Morse's Greatest Mystery

by Colin Dexter

“Probably bashed his head on that?” suggested Lewis.

  And Morse nodded.

  The cream paint of the left-hand door-jamb was splashed with elongated flecks of scarlet, and two feet inside the bathroom itself, on the blue-and-white-tiled floor, was a patch of darkly dried blood.

  “If he’d tripped it could have brought on a heart attack, don’t you think, sir?”

  Again Morse nodded. “And if he’d had a heart attack he could have tripped and cracked his head, yes.”

  Turning her head momentarily towards them, Dr. Hobson put the situation rather more simply: “Which came first—the chicken or the egg?”

  “The chicken?” said Morse.

  But the blonde pathologist was clearly in favour of an each-way bet. “Like as not it happened contemporaneously.”

  Lewis’s eyebrows shot up. “Big word, that.”

  Dr. Hobson smiled at him, attractively. “I’ve finished with it for now, Sergeant. It’s all yours if you’d like to have it.”

  On the dressing table to the right of the bathroom door, beside the phone, lay two items which had been recovered from the bathroom floor: a calibrated syringe, its orange hood still in place over the needle; and the glass fragments of what had been a small phial, some three inches long, which had contained (as indicated by its label) “Human Actrapid Insulin”—the colourless liquid having almost completely seeped away into a layer of white tissue-paper.

  For a minute or so longer, Chief Inspector Morse stood exactly where he was, visualizing much—visualizing almost everything, perhaps—of what had happened there on the threshold of the bathroom, his eyes finally concentrating on the telephone, its receiver cradled firmly on its base.

  Then he announced his strategy: “I think we’ll just nip down to the bar, Lewis—which Doctor Hobson finishes off here.” He looked at his wrist-watch. “That’s two nights running I’ve missed The Archers. For nothing, too—there’s been no murder here.”

  But before leaving Room 231, he dipped a hand gently into the inside breast-pocket of the dead man’s jacket, withdrawing a wallet of pigskin leather.

  “Do we know who found him—and how?” asked Lewis, as the two detectives walked down the grandly wide staircase to the reception area of The Randolph.

  “That’s exactly what I hope you’re going to find out for me.”

  Three-quarters of an hour later Sergeant Lewis had discovered all there was to be known. Not much, but enough. And he reported to Morse.

  Sherwood had reserved the double-bedded, en suite, five-star room by phone only the previous evening—with no opportunity thus afforded for any written confirmation. He had booked in, on his own, at about 5:40 P.M. But the form, duly completed at reception, was comparatively uninformative: Name(s)—“Sherwood”; Home Address—”53 Leominster Drive, Shrewsbury”; Signature—“Peter Sherwood.” The two boxes beside the questions Are you here on business? On leisure? remained unticked, and the space for Car Registration was completed with a dismissive dash. That was all, except for a tick in the Cash box alongside How do you intend to settle your account?

  The Guest Registration Card thus negotiated, £140 (in twenties) had been paid; and no further details were disclosed by Sherwood or demanded by the chicly uniformed receptionist. Any wake-up call in the morning? “No.” Any newspaper? “Yes—the Telegraph.” Sherwood had taken the key, politely declined the offer of help with his two suitcases, and that was that.

  No woman on the scene—no one remembered a woman at all.

  Sherwood was scheduled to attend a two-day conference on Computer Technology being held at Rewley House—very close by, just up at the top of St. John Street, almost immediately opposite The Randolph.

  Now clearly of importance had been two telephone calls. The first, probably an outside call, asking to be put through to Mr. Sherwood; the second, presumably made from inside the hotel, reporting to the operator that medical assistance was urgently required in Room 231. The Senior Concierge, Roy Harden, had immediately gone up to the room, where he’d found the door slightly ajar—and Sherwood lying across the threshold of the bathroom. Already dead by the look of him. From the room itself Harden had promptly telephoned the house-doctor; and then the manager, with whose assistance two minutes later he’d carried Sherwood’s body over to the bed. A room-maid had cleared up the broken glass from the bathroom—for there seemed to be no suspicious circumstances at the time. It was only because of the house-doctor’s marginal unease over the head wound that the manager had deemed it prudent to call in the police. Just to be on the safe side.

