by Colin Dexter
For Morse, the information gleaned from the questionnaires was eminently pleasing; and when, at 10.50 a.m., Cedric Downes led the way out of The Randolph towards South Parks Road and the University Museum, with every single member of the group present (except Mr Eddie Stratton), he looked tolerably pleased with himself. Especially of interest was the fact that one of the two men clearly experiencing difficulty with section (c) on the examination paper, Howard Brown (Morse wondered why his wife hadn't been willing to cover for him), had filled in section (e) with the correct date of arrival, 27 October; or, to be more precise about the matter, '27 October'.
Nor would Morse be forgetting the only man who had not been present at the meeting - the man who still lay with a wicked headache and a barely touched breakfast-tray beside him in Room 201, to which room Shirley Brown had shepherdessed him when, after his unexplained absence, he had reeled into The Randolph the previous night.
But it was with Ashenden that Morse's attention was immediately engaged. Ashenden! - the man whom Cedric Downes now claimed to have passed on his bicycle; the man who had lied about his visit to Magdalen; the man who, like Howard Brown (and possibly Eddie Stratton?), was as yet
unable to produce a single witness to his whereabouts the previous afternoon.
Three of them. How easy it had been almost immediately to uncover three possible suspects for the murder of Theodore Kemp!
Too easy, perhaps?
28
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
(Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat)
'How are you, Morse?' 'Optimistic'
'Oh!' Max appeared disappointed by the reply as he peered down again at the grisly work on which he was engaged.
The contrast between the two men would have struck any observer that morning. The stout, hump-backed surgeon - circumspect, but perky and confident; Morse - looking distinctly weary, his jowls semi-shaven by an electric razor that had seemingly passed peak efficiency, and yet somehow, somewhere underneath, a man on the side of the angels.
'There's some deep bruising here,' began Max, pointing to Kemp's left temple, 'but the main blow' - he jerked the head towards him before caressing the crushed skull with a gentle reverence - 'was here.'
Characteristically Morse sought to swallow back the bitter-tasting fluid that had risen in his gorge; and the surgeon, with understanding, pulled the rubber sheet over the head again.
'Bit messy, isn't it? Bled a lot, too. Whoever killed him had a bucket of blood to wipe away.' 'He was murdered, then?' 'What? Ah! Slipped up a bit there, didn't I?' 'But he was, wasn't he?' 'Your job, that side of things.'
‘Which blow killed him?'
Taper-thin skull like that? Either! Little knock on the right place . . .' 'Probably the blow on the back of the head, Max.’ ‘Oh yes - certainly could have been that.' 'Or . . . ?'
'Yes - could have been the crack on the temple.'
'Someone could have hit him and then he fell over and hit himself on the fender or the door-jamb or the bedpost—'
'Or the kerb, if he was out in the street.' , 'But you don't believe he was, do you?'
'Not my province, belief.'
'Could he have suffered either of the injuries in the water?'
' "Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy doom." '
' "Death", Max - not "doom". And he hadn't got any garments, had he?'
'Good point, Morse. And I've got something else to show you.' Max now exposed Kemp's torso and heaved the corpse a few inches off the table. Along the back of the right shoulder was a scratch, some five or six inches long: a light, fairly superficial scratch, it appeared, yet one made quite recently, perhaps.
‘What caused that, Max?'
'Dunno, dear boy.'
'Try!'
'An instrument of some sort.'
'Not a blunt instrument, though.'
'I would suggest a sharp instrument, Morse.'
'Amazing!'
'Fairly sharp, I should have said.'
'Caused as he was floating along like Ophelia?'
'Oh, I couldn't possibly say.'
'Could it have been done before he was murdered -when he was wearing a shirt, say?' 'Ah! A not unintelligent question!' Together the two men looked again at the light wound,
stretching down diagonally from the back of the neck towards the armpit.
'Could it have been, Max?'
'I think not.'
Then he was possibly naked when he was murdered?'
'Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Anyway he might have hit a willow twig in the river.'
'What other possibilities are there?'
'The evidence extends only as far as the lower scapula, does it not? He could have been wearing an off-the-shoulder toga.'
Morse now closed his eyes and turned away from the body: 'A toga pinned together with the Wolvercote Tongue, no doubt.'
'Oh no! I can assure you of one thing: that was not upon his person.' 'You don't mean - you didn't. . . ?' Max nodded. 'And he didn't swallow it, either.' 'And he didn't drown.'
'No. None of the usual muck one finds in the lungs when a man's fighting for his breath. Could he swim, by the way?'
'Don't know. I haven't seen his wife yet.'
The pathologist suddenly dropped his habitual banter, and looked Morse in the eye. 'I know you've got a lot on your plate, old boy. But I'd see her soon, if I were you.'
'You're right,' said Morse quietly. 'Just tell me, please, whether you think he was naked when he was murdered -that's all I ask.'
'I've told you. I don't know.'
'Not many reasons why people are naked, are there?'
'Oh, I dunno. Having a bath; standing on the weighing-scales; sun-bathing in Spain - so they tell me.'
