Morse's Greatest Mystery

by Colin Dexter

  “She did it! She murdered him!”

  For a few moments Lewis looked across the desk with mouth agape, like a young lad bidden to display his tonsils to the doctor. He would have asked about that unspecified “She,” but already Morse had picked up the phone, asking to be put through to the Path lab—urgently. And as he covered the speaker with the palm of his left hand, he gave his instructions:

  “Go and take a full statement from the manager, Lewis. I want to know exactly what she told him. Verbatim, as far as—

  “Ah, Doctor Hobson?”

  “You can drive back,” Morse had said the following morning when just after 10 A.M. he himself took the wheel of the maroon-coloured Jaguar and began the drive up to Shrewsbury, via Motorways 40, 42, 6, and 54. One hundred and ten miles. No Services. An hour and a half. Lewis, whose only indulgence in life (apart from eggs and chips) was speedy driving, would have cut fifteen minutes off the time.

  Did cut fifteen minutes off, on the return journey.

  “Difficult to know why anyone’d ever want to go from Shrewsbury to Oxford by British Rail,” declared Lewis, as Morse pulled up outside the elegantly appointed, detached house that stood at 53 Leominster Drive.

  “Mrs. Sherwood,” began Morse, “we have some difficult things to tell you. When your husband went off to Oxford, we have every reason to believe, I’m afraid, that he’d arranged to spend two nights with a woman-friend—with a mistress—in The Randolph Hotel. She’d driven him down to Oxford in her own car—”

  Mrs. Sherwood shook her head and closed her eyes, like a young girl refusing to believe that Santa Claus was just a dream.

  “You’ve got it all wrong! He went to Oxford by train—I took him to the station myself. He knew he’d be having quite a lot to drink at the conference—”

  “He went to Oxford by car,” countered Morse. “His mistress drove him there.”

  “But that’s nonsense! I’ve got the rail tickets—”

  “Show me!”

  From her handbag, Mrs. Sherwood took out her husband’s wallet; and from the wallet, the two tickets—which she handed to him.

  “We decided to buy these for you, Mrs. Sherwood, because we wanted to spare you some of the anguish and the pain of all this trouble. And if you’d been more observant, you’d have spotted the wrong date on them. Until yesterday, you see, we’d no suspicion at all that your husband’s death was due to anything but natural causes.”

  Her eyes flicked up sharply. “And now you’re saying …?”

  Morse made no direct answer, but looked away from those compelling eyes, and slowly tore the rail tickets into smaller and smaller pieces, just as earlier he’d torn the photograph.

  “Did you know your husband’s mistress?”

  For a while it seemed that Mrs. Sherwood would challenge the premiss of Morse’s brutal question. But she didn’t.

  “I know her.”

  “We did find a photograph,” continued Morse, “but foolishly I tore it up, because, as I say, we wanted to—”

  “She was hardly the first, Chief Inspector.”

  “Please tell me who she is and where we can find her.”

  But Mrs. Sherwood shook her head as she stared into some middle distance. “I felt jealous about his other women—of course I did. But I envied this one. I’d found out a few things about her and I think she was everything to Peter that I’d never been. You see, I’m so very careful and tight about life—about emotions, money, everything. And she’s open and vivacious, and wonderful in bed, for all I know …”

  “And very young,” added Morse cruelly.

  “About half Peter’s age, yes. Perhaps that’s what hurt more than anything.”

  “But who is she, Mrs. Sherwood?”

  Morse had lifted his fiercely blue eyes to challenge hers. Yet to no avail; and it was Lewis who pursued the questioning.

  “We’re interested in two telephone calls, Mrs. Sher wood, made about the time your husband died: one just before six o’clock; and one five or ten minutes later. At first we believed both calls were made by the same person. Yesterday, though, a woman rang and admitted making the second call—the one asking for a doctor—but she claimed quite certainly that she hadn’t made any earlier call—a call, we thought, possibly asking for your husband’s room-number, or whatever it was she needed to know. She said she already knew the room-number: he’d gone upstairs with the luggage after checking in, and then come down and actually given her the key—before she drove off to park the car somewhere. So what reason could she have had for ringing him?”

