Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

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^ai^^.^^^l No note was found by Kersh" I'a^^^-^^i^ ^ by anyone afterwards.

It was asif>%?  SQ3yg-^b B0 with a despair she'd found incommtS ^ ^ "^ t3 c!

^ c1' to her parents; even to the uncouth loi&> ^ ^ ^ " S 5 so pleasurably

now, though at first against rfc^ g ^ @ S rather nice police inspector who'd

seemed GS S ^ 2 , stand so much about her.

Far too much.  .  .  incl'S s ,3 S known it!  ) the fact that she had lied.

Roy could have been cycling along Sheep Street when Ban-on fell to him

SC because at that very moment he had been in bed with her

partnership had resulted from some incident or series of incidents at school;

that the youth had agreed, for money, to make a statement to the police about

a supposedly accidental collision with a high ladder a statement that was

wholly untrue, because Roy Holmes had been nowhere near Sheep Street that

morning; the hypothesis (to be confirmed!  ) that it was Frank Harrison who

had murdered Barren, and who had engineered an ingenious scheme whereby all

suspicion would be diverted both from himself and from Simon the scheme

itself probably prompted by another son, by Alien Thomas, who regularly

gathered a good deal of information from his vantage-point in the Maiden's

Arms and who regularly passed it on to his father, the man at the centre of

everything.

Lewis nodded to himself.  No wonder Frank Harrison had gone to earth

somewhere.  Not for long though, surely.  He had nowhere to go; nowhere to

hide.  Airports and seaports had been apprised of his passport number, and

photographs would be on their way.  Unless it was too late.

It was Morse's suggestion that the two of them together should interview Roy

Holmes and Christine Coverley, with Lewis invited to do most of the talking

with the youth.

"I detest him, Lewis!  And you're better at those sort of things than I am."

It was flattering, but it didn't work.  Morse was sadly wrong if he thought

he could so easily re-establish some degree of integrity in the eyes of his

sergeant.

In mid-morning, Lewis left the office without asking Morse if he would like a

coffee.  He knew that the omission would be noted; he knew that Morse would

feel the hurt.

Not so.

When Lewis returned ten minutes later, he found Morse leaning back and

beaming happily.

"Fetch me a coffee, will you, Lewis!  No sugar we diabetics, you know .  ..

Something to celebrate."  Th^Iaumras folded

 accepted immediately that it

was in his own hand) Lewis had hoped, in an old-fashioned sort of way, that

Morse had in fact never been invited to Lower Swinstead, in spite of his own

plea for some communication from her; in spite of that almost school boyish

business about looking through his mail every morning in the hope of finding

something from her.  And that was about it.  Morse had wanted to cover up

something of which he was rather ashamed and very embarrassed; just wanted

his own name, previously his own good name, never to be associated with the

life and the death of Yvonne Harrison.  He'd been careless about leaving that

single page of a longer letter but (as he asked Lewis to agree) it was hardly

an incriminating piece of evidence.  What Morse stoutly refused to accept was

that what he had done, however cowardly and dishonest and foolish, had in any

way jeopardized the course of the original enquiry, which he now had the

nerve to assert had been conducted with almost unprecedented incompetence.

Such arrogance was of course not all that unusual; yet in the present

circumstances it seemed to Lewis quite gratuitously cheap.

Leaving all such considerations aside though, what stuck in Lewis's throat

was that initial, duplicitous refusal on Morse's part to have anything to do

with the original case.  Agreed, once he had been drafted on to what seemed

to both Lewis and Strange the second half of the same case.  Morse had risen

to his accustomed heights of logical analysis and depths of human

understanding.  Agreed, he had (as usual) been several furlongs ahead of the

field and, for once, on the right racecourse from the 'off'.

Who else but Morse could have put forward the quite extraordinary hypotheses

made earlier that morning about the murder ofJ.  Ban-on, Builder?  The

hypothesis (seemingly confirmed) that Roy Holmes who'd do almost anything

to get drugs and who'd do absolutely anything when he was on drugs - was

having a sexual relationship with Christine Coverley; the hypothesis

(seemingly confirmed) that the weirdly incongruous

partnership had resulted from some incident or series of incidents at school;

that the youth had agreed, for money, to make a statement to the police about

a supposedly accidental collision with a high ladder a statement that was

wholly untrue, because Roy Holmes had been nowhere near Sheep Street that

morning; the hypothesis (to be confirmed!  ) that it was Frank Harrison who

had murdered Barron, and who had engineered an ingenious scheme whereby all

suspicion would be diverted both from himself and from Simon the scheme

itself probably prompted by another son, by Alien Thomas, who regularly

gathered a good deal of information from his vantage-point in the Maiden's

Arms and who regularly passed it on to his father, the man at the centre of

everything.

Lewis nodded to himself.  No wonder Frank Harrison had gone to earth

somewhere.  Not for long though, surely.  He had nowhere to go; nowhere to

hide.  Airports and seaports had been apprised of his passport number, and

photographs would be on their way.  Unless it was too late.

It was Morse's suggestion that the two of them together should interview Roy

Holmes and Christine Coverley, with Lewis invited to do most of the talking

with the youth.

"I detest him, Lewis!  And you're better at those sort of things than I am."

It was flattering, but it didn't work.  Morse was sadly wrong if he thought

he could so easily re-establish some degree of integrity in the eyes of his

sergeant.

In mid-morning, Lewis left the office without asking Morse if he would like a

coffee.  He knew that the omission would be noted; he knew that Morse would

feel the hurt.

Not so.

When Lewis returned ten minutes later, he found Morse leaning back and

beaming happily.

"Fetch me a coffee, will you, Lewis!  No sugar we diabetics, you know .

Something to celebrate."  The Times was folded

S^

 back in quarters in front of him, the crossword-grid completely filled in.

"Six and a half minutes!  I've never done it quicker."

"Shouldn't that be " more quickly"?"

"Good man!  You're learning at last.  You see it's a question, as I've told

you, of the comparative adjective and the comparative adverb.

If you say ' The phone rang.

Dixon.

For the moment Roy Holmes was not to be found: he wasn't at home; he wasn't

anywhere.  Did Morse want him to keep looking?

'"What the hell do you think?"  Morse had snapped at him.  "You remember the

old proverb?  If at first you don't succeed, don't take up hang-gliding."

The brief telephone conversation pleased Lewis, and for a few seconds he

wondered if he was being a little unfair in his judgement on Morse.  But only

for a few seconds.

"Not the only one we can't find, sir."

"Frank Harrison, you mean?  Ye-es.  I'm a bit puzzled about him.  He might be

a crook he is a crook but he's not a fool.  He's an experienced, hard-nosed,

single-minded, rich banker, and if you're all those things you don't suddenly

put your fingers in the ' The phone rang.

Kershaw.

Morse listened, saying nothing; but the eyes that lifted to look across the

desk into Lewis's face, if not wholly surprised, seemed very disappointed and

very sad.  Much as two hours earlier Lewis's own eyes had looked.

In mid-afternoon (Morse was no longer at HQ) the phone rang.  Swiss Helvetia

Bank.

"Could we speak to Superintendent Lewis, please?"  "Sergeant Lewis speaking."

320

chapter sixty-nine sec.  off.  : Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit of

Count Orsino.  ant.  : You do mistake me, sir.  first off.  No, sir, no jot.

(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) at 5.  20 p.  m.  he was still standing beside

his minimal hand- luggage a few yards from the Euro-Class counter at

Heathrow's Terminal 4, looking around him with as yet dismiss able anxiety,

but with gradually increasing impatience.  5.  10 p.  m.  - that was when

they'd agreed to meet, giving them ample time, once through the fast-track

channel, to have some gentle relaxation together in the British Airways

Lounge before boarding the 18.  30 Flight 338.

Paris .  .  .

A long time ago he and Yvonne had gone to Paris on their honeymoon: lots of

love, lots of sex, lots of sightseeing, lots of food and wine.  A whole

fortnight of it, although he'd known even then that just a week of it would

have been rather better.  It was not difficult (he already knew it well) to

get bored even in the presence of a mistress; and he'd begun to realize on

that occasion that it was perfectly possible to grow just a little wearied

even in the company of a newly wed wife.  There had been one or two

incidents, too, when he'd thought Yvonne was experiencing similar thoughts .

.  .

especially diat time one evening when she'd quite obviously been exchanging

long 321

 looks with a moustachioed Frenchman who looked exactly like Proust.

He'd called her 'a flirtatious bitch' when they got to their hotel room; and

when she'd glared back at him and told him they'd make a 'bloody good pair'

one way or another .  .

There would be no trouble like that with Maxine: only two and a half days

just right, that!  And she was a real honey, a law professor from Yale, aged

forty-two, divorced, a little over- sexed, a little overweight, and hugely

desirable.

She finally appeared, pulling an inordinately large suitcase on wheels.

"You're late!"  His tone was a combination of anger and relief; and he

immediately moved forward ahead of her to the back of the short queue at the

First-Class counter.

"You didn't get my message, did you?  I tried and tried--' " Like I told you?

On the mobile?  "

"It wasn't working.  I think you'd forgotten--' " Christ!  " Harrison took

his mobile from an inside pocket, tapped a few digits, then another few; then

repeated the blasphemy: " Christ!