'Having sex,' added Morse slowly. 'Not so much a willow's twig, perhaps, as a woman's talon.'
'Less likely, I'd say.'
'But you're sometimes wrong.'
'Not so often as you, Morse’ ‘We'll see.'
Max grinned. 'Glad it was you who mentioned sex, though. I was beginning to suspect you'd misplaced your marbles.'
'No, no! No chance of that, Max. Not yet, anyway.' And as Morse left the pathology block, a quiet little smile of confidence could be seen around the chief inspector's lips.
29
There are an awful lot of drunks about these days. It wouldn't really surprise me if you turned out to be one yourself
(Martin Amis, Other People)
Apart from his former wife, Mr Edward Stratton was the only one of the original group who had not listened to Morse that morning. Although his head was throbbing almost intolerably, he'd felt sober enough to ring for breakfast in his room, and had done his best to contemplate the 'Full English' he'd so foolishly ordered for 7 a.m. His brain drew a veil over the sickening consequences.
Edward Stratton had always been interested in machinery, or 'working parts' as he'd always liked to think of things. As a boy in high school he'd progressed from World-War-I aircraft-kits to model railways, his mind and his hands responding most happily to the assemblage of pistons, valves, wheels, with their appropriate adjustments and lubrications. Not marrying, he had set up a small business in specialised agricultural machinery - which had gone bust in 1975. After a long period of depression, and a short period of training, he had taken on a new career - one which also demanded dexterity with the hands: that of a mortician. Was there ever an odder switch of professions? But Stratton had soon grown proficient in the gruesome, sometimes disgusting, demands of his new job; and in the process of preparing an aged philanthropist for his silk-lined resting-place, he had met the man's disconsolate widow, Laura. And married her a year later. Or, perhaps, it may have been that she had married him. Convenience, that's what it had been for her - little more. Maybe f
or him, too? He'd assumed that she had money; everyone assumed that she had money. But he'd never known for certain and still didn't know now.
It was the Wolvercote Tongue which monopolised Stratton's thoughts as he sat on his unmade bed, head between his hands, that Saturday mid-morning. The thing was insured, he knew that - well insured. How otherwise? Yet insured in exactly what circumstances, under exactly what provisions, Stratton was wholly ignorant. Why had Shirley Brown had to mention the point on her brief visit to him earlier that morning, and sowed those slowly germinating seeds of doubt? Would it make a difference if it could be maintained that Laura had died before the Tongue was stolen? Would the money then go to the Ashmolean? But there could never be any proof on the matter, and if she had died after it was stolen, then surely the money would have to be credited to her estate, would it not? Stratton shook his aching head. He could get no real grip on the situation, and the more he pondered, the more confused his thinking became. But if he could get the police to believe it was after. . . because that would mean it was still in her possession when she died . . . wouldn't it... ?
Augh!
Stratton rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. He was dipping his heavy aching head into a basin of cold water when he heard the sharp knock on the door, and was soon admitting Chief Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis into his bedroom.
The former had immediately recognised the symptoms of a Caesar-sized hangover and offered practical aid in the form of two tablets of Alka Seltzer which he appeared to carry regularly on his person.
And almost immediately Stratton had been talking freely . . .
They must have thought him a bit insensitive - running off like that, the day after . . . But he'd seen the advert in The Oxford Mail, and the prospect of an Open Day at Didcot had proved irresistible. He'd walked round the engine sheds, he said, where he'd looked long and lovingly at the old locomotives, and where he'd seen schoolboys and middle-aged men carefully recording numbers and wheel-arrangements in their note-books. ('All of them apparently sane, Inspector!') And then he'd had the thrill of actually seeing ('a life-time's ambition') the Flying Scotsman! He'd stayed there ('in Didcart') much longer than he'd intended; and when finally he tore himself away from the Cornish Riviera and the Torbay Express he'd walked back to Didcot Parkway Station at about five o'clock, and caught the next train back to Oxford, where he'd, er, where he'd had a quick drink in the Station Buffet. Then he'd been walking back to The Randolph when he suddenly felt he just couldn't face his excessively sympathetic countrymen, and he'd called in a pub and drunk a couple of pints of lager.
The pubs were open, were they, Mr Stratton?' asked Lewis.
But it was Morse who answered: 'If you wish, Lewis, I will give you the names and addresses of the three of them there that open all day. Please continue, Mr Stratton.'
Well, at about half-seven he'd gone into a restaurant in St Giles', Browns; had a nice steak, with a bottle of red wine; left at about half-nine - and was strolling down to The Randolph when he'd met Mrs Sheila Williams, just outside the Taylorian, as she was making for the taxi-rank. They had stood talking for quite some time, each of them perhaps slightly the worse for wear, and then she had invited him up to her North Oxford home for a night-cap.
And that was it.
The strong-bodied American, with his rugged features, had spoken with a quiet simplicity; and as he'd watched him and heard him, Morse thought he could well have enjoyed a pint with the fellow. Yet in Morse's view it was always a good idea to ask a few inconsequential questions. So he did.
