The Wench is Dead

by Colin Dexter

  We live in a most degenerate age, decided Morse. Yet he knew, deep down, what nonsense such thinking was. He was no better himself, really, than one of those scandal-sheet scouts. He’d just confessed – had he not? – how much he himself wanted to interview Mrs Oldfield and talk about all the things she must have known. And what (sobering thought!) what if she had invited each of them in, one after the other, separately – and asked for £20,000 a time?

  No chance of any interview or talk now though – not with any of them … But, suddenly, it struck Morse that perhaps there was: Samuel Carter’s Travels and Talks in the Antipodes. That might be a most interesting document, surely? And (it struck Morse with particular pleasure) it would certainly be somewhere on the shelves of the three or four great UK libraries, the foremost of which was always going to be the Bodleian.

  Lewis had already been given his research project; and work was now beginning to pile up for his second researcher in the field: what with Jackson’s Oxford Journal, and now Carter’s book … Had the Colonel consulted that? Must have done, Morse supposed – which was a little disappointing.

  That Friday evening, Morse was visited by both Sergeant Lewis and Christine Greenaway, the latter suddenly changing her mind and foregoing a cocktail reception in Wellington Square. No trouble at all. Just the opposite.

  Morse was very happy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  Those hateful persons called Original Researchers

  (J. M. Barrie, My Lady Nicotine)

  AS USUAL WHEN she went into Oxford on a Saturday, Christine Greenaway drove down to the Pear Tree roundabout and caught the Park-and-Ride bus. Alighting in Cornmarket, she walked up to Carfax, turned right into Queen’s Street, and along through the busy pedestrian precinct to Bonn Square, where just past the Selfridges building she pushed through the doors of the Westgate Central Library. Among the wrong assumptions made by Chief Inspector Morse the previous evening was the fact that it would be sheer child’s play for her to fish out the fiche (as it were) of any newspaper ever published, and that having effected such effortless entry into times past she had the technical skill and the requisite equipment to carry out some immediate research. She hadn’t told him that the Bodleian had not, to the best of her knowledge, ever micro-filmed the whole of the nation’s press from the nineteenth century, nor that she herself was one of those people against whom all pieces of electrical gadgetry waged a non-stop war. She’d just agreed with him: yes, it would be a fairly easy job; and she’d be glad to help – again. To be truthful, though, she was. Earlier that morning she’d telephoned one of her acquaintances in the Reference Section of the Westgate Central, and learned that she could have immediate access to Jackson’s Oxford Journal for 1859 and 1860. How long did she want to book things for? One hour? Two? Christine thought one hour would be enough.

  10.30–11.30 a.m., then?

  Perhaps Morse had been right all along. It was going to be easy.

  On the second floor of the Central Library, in the Local History and Study Area, she was soon seated on an olive-green vinyl chair in front of a Micro-Film-Reader, an apparatus somewhat resembling the upper half of a British Telecom telephone-kiosk, with a vertical surface, some two feet square, facing her, upon which the photographed sheets of the newspaper appeared, in columns about 21⁄2 inches wide. No lugging around or leafing through heavy bound-volumes of unmanageable newspapers. ‘Child’s play.’ The controls marked Focusing Image, Magnification, and Light Control had all been pre-set for her by a helpful young library assistant (male), and Christine had only to turn an uncomplicated winding-handle with her right hand to skip along through the pages, at whatever speed she wished, of Jackson’s Oxford Journal.

  She was relieved, nevertheless, to discover that the Journal was a weekly, not a daily publication; and very soon she found the appropriate columns relating to the first trial of August 1859, and was making a series of notes about what she found; and, like Morse, becoming more and more interested. Indeed, by the time she had finished her research into the second trial, of April 1860, she was fascinated. She would have liked to go back and check up a few things, but her eyes were getting tired; and as soon as the print began to jump along like a line of soldiers dressing by the right, she knew that what the splendid machine called the Viewer Operator had better have a rest. She’d found a couple of pieces of information that might please Morse. She hoped so.

