BOOK FOUR

Chapter Thirty-three

   What shall be the maiden's fate?
   Who shall be the maiden's mate?

Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel


   'There are three basic views about human life,' began Morse. 'One of 'em says that everything happens by pure chance, like atoms falling through space, colliding with each other occasionally and cannoning off to start new collisions. According to this view there's nothing in the scheme of things that has sorted us out - you and me, Lewis - to sit here in this pub, at this particular time, to drink a pint of beer together. It's all just a pure fluke - all just a chancy set of fortuitous circumstances. Then you get those who reckon that it's ourselves, as people, who determine what happens - at least to some extent. In other words, it's our own characters that affect the way things turn out. Sooner or later our sins will find us out and we have to accept the consequences. It's a bit like bowls, Lewis. When somebody chucks you down the green, there's a bias, one way or the other, and you're always going to drift in a set direction. And then there's another view: the view that it doesn't matter a bugger what particular circumstances are, or what individual people do. The future's fixed and firm - just like the past is. Things are somehow ordained from on high-pre-ordained, that's the word. There's a predetermined pattern in life. What's going to be - is going to be; and whatever you do and whatever your luck is, you just can't avoid it. If your number's up - your number's up! Fate - that's what they call it.'
   'What do you believe, sir?'
   'Me? Well, I certainly don’t go for all this "fate" lark - it's a load of nonsense. I reckon I come somewhere in the middle of the other two. But that's neither here nor there. What is important is what Anne Scott believed; and it's perfectly clear to me that she was a firm believer in the fates. She even mentioned the word, I remember, when - when I met her. And then there was that particular row of books just above the desk in her study - all those Penguin Classics, Lewis. It's pretty clear from the look of some of those creased black spines that the works of the Greek tragedians must have made a deep impression on her, and some of those stories - well, let's be more specific. There was one book she'd been rereading very recently and hadn't put back on the shelf yet. It was lying on her desk, Lewis, and one of the stories in that book— '
   'I think I'm getting a bit lost, sir.'
   'All right. Listen! Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time - a long, long time ago, in fact - a handsome young prince came to a city and quite naturally he was entertained at the palace, where he met the queen of that city. Soon these two found themselves in each other's company quite a bit, and the prince fell in love with the beautiful and lonely queen; and she, in turn, fell in love with the young prince. And things were easy for 'em. The prince was a bachelor and he found out that the queen was a widow - her husband had recently been killed on a journey by road to one of the neighbouring cities. So they confessed their love - and then they got married. Had quite a few kids, too. And it would've been nice if they'd lived happily ever after, wouldn't it? But I'm afraid they didn't. In fact, the story of what happened to the pair of 'em after that is one of the most chilling and terrifying myths in the whole of Greek literature. You know what happened then, of course?'
   Lewis looked down at his beer and reflected sadly upon his lack of any literary education. 'I'm sorry, I don't, sir. We didn't have any of that Greek and Latin stuff when I was at school.'
   Morse knew again at that moment exactly why he always wanted Lewis around. The man was so wholesome, somehow: honest, unpretentious, humble, almost, in his experience of philosophy and life. A lovable man; a good man. And Morse continued in a gentler, less arrogant tone.
   'It's a tragic story. The prince had plenty of time on his hands and one day he decided to find out, if he could, how the queen's former husband had died. He spent years digging out eye-witnesses of what had happened, and he finally discovered that the king hadn't died in an accident after all: he'd been murdered. And he kept working away at the case, Lewis, and d'you know what he found? He found that the murderer had been— ' (the fingers of Morse's left hand which had been gesticulating haphazardly in front of him, suddenly tautened and turned dramatically to point to his own chest) '—that the murderer had been himself. And he learned something else, too. He learned that the man he'd murdered had been - his own father. And in a blinding, terrifying flash of insight, Lewis, he realized the full enormity of what he'd done. You see, not only had he murdered his own father - but he'd married his own mother, and had a family by her! And the truth had to come out - all of it. And when it did, the queen went and hanged herself. And the prince, when he heard what she'd done, he - he blinded himself. That's it. That's the myth of Oedipus.'
   Morse had finished, and Lewis felt himself strangely moved by the story and the way his chief had told it. He thought that if only his own schoolteachers had been able to tell him about such top-of-the-head stuff in the way Morse had just done, he would never have felt so distanced from that intimidating crew who were listed in the index of his encyclopaedia under 'Tragedians'. He saw, too, how the legend Morse had just expounded linked up at so many points with the present case; and he would indeed have been able to work it all out for himself had not Morse anticipated his activated musings.
   ‘You can appreciate, Lewis, how Anne Scott's intimate knowledge of this old myth was bound to affect her attitudes and actions. Just think! As a young and beautiful undergrad here, she had met a man and married him, just as in the Oedipus myth Queen Jocasta married King Laius. Then a baby arrived. And just as Jocasta couldnt keep her baby - because an oracle had told her that the baby would kill its father - so Anne Scott and her husband couldn't keep theirs, because they had no permanent home or jobs and little chance of bringing up the boy with any decent prospects. Jocasta and Laius exposed the infant Oedipus on some hillside or other; and Anne and her husband did the modern equivalent - they found a private adoption society which took the baby off their hands immediately. I don't know much about the rules and regulations of these societies, but I'd like to bet that in this case there was a provision that the mother was not to know who the future foster-parents were going to be, and that the foster-parents weren't to know who the actual mother was. Now, Lewis! What would every mother be absolutely certain to remember about her only child - even if it was taken from her almost immediately after it was born. Face and features? Certainly not! Even after a few weeks any clear-cut visual memory would be getting progressively more blurred - and after a few months, certainly after a year, the odds are that she wouldn't even recognize her own offspring. So what's that one thing that she'll never forget, Lewis? Just think back a minute. Our friend Bell - Superintendent Bell - was quite right on one point. He believed that something must have happened the night before Anne Scott died that proved to be the immediate cause of her subsequent actions. He didn't do a bad job, either, because he came up with two or three very interesting facts.'
   'He learned, for instance, that the bridge evening happened to be its first anniversary, and whatsername had laid on some sherry for the occasion; and if you want to get non-boozers a bit relaxed fairly quickly, a few glasses of sherry isn't a bad bet. Doubtless tongues began to wag a bit more freely than usual, and we know a couple of the things that cropped up. Vietnam and Cambodia did, for a start, and I suspect that the only aspect of those human tragedies that directly impinges on your bourgeois North Oxford housewife is the question of adopting one or two of the poor little blighters caught up in refugee camps. All right, Lewis? I reckon adoption was a topic of conversation that night. Then Bell got to know something else - and bless his heart for sticking it down! They were talking about birthdays - and not unnaturally so, in view of the fact they were celebrating their own first birthday; and as I've just said, Lewis, there's one thing no mother's ever going to forget - and that's when her only baby was born! So this is how I reckon things were. That night at the bridge party, somebody who knew Mrs Murdoch pretty well got a fraction indiscreet, and let it be known to a few people - including, alas, Anne Scott - that Mrs Murdoch's elder son was an adopted boy. And then, in the changing circles of conversation, Anne must have heard Mrs Murdoch herself volunteering the information that her elder son, Michael, was celebrating his nineteenth birthday on that very day! What a quirk of fate it all was!'
   'I thought you didn't believe in fate, sir.'
   But Morse was oblivious to the interjection, and continued his fantastic tale. 'When Laius, Jocasta's husband, was killed, it had been on the road between Thebes and Corinth - a road accident, Lewis! When Anne Scott's husband died, it had also been in a road accident, and I'm pretty sure that she knew all about it. After all, she'd known the elder Murdoch boy - and Mrs Murdoch herself, of course - for more than a couple of years. But, in itself, that couldn't have been a matter of great moment. It had been an accident: the inquest had found neither party predominantly to blame. If experience in driving means anything, it means that you have to expect learner drivers - like Michael Murdoch - to do something daft occasionally; and in this case, Anne Scott's husband wasn't careful enough to cope with the other fellow's inexperience. But do you see how things are beginning to build up and develop, Lewis? Everything is beginning to assume a menacing and sinister importance. Young Michael Murdoch was visiting Anne Scott once a week for special coaching; and as they sat next to each other week after week in Canal Reach I reckon that sheer physical proximity got a bit too much for both of 'em. The young lad must have become infatuated by a comparatively mature and attractive woman - a woman with a full and eminently feelable figure; and the woman herself, who had probably only been in love once in her life - and that with a married man who'd never been willing to run off with her - must surely have felt the attraction of a young, virile lad who worshipped whatever ground she chose to tread. She must have led him on a bit, Lewis; and sure as eggs are eggs, the springs on the old charpoy in the bedroom are soon beginning to creak pretty steadily. Then? Well, then the trouble starts. She misses a period - and then another; and she goes off to the Jericho Clinic - where they tell her they'll let her know as soon as they can. It must have been then that she wrote to Charles Richards pleading for a bit of help: a bit of friendly guidance, at the very least - and perhaps for a bit of money so that she could go away and have a quiet, private abortion somewhere. But, as we know, the letter never got through to Charles Richards at all. By some freakish mischance the letter was intercepted by Celia Richards - and that, Lewis, was the source of all the trouble. As the days pass - and still no reply from her former lover - Anne Scott must have felt that the fates were conspiring against her. Michael Murdoch was the very last person in the world she was going to tell her troubles to: he'd finished his schooling, anyway, and so there was no longer any legitimate reason for them seeing each other. Perhaps they met again once or twice after that - I just don't know. What is perfectly clear is that Anne Scott was growing increasingly depressed as the days dragged on. Life hadn't been very kind to her, and looking back on things she saw evidence only of her failures: her hasty adolescent marriage that had been short-lived and disastrous; her love for Charles Richards which had blossomed for a good many years but which had always been doomed to disappointment; other lovers, no doubt, who'd given her some physical gratification, but little else; and then Michael Murdoch...'
   Morse's voice trailed off, and his eyes drifted along the other tables in the lounge bar where groups of people sat exchanging the amusing ephemera of a happier, if somewhat shallower, life than Anne Scott could ever have known. His glass was empty, and Lewis, as he picked it up and walked over to the bar, decided on this occasion not to remind Morse whose turn it was.
   'So,' resumed Morse, lapping his lips into the level of his pint without a word of gratitude, 'Anne Scott's making a bit of a mess of her life. She's still attractive enough to middle-aged men like you and me, Lewis; but most of those are already bespoke, like you, and the ones that are left, like me, are a load of old remaindered books - out of date and going cheap. But her real tragedy is that she's still attractive to some of the young pupils who come along to that piddling little property of hers in Jericho. She's got no regular income except for the fees from a succession of half-wits whose parents are rich enough and stupid enough to cough up and keep hoping. She goes out quite a bit, of course, and occasionally she meets a nice enough chap but... No! Things don't work out, and she begins to think - she begins to believe - that they never will. She's got a deeply pessimistic and fatalistic streak in her make-up, and in the end, as you know, she abandons all hope. Charles Richards, as she thinks, doesn't give a sod about her any longer: just at the time when she desperately needs a friend, he can't even fork out an envelope and stamp. But she was a pretty tough girl, I should think, and she'd have been able to cope with her problems - if it hadn't been for that shattering revelation at the bridge evening.'
   'She'd been reading the Oedipus story again in the Penguin translation - probably with one of her pupils - and the ground's all naked and ready for the seeds that were sown that fateful evening. Adoption and birthdays - they were the seeds, Lewis, and it must have been the most traumatic shock of her whole life when the terrible truth dawned on her: Michael Murdoch was her own son. And as the implications whirled round in her mind, she must have seen the whole thing in terms of the fates marking her out as another Jocasta. Everything fitted. Her husband had been killed - killed in a road accident - killed by her own son - a son with whom she'd been having sex - a son who was the father of the child she was expecting. She must have felt utterly powerless against the workings of what she saw as the pre-ordained tragedy of her own benighted life. And so she decides to do the one thing that was left open to her: to stop all the struggling and to surrender to her fate; to co-operate with the forces that were now driving her inexorably to her own death - a death she slowly determines, as she sits through that long and hopeless night, will be the death that Queen Jocasta chose. And so, my old friend, she hanged herself... And had she but known it, the curse had still not finally worked itself out. Michael Murdoch is in the Intensive Care Unit at the J.R.2, and he's blinded himself, Lewis - just as Oedipus did. The whole wretched thing's nothing less than a ghastly re-enactment of the old myth as you can read it in Sophocles. And as I told you, if there was one man guilty of Anne Scott's death, that man was Sophocles.'
   The beer glasses were empty again and the mood of the two men was sombre as Morse took out his wallet and passed a five-pound note over to Lewis.
   'My round, I think.'
   It was a turn up for the books; an even bigger one when Morse insisted that Lewis kept the change.
   'You've been far too generous with your round recently, Lewis. I've noticed that. But over-generosity is just as big a fault as stinginess, you know. That's what Aristotle said, anyway.'
   Lewis was feeling a little light-headed in the rarefied air of these Greek philosophers and tragedians, but he was anxious to get one thing straight.
   'You still don't believe in fate, sir?'
   'Course I bloody don't!' snapped Morse.
   'But you just think of all those coincidences— '
   What are you talking about? There's only one real coincidence in the business: the fact that Anne Scott should find that one of her pupils is her own son. That's all! And what's so odd about that, anyway? She's had hundreds of pupils, and Oxford's not all that big— '
   'What about the accident?'
   'Augh! There are millions of accidents every year - thousands of 'em in Oxford— '
   'You exaggerate a bit, sir.'
   'Nonsense! And that's where the coincidences stop, isn't it? Anne Scott decided to hang herself - she decided that. It was a conscious human decision, and had nothing to do with those wretched fates spinning your threads or lopping 'em off or whatever else they're supposed to do. And the fact that Michael Murdoch squirted so much dope into himself and then did what he did - well, that was a sheer fluke, wasn't it? He could have done anything.'
   'Fluke, sir? You seem to want to have it all ways. Flukes, coincidences, decisions, fates...'
   Morse nodded rather sadly. He wasn't quite sure where his own pervasively cynical philosophy of life was leading him, but the facts in this particular case remained what they were; for the life and death of Anne Scott had traced with awesome accuracy those murderous, incestuous, and self-destructive patterns of that early story...
   'Do you know, Lewis, I could just do justice to some egg and chips.'
   Lewis was losing count of his surprises. 'I reckon I'll join you, sir.'
   'I'm afraid you'll have to treat me, though. I don't seem to have any money left.'

