Chapter Twenty-three

   And he made him a coat of many colours

Genesis, xxxvii, 3


   Morse allowed himself half an hour along the A34 from Kidlington; and it was ample, for he spotted White Swan Lane as soon as he approached the town centre. Richards Brothers, Publishing & Printing, marked only by a brass plate to the right of the front door, was a converted nineteenth-century red-brick house, set back about ten yards from the street, with four parking lots marked out in white paint on the recently tarmacadamed front. One of the spaces was vacant, and as Morse pulled the Lancia into it he was aware that someone sanding by the first-floor window had been observing his arrival. A notice inside the open front door directed him up the wide, elegant staircase where the frosted-glass panel in lie door to his right repeated the information on the plate downstairs, with the addendum Please Walk In.
   A woman looked up from behind a desk littered with ers. A very attractive woman, too, thought Morse - though considerably older than she'd sounded on the phone.
   'Inspector Morse, isn't it?' she asked without enthusiasm, Mr Richards is expecting you.'
   She walked across to a door (Charles Richards, Manager, in white plastic capitals), knocked quietly, and ushered Morse past her into the carpeted office, where he heard the door click firmly to behind him.
   Richards himself got up from his swivel-chair, shook hands, and beckoned Morse to take the seat opposite him.
   'Good to see you again, Inspector.'
   But Morse ignored the pleasantry. 'You lied to me, sir, about your visit to Jericho on Wednesday, 3rd October, and I want to know why.'
   Richards looked across the desk with what seemed genuine surprise. 'But I didn't lie to you. As I told you— '
   'So if your car picked up a parking ticket that afternoon, someone else must have taken it to Oxford - is that right?'
   'I — I suppose so, yes. But— '
   'And if you paid the fine a couple of days later, someone must have pinched your cheque book and forged your signature? Is that it, sir?'
   'You mean - you mean the cheque...' Richard's voice trailed off rather miserably, and Morse pounced again.
   'Of course, I fully realize that it must have been someone else, because you yourself, sir, were not in Oxford that afternoon - I checked that. The young lady— '
   Richards leaned over the desk in some agitation, and waved his right hand from side to side as though wiping the last three words from a blackboard with some invisible rubber. 'Could we forget that, please?' He said earnestly. 'I - I don't want to get anyone else involved in this mess.'
   'I'm afraid someone else already is involved, sir. As far as I'm concerned, you've got a water-tight alibi yourself - and all I want to know is who it was who drove your car to Jericho that afternoon.'
   'Inspector!' Richards sighed deeply and contemplated the carpet. 'I should have had more sense than to lie to you in the first place - especially over that wretched parking ticket. Though goodness knows how...' He shook his head as if in disbelief. 'You must have some sharp-eyed policemen in the force these days.'
   But Morse was too involved to look unduly smug, and Richards continued, his shoulders sagging as he breathed out heavily.
   'Let me tell you the truth, Inspector. Anne Scott worked for me for several years, as you know. She was a very attractive girl - in her personality as well as in physical looks - and when we went away on trips together - well, I don't need to spell it all out, do I? I was happily married - in a vague sort of way, if you know what I mean - but I fell for Anne in a big way, and when we were away we used to book into hotels as man and wife. Not that it was all that often, really - I suppose about five or six times a year. She never made any great demands on me, and there was never really a time when we seriously thought of, you know, my getting a divorce and all that.'
   'Did your wife know about it?'
   'No, I honestly don't think she did.'
   'So?'
   'Well, I suppose like most people we - we perhaps began to feel after a while that it wasn't all quite so marvellously exciting as it had been; and when Anne decided it would be better if she left - well, I didn't object too strongly. In fact, to tell you the truth, I remember feeling a huge sense of relief. Huh! Odd, isn't it, really?'
   'But you wrote to each other.'
   Richards nodded. 'Not all that often - but we kept in touch, yes. Then last summer, when I moved up here, we suddenly found we were pretty near each other again, and she wrote and told me she could usually be free at least one afternoon a week and I - I found the temptation altogether too alluring, Inspector. I went to see her - several times.'
   'You had a key?'
   'Key? Er, no. I didn't have a key.'
   'Was the door unlocked on the afternoon we're talking about?'
   'Unlocked? Er, yes. It must have been, mustn't it? Otherwise— '
   'Tell me what you did then, sir. Try to remember exactly what you did.'
   Richards appeared to be reading the runes off the carpet once more. 'She wasn't in - well, that's what I thought. I called out, you know, sort of quietly - called her name, that is...'
   'Go on!'
   'Well, the place seemed so quiet and I thought she must have gone out for a few minutes, so - I went upstairs.'
   'Upstairs?'
   Richards smiled sadly, and then looked squarely into Morse's eyes. 'That's right. Upstairs.'
   'Which room did you go in?'
   'She had a little study in the back bedroom - Look! You know all this anyway, don't you?'
   'I know virtually everything,' said Morse simply.
   'Well, we normally had a little drink in there - a drop of wine or something - before we - we went to bed.'
   'Wasn't that a bit risky - in broad daylight?'
   There was puzzlement and unease in Richard's eyes for a moment now, and Morse pondered many things as he waited (far too long) for the answer.
   'It's always risky, isn't it?'
   'Not if you pull the curtains, surely?'
   'Ah, I see what you mean!' Richards seemed suddenly relaxed again. 'Funny, isn't it, that she hadn't got round to putting any curtains up there?'
   (One up to Richards!)
   'What happened then, sir?'
   'Nothing. After about twenty, twenty-five minutes or so, I began to get a bit anxious. It must have been about half past three by then, and I felt something - something odd must have happened. I just left, that's all.'
   'You didn't look into the kitchen?'
   ‘I’d never been into the kitchen.'
   'Had it started raining when you left, sir?'
   'Started? I think it had been raining all the afternoon - well, drizzling fairly heavily. I know it was raining when I got there because I left my umbrella just inside the front door.'
   'Just on the right of the door as you go in, you mean?'
   'I can't be sure, Inspector, but - but wasn't it on the left, just behind the door? I may be wrong, though.'
   'No, no, you're quite right, sir. You must forgive me. I was just testing you out, that's all. You see, somebody else saw the umbrella that afternoon - somebody who'd poked his nose into that house during the time you were there, sir.'
   Richards looked down at his desk and fiddled nervously with a yellow ruler. 'Yes, I know that.'
   'So, you see, I just had to satisfy myself it was you, sir. I wasn't sure even a minute ago about that; but I am now. As I say, your car was seen there, your black umbrella just behind the door, your dark blue mackintosh over the banisters, and the light in the study. It wouldn't have been much good lying to me, sir.'
   'No. Once I knew you'd found out about the car, I realized I might as well come clean. I was a fool not to—  '
   'You're still a fool!' snapped Morse.
   'What? Richards's head jerked up and his mouth gaped open.
   'You're still lying to me, sir - you know you are. You see, the truth is that you weren't in Jericho at all that afternoon!'
   'But - but don't be silly, Inspector! What I've just told you— '
   Morse got to his feet. 'I shall be very glad if you can show me that mackintosh you were wearing, sir, because whoever it was who was in Anne Scott's house that afternoon, he was quite certainly not wearing a blue mackintosh!'
   'I - I may have been mistaken— '
   'You've got a dark blue mackintosh?'
   'Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.'
   'Excellent!' Morse appeared very pleased with himself as he picked up his own light-fawn raincoat from the arm of the chair. 'Have you also got a dark grey duffle coat, sir? Because that's the sort of coat that was seen on the banister in Anne Scott's house. And it was wet: somebody'd just come into the house out of the rain, and you told me - unless I misunderstood you, sir? - that there was no one else in the house.'
   'Sit down a minute!' said Richards. He rested his chin on the palms of his hands and squeezed his temples with the ends of his fingers.
   'You've been lying from the beginning,' said Morse. 'I knew that all along. Now— '
   'But I haven't been lying!'
   Suddenly Morse's blood surged upwards from his shoulders to the back of his neck as he heard the quiet voice behind him.
   'Yes you have, Charles! You've been lying all your life. You've lied to me for years about everything - we both know it. The odd thing is that now you're lying to try to save me! But it's no good, is it?' The woman who had been seated behind the table in the office outside now walked into the room and sat on the edge of the desk. She turned to Morse: 'I'm Celia Richards, the wife of that so-called "husband" behind the desk there. He told me - but he'd no option really - that you were coming here today, and he didn't want Josephine, his normal secretary - and for all I know yet another of his conquests,' she added bitterly, 'he didn't want her to know about the police, and so he got me to sit out there. You needn't worry: it was all perfectly amicable. We had it all worked out. He'd told me you'd be asking about Jericho, and we decided that he'd try to bluff his way through. But if he didn't quite manage it - you did pretty well, you know, Charles! - then I agreed to come in. You see, Inspector, he left the intercom on all the time you've been speaking, and I've listened to every word that's been said. But it's no good any longer - is it, Charles?'
   Richards said nothing: he looked an utterly defeated man.
   'Have you got a cigarette, Inspector?' asked Celia as she unfolded her elegant legs and walked over to stand behind the desk. 'My turn, I think, Charles.' Richards got up and stood rather awkwardly beside her as she took her seat on the executive chair, and drew deeply on one of Morse's cigarettes.
   'I don't want to dwell on the point unduly, Inspector, but poor Charles here isn't the only accomplished liar in the room, is he? I think, if I may say so, that it was a pretty cheap and underhand little trick of yours to go on about those coats like you did. Mackintoshes and duffle coats, my foot! You see, Inspector, it was me who went to see Anne Scott that afternoon, and I was wearing a brown leather jacket lined with sheep-wool. It's in the cupboard next door, by the way.' For a moment her voice was vibrant with vindictiveness: 'Would you like to see it, Inspector Morse?'

