by Colin Dexter
A silent prison officer handcuffed the recaptured Evans, and together the two men clambered awkwardly into the back seat of the prison van.
“See you soon, Evans.” It was almost as if the Governor were saying farewell to an old friend after a cocktail party.
“Cheerio, sir. I, er, I was just wonderin’. I know your German’s pretty good, sir, but do you know any more o’ these modern languages?”
“Not very well. Why?”
Evans settled himself comfortably on the back seat, and grinned happily. “Nothin’, really. I just ’appened to notice that you’ve got some O-level Italian classes comin’ up next September, that’s all.”
“Perhaps you won’t be with us next September, Eivans.”
James Roderick Evans appeared to ponder the Governor’s words deeply. “No. P’r’aps I won’t,” he said.
As the prison van turned right from Chipping Norton on to the Oxford road, the hitherto silent prison officer unlocked the handcuffs and leaned forward towards the driver. “For Christ’s sake get a move on! It won’t take ’em long to find out—”
“Where do ye suggest we make for?” asked the driver, in a broad Scots accent.
“What about Newbury?” suggested Evans.
DEAD AS A DODO
“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.” (And as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)
It was more from necessity than from kindliness, just after 5 P.M. on a rain-soaked evening in early February 1990, that Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police leaned over and opened the Jaguar’s near-side door. One of his neighbours from the North Oxford bachelor flats was standing at the bus stop, was getting very wet—and was staring hard at him.
“Most kind!” said Philip Wise, inserting his kyphotic self into the passenger seat.
Morse grunted a vague acknowledgement as the car made a few further slow yards up the Banbury Road in the red-tail-lighted queue, his wipers clearing short-lived swaths across the screen. Only three quarters of a mile to go, but at this time of day twenty minutes would be par for the progressively paralytic crawl to the flats. Never an easy conversationalist himself—indeed, known occasionally to lapse into total aphasia when driving a car—Morse was glad that Wise was doing all the talking. “Something quite extraordinary’s happened to me,” said the man in the dripping mackintosh.
In retrospect, Morse was aware that he’d listened, at least initially, with no more than polite passivity. But listen he had done.
Philip Wise had gone up to Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1938; and in due course his linguistic abilities (particularly in German) had ensured for him, when war broke out a year later, a cushy little job in an Intelligence Unit housed on the outskirts of Bicester. For two years he had lived there in a disagreeable and draughty Nissenhut; and when the chance came of his taking digs back in Oxford, he’d jumped at it. Thus it was that in October 1941 he had moved into Crozier Road, a sunless thoroughfare just off the west of St. Giles’; and it was there that he’d first met Miss Dodo Whitaker (“Only the one ‘t’, Inspector”) who had a tiny top-floor bedsitter immediately above his own room in the grimy four-storey property that stood at number 14.
Why on earth she’d been saddled with a name like “Dodo,” he’d never discovered—nor enquired; but she was certainly a considerably livelier specimen than the defunct Didus ineptus of Mauritius. Although physically hardly warranting any second glance, especially in the wartime “Utility” boiler-suit she almost invariably wore, she had the inestimable merit of being interesting. And sometimes, over half a glass of mild beer in the ill-lit bar at the rear of the Bird and Baby, her wonted nervousness would disappear, and in her rather deep, husky voice she would talk with knowledge, volubility, and wit, about the class-structure, about the progress of the war—and about music. Yes, above all about music. The pair of them had joined the Record Library, thereafter spending a few candle-lit evenings together in Dodo’s room listening to everything from Vivaldi to Wagner. On one occasion, Wise had almost been on the verge of telling her of the Platonic-plus pleasure he was beginning to experience in her company.
Almost.
Dodo had a brother called Ambrose who now and then managed to get a weekend leave-pass and come to stay with Dodo, usually (though quite unofficially) sleeping on the floor of her single room. Almost immediately, Philip Wise and Ambrose Whitaker became firm friends, spending (somewhat to Dodo’s annoyance) rather too many hours together drinking whisky—a commodity plentiful enough, if over-priced, in the Bird and Baby, but a rare one in the wilds of Bodmin, where Ambrose, with two stripes on each arm, spent his days initiating recruits into the mysteries of antiquated artillery pieces. He was a winsome, albeit somewhat raffish, sort of fellow whose attraction to alcohol apparently eclipsed even his love of music (Dodo spoke of Ambrose, amongst other things, as a virtuoso on the piano). Those weekends had flashed by, with Wise far too soon finding himself walking across Gloucester Green to see his friend off at the Great Western station late on Sunday afternoons.