Chapter Thirty-four

   The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life

G. B. Shaw


   The hotel room could have been almost anywhere: a neat, well-furnished room, with a white-tiled bathroom annexe, its racks replete with fluffy, white towels. A cosmopolitan room - a little antiseptic and anaemic, perhaps, but moderately expensive and adequately cosy. Two separate lights were affixed to the wall just above the head-board of the double bed, though neither was turned on as Charles Richards lay on his back, his left hand behind his head, smoking silently. He wasn't sure of the exact time, but he thought it must be about 7.30 am., and he had been awake for over an hour. Beside him, her back towards him, lay a young woman, the mauve-striped sheet draped closely round her naked body. Occasionally she stirred slightly and once or twice her lips had mumbled some somnolent endearment. But Charles Richards felt no erotic stirrings towards her that morning. For much of the time as he lay there he was thinking of his wife, and wondering sadly why it was that now, when she was willing to let him go, his thoughts kept drifting back to her. She had not cried or created any scene when at last the truth of his relations with Anne Scott had been forced into the open. But her eyes had betrayed her hurt and disappointment, and a hardness that made her face seem older and plainer; yet later she had looked so tender and so very vulnerable that he had almost found himself falling in love with her afresh. She had said little, apart from a few practical suggestions about the days immediately ahead: she was proud and wounded. He wondered where exactly she was at that moment. Almost certainly back home from Cambridge by now. And if she was, her bed would already have been made up neatly, the sheets stretched taut across the mattress and lovingly smoothed as she had always smoothed them...
   And then there was Conrad - his dear and loyal brother Conrad - who had turned up the previous day and managed to book a single room in one of the cheaper hotels across the plaza. Outwardly Conrad seemed as calm as ever, yet underneath were indications of an unwonted anxiety. Which, of course, was all perfectly understandable, for Conrad had been left with a difficult choice. But, as Charles saw it, his brother had almost certainly made the wrong one. Why come out to Madrid? There was virtually no chance that the police could suspect Conrad of anything; so why hadn't he arranged some quiet little business trip in England? All right, he just had to get away, so he'd said - though Charles doubted even that.
   There was a light knock on the door, followed by the rattle of a key in the bedroom lock, and a young, heavily moustached Spanish waiter brought in the breakfast tray. But the woman still slept on. And Charles was glad of that, for the previous morning she had suddenly jerked herself up to a sitting position, completely naked to the waist; and for some deeply innate reason, he had felt himself madly jealous as the waiter's dark eyes had feasted on her breasts.
   For five minutes the tray by the bedside remained untouched, and then Jennifer turned over towards him, her long, painted fingers feeling inside the top of his pyjama jacket. He knew then beyond doubt that after breakfast he would be making love to her again, and momentarily he despised himself - despised that utterly selfish self of his that almost invariably sought some compensating gratification from every situation: just as he had sought out Jennifer Hills after Celia had learned the truth. He shook his head slowly on the pillow, and reached out for the coffee pot; but the woman's fingertips were detouring tantalizingly towards his pyjama trousers, and he turned himself towards her. 'Can't you even wait till after breakfast?'
   'No-o! I want you now.'
   'You're a sexy bitch, aren't you?'
   'Mm. Specially in the mornings. You know that...'
   When the Spanish chambermaid came in to clean up at 10.30 a.m., she found the toast untouched, as it had been the previous morning; and smiling knowingly to herself she turned her attention to smoothing out the rumpled mauve-striped sheets.

