The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn - Inspector Morse 03

by Colin Dexter

  Having completed a synoptic review of the evidence before him, Morse systematically tackled each item severally. The wallet first: a driving licence, RAC membership card, Lloyds Bank cheque card, an outdated NHS prescription for Otosporon, the previous month's pay-slip, a blue outpatients' appointment card for the ENT department at the Radcliffe Infirmary, one five-pound note, three one-pound notes, and a Syndicate acknowledgement card on which were written two telephone numbers. Morse picked up the phone and dialled the first, but his ears were greeted only by a continuous high-pitched monotone. He dialled the second. ‘Hello? Monica Height here.'

  Morse hastily put down the receiver. It was naughty of him, he knew, but he had the feeling that Monica would not be. very happy with him for the moment. Or with Constable Dickson. Yet it made him wonder exactly what the pattern of cross-relationships in the Syndicate had been.

  It was the buff-coloured right-hand half of the cinema ticket which next attracted Morse's attention. Across the top were the numbers 102, beneath them the words ‘Rear Lounge', and along the right edge, running down, the numbers 93550. On the back of the ticket was the design of a pentagram. Somebody must know which cinema it was, he supposed. Job for Lewis, perhaps ... And then it struck him. Fool of a fool. It wasn't 102 across the top at all. There was just the slightest gap between the o and the 2 and Morse saw the name of the cinema staring up at him: STUDIO 2. He knew the place - in Walton Street. Morse had bought a copy of the previous day's Oxford Mail (wherein the Quinn murder had been briefly reported) and he turned the pages and found that Tuesday was the critics' day for reporting to the citizens of Oxford on the quality of the entertainments currently available. Yes, there it was:

  It is all too easy to see why The Nymphomaniac has been retained for a further week at Studio 2. The aficionados have been flocking to see the Swedish sexpot, Inga Nielsson, dutifully exposing her 40" bosom at the slightest provocation. Flock on.'

  Morse read the review with mixed feelings. Clearly, the critics hadn't yet gone metric, and this particular aficionado couldn't even spell the word. Yet big Inga seemed to Morse a most inviting prospect; and doubtless to many another like him. Especially perhaps when the boss was away one Friday afternoon ...? He flicked through the telephone directory, found the number, and asked to speak to the manager who surprisingly turned out to be the manageress.

  'Oh yes, sir. All our tickets are traceable. Buff, you say? Rear circle? Oh yes. We should be able to help you. You see all the blocks of tickets are numbered and a record is kept at the start of each matinee, and then at six o'clock, and then at tea o'clock. Have you got the number?'

  Morse read out the number and felt curiously excited.

  ‘Just one minute, sir.' It turned into three or four, and Morse fiddled' nervously with the directory. 'Are you there, sir? Yes; that's right. Last Friday. It's one of the first tickets issued. The doors opened at 1.15 and the programme started at 1.30. The first rear lounge number is 93543, so it must have been issued in the first five or ten minutes, I should think. There's usually half a dozen or so waiting for the doors to open.'

  ‘You quite sure about this?'

  'Quite sure, sir. You could come down and check if you wanted to.' She sounded young and pretty.

  'Perhaps I will. What film have you got on?' He thought it sounded innocent enough.

  ‘Not quite your cup of tea, I don't think, Inspector.'

  'I wouldn't be too sure about that, miss.'

  'Mrs. But if you do come, ask for me and I'll see you get a free seat.'

  Morse wondered sadly how many, more gift horses "he'd be looking in the mouth. But it wasn't that at all really. He was just frightened of being seen. Now if she'd said...

  But she said something else, and Morse jolted upright in his chair. 'I think I ought to mention, Inspector, that someone else asked me the very same sort of thing last week and ...'

  'What?’ He almost screamed down the phone, but then his voice became very quiet. 'Say that again, will you, please?'

  'I said someone else had—'

  'When was this, do you remember?'

  'I'm not quite sure; sometime - let's see, now. I ought to remember. It's not very often—'

  ‘Was it Friday?' Morse was excited and impatient.

  'I don't know. I'm trying to remember. It was in the afternoon, I remember that, because I was doing a stint in the ticket office when the phone rang, and I answered it myself.'

  'Beginning of the afternoon?'

