Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

Part one

“Get a move on!”

“I’ll get there as fast as I can, sir — I always do.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Lewis turned left at Carfax, down into the High, and then over Magdalen Bridge, car siren wailing, before driving past the Asian grocers’ shops and the Indian restaurants in the Cowley Road.

“I mean,” replied Lewis finally, “that here we are with another murder, and you’ll get there, won’t you? You always do.”

“Nearly always,” conceded Morse.

“And I won’t. I’ve got a second-class mind—”

“Don’t underrate yourself, Lewis! Let others do it for you.”

Lewis grunted humourlessly. “I’m like a second-class stamp, and well you know it.”

“But second-class stamps usually get there in the end.”

“Exactly. Just take a dickens of a lot longer—”

“Slowdown!”

Morse had been consulting an Oxford street plan, and now jabbed a finger to his right.

“That’s it, Lewis: Jowett Place. What number did you say?”

“Probably where those two police cars are parked, sir.”

Morse grinned weakly. “Maintain that level of deductive brilliance, Lewis, and we’ll be through this case before the pubs are open.”

It was 8:50 on the dull, intermittently drizzly morning of Monday, 15 February 1993.

The Oxford City Police had contacted Kidlington CID an hour or so earlier after receiving a 999 call from one Paul Bayley, first-floor tenant of the narrow, two-storey property that stood at 14 Jowett Place. Bayley, an erstwhile History graduate from Magdalen College, Oxford, had found himself out of milk that morning — had walked downstairs — knocked on the door of the woman tenant directly below him, Ms. Sheila Poster — had found the door unlocked — and there...

Or so he said.

Morse looked down at the fully dressed woman lying just inside the ground-floor living-room, the left arm extended, the pleasingly manicured fingernails straining, it appeared, to reach the door. Beneath and in front of the body was a distressingly copious pool of dully matted blood; and although the weapon had been removed it was possible even for such a non-medical man as Morse to unjumble the simple truth that the woman had most probably been stabbed through the heart. Longish dark curls framed the pale face — from which the large brown eyes now stared, for ever fixedly, at a threadbare square of the lime-green carpet.

“Lovely looking girl,” said Lewis quietly.

Morse averted his eyes from the terrible sight, glanced across the the curtained window, then stepped outside the room into the narrow hallway, where Dr. Laura Hobson, the police pathologist, stood in subdued conference with a scene-of-crime officer.

“She’s all yours,” said Morse, in a tone suggesting that the abdication of responsibility for the body was something of a relief. As indeed it was, for Morse had always recoiled from the sight of violent death.

“Funny name — ‘Poster’!” volunteered Lewis as the two detectives stepped up the narrow stairs of Number 14.

“Is it?” asked Morse, his voice betraying no real interest in the matter.

Bayley was sitting beside a police constable in his untidy living room — a large-buttocked, lank-haired, yet handsome sort of fellow, in his late twenties perhaps; unshaven, pony-tailed, with a small earring in his left ear. To whom, predictably, Morse took an instant and intense dislike.

He had been out drinking (Bayley claimed) throughout most of the previous evening, not leaving the King’s Arms in Broad Street until closing time. After which he’d gone back to a friend’s flat to continue the celebrations, and in fact had slept there — before returning to Jowett Place at about a quarter past seven that morning. The rest he’d already told the police, OK?

As he gave his evidence, Bayley’s hands were nervously opening and closing the Penguin translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, and Morse noted (again with distaste) the lines of ingrained dirt beneath the fingernails.

“You slept with a woman last night?”

Bayley nodded, eyes downcast.

“We shall have to know her name — my sergeant here will have to check with her. You understand that?”

Again Bayley nodded. “I suppose so, yes.”

“You didn’t leave her at all?”

“Went to the loo coupla times.”

“You in the habit of sleeping around?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that, no.”

“Ever sleep with — with the woman downstairs?”

“Sheila? No, never.”

“Ever ask her?”

“Once.”

“And?”

“She said if we were going to have a relationship it would have to be cerebral — not conjugal.”

“Quite a way with words she had, then?”

“You could say that.”

“When did you last speak to her?”

“Week or so ago? We were talking — she was talking — about epic poetry. She... lent me this... this book. I was going to give it back to her... today.”

Lewis looked away in some embarrassment as a curtain of tears now covered Bayley’s eyes; but for a while longer Morse himself continued to stare cynically at the young man seated opposite him.

Downstairs, in the second of the two rooms which (along with the kitchen) were offered for rent at 14 Jowett Place, Morse contemplated the double bed in which, presumably, the murdered tenant had usually slumbered overnight. Two fluffy pillows concealed a full-length, bottle-green nightdress, which Morse now fingered lightly before turning back the William-Morris-patterned duvet and examining the undersheet.

“No sign of any recent nocturnal emissions, sir.”

“You have a genteel way of putting things,” said Morse.

The room was sparsely furnished, sparely ornamented — with a large mahogany wardrobe taking up most of the space left by the bed. On the bedside table stood a lamp; an alarm clock; a box containing half a dozen items of cheap jewellery; and a single book: Reflections on Inspiration and Creativity, by Diogenes Small (Macmillan, £14.99).

Picking up the latter, Morse opened its pages at the point where a blue leather bookmarker (“Greetings from Erzincan”) had been placed — and then with no obvious enthusiasm read aloud the few sentences which had been highlighted in the text with a yellow felt-tipped pen:

“Bloody ’ell!”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Can’t even spell,” muttered Morse, as Lewis picked up the bookmarker.

“Where’s Erzincan?”

“Dunno. When I was at school we had to do one of the three ’G’s: Greek, German, or Geography.”

“And you didn’t do Geography...”

But a silent Morse was standing now at the window (curtains drawn back) which looked out onto a patch of leaf-carpeted lawn at the rear of the house. Strangely, something had stirred deep down in his mind, like the opening chords of Das Rheingold; chords that for the moment, though, remained below his audial range.

Lewis opened the wardrobe doors, exposing a modest collection of dresses and coats hanging from the rail; and half a dozen pairs of cheap shoes stowed neatly along the bottom.

Overhead they heard the creaking of floorboards as someone — must be Bayley? — paced continuously to and fro. And Morse’s eyes rose slowly to the ceiling.

But he said nothing.

Neither the bedroom nor the kitchen had yielded anything of significant interest; and Morse was anxious to hear Dr. Hobson’s verdict, however tentative, when half an hour later she emerged from the murder-room.