   Conrad Richards ate little breakfast, either, for he was a deeply worried man. He'd suspected the previous day that Charles had been most displeased to see him, and now he wished he'd never come. But he needed some advice and reassurance, and for those he had depended on his brother all his life. He walked across to the Tourist Office at nine o'clock and found that if he wanted to he could fly back to Gatwick that same afternoon. Yes, that would probably be the best thing: get back, and see Celia again, and face things...
   But when, at 11 a.m., the brothers met in the cocktail bar of the Palace Hotel, Charles seemed his bright, ebullient self once more.
   'Go back today?Nonsense! You've not even had a chance to look round. Look at that!' He pointed out across the plaza to the fountains playing beside the statue of Neptune. 'Beautiful, isn't it? We'll do a bit of sight-seeing together, Conrad. What do you say?'
   'What about er— ?'
   'Don't worry about her. She's flying back to Gatwick this afternoon - on my instructions.'

   Celia, too, had been up early that morning, deciding as she had done to follow Charles's practice of putting some time in at the office on Saturday. The previous day, a measure of greatness had been thrust upon her, for she had found herself making decisions about contracts and payments without the slightest hesitation - and she'd enjoyed it all. Seated in Charles's chair, she'd dictated letters and memorandums, answered the telephone, greeted two prospective clients and one ineffectual salesman - all with a new-found confidence that had surprised her. Action! That's what she told herself she needed - and plenty of it; and she just said 'No, no, no!' whenever the waves of worry threatened to wash all other thoughts away. Indeed, for some brief periods of time she found herself almost succeeding in her self-imposed discipline. But the currents of anxiety were often too strong, and like her brother-in-law she felt the urgent need of having Charles beside her. Charles, who was so strong and confident; Charles whom, in spite of everything that had happened, she knew was the only man she could ever fully love.
   She was still in the office when she took the call at ten-past twelve. It was from Madrid. From Charles.

   She was at home two hours later when she received another call, this time from Detective Chief Inspector Morse, to whom she was able to report that her husband would be returning home on Monday morning, his flight scheduled to land at Gatwick at 10.40 a.m., and that she herself was driving up to meet him. If it was really necessary, yes, they could probably be back by about two o'clock - if the plane was on time, of course. Make it two-thirty then? Better still, three o'clock, just to be on the safe side. At the Richards' house? All right. Fine!
   'Have you any idea where your husband's brother is?'
   'Conrad? No, I haven't, I'm afraid. He's off on business somewhere, but no one seems to know where he's gone.'
   'Oh, I see.'
   Celia could hear the disappointment in the inspector's voice and was clearly anxious to appear co-operative. 'Can I give him a message - when he gets back?'
   'No-o.' Morse sounded indecisive. 'Perhaps not, Mrs Richards. It was just - No, it doesn't matter. It's not important.'

   Lewis had come into the office during the last part of the telephone conversation, and Morse winked at him broadly as he replaced the receiver. 'Monday, then! That's the big show-down, Lewis. Three o'clock. And you know something? I reckon I'm looking forward to it.'
   Lewis, however, was looking unimpressed, and something in his face spelled trouble.
   'Aren't you, Lewis?'
   'I'm afraid I've got some rather odd news for you.'
   Morse looked up sharply.
   'It was very irregular, they said, and Saturday morning's hardly the best time to make inquiries, is it?'
   'But you found out?'
   Lewis nodded. 'You're not going to like this much, sir, but the Scotts' baby was adopted by a couple in North London: a Mr and Mrs Hawkins. They christened the boy "Joseph", and the poor little fellow died just before his third birthday - meningitis.'
   Morse looked utterly blank and his eyes seemed to stare down into some vast abyss. 'You're quite sure about this?'
   'Quite sure, sir. You were right about Michael Murdoch being adopted, though. Same society. But his parents were both killed in a road accident just outside— '
   But Morse was no longer listening, for if what Lewis had just told him was true...
   Yet Morse had not been so very far from the truth, and if only he had known it, the final clue in the Anne Scott case lay even now inside his jacket pocket, in the shape of the unopened letter he had so recently picked up from the frontdoor mat of 9 Canal Reach.
   'Does this mean that we're back to the drawing-board, sir?'
   'Certainly not!' said Morse.
   'Will you want me tomorrow?'
   'Sunday? Sunday's a day of rest, Lewis - and I've got to catch up with the omnibus edition of The Archers.'