  “What do you think so far?” asked Morse.

  “Same as you, sir. Cherchez la belle femme. He’s off to another conference—he invites his mistress—they know how to work things—he has a heart attack—she’s scared out of her wits—rings for the doc—and then gets pretty smartish out of it.”

  “Ye-es …” Morse picked up the dead man’s wallet. “No railway tickets in here, Lewis.”

  “So?”

  “They don’t very often collect railway tickets from passengers these days, do they?”

  Lewis followed the drift of Morse’s thinking. “They probably came by car, you mean?”

  “Her car, like as not. He tells his wife he’s going to the railway station, and his lady-love picks him up there. Then when she gets him here, she just nips off and parks her car somewhere nearby—and there’s no need for anyone to know her registration number or anything. Very neat. Very easy.”

  Lewis nodded agreement. “It’s getting easier all the time to commit adultery.”

  Morse looked up sharply. “Let’s be slightly more accurate about things, Lewis. What you mean is that the preconditions for adultery are easier to handle: fewer eyebrows raised; fewer questions asked; fewer details to be filled in; just fork out your fee for the room … But whether it’s really become emotionally easier, psychologically easier … physically easier—well, I just wouldn’t know, would I?”

  Saving Lewis the possible embarrassment of any reply, the young pathologist now appeared beside them in the Chapters Bar.

  Morse beamed happily, and pushed forward his emptied glass. “Ah, Doctor Hobson! What’ll you have to drink? Lewis here is in the chair.”

  But Dr. Hobson shook her pretty head. “I can’t stay, I’m afraid.”

  “Pity!”

  “You’re feeling all right, Chief Inspector?”

  “Pardon?”

  “They told me the only thing you ever wanted from any pathologist was an estimated time of death.”

  “Oh, I know that already,” replied Morse. “Six o’clock—to the minute, I’d say.”

  Laura Hobson smiled, refusing to rise to the bait. “About six o’clock, yes. I hope you don’t expect me to be quite so precise as you, though? I’m just a humble medical scientist myself. No foul-play, though. I’m fairly sure of that.”

  “Fairly sure?”

  “As I say, I’m just a scientist. Good night.”

  “He was a neat and tidy enough man,” resumed Lewis. “The bag he’d packed for himself—well, it was all laid out with sort of military precision. You know, socks, hankies, spare pants, washing kit—all in their proper compartments.”

  “Condoms?”

  “Yes, sir, in a little compartment at the front.”

  “It’s all very sad, isn’t it?”

  “More sad for the wife, if you ask me.”

  “It was the wife I was thinking of,” replied Morse quietly.

  Lewis thought it wise to change tack. “You seem very sure about the time?”

  “There a Diabetic Card here in the wallet, giving details and times of daily injections: 7 A.M.; 6 P.M.; 10:30 P.M. ‘Military precision,’ did you say? I think you’re right.”

  “We’d know it was just before or just after six anyway, wouldn’t we? From the telephone calls, I mean.”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Who do you think made the first call, sir?”

  “Same woman who made the
second. She rang from a phone-box outside—said she’d parked OK—asked him for the room number—told him to leave the door slightly ajar—promised she’d be with him in just a few minutes …”

  “… saw him lying there—realized he was dead—and rang for help.”

  “Where did she ring from, though?” asked Morse slowly.

  “Bedroom, I should think?”

  “I wonder … She’d have to stand just over him when she rang, wouldn’t she?”

  “Not everybody’s quite so put off by dead bodies as you, sir.”

  The Senior Concierge, now re-summoned, briskly confirmed his earlier evidence, and Morse had only one additional question.

  “Was the telephone off the hook when you went into the room?”

  “Yes, sir. Dangling on the cord.”

  “And you replaced it?”

  “I replaced it.”

  “I see.”

  “Should I have left it?”

