by Colin Dexter
Morse looked at the two lists again, and noticed a fact he'd missed before. Quinn already had two $-pound packs of butter in his fridge, yet for some reason he'd bought another. Different brand, too. Very odd. Like a few other facts. He took a piece of paper and wrote them down:
Position of Quinn's coffee table indicated that he'd probably been sitting in the draught. (Steady, Sherlock)!
No spent matches found in either kitchen or living room; no matches found in Quinn's pockets. (Remember: Mrs E had already cleaned; she'd only returned for the ironing and had not cleared the wastepaper basket again.)
More butter bought, when plenty in stock. (Forget it?)
Note left by Quinn for Mrs E: vague enough to fit virtually any occasion? (Not all that vague though.)
Morse sat back and looked at his handiwork. Individually each point seemed pretty thin; but collectively - did they add up to something? Something like assuming that Quinn did not return from work at all that Friday evening} Had it been somebody else who lit the fire, and bought the groceries, and wrote a note for Mrs Evans? Think on, Morse! Think on, my boy! It was possible. Another starting point. Could the mysterious somebody have been Monica? (His mind kept coming back to her.) But she must have gone home to Sally sometime. (Job for Lewis -check.) Martin? He must have gone home to his wife sometime. When? (Job for Lewis - check.) And anyway, neither of .them knew enough about cyanide, did they? Poisoning was a highly specialized job. (A woman's weapon, though.) Now, Roope was a chemist. And Ogleby knew enough ... Roope or Ogleby - a much likelier pair to choose from. But Roope was out of Oxford until about 4.15 pm. (Or so he said.) And Ogleby went home a bit early. (Or so he said.) Mm. And what about Bartlett? Kidling-ton was on the main road from Banbury, and the main road passed no more than thirty yards from Pinewood Close. If he'd left Banbury at 4.25 pjn. and really pushed it, 70 mph say, he could have been in Kidlington by, well, ten to five? Opportunity enough for any of them really. For if Quinn had discovered that one of the four...
Morse knew he wasn't getting very far. It was the method he couldn't fathom. But one thing was becoming an ever firmer conviction in his mind: whoever had come to Pinewood Close that Friday evening, it hadn't been Nicholas Quinn. Leave it there for the minute, Morse. Think of something else. Always the best way, and there was one thing he could check on straightaway.
He called in Peters, the handwriting pundit, showed him the note written to Mrs Evans, and gave him one of the sheets of Quinn's writing taken from Pinewood Close.
'What do you think?'
Peters hesitated. 'I'd need to study—'
‘What's stopping you?'
Nothing had ever been known to hurry or ruffle Peters, an ex-Home Office pathologist, who in his younger days had made a considerable name and a considerable income for himself by disobeying the two cardinal rules for success - of thinking quickly and of acting decisively. For Peters thought at the speed of an arthritic tortoise and acted with the decisiveness of a soporific sloth. And Morse knew him better than to do anything but sit quietly and wait. If Peters said it was, it was. If Peters said that Quinn had definitely written the note, Quinn had definitely written the note. If he said he wasn't sure, he wasn't sure: and no one else in the world would be sure.
‘How long will you be, Peters?'
Ten, twelve minutes.'
Morse therefore knew that in about eleven minutes he would have his answer, and he sat quietly and waited. The phone went a few minutes later.
'Morse. Can I help you?'
It was the switchboard. 'It's a Mrs Greenaway, sir. From the John Radcliffe. Says she wants to talk to the man in charge of the Quinn murder.'
That's me,' said Morse, without much enthusiasm. Mrs Greenaway, eh? The woman above Quinn. Well, well.
She had read the report in the Oxford Mail (she said) and felt that she ought to ring the police. Her husband wouldn't be very happy but - (Come on, girl, come on!). Well, she wasn't to have the baby until December, but she'd known - about four o'clock on Friday. The contractions - (Come on, girl!). Well, she'd rung up the works where Frank ('my husband, Inspector^’ where Frank worked, and tried to get a message to him. But something must have gone wrong. She'd sat there by the window, watching and waiting, but no one came; and then she'd rung the works again about a quarter to five. She wasn't really worried, but she'd feel happier if Frank ... Anyway she could always ring the hospital herself. They would send an ambulance straightaway; and she wasn't absolutely sure. It could have been just - (Come on!). Anyway, she saw Quinn come in, in his car, just after five. ‘You saw him?'