Chapter Twenty-four

   Some falsehood mingles with all truth

Longfellow, The Golden Legend


   As he drove back to Oxford that lunch-time, Morse thought about Celia Richards. She had told her tale with a courageous honesty and Morse had no doubt whatsoever that it was true. During her husband's earlier liaisons with Anne Scott, Celia had no shred of evidence to corroborate her suspicions, although there had been (she knew) much whispered rumour in the company. She could have been mistaken - or so she'd told herself repeatedly; and when Anne left she had felt gradually more reassured. At the very least, whatever there might have been between the pair of them had gone for good now - surely! Until, that is, that terrible day only a few weeks earlier when, with Charles confined to bed with flu, she had gone into the office to see Conrad, Charles's younger brother and co-partner, who worked on the floor above him. On Charles's desk, beneath a heavy glass paper-weight, lay a letter, a letter written in a hand that was known to her, a letter marked 'Strictly Personal and Private'. And even at that very moment she had known, deep inside herself, the hurtful, heart-piercing truth of it all, and she had taken the letter and opened it in her car outside. It was immediately clear that Charles had already seen Anne Scott several times since the move to Abingdon, and the letter begged him to go to see her again - quickly, urgently. Anne was in some desperate sort of trouble and he, Charles, was the only person she could turn to. Money was involved - and this was stated quite explicitly; but above all she had to see him again. She had kept (she claimed) all the letters he had written to her, and suggested that if he didn't do as she wished she might have (as far as Celia could recall the exact words) 'to do something off her own bat which would hurt him'. She hated herself for doing it, but if threats were the only way, then threats it had to be. Celia had destroyed the letter - and taken her decision immediately: she herself would go to visit her husband's former lover. And she had done so. On Wednesday, 3rd October, Charles said he had a meeting and had taken the Mini to work, telling her not to expect him home before about 6.30 p.m. The Rolls had been almost impossible to park - even the double yellow lines were taken up; but finally she had found a space and had walked up Canal Reach, up to number 9, where she found the door unlocked. ('Yes, Inspector, I'm absolutely sure. I had no key - and how else could I have got in?') Inside, there was no one. She had shouted. No one. Upstairs she had found the study immediately, and within a few minutes found, too, a pile of letters tied together in one of the drawers - all written to Anne by Charles. Somehow, up until that point, she had felt an aggression and a purpose which had swamped all fears of discovery. But now she felt suddenly frightened - and then, oh God! the next two minutes were an unbearable nightmare. For someone had come in; had shouted Anne's name; had even stood at the foot of the stairs! Never in the whole of her life had she felt so petrified with fear. And then, it was all over. Whoever it was, had gone as suddenly as he had come; and after a little wait she herself, too, had gone. The parking ticket seemed an utter triviality, and she had paid the fine the next day - by a cheque drawn on her own account. ('"C" for "Celia" Inspector!') So, that was that, and she had burned all the letters without reading a single word. It was only later, when she read of Anne's suicide, that the terrible truth hit her: she had been in the house where Anne was hanging dead and as yet undiscovered. She became so fluttery with panic that she just had to speak to someone. At first she thought she would unbosom herself to her brother-in-law, Conrad - always a kind and loyal friend to her. But she'd realized that in the end there could be only one answer: to tell her husband everything. Which she had done. And it was Charles who had insisted that he should, and would, shoulder whatever troubles his own ridiculous escapades had brought upon her. It all seemed (Celia confessed) too stupid and melodramatic now: their amateurish attempts at collusion; those lies of Charles; and then his pathetic attempts to tiptoe a way through the mine-field of Morse's explosive questions.
   Throughout Celia's story, Richards himself had sat silently; and after she had finished, Celia herself lapsed into a similar, almost abject, silence. How the pair would react - how they did react - after his departure, Morse could only guess. They had refused his offer of a drink at the White Swan, and Morse himself stoically decided that he would wait for a pint until he got back to Kidlington. For a couple of minutes he was held up along Oxford Avenue by temporary traffic lights along a short stretch of road repairs, and by chance he found himself noticing the number of the house on the gate-post to his left: 204. He remembered that it must be very close indeed to the Richards' residence, and as he passed he looked carefully at number 216 - set back some thirty yards, with a gravelled path leading up to the garage. Not all that palatial? Certainly there were other properties a-plenty near by that could more appropriately have housed a successful businessman and his wife; and it suddenly occurred to Morse that perhaps Charles Richards was not quite so affluent as he might wish others to believe. It was a thought, certainly, but Morse could see little point in pursuing it. In fact, however, it would have repaid him handsomely at that point to have turned the Lancia round immediately and visited the Abingdon Branch of Lloyds Bank to try to seek some confidential insight into the accounts of Mr and Mrs Charles Richards, although not (it must be said) for the reason he had just considered. For the moment a mystery had been cleared up, and that, for a morning's work, seemed fair enough. He drove steadily on, passing a turning on his right which was sign-posted 'Radley'. Wasn't that where Jennifer Something, Charles Richards' latest bedfellow, was dispensing her grace and favours? It was; but even that little loose end was now safely tucked away - if Celia Richards was telling the truth...
   At that point a cloud of doubt no bigger than a man's hand was forming on Morse's mental horizon; but again he kept straight ahead.

   Back in Charles Richards' office, Celia stood by the window staring down at the parking area for many minutes after Morse had left - just as she had stood staring down when he had arrived and parked the Lancia in the carefully guarded space. Finally she turned round and broke the prolonged silence between them.
   'He's a clever man - you realize that, don't you?'
   'I'm not sure.'
   'Do you think— ?'
   'Forget it!' He stood up. 'Feel like a drink?'
   'Yes.' She turned round again and stared down at the street. She'd told only one big lie, but she'd felt almost sure that Morse had spotted it. Perhaps she was mistaken, though. Perhaps he wasn't quite as clever as she'd thought.