  She was looking quickly through her scribbled notes, making sure that she could transcribe them later into some more legible form, when she became aware of a conversation taking place only three or four yards behind her at the Enquiries desk.

  ‘Yes, I’ve tried County Hall – no help, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Your best bet I should think, then, is the City Archivists. They’ve got an office in—’

  ‘They sent me here!’

  ‘Oh!’ The phone rang and the assistant excused himself to answer it.

  Christine gathered up her notes, turned off the MFR (as it seemed to be known), and went up to the desk.

  ‘We met yesterday evening—’ began Christine.

  Sergeant Lewis smiled at her and said, ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Seems I’m having more luck than you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Augh! He always gives me the lousy jobs – I don’t know why I bother – my day off, too.’

  ‘And mine.’

  ‘Sorry we can’t help, sir,’ said the assistant (another query dealt with). ‘But if they’ve got no trace at the Archivists …’

  Lewis nodded. ‘Well, thanks, anyway.’

  Lewis escorted Christine to the swing doors when the assistant had a final thought: ‘You could try St Aldate’s Police Station. I have heard that quite a lot of documents and stuff got housed by the police in the war’ (‘Which war?’ mumbled Lewis, inaudibly) ‘and, well, perhaps—’

  ‘Thanks very much!’

  ‘They can’t really be all that helpful to the public, though – I’m sure you know—’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  But the phone had been ringing again, and now the attendant answered it, convinced that he’d sent his latest customer on what would prove a wholly unproductive mission.

  When alone in crowded streets, Christine sometimes felt a little apprehensive; but she experienced a pleasing sense of being under protection as she walked back towards Carfax with the burly figure of Sergeant Lewis beside and above her. Great Tom was striking twelve noon.

  ‘I don’t suppose you fancy a drink—’ began Lewis.

  ‘No – not for me, thank you. I don’t drink much, anyway, and it’s a bit – bit early, isn’t it?’

  Lewis grinned: ‘That’s something I don’t hear very often from the Chief.’ But he felt relieved. He wasn’t much good at making polite conversation; and although she seemed a very nice young lady he preferred to get about his business now.

  ‘You like him, don’t you? The “Chief”, I mean?’

  ‘He’s the best in the business.’

  ‘Is he?’ asked Christine, quietly.

  ‘Will you be going in tonight?’

  ‘I suppose so. What about you?’

  ‘If I find anything – which seems at the moment very doubtful.’

  ‘You never know.’

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first

  (Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera)

  IN THE LATE 1980s the premises of the City Police HQ in St Aldate’s were being extensively renovated and extended – and the work was still in progress when Sergeant Lewis walked in through the main door that Saturday morning. The Force had always retained its obstinately hierarchical structure, and friendships between the higher and the lower ranks would perhaps always be slightly distanced. Yet Lewis knew Chief Superintendent Bell fairly well from the old days up at Kidlington and was glad to find him in the station.

  Yes, of cours
e Bell would help if he could: in fact, the timing of Lewis’s visit might be very opportune, because many corners and crannies had only just been cleared out, and the contents of scores of cupboards and dust-covered cases and crates had recently seen the light of day for the first time within living memory. Bell’s orders on this had been clear: if any documents seemed even marginally worth the keeping, let them be kept; if not, let them be destroyed. But strangely, up to now, almost everything so newly rediscovered had appeared potentially valuable to someone; and the upshot was that a whole room had been set aside in which the preserved relics and mementos from the earliest days – certainly from the 1850s onwards – had been unsystematically stacked, awaiting appropriate evaluation by academic historians, sociologists, criminologists, local-history societies – and authors. In fact a WPC was in the room now, as Bell thought – doing a bit of elementary cataloguing; and if Lewis wanted to look around …

  Explaining that this was her lunch-break, WPC Wright, a pleasant enough brunette in her mid-twenties, continued eating her sandwiches and writing her Christmas cards, waving Lewis to any quarter of the room he wished after he had briefly stated his mission.