I'd had enough of the bloody mobile recently and--' "And you forgot that we'd

agreed--' " Sorry!  Say you'll forgive me!  "

He looked down at her squarish, slightly prognathic face, her dark-brown

silky hair cut short in a fringe across her broad forehead and above the

quietly gentle eyes that were becoming tearful now, perhaps from her hectic

rush, perhaps from the undeserved brusqueness of his greeting, but perhaps

above all from the knowledge that his love for her homodyned only with the

waves of that physical lust which so often excited him.  Yet the brief

holiday had been her choice, and she knew diat she wouldn't regret having

made it.  She enjoyed being with him: he was good fun and intelligent and

well read and sdll handsome and sdll excellent in bed and yes!  - he was rich.

They moved nearer the counter, neither of them too

anxious to speak a phenomenon not uncommon with persons queuing, as if

their concentration were required for the transactions ahead.

But she volunteered some incidental information: "Accident there was, near

Stokenchurch, and I tried to ' Gently he ran a hand through her silken hair.

"Sweetheart?  Forget it!"

"It's just that we must have been stuck there half an hour and we saw one of

the other passengers pointed it out a beautiful bird of prey there.  A red

kite."

"Tell me later!"

There was now just the one business-suited man in front of them.

"Where have you booked us?"

"The best."

"And the best air-tickets ?"

"Sh!  Nothing but the best for you.  Why not?  Just think of me!  No wife.

No blackmailing kids.  No problems at work.  Nothing to spend money on for a

day or two except on you.  I'm a rich man, sweetheart.  I thought I'd told

you."

"Tickets, please?"

The smiling young lady scrutinized the perfectly valid tickets.

"Passports, please?"

The young lady scrutinized the perfectly valid passports.

"Smoking?"

"Non-smoking."

"Window-centre?  Centre-aisle?"

"Centre-aisle."

"Luggage?"

Frank Harrison lugged the great case on to the track way beside the desk.

"Only the one?"

"Yes."

"You know where the club-lounge is?  "

323

 "Yes."  "Enjoy your flight, sir, and enjoy your stay in Paris!"

He handed her a glass of champagne, and two glasses clinked.  "Here's to a

wonderful little break together.  Ritz here we come!"

He leaned across and kissed her on the soft, un lips ticked mouth a long,

yearning kiss.  His eyes closed.  Her eyes closed.

"Mr Harrison?"  A tap on the shoulder.

"Mr Frank Harrison?"

"What ?"

A uniformed police officer stood beside the small table: "I'm sorry, sir, but

we need to speak to you.  Routine check."

"Thames Valley Police, is this?"

"That's right, sir."

"What exactly ?"

"It's not just that.  Your employers want to speak to you as well."

Harrison's eyes squinted in bewilderment.

"What the hell do they want?  I'm on official furlough, for God's sake.

They'll have to wait till I get back."

"Will you come this way, sir?  Please!"

A second uniformed policeman young, dark-haired stood just inside the

entrance to the executive lounge; was still standing there a quarter of an

hour later when Maxine, after drinking the one and then the other glass of

champagne, went over to speak to him.

"Do you mind telling me, Officer, by whose authority ?"

"Not mine, miss," said PC Kershaw.

"Please believe me.  I also am a man under authority."

"You haven't answered my question."

"I'm from Thames Valley we both are."

"Who sent you here?"

"The CID."

"Who?"

"Chief Inspector Morse."

"Who's he when he's in his office?"

"He's an important man."

"Very important?"

"Oh yes!"  Kershaw nodded with a reverential smile.

"You talk as if he's God Almighty."

"Some people think he is."

"Do you?"

"Not always."

"How long will you be keeping Mr Harrison?"

"I just don't know, Mrs Ridgway."

Maxine poured herself a further glass of champagne, and pondered as she sat

alone at the small table.  They knew her name too .  .  .

He wasn't a particularly lucky man to associate with, Frank Harrison.

The last time she'd been with him, over a year ago, he'd had that phone call

from well, he'd never said who from to tell him that his wife had been

murdered .  .  .

She was tempted to get up and well, just leave.  Just get out of there.  Her

case was on the plane by now though suits, dresses, lingerie, shoes but it

could be returned perhaps?  She sdll had her handbag with its far more

important items: cards, keys, diary, money .  .  .

But she felt sure the PC at the door would never let her out.  That's why he

was there.  Why else?

An announcement over the lounge Tannoy informed her that first-class

passengers for British Airways Flight 338 to Paris should now proceed to Gate

3; and a dozen or so people were draining their drinks and gathering up their

hand luggage.  But for Marine Ridgway it was now a feeling of deep sadness

that had overtaken those earlier minutes of indecision and 325

 any

embezzlement or misappropriation of funds was most definitely not to be laid

at the door of one of the Bank's most experienced, most trusted, most valued

blah blah blah.

It was a call in which Morse was most interested, now repeating (with some

self-congratulation) what he had earlier maintained: that Frank Harrison

might well be, most likely was, capable of murder; but that it was quite out

of character, definitely infra dignitatem, for him to stoop to cooking the

books and fiddling the balance-and-loss ledgers.

"Do you think you may be wrong, sir?"

"Certainly not.  He'll be back from Paris, believe me!  There's no

hiding-place for him.  Not from me, there isn't."

"You think he murdered his wife?"

"No.  But he knows who did.  You know who did.  But we've got to get some

evidence.  We've been checking alibis recent ones.  But we've got to check

those earlier alibis again."

"Who are you thinking of?"

"Of whom am I thinking?"  (Morse recalled the suspicion he'd voiced in his

earlier notes.  ) "I'm thinking of the only other person apart from Frank

Harrison who had a sufficient motive to kill Yvonne

"You mean ?"

"Do you ever go to the pictures?"

"They don't call it the " pictures" any more."

"I went to the pictures a year and a bit ago to see The Full Monty."

"Surely not your sort of ?"

"Exactly my sort of thing.  I laughed and I cried."

"Oh yes."  (The penny had dropped.  ) "Simon Harrison said he'd gone ' '"

Said", yes."

"Said he'd gone with someone else, didn't he?  A girlfriend."

"Wasn't checked though, as far as I can see."

"Understandable, isn't it?  Nobody ever really thought of someone inside the

family."

"Oh yes they did.  Frank Harrison was one of their first suspects."

"But with those signs of burglary, the broken window, the burglar alarm ..  ."

Morse nodded.

"At first almost everything pointed to an outside job.

But then it slowly began to look like something else: a lover, a tryst, a

sex-session, a quarrel, a murder .  .  .  "

"And now we're coming back to the family, you say."

"No one seems to have bothered to get a statement from the young lady Simon

Harrison took to the pictures that evening."

"Perhaps we could still trace her, sir?"

Yes.  "

"It's a long time ago though.  She'd never remember ' " Of course she would!

It was all over the papers: "Woman Murdered" and she'd been with that same

woman's son the evening when it happened.  She could never forget it!  "

"It's still a long time ' " Lewis!  I don't eat all that much as you know.

But when I'm cooking for myself- ' (Lewis's eyebrows rose.  ) ' -1 always

make sure the plate's hot.  I can't abide eating off a cold plate.  "

"You mean we could heat the plate up again?"

"The plate's already hot again.  She's still around.  She's a proud, married

mum now living in Witney."

"How do you know all that?"

"You can't do everything yourself, Lewis."

"Dixon, you mean?"

"Good man, Dixon!  So we're going to see her tonight.  Just you and

I.  "

"You think Simon murdered his mum."

"No doubt about that.  Not any longer, Lewis," said Morse quietly.

"Just because he found her in bed with someone .  .  ."

"With Barron.  I know that, Lewis."

329

 Never before had Lewis been so hesitant in asking Morse a question:

"Did .  .  .  did Mrs Hamson ever tell you that she was .  .  .  seeing

Barron?"

Morse hesitated hesitated for far too long.

"No.  No, she never told me that."

Lewis waited a while, choosing his words carefully and speaking them slowly:

"If she had told you, would you have been as jealous as Simon Harrison?"

Again Morse hesitated.

"Jealousy is a dreadfully corrosive thing.  The most powerful motive of all,

in my view, for murder - more powerful than ' The phone rang once more and

Morse answered.

Kershaw.

"They'll soon be winging their way across the channel, sir.  Anything more

you want me to do?"

"Yes.  Have a pint of beer, just the one, then bugger off home."

Morse put down the phone.

"Good man, Kershaw!  Bit of an old woman though.  Reminds me of my Aunt

Gladys in Ainwick, my last remaining relative.  Well, she was.  Dead now."

"I think he'll do well, yes."

"Kershaw?  Should do.  He got a First in History from Keble."

"Bit more than me, sir."

"Bit more than me, Lewis."

The phone was ringing again.

Strange.

"Morse?  You've let him out of the country, I hear?"

"Yes.  We need a bit more time and a bit more evidence before we bring him

in."

"I agree," said Strange, unexpectedly.

"No good just.  .."

"He'll be back for the day of reckoning."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"And in the interim?"

"He'll be having a beano kisses, wine, roses.

"But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire .  .  ."  You know the

Dowson poem, sir?  "

"Course I bloody do!"

"Well, I don't think he'll ever be really happy with any of these other women

of his."

"This one sounds like a bit of all right though."

"I'd still like to bet he wakes up in the small hours sometimes and thinks

back on the woman he loved more than any of them, feeling a bit desolate ' '

- and sick of an old passion."

"Exactly."

"Yvonne, you mean?"