  “No, no!” For some reason Morse seemed almost relieved, and the concierge left.

  “I wish all our witnesses were as bright and unequivocal as Mr. Harden, Lewis!”

  “Important, is it, this phone business?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Not now.”

  Lewis looked at his watch. “We shall have to do something about his wife, sir.”

  “You know the routine better than I do.”

  Yes, Lewis did.

  “Tell ’em to be gentle with her. Just to say her husband’s had a fatal heart attack. We can arrange transport—well, they can—if she wants to come to Oxford tomorrow. Not tonight, though. Get her local GP in. Well—you know the ropes.”

  Morse drained his beer and his eyes reflected the curious sadness he clearly felt for the woman left alone that night in Shrewsbury.

  “Another pint?” suggested Lewis.

  But Morse shook his head and stood up to go, the pigskin wallet held tightly in his right hand.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, a police car drew up outside the double-garaged property that stood at 53 Leominster Drive, Shrewsbury. Accompanying the police sergeant was a young smartly attractive WPC, who did the talking:

  “Mrs. Sherwood?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you.”

  Sometimes the police had the lousiest job in the whole world.

  Mid-morning the following day Morse had received Dr. Hobson’s preliminary report:

  Heart attack—death following almost immediately. Little or no chance of survival, even if any more sophisticated treatment had been available earlier. Massive h.a. Subject a heavily dependent insulin diabetic, with (probably) high blood-pressure. Often a risky—sometimes fatal—combination. Every indication that onset of h.a. precipitated subject’s imbalance and collapse, with head injury incurred only subsequently. Blood sugar at time of death: 26.8. Very high.

  Doing one or two other little tests. Will keep you informed.

  L.H.

  And now Lewis read through the findings.

  “Things seem to have happened, er, contemporaneously, sir.”

  “Clears it up, certainly, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Mrs. Sherwood’s coming down this morning. Identify the body and …”

  Morse nodded. “Keep her out of The Randolph, if you can. No need for her to know anything about the room or … or anything.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Look! Nobody’s going to profit from parading any dirty linen, agreed?”

  “Least of all Mrs. Sherwood.”

  “And her family.”

  “OK.”

  “Have we discovered much about her?”

  Lewis consulted his note-book.

  “Aged forty-five; son and daughter—both early twenties; she works part-time; bags o’ money; everybody seemed to think the marriage was fine.”

  Morse nodded sombrely. “Death’s bad enough, but … Remember that Greek Archbishop, Lewis? Had a heart attack in his local knocking-shop at Athens? Poor sod!”

  “At least he hadn’t got a wife.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Sherwood was having a bit on the side, too.”

  But Morse appeared not to be listening. He took from the dead man’s wallet a passport-sized colour photograph of a duskily tressed and deeply tanned young beauty, wearing thinly rimmed schoolma’amish spectacles, and looking half-seriously into the camera—yet with lips beginning to curl in a sensuous smile.

  “Lovely!” said Morse. “Lovely!”

  “And that’s …?”

  “That’s Mr. Sherwood’s ‘bit on the side,’ as you so elegantly phrase things.”

  Then Morse, after glancing briefly at the back of the photo, slowly tore it into smaller and smaller pieces.

  “Destroying evidence, that is. Could be valuable in the case—”

  “What case?”

  Lewis shrugged. “You’re in charge, sir.”

  Morse was now on his feet. “Just nip me down to Oxford, will you? Railway station for a couple of minutes —then on to St. Aidâtes. What time’s Mrs. Sherwood due here?”

  “Eleven-thirty. Driving down—dunno if it’s the Rolls or the BMW, though!”

  Morse shot off at an odd angle: “Do you believe in any after-life, Lewis?”

  “Not sure, really. What about you?”

  “No, not me. I think death’s just a process of chemical disintegration.”

  “Perhaps she could tell us—Mrs. Sherwood. She took a Chemistry degree at Cambridge.”

  “How on earth did you find that out?”

  Lewis, too, now rose. “I’m a detective, sir, remember?”

  “She must have been a clever lass at school.”