“Sharp knife by the look of things — second attempt — probably entering from above. Bled an awful lot — as you saw... still, most of us would — with the knife-blade through the heart. Shouldn’t be too difficult to be fairly precise about the time — I’ll be having a closer look, of course — but I’d guess, say, eight to ten hours ago? No longer, I don’t think. Eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock last night?”

“After the pubs had closed.”

“She hadn’t been drinking, Inspector.”

“Oh!”

Morse placed his hand lightly on the young pathologist’s shoulder and thanked her. Her eyes looked interesting — and interested. Sometimes Morse thought he could fall in love with Laura Hobson; and sometimes he thought he couldn’t.

It was almost midday before Morse gave the order for the body to be removed. The scene-of-crime personnel had finished their work, and a thick, transparent sheeting had now been laid across the carpet. Lewis, with two DCs, had long since been despatched to cover the preliminary tasks: to check Bayley’s alibi, to question the neighbours, and to discover whatever they could of Sheila Poster’s past. And Morse himself now stood alone, and gazed around the room in which Sheila Poster had been murdered.

Almost immediately, however, it was apparent that little was likely to be found. The eight drawers of the modern desk which stood against the inside wall were completely empty; with the almost inevitable conclusion to be drawn that the murderer had systematically emptied the contents of each, as well as whatever had stood on the desk-top, into... well, into something — black plastic-bag, say? And then disappeared into the night; in gloves, like as not, for Morse had learned that no extraneous prints had been discovered — only those left almost everywhere by the murdered tenant. The surfaces of the desk, the shelving, the furniture, the window — all had been dutifully daubed and dusted with fingerprint powder; but it seemed highly improbable that such a methodical murderer had left behind any easily legible signature.

No handbag, either; no documents of any sort; nothing.

Or was there?

Above the desk, hanging by a cord from the picture-rail, was a plywood board, some thirty inches square, on which ten items were fixed by multicoloured drawing-pins: five Medici reproductions of well-known paintings (including two Pre-Raphaelites); a manuscript facsimile of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”; a postcard showing the death-mask of Tutankhamen; a photograph of a kingfisher, a large fish balanced in its mouth, perched on a “No Fishing” sign; a printed invitation to a St. Hilda’s Old Girls’ evening in March 1993; and a leaflet announcing a crime short-story competition organized by Oxfordshire County Libraries: “First prize £1,000— Judges Julian Symons and H. R. F. Keating — Final date 10 April 1993.”

Huh! Still seven weeks to go. But there’d now be no entry from Sheila Poster, would there, Morse?

He methodically unpinned each of the cards and turned them over. Four were blank — obviously purchased for decorative purposes. But two had brief messages written on them. On the Egyptian card, in what Morse took to be a masculine hand, were the words: “Cairo’s bloody hot but wish you were here — B.” And on the back of Collins’s “Convent Thoughts,” in what Morse took to be a feminine hand: “On a weekend retreat! I knew I wouldn’t miss men. But I do!! Susan.”

On each side of the boarded-up fireplace were five bookshelves, their contents systematically stacked in order: Austen novels, top left, Wordsworth poems, bottom right. Housman’s Collected Poems suddenly caught Morse’s eye, and he extracted his old hero, the book falling open immediately at “Last Poems” XXVI, where a postcard (another one) had been inserted: the front showing a photograph of streets in San Jose (so it said) and, on the back, a couplet written out in black Biro:

Morse smiled to himself, for the poem from which the lines were taken had been part of his own mental furniture for many moons.

Yet so very soon the smile had become a frown. He’d seen that same handwriting only a few seconds since, surely? He unpinned the postcard from Cairo again; and, yes, the handwriting was more than a reasonable match.

So what?

So what, Morse? Yet for many seconds his eyes were as still as the eyes that stared from the mask of Tutankhamen.

Lewis came briskly into the room twenty minutes later, promptly reading from his note-book:

“Sheila Emily Poster; second-class honours degree in English from St. Hilda’s 1990; aged twenty-five — comes from Bristol; Dad died in ’eighty-four — Hodgkin’s disease; Mum in a special home there — Alzheimer’s; only child; worked for a while with the University Geology Department in the reference section; here in this property almost ten months — £490 a month; £207 in the Building Society; £69.40 in her current account at Lloyds.”

“You can get interest on current accounts these days, did you know that, Lewis?”

“Useful thing for you to know, sir.”

“You’ve been quick.”

“Easy! Bursar of St. Hilda’s, DSS, Lloyds Bank — no problems. Murder does help sometimes, doesn’t it?”

A sudden splash of rain hatched the front window and Morse stared out at the melancholy day:

“Pardon, sir?”

But Morse seemed not to hear. “There’s all this stuff here, Lewis...” Morse pointed vaguely to the piles of magazines lying around. “You’d better have a look through.”

“Can’t we get somebody else—”

“No!” thundered Morse. “I need help — your help, Lewis. For Chrissake get on with it!”

Far from any annoyance, Lewis felt a secret contentment. In only one respect was he unequivocally in a class of his own as a police officer, he knew that: for there was only one person with whom the curmudgeonly Morse could ever work with any kind of equanimity — and that was himself, Lewis.

He now settled therefore with his accustomed measure of commitment to the fourth-grade clerical chore of sorting through the piles of women’s magazines, fashion journals, brochures, circulars, and the like, that were stacked on the floor-space in the two alcoves of the living room.

He was still working when just over an hour later Morse returned from his lunchtime ration of calories, taken entirely in liquid form.

“Found anything?”

Lewis shook his head. “One or two amusing bits, though.”

“Well? Let’s share the joke. Life’s grim enough.”

Lewis looked back into one of the piles, found a copy of the Oxford Gazette (May 1992), and read from the back page.

Morse was unimpressed. “We’re all of us overqualified in Oxford.”

“Not all of us.”

“How long will you be?”

“Another half-hour or so.”

“I’ll leave you then.”

“What’ll you be doing, sir?”

“I’ll still be thinking. See you back at HQ.”

Morse walked out again, down Cowley Road to the Plain; over Magdalen Bridge, along the High, and then up Catte Street to the Broad; and was standing, undecided for a few seconds, in front of Blackwell’s book shop and the narrow frontage of the adjoining White Horse (“Open All Day”) — when the idea suddenly struck him.

He caught a taxi from St. Giles’ out to Kidlington. Not to Police HQ though, but to 45 Blenheim Close, the address given on the leaflet advertising the Oxfordshire short-story competition.

“You’re a bit premature, really,” suggested Rex De Lincto, the short, fat, balding, slightly deaf Chairman of the Oxford Book Association. “There’s still about a couple of months to go and we’ll only receive most of the entries in the last week or so.”

“You’ve had some already, though?”

“Nine.”