Chapter Twenty-five

   The life of a man without letters is death

Cicero


   In the light of a bright October morning the streets assumed a different aspect, and the terraced houses seemed less squeezed and mean. Along the pavements the women talked and polished the door fixtures, visited the corner shops and in general reasserted, with the men-folk now at work, their quiet and natural birthright. A sense of community was evident once more and the sunlight had brought back the colour of things.
   Yes, Sergeant Lewis had spent an enjoyable and reasonably profitable morning in Jericho, and after lunch he reported to Morse's office in the Thames Valley Police HQ buildings in Kidlington. Discreet inquiries had produced a few further items of information about Jackson. Odd jobs had brought him a considerable supplement to his pension, and such jobs had hardly been fitful and minor. Indeed, it was quite clear that the man was far from being a pauper. The house had been his own, he had almost £1,500 in the Post Office Savings Bank, a very recent acquisition of £250 in Retirement Bonds, and (as Lewis guessed) perhaps some £1,000 of fishing equipment. Yet his business dealings with the Jericho traders had been marked by a grudging frugality, and the occasional granting of credit. But it seemed that he always met his debts in the end, and he was up to date with the Walton Tackle Shop on his instalments of £7.50 for a carbon-fibre fishing rod. He had no immediate relatives, and the assumption had to be that Jackson was the last of an inglorious line. But Lewis had met no real ill-feeling against the man: just plain indifference. And somehow it seemed almost sadder that way.
   Morse listened with interest, and in turn recounted his own rather more dramatic news.
   'Did you get a statement from her?' asked Lewis.
   'Statement?'
   'Well, we shall need one, shan't we?'
   So it was that Lewis rang the number Morse gave him, discovered that Mrs Celia Richards was at home, and arranged to meet her that same afternoon. It seemed to Lewis an unnecessary duplication of mileage, but he forbore to make the point. As for Morse, his interest in the Richards' clan appeared to be waning, and at 3.40 p.m. he found himself entering 10 Canal Reach - though he couldn't have told anyone exactly why.
   The blood-stained sheets had been removed from the bedroom in which Jackson had died, but the blankets were still there, neatly folded at the foot of the bare, striped mattress. On the floor the magazines had been stacked in their two categories, and Morse sat down on the bed and picked up some of the pornographic ones once more, flipping through the lewd and lurid photographs. One or two pages had an accompanying text in what looked to him like Swedish or Danish, but most of the magazines had abdicated the requirement of venturing into the suburbs of literature to enhance their visual impact. The angling magazines remained untouched.
   Downstairs, the kitchen boasted few of the latest gadgets, and the tiny larder was ill-stocked. Some copies of the Sun lay under the grimy sink, and the crockery and cutlery used by Jackson for his last meagre meal on earth still stood on the dingy, yellow rack on the draining-board. Nothing, really. In the front room, similarly, there seemed little of interest. A small brass model of a cannon from the Boer War era was the only object on the dusty mantelpiece, and the sole adornment to the faded green wallpaper was a calendar from one of the Angling Associations, still turned to the month of September. A small transistor radio stood on a pile of oddments on the cupboard, and Morse turned on the switch. But the batteries appeared to have run out. There were one or two things in the pile which Morse had vaguely noted on his previous visit, but now he looked at them again: an out-of-date mail-order catalogue; a current pension book; an unopened gas bill; an old copy of The Oxford Journal; an illustrated guide to 'Fish of the British Isles'; two leaflets entitled On The Move; a slim box containing two white handkerchiefs; a circular - Suddenly Morse stopped and turned back to the leaflets. Yes. He remembered reading about the successful TV series On The Move, catering, as it did, for those viewers who were illiterate - or virtually so. Would illiteracy account for the lack of reading material in the Jackson household? Many a pornographic pose, but hardly a line of pornographic prose? What a different set-up across the way at number 9, where Anne Scott had surrounded herself with books galore! That long line of Penguin Classics, for example - many of them showing the tell-tale white furrows down their black spines: Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Horace, Livy, Virgil... If poor old Jackson could only have seen... He had seen though: he'd almost certainly seen more than he should have done, both of the house itself and of the woman who regularly unbuttoned her blouse at the bedroom window.
   Morse went upstairs to the front bedroom once more, took the binoculars that hung behind the door, and focused them upon the boudoir opposite. Phew! It was almost like being inside the actual room! He walked into the tiny back bedroom and looked out in the fading light along the narrow strip of garden to the shed at the far end, about thirty yards away. He focused the binoculars again, but finding the dirty panes hardly conducive to adequate delineation he took the catch off the window and pushed up the stiff, squeaky frame. Then he saw something, and his blood raced. He put the binoculars to his eyes once more - and he was sure of it: someone was looking around in Jackson's shed. Morse hurriedly made his way downstairs, put the key quietly into the kitchen door, took a deep breath, flicked open the lock, and rushed out.
   Unfortunately, however, his right shin collided with the dustbin standing just beside the coalhouse, and he suppressed a yowl of pain as the lid fell clangingly onto the concrete and rolled round like an expiring spinning-top. It was more than sufficient warning, and Morse had the feeling that his quarry had probably been alerted in any case by the opening of the window upstairs. A quick glimpse of a man disappearing over the low wall that separated number 10 from the bank of the canal, and that was all. The garden was suddenly still again in the gathering darkness. If Lewis had been there, Morse would have felt more stomach for the chase. But, alone, he felt useless, and just a little scared.
   The hut was a junk-house. Fishing gear crowded every square inch that was not already taken up by gardening tools, and it seemed impossible to take out anything without either moving everything else or sending precariously balanced items clattering to the floor. Against the left-hand wall Morse noticed seven fishing rods, the nearest one a shiny and sophisticated affair - doubtless the latest acquisition from the tackle shop. But his attention was not held by the rods, for it was perfectly clear to see where the intruder had been concentrating his search. The large wicker-work fisherman's basket lay open on the top of a bag of compost, its contents scattered around: hooks, tins of bait, floats, weights, pliers, reels, lengths of line, knives... Morse looked around him helplessly. Who was it who had been so anxious to search the basket, and why? It was seldom that Morse had no inkling whatsoever of the answers to the questions that he posed himself, but such was the case now.
   Before leaving Canal Reach, he walked across to number 9, unlocked the door, and turned on the wall switch immediately to his left. But clearly the electricity had been disconnected, and he decided that his nerves were in no fit state to look around the empty, darkened house. On the mat he saw a cheap brown envelope, with the name and address of Anne Scott typed behind the cellophane window. A bill, no doubt, that probably wouldn't be settled for a few months yet - if at all. Morse picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.
   He drove along Canal Street and found himself facing the green gates of Lucy's Iron Works, where he turned right and followed Juxon Street up to the top. As he waited to turn left into the main thoroughfare of Walton Street, his eyes casually noticed the signs and plaques on the new buildings there: The Residents' Welfare Club; The Jericho Testing Laboratories; Welsh & Cohen, Dentists... Yet still nothing clicked in his mind.

   Lewis was already back from Abingdon. He had seen Celia Richards alone at the house, and Morse glanced cursorily through her statement.
   'Get it typed, Lewis. There are three "r"s in "corroborate", and it's an "e" in the middle of "desperate". And make sure you've got the address right.'
   Lewis said nothing. Spelling, as he knew, was not his strongest suit.
   'How much exactly did that new rod of Jackson's cost?' asked Morse suddenly.
   'I didn't ask, sir. These modern ones are very light, sort of hollow - but they're very strong, I think.'
   'I asked you how much it cost - not what a bloody miracle it was!'
   Lewis had often seen Morse in this mood before - snappy and irritable. It usually meant the chief was cross with himself about something; usually, too, it meant that it wasn't going to be long before his mind leaped prodigiously into the dark and hit, as often as not, upon some strange and startling truth.

   Later that same evening Conrad Richards drove his brother Charles to Gatwick Airport. The plane was subject to no delay, either technical or operational, and at 9.30 p.m. Charles Richards took his seat in a British Airways DC 10 - bound for Madrid.

Chapter Twenty-six

   Some clues are of the 'hidden' variety, where the letters of the word are in front of the solver in the right order

D. S. Macnutt, Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword


   The next morning, two box files, the one red and the other green, lay on the desk at Kidlington, marked 'Anne Scott' and 'George Jackson' respectively. They remained unopened as Morse sat contemplating the task before him. He felt it most unlikely that he was going to discover many more significant pieces to the puzzle posed by the deaths of two persons separated only by a few yards in a mean little street in Jericho. That the two deaths were connected, however, he had no doubt at all; and the fact that the precise connection was still eluding him augured ill for the cheerful Lewis who entered the office at 8.45 a.m.
   'What's the programme today, then, sir?'
   Morse pointed to the box files. 'It'll probably not do us any harm to find out what sort of a cock-up Bell and his boys made of things.'
   Lewis nodded, and sat down opposite the chief. 'Which one do we start with?'
   Morse appeared to ponder the simple question earnestly as he stared out at the fleet of police vehicles in the yard. 'Pardon?'
   'I said, which one do we start with, sir?'
   'How the bloody hell do I know, man? Use a bit of initiative, for Christ's sake!'
   Lewis pulled the red file towards him, and began his slow and industrious survey of the documents in the Scott case. Morse, too, after what seemed an inordinately prolonged survey of the Fords and BMWs, reluctantly reached for the green file and dumped the meagre pile of papers on to his blotting-pad.
   For half an hour neither of them spoke.
   'Why do you think she killed herself?' asked Morse suddenly.
   'Expecting a baby, wasn't she.'
   'Bit thin, don't you reckon? It's not difficult to get rid of babies these days. Like shelling peas.'
   'It'd still upset a lot of people.'
   'Do you think she knew she was pregnant?'
   'She'd have a jolly good idea - between ten to twelve weeks gone, it says here.'
   'Mm.'
   'Well, I know my missus did, sir.'
   'Did she?'
   'She wasn't exactly sure, of course, until she went to the, you know, the ante-natal clinic.'
   'What do they do there?'
   'I'm not sure, really. They take a urine specimen or something, and then the laboratory boys sort of squirt something— '
   But Morse was listening no longer. His face was alight with an inner glow, and he whistled softly before jumping to his feet and shaking Lewis vigorously by the shoulders.
   'You-are-a-bloody-genius, my son!'
   'Really?' replied an uncomprehending Lewis.
   'Find it! It's there somewhere. That plastic envelope with a couple of bits of burnt paper in it!'
   Lewis looked at the evidence, the 'ICH' and the 'RAT', and he wondered what cosmic discovery he had inadvertently stumbled upon.
   'I passed the place yesterday, Lewis! Yesterday! And still I behave like a moron with a vacuum between the ears! Don't you see? It's part of a letterheading: the JerlCHo Testing LaboRATories! Ring 'em up quick, Lewis, and offer to take 'em a specimen in!'
   'I don't quite see— '
   They tested her, don't you understand? And then they wrote and— '
   'But we knew she was having a baby. And so did she, like as not.'
   'Ye-es.' For a few seconds Morse's excitement seemed on the wane, and he sat down once again. 'But if they wrote to her the day before she— Lewis! Ring up the Post Office and ask 'em what time they deliver the mail in Jericho. You see, if— '
   'It'll be about quarter to eight - eightish.'
   'You think?' asked More, rather weakly.
   'I'll ring if you want, sir, but— '
   ‘Ten to twelve weeks! How long has Charles Richards been in Abingdon?'
   'I don't think there's anything about that here— '
   Three months, Lewis! I'm sure of it. Just ring him up, will you, and ask— '
   'If you'd come off the boil a minute, sir, I might have a chance, mightn't I? You want me to ring up these three— '
   'Yes. Straight away!'
   'Which one shall I ring first?'
   'Use a bit of bl— ' But Morse stopped in mid-sentence and smiled beatifically. 'Whichever, my dear Lewis, seems to you the most appropriate. And even if you ring 'em up in some cock-eyed order, I don't think it'll matter a monkey's!'
   He was still smiling sweetly as Lewis reached for the phone. The old brain was really working again, he knew that, and he reached happily for the documents once more. It was the start he'd been waiting for.

