by Colin Dexter
"Not finished it yet, sir?"
Morse looked up briefly with ill-disguised disdai "There is, as doubtless you observe, Lewis, one clue an one clue only remaining to be entered in the grid. The re I finished in six minutes flat; and, if you must know, witl out your untimely interruption--"
"Sorry!"
Morse shook his head slowly. "No. I've been sitting he looking at the bloody thing for ten minutes."
"Can I help?"
"Extremely improbable!"
"Don't you want to try me?"
Reluctantly Morse handed over the crossword, ar Lewis contemplated the troublesome clue: "Kick in tl pants?" (3-5). Three of the eight letters were entere -I--L-S-.
A short while later Lewis handed the crossword ba¢ across the desk. He'd tried so hard, so very hard, to make some intelligent suggestion; to score some Brownie points. But nothing had come to mind.
"If it's OK with you, sir, I'd like to spend some time down at St. Aldate's this morning--see if we can find some link between all these burglaries in North Oxford."
"Why not? And good luck. Don't give 'em my address though, will you?"
After Lewis had gone, Morse stared down at the crossword again. Seldom was it that he failed to finish things off, and that within a pretty smartish time, too. All he needed was a large Scotch... and the answer (he knew) would hit him straight between the eyes. But it was only 8:35 ^.a. and--It hit him. Scotch!
As he swiftly filled in the five remaining blank squares, he was smiling beatifically, wishing only that Lewis had been there to appreciate the coup de grace.
But Lewis wasn't.
And it was only many months later that Lewis was to learn--and then purely by accident---the answer to that clue in The Times crossword for May 25, 1994, a day (as would appear in retrospect) on which so many things of fateful consequence were destined to occur.
PART ONE
Chapter One
Pension: generally understood to mean monies grudgingly bestowed on aging hirelings after a lifetime of occasional devotion to duty (Small Enlarged English Dictionary, 12th Edition)
Just after noon on Wednesday, August 31, 1994, Chief In-spector Morse was seated at his desk in the Thames Valley Police HQ building at Kidlington, Oxon--when the phone rang.
"Morse? You're there, are you? I thought you'd probably be in the pub by now."
Morse forbore the sarcasm, and assured Chief Superin-tendent Strange--he had recognised the voice--that indeed he was there.
'°Two things, Morse but I'll come along to your office."
"You wouldn't prefer me--?"
"I need the exercise, so the wife says."
Not only the wife, mumbled Morse, as he cradled the phone, beginning now to clear the cluttered papers from the immediate desk-space in front of him.
Strange lumbered in five minutes later and sat down heavily on the chair opposite the desk.
"You may have to get that name-plate changed."
Strange and Morse had never really been friends, but never really been enemies either; and some good-natured bantering had been the order of the day following the rec-ommendation of the Sheehy Report six months earlier that the rank of Chief Inspector should be abolished. Mutual bantering, since Chief Superintendents, too, were also likely to descend a rung on the ladder.
It was a disgruntled Strange who now sat wheezing me-thodically and shaking his head slowly. "It's like losing your stripes in the Army, isn't it? It's... it's..."
"Belittling," suggested Morse.
Strange looked up keenly. "'Demeaning'--that's what I was going to say. Much better word, eh? So don't start trying to teach me the bloody English language."
Fair point, thought Morse, as he reminded himself (as he'd often done before) that he and his fellow police-officers should never underestimate the formidable Chief Superintendent Strange.
"How can I help, sir? Two things, you said."
"Ah! Well, yes. That's one, isn't it? What we've just been talking about. You see, I'm jacking the job in next year, as you've probably heard?"
Morse nodded cautiously.
"Well, that's it. It's the, er, pension I'm thinking about."
"It won't affect the pension."
"You think not?"
"Sure it won't. It's just a question of getting all the paperwork right. That's why they're sending all these forms around--"
"How do you know?" Strange's eyes shot up again, sharply focused, and it was Morse's mm to hesitate.
"I--I'm thinking of, er, jacking in the job myself, sir."
"Don't be so bloody stupid, man! This place can't afford to lose me and you."
"I shall only be going on for a couple of years, whatever happens."
"And... and you've had the forms, you say?"
