The Complete Inspector Morse

by David Bishop

  The inspector sums up his partnership with Lewis: ‘Murder’s always been our business.’

  Morse explains his relationship with alcohol: ‘You don’t imagine I drink just for the pleasure of it, do you?’

  The inspector recalls an old saying: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, don’t take up hang-gliding.’

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: The 13th and final Morse novel was published in a blaze of publicity in 1999, focusing on the death of the lead character. Author Colin Dexter seemed to be omnipresent in newspapers and many magazines, talking about his creation and the reasons for killing Morse off. This gave rise to numerous comparisons with Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary execution of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the great amateur detective, however, there seems no chance of the inspector making a comeback after his own personal Reichenbach.

  Morse sometimes thinks he ought to see Bayreuth, Salzburg and Vienna. The naming of flowers has always compelled his imagination. The inspector thinks the prospect of reincarnation is blessedly remote. He is frightened of death. Morse has adopted a new hobby – birdwatching. He is also the owner of a television and video recorder, although the latter machine still escapes his understanding. The inspector never travels by bus. He says he has never had a camera. Morse keeps a king-sized Mars bar in his flat for emergencies. The inspector claims he could have run a marathon in two hours and 25 minutes once. He is not an animal lover. Morse is supremely skilled at cribbage. He is six months younger than Strange. The inspector recalls going to see The Full Monty – he laughed and cried at the film. Morse’s last remaining relative was Aunt Gladys in Alnwick, but she died recently, aged 92.

  Lewis keeps himself very fit, despite his high cholesterol diet of fried food. He read The Beano as a boy. The sergeant correctly identifies Benjamin Franklin as the US President who said death and taxes were the only things to be sure of. One of Lewis’ greatest joys is using the police siren.

  THE VERDICT: The Remorseful Day is the last Morse novel, bringing the best-selling, award-winning series to a fatal conclusion for the chief inspector. It’s also one of the longest books in the series. The many murders play only a supporting role to the decline and death of the lead character. Any reader who can get through the final 50 pages without shedding a tear or two is a very hard-hearted individual indeed.

  The novel is among the best in the series, a fitting farewell to the great detective and his creator too. Colin Dexter keeps back a final twist in the tale until the epilogue, as a secret bond between Morse and Strange is revealed. Now Morse is no more and, like Lewis, the reader is left only with an absence...

  THE DOUBLE CROSSING

  ‘You’re new, Lewis, and no one’s going to blame you for that.’ A newly promoted detective inspector investigates the loss of a pensioner’s corpse, inadvertently stolen while it was lying inside a caravan at a holiday park in France.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 2003

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: This short story first appeared in Mysterious Pleasures, an anthology edited by Martin Edwards and published by Time Warner to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Crime Writers’ Association. ‘The Double Crossing’ does feature a Detective Inspector Lewis, but it’s DI Lewis David Robertson. Dexter constructs his tale of an accidentally stolen corpse as an elaborate ruse to dupe readers into thinking it is a case for the newly promoted Lewis, following Morse’s death.

  The true identity of the detective is only revealed in the final paragraph. But the jig is up a few sentences earlier when a character mentions the coincidence of DI Robertson sharing his first name with the sergeant’s surname in the TV series Inspector Morse. In effect, ‘The Double Crossing’ is an elaborate piece of meta-fiction, using readers’ prior knowledge of Morse on TV as a literary device to misdirect them.

  THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS QUORUM

  ‘I wonder whether Morse would think he was much of a writer, our man here.’ Inspired by memories of the inspector, Lewis and Hathaway decode a cryptic letter.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 2006

  STORYLINE: Lewis receives a letter from HRF Keating, a former president of the Detection Club. This challenges the inspector to solve a mystery involving a stolen cheque book and missing funds. Lewis discusses the case with his sergeant, James Hathaway. That evening both policemen discover coded clues to the mystery hidden in the letter’s text. Lewis writes back with his solution. Keating admits the initial letter was an elaborate ruse to test whether police detectives still had the cunning and intelligence exhibited by the late Inspector Morse. Keating arranges for a $25,000 donation to the Police Service of Northern Ireland Benevolent Fund by an American philanthropist, who was impressed by Morse at a Detection Club dinner.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: The letter to Lewis mentions Morse became more relaxed after imbibing a plentiful supply of single-malt Scotch.