Chapter Thirty-five

   Sir: (n.) a word of respect (or disapprobation) used in addressing a man

Chambers's Twentieth-Century Dictionary


   The up-swung door of the wide double garage revealed the incongruous collocation of the Rolls and the Mini as Morse walked across the crunching gravel and rang the bell. Clearly number 261 was in a different class from Conrad's house. It was Celia who answered the door.
   'Come in, Inspector.'
   'Plane on time, Mrs Richards?’
   'A few minutes early, in fact. You know my husband, of course.'
   Morse watched them carefully as they stood there, fingers intertwined as though some dramatic reconciliation had recently been enacted - or, at least, as though they wished to give him that impression. He nodded rather curtly.
   'Afternoon, sir. I'd hoped that we could have a quiet little chat on our own - if, er, your wife— '
   'I was just going, Inspector - don't worry. Why don't you go through into the lounge, Charles? You can let me know when you've finished - well, finished whatever you've got to discuss.' She sounded remarkably happy, and there was a spring in her step as she walked away.
   'She's obviously glad to have you back, sir,' said Morse, as the two men sat opposite each other in the lounge.
   'I think she is, yes.'
   'Bit surprising, perhaps?'
   'We're not here to talk about my personal affairs, I hope?'
   'I’m afraid your personal affairs are very much involved, sir.'
   'But not my private relations with my wife.'
   'No. Perhaps not, sir.'
   'And I wish you'd stop calling me "sir"!'
   'My sergeant calls me "sir" all the time. It's just a sort of social formality, Mr Richards.' Morse slowly took out a cigarette, as if he were anxious to impose some leisurely tempo on the interview. 'Mind if I smoke?'
   'Not a bit.' Richards took an ashtray from the mantelpiece and placed it on the arm of Morse's chair.
   Morse offered the packet across but Richards shook his head with a show of impatience. 'Not for the minute, thanks. It's about Anne Scott, isn't it?'
   'Amongst other things.'
   'Well, can we get on with it?'
   'Do you know where your brother Conrad is?’
   'No. Not the faintest.'
   ‘Did he ring you - while you were in Spain?'
   'Yes. He told me one of your men had taken his fingerprints.'
   'He didn't object.'
   'Why should he, Inspector?'
   'Why, indeed?'
   'Why did you take them?'
   'I thought he might have murdered Jackson.'
   'What, Conrad! Oh dear! You must be hard up for suspects.'
   'Yes. I'm - I'm afraid we are.’
   'Do you want my fingerprints?'
   'No, I don't think so. You see you've got a pretty good alibi for that night. Me!'
   'I thought the police were always breaking alibis, though. In detective stories it's usually the person with the cast-iron alibi who commits the murder, isn't it?'
   Morse nodded. 'Not in this case, though. You see, I happen to know exactly who killed Jackson - and it wasn't you.'
   'Well, that's something to be grateful for, I suppose.'
   'Did Conrad also tell you that we found the blackmail note in your desk?'
   'No. But Celia did. I was a bit daft to keep it, I suppose.'
   'But I'm very glad you did. It was the biggest clue in the ease.'
   'Really?'
   'And Jackson didn't write it!'
   'What?'
   'No. Jackson couldn't have written that letter because— '
   'But he rang, Inspector! It must have been Jackson.'
   'Do you remember exactly what he said when he rang?'
   'Well - no, not really, but— '
   'Please try to think back if you can. It's very important.'
   'Well - he seemed to know that er - well, he seemed to know all about me and Anne.'
   'Did he actually mention the letter?'
   'Do you know - I don't think he did, no.' Richards frowned and sat forward in his chair. 'So you think, perhaps, that - that the person who rang me... But it was Jackson, Inspector! I know it was.'
   'Do you mind telling me how you can be so sure?' asked Morse quietly.
   'You probably know, don't you?' To Morse, Richards' eyes suddenly seemed to show a deeply shrewd intelligence.
   'I don't really know anything yet.'
   'Well, when Jackson rang, I decided to change things. You know, change the time and the place and all that. I thought it would give me a chance— '
   'To follow him?'
   'Yes.'
   'How much money did you take with you?'
   '£250.'
   'And where did you arrange to meet him?'
   'Woodstock Road. I left the money behind a telephone box there - near Fieldside - Fieldhouse Road, or some such name. I can show you if— '
   'Then you waited, and followed him?’
   'That's right.'
   'In the car?'
   Richards nodded. 'It wasn't easy, of course, but—'
   'Did you take Conrad with you?'
   'Take Conrad? What - what on earth— ?'
   'How did Conrad follow Jackson? On his bike?'
   'What the hell are you talking about? I followed Jackson - in the car. I just— '
   'There's a folding bicycle in your garage. I just happened to er notice it as I came up the drive. Did he use that?'
   'I just told you, Inspector. I don't know where you're getting all these cock-eyed notions from but— '
   'Did you put the bike in the back seat or in the boot?'
   'I told you— '
   'Look, sir! There can be no suspicion whatever that either you or your brother, Conrad, murdered George Jackson. None! But I'm still faced with a murder, and you've got to tell me the truth, if only because then I'll be able to eliminate certain lines of inquiry - and stop myself wasting my bloody time! You've got to understand that! If I can get it quite clear in my own mind exactly what happened that night, I shall be on the right track - I'm certain of that. And I'm certain of something else, and that is that you involved Conrad in some way or other. It might not have been on a bike— '
   'Yes, it was,' said Richards quietly. 'We put it in the back of the Rolls, and when I parked just off the main road, Conrad got it out. He'd dressed up in a gown and had a few books with him. We thought it would sort of merge into the background somehow.'
   'And then Conrad followed him?'
   'He followed him to Canal Reach, yes - last house on the right.'
   'So?'
   'So nothing, Inspector. We knew where he lived and we - well, it was me, actually - I found out his name.'
   'Go on!'
   'That's the finish, Inspector.'
   'You didn't drive Conrad into Oxford the night Jackson was killed? The night you spoke at the Book Association?'
   'I swear I didn't!'
   'Where was Conrad that night?'
   'I honestly don't know. I did ask him - after we'd heard about this Jackson business. But he said he just couldn't remember. Probably at home all night but— '
   'He's got no alibi, you mean?'
   'I'm afraid not.'
   'Well, I shouldn't worry about that, sir - Mr Richards, I mean. I'd take it as a good sign rather than a bad one that your brother's a bit hazy about that night.'
   'I see, yes. You know, it's not all that easy, is it, remembering where you were a week or so ago?'
   'You'd surely have no trouble, though? About that night, I mean.'
   'No, I haven't. I forget exactly when the meeting finished, but I know I drove straight home, Inspector. I must have been home by - oh, half-past ten, I should think.'
   'Would your wife remember?'
   'Why don't you ask her?'
   'Hardly worth it, is it? You've probably got it all worked out, anyway.'
   'I resent that, Inspector! All right, my brother and I probably acted like a pair of idiots, I realize that. I should have told the police about the letter and so on straight away. All right! But please don't drag Celia into things! I've treated the poor woman shabbily enough without her having to— '
   'I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that; and it doesn't really matter when you got home that night. Why should it?'
   'But it's rather nice when someone can confirm what you say, isn't it? And I'm quite sure that Celia— '
   'Forget it, please! I think I've got the general picture, and I'm very grateful to you.' Morse stood up to go 'We shall have to have a statement, of course. But I can send Sergeant Lewis along at some time that's convenient for you.'
   'Can't we get it done now, Inspector? I've got a pretty hectic programme these next few days.’
   'Not off to Spain again, I hope?'
   'No. I'm off to Newcastle first thing in the morning, and I expect to be there a couple of days. Then I'm going on— '
   'Don't worry about that. There's no rush. As I say, it's not really important. But you know all this bureaucratic business of getting things down on paper: getting people to sign things, and all that. And to be truthful, Mr Richards, we sometimes find that people change their evidence a bit when it actually comes down to having to sign it. Funny, isn't it? And, of course, the memory plays some odd tricks on all of us. Sometimes we find that we suddenly remember a particular detail that we thought we'd quite forgotten.'
   'I'm not sure I like what I think you're trying to say,' said Richards, his voice a degree harsher now.
   'No? All I'm saying is that it won't do any harm for you to think things over at your leisure. That's all.'
   'Shall I write it all out, and post it to you?'
   'No, we can't do that, I'm afraid. We shall need you to sign the statement in front of a police officer.'
   'All right.' Richards seemed suddenly relaxed again and rose from his chair. 'Let's arrange something, shall we?'
   'I should think the best thing is for you to give Sergeant Lewis a ring at the Kidlington HQ when you've finished your business trips. One day early next week, shall we say?'
   'Monday? Will that be all right?'
   'Certainly. Well, I'll be off now. I'm sorry to have taken up so much of your time.'
   'Would you like a cup of tea?'
   'Tea? Er, no thank you - I must be getting back. Please give my regards to Mrs Richards.'
   The two men walked to the front door, and Morse asked if he could have a quick look at the Rolls.
   'Beautiful!' was his verdict.
   'And here's the famous bike,' said Richards ruefully.
   Morse nodded. 'I've always had pretty sharp eyes, they tell me.'
   They shook hands and Morse walked down to the road where Lewis sat waiting with his usual placid patience.
   'Well?’ said Morse.
   'It was just as you said, sir.'
   Morse sat back contentedly as they drove past the last few houses in Oxford Avenue. 'Well, I've thrown in the bait, Lewis. We just sit back now, and wait for the fish to bite.'
   'Think he will?'
   'Oh, yes! You should have heard me, Lewis. A bloody genius, I was!'
   'Really, sir?'
   'Why do you call me "sir" all the time?'
   'Well, it's just a sort of convention in the Force, isn't it? Just a mark of respect, I suppose.'
   'Do you think I deserve some respect?'
   'I wouldn't go so far as that, but it's a sort of habit by now and I don't think I could change in a hurry - sir!'
   Morse sat back happily, for things were going extraordinarily well. At least on one front.

Chapter Thirty-six.

   A vauntour and a lyere, al is one

Geoffrey Chaucer, Troylus and Criseyde


   As instructed, the sister had telephoned Kidlington HQ when the time seemed to her most opportune; and the following evening at 8 p.m. Morse and Lewis sat waiting in a small ante-room just off Dyne Ward in the Eye Hospital at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Walton Street, whither Michael Murdoch had now been transferred. Edward Murdoch, after just leaving his brother's bedside, looked surprised and somewhat flustered as he was ushered into this room and told to sit down. There were no formalities.
   'Can you spell "believe"?' asked Morse.
   The boy swallowed hard and seemed about to answer when Morse, thrusting the blackmail note across the table, answered the question for him.
   'Of course you can. You're a well-educated lad, we know that - No! Please don't touch it, Edward! Fingerprints all over it, you see - but whoever wrote that letter couldn't spell "believe", could he? Just have a look at it.'
   The boy shifted awkwardly in his chair, his eyes narrowing over the writing in the long, uncomfortable silence that followed.
   'Did you write it?' asked Morse slowly. 'Or was it your brother?'
   The boy shook his head in apparent bewilderment. 'You must be joking!'
   It was Lewis who spoke next, his voice flat and unconcerned. 'You didn't write it yourself - is that what you're saying?'
   'Of course I didn't!'
   'That's all I wanted to know, Mr Murdoch,' said Lewis with polite finality. He whispered something into Morse's ear; and Morse, seemingly faced with a decision of some delicacy, finally nodded.
   'Now, sir?' asked Lewis.
   Morse nodded again, and Lewis, taking a pen from his breast pocket and picking up a sheaf of papers from the table, got up and left the ante-room.
   Morse himself picked up a copy of Country Life, turned to the crossword, and had finished it in eleven minutes - minutes during which Edward Murdoch was showing increasing signs of agitation. Two or three times his mouth had opened as if he were about to speak, and when Morse wrote in the last word he could stay silent no longer.
   'What is all this?'
   'We're waiting.'
   'Waiting for - for him to come back?'
   Morse nodded. 'Sergeant Lewis - that's his name.'
   'How long will he be?'
   Morse shrugged his shoulders and turned over a page to survey the features of the Honourable Fiona Forbes-Smithson. 'Difficult to say. Some people are co-operative - some aren’t.'
   'He's gone to see Michael, hasn't he?'
   'He's got his duty to do - just like the rest of us.'
   'But it's not fair!Michael's ill!'
   'He's a lot better. Going to see a bit, so they tell me.'
   'But it's not— '
   'Look, lad!' said Morse very gently and quietly. 'Sergeant Lewis and myself are trying our best to solve a murder. It takes a lot of time and patience and we have to do an awful lot of things we'd rather not do. But if we're lucky and people try to help us - well, sometimes we manage to get to the bottom of things.'
   'But I've told you, Inspector, I never— '
   'You lie!' thundered Morse. 'Do you honestly believe it was my wish for Sergeant Lewis to go and disturb your brother? You're right. He is ill. Do you think I don't know all about him? Do you think I'd risk his chances of getting over all this trouble if I didn't have to?'
   Edward Murdoch did a very strange thing then. Like some frenetic pianist banging away at the same chords, he pressed the fingers of both his hands all over the letter in front of him, and sat back breathing heavily with a look of triumph in his eyes.
   'Not really very sensible,' said Morse mildly. 'You see, I'm going to have to ask you why you did that, aren't I? And, I’ll tell you something, lad, you'd better think up something pretty good!'
   'You're trying to trick me!' shouted the boy. 'Why don't you just— ?'
   'I'm not trying to trick you, lad. I don't need to. You're making enough mistakes without needing me to do muck about it.'
   'I told you. I didn't— '
   'Look! Sergeant Lewis'll be back any minute now, because I can't really believe your brother's as stupid as you are. And when he comes in, we'll have a statement, and then we'll take you up to Kidlington and get one from you. It's all right. You didn't write the letter, you say. That's fine. All we've got to do is to get it down in writing, then typed up, and signed. It won't take all that long, and I'll give your mum a ring and tell her— '
   'What's it got to do with her?'
   'Won't she be a bit worried about you, lad? You're all she's got at home now, you know, and she's had one hell of a time this last few weeks, hasn't she?'
   It was the final straw, and Edward Murdoch buried his head in his hands and wept.
   Morse quietly left the room and beckoned to Lewis, who had been sitting for the last quarter of an hour on a bench at the end of the corridor, making steady progress with the Coffee-Break Crossword in the Daily Mirror.