"No, not Yvonne, sir.  Elizabeth Elizabeth Jane Thomas."

chapter seventy-one What more pleasant setting than the cinema for sweetly

deodorized bodies to meet, unzip, and commune?

(Malcolm Muggeridge, The Most of Malcolm Mu^eridy) sylvia marsden (nee

prentice) was temporarily living with her mother in a pleasantly appointed

semi on a housing estate at Witney.  And it was her mother (Lewis had phoned

earlier) who had answered the door and shown the two detectives into the

lounge where the buxom Sylvia, blouse open, was breast-feeding a very new

baby not in the slightest degree disconcerted to be thus interrupted in her

maternal ministrations, one hand splayed across an engorged nipple, the

fingers of the other playing lovingly around the lips of the suckling infant.

An awkwardly embarrassed Morse moved slowly round the room, simulating deep

interest in the tasteless bric-a-brac that cluttered every surface and shelf

in the brightly decorated room; whilst Lewis stood above the mother and

child, smiling quasi-paternally and drawing the back of his right

index-finger lightly across the cherubic cheek: "Little treasure, isn't he?

What's his name?"

"She's a she, actually aren't you, Susie?"

"Ah yes, of course!"

Morse temporarily declined to take a seat but accepted, strangely enough, the

offer of coffee, and began his questioning whilst looking through the

window on to the neatly kept back garden.

"We're just having to make one or two further enquiries, Mrs Marsden ' " Call

me Sylvia!  "

"It's about one of your former boyfriends ' " Simon, yes, I know.  That

Sergeant Dixon told me.  Nice man, isn't he?

He got on ever so well with Mum.  "

Morse nodded, aware of the probable reason.

"It's a long time ago now, I realize .  .  ."

"Not really.  Not for me it isn't.  The night Simon's mum was murdered?

Can't forget something like that, can you?  "

"That's good news, Sylvia.  Now that night, that evening, the 9th ' " Oh no!

You've got it wrong.  It was the 8th - the night Mrs Harrison was murdered.

I'm quite sure of that.  My birthday, wasn't it?  Simon took me to the ABC in

Oxford.  Super film!  All about these male strippers ' "Did the police ever

ask you about it?"

"No.  Why should they?"

Sylvia rebuttoned her blouse, and as Morse turned at last to face her, Lewis

could see the disappointment on his face.

Mrs Prentice (nee Jones) who had clearly been listening keenly from the

adjacent kitchen, now brought in two cups of coffee.

"I can remember that," she volunteered.

"Like she says, that was your birthday, wasn't it, Sylv?"

"How did you find Simon, Mrs Prentice?"  asked Lewis.

"I liked him.  He used to come in sometimes but I think he felt a bit... you

know, with his hearing."

"He didn't come in that night?"

"No.  I remember it well.  Like Sylv says well, not something you forget, is

it?  I saw him though, after he'd brought her back.  And I heard the pair of

'em whispering on the doorstep.  Nice boy, really.

Could have done worse, couldn't you, Sylv?  "

"I did better.  Mum, OE>' 333

 Clearly there was less than complete family

agreement on the merits of baby Susie's official father and Morse swallowed

his coffee quickly and, as ever, Lewis followed his chief's lead dutifully.

In the car outside they sat for some time in silence.

"You knew it was the 8th, sir.  Why ?"

"Just to test her memory."

There was another long silence.

"Looks as if we've been wrong, sir."

"Looks as if I've been wrong."

"Alibis don't come much better than that."

"No."

"You know when Mrs Whatshername said she heard the pair of 'em whispering

outside, she probably heard more of the conversation than Simon ever did!"

Morse nodded with a wry grin.  'you don't think there's any chance that

somebody bribed our Sylvia and Sylvia's mum .  .  .  ?  "

"Not the remotest.  Do you?"

"No."

"Where do we go from here, sir?"

"You can drop me off at the Woodstock Arms or .  .  ."

"No.  I meant with the case, sir."

'.  .  .  or perhaps the Maiden's Arms.  "

It seemed that Morse was hardly listening.

"I know you're disappointed, sir, but ' " Disappointed?  Nonsense!  "

Some light-footed mouse had just scuttled across his scapu- lae; and when

Lewis turned to look at him, it seemed as if someone had switched the

electric current on behind his eyes.

"Yes, Lewis.  Just drive me out to Lower Swinstead."

334

chapter seventy-two Below me, there is tie village, and looks how quiet

and small!  And yet buhbks o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite

(Tennyson, Maua) unwontedly in a car.  Morse was almost continuously

talkative as they drove along: "Do you know that lovely line of Thomson's

about villages " embosomed soft in trees"?"

 "Don't even know Thomson,"

mumbled Lewis.  "Remarkable things!  Strange, intimate little places where

there's more going on than anybody ever dreams of.  You get illicit liaisons,

hopeless love affairs, illegitimate offspring, wife swopping interbreeding,

neighbourly spite, class warfare all that's for the insiders, though.  If

you're on the outside, they refuse to have anything to do with you.  They

clamp up.  They present a united defensive front because they've got one

thing in common, Lewis: the village itself.  They're all members of the same

football club.  They may loathe each other's guts for most of the week, but

come Saturday afternoon when they put on the same football shirts .  .

Well, the next village better look out!  "

"Except Lower Swinstead doesn't have a football team."

 "What are you talking about?   They're all in the football team."

Lewis drove down the Windrush Valley into Lower Swinstead.

"They don't all clamp up, anyway.  Not to you, they don't.

 Compared with some of our lads you've squeezed a carton of juice out of 'em

already.  "

"But there's more squeezing to do, Lewis -just a little."

Unwontedly in a pub.  Morse had already taken out his wallet at the bar, and

Lewis raised no objection.

"Pint of bitter whatever's in the best nick."

"It's all in the best nick," began BifF en

"And .  .  .  orange or grapefruit, Lewis?"

The fruit machine stood idle and the cribbage-board was slotted away behind

the bar.  But the place was quite busy.  Most of the customers were locals;

most of them people who'd earlier been questioned about the Harrison murder;

most of them members of the village team.

On the pub's notice board at the side of the bar, underneath "Live Music Every

Saturday', was an amateurishly printed yellow poster advertising the current

week's entertainment:

8.  30-11.  30 P.  M.

DON'T MISS IT

The widely acclaimed folk-singer

CYNDICOOK

with the ever popular 3R's Randy, Ray, Rick "Popular?"  asked Morse of the

landlord.

"Packed out we are, every Sat'day."

"Ever had Paddy Flynn and his group playing here?"

"Paddy who?"

"Flynn the chap who was murdered."

"Ah yes.  Read about it, o'course.  But I don't think he were

ever here, Inspector.  You know, fifty-odd groups a year and how many years

is it I've ' "Forget it!"  snapped Morse.

The beer OK?  "

"Fine.  How's Bert, by the way?  Any better?"

"Worse.  Quack called to see him yesterday -just after we'd opened told

Bert's boy the old man oughta go in for a few days, like but Bert told 'em he

wasn't going to die in no hospital."

For someone who knew almost nothing about some things, Thomas Biffen seemed

to know an awful lot about others.

"Where does he live?"  asked Morse.

It was Bert's son, a man already in his late fifties, who showed Morse up the

narrow steepish steps to the bedroom where Bert himself lay, propped up

against pillows, the backs of his hands, purple-veined and deeply foxed,

resting on the top of the sheet.

"Missing the cribbage, I bet!"  volunteered Morse.  The old face, yellowish

and gaunt, lit up a little.

"Alf'll be glad of a rest.

Hah!  " He chuckled deeply in his throat.

"Lost these last five times, he has."

"You're a bit under the weather, they tell me."

"Sdll got me wits about me though.   More'nAlfhas sometimes."   "Still got a

good memory, you mean?"   "Allus had a good memory since I were at school."

"Mind if I ask you a few things?   About the village?   You know .   ..

gossip, scandal .   .   .   that sort of thing?   I had a few words with Alf,

but I reckon his memory's not as sharp as yours."   "Never was, was it?

Just you fire away.   Inspector.   Pleasure!"

Lewis, who had been left in the car, leaned across and opened the passenger

door.

337

 "Another member of the local football team?"  Morse smiled sadly and

shook his head.

"I think he's in for a transfer."

"What exactly did he ?"  "Get me home, Lewis."

On the speedy journey back to Oxford, the pair spoke only once, and then in a

fairly brief exchange: "Listen, Lewis!  We know exactly where Frank Harrison

is; who's with him; how long he's booked in at his hotel; when his return

flight is.  So.  I want you to make sure he's met at Heathrow."

"If he comes back."

"He'll be back.  I want you to meet him.  Charge him with anything you like,

complicity in the murder of his missus; complicity in the murder of Barren

please yourself.  Any- thing!  But bring him back to me, all right?  I've

seldom looked forward ' Morse suddenly rubbed his chest vigorously.

"You OK, sir?"

Morse made no reply immediately.  But after a few miles had perked up

considerably.

"Just drop me at the Woodstock Arms!"

"Do you think ?"

"And present my apologies to Mrs Lewis.  As per usual."

Lewis nodded as he turned right at the Woodstock Road roundabout.

As per usual.

In Paris, in the Ritz, later that same evening a good deal later Marine

Ridgway was finding it difficult to finish the lobster dish and almost

impossible to drink another mouthful of the expensive white wine that looked

to her exactly the

colour and gravity of urine.  She was tired; she was more than a little

tipsy; she was slightly less than breathlessly eager for another bout of

sexual frolicking on their king-size bed.  And Frank, too, (she'd sensed it

all evening) had been strangely reticent and surprisingly sober.