  Lewis has a can of beer from the fridge at home to celebrate a flash of inspiration.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: One of the Detection Club’s members wrote an anagrammatic clue about Morse’s rank and name: “Person with crimes to resolve (9, 5)”. Hathaway and Lewis use strategies for cracking cryptic crosswords to uncover clues hidden in Keating’s letter. Their efforts prove the police still exhibit the high degree of mental acumen and flexibility Morse showed with crossword puzzles, according to Keating.

  MORSE DECODED: The inspector once gave a talk to the Detection Club’s annual dinner at The Ritz hotel in London. The writers’ club knew the inspector because one member had written about several of Morse’s high-profile investigations, particularly those into murder. After his talk – and following whisky – Morse spoke in a most complimentary fashion about Lewis to club members. The inspector never wrote much, according to Lewis. Morse once told Lewis an anecdote about Oscar Wilde labouring for two hours to delete a comma, and then spending another two hours before deciding to reinstate it. Morse believed Keating had one of the shrewdest brains in crime writing.

  SOUNDTRACK: Lewis goes to see Papadopoulous conduct the Oxford Philomusica at the Sheldonian Theatre.

  QUOTE-UNQUOTE: Hathaway is at a loss about how to question Keating by phone. ‘You think of something,’ Lewis interjects. ‘You’re a university graduate, remember.’

  Lewis recalls Morse’s particular attention to commas. ‘Wish I’d known him, sir,’ Hathaway says, with gentle irony.

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: This short story originally appeared in The Verdict of Us All, a collection edited by Peter Lovesey and published in 2006 to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Detection Club member HRF Keating. Other prominent authors mentioned in Dexter’s tale are Len Deighton, Peter Lovesey, Reginald Hill, Ian Rankin and Simon Brett. Dexter makes allusions to himself as the author of Morse mysteries, blurring the distinction between fiction and meta-fiction.

  This story is Dexter’s first to feature the combination of Lewis and Hathaway from the Lewis spin-off. It was published ten months after the duo’s first TV appearance.

  Hathaway’s tutor once warned him to stop employing so many exclamation marks, otherwise his essays would go unread. The sergeant believes any writer who keeps using long dashes hasn’t much idea how to use the Queen’s English. Hathaway buys TV Times magazine.

  THE VERDICT: A slender story that features no crime or action, ‘The Case of the Curious Quorum’ is an affectionate tribute to crime fiction doyen HRF Keating. As with most of Dexter’s fiction since The Remorseful Day, this tale revolves around cryptic crossword clues and letters. The inclusion of Hathaway offers the principal point of interest for Morse and Lewis aficionados.

  MR E. MORSE, BA OXON (FAILED)

  ‘What cock-and-bull story has he been telling you now?’ A drunken driving incident from Morse’s undergraduate days uncovers a succession of secrets and lies.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 2008

  STORYLINE: In the summer of 2008, Philip Day returns from America to Oxford, taking up the post of Ancient History tutor at Lonsdale College. He’s saddened to learn of the death several years earlier of Chief
Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police. Day and Morse shared undergraduate digs in North Oxford forty years before. Invited by the Bursar of Lonsdale to contribute an anecdote to a book about Morse, Day writes an account of a particular incident, but confesses changing some details to spare blushes.

  Day and Morse spend their first year in digs together at The Firs, a detached home owned by a childless couple, Jeff and Helen Lloyd. The following year Morse takes rooms in college, while Day remains with the Lloyds. Both men stay in Oxford during the week of Christmas 1969. On December 23rd, Day returns to the Lloyds’ after an overnight stay in Coventry. The carefully cultivated front lawn is a mess of tyre marks, with twenty feet of fence smashed and splintered across the grass. Mrs Lloyd’s Mini stands outside the garage double doors, apparently undamaged, while Mr Lloyd’s old Rolls Royce is absent.

