway, yes.”
“Is your car parked here?”
Morse pointed to the Jaguar.
“Well, I should leave it here, if I were you. Only five minutes’ walk, if that—and you’ll never park in North Parade.”
Morse nodded. Good idea. And the Rose and Crown was just along in North Parade.
Before leaving Park Town however, Morse strolled across into the central oval-shaped garden separating the Crescents, where he read the only notice he could find, fixed to the trunk of a cedar tree:
THIS GARDEN, LAID OUT CIRCA 1850, IS MAINTAINED BY THE RESIDENTS FOR PLEASURE AND PEACE.
PLEASE RESPECT ITS AMENITIES.
NO DOGS, BICYCLES, BALL GAMES, OR TRANSISTORS.
For a few minutes Morse sat on one of the wooden seats, where someone had obviously not respected the amenities, for an oblong plate, doubtless commemorating the name of a former inhabitant, had been recently prised from the back. It was a restful spot though, and Morse now walked slowly round its periphery, his mind half on Max’s death, half on the photographs taken in the back garden of the ground-floor flat at Seckham Villa. As he turned at the western edge of the garden, he realized that this same Seckham Villa was immediately across the road from him, with the maroon Jaguar parked just to the left of it. And as once again he admired the attractive frontages there, he suspected perhaps that a heavily bearded face had suddenly pulled itself back behind the rather dingy curtains in the front room of Seckham Villa, where Mrs. Something McBryde lay suffering from goodness knows what. Was her husband slightly more inquisitive than he’d appeared to be? Or was it the Jaguar—which often attracted some interested glances?
Thoughtfully Morse walked out of Park Town, then left into the Banbury Road. Finders Keepers was very close. So was North Parade. So was the Rose and Crown.
Chapter Thirty-five
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does
(Steuart Henderson Britt, New York Herald Tribune, 30 October, 1956)
After two pints of cask-conditioned ale in the Rose and Crown, Morse walked the short distance to Finders Keepers, where he was soon ushered through the outer office, past two young ladies busy with their VDUs, and into the inner sanctum of Mr. Martin Buckby, the dark, smartly suited manager of Property Letting Services. It was fairly close to lunch-time, but the manager would be only too glad to help—of course he would.
Yes, his department was responsible for letting a good many of the Park Town properties, most of which had been converted from single homes into two, sometimes three, flats and were more often than not let out to graduates, occasionally to students. Naturally the accommodation varied, but some of the flats, especially those on the ground floor—or first floor, as some of them called it—were roomy, stylish, and well maintained. The letting year usually divided itself into two main periods: October to June, covering the academic year at Oxford University; and then June/July to the end of September, when very frequently various overseas tenants were interested in short-term leases. Advertisements for the availability of such accommodation were regularly placed in The Oxford Times, and occasionally in Property Weekly. But only advertised once, for the flats were almost invariably snapped up straightaway. Such adverts gave a brief description of the property available, and the price asked: about £200-£250 a week for a short-term let (at current rates) and slightly less, proportionately, for a long-term let. Business in the first instance, was usually conducted by phone, often
through agents; and someone—either the client himself or a representative of an agency—would go along to view the property (“Very important, Inspector!”) before the paperwork was completed, either there in the firm’s offices or, increasingly now, directly by fax interchange with countries overseas. A deposit would be lodged, a tenancy agreement signed, a reference given—that was how it worked. There was no guarantee of bona fides, of course, and basically one had to rely on gut-reaction; but the firm experienced very few problems, really. When the client was due to move in, a representative would go along to open the property, hand over keys, explain the workings of gas, electricity, stop-cocks, central heating, fuses, thermostats, everything, and to give the client a full inventory of the property’s effects—this inventory to be checked and returned within seven days so that there could be no subsequent arguments about the complement of fish-knives or feather pillows. The system worked well. The only example of odd behavior over the previous year, for example, had been the overnight disappearance of a South American gentleman who had taken his key with him—and absolutely nothing else. And since, as with all short-term lets, the whole of the rental was paid in advance, as well as an extra deposit of £500, no harm had been done there—apart from the need to change the lock on the front door and to get a further clutch of keys cut.
“Did you report that to the police, sir?”
“No. Should I have done?”
Morse shrugged.
He had a good grasp now of the letting procedure; yet his mind was always happier (he explained) with specific illustrations than with generalities; and if it were proper for him to ask, for example, what Dr. McBryde was paying for the ground-floor flat at Seckham Villa …?
Buckby found a green folder in the filing cabinet behind him and quickly looked through it. “Thirteen hundred pounds per month.”
“Phew! Bit steep, isn’t it?”
“It’s the going rate—and it’s a lovely flat, isn’t it? One of the best in the whole crescent.” Buckby picked out a sheet from the folder and read the specification aloud.
