by Colin Dexter
Lewis himself now knew exactly what had happened on New Year’s Eve in Annexe 3; knew, too, that the murderer of Thomas Bowman had neither set foot inside the main hotel building, nor bedecked himself in a single item of fancy dress. And yet, as to how Morse had arrived at the truth, he felt as puzzled as a small boy witnessing his first conjuring performance. ‘What really put you on to it, sir?’
‘The key point was, as I told you, that the murderer tried desperately hard to persuade us that the crime was committed as late as possible: after midnight. But as you yourself rightly observed, Lewis, there would seem to be little point in such a deception if the murderer stayed on the scene the whole time from about eight that night to one o’clock the next morning. But there was every point if he wasn’t on the scene in the latter part of the evening – a time for which he had an alibi!’
‘But, sir—’
‘There were three clues in this case which should have put us on to the truth much earlier than they did. Each of these three clues, in itself, looks like a pedestrian little piece of information; but taken together – well . . . The first vital clue came largely from Sarah Jonstone – the only really valuable and coherent witness in the whole case – and it was this: that the man posing as “Mr Ballard” ate virtually nothing that evening! The second vital clue – also brought to our notice, among others, by Miss Jonstone – was the fact that the man posing as “Mr Ballard” was still staining whatever he touched late that evening! Then there was the third vital clue – the simplest clue of the lot, and one which was staring all of us in the face from the very beginning. So obvious a clue that none of us – none of us! – paid the slightest attention to it: the fact that the man posing as “Mr Ballard” won the fancy-dress competition!
‘You see, Lewis, there are two ways of looking at each of these clues – the complex way, and the simple way. And we’d been looking at them the wrong way – we’ve been looking at them the complex way.’
‘I see,’ said Lewis, unseeing.
‘Take the food business,’ continued Morse. ‘We almost got in some hopelessly complex muddle about it, didn’t we? I read carefully what dear old Max said in his report about what had been floating up and down in the ascending and descending colons. You, Lewis, were bemused enough to listen to what Miss Jonstone said about someone ringing up to ask what the menu was. Why the hell shouldn’t someone ring up and ask if they’re in for another few slices of the virtually inevitable turkey? And do you know what we didn’t do amid all this cerebration, Lewis? We didn’t ask ourselves a very simple question: if our man had eaten nothing of the first two courses, shouldn’t we assume he might be getting a little hungry? And even if he’s been told he’d better go through the evening secretly sticking all the goodies into a doggie-bag, you might have thought he’d be tempted when he came to the next two courses on the menu – especially a couple of succulent pork chops. So why, Lewis – just think simply! – why didn’t he have a mouthful or two?’
‘Like you say, sir, he was told not to, because it was vital—’
‘No! You’re still getting too complicated, Lewis. There’s a very simple answer, you see! Rastafarians aren’t allowed to eat pork!
‘Now let’s come to this business of the stains this man was leaving behind on whatever he touched – even after midnight! We took down all the evidence, didn’t we – we got statements from Miss Palmer, and Mrs Smith, and Sarah Jonstone – about how the wretched fellow went round ruining their coats and their blouses. And we almost came to the point – well, I did, Lewis – of getting them all analysed and seeing if the stains were the same, and trying to find out where the original theatre-black came from and – well, we were getting too complex again! The simple truth is that any make-up dries after a few hours; it comes off at first, of course, on anything that’s touched – but after a while it’s no problem at all. Yet in this case it remained a problem. And the simple answer to this particular mystery is that our man wanted to leave his marks late that evening; he deliberately put more stain on his hands; and he deliberately put his hands where they would leave marks. All right, Lewis? He had a stick of theatre-black in his pocket and he smeared it all over the palms of his hands in the final hour or so of the New Year party.
‘And then there’s the last point. The man won a prize, and we made all sorts of complex assumptions about it; he’d been the most painstaking and imaginative competitor of the lot; he’d been so successful with his make-up that no one could recognize him; he’d been anxious for some reason to carry off the first prize in the fancy-dress competition. And all a load of complex nonsense, Lewis. The fact is that the very last thing he wanted was to draw any attention to himself by winning the first prize that evening. And the almost childishly simple fact of the matter is that if you want to dress up and win first prize as, let’s say, Prince Charles, well, the best way to do it is to be Prince Charles. And we all ought to have suspected, perhaps, that the man who dressed up in that Rastafarian rigout and who put on such a convincing and successful performance that night as a Rastafarian, might perhaps have owed his success to the simple fact that he was a Rastafarian!’
‘Mr Winston Grant.’
‘Yes, Mr Winston Grant! A man, in fact, I met outside the Friar only last night! And if anyone ever tells you, Lewis, that there isn’t a quite extraordinary degree of coincidence in this world of ours – then you tell him to come to see me, and I’ll tell him different!’
‘Should you perhaps say “differently”?’ asked Lewis.
