The Remorseful Day

by Colin Dexter

  On the glass-topped coffee table there stood a chilled bottle of champagne, with two sparklingly bright glasses on their coasters beside it.

  As quietly bidden, she sat down, the hem of the minidress riding more than halfway up her black-stockinged thighs as languidly she crossed her lengthy legs. Then, as he untwisted the wire at the top of the bottle, she turned away, holding the palms of her hands over her ears.

  “No need for that,” he said. “I'm an expert.”

  Tilting the bottle to 45 degrees, he turned the cork sharply, pulling only slightly—and that was it. Out! He filled the two glasses, sat opposite her, raised his glass, and said, “Cheerio!”

  It seemed to her a strange thing to say. “Hello!” would surely have been more appropriate? It was obviously something he'd stored away in his verbal baggage from a period at least twenty-five years (she decided) earlier than her own.

  Not that that mattered.

  She sipped the champagne; sipped it again; and concluded, although she knew nothing whatever of Bruts and Crus, that it might well be fairly expensive stuff.

  “Specially bought for the occasion?”

  “No. I won it in a raffle.”

  She took a further sip, then drank off the rest in a single draught. “Lovely!”

  He leaned forward and refilled her glass.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

  “It might even things up a bit.”

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No. I'll join you.”

  “You took a lot of trouble about gettin’ me here—”

  “Don't you like taxis?”

  “—and I've never been told exactly what to wear before.”

  He surveyed her vertically striped brown-and-white dress, and counted the buttonholes: seven of them, the top three straining across her breasts.

  “I like buttons. I've read that ‘unbuttoning’ was Philip Larkin's favorite present participle.”

  She let it go, fairly certain that she understood, and slowly unfastened the top button of her dress. “I shall expect a fee, you know that.”

  “Fee? You mean as well as the taxi and the champagne?”

  She nodded and pointed to the bottle. “Will one be enough, do you think?”

  “I won two in the raffle. The other one's cooling in the fridge.”

  She drained her second glass, and sat back in the deeply comfortable settee, unfastening the second button as he again refilled her glass.

  She patted the cushion beside her. “Come and sit next to me.”

  “In a little while. It's just that I'd like to get my fill of sitting here and lusting after you.”

  She smiled. “I wonder how we would have been together?”

  “Know something? You've just quoted T. S. Eliot, virtually verbatim.”

  She let it go, fairly certain that Eliot was a poet. But there wasn't much poetry out there—not in the world in which she moved. It all made her feel pleasingly important and decidedly sexy. Something more, too. As she tilted the third glass of champagne into her lipstick-moistened mouth; as she worked the third button of her dress loose; as she looked down at her braless breasts now almost fully exposed, she felt an animal sense of her own power—and she felt good.

  He was right, though. She was enjoying teasing him, and he was enjoying being teased. No need for that rush to sexual congress the great majority of men (she knew full well) preferred.

  “You know,” she said, “I thought first of all when you rang that you wanted to ask me about the murders.”

  “Afterward, don't you think?”

  She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward to light another cigarette. “No. Let's get the inquisition over. Where's the bedroom, by the way?”

  He pointed to a door on his left. “Top sheet turned back in a very neat hypotenuse.”

  She let it go, for her own mathematics had stopped well short of Pythagoras.

  “I didn't ask you here for any grilling—you know that. But there is one thing I'd like you to tell me.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I think you've got a good idea who murdered Harry. And if you have, I'd like you to tell me.”

  “But I don't—not for certain, I don't.” She recrossed the legs that a little earlier had been provocatively open.

  “Go on!”

  “It's just… well, I reckon perhaps it was Johnnie—might have been, anyway.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Somethin’ he said and … well, you get the vibes sometimes.”

  He seemed to know nothing of “vibes”—interested only in strictly verbal significations.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “Nothin’ really. Nothin’ I'm going to tell you, anyway.”

  “When was this?”

  “Sat'day night.”

  “He was with you then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he often call round?”

  “Quite often.”

  “He'd been taking his time with your building alterations?” He drank the rest of the only glass of champagne he'd allowed himself—drank it swiftly, like a man in a pub who knows that if he stays any longer the next round will surely be his, and who therefore decides to depart.

  “And you went to bed—quite often—with Barron?”

  What the hell! If this fellow just so happened to be more gentle, more interesting, more articulate than some of her occasional partners—so bloody what!

  “Yes!” She said it defiantly. “Pretty good in bed he was, too!”

  “I'm sorry,” he said slowly, “but Mr. Barron's dead.”

  “You thought I didn't know?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Come off it! I wasn't born yesterday.”

  He got to his feet and stepped over to sit beside her. For a while he held her right hand lightly in his; then, with his own right hand he refastened the top three buttons of the dress he'd specifically requested her to wear above no underwear.

  Then he left the room and she heard his voice on the telephone: “Radio Taxis? … One of your drivers, as soon as you can … to Burford … on my account, please … Morse.”

  The two recently refilled glasses of champagne—the one for her, and the one for him—remained untasted on the top of the coffee table that had been polished so carefully before the arrival of Miss Debbie Richardson.