'You say you had a drink at Oxford Station?'
‘Yep.'
‘Which platform would that have been on?'
'Search me! But the same side the train came in, I'd swear to it.'
'And they have booze there, do they?'
'Sure do! I had a can - coupla cans. Expensive it was, too.'
Lewis's eyebrows lifted under a frown, and he looked across at his chief: 'I'm afraid that's not right, sir. Mr Stratton couldn't have got any beer or lager at Oxford Station - not yesterday. There was a great big notice outside: "No Refreshments" or something like that, due to modernisation.'
' "Owing to" modernisation, Lewis.'
'I've never known the difference.'
'No need. Just say "because of" and you'll always be right.'
'As I was saying, sir, the buffet was shut.'
'Interesting point!' remarked Morse, suddenly turning again to a now distinctly uncomfortable-looking Stratton. 'So if you didn't stay on the station between about five-thirty and six-thirty, where exactly were you, sir?'
Stratton sighed deeply, and seemed to be pondering his position awhile. Then he sighed again, before opening the palms of his hands in a gesture of resignation. 'Your Sergeant's right, Inspector. I asked if I could get a drink
anything. But, like he says, they were refurbishing all the places there. I did stay, though. I stayed about half an hour
longer, perhaps. I'd gotten myself a Herald Tribune and I sat reading it on one of the red seats there.'
'Bit chilly, wasn't it?' Stratton remained silent.
'Was there someone outside you didn't want to meet?' suggested Morse.
'I didn't - I didn't want to go out of the station for a while. It, er, it might have been a little awkward for me
- meeting someone who might. . . might be waiting for a bus, or a taxi.'
'You saw someone from the group on the train, is that what you're saying? Someone sitting in a compartment in front of you when you got on the train at Didcot?'
Stratum nodded. 'He'd not got on at Didcot, though. He must have come from Reading, I suppose—' 'Or Paddington,' added Morse quietly. 'Yes, or Paddington.'
Morse looked across at Lewis. Paddington was beginning to loom slightly larger than a man's hand on the horizon; Paddington was where the murdered Kemp had stood and phoned The Randolph the previous day. So was it too much to believe that it was Kemp that Stratton had seen - about five o'clock, hadn't he said?
'You'll have to tell me, you know that,' said Morse gently.
'It was Phil Aldrich,' replied Stratton quietly, his eyes searching those of the two policemen with a look of puzzlement - and perhaps of betrayal, too.
Phew!
'Let me ask you one more question, please, sir. Do you stand to profit much from your wife's death?'
'I do hope so,' replied Stratton, almost fiercely. 'You see, I'm pretty hard-up these days, and to be honest with you I'm certainly not going to say "no" to any insurance money that might be pushed my way.'
'You're an honest man, Mr Stratton!'
'Not always, Inspector!'
Morse smiled to himself, and was walking over to the door when Stratton spoke again: 'Can I ask you a favour?' 'Go ahead!'
'Can you leave me another coupla those Alka Seltzer things?'
30
Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughdess act
(James Thurber, Lanterns and Lances)
Morse thought it must be the splendid grandfather clock he'd seen somewhere that he heard chiming the three-quarters (10.45 a.m.) as he and Lewis sat beside each other in a deep settee in the Lancaster Room. Drinking coffee.
'We're getting plenty of suspects, sir.'
'Mm. We're getting pretty high on content but very low on analysis, wouldn't you say? I'll be all right though once the bar opens.'
'It is open - opened half-past ten.'
'Why are we drinking this stuff, then?'
'Stimulates the brain, coffee.'
But Morse was consulting the Paddington-Oxford timetable which Lewis had picked up for him from Reception, and was nodding to himself as he noted that the 13.30 arrived at Oxford 14.57, just as Kemp had claimed. Now if Kemp had been held up, for some reason, for even longer than he'd expected ... for considerably longer than he'd expected . .
. Yes, interesting! The train Stratum must have caught - said he'd caught - must have been the 16.20 from Paddington, arriving at Didcot 17.10, and Oxford 17.29. For several seconds Morse stared across Beaumont Street at the great Ionic pillars of the Ashmolean . . . What time had Kemp left Paddington? For left Paddington he certainly had, at some point, after ringing through to The Randolph to explain his delayed departure.
But what if... ?
'You know, sir, I was just wondering about that telephone call. What if—?'
Morse grinned at his sergeant. 'Great minds, Lewis - yours and mine!'
'You really think there's a possibility it wasn't Kemp who rang?'
'Yes, I do. And it would give us a whole new time perspective, wouldn't it? You know, with the best will in the world, Max will never give us too much help if he thinks he can't. Quite right, too. He's a scientist. But if we can narrow the time down - or rather, widen it out, Lewis . . .'
For a while he appeared deep in thought. Then, pushing his half-finished coffee away from him, he stood up and gave Lewis his orders: 'Go and find Ashenden for me. I shall be in the bar.'