‘Yes. About five past five, it must have been. He drove in and put his car in the garage.' ‘Was anybody with him?' ‘No.'
'Go on, Mrs Greenaway.’
‘Well, there's nothing else, really.'
‘Did he go out again?'
'I didn't see him.'
Would you have seen him?’
'Oh yes. As I say, I was looking out of the window all the time.'
"We think he went out to the shops, Mrs Greenaway. But you say—'
‘Well, he could have gone out the back way, I suppose. You can get through the fence and on to the path, but—' ‘But you don't think he did?'
‘Well, I didn't hear him, and he wouldn't have gone over the back. It's ever so muddy.' 'I see.'
'Well I hope—'
'Mrs Greenaway, are you absolutely sure you saw Mr Quinn?' 'Well, perhaps I didn't actually ... I heard him on the phone, though.' ‘You what?’
‘Yes. We've got a shared line, and it was just after he came in. I was really getting worried, and I thought I'd try the works again; but I couldn't get through, because Mr Quinn was using the phone.'
‘Did you listen to what he was saying?' .
‘No, Fm sorry, I didn't. Fm not nosy like that.' (Of course not!) 'You see I just wanted him to get off the line, that's all' ‘Was he talking for long?'
'Quite a while. I picked up the phone two or three times and they were still—'
‘You don't remember a name, any name, that Mr Quinn used? Christian name? Surname? Anything at all that could help us?'
Joyce Greenaway was silent for a minute. There was a very vague recollection, but it slipped away from her. ‘I—No, I can't remember.'
'Not a woman, was it?'
'Oh no. It was a man all right. Sounded an educated sort of man - well, you know what I mean, it wasn't a common sort of voice.'
‘Were they having a row?'
'No. I don't think so. But I didn't listen in. I didn't really. I was just getting impatient, that's all.'
"Why didn't you go down and tell Mr Quinn what the situation was?'
Joyce Greenaway hesitated a little, and Morse wondered exactly why. ‘Well, we weren't, you know, as friendly as all that: .
‘Look, Mrs Greenaway. Please think very hard. It's vitally important - do you understand? If you could remember - even the slightest thing.'
But nothing would come, although the outline of that name still lurked subliminally. If only—
Morse did it for her. 'Ogleby? Mr.Ogleby? Does that ring any bells?'
‘No-o.'
‘Roope? Mr Roope? Bartlett? Dr Bartlett? Mar—' Joyce's scalp tingled. She'd been fishing for a verbal shape like 'Bartlett'. Could it have been? She wasn't really listening to Morse now. 'I can't be sure, Inspector, but it might have been Bartlett.'
Whew! What a turn-up for the books! Morse said somebody would be in to see her, but it would have to be the next day; and Joyce Greenaway, feeling a strange mixture of relief and trepidation, walked slowly back to the maternity ward.
Peters had been sitting quite motionless for the past two or three minutes, openly listening to the conversation, but he made no comment. 'Well?' said Morse.
'Quinn wrote it.’
Morse opened his mouth, but closed it again. Any protestation was futile. Peters said it was; so it was.
Why not go with the evidence, Morse and fling your flimsy fancies aside?
Quinn got back home about five; he wrote a note for Mrs Evans; and he rang somebody up - a well-spoken somebody, whose name may have been Bartlett.
eighteen
Mrs Bartlett was something of a surprise. She was three or four inches taller than her husband, and she ordered him around as if he were a naughty but lovable little schoolboy. There was another surprise, too. No one had mentioned to Morse that the Bartletts had a son, and the rather slovenly-dressed, sullen-looking, bearded young man who was introduced as Richard seemed not particularly anxious to make an immediately favourable impression. But whilst the four of them sat rather awkwardly drinking their sherry, it became apparent that under his skin young Richard had a pleasant and attractive personality. As the ice thawed, he spoke with an easy humour and a total lack of self consciousness; and as he and Morse discussed the respective merits of the Sold and Furtwangler recordings of The Ring, Mrs Bartlett slipped away to push a cautious fork into the Brussels sprouts, and summoned her husband to open the wine. The table was immaculately set for the four of them, the silver cutlery winking and sparkling on the white tablecloth in the dimly lit room. The vegetables were almost ready.