  Mrs. Sherwood shrugged her thin shoulders. “Doesn’t seem much point, does there?”

  “Do you think it was one of his other lady-loves?”

  “Could have been—”

  “You, perhaps?” broke in Morse, very quietly.

  Rising from her armchair, Mrs. Sherwood walked over to the french window and stood gazing out across the wide lawn.

  “Is a wife not allowed to ring her husband? At least he almost always told me where he was staying, if not who he was staying with.”

  “What time did you make the call?” continued Morse.

  “Six—sixish? As you say.”

  “Before or after?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You said you’re—what was it?—a bit tight and careful about things like money.”

  She nodded. “Silly really. We’d plenty of money—two salaries coming in.”

  “You work in a pharmaceutical lab, I think?”

  “Part-time, yes.”

  “And you’re a Chemistry graduate.”

  “Huh! You know all about me. But all you really want to know is about her. Am I right?”

  “I’d like to know more about you, though. For example, the phone-rate gets cheaper after six o’clock, doesn’t it? So why didn’t you wait till after six o’clock—it was only a matter of a few minutes.”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “Come on, Mrs. Sherwood! You can do better than that.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You’ll have to, if you want us to find out who murdered your husband.”

  She turned from the window, and in the pale face the eyes were now ablaze.

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes, murdered.”

  “But you’re wrong! He died of a heart attack. That’s what they told me—the medical people—in Oxford.”

  “We’ve had a further report from the police pathologist, Mrs. Sherwood. Sergeant!”

  Lewis now read out the relevant extract from Dr. Hobson’s second report:

  The glass capsule had shattered into small pieces, and the liquid contents had been almost entirely spilled. Our analysis however shows that the original insulin within the capsule had been injected with Sodium Fluoroacetate, a substance readily soluble in water; and extremely poisonous even in the smallest quantity, interfering fatally and almost immediately as it does with the Krebs cycle of metabolism. For obvious reasons this substance is never openly available to the general public.

  “But would be available,” added Morse slowly, “to someone working in a pharmaceutical lab.”

  “My husband died of a heart attack! I was told so. Are you now saying he didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “So please tell me what you are saying! What’s all this about murder?”

  “You wished to murder your husband, Mrs. Sherwood. You poisoned the insulin capsule. That’s what I’m saying.”

  She turned to stare out of the window again.

  “And if I did?” she asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” replied Morse simply. “But I believe you intended to poison your husband. You’d lived with him for twenty-odd years and you knew him to be an extremely meticulous and methodical man. You knew perfectly well that in Oxford, just as here at home, he’d almost certainly be taking his insulin at six o’clock that evening. And the reason you rang him up just before six o’clock was to make sure he didn’t inje
ct himself from the capsule you’d poisoned. Please tell me if I’m wrong, Mrs. Sherwood! But I think that in spite of all that had happened, in spite of all his infidelities, you didn’t hate him quite enough to go through with your plan. In the last analysis, you wanted him to stay alive. Perhaps you even hoped he’d come to love you once again.”

  She nodded weakly, and spoke in a sing-song voice as if the events she now described were distanced and unreal.

  “Five to six, it was when I rang. The line was engaged at first and I began to panic. But then I did get through. It was just like when I was a girl; when I used to play little games with myself. I just asked him if he was going to sleep with her that night … I wanted to shock him, you see … And if he said ‘no,’ I was going to tell him about the insulin.”

  She stopped.

  “And if he said ‘yes’?”

  “It never got that far. I just—I just heard a great crash.”

  “Don’t you think you may have murdered him just as surely as if you’d poisoned him yourself?”

