The Wench is Dead

by Colin Dexter

  ‘You didn’t forget the handkerchief?’

  Quickly she re-checked, drawing from the right-hand pocket of her former cloak the small, white square of linen, trimmed with lace, the initials J.F. worked neatly in pink silk in one corner.

  Clever touch!

  ‘She’s – she’s in there?’ Joanna half-turned to the back of the wagon, for the first time her voice sounding nervous, though unexpectedly harsh.

  He jerked his head, once, his eyes bright in the heavily bearded face.

  ‘I don’t really want to see her.’

  ‘No need!’ He had taken the lantern; and when the two of them had climbed up to the front of the wagon, he shone it on a hand-drawn map, his right forefinger pointing to a bridge over the canal, some four-hundred yards north of Shuttleworth’s Lock. ‘We go down to – here! You wait there, and catch up with them, all right? Then get on board again. Then after that – after you get through the lock – you …’

  ‘What we agreed!’

  ‘Yes. Jump in! You can stay in the water as long as you like. But be sure no one sees you getting out! The wagon’ll be next to the bridge. You get in! And lie still! All right? I’ll be there as soon as I’ve …’

  Joanna took the knife from her skirt. ‘Do you want me to do it?’

  ‘No!’ He took the knife quickly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s just,’ he resumed, ‘that her face, well – well, it’s gone black!’

  ‘I thought dead people usually went white,’ whispered Joanna.

  The man climbed on to the fore-board, and helped her up, before disappearing briefly into the darkness of the covered cart; where, holding the lantern well away from the face, he lifted the dead woman’s skirts and with the skill of a surgeon made an incision of about five or six inches down the front of her calico knickers.

  The man was handing Joanna two bottles of dark-looking ‘Running Horse’ ale, when he felt the firm grip of her hand on his shoulder, shaking, shaking, shaking … ‘Some soup for you, Mr Morse?’

  It was Violet.

  (Not the soup.)

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out and death’s the other

  (Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof )

  THE ‘REPORT’ WAS a regular feature of all the wards in the JR2, comprising a meeting of hospital and medical staff at the change-over points between the Early, Late, and Night shifts. In several of the wards, the weekends offered the chance for some top consultants and other senior medical personnel to concentrate their attention on such sidelines as boating and BMWs. But in many of the semi-surgical wards, like Ward 7C, the Reports went on very much as at any other times; as they did on what was now the second Sunday of Morse’s stay in hospital.

  The 1 p.m. meeting that day was, in fact, well attended: the Senior Consultant, a junior houseman, Sister Maclean, Charge Nurse Stanton, and two student nurses. Crowded into Sister’s small office, the group methodically appraised the patients in the ward, briefly discussing convalescences, relapses, prognoses, medications, and associated problems.

  Morse, it appeared, was no longer much of a problem.

  ‘Morse!’ The hint of a smile could be observed on the Consultant’s face as he was handed the relevant notes.

  ‘He’s making fairly good progress,’ Sister asserted, slightly defensively, like some mother at a Parents’ Evening hearing that her child was perhaps not working as hard as he should be.

  ‘Some of us,’ confided the Consultant (handing back the notes) ‘would like to persuade these dedicated drinkers that water is a wonderful thing. I wouldn’t try to persuade you, of course, Sister, but …’

  For a minute or two Sister Maclean’s pale cheeks were flooded with a bright-pink suffusion, and one of the student nurses could barely suppress a smile of delight at the Dragon’s discomfiture. But oddly, the other of the two, the Fair Fiona, was suddenly aware of lineaments and colouring in Sister’s face that could have made it almost beautiful.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to drink that much, does he?’ suggested the young houseman, his eyes skimming the plentiful notes, several of which he had composed himself.

  The Consultant snorted contemptuously: ‘Nonsense!’ He flicked his finger at the offending sheets. ‘Bloody liar, isn’t he? Drunkards and diabetics!’ – he turned to the houseman – ‘I’ve told you that before, I think?’