Brother and sister—what an engaging couple they were!
Rich, too—at least their parents were.
Dodo, in particular, made no secret of her parents’ extremely comfortable lifestyle, which Wise himself had once (and only once) experienced at first hand, when Dodo had suggested—on his having to spend a week in Bristol in February 1942—that he stay with them; had even loaned him a key to the family mansion in case they were out when he arrived. Wise had already known that Dodo’s parents lived in Bristol, since he’d noticed the postmark on the letter (doubtless from Mummy) that lay each week on the undusted mahogany table in the small entrance hall of number 14—her name in the address, incidentally, always prefixed by the letter “A.” Alice? Angela? Anne? Audrey?—Wise had never been told and, again, had never enquired. But that little fact was something else he’d known earlier, too, since he was with her when, with a practised flourish of those slim and sinewy fingers, she’d signed her membership card at the Record Library. As for the parents, they turned out to be a straight-laced, tight-faced pair who remained frigidly reserved towards their guest throughout his short stay, and who appeared less than effusively appreciative of Dodo—and almost embarrassingly dismissive of Ambrose. Oddly, Wise had not found a single fond memento of their talented offspring in the Whitakers’ gauntly luxurious villa, and not a single family photograph to grace the daily-dusted mantelpieces.
It was three weeks after his return from his ill-starred visit that Dodo left Oxford, her wartime work (something “hush-hush,” it was understood) necessitating a move to Cheltenham. Only about forty miles away—and she’d keep in touch, she said.
But she hadn’t.
“Forty-eight years ago, this was, Inspector. Forty-eight! I was twenty-three myself, and she must have been about the same. Year or two older, perhaps—I’m not sure. You see, I never even asked her how old she was. Pretty spineless specimen, wasn’t I?”
In the darkness, Morse nodded his silent assent, and the Jaguar finally turned into the Residents Only parking area.
Wise contrived to keep talking as the two men dashed through the rain to the entrance hall. “I’d be glad to give you a cup of tea … or something … You see, I haven’t really told you anything yet.”
As they sat opposite each other in the living area, Wise passed across a white, six-page booklet containing details of “A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of AMBROSE WHITAKER, MA (Cantab.), FRAM 1917–1989,” and Morse glanced cursorily at the contents: music; hymn; lesson; music; address; prayers; hymn; music; blessing; music; more music. Observing only that if he ever had a voice in his own funeral arrangements he would join Whitaker in choosing the “In Paradisum” from the Fauré Requiem, Morse handed the leaflet back.
“The thing is this,” continued Wise. “I saw an obituary in The Times in Dec
ember, and I was sure it was the same man I’d known in the war. Quite apart from the pretty unusual Christian name, as well as the very unusual spelling of the surname, everything else fitted, too: born in Bristol, prodigy on the piano—everything! And I just couldn’t help thinking back and wondering whether she was still alive—Dodo, that is. Anyway, a fortnight ago I read about this Memorial Service in Holborn, and I decided to go up and pay my last respects to an old friend—and perhaps …”
“Find some plump-bosomed old spinster—”
“Yes!”
“Did you find her?” asked Morse quietly.
Wise shook his head. “There were an awful lot of important people from the musical world—I hadn’t realized what a name Ambrose had made for himself. I got to the church early and stayed outside for a good while watching the people going in, including—pretty obvious who she was—Ambrose’s wife, who drew up in a chauffeur-driven Rolls—registration AW 1! But I didn’t see the woman I was looking for—and she wasn’t in the church, either. I’d have spotted her straightaway if she had been. She was smallish, stockily built—just like her mother. And there was something else. She had a nasty little red scar—well, a nasty big scar really—just across the left-hand side of her jaw: a bicycle accident when she was a youngster, I think. She was awfully conscious of it and always used a lot of face-powder to try to cover it up a bit. But it was still pretty noticeable, I’m afraid. Well, to cut a long story a bit shorter, I went up to Ambrose’s wife after the service and told her I’d known her husband in the war and said how sorry I was and all the rest of it. She was pleasant enough, but she seemed a bit strained, and there were other people waiting to have a word with her. So I didn’t say much more except to mention that I’d known her husband’s sister as well.” Wise paused a second or two before continuing.
