Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (20 page)

* * *

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 …

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?”