Bartlett himself refilled Morse's glass. 'Nice little sherry, isn't it?'
'Indeed,' said Morse. He noticed that the label was different from that on the sherry bottle found in Quinn's rooms.
'Any more for you, Richard?'
'No.' It sounded oddly abrupt, as though there lurked some dark and hidden enmity within the Bartlett clan.
The soup was ready now, and Morse tossed back the last of his sherry, got to his feet, and walked across the wide room rubbing his hands together.
'Come on then, Richard.' His mother said it pleasantly, but Morse could hear the underlying note of tension.
‘Don't worry about me. I'm not hungry.'
‘But you must, Richard. I've—'
The young man stood up, and a strange light momentarily blazed in his eyes. 'I've just told you, mother, I'm not hungry.'
‘But I've got it all ready for you. Just have a—'
'I don't want any bloody food. How many times do you want telling, you stupid woman?' The words were cruel and harsh, the tone one of scarcely repressed fury. He stalked out of the room, and almost immediately the front door slammed with a thudded finality.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Inspector.'
‘Don't worry about me, Mrs Bartlett. Some of the youngsters these days, you know—'
'It's not that, Inspector. You see ... you see, Richard suffers from schizophrenia. He can be absolutely charming, and then -well, he gets like you saw him just now.' She was very near to tears' and Morse tried hard to say the right things; but inevitably the incident had cast its shadow deep across the evening, and for a while they ate in awkward silence.
'Can it be treated?'
Mrs Bartlett smiled sadly. 'Good question, Inspector. We've spent literally thousands, haven't we, Tom? He's a voluntary patient at Littlemore at the moment. Sometimes he comes home at the weekends, and just occasionally, like tonight, he'll drop in and sit around or have something to eat.' Her voice was wavering and her husband patted her affectionately on the shoulder.
‘Don't worry about it, my dear. We didn't ask the Inspector along to talk about our problems. He's got enough of his own, I should think.'
Only when Mrs Bartlett was washing the pots were the two men able to talk, and Morse's earlier impression that the Secretary knew exactly what was going on in his own office was cumulatively confirmed: if anyone had any ideas about who had been prepared to prostitute the integrity of the Syndicate, Morse felt it would be Bartlett. But he didn't, it seemed. With every subtlety he knew, Morse tried to draw out any suspicion of secret doubts; but the Secretary was deeply loyal to his staff, and Morse knew that he was tiptoeing too delicately. He decided the time had come.
‘What did Mr Quinn want when he rang you up?'
Bartlett blinked behind the window frames; and then looked down at his coffee, and was silent for a while. Morse knew perfectly well that if Bartlett denied that Quinn had spoken to him, that would be the end of it, for there was no hard evidence on the point. Yet the longer Bartlett hesitated (surely Bartlett must realize it?), the more obvious it became.
‘You know that he did ring me, then?'
‘Yes, sir.' He might as well push his luck a little.
‘Do you mind telling me how you know?'
It was Morse's turn to hesitate, but he decided to come reasonably clean. 'Quinn's telephone is on a shared line. Someone overheard you.'
Did Morse catch a sudden flash of alarm behind the friendly lenses? If he did, it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
‘You want me to tell you what the conversation was about?'
'I think you should have told me before, sir. It would have saved a great deal of trouble.' - "Would it?' Bartlett looked the Inspector in the eye, and Morse suspected that he was still a long, long way from reaching to the bedrock of the mystery.
The truth's going to come out sometime, sir. I honestly think you'd be sensible to tell me all about it.'
‘Haven't you got that information, though? You say someone was listening in? Despicable attitude of mind, isn't it? Eavesdropping on other people—'
‘Perhaps it is, sir; but, you see, the er person wasn't really listening in at all - just trying to get a very important call through, that's all. There was no question of deliberately—'
'So you don't know what we were talking about?'
