Morse's Greatest Mystery

by Colin Dexter

  “Oh dear! Did, er, did Watson spot that as well?”

  “He did.”

  “You know, if that fellow could only stop losing things, he’d probably make ‘inspector.’ ”

  “He can have my job any time he likes!”

  “Can’t you just cut the bottom off the photos?” suggested Morse.

  “Trouble is, I’d cut off the flat numbers as well if I did that—the way they’ve turned out; then they might just as well have been taken in Timbuktu as in Bannister Close.”

  “I take your point,” said Morse.

  “Anyway, I didn’t come here to burden you with my troubles. As I say, I just wanted to thank you—in person. I didn’t want to say anything over the blower—can’t be too careful. So—if we can … if we can just, well, draw a veil over things? And I’m sorry I’ve been such a cretin.”

  Morse got to his feet and stood in front of Crawford.

  “Don’t say that.” He spoke in a kindly fashion, oblivious (it appeared) that this was the self-same word he’d used so recently himself to describe his fellow officer. “You could do with a drink.”

  “I could do with two,” corrected Crawford.

  Morse went to his drinks-cabinet and took out the Glenfiddich, at the same time switching on again, albeit softly, the “In Paradisum” from the Fauré Requiem.

  (xiii)

  I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

  (Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin)

  Four days later, on Wednesday 6 April, an oblong buff envelope (“Please Do Not Bend”) arrived by Registered Delivery at the Thames Valley Police HQ, addressed to Chief Inspector Morse.

  Inside the envelope, together with two very glossy black-and-white photographs, was an invoice—and a letter:

  Morse, old boy,

  Sorry about the delay—Easter post and all that. Not bad, are they? Cheque please, as per invoice, asap. No extra fee charged for knocking over that bloody dustbin! What will you think of next?

  Pity I couldn’t get the crutch in—he’d turned too far round. Interesting configuration of the left ear, though. I trust you’ll approve of the “topographically recognizable setting” (your specification). In fact the capsized Tory poster is a nice little prop, don’t you reckon?

  By the way, what the hell are they doing voting Tory down there?

  Yours aye,

  Manuel (McS)

  PS Did I mention the cheque—asap?

  Morse looked at the two photographs; and like the Almighty surveying one of his acts of Creation, he saw that they were good.

  He reached for the phone and rang Inspector Crawford to tell him of his eleventh-hour reprieve—soon learning from Sergeant Wilkins that Crawford had just been called in to see Strange. He’d pass the message on, though.

  (xiv)

  Confessions are good for the soul but bad for the reputation.

  (Thomas Robert Dewar)

  When, half an hour later, Crawford came in, Morse reached into a drawer for the envelope. But it was Crawford, looking preternaturally pleased with himself, who immediately seized the initiative.

  “I was just going to call you. You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

  “Watson’s unearthed his lost exhibits?”

  “Better than that.”

  “They’ve just appointed PC Watson Chief Constable?”

  Crawford blurted it out: “Muldoon! He’s changed his plea—through his lawyer. He’s pleading guilty as charged on all counts. And he’s come clean on the Jericho and Botley places. Very interesting what he’s told us about them. Complete change of heart, that’s what he’s had, Muldoon—with the, er, encouragement of some, you know—one or two little privileges.”

  “Well done!” said Morse, quietly slipping the envelope back into its drawer.

  “And Strange? He’s over the moon.”

  “Everybody’ll be pleased.”

  “Lucky though, wasn’t I?” said Crawford reflectively.

  “We all deserve a little bit of luck now and then,” said Morse.

  After Crawford had gone, Morse once more took the photographs from their envelope, and looked at them briefly again—especially at that neatly sliced left ear—before slowly tearing them up and dropping the pieces into his waste-paper basket.

  Then he wrote out a cheque, and addressed an envelope to Manuel McSevich, Esquire, The Studio, High St., Abingdon, Oxon. It seemed to Morse a quite disproportionate sum to pay; yet, perhaps, not totally exorbitant—considering the nature of the entertainment which that most unusual of evenings had provided.

  (xv)

  If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

  (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

  Only very occasionally did Superintendent Strange patronize the canteen at HQ. But that lunchtime, as the solitary Morse sat at the corner table, his back to his colleagues, rather dejectedly sipping a bowl of luke-warm leek soup, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Can I join you?”

  Morse nodded a supererogatory “yes,” as Strange unloaded from his tray a vast plateful of steak-and-kidney pie, two bread rolls, and a substantial wodge of treacle-tart covered—nay smothered—with custard.

  “You heard about Muldoon, Morse?”

  “Inspector Crawford told me the good news.”

  Strange rubbed his hands gleefully. “Excellent, isn’t it? Excellent! Not the slightest suspicion of any undue police pressure either—you know that!”

  “So I understand, sir.”

  “Above suspicion, eh? Like Caesar’s wife.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “You couldn’t remember her name, could you?”

  “No.”

  “Crawford could, though.”

  Morse nodded. Crawford was clearly the flavour of the month. So be it.

  “You’re not eating much?” queried Strange, forking another great gobbet of meat into his mouth.