She braved the exchange: You're not quite your usual self tonight, Frank.  "

"Why do you say that?"

"It's that business at Heathrow, isn't it?"

Frank leaned across the table and placed his right hand on her arm.

"I'll be OK soon, sweetheart.  Don't worry!  And I ought to tell you

something: you're looking absolutely gorgeous!"

"You think so?"

"Why do you reckon all the waiters keep making detours round our table?"

"Tell me!"

"To have a look down the front of your dress."

"Don't be silly!"

"You hadn't noticed?"

"Frank!  It's been a long day and I'm just so fared ... so dred."

"Not too dred, I hope?  Night zu miideif' " No, darling.  "

"You don't want a sweet?  A coffee?"

"No."

"Well, you go up.  I'll be with you soon.  I've just got a couple of private

phone calls to make.  And I want to dunk for a little while on my own, if you

don't mind?  And make sure you put dial see-through thing on, all right?  The

one that'll send the garcon gaga when he brings our breakfast in the morning."

"You've arranged diat?"

Frank Harrison nodded; and watched the backs of her legs as she left the

table.

Yes, he'd arranged for breakfast in their room.

He'd arranged everything.

Almost.

chapter seventy-three When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen

has glean'd my teeming brain.  (Keats, Sonnet) slowly morse walked homeward

from the Woodstock Arms, disappointed (as we have seen) if not wholly

surprised, that the favourite in the Harrison Stakes had fallen (like Devon

Loch) within sight of the winning-post.  But now, at last (or so he told

himself) Morse guessed the whole truth.  And feeling pleasingly over-bee red

he had earlier taken the unusual step of ordering a bar snack, and had

enjoyed his liberally horse- radished beef sandwiches.  He thought he would

probably sleep well enough that night.  After a while.  Not just for a minute

though.  Truth was that he felt eager to continue (to finish off?  ) the

notes he'd already been making on the Harrison murder, just in case something

happened; just in case no one would be aware of the sweetly logical solution

that had formulated itself in his mind that day.

Much earlier (Morse knew it) he should have paid far more attention to the

thing that had puzzled him most about the Harrison murder: motive.  Until

now, Simon had fitted that bill pretty well, since Morse was sure that the

mother-son relation- ship had been very close; much too close.  Good

thinking, that!  Then, that very afternoon, a busty lusty lass sitting with

Simon in the three-and-six pennies had innocently scuppered his care- fully

considered scheme of things.

Once home.  Morse poured himself a modestly liberal measure of Glenfiddich,

and changed into a gaudily striped pair of pyjamas that blossomed in white

and purple and red .  .  before continuing, indeed completing, his written

record.

This evening in Lower Swinstead I spoke at quite some length with Mr Bert

Bagshaw.  Why did I not follow nay first instincts?  Had I done so, I would

have realized that any clues to that (most elusive) motivation for the murder

of Yvonne Harrison would ever be likely to lie in the immediate locality

itself, rather than in some external rape or alien burglary.  Hardy's yokels

usually knew all about the goings on in the Wessex villages; and their role

is paralleled today by the likes of the Alfs and the Berts in the Cotswold

public houses.

Although I now know who murdered Yvonne Harrison, it will not be easy to

prove the guilt of the accused party.  I am reminded of the Greek philosopher

Protagoras, who found it difficult to be dogmatic about the existence of the

gods, partly because of the obscurity of the subject matter, and partly

because of the brevity of human life.

But herewith I give my final thoughts on the murder of Yvonne Harrison, that

crisply uniformed nurse who looked after me in hospital once (but once!  )

with such tempting, loving care .  .  .

He finished writing an hour later at 12.  45 a.  m.  Or perhaps, to be

accurate, he wrote no more thereafter.

At which hour Lewis was somewhat uneasily asleep, not at all sure in his mind

whether things were going well or going ill.  Morse had insisted that it

should be he, Lewis, who would be on hand when Frank Harrison and his lady

passed through Arrivals at Heathrow.  No problem there though.  Still

thirty-six hours to go before the scheduled British Airways flight was 341

due to land, and Morse had been adamant that Harrison would be on that

flight, and not flitting off to Katmandu or the Cayman Islands.

Yet one thing was ever troublously disturbing Lewis's thoughts: the real

nature of the puzzling and secret relationship that had clearly existed

between Morse and Yvonne Harrison, 342

chapter seventy-four We are adhering

to life now with our last muscle the heart (Djuna Barnes, Nightwood) morse

awoke at 2.  15 a.  m.  " his forehead wet with sweat, an excruciating ache

along the whole of his left arm running up as far as his neck and jaw, a

tightly constricting corselet of pain around his chest.  He managed to reach

the bathroom sink where he vomited copiously.  Thence, in pathetically slow

degrees, he negotiated the stairs, one by one finally reaching the

ground-floor telephone, where he dialled 999, and in a remarkably steady

voice selected the first of the Ambulance Fire Police options.  He was seated

on the lime-green carpet beside the front door, its Yale lock and bolts now

opened, when the ambulance arrived six minutes later.

It all happened so quickly.

After being attached to a portable heart-monitor, after a pain-killing

injection, after chewing an aspirin, after having his blood pressure taken.

Morse found himself lying, contentedly almost, eyes open, on a stretcher in

the back of the ambulance.

Beside him a paramedic was looking down with well-disguised anxiety at the

ghastly pallor of the face and the lips of a purple- blue: "We'll just get

the docs to have a look at you.  We'll soon be there.

Don't worry.  "

Morse closed his eyes, conscious that life had always been a bit of a worry

and seemed to have every likelihood of so continuing now .  .

343

 He should perhaps have rung Lewis from upstairs Lewis had a flat-key

instead of ringing 999.

But then, he realized, Lewis wouldn't have had all that medical equipment,

now would he?

He'd been a little disappointed that he'd heard no ambulance siren.

But then, he realized, there wouldn't be all that much traffic, even in

Oxford, at such an early hour, now would there?

Soon, he knew it, they'd be asking for his

"Religion'.

But then, he realized, it wouldn't take too long for him (or them) to write

down

"None' in some appropriate box, now would it?

"Next of Kin', too.  Trickier that though, because the pen- ultimate member

of the Morse clan had recently died, aged ninety-two.

But then it wouldn't take too long to write down

"None' again.

And there were more cheerful things to contemplate.  Perhaps Nurse Harrison

would be there in the ward again to sit by his bed in the small hours .  .  .

But then, he realized, Yvonne Harrison was now dead.

Perhaps Sister McQueen would be on duty to pull him through again?

But then, he realized, she was away for a month in far Carlisle, tending a

frail, demanding mother.

The kindly paramedic held him down gently as he tried to sit up on the

stretcher.

"Lewis!  I must see Sergeant Lewis."

"Of course.  We'll make sure you see him as soon as they've had a quick look

at you.  We're nearly there."

The night nurse in the 'goldfish-bowl', at the right of the Emergencies

Entrance, watched as the automatic double-doors opened and the paramedics

wheeled the latest casualty through, deciding immediately that Resuscitation

Room B was

the place for the newcomer.  Quickly she bleeped the Senior House Officer.

The next ten minutes saw swift and methodical action: blood samples were

promptly despatched some whither chest X-rays were taken; an

electrocardiograph test had firmly established that the patient had suffered

a hefty anterior myocardial infarct.  But it was time for another move; and

the activities of a young and kindly nurse with a clipboard, dutifully

requesting details of medical history, next of kin, religion, and the like,

were mercifully cut short by a specialist nurse who with all speed supervised

an urgent transfer.

Morse had always delighted in sesquipedalian terminology, since his education

in the Classics had given him much insight into the etymology of words more

than a foot-and-a-half long.  And now, as he lay in the Coronary Care Unit,

he listened with interest to the words being spoken around him: thrombolysis;

tachicardia, strep to-something-something.  One thing was certain: much was

happening and was happening quickly again.  As if there were little time to

spare .  .  .

Were angels male or female?  They'd started off life as male, surely?

So there must have been a sort of trans-sexual interim when .  .  .

Morse's mind was wondering .  .  What gender was the Angel of Death then,

whom he now saw standing at the right-hand side of his bed, with a nurse

holding one gently restraining hand on a softly feathered wing, and the other

hand on his own shoulder.

Morse awoke to full consciousness again, opened his eyes, and found Lewis's

hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir."

"You?  What the 'ell are you doing here?"

"One o' the par as - knew who you were and heard you say, you know .

.  "

Morse nodded, and smiled.

"How you doing, sir?"

"Fine!  It's just a case of mis-identity."

 "I mustn't be long.  They've told me just a coupla minutes, you know."

"Why's that?"  asked Morse wearily.

"They say you need, you know, a lot of rest."

"Law-is!  Why do you keep saying " you know" all the time?"

"Not said " actually" yet though, have I?"

"When you go up to bring Harrison in today ' " Tomorrow, sir.  "

"You sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Don't forget!  I'm doing the interviewing."

Lewis turned to find Nurse Shelick standing behind him.  "Please!"  her lips

mouthed, as she looked down on Morse's intermittently closing eyes.

"Shan't be a second, nurse."

He bent down and whispered: "Anything I can do, sir?"

Morse's eyes were sdll closed, but he seemed to regain some of his earlier

coherence.