   The sordid little story was soon told. It had been Edward who had seen the letter to Charles Richards underneath a pile of books in the study, unsealed but ready to post, with the envelope addressed and stamped. In it Anne Scott had begged for advice, support, and money. She was sure she was pregnant and the father could only be Charles Richards because she had never made love with any other man. She pleaded with Charles to contact her and arrange to see her. She knew he would agree because of what they had meant to each other for so many years; and so very recently, too. She held out no threats, but the very fact that such a thing had crossed her mind served only to show how desperate she was feeling. If he could be her lover no longer, at least he could be a friend - now, when she needed him as never before. She treasured all the letters he had written to her, and re-reading them was about the only thing that gave her any hope. She would burn them all - as he'd often asked her to - if only he would help her. If he wouldn't - well, she just couldn't say what she would do.
   As best he could remember it, that was the gist of the letter that Edward had read before hastily replacing it as he heard Anne climbing the stairs; and that was the gist of what he'd told his brother Michael the same evening. Not in any fraternal, conspiratorial sort of way. Just the opposite, in fact; because Michael had frequently boasted about making love to Anne, and - yes! - he, Edward, had been angry and jealous about it. But Michael had laughed it off; after all it wasn't much good her appealing to him for any money, was it? He couldn't even afford a decent fix every now and again. Then Anne had died; and soon after hearing of her death, Michael had asked Edward whether he could remember the name and address of the man Anne had written to. And that's how it started. Just a joke, really - that's what they'd thought, anyway. There was a chance of some money, perhaps, and money for Michael was becoming an urgent necessity, because (as Edward knew) he'd been on drugs for almost a year. So, almost in a schoolboyish manner, they had concocted a note together - and, well, that was all. The next day Michael had been rushed off to hospital, and Edward himself had felt frightened. Was still frightened - and agonizedly sorry about the cheap thing he'd done and all the trouble he'd caused. He'd never rung up Charles Richards, and he'd never been down to the willow trees to see if anything had been left there.

   Whilst Lewis was laboriously scrawling the last few sentences, Morse wandered off and walked into the ward where Michael lay, a large white dressing over his right eye, his left eye, bruised and swollen, staring up at the ceiling. 'Your brother just told me that between you you wrote a letter to Charles Richards. Is that right, Michael?'
   'If Ted says so. I forget.' He seemed nonchalant and unconcerned.
   'You don't forget other things, perhaps?'
   'What's that supposed to mean?'
   'You'd always remember getting into bed with Ms Scott, surely?'
   To Morse the look that leaped into the single eye of Michael Murdoch seemed distastefully crude and triumphant but the boy made no direct reply.
   'Real honey, wasn't she?'
   'Phew! You can say that again.'
   'She - er - she took her clothes off, you mean?'
   'You kidding? Beautiful body that woman had!' Morse shrugged his shoulders. 'I wouldn't go so far as that myself. I only saw her after she - after she was dead, but, you can't really say she had a beautiful body, can you? With that great birthmark on her side? Come off it, lad. You can't have seen many.’
   'You don't notice that sort of thing too much, though, do you, when— ?'
   'You must have noticed it sometimes, though.'
   'Well, yes, of course, but— '
   'What a cheap and sordid little liar you are, Murdoch!' The anger in Morse's voice was taut and dangerous. 'She had no birthmark anywhere, that woman! She had one big fault and only one; and that was that she was kind and helpful to such a spineless specimen as you, lad - because you're so full of wind and piss there's room for nothing else!'
   The eye was suddenly dull and ashamed, and Morse turned away and walked out. In the corridor he stood at the window for a few minutes breathing heavily until his anger subsided. Perhaps he was a cheap and sordid liar himself, too, for he had seen Anne Scott once - and once only. At a party. Fully dressed. And, as it seemed to him now, such a long, long time ago.

   Whilst Morse and Lewis were still at the Eye Hospital, passengers arriving on a British Airways scheduled flight from Madrid were passing through the customs hall at Gatwick, where onlookers might have seen two plain-clothes men walk up on either side of a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man, his dark hair greying at the temples. There was no struggle, no animated conversation: just a wan, helpless sort of half-smile on the face of the man who had just been arrested. Indeed, the exchanges were so quietly spoken, so decorous almost, that even the bearded customs man a few yards away had been able to hear only a little of what was said.
   The broad-shouldered man had nodded, unemotionally.
   'It is my duty as a police officer to arrest you on a charge of murder: the murder of Mr George Jackson of 9 Canal Reach, Jericho...'
   The customs man frowned, his chalk poised in mid-air over the next piece of luggage. Arrests in the hall were commonplace, of course; but Jericho, as it seemed to him, sounded such a long, long way away.

Chapter Thirty-seven

   I never saw a man who looked
   With such a wistful eye
   Upon that little tent of blue
   Which prisoners call the sky

