The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  At the appointed hour Mrs. B. boiled the kettle in the second-floor front (as her husband had called it); squeezed a Typhoo bag with the kitchen tongs; and stirred in two heaped spoonsful of sugar. Then, with the steaming cup and two digestive biscuits on a circular tray, she was about to make her way downstairs when something quite extraordinary flashed across her vision: she saw a pair of oblique parallel lines passing almost in slow motion across the oblong frame of the second-floor window. So sharply was that momentary configuration imprinted upon her retina that she was able to describe it so very precisely later that same afternoon; was able to recall that earsplitting, skin-tingling shriek of terror as the man whose skull was about to be smashed to pieces fell headfirst on to the compacted pathway below, so very few yards from her own front door.

  “Dead,” the senior paramedic had told her quietly, six minutes only after her panic-stricken call on 999. Incontrovertibly dead.

  For the next hour or so Mrs. Bayley wept almost uncontrollably. Partly from shock. Partly, too, from guilt, because (as she repeatedly reminded herself) it was her fault that he'd appeared upon the scene in the first place. She'd found his name among the local builders and house renovators listed alphabetically in the telephone directory. In the Yellow Pages, in fact. Exactly where Sergeant Lewis, also, had discovered the address of J. Barron, Builder, together with a telephone number in Lower Swinstead.

  Forty-two

  And what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?

  (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

  Had he been left to himself, had he been without any knowledge of the context in which the apparent “accident” had occurred, Lewis would not have suspected that it all amounted to murder. But it had been murder, he felt sure of that; and four hours earlier he had taken personal responsibility for initiating the whole apparatus of yet another murder inquiry. Same SOCOs as in the Sutton Courtenay murder, same pathologist, same everything; but with almost every sign of immediate activity over when, just before 3 P.M., Morse finally put in an appearance, very soon to be seating himself in Mrs. Bayley's north-facing sitting room on the ground floor.

  “Northamptonshire faring any better?” he asked the senior SOCO.

  “Next year, perhaps,” said Eddie Andrews pessimistically.

  “You'd be out of a job without me,” continued Morse. “Just like Dr. Hobson here.”

  But the unsmiling pathologist could find little place in her heart for any banter and ignored the comment. As did Edwards.

  The gloomy room was suddenly empty, apart from Sergeant Lewis. “You said there wasn't any danger of him being murdered, sir.”

  Morse could find no satisfactory answer and stared silently out of the window until Mrs. Bayley came in with (for Morse) wholly unwelcome cups of coffee and the same two digestive biscuits that Barron would have eaten with his oversugared tea.

  “You mentioned to Sergeant Lewis what you saw from the window? The one above this, wasn't it?”

  She nodded. “It made such a vivid imprint on the, er …”

  “Retina?” suggested Lewis.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I did myself once work in the Oxford Eye Hospital.” She turned to Morse. “You'll think me a silly old woman, but it reminded me of something I saw quite a few years ago now in one of the Sundays. There were these outline drawings sent in by readers and you had to guess what they were; and one of them always stuck in my, er …” (This time Lewis desisted.) She took a pencil and without permission made a quick little drawing in Lewis's notebook:

  “Can't you guess, Inspector?” Her eyes twinkled.

  Morse frowned, about to suggest something wildly inappropriate when the undeterred Lewis intervened:

  “Giraffe walking past a window?”

  “You clever man.”

  “No!” Lewis smiled deprecatingly. “I'd seen it before.”

  He took a pencil and made an equally quick little drawing underneath:

  “Aristocratic sardine in a tin!” she cried triumphantly.

  “You clever woman!”

  She shook her head. “I'd seen it before.”

  Morse sounded wearily impatient. “I'm very sorry to interrupt the fun, Mrs. Bayley, but…”

  “Of course. Forgive me!”

  “Which way was your, er, giraffe walking? Left to right? Right to left?”

  “Left to right—exactly like I've drawn it, Inspector.”

  “So if the ladder fell across the window from left to right, the bottom of the ladder must have slipped from right to left—that is, from your point of view here in the house, Mrs. Bayley?”

  “I'm not quite sure I follow you.”

  “I mean, if someone had come along and given the ladder a hefty kick at the bottom, he'd probably have been coming from” (Morse pointed to the right) “the center of Burford, say, to” (Morse pointed vaguely to the left) “wherever this road leads to?”

  “Bourton on the Water.”

  “Thank you, Lewis!”

  “But we know that, sir—about the ladder, I mean. They found him six or seven yards to the right of the front door. That's from Mrs. Bayley's point of view of course,” he added mischievously.

  “Yes!” whispered the lady of the household, as so vividly she recalled that terrible sight, with the red Stanley knife lying there beside the shattered skull.

  Morse was looking far from pleased. Even less so when a further cup of coffee was suggested. The room had become chillier, and he shivered slightly as he got to his feet. It was time for the clichés:

  “If you do remember anything else—anything odd—anything unusual—anything at all…”

  And suddenly she had remembered something. It was Morse's involuntarily shivering shoulders that had jogged—yes, jogged—her memory.