Morse nodded.
"And... and you've actually filled 'em in?" Strange's voice sounded incredulous.
"Not yet, no. Forms always give me a terrible headache. I've got a phobia about form-f'filing."
No words from Morse could have been more pleasing, and Strange's moon-face positively beamed. "You know, that's exactly what I said to the wife about headaches and all that."
"Why doesn't she help you?"
"Says it gives her a headache, too."
The two men chuckled amiably.
"You'd like me to help?" asked Morse tentatively. "Would you? Be a huge relief all round, I can tell you. We could go for a pint together next week, couldn't we?
And if I go and buy a bottle of aspirin "
"Make it two pints."
"I'll make it two bottles, then."
"You're on, sir."
"Good. That's settled then."
Strange was silent awhile, as if considering some matter of great moment. Then he spoke.
"Now, let's come to the second thing I want to talk about--far more important."
Morse raised his eyebrows. "Far more important than pensions?"
"Well, a bit more important perhaps."
"Murder?"
"Murder."
"Not another one?"
"Same one. The one near you. The Mc Clure murder."
"Phillotson's on it."
"Phillotson's off it."
"But--"
"His wife's ill. Very ill. I want you to take over."
"But--"
"You see, you haven't got a wife who's very ill, have you? You haven't got a wife at all."
"No," replied Morse quietly. No good arguing with that. "Happy to take over?"
"Is Lewis--?"
"I've just had a quick word with him in the canteen.
Once he's finished his egg and chips..."
"Oh!"
"And"---Strange lifted his large frame laboriously from the chair--"I've got this gut-feeling that Phillotson wouldn't have got very far with it anyway."
"Gut-feeling?"
"What's wrong with that?" snapped Strange. "Don't you ever get a gut-feeling T' "Occasionally..."
"After too much booze!"
"Or mixing things, sir. You know what I mean: few pints of beer and a bottle of wine."
"Yes..." Strange nodded. "We'll probably both have a gut-feeling soon, eh? After a few pints of beer and a bottle of aspirin."
He opened the door and looked at the name-plate again. "Perhaps we shan't need to change them after ail, Morse."
Chapter Two
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig--which the pluckers forgot somehow-- Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now (D. G. ROSSETTI, Translations from Sappho)
It was to be only the second time that Morse had ever taken over a murder enquiry after the preliminary--invariably dramatic trappings were done with: the discovery of the deed, the importunate attention of the media, the immediate scene-of-crime investigation, and the final removal of the body.
Lewis, perceptively, had commented that it was all a bit like getting into a football match twenty-five minutes late, and asking a fel
low spectator what the score was. But Morse had been unimpressed by the simile, since his life would not have been significantly impoverished had the game of football never been invented.
Indeed, there was a sense in which Morse was happier to have avoided any in situ inspection of the corpse, since the liquid contents of his stomach almost inevitably curdled at the sight of violent death. And he knew that the death there had been violent--very violent indeed. Much blood had been spilt, albeit now caked and dirty-brown--blood that would still (he supposed) be much in evidence around the chalk-lined contours of the spot on the saturated beige car-pet where a man had been found with an horrific knife-wound in his lower belly.
"What's wrong with Phillotson?" Lewis had asked as they'd driven down to North Oxford.
"Nothing wrong with him--except incompetence. It's his wife. She's had something go wrong with an operation, so they say. Some, you know, some internal trouble.., wom-an's trouble."
"The womb, you mean, sir?"
"I don't know, do I, Lewis? I didn't ask. I'm not even quite sure exactly where the womb is. And, come to think of it, I don't even like the word."
"I only asked."
"And I only answered! His wife'll be fine, you'll see. It's him. He's just chickening out."
"And the Super... didn't think he could cope with the case?"
"Well, he couldn't, could he? He's not exactly perched on the topmost twig of the Thames Valley intelligentsia, now is he?"
Lewis had glanced across at the man seated beside him in the passenger seat, noting the supercilious, almost arro-gant, cast of the harsh blue eyes, and the complacent-looking smile about the lips. It was the sort of conceit which Lewis found the least endearing quality of his chief: worse even than his meanness with money and his almost total lack of gratitude. And suddenly he felt a shudder of distaste.