  Forty-six

  For the clash between the Classical and the Gothic revivals, visitors might go to the top end of Beaumont Street and compare the Greek glory of the Ashmolean on the left with the Gothic push of the Randolph Hotel on the right.

  (Jan Morris, Oxford)

  The Spires Restaurant in the Randolph Hotel is an impressively elegant affair. A full complement of Oxford College crests is mounted in a frieze around the room, the regal ambience of the place relieved by the soft lighting of flambeaux on the brown-papered walls, and by two central chandeliers, holding similar flambeaux, that hang from the high-beamed ceiling. Twenty or so tables are spaciously arranged there, cross-draped with maroon tablecloths, and laid with gleaming silverware, sparkling wineglasses, and linen serviettes of a pale-ochre color. The chairs, of uniform style, are upholstered in a material of bottle-green; and the color combination of the room in toto has appealed to many (if not to all) as an unusually happy one. Two large windows on the room's northern side overlook Beaumont Street, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Taylorian Institute just across the way; whilst those seated beside three equally large windows on the eastern side look out on to the Martyrs’ Memorial, with St. John's and Balliol Colleges beyond it, sharing with their fellow diners a vista of St. Giles, the widest street in Oxford and visually one of the most attractive avenues in England.

  At 7:15 that same evening, a man in the company of a much younger woman appeared to have eschewed either of these splendid views, for they had chosen a table (set for three) on the restaurant's west and win-dowless side, and now sat with their backs partly turned on the sprinklin
g of other early diners—like people who had no real objections to being seen, perhaps, but equally had no wish to draw attention to themselves.

  At 7:25 P.M., the man was again consulting his wrist-watch when a black-tied waiter asked if they would like a further drink while they waited.

  Though expensive, the cocktail they had each been drinking was, in the young woman's judgment, “absolutely yummy”—Cognac, Kümmel, Fraise Liqueur, topped with chilled champagne—and she nodded. Might just as well be happy about something.

  “Same again,” said Frank Harrison. “Ailish cocktails.” And when the waiter was gone: “Where the hell's he got to? I've not got all bloody evening.”

  “You've got to get back tonight, Dad?”

  “That's got nothing to do with it. Seven-fifteen is seven-fifteen!”

  “His hearing's not getting any better, you know. He probably thought you said seven-fifty.”

  “Who's ever ordered a dinner for seven-fifty, for Christ's sake?”

  For the moment Sarah said nothing further, looking around her and enjoying the regal dignity of the restaurant. And in truth her father's tetchy impatience with Simon was not wholly displeasing to her. There had ever been a closer bond between herself and her father than with her mother; and, in turn, a very much closer bond between Simon and his mother than with his father. But such things were not spoken of freely in families; and it was better that way. Quite why she had always felt possessive about her father, she could not explain well even to herself. But she remembered clearly when she'd first been conscious of it: when she had crept silently downstairs late one night with a party in full swing below; and when, unseen herself, she'd watched her father kissing a young woman in the kitchen. She had cried herself to sleep that night. Only six, she'd been, but she could have murdered the woman. Disbelief? Shock? Outrage? All three mixed together, like a cocktail… like a cocktail topped up with a little chilled jealousy.

  Simon appeared at 7:48. Like his father, not looking particularly in love with life.

  “You're both early?” he ventured, as he took his seat. “Seven-fifty, wasn't it?”

  “Forget it!” His father passed over a menu.

  “I could do with a drink first, Dad.”

  “Just read the question-paper!”

  Simon looked down at the succulent-sounding selections: To Start… To Continue … Dessert… Beverages—and felt a little happier, until Harrison père, brusquely ruling out starters, called over the waiter and put in their order for the main courses: Guinea Fowl; Calves’ Liver; Steak (medium). “And a bottle of some decent Claret.”

  “Just one?” queried Simon. “Three of us?”

  “Sarah's driving.”

  “Aren't you driving, Dad?” asked Sarah.

  “ I don't really need my daughter to tell me what I can drink, thank you very much.”

  Sarah put down her menu and stood up slowly. “Excuse me a minute! I'm just off to …”

  But before making her way to the Ladies’ Powder Room, Sarah Harrison stopped at Reception.

  “Can I ring one of your guests from here?”

  “Of course.” The young girl smiled. “Just ring the room number.” She pointed to the phone at the side of the desk.

  “The name's Harrison—F. Harrison.”

  The receptionist tapped a few keys and looked at her video-screen.

  “Yes. That's right.”

  “Can you just give me the room number?”

  “I'm sorry. I can't do that. It's strict company policy—”

  “I'm his daughter, for God's sake!”

  “Just a minute!” The girl moved away and the phone on the desk sprang to life when she returned: “All yours.”

  Sarah picked up the phone and listened, wondering what on earth she was going to say. But she needn't have bothered.

  “Hellóho.” It was a female, husky, transatlantic voice.

  Sarah put down the phone, a sudden glint of fury in her eyes.

  She returned to the table to find father and brother, heads close together, in what seemed a significant conversation. But there the exchanges stopped—whether because of her own return or the contemporaneous arrival of the main courses, Sarah was uncertain.