   Within half an hour, Lewis's trio of tasks had been completed. Anne Scott had called at the Jericho Testing Laboratories on the afternoon of Monday, 1st October, to ask if there was any news and she had been told that as soon as the report was through a letter would be in the post-which it had been on Tuesday, 2nd October: pegnancy was confirmed. The Jericho post was delivered somewhat variably, but during the week in question almost all letters would have been delivered by 8:30 am. Only with the Richards' query had Lewis experienced any difficulty. No reply from Charles's private residence; and at the business number, a long delay before the call was transferred to Conrad Richards, the junior partner, who informed Lewis that the company had indeed moved to Abingdon about three months ago: to be exact, twelve weeks and four days.
   Morse had sat silently during the phone calls, occasionally nodding with quiet satisfaction. But his attention to the documents in front of him was now half-hearted, and it was Lewis who finally picked up the small pink slip of rough paper which had fallen to the floor.
   'Yours or mine, sir?'
   Morse looked at the brief note. '"Birthdays", Lewis. It seems that one of the old codgers at the bridge evening remembers they were talking about birthdays.'
   'Sounds pretty harmless, sir.' Lewis resumed his study of his documents, although a few seconds later he noticed that Morse was sitting as still as the dead, the smoke from a forgotten cigarette drifting in curling whisps before those unblinking, unseeing eyes.

   Later the same morning, Conrad Richards dialled a number in Spain.
   'That you, Charles? Buenos something or other! Come está?'
   'Fine, fine. Everything OK with you?'
   'The police rang this morning. Wanted to know how long we'd been in Abingdon.'
   'Was that all?'
   'Yes.'
   'I see,' said Charles Richards slowly. 'Celia all right?'
   'Fine, yes. She's gone over to Cambridge to see Betty. She'll probably stay overnight, I should think. I tried to persuade her, anyway.'
   'That's good news.'
   'Look, Charles. We've had an enquiry from one of the Oxford examination boards. They want five hundred copies of some classical text that's gone out of print. No problem over royalties or copyright or anything. What do you think?'
   The brothers talked for several minutes about VAT and profit margins, and finally the decision was left with Conrad.
   A few minutes later Charles Richards walked out into the bright air of the Calle de Alcata and, entering the Cafe Leon, he ordered himself a Cuba Libre. On the whole, things seemed to be working out satisfactorily.

   All the way, Celia Richards's mind was churning over the events of the past two weeks, and she was conscious of driving with insufficient attention. At Bedford she had incurred the honking displeasure of a motorist she had not noticed quite legitimately overtaking her on the inside in the one-way system through the centre; and on the short stretch of the Al she had almost overshot the St Neots turn, where the squealing of her Mini's brakes had frightened her and left her heart thumping madly. What a terrible mess her life had suddenly become!
   In the early days at Croydon, when she had first met the Richards brothers, she had almost immediately fallen for Charles... Charles with his charm and vivacity, his sense of enjoyment, his forceful masculinity. Yet, even then, before they agreed to marry, she was conscious of other sides to his nature: a potential broodiness; a weakness for false flattery; a slightly nasty, hard streak in his business dealings; the suspicion - yes, even then - that his eye would linger far too long on the lovely limbs and the curving breasts of other women. But for several years they had been as happy as most couples: probably more so. Social events had brought her into an interesting circle of friends, and on more than one occasion other men had shown more interest in her own young and attractive body than their wives would have wished. Just a few times she had been fractionally disloyal to her marriage vows, but never once had she entertained the idea of any compromising entanglement. But Charles? He had been unfaithful, she knew that now: knew it for certain, because at long last - when there was no longer any hope of screening his impulsive affairs with his fond, if wayward, affection towards her - he had told her so... And then there was Conrad. Poor, faithful, lovely Conrad! If only she'd been willing to get to know him better when, in the early days, his own love for her had blazed as brightly as that of Charles... But he'd never had the sparkle or the drive of his elder brother, and he'd never really had a chance. A bit ineffectual, a bit passive - a bit 'wet', as she'd once described him to Charles. Oh dear! As things had turned out, he'd always been wonderful to her. No one could have been more kind to her, more thoughtful, more willing to forget himself; and she thought again now of that mild and self-effacing smile that reflected a dry, fulfilled contentment in the happiness of others... What would it have been like if she'd married Conrad? Not that he'd ever asked her, of course: he was far too shy and diffident to have joined the lists with Charles. Physically he and Charles looked very similar, but that was only on the surface. Underneath - well, there was no electric current in Conrad... or so she'd thought until so very recently.
   In Cambridge she turned into the Huntingdon Road and drove out to Girton village, where her sister lived.
   When Betty brought a glass of sherry into the lounge, she found her sister in tears - a series of jerky sobs that stretched her full and pretty mouth to its furthest extent.
   'You can tell me about it later, Celia, if you want to. But I shan't mind if you don't. A drop of booze'll do you good. Your bed's aired, and I've got a couple of tickets for the theatre tonight. Please stay!'
   Dry-eyed at last, Celia Richards looked sadly at her sister and smiled bleakly. 'Be kind to me, Betty! You see - you see - I can't tell you about it, but I've done something terribly wrong.'