  Mrs Lloyd says she was alone at home the previous evening. Her husband had been picked up and driven to a Christmas party – his car was in for repairs. Mrs Lloyd had heard a crash about 9.30 pm and discovered the damage later that night. She didn’t call the police until the next morning, but they haven’t arrived yet. Mr Lloyd borrow his wife’s car to visit Tom, the mechanic busy fixing the Rolls. Day agrees to offer moral support for Mrs Lloyd when the police do arrive.

  A single officer, Constable Watson, comes to investigate but offers little hope. Mrs Lloyd produces a clue – a personalised number plate that must have come off the car that did all the damage before driving off. She refuses to relinquish the evidence, claiming it will be required by the insurance company, but lets the constable note down the number: ‘54LLY D’. After the policeman leaves, Mrs Lloyd wishes Morse was around as he’d probably more chance of solving the case.

  Day undertakes some investigations of his own, deducing that the Lloyds are in strife maritally and financially. Day decides it was a drunken Jeff at the wheel of the Rolls that destroyed the fence. Eventually Morse volunteers the truth: it was the mechanic who’d been fixing the Rolls that drove it through the fence. Morse persuades Day to spare the helpful mechanic from police prosecution, knowing it could cost the man his livelihood...

  UNLUCKY IN LOVE: Morse has a girlfriend in Lincolnshire, Sally Downes, who dumps him by letter just before Christmas 1969. Sally writes that he will ever be her dearest, but Sally chooses to care for her mother who is handicapped by multiple sclerosis. Morse and Sally had plans to spend Christmas together at The Randolph. Sally asks Morse not to write or phone her, and offers him a Kipling quote as solace. Helen Lloyd admits she fell in love with Morse, but he didn’t reciprocate her feelings. Despite this, there are indications he may have been intimate with Mrs Lloyd.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: As an undergraduate Morse preferred a liquid lunch in one of Oxford’s city centre hostelries. He once told Mrs Lloyd that too many double Scotches usually gave him single vision. When Day seeks Morse out at The Randolph, he finds his former housemate in the main bar with an almost empty glass of beer and an empty tumbler of what had been a whisky chaser. Morse gets Day to replenish the drinks, asking for a large Glenfiddich. Visiting the Lloyds later, Morse looks down with displeasure at a glass of red plonk – they don’t have any Scotch.

  THE MANY LUSTS OF MORSE: Morse glances appreciatively more than once at the décolletage of Helen Lloyd’s skimpy white blouse. He nominates ‘unbuttoning’ as his favourite present-participle in the English language.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: Morse is doing the Times crossword in the hotel bar when Day seeks him out. He completes the final clue, praising the puzzle it set: ‘It’s nice is scrambled eggs (7)’. Later Morse says he’s been wasting his time with crosswords since the age of 11. Fellow undergrads always come to him whenever a cryptic clue defeats them – as do some of the dons. Morse could sometimes complete the Times cryptic crossword before the timer pinged for his boiled egg.

  MORSE DECODED: This short story is a treasure trove of information about Morse’s time as an undergraduate at Oxford. However, much of it contradicts what had previously been established. In the story’s introduction, Day sets himself out as an unreliable narrator and admits to altering certain facts to protect those involved. So it’s up to the reader to decide how much credence they place in this particular narrative...

  Morse was 18 in November 1967 when he sat the Oxford Entrance examinations. As a teenager Morse was of medium height, with a palish, slightly dolichocephalic face and full, light-brown hair with the merest hint of ginger to his locks. He had an extraordinarily gifted and subtle brain. In the exam Morse chose to write about County Boundaries, interpreting the title as a chance to write about cricket – despite knowing very, very little about the sport.

  Morse was awarded a Major Scholarship in Classics at Lonsdale College. He became known as Pagan to his fellow undergraduates after writing ‘High-church atheist’ in the religion section of his university application form. Morse was allocated digs with Philip Day at the North Oxford home of Jeff and Helen Lloyd. He took dinners in the Lonsdale College hall, but had regular Sunday lunch with Day and the Lloyds. Morse recognises a line by Thomas Hardy and the chapter from which it originates.

  Each week in term-time on Monday or Tuesday Morse would receive a letter from his girlfriend Sally Downes in Lincolnshire, sent in a pale-blue envelope with the flap firmly sellotaped. He excelled at translating from Greek and Latin and composition into those languages, able to read each with fluency and speed. But the history and philosophy of Greece and Rome kindled little interest in his mind. He was fascinated by the study of classical authors’ manuscripts. A. E. Housman was his hero.