  She shook her head, more in bewilderment, it seemed, than in denial. “What will happen to me?”

  “I just don’t know,” said Morse.

  At the front door, she laid a hand lightly on his arm, and lowered her eyes.

  “It was very kind of you—what you did.”

  “But you won’t tell me who this other woman is?”

  “No.”

  Once the Jaguar had disappeared from view, Mrs. Sherwood moved back inside the house, a semi-smile upon her lips.

  Too clever for his own good, that man! She’d played it mostly by ear, of course. But how easy he’d made it for her! With him pointing out the escape route she’d so desperately been seeking after his mention of the Sodium Fluoroacetate; him suggesting the blessedly mitigating circumstance that it was she, Pamela Sherwood, who had rung her husband; she who had tried not to cause, but to prevent her husband’s death. Why he’d even told her the time of that telephone call—a call she’d never made, of course.

  Oh, she’d willingly enough have faced the consequences of poisoning her husband, because above all things in life she’d wanted him dead. But now? If by some happy chance she were to be seen as guilty only of causing him a heart attack—well, she’d settle for that all right. Why not? He was dead, that was the main thing. And that Jane bloody Ballantyre—pox-ridden strumpet!—would have to seek some other demerara daddy now.

  “You were kind, you know,” said Lewis as he drove the Jaguar out of Leominster Drive.

  “How come?”

  “Well, the photo—”

  “ ‘Stupid,’ do you mean?”

  “—and the rail tickets.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I do. You probably know you haven’t got a reputation for being too generous with money—”

  “No?”

  “—but I reckon underneath you’re a bit of an old softie, really. I mean, forking out of your own pocket for those tickets …”

  Morse opened his mouth as if to reply; but decided against it. He would (he promised himself) inform Lewis about the expenses claim he had already submitted for £26—but not for the time being.

  “Where to now, sir?”

  “We’re going to try to trace Peter Sherwood’s mistress.”

  “But—but haven’t we cleared things up?”

  “What? You didn’t believe all that stuff we got from Mrs. Sherwood, did you?”

  “You mean—you mean you didn’t?”

  “Lewis! Lewis! Why do you think she refused to tell us anything about her husband’s latest conquest?”

  Lewis had no idea, and mercifully Morse continued.

  “Because our dusky maiden is the only one who knows the truth in this case. And Mrs. Sherwood doesn’t want us to know the truth, does she?”

  “Perhaps not,” mumbled Lewis, uncomprehendingly.

  “So you ask me where were going? Well, it’s a longish shot, but not a hopeless one. The initials on the back of the photo were ‘JB’; she looked deeply tanned—”

  “Perhaps she’s just back from a topless two weeks in Torremolinos.”

  “You know, Lewis, you don’t often come out with such a splendid sentence as that.”

  Lewis felt better. “You mean she might belong to a local health centre?”

  “Lying on a sun-bed, yes. And if Mrs. Sherwood was able to find out a few things about her—”

  “—she might not live a million miles from Leominster Drive.”

  “Exactly so.”

  “Sounds like my sort of job, sir.”

  “Just what I was thinking, Lewis. So, if you’ll just drop me off at the nearest pub?”

  Late that same afternoon, in a luxury flat rather less than a mile from the Sherwood residence, a dark-haired, totally and fatally attractive young woman, wearing thinly rimmed, schoolma’amish spectacles, was still in an agitated frame of mind.

  For she knew that she had killed her lover.

  Had it been foolish to ring the manager of The Randolph? Certainly the questions he’d asked were disturbingly shrewd; yet her conscience had compelled her to do something. Yes, even she had a conscience …

  It had been five minutes to six when she’d finally managed to park the car—up in Norham Gardens, rather further out than she’d anticipated. But at least a telephone booth had stood near by, and (as arranged) she’d dialled the hotel and been put through without delay. And virtually verbatim could she recall that brief—that fatal—conversation:

  “Peter?”

  “Jane!”