Chapter Twenty-seven

   The time is out of joint

Hamlet Act I, scene v


   Although Morse insisted (that lunch-time) that a liquid diet without blotting-paper was an exceedingly fine nutrient for the brain cells, Lewis opted for his beloved chips - with sausages and egg - to accompany the beer. 'Are we making progress?' he asked, between mouthfuls.
   'Progress? Progress, Lewis, is the law of life. You and I would be making progress even if we were going backwards. And, as it happens, my old friend, we are actually going forward at this particular stage of our joint investigations.'
   'We are?'
   'Indeed! I think you'll agree that the main facts hang pretty well together now. Anne Scott goes to a bridge evening the night before she kills herself, and I'm certain she learns something there that's the final straw to a long and cumulative emotional strain. She writes a note to Edward Murdoch, telling him she can't see him for a lesson the next afternoon, and from that point the die is cast. She gets home about 3 am. or thereabouts, and we shall never know how she spends the next few hours. But whatever doubt or hesitation she may have felt is finally settled by the Wednesday morning post, when a letter arrives from the birth clinic. She burns the letter and she - hangs herself.
   'Now Jackson has been doing some brick-work for her, and he goes over to have a final look at things - and to pick up his trowel. He lets himself in, pushes the kitchen door open, and in the process knocks over the stool on which Anne Scott has stood to hang herself - and finds her swaying there behind the door after he's picked up the stool and put it by the table. Now, just think a minute, Lewis. Anyone, virtually anyone, in those circumstances would have rung up the police immediately. So why not Jackson? He's got nothing to worry about. He does lots of odd jobs in the neighbourhood and it must be common knowledge that he's patching up the wall at number 9. So why doesn't he ring the police at that point! - because I'm sure it was Jackson who rang up later. It's because he finds something, Lewis - apart from the body: something which proves too tempting for his cheap and greedy little soul.'
   'I thought for a start it may have been money, but I doubt it now. I think she'd written some sort of letter or note and left it on the kitchen table - a letter which Jackson takes. He's anxious to get out of the house quickly, and he forgets to lock the door behind him. Hence all our troubles, Lewis! You see, since Jackson has been coming over regularly - sometimes when she was still in bed - she's got in the habit of locking her front door, then taking the key out, and leaving it on the sideboard, so that he can put his own key in.'
   'Surely she wouldn't have done that if she'd already decided to kill herself?'
   But Morse ignored the objection and continued. 'Then Jackson goes over to his own home and reads the letter— '
   'But you told me he couldn't read!'
   'It's addressed, Lewis, to one of two people; either to the police; or to the man who's been her lover - the man she's recently written to, and the man who's probably been the only real passion in her life - Charles Richards. And there's something in that letter that gives Jackson some immediate prospect of personal gain - a situation he's decided to take full advantage of. But let's get back to the sequence of events that day. Someone else goes into number 9 during the afternoon - Celia Richards. Pretty certainly Jackson sees her going in - as he later sees me,Lewis - but he can't have the faintest idea that she's the wife of the man he's going to blackmail. He realizes one thing, though - that he's forgotten to lock the door; and so when everything's quiet he goes over and puts his key through the letter box. That's the way it happened, Lewis - you can be sure of that.'
   'Perhaps,' mumbled Lewis, wiping up the last of the egg yolk with a final, solitary chip.
   'You don't sound very impressed?'
   'Well, to be honest, I'd thought very much the same myself, sir, and I'm pretty sure Bell and his boys— '
   'Really?' Morse drained his beer and pushed the glass in front of Lewis's plate. 'Bags of time for another.'
   'I got the last one, sir. Just a half for me, if you don't mind.'
   'Now,' resumed Morse (glasses replenished), 'we've got to link the death of Anne Scott with the murder of Jackson, agreed? Well, I reckon the connection is fairly obvious, and from what you've just said I presume that your own nimble mind has already jumped to a similar conclusion, right?'
   Lewis nodded. 'Jackson tried to blackmail Charles Richards because of what he learned from the letter, and it seems he succeeded because he took £250 to the Post Office the day before he was murdered. I reckon he'd written to Richards, or rung him up, and that Richards decided to cough up to keep him quiet. He could have arranged to meet Jackson to give him the money and then just followed him home. And once he knew who he was, and where he lived - well, that was that. Perhaps he didn't really mean to kill him at all - just scare him out of his wits and get the letter, or whatever it was.'
   Morse shook his head. It might have happened the way Lewis had just outlined things; but it hadn't. 'You may be right most of the way, Lewis, but you can be absolutely certain about one thing: it wasn't Charles Richards who murdered Jackson. And until somebody proves to us that the earth is round or a triangle hasn't got three sides, we'd better bloody face it! He was giving a lecture - with me in the audience!'
   'Don't you think, perhaps— ?'
   'Nonsense! Jackson was in the pub at gone eight and the police found his body while Richards was still talking. And he didn't leave that platform for one second, Lewis!'
   'I'm not saying he did, sir. But he could have got someone else to go and rough Jackson up, couldn't he?'
   Morse nodded. 'Carry on!'
   'He's got a wife, sir.'
   'I can't exactly see her pushing Jackson upstairs, can you? He was no youngster, but he was a tough and wiry little customer, I should think. Though perhaps it might not be a bad idea to find out exactly where she was that night... ' His voice drifted off, and characteristically he married a few stray drops of beer on the table with the little finger of his left hand, his eyes seeming to stare into the middle distance.
   'He's got a brother, too,' added Lewis quietly.
   Morse's eyes refocused on his colleague immediately and a faint smile formed round his mouth. 'The brother? Yes, indeed! I wondered when you were going to get around to him. I've been giving our Conrad a little bit of thought myself this morning, and I reckon it's time we had a quiet little word with him.'
   'We've got some jolly good prints, sir - as good as anything the boys have seen for quite some time. And it wouldn't be much trouble getting Conrad's dabs, would it?'
   'No trouble at all.'
   'Well' - Lewis looked at Morse rather hesitantly - 'shall we go and see him?'
   'Why not? We'll just have another pint and then— '
   'No more for me, sir. Do you want—'
   'Pint, yes please. You're very kind.'
   'I've been, thinking, sir,' began Lewis when he came back from the bar.
   'So have I. Listen! We'll nip over there together. There are two calls we'd better make. Conrad Richards for one, and then there's that girl friend Charles Richards told me he was with when— '
   'But why see her? You've already— '
   'Let's toss up, Lewis. You can drive us out there. Heads you go to see Conrad - tails I do. All right?' Morse took out a 10p piece, flipped it in the air, and then peered cautiously underneath his palm before immediately returning the coin to his pocket. 'Heads it is, Lewis. What was it we agreed? Heads was you to see Conrad, wasn't it? Excellent! I shall have to take it upon myself to visit Mrs Whatsername.'
   'Hills, sir.'
   'Ah yes.' Morse relaxed and lovingly relished the rest of his beer. Someone had left a copy of the Daily Mirror on the next table and he picked it up and turned to the racing page. 'Ever have a flutter these days, Lewis?'
   Lewis placed his empty glass in the middle of the plate and laid his knife and fork neatly to the side of it. 'Very seldom, sir. I'm not quite so lucky at gambling as you are.'
   As they got up to go, Morse suddenly remembered his bet with the police surgeon. 'Do you think there's any way, Lewis, in which Jackson could have been murdered before eight o'clock that night?'
   'No way at all, sir.'
   Morse nodded. 'Perhaps you're right.'

Chapter Twenty-eight

   If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency

Sir Joshua Reynolds


   Almost immediately Lewis found himself liking Conrad Richards, the junior partner who worked in an office no smaller than that of his brother's below, though designated by no nameplate on the door. Lewis explained the purpose of his visit, and his reasonable requests met with an amiable cooperation. Conrad had exhibited (as Lewis was later to tell Morse) some surprise, perhaps, when the subject of fingerprints was broached, but he had willingly enough pressed the fingers and thumbs of both hands upon the ink-pad, and thence onto the cards.
   'Just a matter of elimination,' Lewis explained.
   'Yes, I realize that but...'
   'I know, sir. It sort of puts you on the record, doesn't it? Everyone feels the same.'
   Conrad now held his hands out awkwardly, like a woman just disturbed at the kitchen sink who is looking around for a towel. 'Do you mind if I just go and wash— '
   'It's all right, sir. I'll be off now. There's only one more thing - just for the record again, of course. Can you tell me where you were between 8 and 9 p.m. on the evening of the 19th October?'
   Conrad looked vague and shook his head. 'I can't, I'm afraid. I can try to find out for you - or try to remember, but I - I don't know. Probably at home reading, I should think, but...' Again he shook his head, his voice level and seemingly unconcerned.
   'You live alone, sir?’
   'Confirmed bachelor.'
   'Well, if you can have a think and let me know.'
   'I will. I expect I'll be able to come up with something, but I've got an awful feeling I'm not going to produce any convincing alibi.'
   'Few people do, sir. We don't expect it.'
   'Well, that's good news.'
   Lewis got up to go. 'There is just one more thing. I'd like to have a quick word with your brother. Is he— '
   'He's in Spain, officer. He's there on business for a week or so.'
   'Oh! Well, never mind! We shall have to try to see him when he gets back.'

   For five minutes after Lewis had gone, Conrad Richards sat silently at his desk, his features betraying no sign of emotion or anxiety. Then he reached for the phone.

   Morse, too, sat waiting, depressed, impatient, and irritated, on a low wooden bench beside the church in Radley. He had told himself (with a modicum of honesty) that he was still vaguely worried about Charles Richards' whereabouts on the day of Anne Scott's death; but he could only half convince himself on the point. Perhaps the simple truth was that he liked interviewing women whose voices over the phone promised a cloud nine of memorable mouths and leggy elegance. But whichever way it was, his visit had been fruitless. The house was locked firmly front and back, the shrill bell echoing through an ominously vacant property. Pity! A lovely female firmly sunk in fathoms of leisure - and just at this moment she had to be out! A bit more than out, too, according to the neighbours. Away. Abroad.
   Morse was still staring glumly at the ground when the white police car finally drew alongside.
   'Any luck?' asked Lewis, as Morse got in beside him.
   'Interesting!' Morse feigned a vague indifference and fastened his seat-belt.
   'Nice looker, sir?' ventured Lewis after a couple of miles.
   'I didn't bloody see her, did I?' growled Morse. 'She's in Spain.'
   'Spain?' Lewis whistled loudly. 'Well, well, well! The birds seem to be flying from their nests, don't they?' He recounted the details of his own eminently more successful mission and the impression he'd formed of Conrad Richards; and Morse listened in silence. Lewis had often noticed it before: over a beer table it was usually difficult to get the chief to shut up at all, but in a car he was invariably a taciturn companion.
   'What d'you think, then, Lewis?'
   'Well, we can get those prints checked straight away - and I've got the feeling we may just about be there, sir. As I see it, Charles Richards must have brought his brother along with him when he came to give his talk; then dropped him somewhere in Jericho and told him to go and scare the living daylights out of Jackson.'
   'He must have taken him completely into his confidence, you mean?'
   Lewis nodded as he turned on to the A34 and headed north. 'Charles Richards must have traced Jackson - he probably followed him after leaving the money somewhere - and then, as I say, he must have asked Conrad to help him. Quite neat, really. Charles is completely in the clear and nobody's going to think Conrad had anything to do with it. Anyway, things must have gone wrong, mustn't they? I doubt whether Conrad ever actually meant to kill Jackson - I reckon he'd have been far more careful about leaving any prints if he had. In fact, I doubt if he knew what to do, poor chap. Jackson's bleeding like mad, and Conrad just panics up there in the bedroom. He gets out quick and rings the police. Perhaps his one big worry was to save the old fellow.'
   'Mm.' The monosyllable sounded sceptical.
   'How else, sir?'
   'I dunno,' said Morse. It might have happened the way Lewis had suggested, but he doubted it. From the look of the dead Jackson's face, it seemed quite clear that someone had definitely meant business: something more than mere gentle persuasion followed by an accidental bang against a bed-post. The man had been clouted and punched about the head by someone made of much sterner stuff than Conrad Richards, surely, for (from the little Morse had learned of him) Conrad was considered by all to be one of the mildest and most amenable of men. Everyone, as Morse supposed, was just about capable of murder, but why should Conrad be put forward as the likeliest perpetrator of such uncharacteristic malice? He ought to see Conrad, though: ought to have seen him that afternoon instead of—
   'Turn the car round!'
   'Pardon, sir?'
   'We're going back there - and put your foot down!'