“Do you know what happened then, Inspector? Ambrose’s wife pointed to a grey-haired woman in a black dress standing with her back to us, a woman very much the same height and build as Dodo had been. “This gentleman here says he used to know you, Agnes …”
“Agnes!”
“But I didn’t hear any more—I just didn’t know what to do—or say. You see, the woman in black turned round and faced me, and she wasn’t Dodo Whitaker.”
It was Morse who broke the silence which followed. “Ambrose only had the one sister?”
Wise nodded, a wry, defeated smile upon his face. “Yes—Agnes. He never did have a sister named ‘Dodo’!”
Again the two men were silent.
“Well?” asked Wise, finally.
It had always appeared to Morse an undeniable fact that coincidence plays a far greater role in human affairs than is generally acknowledged. And here was yet another instance of it—it must be! Wise’s tale was interesting enough—assuredly so: but it wasn’t much of a problem, surely? Ostentatiously he drained his whisky, gratefully witnessed the replenishment, and then pronounced judgement: “There were two Ambrose Whitakers, both musical men, and both from Bristol, and the one you knew wasn’t the one who died.”
“You think not?” The half-smile on Wise’s face made Morse rather uncomfortably aware that a slightly more intelligent analysis had been expected of him.
“You don’t think,” suggested Morse weakly, “that Agnes might have had some plastic surgery or something?”
“No, no. It’s just that there are far too many coincidences for me to swallow. Everything fitted—down to the last detail. For example, Dodo told me that she and Ambrose once got a bit morbid about the possibility of his being killed in the war and how he’d told her that he’d settle for a couple of bits of music when they buried him: the ‘In Paradisum’—”
“Lovely choice!” interjected Morse. “I saw that in the Service.”
“—and the adagio from the Mozart Clarinet Concerto—”
“Ah yes! K662.”
“K622.”
“Oh!”
Morse knew that he wasn’t scoring many points; knew, too, that Wise was perfectly correct in believing that the coincidences were getting way out of hand. But he had no time at all to develop the quite extraordinary possibility that suddenly leaped into his brain; because Wise himself was clearly most anxious to propound his own equally astonishing conclusions.
“What would you say, Inspector, if I told you that Dodo wasn’t Ambrose Whitaker’s sister at all—she was his wife.”
Morse’s face registered a degree of genuine surprise, but he allowed Wise to continue without interruption.
“It would account for quite a few things, don’t you think? For example, it always seemed a bit odd to me that when Ambrose got any leave he invariably came all the way from Cornwall here to Oxford—via Bristol, at that!—just to see his sister. You’d think he’d have called in on his parents once in a while, wouldn’t you? They were much nearer than Dodo was; and well worth keeping the right side of, surely? But it wouldn’t be surprising if he took every opportunity of coming all the way to Oxford to see his wife, would it? And that would certainly tie up with him sleeping in her room. You know, with all that family money he could have taken a suite in The Randolph if he’d wanted. Yet instead of that, he slept—or so he said—on Dodo’s floor. Then again, it would probably account for the fact that she never once let me touch her physically—not even hold hands. She was fond of me, though—I know she was …”
Momentarily Wise stopped, nodding slowly to himself. “For some reason the Whitakers must have disapproved of Ambrose’s marriage and wanted as little as possible to do with his wartime bride—hence their cool reception of me, Inspector! There may have been talk of disinheriting him—I don’t know. I don’t know anything, of course. But I suspect she was probably pregnant underneath that boiler-suit of hers, and as her time drew nearer she just had to leave Oxford. Then? Your guess is as good as mine: she died—she was killed in an air-raid—she got divorced—anything. Ambrose remarried, and the woman I met at the Memorial Service was his second wife.”