‘This man had been a builder’s labourer; he’d worked on several sites in Oxford – including the Locals; he’d lost his job because of cutbacks in the building industry; he was getting short of money for himself and his family; he was made an extraordinarily generous offer – we still don’t know how generous; and he agreed to accept that offer in return for playing – as he saw things – a minor role for a few hours at a New Year’s party in an Oxford hotel. I doubt we shall ever know all the ins and outs of the matter but—’
Sergeant Phillips knocked and announced that the prisoner was now in the interview room.
And Morse smiled.
And Lewis smiled.
‘Just finish off what you were saying, will you, sir?’
‘Nothing more to say, really. Winston Grant must have been pretty carefully briefed, that’s for sure. In the first place he’d be coming into the hotel directly from the street, and it was absolutely essential that he should wait his time, to the second almost, until Margaret Bowman had created the clever little distraction of taking Sarah Jonstone away from the reception desk to inspect the graffito in the Ladies’ – a graffito which she, Margaret Bowman, had herself just scrawled across the wall. Then, I’m sure he must have been told to say as little as possible to anyone else all the evening and to stick close to Margaret Bowman, as if they were far more interested in each other than in the goings-on around them. But there was no chance of him opting out of the fancy-dress competition! I suspect, too, that he was told not to eat anything – if he could manage not to without drawing too much attention to himself; and remember, he was helped in this by the way Binyon had scheduled the various courses at different tables. But it may well be, Lewis, that we’re overestimating the extent to which the plan was completely thought out. Above all, though, he had to carry through that final, extraordinarily clever, little deception: he was to make every effort to pretend that he was a black man – even though he was a black man. And there was one wonderfully simple way in which such a pretence could be sustained, and that was by rubbing dark-stain on to his hands – hands that were already black – so that everyone who came into physical contact with him should believe that he was not a black man – but a white man. And that, Lewis, in the later stages of that New Year’s party is what he did, making sure he left a few indelible marks on the most obvious places – like the shoulders of the light-coloured winter mackintoshes worn by both Miss Palmer and Mrs Smith—’
‘—and th
e white blouse of Sarah Jonstone.’
‘Cream-coloured actually,’ said Morse.
For Sergeant Phillips it was all somewhat déjà vu as he resumed his vigil at the door of the interview room, his feet still aching, his eyes scanning the bare room once again: the wooden trestle-table on which stood a white polystyrene coffee cup (full) and an ash-tray (as yet empty); and behind the table, the same fairish-haired, fresh-complexioned man who had sat there the previous evening – Mr Edward Wilkins.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Wednesday, January 8th: p.m.
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
(VIRGIL, Georgics)
AT 5 P.M., Mr James Prior, Security Officer at the Locals, put on his bicycle clips and prepared to leave. Before he did so he had a final look round Reception to make sure that everything that should be locked up was locked up. It was odd though, really, to think that the only thing the police had been interested in was the one drawer that wasn’t locked up – the drawer in which he kept all the out-of-date security passes, elastic-banded into their various bundles. Like the bundle for the last lot of building workers from which the police had already taken two passes away: that of Winston Grant, a Rastafarian fellow whom Prior remembered very well; and that of a man called Wilkins, who’d operated the giant yellow crane that had towered over the Delegacy building throughout the summer months. After Morse’s call early that morning, Prior had looked briefly through the rest of that particular bundle, and had wondered whether there were any other criminals lurking among those very ordinary-looking faces. But the truth was that one could never tell: he, far more than most people, was fully aware of that.
That afternoon, Wilkins had been resignedly cooperative about every detail of the whole case – with the exception of the act of murder itself, which he stubbornly and categorically refused to discuss in any respect whatsoever: it was as if that single, swift dispatch (to which he now confessed) had paralysed his capacity to accept it as in any way a piece of voluntary, responsible behaviour. But for the rest, he spoke fully and freely; and there was nothing surprising, nothing new, that emerged from his statement. Naturally enough, perhaps, he expressed the hope that Winston Grant should be treated with appropriate leniency, although it seemed to others (certainly to Lewis) that such an accomplice must have been rather more aware of the nature of his assignment than either Grant or Wilkins was prepared to admit.
About Margaret Bowman, the only piece of new information Wilkins was able to give was that he had more than once picked her up from a beauty clinic in Oxford, and Lewis shook his head ruefully as he learned that this clinic was the very first one he had rung – the one refusing to divulge any confidential details. About Margaret’s present fate Wilkins appeared strangely indifferent. He hadn’t (he said) the faintest idea where she’d finally drifted off to; but presumably the police would be concentrating on her various relatives up around Alnwick or Berwick or Newcastle or wherever they were. For his part, he was perhaps glad to get shot of the woman. She’d brought him nothing but trouble, although he fully accepted that it had been far more his fault than hers that things had finally . . . But that was all over now. And in an odd sort of way (he’d said) he felt relieved.
It was just after 6.30 p.m. when Sergeant Phillips escorted Wilkins down to St Aldates where temporarily, together with Grant, he would be held, awaiting (in the short term) the provision of alternative custodial arrangements and (in the long term) the pleasure of Her Majesty.