  It was wholly forgivable that for a few seconds the suspicion of a smile hovered around the lips of Sister Maclean, her cheeks now restored to their wonted pallidity.

  ‘He’s not diabetic—’ began the houseman.

  ‘Give him a couple of years!’

  ‘He is on the mend, though.’ The houseman (and rightly!) was determined to claim some small credit for the reasonably satisfactory transit of Chief Inspector Morse through the NHS.

  ‘Bloody lucky! Even I was thinking about cutting half his innards away!’

  ‘He must be a fundamentally strong sort of man,’ admitted Sister, composure now fully recovered.

  ‘I suppose so,’ conceded the Consultant, ‘apart from his stomach, his lungs, his kidneys, his liver – especially his liver. He might last till he’s sixty if he does what we tell him – which I doubt.’

  ‘Keep him another few days, you think?’

  ‘No!’ decided the Consultant, after a pause. ‘No! Send him home! His wife’ll probably do just as good a job as we can. Same medication – out-patients’ in two weeks – to see me. OK?’

  Eileen Stanton was about to correct the Consultant on his factual error when a nurse burst into the office. ‘I’m sorry, Sister – but there’s a cardiac arrest, I think – in one of the Amenity Beds.’

  ‘Did he die?’ asked Morse.

  Eileen, who had come to sit on his bed, nodded sadly. It was mid-afternoon.

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Don’t know exactly. Few years younger than you, I should think.’ Her face was glum. ‘Perhaps if …’

  ‘You look as if you could do with a bit of tender loving care yourself,’ said Morse, reading her thoughts.

  ‘Yes!’ She looked at him and smiled, determined to snap out of her mopishness. ‘And you, my good sir, are not going to get very much more of our wonderful loving care – after today. We’re kicking you out tomorrow – had quite enough of you!’

  ‘I’m going out, you mean?’ Morse wasn’t sure if it was good news or bad news; but she told him.

  ‘Good news, isn’t it?’

  ‘I shall miss you.’

  ‘Yes, I shall …’ But Morse could see the tears welling up in her eyes.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ He spoke the words softly; and she told him. Told him about her wretched week; and how kind the hospital had been in letting her switch her normal nights; and how kind, especially, Sister had been … But the big tears were rolling down her cheeks and she turned away and held one hand to her face, searching with the other for her handkerchief. Morse put his own grubby handkerchief gently into her hand, and for a moment the two sat together in silence.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Morse at last. ‘It must be pretty flattering to have a couple of fellows fighting over you.’

  ‘No! No, it isn’t!’ The tears were forming again in the large, sad eyes.

  ‘No! You’re right. But listen! It won’t do you any good at all – in fact’ (Morse whispered) ‘it’ll make you feel far worse. But if I’d been at that party of yours – when they were fighting over you – I’d have taken on the pair of ’em! You’d have had three men squabbling over you – not just two.’

  She smiled through her tears, and wiped her wet cheeks, already feeling much better. ‘They’re big men, both of them. One of them takes lessons in some of those Martial Arts.’

  ‘All right – I’d’ve lost! Still have fought for you, though, wouldn’t I? Remember the words of the poet? “Better to have fou
ght and lost than … something … something …”’ (Morse himself had apparently forgotten the words of the poet.)

  She brought her face to within a few inches of his, and looked straight into his eyes: ‘I wouldn’t have minded a little bit if you had lost, providing you’d let me look after you.’

  ‘You have been looking after me,’ said Morse, ‘and thank you!’

  Getting to her feet, she said no more. And Morse, with a little wistfulness, watched her as she walked away. Perhaps he should have told her that she’d meant ‘provided’, not ‘providing’? No! Such things, Morse knew, were no great worry to the majority of his fellow men and women.