"Yes.  Second drawer down on the right.  There's a Carlisle number for Sister

McQueen.  Give her a ring.  Not today though .  .  .  like you say, tomorrow.

Just say I'm ..  ."

Lewis prepared to go.

"Leave it to me, sir, and ..  .  keep a stout heart!  Promise me that!"

Morse opened his eyes briefly.

"That's what my old father used to say."

"So you will, won't you, sir?"

Morse nodded slowly.

"I'll try.  I'll try ever so hard, my old friend."

Lewis was checking back the tears as he walked away from the Coronary Care

Unit, and failed to hear Nurse Shelick's quiet

"Goodbye'.

546

chapter SEVI^y.  F^ The cart is shaken all to pieces, and i j i r tfg.

rugged road is very near its end (Dickens, Bleak House) that same day was to

be the longest and almost the unhappiest in Lewis's life.  At 6.

30 c , , , , ,.  11 a pi.  he drove out to Police HO and sat quietly in Morse

s offic( , yr i- i -< 17 p the Harrison case the last thing that concerned

him.  At 7 i , .  , , " , pi.  he rang the JR2 and learned that Morse's

condition .  .  .  , , ."

^as CnUcal but stable , although he had little real idea what that might

signify on the Coronary Richter Scale.

Strange, early apprised of Morse , .  ,.  .

6 j if ^ hospitalization, came in at 8 a.  m.  " himself immediately ringir .

, ,.  .  .

' ng the JR2, and impauendy asking several questions and hem ".

, " * a given the same answer as Lewis: " Critical but stable'.  As n .

, .  , nuch was being done as humanly possible, Strange learned, .  .  7 r &

Any visit was, at present, quite out of the question.

For' , .  .

' ^ l the minute it was all tests and further treatment.  The ward I , .  ",.

, ..

had the police number of Sergeant Lewis, and would ring if.  .  ", 6 " .  if

there was any news.

Morse was fully conscious of what .  .  was going on around him.  He felt

fairly sure that he was dying , , .

,.  , ' 6 and pretended to himself that he would face death with at Ie;' , ,.

.

agt some degree of dignity, if not with equanimity.  He had b .  , , .  , ,.

" ' / pgn seated beside his old father when he'd died, and hean , .  ..

, , .  , i him reciting the Lord s

 Prayer, as if it were some sort of

insurance policy.  And Morse wondered whether his own self-interest might

possibly be served by following suit.  But if by any freak of chance there

was an Almighty, well.  He'd understand anyway; and since, in Morse's view,

there wasn't, he'd be wasting his really (at this time) rather precious

breath.  No.  The long day's task was almost done, and he knew that he must

sleep .  .  .

At 1.  30 p.  m.  the consultant looked down on the sleeping man.  There had

been no positive reaction from the comprehensive tests and treatments; no

success from the diuretic dosages that should have cleared the fluid that was

flooding the lungs; no cause for the sligh est optimism from the

echo-cardiogram.  He sat at the desk there and wrote: "Clinical evidence that

the heart is irreparably damaged; kidney failure already apparent.  Without

specific request from n.o.k.

in my judgement inappropriate to resuscitate' The nurse beside him read

through what he had written.

"Nothing else we can do, is there?"

The consultant shook his head.

"Pray for a miracle, that's about the only hope.  So if he asks for anything,

let him have it."

"Even whisky?"

"Why do you say that?"

"He's already asked for a drop."

"Something we don't stock in the pharmacy, I'm afraid."

The nurse smiled gently to herself after the consultant had left, for someone

had already slipped a couple of miniature Glenfiddichs into the top of

Morse's bedside table; and there'd only been the one visitor.

Seated outside a cafe on the Champs Elysees, Maxine Ridgway clinked her glass

across the table.  It had been a splendid lunch and she felt almost happy.

Thank you!  You're a terrible, two-timing fellow you know that.  But you're

giving me a wonderful time.  You know that, too.  "

"Yes, I do know.  Trouble is the time's gone by so quickly."

"No chance of staying another few days?  Day or two?  Day?"

"No.  We're back in the morning as scheduled.  I've got a meeting I've agreed

to attend."

"A board meeting?"

"No, no.  Much more interesting.  A meeting with a chief inspector of police.

I've met him once before, only the once, at a funeral; and then only very

briefly.  But he's - well, he's a bit like me, in a way, I suppose.  He'd

never run away from anyone, I reckon; and I'd never forgive myself if I ran

away from him."

Maxine looked over at Frank Harrison, and realized for the first time in

their relationship that she was probably in love with the man.  In those

early heady days it had been all Daimlers and diamonds; but she would always

have chosen the wine and the roses of these last forty-eight hours .  .  .

Suddenly she sensed that she was never going to see him again, and she

yearned at that moment to be alone with him, and to give herself to him.

"Let's go back to the hotel, Frank."

"What?  On a beautiful sunny afternoon like this?"

"Yes!"

Frank Harrison leaned across and placed his right hand on her bare shoulder.

"Shall I tell you a secret, my darling?  I was about to suggest exactly the

same thing myself."

It was a happy moment.

But a moment only.

Harrison got to his feet.

"I've just got to make a phone call first."

 "You can ring from the room."

 "No, it's a private call."   "And you don't want me to ?"   "No, I don't."

"If he asks for anything," that's what the consultant said.  And when Morse

made his second request (the first already granted) the nurse rang Police HQ

immediately.  Lewis and Strange Morse wanted to see them.

Perhaps she had given the two names in alphabetical order, but Lewis hoped it

had been in order of preference a hope though that had probably been

unjustified, he thought, as he stood waiting at the back of the unit, since

it had clearly been Strange who had been first on Morse's visiting list.

"Right old mess you've got yourself into.  Morse!"

"Looks like it, I'm afraid."

"You're in the best of hands, you know that."

"I'm going to need a bit more than that."

"Look, Morse.  Don't you think it would be a good thing .  .  .  don't you

think I ought ?"

But Morse was shaking his head in some agitation.

"No!  Please!  If you really want to help .  .  ."

"Course!  Course, I do!"

"Can you ask Lewis .  .  .  ?"

"Course!  Just you keep hold of the hooks, old mate!  And that's an order.

Don't forget I'm still your superior officer."

"Lewis!"  Morse spoke the name very quietly but quite clearly.  His eyes were

open, and his lips moved as if he were about to say something.

But if such were the case, he never said it; and Lewis decided to do what so

many people have done beside a hospital bed; decided to speak a few

comforting thoughts aloud:

"You've got the top load of quacks in Oxfordshire looking after you, sir.

All you've got to do promise me!  - is to do what they say and .  ..  And

what I really want to say is thank- you for ..."

But Lewis could get no further.

And in any case Morse had closed his eyes and turned his head away to face

the pure-white wall.

Just a little word from Morse would have been enough.

But it wasn't to be.

A nurse was standing beside him, testing his lip-reading skills once more:

"I'm afraid we must ask you to go ..."

At 4.  20 p.  m.  Morse seemed to rally a little, and held his hand up for

the nurse.

"I'm allowed a drop more Scotch?"  he whispered.

She poured out the miserably small contents of the second miniature and held

a jug of water over the glass.

"Yes?"

"No," said Morse.

She put her arm around his shoulders, pulled him towards her, and held the

glass to his lips.  But he sipped so little that she wondered whether he'd

drunk a single drop; and as he coughed and spluttered she took the glass away

and for a few moments held him closely to her, and felt profoundly sad as

finally she eased the white head back against the pillows.

For just a little while, Morse opened his eyes and looked up at her.

"Please thank Lewis for me .  .  ."

But so softly spoken were the words that she wasn't quite able to catch them.

The call came through to Sergeant Lewis just after 5 P.  M.

chapter

seventy-six Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on

Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liijuor than the Muse, And malt does

more than Milton can To justify Cod's ways to man (A.  E.  Housman, A

Shropshire Lad before leaving for Heathrow, Lewis had informed Chief

Superintendent Strange that it would not be at all sensible, in fact it would

be wholly inappropriate, for him to continue as a protagonist, virtually the

protagonist, in the Harrison case: he was exhausted mentally, physically,

emotionally; and, well .  .  he just begged for a rest.

And Strange had granted his request.

"I'm going to put someone in charge who's considerably more competent than

you and Morse ever were."

"Yourself, sir?"

"That's it," smiled Strange sadly.

"You have two or three days off from tomorrow.  You could take the missus to

South Wales."

"I said I needed a rest, sir!  And there are one of two things that Morse ..."

"Make a few calls you mean yes.  And go through his diary and see what dates

..."

"I don't think there'll be many of those."

"You don't?"  asked Strange quietly.

"And I haven't got much of a clue how he was going to tackle Frank Harrison."

Strange lumbered round the table and placed a vast hand on Lewis's shoulder.

"You've got a key?"

Lewis nodded.

"Just bring Harrison Senior straight to me.  Then .  .  ."

Lewis nodded.  He was full up to the eyes; and left without a further word.

On journeys concerned with potential criminals or criminal activity, CID

personnel were never advised, and were seldom permitted, to travel alone.

And the following morning Lewis was not wholly unhappy to be travelling

alongside a familiar colleague, albeit alongside Sergeant Dixon.  After the

first few obligatory words, the pair of them had lapsed into silence.