   But Conrad Richards was no longer in his upper-storey office. According to the young receptionist, he had brought two suitcases with him that morning, and he had gone off in a taxi about ten minutes ago. He had mentioned something about a business trip, but had given no indication of where he was going or when he would be returning.
   Morse was angry with himself and his displeasure was taken out on the receptionist, she appearing to be the only other person on the premises. After impressively invoking the awful majesty of the law, and magisterially demanding whatever keys were available, he stood with Lewis in Charles Richards' office and looked around: bills in the in-trays, ash in the ash-trays, and the same serried ranks of box files on the shelves he had seen before. It seemed a daunting prospect, and leaving Lewis to 'get on with it' he himself climbed the stairs to Conrad Richards' office.
   One way and another, however, it wasn't to be Morse's day. In the (unlocked) drawers of Conrad's desk he found nothing that could raise a twitch from a hyper-suspicious eyebrow: invoices, statements, contracts, costings - it all seemed so futile and tedious. The man had hidden nothing; and might that not be because he had nothing to hide? There were box files galore here, too, but Morse sat back in Conrad's chair and gave up the unequal struggle. On the walls of the office were two pictures only: one a coloured reproduction of a delicate wall-painting from Pompeii; the other a large black-and-white aerial photograph of the medieval walled city of Carcassone. And what the hell were they supposed to tell him?

   It was Lewis who found it - underneath a sheaf of papers in the bottom (locked) drawer of Charles Richards' desk; and as he climbed the stairs he sought to mask the beam of triumph on his face. Putting his nose round the door, he saw Morse seated at the desk, scowling fecklessly around him. 'Any luck, sir?'
   'Er, not for the minute, no. What about you?' Lewis entered the office and sat down opposite his chief. 'Almost all of it business stuff, sir. But I did find this.'
   Morse took the folded letter and began to read:

   Dear Mister Richards Its about Missis Scott who died, I now all about you and her but does Missis Richards...

   As they walked out of the office below, Morse spoke to the receptionist once more.
   'You weren't here when I called on Tuesday, were you?'
   'Pardon, sir?' The young girl seemed very flustered and a red flush spread round her throat.
   'You took the day off, didn't you? Why was that?'
   'Mr Richards told me I needn't— '
   'Which Mr Richards was that?'
   'Mr Charles, sir. He said— '
   But Morse dismissed her explanation with a curt wave of his hand, and walked down to the street.
   'Bit short with her, weren't you, sir?'
   'They're all a load of liars, Lewis! Her, too, I shouldn't wonder. Let's get back!'
   Morse said nothing on the return drive. The letter that Lewis had found lay on his lap the whole time, and occasionally he looked down to read it yet again. It perplexed him sorely, and by the time the police car pulled into the HQ yard at Kidlington, whatever look of irritation had earlier marked his face had changed to one of utter puzzlement.
   'D'you know, Lewis,' he said as they walked into the building together, 'I'm beginning to think we're on the wrong track completely!'
   'Pardon, sir?'
   'Is everybody going bloody deaf all of a sudden?'
   Lewis said no more, and the two men called into the canteen for a cup of tea.
   'I'll just be off and see about these prints, sir. Keep your fingers crossed for me. What's the betting?'
   'I thought you weren't a gambling man, Lewis? And if you were, I shouldn't put more than a coupla bob on it.’
   Lewis shrugged his shoulders, and left his chief staring glumly down at the muddy-brown tea - as yet untouched. He'd frequently seen Morse in this sort of mood, and it worried him no more. Just because one of the chief's fanciful notions took a hefty knock now and then! A bit of bread-and-butter investigation was worth a good deal more than some of that top-of-the-head stuff, and the truth was that they'd found - he'd found! - the blackmail letter. Morse might be a brilliant fellow but... Well, it hardly called for much brilliance, this case, did it? With the prints confirmed, everything would be all tied up, and Lewis was already thinking of a nationwide alert at the airports, because Conrad Richards couldn't have got very far yet, surely. Luton? Heathrow? Gatwick? Wherever it was, there'd be plenty of time.

   Half an hour later Lewis was to discover that between the excellent facsimiles of the fingerprints lifted from Jackson's bedroom and those taken only that afternoon from Conrad Richards, there was not a single line or whorl of correspondence anywhere.

Chapter Twenty-nine

   And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob

Genesis, xxv, 28


   Edward Murdoch felt ill-tempered and sweaty as he cycled homewards late that Wednesday afternoon. Much against his will, he had been roped into making up the number for his house rugby team, and his own ineffectualness and incompetence had been at least partly to blame for their narrow defeat. He was almost always free on Wednesday afternoons, and here was one afternoon he could have used profitably to get on with those two essays to be handed in the next morning. The traffic in Summertown was its usual bloody self, too, with cars seeking to pull into the precious parking bays, their nearside blinkers flashing as they waited for other cars to back out. Twice he had to swerve dangerously as motorists, seemingly oblivious to the rights of any cyclist, cut over in front of him. It was always the same, of course; but today everything seemed to be going wrong, and he felt increasingly irritated. He came to the conclusion that his bio-rhythms were heterodyning. The two words were very new to him, and he rather liked them both. He was getting hungry, too, and he just hoped that his mother had got something decent in the oven - for a change! The last ten days or so, meals had been pretty skimpy: it had been mince, stew, and baked beans in a dreary cyclical trio, and he longed for roast potatoes and thinly sliced beef. Not, he knew, that he ought to blame his mother too much - considering all that she'd been going through. Yet somehow his own selfish interests seemed almost invariably to triumph over his daily resolutions to try to help, even fractionally, during these tragic and traumatic days in the life of the Murdoch family.
   He pushed his bike roughly into the garden shed, ignored the tin of nails which spilt on to the floor as his handle-bars knocked it over, unfastened his brief-case from the rack over the back wheel, and slammed the shed door noisily to.
   His mother was in the kitchen ironing one of his white shirts.
   'What's for tea?' His tone of voice suggested that whatever it was it would be viewed with truculent disfavour.
   'I've got a nice bit of stew on, with some— '
   'Oh Christ! Not stew again!'
   Then something happened which took the boy completely by surprise. He saw his mother put down the iron; saw, simultaneously, her shoulders heave and the backs of her two forefingers go up to her tight mouth; and he saw in her eyes a look that was utterly helpless and hopeless, and then the tears soon streaming down her cheeks. A second later she was sitting at the kitchen table, her breath catching itself in short gasps as she fought to stave off the misery that threatened to swamp her. Edward had never for a second seen his mother like this, and the knowledge that she - she, his own solid and ever-dependable mother - was liable, just like anyone else, to be engulfed by waves of desperation, was a deeply felt shock for him. His own troubles vanished immediately, and he was conscious of a long-forgotten love for her.
   'Don't be upset, mum! Please don't! I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't mean...'
   Mrs Murdoch shook her head vigorously, and wiped her handkerchief across her eyes. 'It's not— ' But she couldn't go on, and Edward put a hand on her shoulder, and stood there, awkward and silent.
   'I've not helped much, have I, mum?' he said quietly.
   'It's not that. It's - it's just that I can't cope. I just can't! Everything seems to be falling to bits and I - I—' She shook her head once more, and the tears were rolling freely again. 'I just don't know what to do!  I've tried so hard to—' She put her own hand up on to her son's, and tried to steady her quivering voice. 'Don't worry about me. I'm just being silly, that's all.' She stood up and blew her nose noisily into the paper handkerchief. 'You have a good day?'
   'It's Michael - isn't it, mum?'
   Mrs Murdoch nodded. 'I went to see him again this afternoon. He's lost one eye completely and - and they don't really know - they don't really know... '
   'You don't mean - he'll be blind?'
   Mrs Murdoch picked up the iron again and seemed to hold it in front of her like some puny shield. 'They're doing the best they can but... '
   'Don't let's lose hope, mum! I know I'm not much of a one for church and all that, but hope is one of the Christian virtues, isn't it?'
   If Mrs Murdoch had followed her instincts at that moment, she would have thrown her arms around her son and blessed him for the words he'd just spoken. But she didn't. Somehow she'd never felt able to express her feelings with any loving freedom, either with Michael or with Edward, and something restrained her even now. She turned off the iron and put two plates under the grill to warm. Where had she gone wrong? Where? If only her husband hadn't died... If only they'd never decided to... Oh God! Surely, surely, things could never get much worse than this? And yet she knew in her heart that they could; and as she put on the oven-glove to take out the stew-pot, she guiltily clutched her little secret even closer to herself: the knowledge that she would never be able to love Michael as she had always loved the boy who was now setting the table in the dining-room.