  The jogger.

  “There was something a bit unusual. We don't get many people jogging here—we're all a bit too old. But there was one this morning, about a quarter-to-eight. He'd pulled the hood of his tracksuit over his head as if he was feeling the cold a bit.”

  “Or wasn't anxious to be recognized,” added Morse quietly.

  “Perhaps you could recognize him though, Inspector. You see, he was wearing a very distinctive pair of training shoes. Red, they were.”

  The two policemen left with appropriate expressions of gratitude; and with the two digestive biscuits still untouched on the circular tray, beside two cups, one of them full, of stone-cold coffee.

  Forty-three

  For coping with even one quarter of that running course known as “Marathon”—for coping without frequent halts for refreshment or periodic bouts of vomiting—a man has to dedicate one half of his youthful years to quite intolerable training and endurance. Such dedication is not for me.

  (Diogenes Small, 1797-1805,

  The Joys of Occasional Idleness)

  After Lewis had turned right at the junction of Sheep Street and High Street and slipped the marked police car into the queue up to the A40 roundabout, Morse pointed peremptorily to the right, to the Cotswold Gateway Hotel.

  Seated at a wall-settle in the bar, Morse tasted his pint of cask-conditioned ale and proclaimed it “not so bad.” And Lewis, seated opposite, sipped his iced orange juice and said nothing.

  Morse looked sourly out of sorts.

  “Just nip and get me a packet of cigarettes, Lewis. Dunhill, if they've got them. I don't seem to …” In time-honored fashion, he patted his trouser pockets with little prospect, as it seemed, of finding any funds therein.

  “I thought you'd stopped,” ventured Lewis, as minutes later Morse peeled off the cellophane.

  “First today!” said Morse as with obvious gratification he inhaled deeply.

  In turn, Lewis took a deep breath himself:

  “You mustn't get cross with me if—”

  “Certainly not.” Morse pushed his empty glass across the table.

  Waiting at the bar, Lewis was rehearsing his carefully formulated sentence; was ready with it
once he took his seat again.

  “You mustn't be cross with me, sir, but—”

  “Someone's been round to Mrs. Barron? You've seen to that?”

  “Dixon, yes. With WPC Towle—she's an experienced officer.”

  “PC Towle, you mean. They're all PCs now, whatever the sex. Stands for Politically Correct.”

  For the umpteenth time in his working life with Morse, Lewis knew that any potentially favorable wind had suddenly stopped blowing for him; and that it would be Morse who would now be sailing serenely on, whatever the state of the weather. As he did now:

  “Something worrying you, Lewis?”

  “Yes. Something is. We started off with two murders and you said you knew who the murderer was. And now this murderer of yours gets murdered himself and …”

  “And there's not all that much point in sitting around in a pub all day just thinking about things. Is that what you're saying?”

  “Yes! Why don't we sit back and look at what we've got—look at the evidence?”

  “You're talking to me in italics, Lewis.”

  “All right! But don't you think it is time—to start again—at the beginning?”

  “No,” said Morse (no italics). “Let's start with those red trainers.”

  “All right. Good news that. There can't be more than a dozen people in Oxfordshire who've got a pair like that. Give us a few days. We'll find him. Guaranteed!”

  “Let's hope you're right. Bit odd, though. Quarter to eight? And still running when Barron fell at ten past ten?”

  “We're not all as unfit as you.”

  “What? I could have run a marathon in that time. Once.”

  Lewis smiled quietly to himself as Morse continued: “You know, what worried me about the murders of Flynn and Repp was how anyone could have got away from that car without people noticing all the blood on his clothes. Then it struck me. Barron could have got away with it easily. His overalls were already covered in red—covered in the maroon paint from Debbie Richardson's outhouse—before the murders. Nobody's going to worry about what he looks like, not in Lower Swinstead anyway. It's not exactly like spilling a bottle of Claret over your white tuxedo on the QE2. Is it now?”

  “I wouldn't know, sir.”

  “Being too clever, am I?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You see, I thought he was clever, Barron. And in spite of what some of these criminologists say, some criminals are clever.”

  Lewis agreed. “ Pretty clever of our murderer to knock him off his ladder: no weapon, no fingerprints …”

  “Mm.” Morse drained his beer and stood up. “You will be glad to know that the brain is now considerably clearer, although I am still, if it's of interest to you, exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours.”

  “Truth is, sir, some of ‘em aren't all that clever. We both know that.”

  By the time they were back at Kidlington HQ, the strangely disturbing news was already beginning to filter through.

  Not that Morse himself was to be in his office that late Monday afternoon, for he had instructed Lewis to drop him off at his flat in North Oxford. He longed for some music: some Mozart (though not Eine Kleine Nachtmusik), some Wagner (though not the Ride of the Valkyries), some Vivaldi even (though not The Four Seasons), or some Vaughan Williams (though not The Lark Ascending).