  “I’m not very hungry today.”

  “It’s a wonder you’re not in the pub, then. You’re usually thirsty enough.”

  The reminder did little to lighten Morse’s mood; and in sycophantic fashion he quickly sought to change the drift of the conversation.

  “How’s that little grandson of yours, sir?”

  “Fine. Absolutely fine! Did I show you his latest photo?”

  Morse nodded, hurriedly. “Still behaving himself?”

  For a few seconds, Strange looked slightly uneasy—before leaning over the almost empty plate of treacle-tart, a mischievous glint in his eye.

  “To tell you the truth, Morse, his mother rang us only last night. Seems she left him with a baby-sitter when she went to church for Easter-morning service. And d’you know what the little bugger did? He went and bit the bloody baby-sitter’s hand!”

  “Just a temporary lapse,” suggested Morse.

  “Course it was! We can’t be good all the time, can we? None of us can.”

  Morse nodded slowly. “No, sir. We all have the occasional moment when we’re not—we’re not particularly proud of ourselves.”

  Strange appeared gratified by this latter sentiment; and after spooning up his last mouthful of custard he sat back, replete and relaxed. Taking out his wallet, he extracted, just as he had done a week earlier, the latest snapshot of Grandson Number One (two years, three months).

  “Super little chap, Morse. You can leave him with anybody—well, almost anybody! As good as gold, almost.”

  As if with mutual understanding, the two policemen looked at each other then.

  And smiled.

  MORSE’S

  GREATEST MYSTERY

  “Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”

  (Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

  He had knocked diffidently at Morse’s North Oxford flat. Few had been invited into those book-lined, Wagner-haunted
rooms: and even he—Sergeant Lewis—had never felt himself an over-welcome guest. Even at Christmas time. Not that it sounded much like the season of goodwill as Morse waved Lewis inside and concluded his ill-tempered conversation with the bank manager.

  “Look! If I keep a couple of hundred in my current account, that’s my look-out. I’m not even asking for any interest on it. All I am asking is that you don’t stick these bloody bank charges on when I go—what? once, twice a year?—into the red. It’s not that I’m mean with money”—Lewis’s eyebrows ascended a centimeter—“but if you charge me again I want you to ring and tell me why!”

  Morse banged down the receiver and sat silent.

  “You don’t sound as if you’ve caught much of the Christmas spirit,” ventured Lewis.

  “I don’t like Christmas—never have.”

  “You staying in Oxford, sir?”

  “I’m going to decorate.”

  “What—decorate the Christmas cake?”

  “Decorate the kitchen. I don’t like Christmas cake—never did.”

  “You sound more like Scrooge every minute, sir.”

  “And I shall read a Dickens novel. I always do over Christmas, Re-read, rather.”

  “If I were just starting on Dickens, which one—?”

  “I’d put Bleak House first, Little Dorrit second—”

  The phone rang and Morse’s secretary at HQ informed him that he’d won a £50 gift-token in the Police Charity Raffle, and this time Morse cradled the receiver with considerably better grace.

  “ ‘Scrooge,’ did you say, Lewis? I’ll have you know I bought five tickets—a quid apiece!—in that Charity Raffle.”

  “I bought five tickets myself, sir.”

  Morse smiled complacently. “Let’s be more charitable, Lewis! It’s supporting these causes that’s important, not winning.”

  “I’ll be in the car, sir,” said Lewis quietly. In truth, he was beginning to feel irritated. Morse’s irascibility he could stomach; but he couldn’t stick hearing much more about Morse’s selfless generosity!

  Morse’s old Jaguar was in dock again (“Too mean to buy a new one!” his colleagues claimed) and it was Lewis’s job that day to ferry the chief inspector around; doubtless, too (if things went to form) to treat him to the odd pint or two. Which indeed appeared a fair probability, since Morse had so managed things on that Tuesday morning that their arrival at the George would coincide with opening time. As they drove out past the railway station, Lewis told Morse what he’d managed to discover about the previous day’s events …

  The patrons of the George had amassed £400 in aid of the Littlemore Charity for Mentally Handicapped Children, and this splendid total was to be presented to the Charity’s Secretary at the end of the week, with a photographer promised from The Oxford Times to record the grand occasion. Mrs. Michaels, the landlady, had been dropped off at the bank in Carfax by her husband at about 10:30 A.M., and had there exchanged a motley assemblage of coins and notes for forty brand-new tenners. After this she had bought several items (including grapes for a daughter just admitted to hospital) before catching a minibus back home, where she had arrived just after midday. The money, in a long white envelope, was in her shopping bag, together with her morning’s purchases. Her husband had not yet returned from the Cash and Carry Stores, and on re-entering the George via the saloon bar, Mrs. Michaels had heard the telephone ringing. Thinking that it was probably the hospital (it was) she had dumped her bag on the bar counter and rushed to answer it. On her return, the envelope was gone.