  ‘It’s all yours, Sergeant. Or, at least, I wish it was!’

  Lewis could see what she meant. Morse had given him a copy of the Colonel’s work (several spares had been left on the ward); but for the moment Lewis could see little or no chance of linking anything that had occurred in 1860 with the chaotic heaps of boxes, files, bags, crates, and piles of discoloured, dog-eared documents that lay around. To be fair, it was clear that a start had been made on sorting things out, for fifty-odd buff-coloured labels, with dates written on them, were attached to the rather neater agglomeration of material that had been separated from the rest, and set out in some semblance of chronological order. But amongst these labels Lewis looked in vain for 1859 or 1860. Was it worth having a quick look through the rest?

  It was at 1.45 p.m., after what had proved to be a long look, that Lewis whistled softly.

  ‘You found something?’

  ‘Do you know anything about this?’ asked Lewis. He had lifted from one of the tea-chests a chipped and splintered box, about two feet long, by one foot wide, and about 9–10 inches deep; a small box, by any reckoning, and one which could be carried by a person with little difficulty, since a brass plate, some 4 inches by half an inch, set in the middle of the box’s top, held a beautifully moulded semi-circular handle, also of brass. But what had struck Lewis instantly – and with wondrous excitement – were the initials engraved upon the narrow plate: ‘J.D.’! Lewis had not read the slim volume with any great care (or any great interest, for that matter); but he remembered clearly the two ‘trunks’ which Joanna had taken on to the boat and which presumably had been found in the cabin after the crew’s arrest. Up to that point, Lewis had just had a vague mental picture of the sort of ‘trunks’ seen outside Oxford colleges when the undergraduates were arriving. But surely it had said that Joanna was carrying them, hadn’t it? And by the well-worn look of the handle it looked as if this box had been carried – and carried often. And the name of Joanna’s first husband had begun with a ‘D’!

  The policewoman came over and knelt beside the box. The two smallish hooks, one on each side of the lid, moved easily; and the lock on the front was open, for the lid lifted back to reveal, inside the green-plush lining, a small canvas bag, on which, picked out in faded yellow wool, were the same initials as on the box.

  Lewis whistled once more. Louder.

  ‘Can you – can we – ?’ He could scarcely keep the excitement from his voice, and the policewoman looked at him curiously for a few seconds, before gently shaking out the bag’s contents on to the floor: a small, rusted key, a pocket comb, a metal spoon, five dress-buttons, a crochet-hook, a packet of needles, two flat-heeled, flimsy-looking shoes, and a pair of calico knickers.

  Lewis shook his head in dumbfounded disbelief. He picked up the shoes in somewhat gingerly fashion as if he suspected they might disintegrate; then, between thumb and forefinger, the calico knickers.

  ‘Think I could borrow these shoes and the er …?’ he asked.

  WPC Wright eyed him once again with amused curiosity.

  ‘It’s all right,’ added Lewis. ‘They’re not for me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Morse – I work for Morse.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me he’s become a knicker-fetishist in his old age.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Wish I did!’

  ‘He’s in hospital, I’m afraid—’

  ‘Everybody says he drinks far too much.’

  ‘A bit, perhaps.’

  ‘Do you know him well, would you say?’

  ‘Nobody knows him all that well.’

  ‘You’ll have to sign for them—’

  ‘Fetch me the book!’

  ‘—and bring them back.’

  Lewis grinned. ‘They’d be a bit small for me, anyway, wouldn’t they? The shoes, I mean.’

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  * * *

  Don’t take action because of a name! A name is an uncertain thing, you can’t count on it!