  ‘No, it was much later than that. Just a minute. I think it was ... Just a minute.' Morse heard some chattering in the background, and then the manageress's voice spoke in his ear once more. Inspector, I think it was in the late afternoon, sometime. About five, perhaps. Fm sorry I can't—’

  'Could have been Friday, you think?'

  ‘Ye-es. Or Saturday, perhaps. I just—'

  ‘A man, was it?'

  ‘Yes. He had a nice sort of voice. Educated - you know what I mean.' ‘What did he ask you?'

  ‘Well, it was funny really. He said he was a detective-story writer and he wanted to check up on some details.' ‘What details?'

  'Well, I remember he said he'd got to put some numbers on a ticket his detective had found, and he wanted to know how many figures there were - that sort of thing.'

  'And you told him?'

  ‘No, I didn't. I told him he could come round to see me, if he liked: but I felt a bit - well, you know, you can't be too careful these days.'

  Morse breathed heavily down the phone. 'I see. Well, thank you very much. You've been extremely kind. I think, as I say, I shall probably have to bother you again—'

  ‘No bother, Inspector.'

  Morse put down the phone, and whistled softly to himself. Whew! Had someone else found Quinn's body and the cinema ticket before Tuesday morning? Long before? Saturday; the manageress had said it might have been Saturday. And it couldn't have been Friday, could it? About five, she'd said. Morse looked quickly again at the Oxford Mail and saw the times: The Nymphomaniac. 1.30 to 3.20 pm. Until twenty past three on Friday Quinn had been feasting his eyes on Inga Nielsson's mighty bosom and few things, surely, would have dragged him out of Studio 2 before the film had finished. Unless, of course ... At long last it struck him: the pretty strong probability that Quinn had not been sitting alone in Studio 2 that Friday afternoon.

  thirteen

  As Morse stood with Lewis in Pinewood Close at 2 p.m. on the following afternoon, awaiting the arrival of Mrs Jardine, he tried with little success to draw a veil over the harrowing events of the morning. Mr and Mrs Quinn had trained down from Huddersfield, and somewhere amid the wreckage of their lives, somewhere amid the tears and the heartbreak, they had managed to find reserves of quiet dignity and courage. Morse had accompanied Mr Quinn senior to the mortuary for the formal identification of his son, and then spent over an hour with them both in his office, unable to tell them much, unable to offer anything except the usual futile words of sympathy. And as Morse had watched the tragic couple climb into the police car for Oxford, he felt great admiration - and even greater relief. The whole interview had upset him, and apart from a few brief minutes with a reporter from the Oxford Mail, he had not been in the mood to grapple with the perpetually multiplying clues to the last hours lived by Nicholas Quinn.

  Two men were repairing the street lamp in front of No i, and Morse strolled over to them. 'How long before they come and smash it up again?'

  ‘You never know, sir. But, to be truthful, we don't get too much vandalism round 'ere, do we, Jack?'

  But Morse had no chance of hearing Jack's views on the local yahoos, for Mrs Jardine drew up in her car and the three of them disappeared into the house, where for half an hour they sat together in the front room. Mrs Jardine told them as much as she knew about her former tenant: about his coming to see her in mid-August; about her chat with Bartlett (Quinn's choice as referee); about his tidy habits and his punctuality in paying his rent; about his usual weekend routine
; and about any and every thing Morse could think of asking her that might add to his picture of Mr Quinn alive. But he learned nothing. Quinn had been a model tenant, it seemed. Quiet, orderly, and no gramophone. Girlfriends? Not that she knew of. She couldn't stop that sort of thing, of course, but it was much better if her tenants

  - well, you know, behaved themselves. The others - upstairs? Oh, they got along well with Mr Quinn, she thought, though she couldn't really know, could she? What a good job Mrs Greenaway hadn't been there on Tuesday, though I You could never tell - with the shock. Yes, that had been a real blessing.

  It was another chilly afternoon, and Morse got up to light the fire, turning the automatic switch on the side as far as he could. But nothing happened.

  'You'll have to use a match, Inspector. Those things never seem to work. How the manufacturers get away with it—'

  Morse struck a match and the fire exploded into an orange glow.

  ‘Do you make any extra charge for gas and electricity?'