There was never likely to be any risk of missing the returning couple at the

Arrivals exit.  Nor was there.  And it was Lewis who read from his prepared

notes, as unostentatiously as he could: "Mr Frank Harrison, it is my duty as

a police officer to inform you that I am authorized to remand you into

temporary custody on two counts: first, on suspicion of the murder of Mr John

Barron of Lower Swinstead on the 3rd of August, 1998; second, on suspicion of

the murder of your wife, Yvonne Harrison, on the 8th July 1997.  It is also

my duty to tell you ' " Forget it.  Sergeant.  You told me what to expect.

Just a couple of favours though, if that's all right?  Won't take long.  "

"What have you got in mind?"  In truth, Lewis had neither the energy nor the

enthusiasm to initiate any determined pursuit had Frank Harrison and partner

decided to make a dash for it and vault the exit-barriers.  But that was

never going to happen.  Nor did it.

"Well, it's the car, first of all.  I left it ' " All taken care of, sir.  Or

it will be.  "

"Thank you.  Second thing, then.  You know the one thing I really missed in

Paris?  A pint of real ale, preferably brewed in Burton-on-Trent.  The bars

are open here and ..."

"OK."

Dixon stood beside him as Harrison ordered a pint of Bass and a large gin and

tonic (and, of course, nothing else) whilst Lewis sat at a nearby table,

momentarily alone with Maxine Ridgway.

"You know," she said very firmly, 'you're quite wrong about one thing.  I

don't know too much about Frank's life, but it does just so happen I was with

him the night that his wife was murdered.  We were together in his London

flat!  I was there when the phone rang and when he ordered a taxi to Padding-

ton ' Frank Harrison was standing by the table now: "Why don't you learn to

keep your mouth shut, woman!"  But his voice was resigned rather than

angered, and if he had contemplated throwing the gin and tonic in her face,

it was only for a second or two.

He sat down and drank his beer.

The damage had been done.

In the back of the police car as it returned to Oxford, Lewis realized, with

an added sadness, that Morse had been wholly wrong, as it now transpired, in

his final analysis of the Harrison murder.

Frank Harrison, if his lady-friend were to be believed, just could not have

murdered his wife that night; and the police must have been right, in the

original enquiry, to cross him off their suspect list.

It had all happened before, of course - many a time!  - when Morse, after the

revelation of some fatal flaw in his earlier reasoning, would find his mind

leaping forward, suddenly, with inexplicable insight, towards the ultimate

solution.

But those days had now gone.

It was not until the car was passing through the cutting in the Chiltems by

Stokenchurch that Harrison spoke: "Red kite country this is now.  Did you

know that, Sergeant?"

"As a matter of fact I did, yes.  I'm not into birds myself though.

The wife puts some nuts out occasionally but.  "

It may hardly be seen as a significant passage of conversation.

Harrison spoke again just after Dixon had turned off the M40 on to the A40

for Oxford.

"You know, I'm looking forward to seeing Morse again.  I met him at Barren's

funeral, but I don't think we got on very well .  .  .  My daughter, Sarah,

knows him though.  He's one of her patients at the Radcliffe.  She tells me

he's a strange sort of fellow in some ways interesting though, and very

bright, but perhaps not taking all that good care of himself."

Lewis remained silent.

"Why didn't he come up to Heathrow himself?  Wasn't that the original idea?"

"Yes, I think it was."

"Are we meeting at St Aldate's or Kidlington?"

"He won't be meeting you anywhere, sir.  Chief Inspector Morse is dead."

chapter seventy-seven Dear Sir/ Madam Please note that an entry on the

Register of Electors in your name has been deleted for the following reason:

DEATH

If you have any objections, please notify me, in writing, before the 25th

November, 1998, and state the grounds for your objection.

Yours faithfully (Communication from Carlow County Council to an erstwhile

elector) after returning to HQ Lewis gave Strange an account of the quite

extraordinary evidence so innocently (as it seemed) supplied by Maxine

Ridgway.

But he could do no more.

For he had nothing more to give.

Unlike Morse, who had always professed enormous faith in pills pills of all

colours, shapes, and sizes Lewis could hardly remember the last time he'd

taken anything apart from the Vitamin C tablet he was bullied to swallow each

breakfast-time.  It had therefore been something of a surprise to learn that

Mrs L kept such a copious supply of assorted medicaments;

and retiring to bed unprecedentedly early that evening he had swallowed two

Nurofen Plus tablets, and slept like the legendary log.

At 10 a.  m.  the following morning he drove up to the mortuary attheJR2.

The eyes were closed, but the expression on the waxen face was hardly one of

great serenity, for some hint of pain still lingered there.

Like so many others contemplating a dead person, Lewis found himself

pondering so many things as he thought of Morse's mind within the skull.

Thought of that wonderful memory, of that sensitivity to music and

literature, above all of that capacity for thinking laterally, vertically,

diagonally whateverwhichway that extraordinary brain should decide to go.

But all gone now, for death had scattered that union of component atoms into

the air, and Morse would never move or think or speak again.

Feeling slightly guilty, Lewis looked around him.  But at least for the

moment his only company was the dead.  And bending down he put his lips to

Morse's forehead and whispered just two final words: "Goodbye, sir."

chapter seventy-eight .  & that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground Ss~

that no sexton be asked to toll the bell &' that no murners walk behind me at

my funeral & that no flours he planted on my grave.  (Thomas Hardy, The Mayor

of Casterbridge) morse had always been more closely attuned to life's adagios

than its allegros; and his home reflected such a melancholic temperament.

The pastel-coloured walls, haunted by the music of Wagner, Bruckner, and

Mahler, were deco- rated with sombre-toned reproductions of Rembrandt, Ver-

meer, and Atkinson Grimshaw; and lined, in most rooms both upstairs and down,

with long shelves of the poets and the novelists.

The whole place now seemed so very still as Lewis picked up two pints of

semi-skimmed Coop milk from the porch, picked up four letters from the

doormat, and entered.

In the study upstairs there were several signs (as Lewis already knew) of a

sunnier temperament: the room was deco- rated in a sun-bed tan, terra cotta

and white, with a bright Matisse hanging on the only wall free of the

ubiquitous books, CDs, and cassettes.  A red angle-lamp stood on the desk

with, beside it, a bottle of Glenfiddich, virtually empty, and a cut- glass

tumbler, completely empty.  Morse had timed his exit fairly satisfactorily.

Lewis sat down and quickly looked through the letters: BT; British Diabetic

Association; Lloyds Bank; Oxford Brookes University.

Nothing too personal perhaps in any of them, but he left them there unopened.

He fully realized there would be quite a few details to be sorted out soon

by someone.  Not by him though.  He had but the single mission there.

In the second drawer down on the right, he found six photographs and took

them out.  An old black-and-white snap of a middle-aged man and woman, the

man showing facial lineaments similar to Morse's.  A studio portrait of a

fair-haired young woman, with a written message on the back: "Like you I wish

so much that things could have been different love always W.  Another smaller

photograph, with a brief sentence in Morse's own hand: " Sue Widdowson before

she was arrested'.  A holiday shot of a young couple on a beach somewhere,

the dark-headed bronzed young woman in a white bikini smiling broadly, the

young man's right arm around her shoulders, and (again) some writing on the

back

"I only look happy.  I miss you like crazy!!!  Ellie'.  Clipped to a

photograph of a smartly attractive woman, in the uniform of a hospital

sister, was a brief letter under a Carlisle address and telephone number: " I

understand.  I just can't help wondering how we would have been together,

that's all'd have had to sacrifice a bit of independence too you know!

Always remember my love for you.  J.  "

Only the one other photograph: that of Morse and Lewis standing next to each

other beside the Jaguar, with no writing on the back at all.

Lewis tried the Carlisle number; with no success.

On the floor to the right of the desk lay a buff-coloured folder, its

contents splayed out somewhat, as if perhaps it may have been knocked down

accidentally; and he picked it up.  On the front was written: "For the attn.

of Lewis'.

The top sheet was the printed form D1/D2, issued by the Department of Human

Anatomy in South Parks Road, the second section duly signed by the donor; and

countersigned 359

 by the same man who had witnessed the validity of the

second single sheet ofA4 to which Lewis now turned his attention: MY WILL I

expressly forbid the holding of any religious service to mark my death.  Nor

do I wish any memorial service to be arranged thereafter.  If any persons

wish to remember me in any way, let it be in their thoughts.

If these handwritten paragraphs have any legal validity, as I am assured they

do, my estate may be settled with little difficulty.  I no longer have any

direct next-of-kin, and even if I have, it makes no difference.

My worldly goods and chattels comprise: my flat (now clear of mortgage); its

contents (including a good many rare first editions); two insurance policies;

and the monies in my two accounts with Lloyds Bank.  The total assets

involved I take to be somewhere in the region of 150,000 at current rates and

values.

It is my wish that the said estate, after appropriate charges, be divided

(like Gaul) into three parts, in equal amounts (unlike Gaul) with the

beneficiaries as follows: (a) The British Diabetic Association (b) Sister

Janet McQueen (see address book) (c) Sergeant Lewis, my colleague in the

Thames Valley CID.

For several minutes, Lewis sat where he was, unmoving, but deeply moved.  Why

in heaven Morse should have shown such bitterness toward the Church, he

couldn't know; and wouldn't know.  And why on earth Morse had remembered him

with such .  .

His thoughts still in confusion, Lewis tried the Carlisle number again; again

without success.

He washed out the empty tumbler in the bathroom, and returned to the study,

where he poured himself the last half- inch of Glenfiddich, sat down again,

silently raised his glass, and drained it.