  But they were to him.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  * * *

  I think it frets the saints in heaven to see

  How many desolate creatures on the earth

  Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship

  And social comfort, in a hospital

  (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh)

  THERE IS A sadness which invariably and mysteriously accompanies the conclusion of any journey, and the end of any sojourn. Whether or not such sadness is a presage of the last journey we all must take; whether or not it is, more simply, a series of last, protracted goodbyes – it is not of any import here to speculate. But for Morse, the news that he was forthwith to be discharged from the JR2 was simultaneously wonderful – and woeful. Music awaited him? Indeed! Soon he would be luxuriating again in Wotan’s Farewell from the last act of Die Walküre; and turning up Pavarotti fff from one of the Puccinis – certainly in mid-morning, when his immediate neighbours were always out and about on their good works for Oxfam. Books, too. He trusted that the Neighbourhood Watch had done its duty in North Oxford, and that his first edition of A Shropshire Lad (1896) was still in its place on his shelves, that slim, white volume that stood proudly amongst its fellows, carrying no extra insurance-cover, like a Royal Prince without a personal bodyguard. Yes, it would be good to get home again: to please himself about what he listened to, or read, or ate … or drank. Well, within reason. Yet, quite certainly, he would miss the hospital! Miss the nurses, miss the fellow-patients, miss the routine, miss the visitors – miss so much about the institution which, with its few faults and its many virtues, had admitted him in his sickness and was now discharging him in a comparative health.

  But the departure from Ward 7C was not, for Morse, to be a memorable experience. When the message came – hardly a bugle call! – to join a group of people who were to be ambulanced up to North Oxford, he had little opportunity of saying farewell to anyone. One of his ward-mates (‘Waggie’) was performing his first post-operatively independent ablutions in the washroom; another was very fast asleep; one had just been taken to the X-ray Department; the Ethiopian torch-bearer was sitting in his bed, with Do-Not-Disturb written all over him, reading The Blue Ticket (!); and the last was (and had been for hours) closeted behind his curtains, clearly destined little longer for this earthly life; perhaps, indeed, having already said his own farewells to everybody. As for the nurses, most were bustling purposively about their duties (one or two new faces, anyway), and Morse realized that he was just another patient, and one no longer requiring that special care of just one week ago. Eileen he had not expected to see again, now back to her normal Nights, as she’d told him. Nor was Sister herself anywhere to be seen as he was wheeled out of the ward by a cheerful young porter with a crew-cut and earrings. The Fair Fiona, though, he did see – sitting patiently in the next bay beside an ancient citizen, holding a sputum-pot in front of his dribbling lips. With her free hand she waved, and mouthed a ‘Good luck!’. But Morse was no lip-reader and, uncomprehending, he was pushed on through the exit corridor where he and his attendant waited for the service-lift to arrive at Level 7.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  * * *

  Lente currite, noctis equi!

  (Oh gallop slow, you horses of the night!)

  (Ovid, Amores)

  ALTHOUGH MRS GREEN had kept Morse’s partial central-heating partially on, the flat seemed cold and unwelcoming. It would have been good for anyone to be there to welcome him: certainly (and especially) Christine – or Eileen, or Fiona; even, come to think of it, the dreaded Dragon of the Loch herself. But there was no one. Lewis had not been in to clear up the stuff stuck through the letter-box, and Morse picked up two white-enveloped Christmas cards (one from his insurance company, with the facsimiled signature of the managing director); and his two Sunday newspapers. Such newspapers, although there was an occasional permutation of titles, invariably reflected the conflict in Morse’s mind between the Cultured and the Coarse – the choice between the front page of the present one, Synod in Dispute over Disestablishment, and Sex Slave’s Six-Week Ordeal in Silk-lined Coffin of the other. If Morse chose the latter first (as, in fact, he did) at least he had the excuse that it was undoubtedly the finer headline. And this Sunday, as usual, he first flicked through the pages of full-breasted photographs and features on Hollywood intrigues and Soap infidelities. Then, he made himself a cup of instant coffee (which he much preferred to ‘the real thing’) before settling down to read about the most recent fluctuations on the world’s stock-markets, and the bleak prospects for the diseased and starving millions of the world’s unhappy continents.