De Lincto walked over to a cabinet, took out a handwritten list of names, and passed it across.

1 IAN BRADLEY

2 EMMA SKIPPER

3 VALERIE WARD

4 JIM MORWOOD

5 CHRISTINA COLLINS

6 UNA BROSHOLA

7 ELISSA THORPE

8 RICHARD ELVES

9 MARY ANN COTTON

Morse scanned the list, his attention soon focusing on the last name.

“Odd,” he mumbled.

“Pardon?”

“Mary Ann Cotton. Same name as that of a woman hanged in Durham jail in the 1880s.”

“So?”

“And look at her!” Morse’s finger pointed to number five, Christina Collins. “She got herself murdered up on the canal in Staffordshire somewhere. Surely!”

“I’m not quite with you, Inspector.”

“Do you get phoney names sometimes?”

“Well, you can’t tell, really, can you? I mean, if you say you’re Donald Duck—”

Morse nodded. “You are Donald Duck.”

“You’d perhaps use a nom de plume if you were an established author...”

“But this competition’s only for first-timers, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been reading the small print, Inspector.”

“But how do you know who they are if they’ve won?”

“We don’t sometimes. Not for a start. But every entrant sends an address.”

“I see.”

Morse looked again at the list, and suddenly the blood was running cold in his veins. The clues, or some of them, were beginning to lock together in his mind: the short-story leaflet; the advice of Diogenes Small, that guru of creative writing; the book that young Bayley had borrowed... the translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which Dido, the queen of Carthage, had fallen in love with Aeneas and then stabbed herself in her despair... Dido... known also by an alternative name — Elissa!

Morse took out a pencil and lightly made twelve oblique strokes through each letter of ELISSA THORPE, in what seemed to De Lincto a wholly random order; but an order which in Morse’s mind spelled out in sequence the letters of the name SHEILA POSTER.

Morse rose to his feet and looked across at the cabinet. “You’d better let me have story number seven, if you will, sir.”

“Of course. And if I may say so, you’ve made a very good choice, Inspector.”

Only one message was awaiting Morse when he returned to his office at HQ: Dr. Hobson had called to say that Sheila Poster was about twelve weeks pregnant. But Morse paid scant attention to this new information, for there was something he had to do immediately.

He therefore sat back comfortably in the old black-leather armchair.

And read a story.

Part two

The story (printed verbatim here) which Morse now began to read was cleanly typed and carefully presented.

I was gratified though surprised that my carefully worded application had been considered and I caught the bus in good time.

At 10:30 A.M. to the minute I walked along the flagged path that bisected the weedless front lawn and knocked at the door of The Grange in Squitchey Lane.

A quarter of an hour later, after a last mouthful of some bitter-tasting coffee, I’d landed the job.

How?

I wasn’t sure, not then. But when she asked me if I’d enjoyed the coffee, I said I preferred a cup of instant, and she’d smiled thinly.

“That’s what my husband says.”

I hoped my voice showed an appropriate interest.

“Your husband?”

“He’s abroad. The Americans are picking his brains.”

She stood up.

“Do you know why I’ve offered you the job?”

It was a bit risky but I said it: “No one else applied?”

“I’m not surprised you have a degree. You’re quite bright really.”

“Thank you.”

“You need the money, I suppose?”

I lowered my eyes to the deep Wilton and nodded.

“Goodbye,” she said.

I left her standing momentarily there at the front door — slim, elegantly dressed, and young — well, comparatively young.

And, yes, I ought to admit it, uncommonly attractive.

The tasks allotted to me could only just be squeezed into the nine hours a week I spent at The Grange.

But £36 was £36.

And that was a bonus.

Can you guess what I’m saying? Not yet?

You will.

Two parts of the house I was forbidden to enter: the master bedroom (remember that bedroom!) and the master’s study — the latter by the look of it a large converted bedroom on the upstairs floor whose door was firmly closed.

Firmly locked, as I soon discovered.

There was no such embargo on the mistress’s study — a fairly recent addition at the rear of the house in the form of a semi-conservatory, its shelves, surfaces, and floor all crammed with books and littered with loose papers and typescripts. And dozens of house-plants fighting for a little Lebensraum.

I was invariably fascinated with the place as I carefully (too carefully) watered the plants, replaced the books in alphabetical order, shuffled untidy piles into tidy piles, and carefully (too carefully) hoovered the carpeted floor and dusted around.

I love charging around with a duster. It’s one of the only jobs I do where I can actually see a result.

And I like seeing a result...

There was only one thing wrong with that room.

The cat.

I hate all cats but especially this cat, which occasionally looked at me in a mysterious knowing aristocratic potentially ferocious manner.

Like his mistress.

A small two-way cat-flap had been cut into the door leading from the conservatory to the rear garden through which the frequently filthy-pawed “Boswell” (huh!) would make his exits and his entrances.

Ah, but bless you, Boswell!

I felt confident that Mrs. Spencer-Gilbey could not have taken up my single reference since from the beginning she called me “Virginia” without the slightest hint of suspicion.

For my part, I called her “ma’am,” to rhyme with “jam.” It was five syllables shorter than any more formal address, and I think the royal connotation was somewhat pleasing to her.

Early on the Wednesday morning of my third week the amateurish tack-tack-tack of the typewriter in the conservatory stopped and my employer came through into the downstairs lounge to inform me she had to go out for two hours.

It was at that point I made my first bold move.

I took a leather-bound volume from the bookshelf beside me and blew a miniature dust-storm along the golden channel at the top of its pages.

“Would you like me to give the books a wipe with a duster?”

For a few seconds I thought I saw in those cold grey eyes of hers something very close to hatred.

“If you can put them all back exactly as you found them.”

“I’ll try, ma’am.”

“Don’t try. Do it!”

It was going to be a big job.

Bookshelves lined three whole sides of the room, and at mid-morning I had a coffee-break in the kitchen.

Outside by the garden shed I saw the steatopygous odd-job man who appeared intermittently — usually when I was leaving — to fix a few things as I supposed.

I held my coffee-cup up to the window and my eyes asked him if he’d care to join me.

His eyes replied yes and I saw he was younger than I had thought.

More handsome too.

I asked him how well he knew her ladyship but he merely shrugged.

“She’s writing a book, did you know?” I asked.

“Really?”

He took a swallow of his coffee and I saw that his hands though grubby enough were not those of a manual labourer.

“On Sir Thomas Wyatt,” I continued. “I had a look when I was hoovering.”

“Really?”

If his vocabulary seemed rather limited, his eyes ranged over me more widely, and he smiled in a curiously fascinating way.