Yet only briefly. For Morse's face had become serious again as he'd pointed to the right; pointed to Daventry Av-enue; and amplified his answer as the car braked to a halt outside a block of fiats: "You see, we take a bit of beating, don't we, Lewis? Don't you reckon? Me and you? Morse and Lewis? Not too many twigs up there above us, are there?"
But as Morse unfastened his safety-belt, there now ap peared a hint of diffidence upon his face.
"Nous vieillissons, ri'est-ce pas?"
"Pardon, sir?"
"We're all getting older--that's what I said. And that's the only thing that's worrying me about this case, old friend."
But then the smile again.
And Lewis saw the smile, and smiled himself; for at that moment he felt quite preternaturally content with life.
The constable designated to oversee the murder-premises volunteered to lead the way upstairs; but Morse shook his head, his response needlessly brusque: "Just give me the key, lad."
Only two short flights, of eight steps each, led up to the first floor; yet Morse was a little out of breath as Lewis opened the main door of the maisonette.
"Yes"--Morse's mind was still on Phillotson--"I reckon he'd'ye been about as competent in this case as a dyslexic proof-reader."
"I like that, sir. That's good. Original, is it?"
Morse granted. In fact it had been Strange's own ap-praisal of Phillotson's potential; but, as ever, Morse was perfectly happy to take full credit for the bons mots of oth-ers.
Anyway, Strange himself had probably read it some-where, hadn't he? Shrewd enough, was Strange: but hardly perched up there on the roof of Canary Wharf.
Smoothly the door swung open The door swung open on another case.
And as Lewis stepped through the small entrance-hall, and thence into the murder room, he found himself wonde ing how things would turn out here.
Certainly it hadn't sounded all that extraordinary a ca when, two hours earlier, Detective Chief Inspector Phillo son had given them an hour-long briefing on the murder Dr. Felix Mc Clure, former Student--late Student--c Wolsey College, Oxford...
Bizarre and bewildering--that's what so many cases the past had proved to be; and despite Phillotson's briefi the present case would probably be no different.
In this respect, at least, Lewis was correct in his thinkin What he could not have known--what, in fact, he never r ally came to know--was what unprecedented anguish th present case would cause to Morse's soul.
Chapter Three
Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went (EDWAID FITZGERALD, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
Daventry Court (Phillotson had begun), comprising eig1 "luxurious apartments" built in Daventry Avenue in 198t had been difficult to sell. House prices had tumbled dufin the ever-deepening recession of the early nineties, an Mc Clure had bought in the spring of 1993 when he'd co vinced himself (rightly) that even in the continuing buyer market Flat 6 was a bit of a snip at 99,500 pounds pence Mc Clure l-fimself was almost sixty-seven years old at fi J time of his murder, knifed (as Morse would be able to see for himself) in quite horrendous fashion. The knife, according to pathological findings, was unusually broad-bladed, and at least five inches in length. Of such a weapon, however, no trace whatsoever had been found. Blood, though? Oh, yes, Blood almost everywhere. Blood on almost everything. Blood on the murderer, too? Surely so.
Blood certainly on his shoes (trainers?), with footprints-especially of the right foot---clearly traceable from the mur-der scene to the staircase, to the main entrance; but thence virtually lost, soon completely lost, on the gravelled fore-court outside. Successive scufflings by other residents had obviously obliterated all further traces of blood. Or had the murderer left by a car parked close to the main door? Or left on a bicycle chained to the nearest drainpipe? (Or taken his shoes off, Lewis thought.) But intensive search of the forecourt area had revealed nothing. No clues from the sides of the block either. No clues from the rear. No clues at all outside. (Or perhaps just the one clue, Morse had thought: the clue that there were no clues at all?)
Inside? Well, again, Morse would be able to see for him-self.
Evidence of extraneous fingerprints? Virtually none..
Hopeless. And certainly no indication that the assailant--murderer--had entered the premises through any first-floor window.
"Very rare means of ingress, Morse, as you know. Pretty certainly came in the same way as he went out."
"Reminds me a bit of Omar Khayyam," Morse had mut-tered.
But Phillotson had merely looked puzzled, his own words clearly not reminding himself of anyone. Or any-thing.