Morse breathed deeply. ‘No, sir.'
‘Well, I'm er I'm not going to tell you. It was a very personal matter, between Quinn and myself—'
‘Perhaps it was a personal matter that led to him being murdered, sir.'
‘Yes, I realize that,'
‘But you're not going to tell me?'
‘No.'
Morse slowly drained his coffee. 'I don't think you realize exactly how important this is, sir. You see, unless we can find out where Quinn was and what he was doing that Friday evening—'
Bartlett looked at him sharply. 'You said nothing about Friday before.' ‘You mean—?'
‘I mean that Quinn rang me up one evening last week, yes. But it wasn't Friday.'
Clever little bugger! Morse had let the cat out of the bag -about not really knowing what the conversation had been about - and now the cat had jumped away over the fence. Bartlett was right, of course. He hadn't actually mentioned Friday, but—
Mrs Bartlett came through with the coffee pot and refilled the cups. She appeared quite unaware of breaking the conversation at a vital point, sat down, and innocently asked Morse how he was getting on with his inquiries into the terrible terrible business of poor poor Mr Quinn.
And Morse was game for anything now. ‘We were just talking about telephone calls, Mrs Bartlett. The curse of the times, isn't it? I should think you must get almost as many as I do.'
‘How right you are, Inspector. I was only saying last week -when was it, Tom? Do you remember? Oh yes. It was the day you went to Banbury. The phone kept ringing all the afternoon, and I said to Tom when he came in that we ought to get an ex-directory number and - do you know what? - just as I said it, the wretched thing rang again! And you had to go out again, do you remember, Tom?
The little Secretary nodded and smiled ruefully. Sometimes life could be very unfair. Very unfair indeed.
Just after 8.15 pan. that same evening a man was taking the lid off the highly-polished bronze coal scuttle when he heard the knock, and he got slowly to his feet and opened the door.
"Well, well! Come on in. I shan't be a minute. Take a seat.' He knelt down again by the fire and extracted a lump of shiny black coal with the tongs.
In his own head it sounded as if he had taken an enormous bite from a large, crisp apple. His jaws seemed to clamp together, and for a weird and terrifying second he sought frantically to rediscover some remembrance of himself along the empty, echoing corridors of his brain. His right hand still held the tongs
, and his whole body willed itself to pull the coal towards the bright fire. For some inexplicable reason he found himself thinking of the lava from Mount Vesuvius pouring in an all-engulfing flood towards the streets of old Pompeii; and even as his left hand began slowly and instinctively to raise itself towards the shattered skull, he knew that life was ended. The light snapped suddenly out, as if someone had switched on the darkness. He was dead.
nineteen
Mrs Bartlett got up to answer the phone at a quarter to eleven and Morse realized that it would be as good an opportunity as he would get of taking a reasonably early leave of his hosts.
'It's probably Richard,' said Bartlett. 'He often feels a bit sorry later on, and tries to apologize. I shouldn't be surprised if—'
Mrs Bartlett came back into the room. 'It's for you, Inspector.'
Lewis told him as quickly and as clearly as he could what had happened. The Oxford City Police had been called in about nine o'clock - Chief Inspector Bell was in charge. It was only later that they realized how it might all tie in, and they'd tried to get Morse, and had finally got Lewis. The man had been killed instantly by a savage blow with a poker across the back of the skull. No prints or anything like that. The drawers had been ransacked, but not in any methodical way, it seemed. Probably the murderer had been interrupted.
'I'll see you there as soon as I can manage it, Lewis.'
As Morse came back into the room his face was pale with shock and he tried to keep his voice steady as he told the Bartletts the tragic news. 'It's Ogleby. He's been murdered.'
Mrs Bartlett buried her head in her hands and wept, whilst the Secretary himself, as he showed Morse to the front door, had difficulty in putting his words together coherently. He suddenly seemed an old man, shattered and uncomprehending. 'You asked about Quinn - when he rang - when he rang me - you asked about it - I said—'
Morse put his hand gently on the little man's shoulders. ‘Yes. You tell me.'
'He said that - he said that he'd found out something I ought to know - he said that - that someone from the office was deliberately leaking question papers.'