  (Bertolt Brecht, A Man’s a Man)

  DURING THAT SAME Saturday which saw Sergeant Lewis and Christine Greenaway giving up their free time on his behalf, Morse himself was beginning to feel fine again. Exploring new territory, too, since after lunch-time he was told he was now free to wander along the corridors at will. Thus it was that at 2.30 p.m. he found his way to the Day Room, an area equipped with armchairs, a colour TV, table-skittles, a book-case, and a great pile of magazines (the top one, Morse noted, a copy of Country Life dating from nine years the previous August). The room was deserted; and after making doubly sure the coast was clear, Morse placed one of the three books he was carrying in the bottom of the large wastepaper receptacle there: The Blue Ticket had brought him little but embarrassment and humiliation, and now, straightway, he felt like Pilgrim after depositing his sackful of sin.

  The surfaces of the TV set seemed universally smooth, with not the faintest sign of any switch, indentation, or control with which to set the thing going; so Morse settled down in an armchair and quietly contemplated the Oxford Canal once more.

  The question for the Jury, of course, had not been ‘Who committed the crime?’ but only ‘Did the prisoners do it?’; whilst for a policeman like himself the question would always have to be the first one. So as he sat there he dared to say to himself, honestly, ‘All right! If the boatmen didn’t do it, who did?’ Yet if that were now the Judge’s key question, Morse couldn’t see the case lasting a minute longer; for the simple answer was he hadn’t the faintest idea. What he could set his mind to, though, was some considered reflection upon the boatmen’s guilt. Or innocence …

  A quartet of questions, then.

  First. Was it true that a jury should have been satisfied, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the boatmen murdered Joanna Franks? Answer: no. Not one shred of positive evidence had been produced by the prosecution which could be attested in court by any corroborative witnesses to murder – and it had been on the count of murder that the boatmen had been convicted.

  Second. Was it true that the prisoners at the bar had been afforded the time-honoured ‘presumption of innocence’ – the nominal glory of the British Legal System? Answer: it most definitely was not. Prejudgements – wholly pejorative prejudgements – had been rife from the start of the first trial, and the attitude of the law officers no less than the general public had been, throughout, one of unconcealed contempt for, and revulsion against, the crude, barely literate, irreligious crew of the Barbara Bray.

  Third. Was it true that the boatmen, or some of them, were likely to have been guilty of something? Answer: almost certainly, yes; and (perversely) most probably guilty on the two charges that were dropped – those of rape and theft. At the very least, there was no shortage of evidence to suggest that the men had
lusted mightily after their passenger, and it was doubtless a real possibility that all three – all four? – had sought to force their advances on the hapless (albeit sexually provocative?) Joanna.

  Fourth. Was there a general sense – even if the evidence was unsatisfactory, even if the Jury were unduly prejudiced – in which the verdict was a reasonable one, a ‘safe’ one, as some of the jurisprudence manuals liked to call it? Answer: no, a thousand times no!

  Almost, now, Morse felt he could put his finger on the major cause of his unease. It was all those conversations, heard and duly reported, between the principal characters in the story: conversations between the crew and Joanna; between the crew and other boatmen; between the crew and lock-keepers, wharfingers, and constables – all of it was wrong somehow. Wrong, if they were guilty. It was as if some inexperienced playwright had been given a murder-plot, and had then proceeded to write page after page of inappropriate, misleading, and occasionally contradictory dialogue. For there were moments when it looked as if it were Joanna Franks who was the avenging Fury, with the crewmen merely the victims of her fatal power.

  Then, too, the behaviour of Oldfield and Musson after the murder seemed to Morse increasingly a matter of considerable surprise, and it was difficult to understand why Counsel for the Defence had not sought to ram into the minds of Judge and Jury alike the utter implausibility of what, allegedly, they did and said. It was not unknown, admittedly, for the odd psychopath to act in a totally irrational and irresponsible manner. But these men were not a quartet of psychopaths. And, above all, it seemed quite extraordinary to Morse that, even after (as was claimed) the crew had somehow and for some reason managed to murder Joanna Franks, they were – some twenty-four, thirty-six hours later – still knocking back the booze, still damning and blasting the woman’s soul to eternity. Morse had known many murderers, but never one who had subsequently acted in such a fashion – let alone four. No! It just didn’t add up; didn’t add up at all. Not that it mattered, though – not really – after all these years.