  Thereafter the food was appreciatively consumed, the few transmensal exchanges wholly mundane and perfunctory, the bottle of Claret rapidly going and going and soon wholly gone.

  “Another bottle, Dad?” suggested Simon.

  “No!”

  “I came on the bus—I'm going back on the bus.”

  “But Dad's got to drive back to London, remember? Anyway I thought we were all supposed to keep sober tonight. Isn't that why we're here?”

  “It was, yes. Just keep your voice down, will you? And read this. Simon's already seen it. Pretty quick off the mark, some of these local reporters.”

  Sarah looked down at the copy of the Oxford Mail passed across to her, the lower half of the back page folded over to show the latest news column:

  Forty-seven

  Different things can add up in different ways whilst reaching an identical solution, just as “eleven plus two” forms an anagram of “twelve plus one.”

  (Margot Gleave, A Classical Education)

  A wealth of police personnel and well-targeted inquiries had borne swift if, here and there, unexpected evidence—evidence which Sergeant Lewis (alone in his office late that Monday evening) was able to shift and to categorize at his own pace. Thus far, the facts, and the glosses on the facts, formulated themselves as follows in Lewis's mind:

  First. The shiny orange-red Stanley knife had been purchased, together with other items, from a hardware shop in Burford on the Saturday of the previous week (receipt unearthed in Barron's Expenses File). Barron could still have been a murderer—of course, he could!—but quite certainly not with the knife he'd used that same morning as he stood almost atop the topmost section of the ladder and twisted the blade into the rotting, unresisting sill of the dormer window in Sheep Street.

  Second. The stains on the overalls Barron had been wearing that morning had quite certainly not been human blood; but almost certainly smears of paint patented under the brand name Cremosin, two-pint tins of which were found in Barron's garage, a space now used exclusively for building and decorating materials.

  Third. On the morning of the Friday when Flynn and Repp had been murdered, Barron had left home around his usual time to spend some of the morning in Thame, where two properties were inviting tenders for renovation, for which Barron had been keen to submit his own estimates. Necessarily, of course, this evidence had been taken from Barron's wife, Linda; and yet (already) a dated parking ticket for four hours that morning (South Oxon DC, Cattle Market) had been found in Barron's van—evidence, if anything, to substantiate the claim that the builder had paid for a fairly extensive stay in the center of Thame on July 24.

  Fourth. There appeared, as yet, no evidence whatever that Barron had received any monies from anywhere to match the payments so regularly stashed into the balances of both Flynn and Repp. In short, if Barron had been the third man—if he had duly received his own share of the spoils for the conspiracy of silence—there was no sign of it, so far.

  They were not in any way decisive, these findings and non-findings. The trouble was they all seemed to be pointing in the same direction.

  Or were they?

  For example (thought Lewis), it was surely to be expected that Barron would have got rid of the murder weapon and bought himself a new knife if in fact he had used the former for the murders.

  For example (thought Lewis), it was most unlikely that Barron had only one pair of overalls. And if someone with an extravagantly fanciful mind (Morse!) could entertain the idea that a pair of white overalls covered with red paint was a good disguise for a soaking of blood … well, it could be, perhaps.

  For example (thought Lewis), why buy a four-hour parking ticket in Thame on the day of the murders unless to create an alibi? Builders would usually have littl
e difficulty in parking outside the properties in question. All right, parking was getting a nightmare everywhere, even for police cars, but…

  For example (thought Lewis), why shouldn't Barron, like Flynn perhaps, have received his payoffs in banknotes, and kept them? No need to pay them into a bank or a building society. Why not put them in the loft? In the wardrobe? In a milk jug in the fridge? Like a few other self-employed builders, Barron might well be playing a canny little game with casual receipts, with ready-cash payments, with VAT evasions. And, if so, he would certainly not be overanxious to account for any largish sums of money regularly entrusted to some official depository.

  Lewis himself had felt pretty certain that Barron was their man; Morse was absolutely convinced. And yet the evidence thus far gathered seemed to be stacking up a little bit the wrong way. Lewis knew it. He had ever been a champion of the cumulative-evidence approach to crime: a piece-by-piece aggregation against a suspect that gradually mounted into an impressively documented pile that could be forwarded to the DPP. All right! Morse's method was occasionally very different. Yet many of the murders that the pair of them had solved together had been relatively uncomplicated: no real mystery, no real cunning, no real deviousness, no carefully woven web of deceit. Domestic stuff, next-door-neighbor stuff, most of it, with the husband returning home unexpectedly from work and finding his spouse abed with postman, milkman, gasman … builder?

  But whichever way one looked at things, any direct evidence against the builder was proving surprisingly difficult to come by.

  At 8:45 P.M., tired and hungry, Lewis decided that whatever further developments there were to be—and they were coming in all the time—he would have to take a break; and he drove home to Headington. But only after trying Morse's number once more. Ringing tone. No answer.

  Morse came into HQ three-quarters of an hour later and rang Lewis's home number immediately. Ringing tone. Answer.

  Resignedly, about to start his eggs and chips, Lewis brought Morse up to date with the information received, suggesting that it was, at this point, all a bit ambivalent and equivocal, although in truth Lewis made use of neither of these epithets himself.