   Later that evening the senior ophthalmic surgeon lifted, with infinite care, the bandage round Michael Murdoch's head. Then he took off his wrist-watch and held it about six inches in front of his patient's left eye.
   'How are you, Michael?'
   'All right. I feel tired, though - ever so tired.'
   'Hungry?'
   'No, not really. I've had something to eat.'
   'That was a little while ago, though, and you've been asleep since then. Have you any idea of the time now?' He still held the watch steadily in front of the boy's remaining eye.
   'Must be about tea time, is it? About five?'
   The wrist-watch said 8.45, and still the surgeon held it out. But the boy's horridly blood-shot eye stared past the watch, unseeing still, and as the surgeon replaced the bandage he shook his head sadly at the nurse who was standing anxiously beside him.

   On his way back from the Friar Bacon at ten minutes to eleven that night, Morse chanced to meet Mrs Murdoch, her Labrador straining mightily from her; and for the first time he learned of the tragic fate of her elder boy. He listened dutifully and compassionately, but somehow he couldn't seem to find the appropriate words of comfort, mumbling only the occasional 'Oh dear!', the occasional 'I am sorry', as he stood staring blankly at the grass verge. Fortunately the dog came to his rescue, and Morse felt relieved as the sandy coloured beast finally wrenched his mistress off to pastures new.
   As he walked the remaining few hundred yards to his home, he pondered briefly upon the Murdoch family and their links with Anne Scott. But he was tired and over-beered, and nothing was to click in Morse's rather muddled mind that night.

Chapter Thirty

   An illiterate candidate gives his thoughts. The spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are chaotic. Examiners should feel no reluctance about giving no marks for such work

Extract from Specimen Essays at 16+


   Thursday saw Morse late into his office, where - he greeted Lewis with a perfunctory nod. He had slept badly, and silently vowed to give the booze a rest that day. Whilst Lewis amateurishly tapped the keys as he typed up a report, Morse forced his attention back to the blackmail note discovered in Charles Richards' desk. At one reading, it seemed a typically semi-literate specimen of the sort of note so often received by blackmail victims - ill-spelt, ill-punctuated, and ill-expressed. And yet, at another reading, it seemed not to fall into the conventional category at all. He handed the note across to Lewis.
   'What do you make of it?'
   'His spelling's even worse than mine, isn't it? Still, we knew all along he'd never been to Eton.'
   'By "he", you mean Jackson, I suppose?'
   Lewis turned from the typewriter and frowned. 'Who else, sir?'
   'You think Jackson wrote this?'
   'Don't you?'
   'No, I don't. In fact, I'm absolutely sure that Jackson himself couldn't have written one line of this - let alone the whole caboodle. You'll find in Jackson's pathetic little pile of possessions a couple of pamphlets about that telly programme On the Move - and that wasn't a programme for your actual semi-complete illiterates, Lewis: it was for your complete illiterates, who've never managed to read or write and who get embarrassed about ever admitting it to anyone. So I reckon Jackson must have got somebody— '
   'But it's pretty bad,that letter, sir. Probably get about Grade Five CSE, if you ask me.'
   'Really? Well, if you honestly think that, I'm sure the nation is most relieved to know that you're not going to be called up to exercise your ignorant prejudices upon the essays written by most of our sixteen-year olds! You see, you're quite wrong. Here! Look at it again!' Morse thrust the letter across once more, and sat back in his chair like some smug pedagogue. 'What you want a letter to do, Lewis, is to communicate - got that? Now the spelling there is a bit weak, and the punctuation's infantile. But, Lewis, I'll tell you this: the upshot of that particular letter is so clear, so unequivocal, so clever, that no one who read it could have misunderstood one syllable! Mistakes galore, I agree; but when it comes down to telling Richards exactly where and exactly when and the rest of it - why, the letter's a bloody model of clarity! Look at it! Is your understanding held up by some dyslexic correspondent who spells "receive" the wrong way round? Never!'
   'But— '
   'Yes, I know. If you've got some little typist next door who can't spell, you give her the sack. And quite right, too. That's her job, and none of us wants to sign illiterate letters. But I'll say it again: whoever wrote this letter knew exactly what he was up to. And it's just the same with the punctuation, if you look a little more closely. Full stops and question marks are all cock-eyed - but they don't affect what's being said.' Morse banged the table with a rather frightening intensity. 'No! Jackson did not write that letter.'
   He wrote two words on the pad in front of him and passed the sheet over. 'What do you make of those?'
   Lewis looked down at egog and metantatopi, but managed to decipher neither of these orthographic monstrosities.
   'You've no idea, have you?' continued Morse. 'And I don't blame you, because that's the sort of thing your illiterate johnnies sink to. The first word's supposed to be "hedgehog", and the second's "meat and potato pie" - and they're both genuine! Chap from the examination board told me. Do you see what I mean?'
   Yes, Lewis was beginning to wonder if the chief hadn't got something; but wasn't he assuming that Jackson was illiterate? If someone found a book on your shelves entitled Teach Yourself to Spell, it didn't automatically mean...
   But Morse was still going on. 'And then there's this business of the money, isn't there? If Jackson thought he'd got a soft touch for a nice little bit of blackmail, I reckon he'd have asked for one helluva sight more than a measly— '
   'Perhaps he did, sir.'
   The interjection stopped Morse in his tracks, and he nodded in reluctant agreement. 'Ye-es. You know, I hadn't thought of that.'
   'Don't you think, anyway, that it might be better to find out about this? Find out whether Jackson could write?'
   'You're right! Get on to that woman at the Post Office down there, Mrs Whatsername— '
   'Mrs Beavers.'
   ‘That's her. Get on to her and ask her how Jackson signed for his OAP. And since she's such a nosy old bugger, ask her who Jackson was doing a bit of work for before he died - apart from Anne Scott. Do you know what, Lewis? I reckon you'll find that Jackson was doing one or two other little jobs as well.'

   Three-quarters of an hour later Lewis learned that Jackson was able, just, to render in alphabetical characters a tentative resemblance to 'G. Jackson' on his OAP slips. But it wouldn't much have mattered if he'd not even been able to manage that - so Mrs Beavers asserted. There were one or two of the old 'uns who got by with an 'X', provided that it was inscribed on PO premises in view of one of the staff, or vouched for by some close relative or friend. Mrs Beavers herself had often had to read or explain to Jackson some notification of change or renewal, or some information about supplementary benefit or rate rebate. And Jackson had readily understood such things - and acted upon them. He was, it seemed, far from unintelligent. The fact remained, however, that to all intents and purposes Jackson was illiterate.
   Mrs Beavers was just as well up with the odd-job needs of the local community as with the literary competences of her clientele. Mrs Jones in Cardigan Street, had found occasion to hire Jackson's services in planning and rehanging several doors that were sagging and sticking; Mrs Purvis in Canal Reach had asked Jackson if he could rewire the house for her - the estimate from the Electricity Board was quite ridiculous. Then there was that couple who'd just moved into Albert Street who wanted pelmets made for the windows...'
   Lewis listened and made his awkward notes. It was, he had to admit, pretty well as Morse had said it would be; and when he reported back to Kidlington the only thing that seemed to interest Morse was, of all things, Mrs Purvis's rewiring.
   'Rewiring, eh? I wonder how much Jackson knocked her back for that? My place needs doing and someone told me it'll cost about £250.'
   'Well, it's quite a big job, you know.'
   '£250 isn't really a lot these days, though, is it?' said Morse slowly.
   'Not enough to keep Jackson quiet, you mean?'
   'I keep telling you, Lewis - Jackson didn't write the letter!'
   'Who do you think did, then?'
   Morse tilted his head slightly and opened the palms of his hands. 'I dunno, except that he - or she - is well enough educated to know how to pretend to be uneducated, if you see what I mean. That letter would have been just the sort I'd have written, Lewis, if someone had asked me to try to write a semi-literate letter.'
   'But you're a very well educated man, sir!'
   'Certainly so - and don't you forget it! And whilst we're on this education business, I just wonder, Lewis, exactly where Mrs Purvis went to school when she was a girl.'
   It seemed to Lewis the oddest question that had so far posed itself to his unpredictable chief, and the reason for it was still puzzling him as he brought the police car to a halt in front of the bollards that guarded Canal Reach.