  ‘No. It's included in the rent,' replied Mrs Jardine. But as if to dispel any possible suspicion of excessive generosity, she nastily added that the tenants had to share the telephone bill, of course.

  Morse was puzzled. 'I don't quite follow you.'

  'Well, there's a shared line between them, you see. There's a phone upstairs in the Greenaways' bedroom and one here in this room.'

  'I see,' said Morse quietly.

  After the landlady had left them, Morse and Lewis went into the room where Quinn had been found. Although the curtains were now drawn back, it seemed no less sombre than when they were in it last; and certainly colder. Morse bent down and tried turning the switch on the gas fire. He tried again; and again. But nothing.

  ‘Probably no batteries in it, sir.' Lewis unfastened the side panel, and produced two stumpy Ever Ready batteries, now covered with a slimy, mildewed discharge.

  The same Thursday morning Joyce Greenaway had been moved -from the Intensive Care Unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital; and when one of her old schoolfriends came to see her at 2.30 pm. ‘he was in a pleasant ward, two storeys below, in the company of three other recently-delivered mothers. Conversation was babies, babies, babies, and Joyce felt buoyant. She should be out in a few days, and she felt a strangely-satisfying surge of maternal emotions developing deep within herself. How she loved her darling little boy! He was going to be fine - there was no doubt of that now. But the problem of what to call him remained unresolved. Frank had decided that he didn't really like ‘Nicholas' all that much, and Joyce wanted him to make the choice. She herself wasn't all that smitten with the name, anyway. It had been awfully naughty of her to mention the name in the first place. But she'd just had to see if Frank had suspected anything, and despite her earlier fears she now felt convinced that he hadn't. Not that there was much to suspect.

  It had started just after Nicholas had come, at the beginning of September, when he'd always seemed to be running out of matches, or sugar, or milk tokens; and he'd been so grateful, and so attentive towards her - and she over six months gone! Then that Saturday morning when she had been out of milk, with Frank on one of his everlasting shifts, and she had gone down in her nightie and housecoat, and they had sat for a long time drinking coffee together in the kitchen, and she had longed for him to kiss her. And he had, standing beside her with his hands on her shoulders, and then, after delicately unfastening her housecoat, putting his right hand deep inside her nightie and gently fondling her small firm breasts. It had happened three times after that, and she'd felt a deep tenderness towards him, for he made no other demands upon her body than to pass the tips of his fingers silkily over her legs and over her swollen belly. And just that once she had done more than passively lean back and surrender herself to the exquisite thrill that his hands could bring to her. Just the once - when so diffidently and so lightly, her outstretched fingers had caressed him. Oh yes, so very, very lightly! She had felt an enormous inner joy as he had finally buried his head on her shoulder, and the things she'd whispered to him then were now the focus of her conscience-stricken thoughts. But Frank would never know, and she promised herself that never, never again would she ... would she ...

  She was awoken by the clatter of cups at four o'clock, and a quarter of an hour later the trolley came round with books and newspapers. She bought the Oxford Mail.

  Morse was a few minutes early for his appointment, but the Dean 98

  of the Syndicate was ready for him in his oak-panelled rooms on the Old Staircase in the inner quad, and the two men were chatting vaguely of this and that when at five past four a scout knocked and came in with a tray.

  'I thought we'd have a drop of Darjeeling. All right with you?' The voice, like the man, was syrupy and civilized.

  'Lovely,' said Morse, wondering what Darjeeling was.

  The white-coated scout poured the dark-brown liquid into bone-china cups, embossed with the crest of Lonsdale College. 'Milk, sir?'

  Morse watched it all with an amused detachment. The Dean, it seemed, always had a slice of lemon, and one half-teaspoonful of sugar, which the scout himself measured out, almost to the grain, and stirred in with high seriousness. The old boy probably got his scout to tie his shoe laces up for him! Cloud cuckooland! Morse took a sip of the tea, sat back, and saw the Dean smiling at him shrewdly.

  ‘You don't really approve, I see. Not that I blame you. He's been with me almost thirty years now, and he's almost—But, I'm sorry, I'm 'forgetting. You've come to see me about Mr Quinn. What can I tell you?'