He looked down at the several sheets of paper remaining in the folder, marked

on the first page

"Notes on the Harrison Case', and all written in Morse's hand, that same

small upright script that Lewis had found in the Harrison files.  He'd go

through it all later though.  For the moment he placed the other two single

sheets on the top, and was preparing to leave, when he opened the second

drawer down again, took out the photograph of the Jaguar, and slipped it into

the folder on top of everything else.

And noticed something else there, pushed to the back of the drawer.

A pair of handcuffs.

361

chapter seventy-nine Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor

hell a jury like a woman scorned (Congreve, The Mowmmg Bride) If you're

guilty, you'll have to prove it (Groucho Marx) lewis finished reading through

the folder early that same evening.

Most of it he'd known about already.  It was only when he'd come to the last

three sheets that he was aware of the wholly new tenor of Morse's thinking.

But herewith I give my final thoughts on the murder of Yvonne Harrison, that

crisply uniformed nurse who looked after me in hospital once (but once!  )

with such tempting, loving care.

From the start of this case, one person stood out high above the others in

firmness of purpose, daring, and clarity of mind: Frank Harrison.  He was

still sexually attracted to Yvonne, but she was no longer attracted to him;

indeed one night in hospital she told me that she used to hook her foot over

her own side of the mattress to establish a sort of no man land between

them.  But she remained a woman obsessively interested in sex, both as

practising participant and addicted voyeur.  (She had mentioned to me some

Amster- dam videos.  But although I looked quite carefully through

the scores of videos there, I could find nothing.  I suspect they were

innocently disguised under such labels as The Jungle Book or Cooking with

Herbs.  ) Now clearly Frank Harrison was is someone with a very strong sexual

drive, and doubtless he claimed his marital rights on his spasmodic periods

at home.  But inevitably, when they were away from each other, Yvonne knew

what he was up to, just as he knew what she was up to.  And for that reason,

I can find no compelling motive for Frank Harrison to have murdered his wife.

There might have been the opportunity, for all we know.  But his alibi was

uncontested, since there seemed no reason to suspect the firm and explicit

evidence of the man Flynn, who claimed to have picked him up from Oxford

Station and driven him out to his home to Lower Swinstead.

It is now my view (I look forward to interviewing Frank H on the matter) that

Flynn was not in fact paid for fixing his taxi-times for the purpose of

Harrison's alibi.  He was paid for something different.

Until so very recently I thought that Simon must have murdered his mother.

He had ample motive if he found his beloved mum in bed with the local,

builder God help us!  And the other facts fitted that hypothesis neatly: he

was known to Repp, the local shady character familiar to everyone around, as

well as being a regular at the Maiden's Arms; known to Barren, of course; and

also known to Flynn, because the pair of them had attended lip-reading

classes together.

As you know, I was wrong.

But there was someone else who had an even more compelling motive, with the

other facts fitting equally convincingly: Sarah Harrison.

What motive could she have had?  Simply this: that she and Barren had been

secret lovers for a year or so before Yvonne's murder.  I learned something

about this from two most unlikely witnesses from Alf and Bert, denizens of the

Maiden's Arms.  Particularly from Bert, 36^

 who had seen the two of them

together, both at the Three Pigeons in Witney and at the White Hart in

Wolvercote, when he was playing away in the cribbage-league.  I've little

doubt that others in Lower Swinstead knew about it too, but they all kept

their mouths shut.  On that fateful evening, Sarah called home unexpectedly,

and found her secret lover in bed with her mother God help us!  She was

already known to Repp, as well as to Barren, of course.  But where does that

opportunistic fellow Flynn fit into the picture this time?  There is now

ample proof that he knew Sarah fairly well, because in the years before the

murder the pair of them had performed in a pop group together in several pubs

and clubs in West Oxfordshire (some details are known) although never as it

happens at the Maiden's Arms.

And that's almost it, Lewis.

There remains just the one final matter to settle.  The murder weapon was

never found.  But the path-report, as you'll recall, gave some indication of

the type of weapon used.  There were perhaps two blows only to Yvonne's head.

The first rendered the right cheek-bone shattered and the bridge of the nose

broken.  The second, the more vicious and it seems the fatal blow, crashed

across the base of the skull, doubtless as Yvonne tried to turn her head away

in desperate self-defence.  The suggestion made was that some sort of

'tubular metal rod' was in all probability the cause of such injuries.

An arm-crutch!

How do I know this?  I don't.  But I shall be inordinately surprised if I am

not very close indeed to the truth.  And how many times this has happened?  -

it was you, Lewis, who did the trick for me again!

Remember?  You were reining back some fanciful notions of mine about Sarah

tearing down to the cinema to buy a ticket, and you said that she wasn't

going to be tearing about anywhere that night, because she'd sprained her

ankle rather badly; and that if she were doing

anything it would be hobbling about.  Yes.  Hobbling about on one of those

metal arm-crutches they'd probably issued her with from the Physiotherapy

Department.  (Will you find out, Lewis, if and when the arm-crutch was

returned?  ) I realize that it won't be easy to establish Sarah's guilt, but

we've got the long-awaited interview with her father to look forward to.

He'll be a worthy opponent, I know that, but I'm beginning to suspect that

even he has almost had enough by now.  If I'm over-optimistic about such an

outcome, there'll still be Sarah herself.  It will be a surprise if the pair

of them haven't been in close touch in recent days and weeks, and I've got a

feeling that like her father she's almost ready herself to emerge from the

hell she must have been going through for so long.  Quite apart from judicial

convictions and punishments, guilt brings its own moral retribution.  We all

know that.

One thing is certain.  This will be has been my last case.  I am now

determined to retire and to take life a little more gently and sensibly.

We've tackled so many cases together, old friend, and I'm very happy and very

proud to have worked with you for so long.

That's it.  The time is now 12.  45 a.  m.  " and suddenly I feel so very

weary.

All the manuscript notes were with Strange within the half- hour.

And Lewis had nothing further to do with the investigation.

365

chapter eighty I am retired.  I am to be met with in trim gardens.  I am

already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture,

perambulating at no fixed pace nor with any settled purpose.  I walk about;

not to and from (Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia) it seemed there was

little to cloud the bright evening at the end of August, that same year, when

Strange held his retirement party.  The Chief Constable (no less!  ) had

toasted his farewell from the Force, paying a fulsome tribute to his

colleague's many years of disdngished service in the Thames Valley CID,

crowned, as it had been, with yet another significant triumph in the Yvonne

Harrison murder case.

For his part.  Strange had spoken reasonably wittily and blessedly briefly,

and had included a personal tribute to Chief Inspector Morse: "I don't think

we're going to see his like again in a hurry, and people of lesser intellect

like me should be grateful for that.  And it's good to have with us here his

faithful friend and, er, drinking-companion' (muted amusement) " Sergeant

Lewis' (Hear-Hear!

all round).

"Morse had no funeral service and no memorial service, just as he wished; but

I make no apology for remembering him here this evening because, quite

simply, he had the most brilliant mind I ever encountered in the whole of my

police career .  ..  Well now.  All that remains for me is to thank you for

coming along to see me off; to say thank you for

the lawn-mower and the book' (he held aloft a copy of Sir David Attenbo

rough's The Life of Birds) 'and to remind you there's a splendid buffet next

door, including a special plate of doughnuts for one of our number.  " (Much

laughter, and much subsequent applause.) Lewis had clapped as much as the

rest of them, but he had no wish to stay too long amid the back-slapping and

the reminiscences; and soon made his way upstairs to the deserted canteen

where he sat in a corner drinking an orange juice, wishing to be alone with

his thoughts for a while .  .  .

The conclusion to the Harrison case had proved pretty much, though far from

exactly, as Morse had predicted.  Two hours after her father had been taken

to HQ for questioning, Sarah Harrison (refusing to see her father) had

presented herself voluntarily and made a full confession to the murder of her

mother, making absolutely no apology for anything except for causing her

father (she knew it!  ) all that pain and agony of spirit.  What would happen

to her now, she said, would not really amount to imprisonment at all; but, in

a curious sort of way, to a kind of liberation.

And perhaps it had been much the same, albeit rather later, for Frank

Harrison himself, who (less eloquently than his daughter) had by degrees

unburdened himself of his manifold sins and wickednesses, including the

subsequent murder of his wife's lover, John Barren .  .

His actions, after receiving his daughter's frantic, frenetic phone call on

the night of Yvonne murder, had been straight- forward.  Train to Oxford;

then taxi to Lower Swinstead, whence Barren had long since fled; and where

Repp, though still around, remained unseen.  Harrison had paid off Flynn,

expecting him to drive away forthwith; thereafter very quickly dispatching

his distraught daughter home.  Coolly and ruthlessly he'd taken over.

Confusion!  - that was the only hope; 367

 and the only plan.  Yvonne was

already handcuffed, presumably for some bizarre bondage session, and what a

blessing that had been!  He'd tied a gag lightly around her mouth; gone on to

the patio and smashed in the glass of the french window from the outside

before unlocking it; he'd turned the lights on, every one of them, and yanked

out the TV and the telephone leads, both upstairs and down; and finally, with

illogical desperation; he'd decided to activate the burglar alarm, since even

if no one heard it, it would be recorded (so he believed).