“I don’t suppose you know much about Sir Thomas Wyatt?”

He shrugged again. “Not much. But if you’re going to tell me he died in 1542, you’ll be wasting your time, won’t you?”

Jesus!

He smiled again, this time at my discomfiture; then leaned forward and kissed me fully on the lips.

“Are you on the pill?”

“It’s all right. You see, I’m pregnant,” I replied.

Afterwards we dared to have a cigarette together. It was the first I’d smoked for six months and it tasted foul.

Stupid!

His lighter was out of fuel and I used one of the extra-long Bryant & May matches kept in the kitchen for various purposes.

For various purposes...

I’d almost finished the second wall of bookshelves when milady came back.

Just after I had turned round to acknowledge her presence a single sheet of paper fluttered to the floor.

Quickly I bent down to pick it up but she was immediately beside me, snatching it from my hand.

It was only a brief note and its contents could be read almost at a glance:

The message had been typed on cheap thin paper with the signatory’s name written in light-blue Biro — “Marie,” the “i” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.

But Mrs. S-G said nothing, and half an hour later I was on my way home — unobtrusively as ever.

I had advertised to no one the fact that I was working as a part-time charwoman and I took care to be seen by as few people as possible.

There were reasons for this. You will see.

The following Monday I asked Mrs. S-G if I could vary my time slightly and start half an hour earlier.

“Do you have to?” Her voice was contemptuous of the request.

“It’s just that if I caught the earlier bus—”

“Oh, don’t explain, for heaven’s sake! Do you have to? — that’s all I asked.”

I said I did, and it was agreed that I should henceforth begin at 8:30 A.M.

On Friday of that same week the postman called at 8:50 A.M., and three letters seemed to slither through the front door: a communication from British Telecom; a letter addressed to Mrs. S-G, marked “Strictly Private”; and a letter for Mr. S-G, the name and address written in light-blue Biro, the “i” of “Squitctley” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.

Even as I picked up the letters I knew that my employer was just behind me.

“Thank you. I’ll take them.”

Her manner was offensively brusque. But I made no demur and continued wiping the skirting boards around the entrance hall.

“I’m sorry,” I said (it was the following Wednesday), “but I shan’t be able to come on Friday.”

“Oh?”

“You see I’ve got to go to the ante-natal clinic...”

“Don’t explain, for heaven’s sake. I thought I’d told you that before.”

“You did, yes.”

She said no more.

Nor did I.

The phone was seldom used at The Grange but that morning I heard her ring up someone from the conservatory.

I stood close to the door and tried hard to listen but the only part of the proceedings I caught was “Saturday night...”

My appointment at the hospital was for 10:30 A.M. but an emergency put the morning’s programme back by about an hour.

During the wait I read a few articles from various magazines, including an interview with an old gardener now aged one hundred who claimed that for getting rid of dandelions there was nothing quite so effective as arsenic, a small quantity of which he always kept in his garden shed.

Was it at this point I began to think of getting rid of Mrs. S-G? Along with the dandelions?

I suppose I’d already pondered the problems likely to face unmarried mums. Problems so often caused by married dads.

What really irks me more than anything, though, is all that sickening spiel they come up with. You know, about not wanting anyone to get hurt. Above all not wanting the little wife to get hurt.

Hypocrites!

It was my turn for receiving letters on the Thursday of the following week. Two of them.

The first was from the hospital. I was fine. The baby was fine. I felt almost happy.

The second was from the father of my child, with the postmark “Los Angeles.”

Here’s the bit I want you to read:

How nice and cosy that would be!

And I would be there, perhaps.

Yes, there was a chance that I would be there.

The following day, Friday, was to be my last in employment as a cleaning lady, and that morning I put the finishing touches to my plan.

Originally I had intended to kill only Mrs. S-G. But my terms of reference had now widened.

That same afternoon I acted in an uncharacteristically careless way. I wrote a letter to my former employer:

It would have been tit-for-tat in the resignation-dismissal stakes. But I didn’t post the letter that day.

Nor the next.

Mrs. S-G however had clearly been better stocked with first-class stamps and her letter lay on the hall-mat the following morning, Saturday 13th, with mine still propped up against the Kellogg’s packet on the kitchen table.

Stupid.

Both of them had called me stupid.

On that same Saturday night — or rather in the early hours of the Sunday morning — I waited with great patience for the light to be switched off in the master bedroom. (You remember it?)

If they were not in the same bed at least they were in the same bedroom, since I had seen the two figures silhouetted several times behind the curtains.

I further waited one whole hour, to the minute, before moving soundlessly along the side of the house and then into the rear garden where I stooped down beside the conservatory door.

Good old Boswell! (Remember him?) I almost hoped he’d decided to sleep out in the open that night.

I struck one of the extra-large Bryant & May matches. (Remember them?) And shielding the flame I pushed my hand slowly through the cat-flap.

Behind the glass-panelled door I could see the loose sheets of paper (so carefully stacked) catching light almost immediately.

No more than ten seconds later I felt rather than heard the sudden “whoosh” of some powerful updraught as a tongue of flame licked viciously at the items (so carefully stacked) beside the conservatory door.

The colour of the blaze reminded me so very much of Boswell’s eyes.

I departed swiftly via the front path before turning round fifty or so yards down the road.

The window of the master bedroom was still in darkness. But at the rear of the house I had the impression that although it was still only 2:15 A.M. the rosy-fingered dawn was beginning to break already.

It was big news.

Headlined in Monday’s edition of The Oxford Mail, for example, I read:

My eyes skipped on to the next paragraph:

But I wasn’t really interested about where.

So I turned to look at the picture on page two.

It hadn’t after all seemed worthwhile to turn up at the Bird and Baby the previous day. So I hadn’t gone.

You can see why.

The fire was still big (bigger) news in the Tuesday evening’s edition of The Oxford Mail:

And he had also rung me.

For a start I was tempted to “come forward” myself — over the phone and anonymously — with a tentative (hah!) suggestion about the identity of that second fire-victim.

God rot his lecherous soul!

But I shan’t make that call.

One call I shall quite certainly make though. Once the dust, once the ashes have started to settle.

You see, I think that a meeting between the two of us could possibly be of some value after all. Don’t you?

And even as I write I almost hear the words that I shall use:

“John? Sunday? The usual? Twelve noon in the back room of the Bird and Baby? Please be there!”

Yes, John, please be there — for both our sakes...

Part three

Lewis came into Morse’s office just before four o’clock that afternoon.

“Not much to report, sir. There’s a card on the notice-board there — looks as if it might be from a boyfriend.”

“I saw it.”

