by Colin Dexter
Thus it was that she answered Lewis simply and quietly. ‘No, there were no footprints from the annexe to be seen that morning – yesterday morning. But yes, it was snowing when I looked out – I’m sure of it.’
‘You mean that the weatherman at Radio Oxford has got things all wrong, miss?’
‘Yes, I do, Sergeant.’
Lewis felt a little taken aback by such strong, and such conflicting evidence, and he turned to Morse for some kind of arbitration. But as he did so, he noticed (as he had so often in the past) that the chief inspector’s eyes were growing brighter and brighter by the second, in some sort of slow incandescence, as though a low-powered filament had been switched on somewhere at the back of his brain. But Morse said nothing for the moment, and Lewis tried to rediscover his bearings.
‘So from what you say, you think that Mr Ballard must have been murdered by one of those five other people there?’
‘Well, yes! Don’t you? I think he was murdered by Mr or Mrs Palmer, or by Mr or Mrs Smith, or by Mrs Ballard – whoever she is!’
‘I see.’
During these exchanges, Morse himself had been watching the unshadowed, unrouged, unlipsticked blonde with considerable interest; but no longer. He stood up and thanked her, and then seemed relieved that she had left them.
‘Some shrewd questioning there, Lewis!’
‘You really think so, sir?’
But Morse made no direct answer. ‘It’s time we had some refreshment,’ he said.
Lewis, who was well aware that Morse invariably took his lunchtime calories in liquid form, was himself perfectly ready for a pint and a sandwich; but he was a little displeased about Morse’s apparently total lack of interest in the weather conditions at the time of the murder.
‘About the snow, sir—’ he began.
‘The snow? The snow, my old friend, is a complete white herring,’ said Morse, already pulling on his greatcoat.
In the back bar of the Eagle and Child in St Giles’, the two men sat and drank their beer, and Lewis found himself reading and reading again the writing on the wooden plaque fixed to the wall behind Morse’s head:
C.S. LEWIS, his brother, W.H. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and other friends met every Tuesday morning, between the years 1939–1962 in the back room of this their favourite pub. These men, popularly known as the ‘Inklings’, met here to drink beer and to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing.
And strangely enough it was Sergeant Lewis’s mind, after (for him) a rather liberal intake of alcohol, which was waxing the more imaginative as he pictured a series of fundamental emendations to this received text; ‘CHIEF INSPECTOR MORSE, with his friend and colleague Sergeant Lewis, sat in this back room one Thursday, in order to solve . . .’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thursday, January 2nd: p.m.
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
(WALTER DE LA MARE, The Listeners)
IF, AS NOW seemed most probable, the Haworth Hotel murderer was to be sought amongst the fellow guests who had been housed in the annexe on New Year’s Eve, it was high time to look more carefully into the details of the Palmers and the Smiths, the guests (now vanished) who had been staying in Annexe 1 and Annexe 2 respectively; and Lewis looked at the registration forms he had in front of him, each of them fully filled in; each of them, on the face of it, innocent enough.
The Palmers’ address, the same on the registration form as on the earlier correspondence, was given as 29A Chiswick Reach; and the telephone operator confirmed that there was indeed such a property, and that it did indeed have a subscriber by the name of Palmer, P. (sex not stated) listed in the London Telephone Directory. Lewis saw Morse’s eyebrows lift a little, as if he were more than a fraction surprised at this intelligence; but for his own part he refused to assume that everyone who had congregated quite fortuitously in the Haworth annexe was therefore an automatic criminal. He dialled the number and waited, letting the phone at the other end ring for about a minute before putting down the receiver.
‘We could get someone round there, perhaps?’
‘Not yet, Lewis. Give it a go every half-hour or so.’
Lewis nodded, and looked down at the Smiths’ card.
‘What’s their address?’ asked Morse.
‘Posh sort of place, by the look of it, “Aldbrickham, 22 Spring Street, Gloucester”.’
This time Lewis saw Morse’s eyebrows lift a lot. ‘Here! Let me look at that!’ said Morse.
And as he did so, Lewis saw him shake his head slowly, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth.
‘I’m prepared to bet you my bank-balance that there’s no such address as that!’
‘I’m not betting anything!’
‘I know the place, Lewis. And so should you! It’s the street where Jude and Sue Fawley lived!’
‘Should I know them?’
‘In Jude the Obscure, Lewis! And “Aldbrickham” is Hardy’s name for Reading, as you’ll remember.’
‘Yes, I’d forgotten for the moment,’ said Lewis.
‘Clever!’ Morse nodded again as though in approbation of the literary tastes of Mr and Mrs John Smith. ‘There’s no real point in trying but . . .’ Lewis heard an audible sigh from the girl on 192 as she heard that Lewis wanted Smith, J.; and it took her a little while to discover there was no subscriber of that name with a Spring Street address in Gloucester. A further call to the Gloucester Police established, too, that there was not a Spring Street in the city.
Lewis tried Chiswick again: no reply.
‘Do you reckon we ought to try old Doris – Doris Arkwright?’ asked Morse. ‘Perhaps she’s another crook.’