  At half-past five the phone rang, and Morse knew that if he had one wish only it would be for the caller to be Christine.

  The caller was Christine.

  Not only had she located the rare (and extraordinarily valuable) book of which Morse had enquired, but she had spent an hour or so that afternoon (‘Don’t tell anyone!’) reading through the relevant pages, and discovering (‘Don’t be disappointed!’) that only one short chapter was given over to the interview, between Samuel Carter and an ageing Walter Towns, concerning the trial of the boatmen.

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ said Morse. ‘Where are you ringing from?’

  ‘From, er, from home.’ (Why the hesitation?)

  ‘Perhaps—’

  ‘Look!’ she interrupted. ‘I’ve made a photocopy. Would you like me to send it through the post? Or I could—’

  ‘Could you read it quickly over the phone? It’s fairly short, you say?’

  ‘I’m not a very good reader.’

  ‘Put the phone down – and I’ll ring you back! Then we can talk as long as we like.’

  ‘I’m not as hard up as all that, you know.’

  ‘All right – fire away!’

  ‘Page 187, it begins – ready?’

  ‘Ready, miss!’

  ‘Of the persons encountered in Perth in these last months of 1884 was a man called Walter Towns. Although he was known as a local celebrity, I found it difficult to guess the quality which had avowedly brought such renown to the rather – nay, wholly! – miserable specimen to whom I soon was introduced. He was a small man, of only some five feet in stature, thin, and of a gaunt mien, with deeply furrowed creases down each of his cheeks from eye to mouth; furthermore, his exceedingly sallow complexion had remained untouched by the rays of a sun that is powerful in this region, and his hollow aspect was further enhanced by the complete absence of teeth in the upper jaw. Yet his eyes spoke a latent (if limited) intelligence; and also a certain dolefulness, as if he were remembering things done long ago and things done ill. In truth, the situation pertaining to this man was fully as melodramatic as my readers could have wished; for he had been reprieved from the gallows with minutes only to spare. It was with the utmost interest and curiosity, therefore, that I questioned him.

  ‘A woman had been murdered near Oxford in 1860, on the local canal, and suspicion had centred on the crew of a narrowboat plying south towards London. The four members of the crew, including both Towns himself and a lad of some fourteen years, had duly been arrested and brought to Court. Whilst the youth had been acquitted, the three others had been convicted, and incarcerated in the gaol in the city of Oxford,
awaiting public execution. It was here, two or three minutes following the final visit of the Court Chaplain to the prisoners in their condemned cells, that Towns had received the news of his reprieve. Few humans, certainly, can have experienced a peripeteia’ (Christine here reverted to the spelling) ‘so dramatic to their fortunes. Yet my conversation with Towns proved a matter of some considerable disappointment. Barely literate as the man was (though wholly understandably so) he was also barely comprehensible. His West Country dialect (as I straightway placed it) was to such an extent o’erlaid with the excesses of the Australian manner of speech that I could follow some of his statements only with great difficulty. In short, the man I now met seemed ill-equipped to cope with the rigours of life – certainly those demanded of a free man. And Towns was a “free” man, after serving his fifteen years’ penal servitude in the Longbay Penitentiary. A broken, witless man; a man old before his time (he was but 47), a veteran convict (or “crawler”) who had experienced the ineffable agonies of a man faced with execution on the morrow.

  ‘Concerning the gruesome and macabre events invariably associated with the final hours of such criminals, I could learn but little. Yet a few facts may be of interest to my readers. It is clear, for example, that the prisoners each breakfasted on roasted lamb, with vegetables, although it seems probable from Towns’ hazy recollection that such or similar breakfasts had been available during the whole period following the fixing of the date for their execution. More distressing, from Towns’ viewpoint, was being denied access to his fellow criminals; and if I understood the unfortunate man aright it was this “deprivation” which had been the hardest thing for him to bear. Whether he had slept little or not at all during the fateful night, Towns could not well remember; nor whether he had prayed for forgiveness and deliverance. But a miracle had occurred!