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol


   Morse had heard of the arrest the previous evening after returning to Kidlington HQ at about 9.45 p.m. He had been pleasurably surprised that things had developed so quickly, and he had promptly despatched a telex of thanks to Interpol. His decision had been a simple one. The HQ building was non-operational as far as cells were concerned, and he had ordered the police car to drive direct to St Aldates, where a night's solitary confinement might well, in Morse's view, prove beneficial for the prisoner's soul.
   The next morning, Morse took his time; and when Lewis drove into the crowded St Aldates' yard it was already 9.45 a.m.
   'I’ll see him alone first,' said Morse.
   'I understand, sir.' Lewis appeared cheerfully indifferent. I’ll nip along and get a cup of coffee.'
   Richards was seated on a narrow bed reading the Daily Express when the cell-door was closed behind Morse with a thumping twang.
   'Good morning, sir. We haven't met before, have we? I've met your brother several times, of course - but never you. I'm Morse - Detective Chief Inspector Morse.'
   'Charles has told me about you, Inspector.’
   'Do sit down, please. We've er we've got quite a lot to talk about, haven't we? I told the people here that you were perfectly free, of course, to call your lawyer. They told you that, I hope?'
   'I don't need a lawyer, Inspector. And when you let me go - which won't be long, believe me! - I promise I shan't even complain about being cooped up for the night in this wretched cell.'
   'I do hope they've treated you reasonably well?'
   'Quite well, yes. And it's good to get back to some English food, I must say. Perhaps a prisoner's life isn't too bad— '
   'It's pretty grim, I'm afraid.'
   'Well, I think you've got a bit of explaining to do, Inspector.'
   'Really? I was hoping you were going to do all that.'
   'I've been accused of murdering a man, I understand?'
   'That's it.'
   'Don't you think you owe me just a little explanation?'
   'All right. Your brother Charles told you about the blackmail note he received, and asked you for your co-operation. You've always been a kindly and good-hearted fellow, and you said you'd do what you could. Then your brother had a phone call about the note - or at least a call he thought was about the note - and he arranged to meet the blackmailer, Jackson. He drove his Rolls into Oxford, and he took you with him. When you got near the rendezvous that night, you crouched down in the back seat, and Charles carefully kept the car away from the lighted road whilst you quietly got out, taking Mrs Richards' folding bicycle with you. Then you waited - and you followed the man you'd seen take the money. Luckily he was on a bicycle as well, and you tailed him down to Jericho, where you saw him go in his house. And that was the night's work successfully completed. Charles was waiting for you at some pre-arranged spot and— '
   'The Martyrs' Memorial, actually.'
   'You - you're not going to deny any of this?'
   'No point, is there? It's all true - apart from the fact that I've got a folding bike of my own.'
   'Ah well! Even the best of us make little mistakes here and there.'
   'Big ones, too, Inspector - like the one I suspect you're about to make. But go on!'
   'The plan had worked well, and you decided to repeat it. Charles had agreed to speak to the Oxford Book Association and he took you with him that Friday night. He probably dropped you somewhere near St Barnabas' Church and arranged to pick you up at about a quarter to ten or so.'
   Richards shook his head in quiet remonstration. 'Look, Inspector. If you really— '
   'Just a minute! Hear me out! I don't think you meant to murder Jackson. The idea was that you— '
   'I can't listen to this! You listen to me a minute! You may be right - you probably are - in saying that Charles meant to go and see Jackson. Knowing Charles as I do, I don't think he could have let a thing like that go. He'd like as not have gone to see Jackson and scared the living daylights out of him - because you mustn't underestimate my brother, Inspector: he's as tough and unscrupulous as they come - believe me! But don't you understand? Something put a whacking great full stop to any ideas that Charles may have had. And you know perfectly well what that something was: Jackson was murdered. And that, from our point of view, was that! We just felt - well, we needn't worry about him any more.'
   'So you didn't go to Jackson's house that night?'
   'I certainly did not.'
   'Where were you that night, sir?' (Had the 'sir’ crept in from conditioned reflex? Or was Morse feeling slightly less sure of himself?)
   'I don't know,' replied Richards in a hopeless voice. 'I just don't know, Inspector. I don't go out much. I'm not a womanizer like Charles, and if I do go out it's usually only to the local.'
   'But you didn't go to the local that night?'
   'I may have done, but I can't remember; and it's no good saying I can. If I had gone, it would only have been for an hour or so, though.'
   'Perhaps you stayed at home and watched the telly?’
   'I haven't got a telly. If I was home that night I'd have been reading, I should think.'
   'Anything interesting?’
   'I've been reading Gibbon recently - and reading him with infinite pleasure, if I may say so— '
   'Which volume are you up to?'
   'Just past Alaric and the sacking of Rome. Volume Four.'
   'Don't you mean Volume Three?'
   'Depends which edition you're reading.'
   Morse let it go. 'What was the real reason for your visit to Jackson's house that night?'
   Richards smiled patiently. 'You must have a pretty poor opinion of my intelligence, Inspector.'
   'Certainly not! Any man who reads Gibbon has got my vote from the start. But I still think no one actually intended murdering Jackson, you see. I think he was after something else.'
   'Such as?'
   'I think it was a letter - a letter that Jackson had found when he pushed his way through into Anne Scott's kitchen that morning. At first I thought it must have been a letter she'd written for the police - a suicide note - telling the whole story and perhaps telling it a bit too nastily from your brother's point of view. But now I don't think so, somehow. I think the letter Jackson found had probably been received through the post that very morning - a letter from your brother telling Anne Scott that he couldn't and wouldn't help her, and that everything between them was over.'
   'Have you got the letter?' asked Richards quietly.
   'No,' said Morse slowly. 'No - we haven't.'
   'Aren't you going to have to do a bit better than this, Inspector?'
   'Well, your brother was looking for something - in that shed at the bottom of Jackson's garden. Or was that you, sir?'
   'In a shed?’
   Morse ignored the apparent incredulity in Richards' voice and continued. 'That letter would have been a bad thing for your brother, sir. It could have broken up his marriage if— '
   'But Celia knew about Anne Scott.'
   'Only very recently, I think.'
   'Yes, that's true.'
   'Do you love your sister-in-law?'
   Richards looked down sadly at the concrete floor and nodded. 'I shall always love her, I suppose.'
   Morse nodded, too, as if he also was not unacquainted with the agonies of unrequited love.
   'Where does this leave us, Inspector?'
   'Where we started, I'm afraid, sir. You've been charged with the murder of Jackson, and that charge still stands. So we'd better get back to thinking about where you were on the night when— '
   Richards got up from the bed, a new note of exasperation in his voice. 'I've told you - I don't know. If you like, I'll try - I'll try like hell - to get hold of somebody who may have seen me. But there are millions of people who couldn't prove where they were that night!'
   'That's true.'
   'Well, why pick on me? What possible evidence— ?'
   'Ah!' said Morse. 'I wondered when you were going to ask me about the evidence. You can't honestly think we'd have you brought here just because no one saw you reading Gibbon that night? Give us a little credit!'
   Richards looked puzzled. 'You've got some evidence? Against me?'
   'Well, we're not absolutely sure, but - yes, we've got some evidence. You see there were several fingerprints in Jackson's bedroom, and as you know I asked my sergeant to take yours.'
   'But he did! And I'll tell you one thing, Inspector, my prints could quite definitely not have matched up with anything there, because I've never been in the bloody house - never!'
   'I think you've missed my point, sir. We didn't really get a chance of matching up your prints at all. I know it's our fault - but you must forgive Sergeant Lewis. You see, he's not very well up in that sort of thing and - well, to be truthful, sir - he mucked things up a bit. But he's a good man, and he's willing to have another go. It's important, don't you think, to give a man a second chance? In fact he's waiting outside now.'
   Richards sat down on the bed again, his head between his hands. For several minutes he said nothing, and Morse looked down at a man who now seemed utterly weary and defeated.
   'Cigarette?' said Morse.
   Richards took one, and inhaled the smoke like a dying man gasping at oxygen.
   'When did you find out?' he asked very quietly.
   'Find out that you weren't Conrad Richards, you mean? Well, let me see now...' Morse himself inhaled deeply on his own cigarette; and as he briefly told of his discoveries, the same wan and wistful half-smile returned to the face of the man who sat on the edge of the narrow bed.
   It was the face of Charles Richards.

Chapter Thirty-eight

   Fingerprints are left at the scenes of crime often enough to put over 10,000 individual prints in the FBI files. Even the craftiest of perpetrators sometimes forget to wipe up everywhere