  “Everything OK?”

  “Will be once you get here. Room 231.”

  “Is it nice?”

  “Lovely double bed!”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “I’ll leave the door ajar.”

  “Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m wanting you like crazy.”

  “Jane! Please don’t say things like that!”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “You make me—you make me so excited—”

  That was when she’d heard a great crash, although the terrible truth had not immediately dawned upon her consciousness …

  Who the two men were she now saw walking up to the block of flats, she hadn’t the faintest notion. But they looked a well enough heeled pair, and the posh car parked at the kerbside hardly suggested a couple of double-glazing double-dealers. And when she answered the door-bell (yes, they had called to see her) she acknowledged to herself that she could really rather fancy one of the two men, the one whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey. For in spite of her anxieties, she was already casting round (as Mrs. Sherwood had suspected) for some replacement demerara daddy.

  “Jane Ballantyre?”

  She smiled invitingly. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “You know, I rather think you can,” said the man whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey.

  Announcing a new Inspector Morse mystery:

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOR

  by Colin Dexter

  Available soon in hardcover from Crown Books.

  For a glimpse of this riveting new novel, please read on …

  Painstakingly, in block capitals, the Chief Inspector wrote his name, E. MORSE; and was beginning to write his address when Lewis came into the office at 8:35 A.M. on Monday, 19 February.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  Morse looked down at a full page torn from one of the previous day’s colour supplements.

  “Special offer: two free CDs, when you apply to join the Music Club Library.”

  Lewis looked dubious. “Don’t forget you have to buy a book every month with that sort of thing. Life’s not all freebies, you know.”

  “Well, it is in this case. You’ve just got to have a look at the first thing they send you, that’s all—then send it back if you don’t like it. I think they even refund the postage.”

  Lewis watched as Morse completed and snip
ped out the application form.

  “Wouldn’t it be fairer if you agreed to have some of the books?”

  “You think so?”

  “At least one of them.”

  Intense blue eyes, slightly pained, looked innocently across the desk at Sergeant Lewis.

  “But I’ve already got this month’s book—I bought it for myself for Christmas.”

  He inserted the form into an envelope, on which he now wrote the club’s address. Then he took from his wallet a sheaf of plastic cards: Bodleian Library ticket; Lloyds payment card; RAC Breakdown Service; blood donor card; Blackwell’s Bookshops; Oxford City Library ticket; phonecard … but there appeared to be no booklet of first-class stamps there. Or of second-class.

  “You don’t, by any chance, happen to have a stamp on you, Lewis?”

  “What CDs are you going for?”

  “I’ve ordered Janáček, the Glagolitic Mass—you may not know it. Splendid work—beautifully recorded by Simon Rattle. And Richard Strauss, Four Last Songs—Jessye Norman. I’ve got several recordings by other sopranos, of course.”

  Of course …

  Lewis nodded, and looked for a stamp.

  It was not infrequent for Lewis to be reminded of what he had lost in life; or rather, what he’d never had in the first place. The one Strauss he knew was the ‘Blue Danube’ man. And he’d only recently learned there were two of those, as well—Senior and Junior; and which was which he’d no idea.

  “Perhaps you’ll be in for a bit of a let-down, sir. Some of these offers—they’re not exactly up to what they promise.”

  “You’re an expert on these things?”

  “No … but … take Sergeant—” Lewis stopped himself in time. Just as well to leave a colleague’s weakness cloaked in anonymity. “Take this chap I know. He read this advert in one of the tabloids about a free video—sex video—sent in a brown envelope with no address to say where it had come from. You know, in case the wife …”

  “No, I don’t know, Lewis. But please continue.”

  “Well, he sent for one of the choices—”

  “Copenhagen Red-Hot Sex?”

  “No. Housewives on the Job—that was the title; and he expected, you know …”

  Morse nodded. “Housewives On the job’ with the milkman, the postman, the itinerant button-salesman …”