But before any such attempt could be made, a messenger from the pathology lab came in with the police surgeon’s preliminary findings. The amateurishly typewritten report added little to what had already been known, or assumed, from the previous evening’s examination: age thirty-five to forty-five; height five foot eight and a half (‘He’s grown an inch overnight!’ said Morse); no fragments of wood or glass or steel in the considerable facial injury, caused likely enough by a single powerful blow; teeth – in exceptionally good condition for a male in the age group, with only three minor fillings in the left-hand side of the jaw, one of them very recent; stomach – a few mixed vegetables, but little recent intake by the look of things.
That, in essence, was all the report said. No further information about such key issues as the time of death; an array of medical terms, though, such as ‘supra-orbital foramen’ and ‘infra-orbital fissure’, which Morse was perfectly happy to ignore. But there was a personal note from the surgeon written in a spidery scrawl at the foot of this report. ‘Morse: A major drawback to any immediate identification is going to be the very extensive laceration and contusion across the inferior nasal concha – this doesn’t give us any easily recognizable lineaments for a photograph – and it makes the look of the face harrowing for relatives. In any case, people always look different when they’re dead. As for the time of death, I’ve nothing to add to my definitive statement of yesterday. In short, your guess is as good as mine, although it would come as a profound shock to me if it was any better. Max.’
Morse glanced through the report as rapidly as he could, which was, to be truthful, not very rapidly at all. He had always been a slow reader, ever envying those of his colleagues whose eyes appeared to have the facility to descend swiftly through the centre of a page of writing, taking in as they went the landscape both to the left and to the right. But two points – two simple, major points – were firmly and disappointingly apparent: and Morse put them into words.
‘They don’t know who he is, Lewis; and they don’t know when he died. Bloody typical!’
Lewis grinned: ‘He’s not a bad old boy, though.’
‘He should be pensioned off! He’s too old! He drinks too much! No – he’s not a bad old boy, as you say; but he’s on the downward slope, I’m afraid.’
‘You once told me you were on the downward slope, sir!’
‘We’re all on the downward slope!’
‘Shall we go and have a look at the other bedrooms?’ Lewis spoke briskly, and stood up as if anxious to prod a lethargic-looking Morse into some more purposive line of inquiry.
‘You mean they may have left their Barclaycards behind?’
‘You never know, sir.’ Lewis fingered the great bunch of keys that Binyon had given him, but Morse appeared reluctant to get moving.
‘Shall I do it myself, sir?’
Morse got up at last. ‘No! Let’s go and have a look round the rooms – you’re quite right. You take the Palmers’ room.’
In the Smiths’ room, Annexe 2, Morse looked around him with little enthusiasm (wouldn’t the maid have tidied Annexe 1 and Annexe 2 during the day?), finally turning back the sheets on each of the twin beds, then opening the drawers of the dressing table, then looking inside the wardrobe. Nothing. In the bathroom, it was clear that one or both of the Smiths had taken a shower or a bath fairly recently, for the two large white towels were still slightly damp and the soap in the wall-niche had been used – as had the two squat tumblers that stood on the surface behind the washbasin. But there was nothing to learn here, Morse felt sure of that. No items left behind; no torn letters thrown into the waste-paper basket; only a few marks over the carpet, mostly just inside the door, left by shoes and boots that had tramped across the slush and snow. In any case, Morse felt fairly sure that the Smiths, whoever they were, had nothing at all to do with the crime, because he thought he knew just how and why the pair of them had come to the Haworth Hotel, booking in at the last possible moment, and getting out at the earliest possible moment after the murder of Ballard had been discovered. ‘Smith, J.’ (there was little doubt in Morse’s mind) was an ageing rogue in middle management, drooling with lust over a new young secretary, who’d told his long-suffering spouse that he had to go to a business conference in the Midlands over the New Year. Such conduct was commonplace, Morse knew that; and perhaps there was little point in pursuing the matter further. Yet he would like to meet her, for she was, according to the other guests, a pleasingly attractive woman. He sat on one of the beds, and picked up the phone.
‘Can I help you?’ It was Sarah Jonstone.
‘Do you know what’s the first thing they tell you if you go on a course for receptionists?’
‘Oh! It’s you.’
‘They tell you never to say “Can I help you?”’
‘Can I hinder you, Inspector?’
‘Did the Smiths make any telephone calls while they were here?’
‘Not from the bedroom.’
‘You’d have a record of it – on their bill, I mean – if they’d phoned anyone?’
‘Ye-es. Yes we would.’ Her voice sounded oddly hesitant, and Morse waited for her to continue. ‘Any phone call gets recorded automatically.’
‘That’s it then.’
‘Er – Inspector! We’ve – we’ve just been going through accounts and we shall have to check again but – we’re almost sure that Mr and Mrs Smith didn’t square up their account before they left.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?’ snapped Morse.
‘Because – I – didn’t – know,’ Sarah replied, spacing the four words deliberately and quietly and only just resisting the impulse to slam the receiver down on him.
‘How much did they owe?’
Again, there was a marked hesitation at the end of the line. ‘They had some champagne taken to their room – expensive stuff—’
‘Nobody’s ever had a cheap bottle of champagne – in a hotel – have they?’