  The Dean was clearly a sensitive and cultured soul: he was due to retire in one year's time, at sixty-five, and was clearly saddened that the tragedy of Quinn's murder should have clouded a long and distinguished connection with the Syndicate. To Morse, it seemed a curiously self-centred commiseration.

  ‘Would you say the Syndicate is a happy sort of place, sir?'

  'Oh yes. I think everybody would tell you that.'

  ‘No hostility? No er personal animosities?'

  The Dean looked a little uneasy, and it was clear that he might have one or two reservations - minor ones, of course. There are always a few er difficulties. You find them in every er—'

  ‘What difficulties?'

  ‘Well - basically, I think, there'll always be just a little er friction, shall we say, between the older generation - my generation - and some of the younger Syndics. You always get it. It was’ just the same when I was their age.'

  The younger ones have their own ideas?'

  ‘I’m glad they have.'

  'Are you thinking of any particular incident?'

  Again the Dean hesitated. ‘You know the sort of thing as well as I do, surely? One or two people get a bit hot under the collar now and again.'

  ‘Has this got anything to do with Mr Quinn?’

  'Quite honestly, Chief Inspector, I think not. You see, one of the incidents I'm thinking of happened before Quinn was appointed - in fact it happened when we were appointing him.' He gave a brief account of the interviewing committee's disagreement over-the choice of candidates, and Morse listened with deep interest.

  ‘You mean Bartlett didn't want to appoint Quinn?'

  The Dean shook his head. 'You misunderstand me. The Secretary was quite happy about him. But, as I say, personally he would have given the job to one of the others.'

  ‘What about you, sir? What did you feel?'

  'I er I thought the Secretary was right.'

  'So Mr Roope was the fly in the ointment?'

  'No, no. You still misunderstand me. Quinn was appointed by the committee - not by Roope.'

  ‘Look, sir. Please be quite frank with me. Would I be right in saying that there's not much love lost between Bartlett and Roope?'

  'Aren't you enjoying your tea, Chief Inspector? You've hardly touched a drop yet.'

  ‘You're not going to answer my question, sir?'

  'I really do think it would be fairer if you asked them, don't you?'

  Morse
nodded, and drained the lukewarm liquid. 'What about the permanent staff? Any er friction there?' 'Amongst the graduates, you mean? N-o, I don't think so.' ‘You sound a bit dubious.'

  The Dean sat back and slowly finished his own tea, and Morse realized he would have to push his luck a bit. 'Miss Height, for instance?' 'A lovely girl.'

  ‘You mean we can't blame the others too much if...'

  If there's any of er of that sort of thing going on, I can only say that I know nothing about it.' 'Rumours, though?'

  'We've all got more sense than to listen to rumours.'

  ‘Have we?' But it was clear that the Dean was not to be drawn, and Morse switched the line of his questioning once more. 'What about Bartlett? Is he well-liked?'

  The Dean looked at Morse keenly, and carefully poured out more tea. ‘What do you mean?'

  'I just wondered if any of the other graduates had any cause to - to, you know—' Morse didn't know what he wondered; but the Dean, it seemed, did.

  'I suppose you're thinking of Ogleby?'

  Morse nodded sagely, and tried to ooze omniscience. ‘Yes, it was Mr Ogleby I was wondering about.'

  That's ancient history, though, isn't it? It's a long time ago, now. Huh I I remember at the time thinking that Ogleby was potentially the better man. In fact, I voted for him. But with hindsight I'm sure that Bartlett was the wiser choice, and we were all very glad that Ogleby was willing to accept the post of Deputy Secretary. Very able man. I'm quite sure that if he'd wanted to, he ...' The Dean talked freely now, and Morse felt his own attention drifting further and further away. So. Bartlett and Qgleby had applied for the Secretaryship together, and Ogleby had been turned down; and perhaps the slight had rankled on and on over the years - might still be rankling on. But what on earth could that have to do with the murder of Quinn? If Bartlett had been murdered - or even Ogleby - yes! But...

  The Dean stood at the window and watched Morse walk briskly around the quad. He knew that for the last ten minutes his words had fallen on deaf ears, and for the life of him he was completely unable to fathom the look of quiet contentment which had so suddenly appeared on the Chief Inspector's face.