  In his second year at Oxford Morse took rooms in college. He attended only two or three lectures in the latter half of Michaelmas Term. Morse didn’t discuss his home, his parents or whether he had any siblings – but did let slip his father drove a taxi. As Christmas 1969 approached, a tutor at Lonsdale who supervised Morse noticed a marked drop in the standard of the undergrad’s work. Dr Hughes considered Morse a brilliant mind, the best at the college for a decade. But without a dramatic improvement, Morse was in danger of failing his degree altogether.

  Morse was in sympathy with the widespread disillusionment and dissent of his peers at university, attending a good many protest meetings. But Day only once saw Morse taking more active participation by marching silently at the back of a large, noisy demonstration against the war in Vietnam. The undergrad empties his bank balance to buy Sally personalised number plates, but gets dumped before he can present them to her. Morse boasted that he never took any physical exercise on principle.

  Morse completed the Mods section of his Classics degree with what were rumoured to be the second highest marks of the year, but chose to discontinue his studies. He spent two years at the Patent Office in London before joining the Thames Valley Police in the early 1970s.

  SOPHOCLES DID DO IT: For once it’s someone else who keeps jumping to the wrong conclusions, while Morse is the person who obfuscates and misdirects.

  SOUNDTRACK: As an undergraduate, Morse owned an ancient portable gramophone on which he continually and sometimes continuously played highlights from Wagner’s Ring cycle. Morse gave Day a tutorial on the operatic masterpiece’s structure and story. Wagner’s music was never half as bad as it sounded, according to Morse.

  QUOTE-UNQUOTE: Morse lapses into Latin while lying about his movements: ‘I drove back here, pissed as the proverbial Triturus vulgaris.’

  Mr Lloyd asks one of the more unlikely questions in a Colin Dexter story: ‘What’s the etymology of “tickety-boo”?’ Morse doesn’t know the answer.

  Morse urges his fellow undergraduate to continue explaining a theory about who really knocked down the front fence: ‘Carry on, Sherlock!’

  Mrs Lloyd makes a wry observation about Morse’s parsimonious tendencies: ‘Always a bit on the tight side where money’s concerned, isn’t he?’

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: Commissioned by the Daily Mail newspaper, this tale was originally published in three parts over
Christmas 2008 as ‘Morse and the Mystery of the Drunken Driver’. It was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime (Volume 7) in 2010, presented as a single story with a new title – ‘Mr E. Morse, BA Oxon (Failed)’. The narrative took on new significance in 2011 when news broke that ITV were considering using it as the inspiration for a new Morse television drama. As this book goes to print, it remains to be seen if the proposed TV project will happen.

  THE VERDICT: Dexter offers a tantalising glimpse of Morse as an undergraduate in Oxford, showing us the man in the making. Still only a teenager, Morse is already fond of women, whisky, crosswords and puzzles of all kinds. Dexter writes in the first person for this short story, something of a rarity for the author. The mystery that underpins this narrative is of limited consequence and interest, but the look back at Morse’s early years will catch the eye of any enthusiast...

  CLUED UP

  ‘Characters Loved Universally, Each Decidedly Odd.’ Morse helps Lewis solve a crossword puzzle inspired by a board game about murder mysteries.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 2009

  STORYLINE: Lewis comes to Morse’s office at Thames Valley Police HQ one morning for help with the last six clues in a themed puzzle. The inspector dismisses all of his sergeant’s suggested solutions out of hand, before realising sometimes the most obvious answer is also the right one. He proposes a trip to the pub.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: Morse decides he and Lewis deserve a drink after cracking the colourful clues, especially as the pubs opened a minute earlier. Morse expects his sergeant to pay. ‘I always do,’ Lewis mutters.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: This short story is all about crosswords and puzzles. Morse beams after solving the Times crossword in eight minutes and fourteen seconds, even if his personal best is faster. He helps Lewis with a different cryptic crossword, albeit somewhat simpler than those published in The Times. Morse scoffs at the sergeant’s proposed answers, but eventually realises Lewis is right on three out of five.