“And there’s this — I reckon it’s probably in the same handwriting.”

Lewis handed over a postcard showing a caparisoned camel standing in front of a Tashkent mosque. On the back Morse read the brief message: “Travelling C 250 K E.”

“What’s that all about, do you think, sir?”

Morse shook his head: “Dunno. Probably the number of the aeroplane or the flight number or... something. Where did you find it, anyway?”

“There was an atlas there and I was looking up that place — you know, Erzincan. The postcard was stuck in there. You know, like a sort of marker.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you want to know where Erzincan is?”

“No. I looked it up when I got back here.”

“Oh.”

With a glint of triumph in his eyes, Morse now picked up the pink folder containing the Sheila Poster story and quickly explained its provenance.

“I want you to read this.”

“What, now, sir?”

“Did you think I meant on your summer holidays?”

“I’m a slow reader, you know that.”

“So am I.”

“You want me to read it here?”

“No. I’ve got things to be getting on with here. Go and have a sandwich. And take your time. Enough clues there to fill a crossword puzzle.”

After Lewis had gone, Morse looked at his watch and started on The Times crossword.

When, eleven minutes later, he filled in the four blanks left, in — E-S-I-, he knew he should have been quicker in solving that final clue: “Gerry-built semi is beginning to collapse in such an upheaval” (7).

Not bad, though.

A further hour passed before Lewis returned from the canteen and sat down opposite his chief.

“Lot’s o’ clues, you’re right, sir. Probably made everything up, though, didn’t she?”

“Not everything, not by a long chalk — not according to Diogenes Small.”

“According to who, sir?”

“To whom, Lewis — please!”

“Sorry, sir. I’m getting better about spelling, though. She made one mistake herself, didn’t she?”

“Don’t you start making things up!” Morse passed a handwritten list across the desk. “You just rope in Dixon and Palmer — and, well, we can get through this little lot in no time at all.”

Lewis nodded: “Have the case sewn up before the pubs close.”

For the first time that day there appeared a genuine smile on Morse’s face. “And these are only the obvious clues. You’ll probably yourself have noticed a good many clues that’ve escaped my notice.”

“Temporarily escaped,” muttered Lewis, as he looked down at Morse’s notes:

— Names (road, house, people): all phoney, like as not?

— Gazette: same ad you found? check

— Mr. X (potential father): an academic surely? lecture tour of USA?

— Boswell: owners of this strange orange-eyed breed? check with the Cat Society

— Publishers (OUP etc): any recent work known/ commissioned on Sir T W?

— Ante-natal clinics: check — esp. JR2

— Bird and Baby: check, with photograph

“We should come up with something, I agree, sir. But it’s going to take quite a while.”

“You think so?”

“Well, I mean, for a start, is there such a thing as the Cat Society?”

“That’s what you’re going to check up on, Lewis!”

“Seven lots of things to check up on, though.”

“Six!” Morse rose from his armchair, smiling happily once again. “I’ll check up on that last bit myself.”

“But where are you going to get a photo from?”

“Good point,” conceded Morse, allowing, in his mind, that occasionally it was perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition.

At 10:15 P.M. Lewis rang Morse’s home number, but received no reply. Was the great man still immersed in his self-imposed assignment — with or without a photograph?

In fact Morse was at that moment still sitting in the murder-room at 14 Jowett Place.

His mind had earlier informed him that he had missed something there; and at 8:15 P.M. he had re-entered the property, assuring the PC guarding the front door that he wouldn’t be all that long.

But nothing had clicked in that sad room. And the over-beered Morse had sat in the sole armchair there and fallen asleep — finally awakening half an hour after midnight, and feeling as rough (as they say) as a bear’s backside.

The following morning Lewis reported on his failures, Dixon’s failures, Palmer’s failures; and Morse reported on his own failures.

“You know this house business?” volunteered a rather subdued Lewis. “She’s very specific about it, isn’t she? Listed building, thatched, timbered, conservatory at the back — couldn’t we try the Council, some of the upmarket estate-agents...”

“Waste o’ time, I reckon.”

“So? What do we do next?”

“Perhaps we ought to look at things from the, er, the motivation angle.”

“Doesn’t sound much like you, sir.”

No, it wasn’t much like him — Morse knew that. He loved to have some juicy facts in front of him; and he’d never cared to peer too deeply down into the abyss of human consciousness. Yet there now seemed no alternative but to erect some sort of psychological scaffolding around Sheila Poster’s hopes and fears, her motives and mistakes... And only then to look in turn once more through each of the windows; once more to ask what the murdered woman was trying to tell everyone — trying to tell herself — in the story she had written.

Morse sought to put his inchoate thoughts into words whilst Sergeant Lewis sat opposite and listened. Dubiously.

“Let’s assume she’s had a fairly permanent job in the past — well, we know she has — but she’s been made redundant — she’s got hardly any money — everything she owns is just that bit cheap — she meets some fellow — falls for him — he’s married — but he promises to take her where the lemon trees bloom — she believes him — she carelessly gets herself pregnant — by chance she finds an advert his wife has put in the local rag — she goes to work there — she’s curious about the wife — jealous about her — she wants the whole situation out in the open — things turn sour though — lover-boy has second thoughts — he jilts her — the wife gives her the sack into the bargain — and our girl is soon nourishing a hatred for both of them — she wants to destroy both of them — but she can’t really bring herself to destroy the father of her child — so in her story she changes things a bit — and sticks the wife in bed with a lover of her own — because then her own lover, Sheila’s lover, will still be around, still alive — so there’ll always be the chance of her winning him back — but he’s bored with her — there’s some academic preferment in the offing perhaps — he wants to get rid of her for good — he’s prepared to play the faithful husband again — but Sheila won’t play ball — she threatens to expose him — and when he goes to see her she becomes hysterical — he sees red — he sees all the colours of the rainbow — including orange, Lewis — because he knows she can ruin everything — will ruin everything — and then he knifes her...”

“Who knifes her?” asked Lewis quietly.

Morse shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I know what, though. I know I’m missing something!”

For a few moments the look on Morse’s face was potentially belligerent — like that of Boswell in the story; and Lewis felt diffident about asking the favour.

Yet his wife had insisted that he did.

“I hope you won’t mind, sir, but if I could take a couple of hours off this lunchtime? The wife—”

Morse’s eyebrows rose. “Doesn’t she know you’re in the middle of a murder enquiry? What’s she want you to do? Take her a bag of spuds home?”

Lewis hesitated: “It’s just that, well, there’s this great big crack that’s appeared overnight in the kitchen wall and the wife’s worried stiff that if we don’t—”

“Bit of subsidence, you reckon?” (The pedantic Morse gave the stress to the first of the three syllables.)