“Mm.” Morse was looking decidedly dubious. “But if this Dodo girl was his wife, and if his parents couldn’t stand the sight or sound of her, why on earth did they write to her every week? And why did she think she had the right to invite you down to Bristol? To have a key, even—let alone to give you one.” Morse shook his head slowly. “She must have been pretty sure she could take their good-will for granted, I reckon.”
“You think they were her parents, then,” said Wise flatly.
“I’m sure of it,” said Morse.
Wise shook his head in exasperation. “What the hell is the explanation, then?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s much doubt about that,” said Morse. But he spoke these words to himself, and not to Wise. And very soon afterwards, seeing little prospect of any further replenishment, he took his leave—with the promise that he would give the problem “a little consideration.”
The following Monday morning, Morse stood beside the Traffic Comptroller at Kidlington Police HQ and watched as “AW 1” was keyed into the Car Registration computer. Immediately, the VDU spelled out the information that the car was still registered under the name of Mr. A. Whitaker, 6 West View Crescent, Bournemouth; and noting the address Morse walked thoughtfully back to his ground-floor office. After ringing Directory Inquiries, and getting the Bournemouth telephone number, he was soon speaking to Mrs. Whitaker herself, who in turn was soon promising to do exactly as Morse had requested.
Then Morse rang the War Office.
Ten days later, Philip Wise returned from a week’s holiday in Spain to find a long note from Morse.
P. W.
I’ve discovered a few more facts, but some of what follows may possibly be pure fiction. As you know, records galore got destroyed in the last war, affording limitless opportunity for people to cover up their traces by means of others’ identity-cards and so on, especially after a period of chaos and carnage when nobody knew who was who or which corpse was which.
After Dunkirk, for instance.
>
Gunner (as he then was) Whitaker was the only man of thirty on board who survived, quite miraculously, when the Edna (a flat-bottomed barge registered in Felixstowe) was blown out of the water by a German dive-bomber on May 30th, 1940. He was picked up, with only a pair of waterlogged pants and a wrist-watch to call his own, by the naval sloop Artemis, and was landed at Dover, along with tens of thousands of other soldiers from almost every regiment in the land. (My own imaginative faculties now come wholly into play.) In due course, he was put on a train and sent to a temporary rehabilitation camp—as it happened, the one here in Oxford up on Headington Hill.
The fact that he was in a state of profound shock, with his nerves half-shot to pieces, is probably sufficient to account for his walking out of this camp (quite literally) after only one night under canvas, and hitchhiking down to Bristol. But he didn’t walk out alone. He took a friend with him, a man from the same regiment; and they both quite deliberately got out of the camp before either could be re-documented and re-posted. This second man had only a mother and sister as close family, who were both killed in one of the very first air-raids on Plymouth; and for some (doubtless considerable) sum of money, donated by the protective Whitaker parents, this man agreed to leave on permanent record the official War Office version of his fate after Dunkirk—“Missing presumed killed”—and for the rest of the war to assume the name and role of Ambrose Whitaker. In short, my guess is that the man who came up from Bodmin to see Dodo was not Ambrose Whitaker at all.
Your own guess about things fitted some of the facts well enough; but those facts also fit into a totally different pattern. Just consider some of them again. First, there was the weekly letter from Bristol, from parents who seemingly didn’t even want to acknowledge their daughter and who hid all the family photos when you stayed with them. Odd! Then, take this daughter of theirs, Dodo. No great shakes physically, and only just up to attracting an impressionable young man after he’d had a few pints (please don’t think me unfair!) in a dim pub-lounge or a candle-lit bedroom—yet she decided to hide whatever charms she’d got under a baggy boiler-suit. Decidedly odd! What else did you tell me about her? She was nervy; she had a deepish voice; she wore too much face-powder; she knew a great deal about the war … (You’ve guessed the truth by now, I’m sure.) Her Christian name began with “A”, and you saw her sign her name that way at the Record Library—with the sinewy fingers of an executant musician. But that wasn’t odd, was it? Her name did begin with “A,” and Ambrose Whitaker, as we know, was himself a fine pianist. And so it wasn’t only the scar on her jaw she was anxious to conceal with those layers of face-powder—it was the stubble of a beard that grew there every day. Because Dodo Whitaker was a man! And not just any tuppenny-ha’penny old man, either: he was Ambrose Whitaker.