  Most especially not The Lark Ascending, since Morse (as we have seen) had already spent enough of his time with the dawn that day.

  Forty-four

  CLINTON WINS ON BUDGET, BUT MORE LIES AHEAD

  (From USA's Best Newspaper Headlines, 1997)

  Sergeant Dixon swallowed the last of the jam-filled, sugar-coated doughnut: “I'm beginning to think he's losing his marbles. First he says we go and bring Barron in—and the next thing is we're telling his missus he's croaked it.”

  Sergeant Lewis looked up. “How did she take it?”

  “Not very well. Kate was very good with her but…”

  “Her GP knows?”

  “Yep. And she's got her mum and sister there, so … The kids though, innit? Poor little buggers: six and four.”

  “Easier for them, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps so. I just had the feeling though, you know, the marriage wasn't all that…” Dixon held out a shaky right hand, like that of a man with delirium tremens.

  “What gave you that impression?”

  Dixon tapped his right temple with a firmer finger. “Experience, mate.”

  He got up, walked over to the canteen counter, and looked hopefully along the glass shelves.

  Lewis was summoned to Caesar's tent just after 5:30 P.M.

  “Sorry state of affairs, Lewis, when a man can't even get a round of golf in on a Monday afternoon!”

  “I just thought you ought to—”

  “Winning I was. Two up at the turn. The swing really in the groove. And then …”

  “I'm sorry, sir. But as I say I thought—”

  “Where's Morse?”

  “He, er, just went back home for a while.”

  “Best place for him. Nothing but disaster since he took over things.”

  “It was you wanted him,” said Lewis gently.

  “Too clever—that's Morse's trouble! Time he jacked it in—like me. Make way for these bright young buggers checking in through the fast track. It's all degrees these days, Lewis, and DNA, and …”

  “Clipboards?”

  Strange smiled sympathetically. “Old Morse doesn't like clipboards much, does he?”

  “No.”

  “You'll miss him when he goes, won't you?”

  “Is he going?”

  “You'll be a richer man, for certain.”

  Lewis made no reply.

  “Did he have a couple of beers out at Burford?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Remarkable! And who paid for that, pray?”

  “Oddly enough, he did.”

  Strange looked across the desk shrewdly. “Know something, Lewis? You're nearly as big a liar as that American president.”

  For the next ten minutes, and with no further lies, Lewis told the Chief Superintendent as much as he or anyone else (including Morse?) could know about the deliberate murder of J. Barron, Builder (and increasingly, as it appeared, Decorator) of Lower Swinstead.

  “Mm!”

  Strange contemplated the phone awhile, then rang Morse. But the ex-directory number was engaged. A minute later, he rang again; and, a minute later, again. Still engaged.

  “Taken his phone off the bloody hook. Typical! He's supposed to be solving an assortment of murders.”

  “He's a bit tired, sir. I don't think he's been sleeping very well.”

  “Hardly surprising, is it? Having to get up for a pee every half hour?”

  “I don't think it's just that.”

  “What d'you mean?” Strange's voice was sharper.

  “Well, nothing really.”

  “Out with it, Lewis.”

  “Just that sometimes perhaps it almost seems as if he doesn't really care all that much …”

  “Interesting!”

  For a while Strange pondered matters. Then decided: “Go and knock him up!”

  “Couldn't we give him a rest, just for today?” suggested a diffident Lewis. “Not much he can do for the minute, is there? Not much you can do, either.”

  “Mm. You could be right.”

  “Why not get back to the golf course?”

  “Because, Lewis—because I've let him off the hook. Three up at the turn …”

  “I thought you said it was two up, sir.”

  “Did I?”

  Strange reached for the phone and rang Morse's number yet again.

  Still engaged.

  He stood up and repeated Lewis's words: “Not much you can do, either. Why don't you just bugger off home. Eggs and chips, what?�
�

  For a good deal of these exchanges between Strange and Lewis, Deborah Richardson had been standing, head tilted, in the narrow passageway at the back of the property, wondering whether she'd been sensible in choosing that particular shade of maroon for the newly established outhouse. Two of the re-plastered walls had received their first coat—several weekends ago now—and they reminded her, according to the light, either of black currant jam or of blood.

  She thought she'd probably change things.

  The phone rang.

  She reached it at the sixth ring.

  The arrangements, unusually involved, took a little while to get sorted out.

  Once they were, she felt almost unprecedentedly excited.

  Forty-five

  Nunquam ubi sub ubi!

  After he had locked the door behind them she immediately, albeit a little nervously, commented upon the civilized appearance of the bachelor flat, listening with half an ear to a love duet from one of the operas, although she had no idea which one; standing appreciatively for a while in front of a reproduction of The Milkmaid, although she had only just heard of Vermeer; looking wide-eyed along the shelves and shelves and shelves of books that lined three of the walls there; noticing too, although not herself a particularly houseproud woman, the thin layer of dust on the CD player and the thicker layer along the top of the skirting boards.