No. Entry from the main door, surely, via the Entryphone system, with Mc Clure himself admitting whomsoever (not Phillotson's word)---be it man or woman. Someone known to Mc Clure then? Most likely.
Time? Well, certainly after 8:30 n.M. on the Sunday he was murdered, since Mc Clure had purchased two newspa-pers at about 8 a.M. that morning from the newsagents in Summertown, where he was at least a well-known face if not a well-known name; and where he (like Morse, a happened) usually catered for both the coarse and the c tured sides of his nature with the News of the World The Sunday Times. No doubts here. No hypothesis requit Each of the two news-sheets was found, unbloodied, on work-top in the "all-mod-con kitchen."
After 8:30 A.M. then. But before when? Prelim/n findings--well, not so preliminary--from the patholog fn'mly suggested that Mc Clure had been dead for ab twenty hours or so before being found, at 7:45 ^.M. the f lowing morning, by his cleaning-lady.
Hypothesis here, then, for the time of the murder? [ tween 10 ^.., say, and noon the previous day. Rougk But then everything was "roughly" with these wretched l thologists, wasn't it? (And Morse had sm/led sadly, a thought of Max; and nodded slowly, for Phillotson preaching to the converted.)
One other circumstance most probably corroborating pre-noon time for the murder was the readily observable, duly observed, fact that there was no apparent sign, such the preparation of meat and vegetables, for any potent Sunday lunch in Flat 6. Not that t
hat was conclusive in itse since it had already become clear, from sensibly orientat enquiries, that it had not been unusual for Mc Clure to w E down the Banbury Road and order a Sunday lunch--8 Steak, French Fries, Salad---only L3.99--at the King's Am washed down with a couple of pints of Best Bitter, no swe no coffee. But there had been no sign of steak or chips lettuce or anything much else when the pathologist had st open the white-skinned belly of Dr. Felix Mc Clure. No si of any lunchtime sustenance at all.
The body had been found in a hunched-up, foetal postm with both hands clutching the lower abdomen and the ey screwed tightly closed as if Mc Clure had died in the thro of some excruciating pain. He was dressed in a shoi sleeved shirt, vertically striped in maroon and blue, a bla Jaeger cardigan, and a pair of dark-grey flannels---the low part of the shirt and the upper regions of the trousers st J and steeped in the blood that had oozed so abundantly.
Mc Clure had been one of those "perpetual students life" (Phillotson's words). After winning a Major Scholar~ ship to Oxford in 1946, he had gained a First in Mods, a First in Greats--thereafter spending forty-plus years of his life as Ancient History Tutor in Wolsey College. In 1956 he had married one of his own pupils, an undergraduate from Somerville--the latter, after attaining exactly similar dis-tinction, duly appointed to a Junior Fellowship in Merton, and in 1966 (life jumping forward in decades) running off with one of her own pupils, a bearded undergraduate from Trinity. No children, though; no legal problems. Just a whole lot of heartache, perhaps.
Few major publications to his name--mostly a series of articles written over the years for various classical journals. But at least he had lived long enough to see the publication of his magnum opus: The Great Plague at Athens: Its Effect on the Course and Conduct of the Peloponnesian War. A long title. A long work.
Witnesses?
Of the eight "luxurious apartments" only four had been sold, with two of the others being let, and the other two still empty, the "For Sale" notices standing outside the respec-tive properties---one of them the apartment immediately below Mc Clure's, Number 5; the other Number 2. Questioning of the tenants had produced no information of any value: the newly-weds in Number 1 had spent most of the Sunday morning a-bed--sans breakfast, sans newspapers, sans everything except themselves; the blue-rinsed old lady in Number 3, extremely deaf, had insisted on making a very full statement to the effect that she had heard nothing on that fateful mom; the couple in Number 4 had been out all morning on a Charity "Save the Whales" Walk in Wytham Woods; the temporary tenants of Number 7 were away in Tunisia; and the affectionate couple who had bought Number 8 had been unintermptedly employed in redecorating their bathroom, with the radio on most of the morning as they caught up with The Archers omnibus. (For the first time in several minutes, Morse? s interest had been activated.)