“More like an earthquake, sir.”

For several seconds Morse sat utterly immobile in his chair, as if petrified before the sight of the Gorgon. And for the same several seconds Lewis wondered if his chief had suffered some facial paralysis.

Then Morse’s lips slowly parted in a beatific smile. “Lewis, my old friend, you’ve done it again! You’ve gone-and-done-it-once-again! I think I see it. Yes, I think I see all of it!”

The happily bewildered Lewis sat back to learn the nature of his latest involuntary feat; but any enlightenment would have to wait awhile — that much was clear.

“Don’t you let that missus of yours down!” beamed Morse. “She’s one in a million, remember that! Get off and sort things out with the surveyor or something—”

“Or the demolition squad.”

“—and get back here” (Morse looked at his watch) “two o’clock, say?”

“You’re sure—?”

“Absolutely. I’ve got a few important things to do here. And, er, just ask Dixon to come in, will you? And Palmer, if he’s there?”

Lewis’s euphoria was dissipating rapidly; but he had no opportunity to remonstrate, for Morse had already dialled a number and was asking if he was through to the Atlas Department of the Oxford University Press.

Sergeant Lewis returned to Kidlington HQ just before 2 P.M., almost three hours later, having finally received some reasonable reassurance that the Lewis residence was in minimal danger of imminent collapse. And at least Mrs. Lewis was now somewhat happier in her mind.

It soon became apparent to Lewis that during his absence someone — the doughnut-addicted Dixon? the pea-brained Palmer? — had been back out to Jowett Place; and Morse himself (what else had he been up to?) now sat purring like some cream-crammed orange-eyed longhair as he surveyed the evidence before him on his desk — ready, it appeared, to lead the way along the path of true enlightenment.

“Clue Number One.” Morse opened the magnum opus of Diogenes Small and lovingly contemplated the bookmark: “Greetings from Erzincan.” “All right, Lewis?”

“Clue Number Two.” He held up the postcard from Tashkent, turned it over, and read out its brief message once more:” “Travelling C 250 K E.” Not too bright, were we? It means exactly what it says: Travelling about two hundred and fifty kilometres east, east of Tashkent, where we find, Lewis — the Susamyr Valley in Kirgyzstan.

“Clue Number Three. Dear old Toot-and-come-in — another postcard, another message, pretty certainly in the same handwriting: ‘Cairo’s bloody hot but wish you were here.’ Remember? Signed ‘B.’

“Clue Number Four.” Morse picked up the couplet from “Last Poems.” “Lines from a love poem, Lewis — with the seas between the pair of them — written from Los Angeles — the place to which the letter was re-addressed by Mrs. S-G in the story. Remember? And we know why he went to all these places, don’t we?”

Lewis didn’t. But he nodded.

Why not?

“Then there was Clue Number Five — that walloping great clue you found straightaway: the fact that Sheila Poster had worked in the Geology Department here. Huh! I was blind.

“Then there was Clue Number Six... from The Times crossword yesterday... Well, no, perhaps that was just a coincidence.

“And to cap it all you tell me about those almighty cracks in your bedroom wall...”

“Crack — only one crack, sir — in the kitchen, actually.”

Morse waved his right hand as if dismissing such trivial inaccuracies as of minor moment.

“And, Lewis, the dates all match — all of ’em. In each case they fall about ten days or a fortnight after the events — I’ve checked ’em with a lovely girl called Eunice Gill in the OUP cartographical section.”

(What hadn’t Morse done, Lewis was beginning to wonder.)

“And she faxed me this,” continued Morse.

Lewis took the sheet and read a newspaper paragraph, dated 28.xi.92:

It had all taken Lewis far too long, of course; but now he let the information sink in. And finally he spoke:

“So what we need is a list of the delegates at the conference. Shouldn’t take—”

But he got no further, for Morse handed him a sheet on which the members of the UK delegation were listed.

“Good man — Sergeant Dixon — you know,” said Morse.

Lewis ignored the tribute. “None of ’em with the initial ‘B,’ though.”

“Why not try ‘R’?” asked Morse quietly.

So an embarrassed Lewis tried “R,” and looked again at the middle name of the five: Robert Grainger, D.Phil., MA.

“So all we need is to find out his address—”

“Cumnor Hill, Lewis. Not far off, is it? Palmer traced him. Good man — Palmer — you know.”

Part four

“Why do you think he did it?” asked Lewis as they drove along the Botley Road.

“Grainger’s possible motives, you mean? Well, he was hot favourite for the chair in Geology — you’ve just discovered that for yourself. Great honour, you know, having a professorial chair at Oxford. Biggest prize of the lot. For some people.”

Lewis nodded, for he half understood now, and himself took up the thread: “And Sheila Poster was going to ruin it all. Just as he’s going to claim his birthright, he’s suddenly faced with the prospect of scandal and failure and divorce... and the nightmare of some squawking infant into the bargain.”

Morse was unusually slow in his reply as they started to climb Cumnor Hill. “I wouldn’t know about those last two things, Lewis.”

They walked along the flagged path that bisected the well-tended lawn, weedless even in winter, and knocked on a front door which was immediately opened by a prematurely grey-haired man, slimly built, in his late forties or so, his eyes looking at them over half-lensed spectacles.

“You’re the police, I suppose?”

Morse showed his warranty. “Dr. Grainger?”

For a few seconds the man hesitated. Then stood back and ushered his visitors into a well-appointed lounge, three of its walls completely lined with books.

“Yes. I suppose we’d better get it over with.”

He spoke quite slowly, and without emotion — at least to begin with. Yes, he knew that Sheila Poster had been murdered. He’d read it in the Oxford Mail. Yes, he’d had an affair with her; she’d been putting pressure on him to leave his wife and go to live with her; she’d told him she was pregnant — though he’d doubted the claim. His wife now knew most of the truth, but had only become directly involved because Sheila had contrived somehow to get a job as a cleaning-woman in the house there, and then had sought to poison the marital relationship — what little there was left of it...

It was at this point that the belittled Lewis (seemingly to Morse’s mild amusement?) decided to assert himself.

“It’ll be up to Mrs. Grainger to give us details about her side of things, sir. You yourself weren’t here, were you, when Miss Poster was working for your wife?”

Grainger, who hitherto had been speaking directly to Morse, now turned his eyes upon Lewis.

“You mean you’re not prepared to take my word about what my wife has told me?”

“We’re not here to answer questions, Dr. Grainger — we’re here to ask them,” snapped Lewis.