  At the time of the theft, there had been about thirty people in the saloon bar, including the regular OAPs, the usual cohort of pool-playing unemployables, and a pre-Christmas party from a local firm. And—yes!—from the very beginning Lewis had known that the chances of recovering the money were virtually nil. Even so, the three perfunctory interviews that Morse conducted appeared to Lewis to be sadly unsatisfactory.

  After listening a while to the landlord’s unilluminating testimony, Morse asked him why it had taken him so long to conduct his business at the Cash and Carry; and although the explanation given seemed perfectly adequate, Morse’s dismissal of this first witness had seemed almost offensively abrupt. And no man could have been more quickly or more effectively antagonized than the temporary barman (on duty the previous morning) who refused to answer Morse’s brusque enquiry about the present state of his overdraft. What then of the attractive, auburn-haired Mrs. Michaels? After a rather lop-sided smile had introduced Morse to her regular if slightly nicotine-stained teeth, that distressed lady had been unable to fight back her tears as she sought to explain to Morse why she’d insisted on some genuine notes for the publicity photographer instead of a phonily magnified cheque.

  But wait! Something dramatic had just happened to Morse, Lewis could see that: as if the light had suddenly shined upon a man that hitherto had sat in darkness. He (Morse) now asked—amazingly!—whether by any chance the good lady possessed a pair of bright green, high-heeled leather shoes; and when she replied that, yes, she did, Morse smiled serenely, as though he had solved the secret of the universe, and promptly summoned into the lounge bar not only the three he’d just interviewed but all those now in the George who had been drinking there the previous morning.

  As they waited, Morse asked for the serial numbers of the stolen notes, and Lewis passed over a scrap of paper on which some figures had been hastily scribbled in blotchy Biro. “For Christ’s sake, man!” hissed Morse. “Didn’t they teach you to write at school?”

  Lewis breathed heavily, counted to five, and then painstakingly rewrote the numbers on a virginal piece of paper: 773741–773780. At which numbers Morse glanced cursorily before sticking the paper in his pocket, and proceeding to address the George’s regulars.

  He was virtually certain (he said) of who had stolen the money. What he was absolutely sure about was exactly where that money was at that very moment. He had the serial numbers of the notes—but that was of no importance whatsoever now. The thief might well have been tempted to spend the money earlier—but not any more! And why not? Because at this Christmas time that person no longer had the power to resist his better self.

  In that bar, stilled now and silent as the grave itself, the faces of Morse’s audience seemed mesmerized—and remained so as Morse gave his instructions that the notes should be replaced in their original envelope and returned (he cared not by what means) to Sergeant Lewis’s office at Thames Valley Police HQ within the next twenty-four hours.

  As they drove back, Lewis could restrain his curiosity no longer. “You really are confident that—?”

  “Of course!”

  “I never seem to be able to put the clues together myself, sir.”

  “Clues? What clues, Lewis? I didn’t know we had any.”

  “Well, those shoes, for example. How do they fit in?”

  “Who said they fitted in anywhere? It’s just that I used to know an auburn-haired beauty who had six—six, Lewis!—pairs of bright green shoes. They suited her, she said.”

  “So … they’ve got nothing to do with the case at all?”

  “Not so far as I know,” muttered Morse.

  The next morning a white envelope was delivered to Lewis’s office, though no one at reception could recall when or whence it had arrived. Lewis immediately rang Morse to congratulate him on the happy outcome of the case.

  “There’s just one thing, sir. I’d kept that scrappy bit of paper with the serial numbers on it, and these are brand-new notes all right—but they’re not the same ones!”

  “Really?” Morse sounded supremely unconcerned.

  “You’re not worried about it?”

  “Good Lord, no! You just get that money back to ginger-knob at the George, and tell her to settle for a jumbo-cheque next time! Oh, and one other thing, Lewis. I’m on leave. So no interruptions from anybody—understand?”

  “Yes, sir. And, er … Happy Christmas, sir!”

  “And to you
, old friend!” replied Morse quietly.

  The bank manager rang just before lunch that same day. “It’s about the four hundred pounds you withdrew yesterday, Inspector. I did promise to ring about any further bank charges—”

  “I explained to the girl,” protested Morse. “I needed the money quickly.”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly all right. But you did say you’d call in this morning to transfer—”

  “Tomorrow! I’m up a ladder with a paint brush at the moment.”

  Morse put down the receiver and again sank back in the armchair with the crossword. But his mind was far away, and some of the words he himself had spoken kept echoing around his brain: something about one’s better self …And he smiled, for he knew that this would be a Christmas he might enjoy almost as much as the children up at Littlemore, perhaps. He had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all?

  EVANS TRIES

  AN O-LEVEL

  Dramatis Personae

  The Secretary of the Examinations Board

  The Governor of HM Prison, Oxford

  James Evans, a prisoner

  Mr. Jackson, a prison officer

  Mr. Stephens, a prison officer

  The Reverend S. McLeery, an invigilator

  Detective Superintendent Carter

  Detective Chief Inspector Bell

  The unexamined life is not worth living.

  (Plato)

  It was in early March when the Secretary of the Examinations Board received the call from Oxford Prison.

  “It’s a slightly unusual request, Governor, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to help. Just the one fellow, you say?”