Morse insisted that both he himself and Lewis should call it a day; and Lewis was just closing the box-file on the Haworth Hotel case when he noticed a letter which he had never been shown: one beginning ‘This is a love letter . . .’ He read the first few lines with some mystification – until he came to the quite extraordinary statement that the anonymous correspondent had been ‘reading a biography of Thomas Hardy . . .’!
Should he tell Morse? He read the letter through again with the greatest interest.
Well, well, well!
At 7 p.m. Morse (Lewis thought he had gone) came back into his office once more. ‘Listen, Lewis! This Wilkins is one of the cleverest buggers we’ve ever had! You realize that? He’s pulled the wool over my eyes about the most central, central, central issue of the lot! And you know what that is? That he, Wilkins, was – is! – hopelessly in love with this woman, Margaret Bowman; and that he’d do anything – did do anything – to keep her. In fact, he murdered her husband to keep her! And likewise, Lewis, the fact that he’d do anything to protect her now! You remember what he said last night? Just get the transcript, Lewis – the bit about the passport!’
Lewis found the document and read aloud:
‘I advised her to get on a boat or something and sail off to the continent – away from everything.’
‘But she didn’t take your advice?’
‘No, she couldn’t. She hadn’t got a passport and she was frightened of applying for one because she knew everybody was trying to find her . . .’
‘God, I’m a fool, Lewis! I wonder how many lies he has told us? That she was at his house last night? That she was up with her sister in Newcastle? Has she got a sister, Lewis? Oh dear! She hasn’t got a passport, he says? And we believe him! So we don’t watch all the boats—’
‘Or the planes,’ added Lewis quietly.
‘I don’t believe it!’ said Morse softly, after a pause.
‘What’s worrying you, sir?’
‘Get a telex off to Gatwick straight away! Get the passenger list of flight number whatever-it-was!’
‘You don’t think—?’
‘Think? I’m almost sure, Lewis!’
When Lewis returned from the telex office, Morse already had his greatcoat on and was ready to leave.
‘You know that letter you had from one of your admirers, sir?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘You left it in the box.’
‘Oh!’
‘Did you notice the postmark on the original letter?’
‘London. So what?’
‘London? Really?’ (Lewis sounded like a man who knows all the answers.) ‘You get a lot of people going up to the London sales from all over the country, don’t you? I mean anyone from anywhere – from Oxford, say – could go up to the January sales and drop a letter in a postbox outside Paddington.’
Morse was frowning. ‘What exactly are you trying to tell me, Lewis?’
‘I just wondered if you had any idea of who’d written that letter to you, that’s all.’
Morse’s hand was on the doorknob. ‘Look, Lewis! You know the difference between you and me, don’t you? You don’t use your eyes enough! If you had done – and very recently, too! – you’d know perfectly well who wrote that letter.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes! And it so happens – since you’re suddenly so very interested in my private affairs, Lewis – that I’m going to take the particular lady who wrote that particular letter out for a particularly fine meal tonight – that’s if you’ve no objections?’
‘Where are you taking her, sir?’
‘If you must know, we’re going out to Springs Hotel near Wallingford.’
‘Pretty expensive, so they say, sir.’
‘We shall go halves – you realize that, of course?’ Morse winked happily at Lewis – and was gone.
Lewis, too, was smiling happily as he rang his wife and told her that he wouldn’t be long.
At 7.50 p.m. the telex reply came through from Gatwick: on the scheduled 12.05 flight that had left that morning for Barcelona, the passenger list had included, apart from a Mr Edward Wilkins, a Mrs Margaret Bowman, the latter giving an address in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
At 8.00 p.m., Lewis pulled on his overcoat and left Kidlington HQ. He wasn’t at all sure whether Morse would be pleased, or displeased, with the news he had just received. But the last thing he was going to do was to ring Springs Hotel. He just hoped – very much he hoped – that Morse would
have an enjoyable evening, and an enjoyable meal. As for himself, the missus would have the egg and chips ready; and he felt very happy with life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material:
George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, for a quotation by Bertrand Russell.
Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Estate of Ogden Nash for a quotation by him.
Peter Champkin for an extract from his book The Waking Life of Aspern Williams.
Faber and Faber Ltd, for an extract from ‘La Figlia Che Piange’ in Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot.
A. M. Heath & Company Ltd, on behalf of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell for an extract from Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, published by Secker & Warburg Ltd.
Henry Holt & Company Inc, for a quotation by Robert Frost.
A. D. Peters & Company and Jonathan Cape Ltd, on behalf of the Executors of the Estate of C. Day Lewis, for an extract from ‘Departure in the Dark’ in Collected Poems, 1954, published by the Hogarth Press.
The Society of Authors on behalf of the Bernard Shaw Estate for a quotation by Bernard Shaw.
A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, for an extract by Rudyard Kipling from The Thousandth Man.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
Praise for
Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse Mysteries
‘No one constructs a whodunit with more fiendish skill than Colin Dexter’
Guardian
‘Traditional crime writing at its best; the kind of book without which no armchair is complete’