Irritatedly, Grainger turned back to Morse. “Is it necessary for us to have this man with us, Inspector? I am not used to being spoken to in this way and I find it wholly and unnecessarily offensive!”

“This is a murder enquiry, sir,” began Morse rather lamely. “You must understand—”

“But I do understand. And I’m telling you you’re wasting your time if you think you’ll find any murderer in this house.”

“Where were you on Sunday night?” asked Morse quietly.

“Huh! I’ll tell you. I was in America — that’s where I was.”

“And you can prove that?”

Grainger stood up, and followed by Lewis walked over to a bureau on which, beside a framed wedding-photograph, lay an envelope (as it proved) of travel documents. He handed it to Morse.

“As you’ll see, I arrived back only yesterday afternoon — Monday. The plane, believe it or not, landed punctually at 4:15 P.M. I caught the Heathrow bus just after five o’clock, and I got to Oxford about quarter to seven.”

“It’ll certainly be pretty easy to check up, then,” said Lewis, smiling serenely; and it was Morse who now looked round at his sergeant, more in admiration than in anger. Yet he himself sat silent and listened only, as Grainger snarled at Lewis once more, the antagonism between the two men now almost physically tangible.

“Oh yes. It’ll hardly require a man of your calibre to check up on that. And it’ll be pretty easy to check up on my wife as well. But let me tell you something. Sergeant! It won’t be you who sees her. Is that clear? She’s extremely upset — and you can understand why, can’t you? Sheila was here working for her until a fortnight or so ago. All right? Now you might get a bit blasé about murders, Sergeant — but other people don’t. My wife is under sedation and she’s not going to see anyone — not today she isn’t. And she won’t see you, in any case! Your inspector here sounds a reasonably humane and civilized sort of fellow — and perhaps there are still a few others like him in the Force. So any of them can see my wife. All right? But it won’t be you, Sergeant. Why? Because I say so!”

Phew!

Morse now intervened between the warring parties: “That’ll be fine, sir. Have no fears! I’ll be interviewing your wife myself. But... but it would help us, sir, if you do happen to know where Mrs. Grainger was on Sunday night?”

“She went to some gala do in London with one of her friends — lady-friends. As I understand it, the pair of them missed the 11:20 from Paddington and had to catch the 12:20 — the ‘milk-float,’ I think they call it — landing up here at about 2 A.M. They got a taxi home from the station. That’s all I know.”

“Have you got this friend’s telephone number?”

“You won’t need it. She lives next door.”

Grainger pointed vaguely to the right; and Morse nodded his unspoken instruction to Lewis.

And Lewis left.

Morse was already seated in the Jaguar when Lewis rejoined him ten minutes later.

“He’s right, sir. They got back here to Cumnor about half-past two in the early hours of Monday morning.”

Morse showed no emotion, for he’d fully expected confirmation of Mrs. Grainger’s alibi.

And he began to explain.

“You see, Lewis, it’s not the who-dunnit aspect of this particular case that’s really important — but the why-dunnit. Why was Sheila Poster murdered? She must surely have posed a threat to someone, either a man or a woman. And more likely a man, I’m thinking. She must have stood in the way of some man’s hopes and calculated advancement. So much of a threat that when she refused to compromise, at some show-down between them, she was murdered precisely for that refusal of hers. So we’d no option but to work backwards — agreed? And we knew her side of things, to some extent, from the story she wrote. Now some things in that story reflected actuality fairly closely, didn’t they? The Graingers’ house — ‘The Grange,’ huh! — her job there — her affair with the husband — her overwhelming wish to force the issue with the wife—”

“Don’t forget the baby, sir!”

“No, I won’t forget the baby. But Grainger didn’t seem to think she was telling the truth about that, did he?”

“She was pregnant, though.”

“Yes, she was telling the truth about being pregnant. In fact, she was telling a whole lot more of the truth perhaps than she was prepared to admit — even to herself. Let’s make a hypothetical case. What, say, if she really wanted to murder not the married couple she was telling herself she hated? What if — in her story — she wanted to murder the very people she did in fact murder: the lady-of-the-house and that lady’s lover? What if the pair of them had fallen deeply in love? What if — again as in the story — the lady-of-the-house had been only too glad to learn of her husband’s infidelity? Because then she could divorce him, and marry her new lover... the man who stood by the flower-beds and tended the lawns there...”

“The man who came in for a cup of coffee, sir.”

“Perhaps so. But don’t forget she wasn’t just telling us a string of facts in the story — she was making a whole lot of it up as she went along.”

“Really, sir?”

Lewis, as Morse could just about make out in the gloaming, was smiling quietly to himself.

“What the hell’s got into you, Lewis? You antagonize one of our leading witnesses; you go off and find an unshakeable alibi for his missus; and now you sit there grinning like a Cheshire—”

“By the way, sir, they do have a cat — I asked next door. ‘Johnson,’ its name is.”

“You’ve nothing else to tell me, have you?” asked Morse, looking curiously at his sergeant.

“Actually, there is, sir — yes.”

“Out with it, man!”

“Yesterday, sir, when we interviewed Paul Bayley, he said he’d been with his girlfriend all night.”

“You told me that. You told me you’d checked.”

“I did check. Bayley told me she was in the middle of moving flats that very day — seemed she’d been a little bit too generous with her favours for the landlord’s liking; and — just temporarily, mind — she was registered as of no fixed address. But Bayley said she’d almost certainly be in the City Centre Westgate Library — where she went most mornings — in the Local History Section—”

“Where she was!”

Lewis nodded. “Doing some research on Nuneham Courtenay and the Deserted Village. So she told me.”

“Well?”

“Well... that’s about it.”

“Is it?”

“She’s a very beautiful woman, sir.”

“More beautiful than Sheila Poster?”

“I’d say so. More to my taste, anyway.”

“And most men would fancy her?”

“If they had the chance.”

“And Bayley did have the chance.”

“I’m pretty sure he did. He’s been in Jowett Place for about four months or so now. Unemployed for a start; but then in work — so his landlord says.”

“His landlord? When did you see him?”

“He called in yesterday lunchtime, when you were in the pub. And from what he said—”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“Thought I’d just do a bit of investigation off my own bat, sir. You didn’t mind?”

“See if you could solve the case, you mean?”

“Try to, yes. And the landlord said it was Sheila Poster who’d told Bayley about the vacancy in the flat upstairs and who’d put in a good word for him, you know — gave him a good-behaviour reference. Not only that, though. I reckon she was the one who told Bayley about the odd-job vacancy going up at the Graingers’ place.”

“Phew!” Morse whistled quietly. “You’re saying Bayley was the odd-job man?”