  “But you still don’t want to see her?”

  “No.”

  As he’d promised, Morse spent only a brief while inside Oxford railway station; and five minutes later Lewis was driving down St. Aidâtes, when Morse peremptorily announced a slight change of plan. It was just after 11 A.M.

  “Drop me anywhere here! I’ll just nip in to see how the landlord is.”

  He gestured vaguely to the Bulldog, and Lewis brought the police car to a stop opposite Christ Church.

  “Just give this to Mrs. Sherwood, will you?”

  Lewis took the proffered wallet. “No more photos in it?”

  “Only one of the four of ’em: mum and dad and the two kids. Everything’s all right now.”

  * * *

  Lewis had arrived back at Kidlington HQ at 2 P.M. to find that the chief had not yet returned—from wherever.

  Mrs. Sherwood had been a quarter of an hour late (in the BMW), and Lewis had looked quickly through the contents of her late husband’s wallet as he’d waited in a small ante-room in the Pathology Institute. The usual plastic cards were there, relating to monies and memberships; £110 in banknotes; the family photograph that Morse had mentioned (but no others); and something else, yes—two green-and-orange British Rail tickets, one “Out” and one “Return,” between Shrewsbury and Oxford. Neither had received the attention of any ticket-collector’s clip. Yet they looked genuine enough. Were genuine enough, except for the fact that the date printed on each of them was not yesterday’s—but today’s.

  Lewis smiled wryly to himself.

  Mrs. Pamela Sherwood had turned out to be a slim, well-groomed, delicately featured woman—distressed, yes, but well in control. Lewis himself never really knew what to do or what to say in times of bereavement; but that was exactly why (as Morse well knew) he performed the job so successfully, since it was not unusual on such sad occasions for roles to be reversed and for the bereaved themselves to feel an instinctively reciprocal sympathy with the good sergeant.

  As now.

  Over coffee, and after identifying her husband’s body, Mrs. Sherwood herself had looked quickly through the contents of the wallet, her eyes intent as she took out one item after another, including the tickets.

  One item
after another … except of course for the photograph of the dusky siren whose features for a little while had recently held the Chief Inspector mesmerized.

  But it was the message on Morse’s Ansaphone which displaced any thoughts of Mrs. Sherwood; a message left by the manager of The Randolph; a message which Lewis, now for the third time, replayed as he waited for Morse to return.

  Bamber Goodall here, Chief Inspector. I had a personal call this morning just before twelve. A woman, youngish woman by the sound of her, said she’d got to speak to me and I accepted the call. She said she was feeling guilty because she was the woman who was going to stay with Mr. Sherwood. She said she’d driven him down in her own car. She’d kept out of the way when he’d booked in, and when he’d gone up to the room with their luggage. Then he’d come down again, given her the room-key, and said he’d expect her in about ten or fifteen minutes, after she’d parked the car—which she had done, up in Norham Gardens. It seems they’d both been worried about leaving the car in the hotel garage. Then when she got back and walked up to their room she’d opened the door to find him lying there, and she’d just “panicked”—her word—and grabbed her case—still unopened—and got the hell out of things. She drove out to the Cotswolds, and then back home this morning. She was still feeling awful about it, she said. Somehow she’d known he was dead—though she didn’t say how she knew. Well, that’s it really. When I said she ought to talk to the police she said she couldn’t. I tried to keep her talking but it was no good. She just kept saying that if only Mrs. Sherwood could be kept out of it all—you know—kept in the dark about things, about her, well, she’d be extremely grateful. So that’s it, really. I’ll be in the hotel here till about eight-thirty this evening … if you want me.

  During the replay of this message, Lewis had been conscious that Morse was standing beside him, listening (it seemed) intently; and as Goodall signed off, Lewis noted that Morse’s eyes were shining with excitement; and impatience, too—like a camel sniffing the coolness of the air and eager to ride forth at evening from the wells …

  Although Lewis himself would not have made that particular simile.

  Morse’s verdict, whispered and intense, was barely audible in the now silent office: