The Remorseful Day (30 page)

Including Frank Harrison.

Chief Superintendent Strange, who had been seated in the back row next to Morse, was the last but one to leave. His thoughts had roamed irreverently throughout the short service, and the superannuated minister's apparent confidence in the resurrection of the dead had filled him more with horror than with hope. He thought of his wife and of her death and experienced that familiar sense of the guilt that still remained to be expiated. The hymn was all right, although he'd gone himself for “Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven” in the Instructions for My Funeral stapled to his last will and testament. But on the whole he dreaded church services almost as much as did the man seated beside him; and he could think of nothing more detestable than a funeral.

Morse himself had been sickened by the latest version (Series Something) of the Funeral Service. Gone were those resonant cadences of the AV and the Prayer Book: those passages about corruption putting on incorruptibility and the rest of it, which as a youth he'd found so poignant and powerful. They'd even had a cheerful hymn, for heaven's sake! Where was that wonderfully sad and sentimental hymn he'd chosen for his own farewell: “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”? Chosen, that is, before he'd recently decided to leave his body for medical science, although that decision itself was now in considerable doubt. In particular that little clause in sub-section 6 of Form D1 still stuck in his craw: “Should your bequest be accepted …”

He pointedly avoided the priest who'd presided—a
man (in Morse's view) excessively accoutred in ecclesiastical vestments, and wholly lacking in any sensitivity to the English language. But he did have a quick word of sympathy with the widow, shaking her black-gloved hand firmly before turning to her mother.

“Mrs. Stokes?” he asked quietly.

“Yes?”

Morse introduced himself. “My sergeant called to see your daughter—”

“Oh yes.”

“—when you were there looking after the children, I believe. Very kind of you. Must be a bit wearisome … I wouldn't know, though.”

“It's a pleasure really.”

“Who's looking after them today?”

“Oh they're, er … you know, a friend, a neighbor. Won't be for long anyway.”

“No.”

Morse turned away, following in Strange's steps toward the car park.

She was lying, of course—Morse knew that. There was only one of the Barron children at home that day; as there had been when Lewis had called. The elder of the two, Alice, was away somewhere. That much, though very little else, Lewis himself had been able to learn from the Barrons’ GP the previous day. Morse thought he knew why, and another piece of the jigsaw had slipped into place.

“Hello! Chief Inspector Morse, isn't it? My daughter tells me she saw you recently. But perhaps you don't know me.”

“ Let's say we've never been officially introduced, Mr. Harrison.”

“Ah! You
do
know me. I know you, of course, and Sergeant Lewis has been to see me. You probably sent him.”

“As a matter of fact I did.”

“I realize you weren't yourself involved in my wife's murder case but, er …”

Harrison was by some three inches or so the taller of
the two, and Morse felt slightly uncomfortable as a pair of pale-grey eyes, hard and unsmiling, looked slightly down on him.

“… but I'd heard about you. Yvonne spoke about you several times. She'd looked after you once when you were in hospital. Remember?”

Morse nodded.

“Quite taken by you, she was. ‘A sensitive soul'—I think that's what she called you; said you were interesting to talk to and had a nice voice. Told me she was going to invite you out to one of her, er, soirées. When I was away, of course.”

“I should hope so. Wouldn't have wanted any competition, would I?”

“Did
you have any competition?”

“The only time I ever met Yvonne again was in the Maiden's Arms,” said Morse gently, unblinking blue eyes now looking slightly upward into the strong, cleanshaven face of Harrison senior.

As Strange struggled to squeeze his bulk between seat and steering wheel, Morse looked back and saw that the funeral guests were almost all departed. But Linda Bar-ron stood there still, in close conversation with Frank Harrison—both of them now stepping aside a little as another black Daimler moved smoothly into place outside the chapel, with another light-brown, lily-bedecked coffin lying lengthways inside, the polished handles glinting in the sun.

Morse found himself pondering on the funeral. “I wonder why
he
put in an appearance.”

“Who? Frank Harrison? Why shouldn't he? Lived in the same village—had him in to do those house repairs—”

“Knew his wife had been in bed with him.”

“Fasten your seat belt, Morse!”

“Er, before we drive off, there's something—”

“Fasten your seat belt! Know what that's an anagram of, by the way? ‘Truss neatly to be safe.’ Clever, eh? Somebody told me that once. You probably.”

For a few seconds Morse looked slightly puzzled.

“Couldn't have been me. It's got to be ‘belts.’ Otherwise there's one V short.”

“Just put the bloody thing on!”

But Morse left the bloody thing off as he looked directly ahead of him and completed his earlier sentence: “Just before we drive off, sir, there's something I ought to mention. It's about Lewis. I'm fairly sure he's beginning to get some odd ideas about my being involved in some way with Yvonne Harrison.”

It was Strange's turn to look directly ahead of him.

“And you think I wasn't aware of that?” he asked quietly.

Once in Charlton Kings, a suburb on the eastern side of Cheltenham, Sergeant Lewis had followed the map directions carefully (he loved that sort of thing), turning right from the A40 through a maze of residential streets, and finally driving the unmarked police car past the sign on the whitewashed wall beside the gateway—“Sisters of the Covenant: Preparatory Boarding School for Girls—”and along the short graveled drive that led to a large, detached Georgian house.

Destination reached; and purpose, shortly afterward, fulfilled.

With a few extra suggestions from Morse, Lewis had found it comparatively easy to fill in most of the picture. The Barrons’ GP had professional and wholly proper reasons for his guarded reticence. But other sources had been considerably less cautious with their help and
information: the Burford Social Services, the NSPCC, the headmistress of the village primary school, the local Catholic priest, and, last of all, the middle-aged nun, dressed in a chocolate-brown habit and white wimple, who was expecting him and who found little difficulty in answering his brief, pointed questions.

Five nuns, all of them resident, looked after the school, which was specifically dedicated to the physical and spiritual well-being of girls between the ages of four and eleven (currently eighteen of them) who for varied reasons—poverty, indifference, criminality, cruelty—had been ill-used in their family homes. In spite of a modest benefaction, the school was a place of limited resources, at least in human terms, and was appropriately designated “Private,” with the majority of parents paying fees of between £1,000 and £1,500 per term.

Alice Barron, yes—now aged six—was one of the pupils there, referred to the school by her mother. She had been abused, not sexually, it seemed, but certainly physically; certainly psychologically.

No, Alice was not one of our Lord's brightest intellects; in fact she was in some ways a slow-witted child. This may have been the result of her home environment, but probably only partially so. Her younger sister (the teaching staff had learned) was as bright as the proverbial button; and such a circumstance could well have accounted to some degree for an impatient, expectant, aggressive parent to have …

“The father, you mean?”

“You're putting words into my mouth, Sergeant.”

“But if you were a betting woman—which I know you're not, of course …”

“What on earth makes you think that?” Her eyes momentarily glinted with humor. “But if I
were
, I would not be putting much money on the mother, no.”

“How are the accounts for each term settled?”

“I looked that up, as you asked me. I can't be quite sure, but I suspect it's been in cash.”

“Isn't that unusual?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Does Alice know about her father's death?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Do you think this whole business is going to … ?”

“Difficult to tell, isn't it? She's improving, right enough. She's stopped wetting her bed, and she doesn't scream so loudly in the night.”

“But if you were going to have another bet?”

“If I were a bookmaker, I'd lay you even money on it.”

As he drove back up to the A40, Lewis felt fairly sure he knew only a quarter as much about horse racing (and probably about life) as Sister Benedicta.

Back at HQ Lewis found a handwritten note for his personal attention:

It was in Morse's hand, that small, neatly formed upright script that was recognizable anywhere; as indeed, for that matter, was Strange's hand—large, spidery, with a perpetual list to starboard, and often only semilegible.

But Lewis was unconcerned. He would type up a report on his wholly satisfactory morning's work. And
then he would sit back and let things slowly sink in, for it had now become clear that the Repp-Flynn-Barron mystery was solved. Completely solved now, with the knowledge that it was Linda Barron who had taken the hush money; Linda Barron who must have insisted that if her husband ever thought of siphoning some of it off for himself she would expose him for the child abuser that he was, and expose him to Social Services, to the police, to the folk in the village, to the Press. And she would have meant it, for she was past caring. My God, yes! And Barron had agreed.

Yes…

The big moments in the case were over; and he rang Mrs. Lewis and asked her to have the chip-pan ready half an hour earlier than usual.

Yes…

In a strange kind of way, his confidence in himself had grown steadily throughout the present case, in spite of a few irritations like Dixon!
And
there was that one thing that had been interesting him and troubling him, in equal measure, for some considerable time now. Very soon he'd have to face up to telling Morse of his suspicions. But not just yet. He'd need to know a bit more about the Harrison murder first; especially about the contents of that fourth green box-file which had mysteriously added itself to the documents in the case, and which now sat alongside the other three on a shelf in Morse's office. Perhaps a bit later that afternoon, since Morse was unlikely to return.

What if he did, anyway?

Yes…

Lewis sat back after typing his report, his thoughts dwelling on the case that to all intents and purposes had now closed. He
was
right, wasn't he? But there were just one or two tiny items he hadn't as yet checked; and he knew that his conscience would be niggling him about them. No time like the present.

But not much luck. Still, those alibis for the Monday morning didn't much matter any longer. Or rather non-alibis, since neither Harrison Senior nor Harrison
Junior had any alibi at all. And whilst Sarah Harrison did have an alibi, it still remained unchecked.

He rang the Diabetes Centre in the Radcliffe Infirmary, with almost immediate if unexpected success, since Professor Turner (clearly not a Monday-Friday medic) now confirmed everything that Miss Harrison herself had affirmed: “In fact, Sergeant, she had to take over some of my patients mid-morning when I was summoned by my superiors—”

“Do you have any superiors, sir?”

On reflection, Lewis was more than a little pleased with that last question: just the sort of thing Morse would have asked. Was he, Lewis, just a little—after all this time—moving gradually nearer to Morsean wavelength?

At a quarter past four he walked along the corridor to Morse's office, to cast a fresh eye (so he promised himself) on that bizarre, that puzzling, that haunting evening of Yvonne Harrison's murder—the source of so much trouble and tragedy.

Very soon he was virtually certain that he had seen none of the contents of that fourth box-file before; and had convinced himself that this was not merely a matter of some redistribution of the case documents. The file contained the sort of personal items that many women, and doubtless many men, keep in one of the locked drawers of their desks or bureaus, often with some sense of guilt.

There were all the usual things that from experience Lewis had known so well: letters, many of them in their original envelopes, some from women, most of them from men; photographs, many of them of Yvonne herself (one topless) with a variety of men friends; postcards from many a quarter of the globe, but mostly from Greece and Switzerland; three slim (unopened) bottles of perfume; various receipts for the purchase of ultraexpensive clothes and shoes. But for all the variety of material there, the box was scarcely half-full, and Lewis took his time. He looked at the photographs
reasonably quickly (not quite so quickly at one of them, perhaps), before reading slowly (though not as slowly as Morse would have done) through the letters.