‘And they had four bottles—’
‘Four?’ Morse whistled softly to himself. ‘What exactly was this irresistible vintage?’
‘It was Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin 1972.’
‘It it good stuff?’
‘As I say, it’s expensive.’
‘How expensive?’
‘£29.75 a bottle.’
‘It’s what?’ Again Morse whistled to himself, and his interest in the Smiths was obviously renascent. ‘Four twenty-nines are . . . Phew!’
‘Do you think it’s important?’ she asked.
‘Who’d pick up the empties?’
‘Mandy would – the girl who did the rooms.’
‘And where would she put them?’
‘We’ve got some crates at the back of the kitchen.’
‘Did anyone else raid the champagne cellar?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So you ought to have four empty bottles of ’72 whatever-it-is out there?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘No “suppose” about it, is there?’
‘No.’
‘Well, check up – straight away, will you?’
‘All right.’
Morse walked back into the bathroom, and without picking up the tumblers leaned over and sniffed them one by one. But he wasn’t at all sure if either smelled of champagne, though one pretty certainly smelled of some peppermint-flavoured toothpaste. Back in the bedroom, he sat down once more on the bed, wondering if there was something in the room, or something about the room, that he had missed. Yet he could find nothing – not even the vaguest reason for his suspicions; and he was about to go when there was a soft knocking on the door and Sarah Jonstone came in.
‘Inspector, I—’ Her upper lip was shaking and it was immediately clear that she was on the verge of tears.
‘I’m sorry I was a bit short with you—’ began Morse.
‘It’s not that. It’s just . . .’
He stood up and put his arm lightly round her shoulders. ‘No need to tell me. It’s that penny-pinching Binyon, isn’t it? He’s not only lost the Smiths’ New Year contributions, he’s an extra one hundred and nineteen pounds short – yes?’
She nodded, and as the eyes behind the large round lenses brimmed with glistening tears Morse lightly lifted off her spectacles and she leaned against his shoulder, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks. And finally, when she lifted her head and smiled feebly, and rubbed the backs of her hands against her tear-stained face, he took out his only handkerchief, originally white and now a dirty grey, and pushed it into her grateful hands. She was about to say something, but Morse spoke first.
‘Now don’t you worry, my girl, about Binyon, all right? Or about these Smiths, either! I’ll make sure we catch up with ’em sooner or later.’
Sarah nodded. ‘I’m sorry I was so silly.’
‘Forget it!’
‘You know the champagne bottles? Well, there are only three of them in the crate. They must have taken one away with them – it’s not here.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t quite finish it.’
‘It’s not very easy to carry a half-full bottle of bubbly around.’
‘No. You can’t get the cork back in, can you?’
She smiled, feeling very much happier now, and found herself looking at Morse and wondering if he had a wife or a series of women-friends or whether he just wasn’t interested: it was difficult to tell. She was conscious, too, that his mind hadn’t seemed to be on her at all for the last few minutes. And indeed this was true.
‘You feeling better?’ she heard him say; but he appeared no longer to have any interest in her well-being, and he said no more as she turned and left him in the bedroom.
A few minutes later he poked his head round the door of Annexe 1 and found Lewis on his hands and knees beside the dressing table.
‘Found anything?’ he asked.
‘Not yet, sir.’
Back in the temporary Operations Room, Morse rang the pathology lab and found the police surgeon there.
‘Could it have been a bottle, Max?’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted that morose man. ‘But if it was it didn’t break.’
‘You mean even you would have found a few lumps of glass sticking in the fellow’s face?’
‘Even me!’
‘Do you think with a blow like that a bottle would have smashed?’
‘If it was a bottle, you mean?’
‘Yes, if it was a bottle.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Well, bloody guess, then!’
‘Depends on the bottle.’
‘A champagne bottle?’
‘Many a day since I saw one, Morse!’
‘Do you think whoever murdered Ballard was left-handed or right-handed?’
‘If he was a right-handed tennis player it must have been a sort of backhand shot: if he was left-handed, it must have been a sort of smash.’
‘You’re not very often as forthcoming as that!’
‘I try to help.’
‘Do you think our tennis player was right-handed or left-handed?’
‘Don’t know,’ said the surgeon.
Lewis came in a quarter of an hour later to report to his rather sour-looking superior that his exhaustive search of the Palmer suite had yielded absolutely nothing.
‘Never mind, Lewis! Let’s try the Palmer number again.’
But Morse could hear the repeated ‘Brr-brrs’ from where he sat, and sensed somehow that for the moment at least there would be no answer to the call. ‘We’re not having a great afternoon, one way or another, are we?’ he said.
‘Plenty of time yet, sir.’
‘What about old Doris? Shall we give her a ring? We know she’s at home – warming her corns on the radiator, like as not.’
‘You want me to try?’
‘Yes, I do!’
But there was no Arkwright of any initial listed in the Kidderminster area at 114 Worcester Road. But there was a subscriber at that address; and after some reassurance from Lewis about the nature of the inquiry the supervisor gave him the telephone number. Which he rang.
‘Could I speak to Miss Doris Arkwright, please?’
‘I think you’ve got the wrong number.’