“I’m saying exactly that, sir!”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Not yet,” replied Lewis, beaming happily.

“Let me get this clear. You’re suggesting that Bayley goes to work for Mrs. Sylvia Grainger — she falls for him — he falls for her — she knows her husband’s having an affair with the charwoman — she’s proof of it. Then” (Morse paused slightly for dramatic effect) “just when things are looking hunky-dory, this charwoman claims she’s pregnant. Not by Grainger, though...”

“... but by Bayley. Yes, sir.”

“And Bayley goes down on Sunday night — has it out with her — she refuses to play ball — and she gets herself murdered. Is that the idea?”

“Exactly!”

“But Bayley’s got an alibi! This local history woman of yours — she says she was with him all night.”

“From about nine P.M. to seven A.M. the following morning. Correct. Slept on the floor together in a friend’s house in Cowley somewhere — she refuses to say exactly where.”

“She’s probably trying to protect her friends or something.”

“Or something,” repeated Lewis.

“Just you bear in mind all the adverse publicity we’re getting about ‘confessions under duress,’ OK? We’ve got to tread carefully, you know that.”

It was still only four o’clock, yet already the afternoon had darkened into early dusk.

“Can you guess, sir, why Dr. Grainger was so worried about me interviewing his wife?”

“He probably thought you were a bit crude, Lewis — preferred a sensitive soul like me. And by the way, don’t forget that there are few in the Force more competent at that sort of thing than me.”

“You can’t think of any other reason?”

“You obviously can.”

Lewis savoured his moment of triumph. “Did you see the wedding-photo just now — the one Dr. Grainger had on the bureau?”

“Well, yes — at a distance.”

“Beautiful woman, Mrs. Grainger — very beautiful.”

“Taken quite a few years ago, that photo — she’s probably changed since then.”

“No! You’re wrong about that, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I met her very recently. Met her yesterday morning, in fact. In the Westgate Library. She told me her name was Wendy Allsworth. But it isn’t, sir. It’s Sylvia Grainger.”

“Extraordinary!” said Morse, his voice strangely flat.

“You don’t sound all that surprised.”

“Just tell me one thing. When you took the statement from — from Mrs. Grainger, do you think she knew about the murder?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“No. So unless they planned things—”

“Very doubtful!” interposed Morse.

“—Bayley must have rung her up early that morning.”

“Do you think he told her?”

“I don’t think so. If she’d known it was a murder enquiry... No, I don’t think he told her.”

“I agree. She was prepared to go a long way — did go a long way. Not that far, though.”

Lewis hesitated. “You’ll excuse me for saying so, but as I said you don’t sound very surprised about all this.”

“What? Of course I am. From where I sat I couldn’t have recognized the Queen if she’d been in that photo. The old eyes are not as sharp as they were.”

“You knew, though, didn’t you?” asked Lewis quietly.

“Not all of it, no,” lied Morse.

Yet Lewis’s silence was saddeningly eloquent, and Morse finally nodded. Then sighed deeply.

“I’ve always told you, Lewis, haven’t I? The person who finds the body is going to be your prime suspect. That’s always been my philosophy. It’s compulsive with these murderers — they want their victim found. It’d send ’em crackers if the body lay undiscovered somewhere for any length of time.”

“So?” asked Lewis dejectedly.

“So! So I had Bayley brought in this morning — this lunchtime.”

“While I was with the builder.”

“Yes. And Bayley continues to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.”

“You interviewed him yourself?”

“Yes. And I just told you, there’s no one in the Force so firmly and fairly competent as me — not in that line of business.”

Lewis was smiling wryly now — first nodding, then shaking his head. He might well have known...

He nodded towards the Graingers’ home: “Shall we go and take her in as well?”

“Actually she’s, er, she’s already helping with our enquiries.”

Lewis almost exploded. “But you can’t — you can’t mean...”

“I do, yes. I had Bayley tailed and he went out to meet Sylvia Grainger — in the bar at The Randolph — about a quarter to twelve, that was. She’d told her husband she was going to her sister’s for a few hours. That’s what she said. So! So there’s really not much point in us sitting here freezing any longer, is there?”

Lewis turned the key in the ignition, the Jaguar spurted into life, and the two detectives now sat silently side by side for several minutes as they drove back down into Oxford.

It was Lewis who spoke first: “You know, it really is nonsense what you say, sir — about the first person finding the body. I just don’t know where the evidence is for that. And then you say it’s ‘compulsive’ — didn’t you say that? — for murderers to want the body found. But some of ’em take enormous time and trouble for the body never to be found.”

“You’re right, I agree. I was exaggerating a bit.”

“So what did make you think it was Bayley? There must have been something.”

“It’s all these wretched crosswords I do. You meet some odd words, you know. The first time I saw Bayley in his room I thought what a great big fat-arsed sod he was. And then, this morning, I read Sheila Poster’s story again — and well, things went sort of ‘click.’ You remember that long word Sheila Poster used — about the odd-job man? Mind you, she was an English graduate.”

Lewis did remember, but only vaguely; he’d look it up once they got back to HQ.

“It was always going to be a straightforward case,” continued Morse. “We’d have been sure to find out where Bayley had been working, sooner or later.”

“ ‘Sooner or later,’ ” repeated Lewis. “And for once I thought it was me who was sooner. It’s just like I said: I’ve got a second-class mind — I’m just like a second-class—”

“Ah! That reminds me. Just pull in here a minute, will you?”

Lewis turned into a slip-road alongside a row of brightly lit shops just before the Thames Valley Police HQ buildings.

“Where exactly—?”

“Here! Here’s fine.”

Morse jabbed a finger to the left, and Lewis braked outside a sub post-office.

“Just nip in and get me a book of stamps, please.”

“First- or second-class?” For some reason Lewis was feeling reasonably happy again.

“No need to go wild, is there? I’ll have one book of second-class, all right? These days they get there almost as quickly as first, you know that.”

Morse had been pushing his hands one after the other into the pockets of overcoat, jacket, trousers — seemingly without success.

“You’ll never believe it, Lewis, but...”

“I think I will, sir. Remember what that fellow Diogenes Small wrote about people’s flights of imagination?”

“You’ve been soaring up there yourself, you mean?”

“Not quite, no. All I’m saying is it wouldn’t take a detective to see what you’re trying to tell me.”

“Which is?”

“You haven’t got any money.”

“Ah!”

Morse looked down silently at the car-mat; and Lewis, now smiling happily, opened the driving-seat door of the Jaguar, and was soon to be seen walking towards the premises of the sub post-office in Kidlington, Oxon.