He'd done enough.  Almost enough.  Just the police now.  He had to ring the

police, immediately; and suddenly he realized he couldn't ring them he'd just

made sure of that himself.  But there was his mobile, the mobile on which

he'd already rung Sarah several times from the train and once from Flynn's

taxi.  He could always lose it though: and the longer he waited to ring for

help, the better the chances for that confusion he'd tried so hard to effect.

In detective stories he'd often read of the difficulties pathologists

encountered in establishing the time parameters for any murder.  Yes!  He'd

just go up to the main road and walk (run!  ) the half-mile or so to the next

house.  Which indeed he was doing when he heard the voice at the gate that

led to the drive.  He remembered Flynn's words exactly: "I t'ink you moight

be needin' a little help, sorr?"  .  .  .

epilogue Certainly the gods are ironical: they always punish one for one's

virtues rather than for one's sins (Ernest Dowson, Letters) 'didn't you want

any food?  "

"No thank you, sir.  I've got a meal waiting at home."

"Ah yes.  Of course."

"And I didn't particularly want to watch Dixon eating doughnuts."

"No, I understand."  Strange lowered himself rather gingerly on to the

inappropriately small chair opposite.

"Talking of eadng, Lewis, what the hell's eating you, pray?"

As he'd requested (and as we have seen) Lewis had nothing further to do with

the Harrison case.  He had tried, and with some considerable success, to

distance himself from the whole affair, even from thinking about it.  There

was just that one persistent, niggling worry that tugged away at his mind

like some over-indulged infant tugging away at its mother's skirts in a

supermarket: the knowledge that Morse, on his own admission, and for the

first time in their collaboration, had acted dishonestly and dishonourably.

He looked up at Strange.

"What makes you think something's eadng me?"

"Come on, Lewis!  I wasn't born yesterday."

So Lewis told him.

Told him of the unease he'd felt from the beginning of the

3G9

 case: that Morse had known far too little about it, and then again far too

much; that Morse had originally voiced such vehement opposition to taking on

the case, and yet had spent the last days of his life doing little else than

trying to fathom its complexity.

"And that's all that's been bothering you?"

"And " Look!  Tell me!  What's the very worst thing you think he could have

done?  There's this attractive nurse pulling him through a serious illness in

hospital a place where patients can get a bit low, and a bit vulnerable.

Nurses, too, for that matter.  And she fell for him a bit ' "How do you know

that?"

"She told me so.  She told me one night in hospital when she was looking

after me\ Morse fell for her a bit, too anybody would!  and after he's

discharged he writes and asks her why she's not been in touch with him.  But

she doesn't write back, although she keeps his letter.  Know why, Lewis?

Because she doesn't really know how to cope with being in love herself."

"How do you know that?"

"Does it matter?  When she was murdered well, you know the rest.

Morse was on another case at the time you were on it with him, for God's

sake!  And he said it was too much for the pair of you to take on another.  "

"Only after he'd found his own letter."

"Lewis!"

"Only after he'd recognized the handcuffs."

"Lewis!  Listen!  Nothing Morse did then nothing- affected that enquiry in

the slightest way.  Yvonne had kept some letters from her men-friends, the

kinkies and the straights alike.  She certainly didn't keep any from Ban-on.

Maybe because he never wrote any, I dunno.  Maybe because she just didn't

want to."

"Just the ones from her favourite clients."

"You know that.  You've seen them."

"Some of them," said Lewis slowly.

"Well I saw all the bloody letters!"

"Including the one from Morse."

"Not a crime you know, writing a letter.  It was immaterial anyway, as I keep

trying to tell you."  Strange looked exasperated.

"It's just that it would have been awkward, wouldn't it?  Bloody awkward!  I

wanted to protect the silly sod.  You never thought he was a saint, did you?"

Lewis was silent for a while.  No.  He'd never thought of Morse as a possible

candidate for sanctification.

But there was something wrong about what he'd just heard.

"So you saw the letter before Morse saw it, is that what you're saying?"

"Morse never saw the letter, not till you showed him that page of it.

You see, Lewis, Ztook it not Morse.  "

"And you didn't check ' " Couldn't have done, could I?  It was a longish

letter.  But I didn't read it, so I wouldn't have spotted if there was any

gap.  "

"So it was you who kept some of the evidence separate?"

"Afraid so, yes.  I was scared stiff one of my letters might be there, if you

want the truth.  And as things turned out it just became impossible for me to

put that stuff back in the folder while the original enquiry was still going

on."

"So you got a new box-file when the case was re-opened .  .  ."

Strange nodded.

"Always felt guilty about it but ' " Why didn't Morse spot the page you'd

missed?  "

"Perhaps he didn't look all that carefully.  Not his way usually, was it?

Perhaps he wasn't too interested in the literary shortcomings of her other

admirers.  Not very fond of spelling mistakes, now was he .

.  ?  or perhaps he just felt the letters were too private, like he'd hoped

his own letter would be.  How do Jknow?  What I do know is that he wasn't

looking for a list of lovers who might have been in bed with Yvonne that

night.  Somehow he was convinced he knew' who the man was.  He told me who it

was; and he told you who it was.  And he was right.  "

371

 Lewis nodded.

But the supermarket-brat was giving a final tug.

"Plenty of letters and none of them any help, I agree, sir.  But just the one

pair of handcuffs!  And Morse realized there'd be no problem in tracing them,

so he destroyed the issue-list.  And we both know why, don't we, sir?

Because they were his."  | "Come off it, Lewis!

There's a hundred and one worse things in life than him giving some bloody

cuffs he'd never used once in his life to some woman who'd asked him for them

whatever the reason.  "

Slowly shaking his head, Lewis stared down at the canteen carpet

disconsolately.

"It's just that he seems not quite the man .  .  ."

"And you can't forgive him for that."

"Course I can forgive him!  Just a bit of a jolt, that's all.  Can't you

understand that?  After all those years we were together?"

"That's what's really eating you, isn't it?  Be honest!  It's just that you

don't think as much of old Morse as you used to."

"Not quite as much, no."

Strange struggled to his feet.

"Must be off.  Good to talk.  I'd better get back downstairs."

Lewis got to his feet.

"Mrs Lewis sends her very best wishes, sir."

The two policemen shook hands, and the interesting exchange was apparently

over.

But not so.

Halfway to the canteen exit.  Strange suddenly turned round and came back to

the table.

"Do you remember those issue-lists for handcuffs, Lewis?"

"It's a long time ago ..."

"Well, they're just handwritten lists, kept up to date in a series of

columns: date, name, rank, serial number.  Just like this."  Strange took a

folded sheet ofA4 from an inside pocket.  "But you remember the serial-number

on the pair you found in Morse's drawer?"

"Nine-two-two."

He handed the sheet to Lewis.

"You've got a good memory!"

"Where did you get this?"

"Someone took it from HQ, Lewis.  Morse did!"

Lewis looked down at the list, but could find no mention of Morse's name.

Could see another name though at the seventh entry down, along with the other

details in the neatly ruled lines: 3 June '68 Strange

PC

734 922 "You mean.  .  .?"

"I mean, Lewis, that Morse knew I was having an affair with Yvonne Harrison.

I don't know how he knew, but he always tended to know things, didn't he?  He

pinched that form, and he kept it till after the wife's funeral.  Then he

gave it to me.  Said it would be useless without the cuffs, which he said he

was going to keep anyway, just in case I ever did anything bloody stupid.

And he said exactly what I said to you a few minutes ago: nothing nothing

that happened then had affected the enquiry in the slightest way.  Is that

clear, Lewis?"

Yes it was clear.

"You're saying that all Morse did was to save you .

.  and save Mrs Strange .  .  .  "

"It would have broken her to pieces," said Strange very quietly.

"And me.  Would have broken both of us to pieces."

"She never knew?"

"Never had the faintest idea.  Thanks to Morse."

Lewis was silent.

"Just like you, eh?  About lots of things.  You never had the faintest idea,

for example, that I re-opened the Harrison case on the basis of a couple of

bogus telephone calls, now did you?"

"You mean ?"

373

 "I mean there were no telephone calls.  I made 'em up myself.  Both of

'em."

"I just didn't realize .  .  ."

"Nobody did, except Morse of course.  He guessed straight- away.  But I'd

like to bet he never told you!  He just didn't want to let me down, that's

all."

"Why didn't he tell me all this though?  It would have made such a lot of

difference ... at the end ..  ."

"I dunno.  Always an independent sod, wasn't he?  And always had that great

big streak of loyalty and integrity somewhere deep inside him.

But you don't need me to tell you that.  So he was never worried too much

about what people thought of him.  He certainly didn't give two monkeys what

I thought of him, at least most of the time.  In fact the only person he did

want to think well of him was you, Lewis.  So let me tell you something else.

It's one helluva job having to live with guilt, as I've done.  Almost

everybody discovers the same, you know that.  Frank Harrison did, didn't he?

Sarah Harrison, too.  It's something I hope you'll never have to go through

yourself.  Not that you ever will.  Nor did Morse though.  He once told me

that the guiltiest he ever felt in his life was when a couple of the lads saw

him flicking through a girlie magazine in the Summertown news agent

So .  So just keep thinking well of him, Lewis that's all I ask.  "

The former Chief Superintendent lumbered across the still- deserted canteen

to join the jollifications below.

But Lewis sat where he was.

Apart from the middle-aged woman at the counter reading the Sun, there seemed

no one else there.  And after looking around him as guiltily as Morse must

have done in the Summertown news agent for a little while, in his

desolation, he wept silently.