Murder Ink


   'When did you find out, Morse?' asked the ACC that afternoon.
   'Looking back on it, sir, I think the first inkling should have come when I went to the Book Association and learned that it had been Anne Scott who had suggested to the committee that Charles Richards should be invited along to talk about the small publishing business. Such a meeting would attract a few people, the committee felt, especially some of the young students from the Polytechnic who might be thinking of starting up for themselves. But "small" is the operative word, sir. In a limited and very specialized field the Richards brothers had managed to run a thriving little concern. But who had heard of them? Who - except for Anne Scott - knew them? Virtually no one in Oxford, that's for certain - just as virtually no one would recognize the managing directors even of your big national publishers. And, remember, the Richards brothers had only just moved into Oxfordshire a few months earlier - half a dozen miles outside Oxford itself - and the chances that anyone would recognize either of them in a small meeting were very slim indeed. The only person who would have known them both was dead: Anne Scott. So they laid their plan - and decided to follow the same routine as the one which had proved so successful earlier in the week, when it was Conrad Richards who drove the Rolls to Oxford and Charles Richards who followed Jackson to Canal Reach.
   'Perhaps from the little we've learned about the two brothers' characters this wasn't surprising: it was Conrad who'd always been ready to play second fiddle, and Charles who'd always been the more dynamic. So they decided to swap roles again for the Friday evening, with Conrad taking his brother's place in a talk which - very much at the eleventh hour - had been brought forward, thus almost certainly cutting down what would have been a meagre audience at the best of times. Charles had already written out his notes for the speech, and Conrad probably knew more about the workings of the business, anyway. Conrad, I'm sure, was quite happy to do this; what he adamantly refused to do was to go down to Canal Reach. As ever, in his own mild way, he was quite willing to co-operate wherever he felt he could - but it had to be Charles who went to face Jackson. Now, I'm fairly sure in my own mind, sir, that although Charles Richards wasn't reckoning on murder, he was determined to get that letter back - or else. He tried to scare Jackson and pushed him around from room to room as he tried to find what he wanted - the letter which would implicate him deeply in Anne Scott's death, and pretty certainly put paid to his marriage - and possibly his business, too. And when they got to the bedroom he got so exasperated that he literally shook the life out of Jackson against the bed-post. At that point Charles Richards was in a tight spot. He knew his own name was likely to crop up somewhere in police inquiries into Anne Scott's death, and he realized how vital it was that Conrad, who was at that very moment talking to an audience under the alias of 'Charles Richards', should be given an utterly unassailable alibi. So he rang up the police - and then he got the hell out of Jericho and waited at the Martyrs' Memorial for Conrad to pick him up.'
   'He didn't find the letter?'
   'So he says - and I'm inclined to believe him.'
   'What about the change of date for the meeting? Was that deliberate?'
   'I don't really see how it could have been, sir: there wasn't the time, I don't think. No. Charles had to go to Spain on business some time this month, and it so happened that one of his girl friends told him that she could get away, too, and join him. But only during that week. So Charles pleaded urgent business, the meeting was changed, and the brothers took full advantage of— '
   'Lucky for them, wasn't it? Keeping the audience down, I mean.'
   'Luckier than you realize, sir. Miss Universe or World or something was on the telly that night and— '
   ‘I’m surprised you weren't watching it, Morse.'
   'Did they pick the right girl, sir?'
   'Well, personally I'd have gone for Miss - Go on!'
   'I should think things must have looked pretty black as they went home that night and talked over what had happened. But very soon one thing must have become increasingly clear to the pair of them. Perhaps all would be well, if only they could keep up the pretence. The real danger would come if the police, in connection with Anne Scott's death, discovered that the "Charles Richards" of the OBA talk was not Charles Richards at all - but his brother Conrad, because the speaker that night had an alibi that no one in the world could shake. So the brothers made their decision. Celia Richards had to be brought into the picture straight away, and Charles had no option but to tell her everything about his affair with Anne Scott and to plead with her to take her part - a pretty big part, too - in the deception that followed.'
   The ACC nodded. 'Ye-es. You'd better tell me how they worked that.'
   'To an outsider, sir, I think that one thing about this case would seem particularly odd: the fact that Sergeant Lewis and myself had never been together when we'd met Conrad Richards; and, at the same time, we'd neither of us met the two brothers when they were together. Let me explain, sir. I met Charles Richards - or rather the man I thought was Charles Richards - for the first time at the OBA, when his physical appearance was firmly fixed for me as Charles Richards. As it happened, I did ring up the actual Charles Richards the next day, but the line, as I well remember, was very poor and crackly, and we ended up almost shouting to each other. In any case, I'd only heard him speak the once - and it just didn't occur to me that the man I was speaking to was any other than the man I'd sat listening to on the back row. Then, a day or two later, I rang Charles Richards again; but he was out at the time and so I left a message with his secretary for him to ring back. As we now know, sir, the two brothers were able to solve that little problem without too much trouble. When Charles received the message, he got Conrad to ring me back. Easy. But I asked for a meeting with him the next day, and that took a bit more organization. When I called at Charles Richards' office I was treated to a neat and convincing little charade by Celia - acting as the receptionist - and by Conrad - playing the part of Charles. It was, by the way, sir, at that point that I should have taken more notice of one very significant fact. Celia asked me for a cigarette that day - something she surely would never have done if the man who was with her was really her husband, because I was later to learn that Charles Richards was a heavy smoker. Anyway, I suspected nothing at the time, and the three of them must have felt encouraged about keeping up the pretence if the police were to bother them again.'
   'Then we were a bit unlucky. Lewis and myself paid a surprise visit to Abingdon one afternoon, to get Conrad's fingerprints. But I didn't join him for a start, sir. I had another er lead to follow up, and so I wasn't with Lewis when he called at the office and met Conrad - the same man who'd twice passed himself off to me as Charles. We had reason to believe that Conrad might have been involved in things somehow, and we wanted to find whether his prints matched those found in Jackson's bedroom. So Lewis got the prints - Conrad's prints - and of course they matched nothing, because it had been Charles who had been in Jackson's house. That same afternoon we returned to the Richards' firm - but we were too late. We searched the offices that the brothers used, and as you know we found the blackmail note in Charles's desk. But the real clue I missed, I'm afraid. It was pretty clear from the ash-trays full of stubs that Charles was virtually a chain-smoker, but in Conrad's room there was no physical sign whatsoever of smoking and not the faintest smell of stale tobacco. Then we made a final visit to Abingdon, when Celia and Conrad - this time with ample warning - put on another little performance for me, playing the parts of a reconciled couple very cleverly. But they were wasting their time, I'm afraid. You see, there were two reasons for my visit. First, to get the man I'd been interviewing to the front door so that Lewis could see him and so corroborate what we'd suspected - that the man I'd been meeting all the time was in fact Conrad Richards.'
   'But why all the clever-clever stuff, Morse? Why didn't you just arrest him there and then and get it over with?'
   'We'd have run the risk of letting the big fish get away, sir, and that was the second reason for my going that day. I had to lay the bait to get Charles Richards back in England, and so I told Conrad that we had to have a statement from him and that it was going to be Sergeant Lewis who would take it down. You see, Lewis knew the real Conrad Richards: he'd taken his fingerprints. And so any statement would have to be made by the genuine Charles Richards; and to do that he'd have to get back from Spain fairly quickly. As, in fact, he did, sir.'
   'And he walked into our men at Gatwick - and then you walked into him at St Aldates.'
   'Yes. Once I'd mentioned that we needed to take his prints again and that Sergeant Lewis was going to try to do a better job this time, he realized the game was finally up. Lewis had never taken his prints at all, you see - and, well, Charles could see no point in pretending any longer. I offered him a cigarette - and that was that!'
   'How kind of you, Morse! I suppose, by the way, the prints were Charles Richards'?'
   'Er, well, as a matter of fact they weren't, sir. I'm afraid I must have been just a little careless er myself when I examined the head-board and— '
   The ACC got to his feet and his face showed pained incredulity. 'Don't - don't tell me they were— '
   Morse nodded guiltily. 'I'm afraid so - yes, sir: they were mine.'

Chapter Thirty-nine

   The troubles of our proud and angry dust
   Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
   Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
   Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale

A. E. Housman, Last Poems


   Apart from a few small details the case of the Jericho killings was solved, but Morse knew as he sat in his office the following morning that it wasn't yet quite the time to pack away the two box files on the shelves of the Record Office. There were two things really that still nagged at his brain. The first was the realization that his Sophoclean hypothesis about Anne Scott's suicide had been largely undermined by Lewis's patient inquiries... (Where was Lewis, by the way? Not like Lewis to be late...) The second thing was that the letter Charles Richards had written to Anne Scott had still not been found. Was that important, though? Beyond much doubt it had led directly to Anne's death, but it wasn't difficult to guess at its contents: not difficult to reconstruct the events of that morning when Anne had received one letter from the clinic saying, yes, she was pregnant, and another from Charles Richards saying, no, he wasn't going to see her again.
   Morse nodded to himself: it had been the post that morning that had been the final catalyst - not the previous night's talk at the bridge club of birthdays and adoptions. But why should Anne have been up so early that morning? Usually, as he'd learned, she would stay in bed until about lunch-time on a Wednesday, after getting to bed so very late after bridge. And, then again, why had she cancelled her lesson with Edward Murdoch? Had Anne Scott really had a morbid sense of the gods' ill-favour as they played their sport with men and women? If not, what had she done when she got home early that morning? What if—? Ye-es. He'd been assuming that she'd stayed awake that terrible night largely because the bed had not been slept in. Or so it had appeared. But surely she could have gone to bed? Gone to sleep, got up early, made the bed, and then... But why had she got up so early that morning?
   Morse shook his head. It wasn't quite adding up, he knew that, and he needed to talk to Lewis. (Where the hell was Lewis?) Morse reached for another cigarette and his mind wandered back to the night when he had met Anne... the night when but for some miserable ill-luck that had taken him away... when Lewis had come in and dragged him off...
   'Morning, sir!' Lewis looked as bright and cheerful as the golden sunlight outside. 'Sorry to be a bit late, but— '
   'Bit late? You're bloody late!' Morse's face was sour.
   'But you said— '
   'Got your car here?'
   'Outside.' Lewis permitted himself a gentle smile and said no more.
   'I want to take a last little look at Jericho, Lewis. There's that bloody letter from Richards for a start. Bell's lot looked for it; you looked for it; Richards himself looked for it - and nobody can find it, right? So it's about time I had a look for it! You all swear it's not there, but the trouble is you've probably all been looking in the wrong place. I'm not saying I know where the right place is, but I’ll be surprised if I don't do a bit better than the rest of you. Can't do worse, can I? You need a bit of imagination in these things, Lewis...'
   'As you wish, sir.'
   Morse was unusually talkative as they drove down the Woodstock Road and turned down the one-way Observatory Street towards Jericho. 'Beautiful morning, Lewis! Almost makes you feel glad to be alive.'
   'I'm always glad to be alive.'
   'Really?' Morse vaguely looked along the stuccoed fronts of the terraced houses and then, as Lewis waited to turn into Walton Street, he suddenly caught sight of the Jericho Tackle Shop, and a beautiful new idea jumped across the threshold of his mind.
   'Jackson was buying his new rod from there, wasn't he?' Morse asked casually.
   'That's right.'
   Lewis parked the police car by the bollards at Canal Reach. 'Which key do you want first, sir?'
   'Perhaps we shan't need either of them.'
   The two men walked up the narrow little street, where Morse led the way through to the boat-yard before turning right and climbing over the fence into the back garden which the late George Jackson had fitfully tended. The shed door was still secured only by the rickety latch that Morse had opened once before, and now again he looked inside and surveyed the vast assortment of Jackson's fishing tackle.
   'Is that the new rod?' he asked.
   'Looks like it, sir.'
   Morse carefully disconnected the jointed sections and examined them. 'You see, Lewis? They're hollow inside. Just the place to hide a letter, wouldn't you say? Just roll the letter up into a cylinder and then...' Morse was busily peering and feeling inside the sections, but for the moment, as Lewis stood idly by, he could find nothing.
   'It's here, Lewis! It's here somewhere. I know it is.'
   But a quarter of an hour later he had still found nothing. And however Morse twisted and pulled and cursed the collection of rods, it soon became clear that no letter was concealed in any of them.
   'You've not been much bloody help!' he said finally.
   'Never mind, sir - it was a good idea,' said Lewis cheerfully. 'Why don't we nip over the way and have a noggin? What do you say?'
   Morse looked at his sergeant in a peculiar way. 'You feeling all right, Lewis?'
   ‘Well, we've solved another case, haven't we? It’ll be a little celebration, sort of thing.'
   'I don't like these loose ends, though.'
   'Forget it, sir!' Lewis led the way through the back yard and out once more into Canal Reach, where Morse stopped and looked up at the bedroom window of number 9. Still no curtains.
   'I wonder... ' said Morse slowly.
   'Pardon, sir?'
   'You got the key, you say?' Lewis fiddled in his pocket and found it. 'I was just wondering,' said Morse, 'if she had an alarm clock in her bedroom. Can you remember?'
   'Not off hand, sir. Let's go and have a look.'
   Morse opened the door and suddenly stopped. Deja vu. There, on the inside door-mat, was another brown envelope, and he picked it up and looked at it: 'Southern Gas Board' was printed along the bottom of the cover.
   'Just nip upstairs then, Lewis, and bring the alarm clock down - if there is one.' When Lewis had left him, Morse put his hand inside his breast pocket and pulled out the envelope he had previously found - and until this moment forgotten about. Slitting open the top in a ragged tear he took out a single typed sheet of paper:

   SUMMERTOWN CURTAINING 8th Oct

   Dear Ms Scott,
   I am sorry that we were unable to contact you earlier about your esteemed order for curtaining and pelmeting. Unfortunately it proved impossible for our fitters to come as agreed on the 3rd inst., since our suppliers let us down over the yellow material for the study and the front bedroom, and we thought it more sensible to do the whole house in one day rather than doing the jobs in two bits. We regret the inconvenience caused.
   I am now able to inform you that all materials are ready and we look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible about a convenient time. We confidently expect, as before, that all the work can be completed in a single day and we shall be happy to begin work at about 9 am. If this is again suitable to you.

Yours faithfully, J. Burkitt (Manager)
   As Morse finished reading Lewis was standing beside him, a small, square, black alarm-clock in his hand. 'Anything interesting?'
   Morse pondered the letter once more, then pointed to the clock. 'I think we've probably got another loose end tied up, yes - if that thing's set for about half-past seven.'
   'Quarter-to-eight, actually, sir.'
   'Mm.' Morse stood still just inside the door, his mind reconstructing the scene that must have taken place in that very room. He seemed sadly satisfied.
   'You know that letter from Charles Richards, sir? Don't you think she probably burnt it with the one from the clinic? Perhaps if we get the path boys to have a look at those ashes in the grate— '
   Morse shook his head. 'No. I buggered that up when I started poking around, Lewis. It's no good now.'
   'You think he did write a letter to her, sir?'
   'Well,' not in direct answer to hers, no. Celia Richards intercepted that, as we know. But I think she must have got in touch with him somehow, after she'd heard nothing; and I think he wrote to her - yes, I do.'
   'He says he didn't, though.'
   'Pretty understandable, isn't it?'
   'You mean he's got one death on his conscience already?'
   Morse nodded. 'Not the one you're thinking of, though, Lewis. I don't believe he gives a sod about what he did to Jackson: it's the death of Anne Scott that he'll have on his conscience for ever.'

   'I'll get them, sir,' said Lewis as they walked into the Printer's Devil. 'You just sit down and read that.' He handed Morse an envelope which had quite clearly been rolled into a tight cylindrical shape. 'I came here this morning, and I found it inside the new rod, sir. I hope you’ll forgive me for not telling you before, but it's not the letter you were looking for.
   Lewis walked over to the bar, and Morse sat down and immediately saw the name on the grimy envelope: it was his own.

   For Chief Inspector (?) Morse
   Thames Valley Police
   Absolutley Private, and for the attention of no one else.

   Inside the envelope was a single sheet of writing together with a further envelope, itself already addressed 'Charles Richards'. Morse took the single sheet and slowly read it:

   Dear Inspector Morse,
   Perhaps you will have forgotten me. We met once at a party when you had too much to drink and were very nice to me I'd hoped you'd get in touch with me – but you didn't. Please, I beg you, be kind to me again and deliver the enclosed letter personally and in the strictest confidence. And please, please don't read it. What I am going to do is cowardly and selfish, but somehow I just can't go on any more - and I don't want to go on any more.

Anne Scott
   Lewis had brought the beer over and was sitting quietly opposite.
   'Have you read this, Lewis?'
   'No, sir. It wasn't addressed to me.'
   'But you saw who it was addressed to?’
   Lewis nodded, and Morse passed it over. 'You didn't read this one, either?' asked Morse, taking out the envelope addressed to Charles Richards.
   'No, sir. But I should think we know roughly what's in it, don't we?'
   'Yes,' said Morse slowly. 'And I think - I think I ought to do what she asked me, don't you?' He passed the envelope across. 'Seal it up, Lewis - and see that he gets it straight away, please.'
   Was he doing the right thing? Charles Richards would find the letter terribly hurtful to read - there could be little doubt of that. But, then, life was hurtful. Morse had just been deeply hurt himself... 'I'd hoped you'd get in touch with me', she'd said, 'but you didn't.' Oh! If she'd known... if only she'd known.
   He felt Lewis's hand on his shoulder and heard his kindly words. 'Don't forget your beer, sir!'

Epilogue

   Jericho has altered little since the events described in these chapters, although the curious visitor will no longer find Canal Reach marked upon the street map, for the site of the narrow little lane in which Ms Scott and Mr Jackson met their deaths is now straddled by a new block of flats, in which Mrs Purvis (together with Graymalkin) is happily resettled, and where one of her neighbours is the polymath who once regaled Morse on the history of Jericho and who is now a mature student reading Environmental Studies at London University. Some others, too, who played their brief parts in the case have moved - or died; but many remain in the area. Mrs Beavers, for example, continues to run the corner post office, and Mr Grimes to sit amongst his locks and burglar alarms. And the Italianate campanile of St Barnabas still towers above the terraced streets below.
   In the wider confines of Oxford, a few small items of information may be of some interest to the reader. Michael Murdoch, a jauntily set black patch over his right eye, was able to make a late start to his university studies in the Michaelmas Term, whilst Edward Murdoch's German master confidently predicted a grade 'A' in his Advanced level examination. The bridge club flourished pleasingly, and Gwendola Briggs was heard to boast of twenty-two signatures on the wreath purchased for old Mr Parkes, cremated on the very day that Charles Richards was found guilty at Oxford Crown Court of the murder of George Jackson. Somewhat surprisingly, Detective Constable Walters made up his mind to leave the police and to join the army - a decision which displeased, amongst others, Superintendent Bell, a man who finds his talents now more profitably employed in administration than ever they were in detection. In late November Sergeant Lewis's eldest daughter produced a baby girl, and Mrs Lewis was so overjoyed that she bought a modestly expensive bottle of red wine to accompany her husband's beloved egg and chips.
   And what of Morse? He still walks to his local most evenings, and would appear to take most of his calories in liquid form, for no one has seen him buying cans of food in the Summertown supermarkets. In mid-December he was invited to another party in North Oxford; and as he waited in the buffet queue his eyes caressed the slim and curving bottom of the woman just in front of him as she leant across the table. But he said nothing; and after eating his meal alone, he found an easy excuse to slip away, and walked home.