Chapter Thirty-one

   She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a succinct narrative of those events

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles


   Morse had known - even before he'd noticed the rows of paperback Catherine Cooksons and Georgette Heyers along the two shelves in the little sitting room.
   'His name's Graymalkin,' Mrs Purvis had replied, looking down lovingly at the grey-haired Persian that wove its feline figures-of-eight round her legs. 'It's from Macbeth, Inspector - by William Shakespeare, you know.'
   ‘Oh yes?’
   Lewis listened patiently whilst Mrs Purvis was duly cosseted and encouraged, and it was a relief when Morse finally brought forward the heavier artillery.
   'You know, you're making me forget what we called for, Mrs Purvis. It's about Mr Jackson, of course, and there are just a few little points to clear up - you know how it is? We're trying to find out a little bit more about the sort of odd jobs he was doing - just to check up on the sort of income he had. By the way, he was doing some work for you, wasn't he?'
   'He'd finished. Rewiring the house, it was. He wasn't the neatest sort of man, but he always did a good job.'
   'He'd finished, you say?'
   'Yes - when would it be now?'
   'And you'd squared up with him?'
   Mrs Purvis leaned down to stroke Graymalkin, and Lewis thought that her eyes were suddenly evasive. 'I squared up with him, yes, before...'
   'Mind telling me how much he charged?’
   'Well, he wasn't a professional, you know.’
   'How much, Mrs Purvis?'
   '£75.' (Why, wondered Lewis, did she make it sound like a guilty admission?)
   'Very reasonable,' said Morse.
   Mrs Purvis was stroking the Persian again. 'Quite reasonable, yes.'
   'Did he often do jobs for you?'
   'Not really. One or two little things. He fixed up the lavatory— '
   'Did you ever do any little jobs for him?’
   Mrs Purvis looked up with startled eyes. 'I don't quite see— '
   'Mr Jackson couldn't write very well, could he?'
   'Write? I - I don't know really. Of course he hadn't had much education, I knew that, but— '
   'You never wrote a letter for him?'
   'No, Inspector, I didn't.'
   'Not a single letter?'
   'Never once in my life! I swear that on the Holy Bible.'
   'There's nothing wrong in writing a letter for a neighbour, is there?'
   'No, of course there isn't. It's just that I thought— '
   'Did you ever read a letter for him, though?'
   The effect of the question on the poor woman was instantaneous and devastating. The muscles round her mouth were quivering now as two or three times she opened her lips to speak. But no words came out.
   'It's all right,' said Morse gently. 'I know all about it, you see, but I'd like to hear it from you, Mrs Purvis.'
   The truth came out then, reluctantly confessed but perfectly clear. The bill for rewiring the tiny property had been £100, but Jackson had been willing to reduce it by £25 if she was prepared to help him. All she'd got to do was to read a letter to him - and then to say nothing about it to anyone. That was all. And, of course, it was only after beginning to read it to him that she'd realized it must have been a letter that Ms Scott had left on the kitchen table when she'd hanged herself. There had been four sheets of writing, she recalled that quite clearly, although Jackson had taken the letter from her after she'd read only about half of it. It was a sort of love letter, really (said Mrs Purvis), but she couldn't remember much of the detail. It said that this man she was writing to was the only one she'd ever really loved and that whatever happened she wanted him to know that; and never to blame himself in any way. She said it was all her fault - not his, and...
   But Mrs Purvis could remember no more.
   Morse had listened without interruption as the frightened woman exhausted her recollections, 'You didn't do anything else for him - anything else at all?'
   'No, honestly I didn't. That was all. I swear on the— '
   'You didn't even try to find a telephone number for him?' Morse had spoken evenly and calmly, but Mrs Purvis broke down completely now. Between sobs Morse learned that she hadn't looked up a telephone number, but that Jackson had asked her how to get through to directory enquiries, and that she'd told him. It was only later, really, that she'd begun to realize what Mr Jackson might be up to.
   'You're not very well off, are you, my love?' said Morse gently, laying a comforting hand on the woman's shoulder. 'I can understand what you did, and we're going to forget all about it - aren't we, Lewis?'
   Rather startled at being brought so late into the action, Lewis swallowed hard and made an indeterminate grunt that sounded vaguely corroborative.
   'It's just that if you can remember anything - anything at all - about this man Ms Scott was writing to - well, we'd be able to tie the whole thing up, wouldn't we?'
   Mrs Purvis nodded helplessly. 'Yes, I see that, but I can't— '
   'Do you remember where he lived?'
   'I'm sorry, but I didn't see the envelope.'
   'Name? There must have been a name somewhere, surely? She must have written "Dear Somebody", or ‘My dear Somebody", or something? Please try to remember!'
   'Oh dear!'
   'It wasn't "Charles", was it?'
   The light of redemption now beamed in Mrs Purvis's eyes, as though her certain remembrance of things past had atoned at last for her earlier sins. ' "My dearest Charles",' she said, slowly and quietly. 'That's what it was, Inspector: that's how she started the letter!'
   Graymalkin's eyes watched the two detectives as they left - eyes that stared after them with indifferent intelligence: neither hostility against the intruders, nor compassion for the mistress. Now left in peace, the cat curled up on the armchair beside the fire, resting its head on its paws and closing its large, all-seeing eyes. It had been another interlude - no more.

   That same evening Morse drove up to the J.R.2 in Headington, and spoke with the sister in the Intensive Care Unit. Silent-footed, they walked to the bed where Michael Murdoch lay asleep.
   'I can't let you wake him,' whispered the sister.
   Morse nodded and looked down at the boy, his head turbaned in layers of white bandaging. Picking up the chart from the foot of the bed, Morse nodded his ignorant head as his eyes followed the mountain-peaks of pulse-rate and temperature. The top of the chart read Murdoch, Michael; date of birth: the second of Octo - But Morse's eyes travelled no further, and his mind was many miles away.
   The clues were almost all assembled now, although it was not until four hours and a bottle of Teacher's later that Morse finally solved the first of the two problems that the case of the Jericho killings had presented to him. To be more precise, it was at five minutes past midnight that he discovered the name of the man who had killed Ms Anne Scott.

Chapter Thirty-two

   A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine

G. B. Shaw


   Detective Constable Walters had experienced little glamour since his appearance on the stage in the first act of the Jericho killings, and his latest assignment, a hefty burglary in North Oxford, had made no great demands on his ratiocinative skills. An upper window had been left open, and the burglars (two of them, perhaps) had helped themselves to the pickings whilst the owners were celebrating their silver wedding at the Randolph. The only fingerprints that might have been left had disappeared with the articles stolen, a list of which Walters had painstakingly made late the previous evening. No clues at all really, except that one of the intruders had urinated over the lounge carpet - an attendant circumstance which had elicited little enthusiasm when reported to the path boys. In fact, even the suggestion that there were two of them had been entertained only because one of the neighbours thought she may have seen a couple of suspicious youngsters walking up and down the road the day before. No, it was going to be one of those unsolved crimes - until perhaps the culprits were caught red-handed, asking for umpteen other offences to be taken into consideration. It was, therefore, a pleasurable relief for Walters when Lewis walked in on Friday morning.
   'You want to see the new super, Sarge?'
   'No. Actually, it's Constable Walters I'm after.'
   'Your chief a bit sore about the promotion?'
   'Sore? Morse? He looked like he'd won the pools when I last saw him.'
   'Can we help you?'
   'Morse says you looked into Ms Scott's early marriage, and found where her husband had been living before he was killed.'
   'That's right.'
   'You - spoke to the landlady?'
   Walters nodded.
   'Tell me all about it,' said Lewis.
   'Important, is it?’
   'So Morse says.'

   By the end of the morning, after a visit to the landlady, after inspecting the medical records in the Radcliffe Infirmary's Accident Department, and after matching his findings with the road accident records in the archives at Police HQ, Lewis knew it all. Yet he felt oddly frustrated about his three hours' research, for Morse - who would never stoop to such fourth-grade clerical stuff himself - had already told him what he'd find: that the other driver involved in the fatal accident with Anne Scott's former husband had been Michael Murdoch.

   Back in Morse's office, Lewis began to recount his morning's findings, but his reception was surprisingly cool.
   'Cut out the weasel words, Lewis! It was just as I said, wasn't it?'
   'Just as you said, sir,' replied Lewis mildly.
   'And why didn't that incompetent Walters take the trouble to put the landlady's address in his report?'
   'I didn't ask him. He probably didn't think it was important.'
   ‘Didn’t think? What the hell's he got to think with?’
   ‘He’s only a young fellow—'
   'And doubtless you, Lewis, with your vast experience, wouldn't have thought it very important either?'
   'No, I don't think I would, sir,' replied Lewis, marvelling at his own intrepidity. 'And I know how much you value my own idea of what's important and what isn't.'
   'I see.' But there was an icy note in Morse's reply that suddenly alerted Lewis to an imminent gale, force ten.
   'I'd always thought, Lewis, that the job of a detective, however feebleminded he may be, was to produce a faithful and accurate report on whatever facts he'd been able to establish - however insignificant those facts might appear.' The voice was monotonous, didactic, with the slow, refined articulation of a schoolmaster explaining the school rules to a particularly stupid boy. 'You see, it's often the small, seemingly insignificant detail that later assumes a new-born magnitude. You would agree with that, would you not?'
   Lewis swallowed hard and nodded feebly. He was in for a carpeting, he knew that. But what had gone wrong?
   'So your friend Walters was somewhat remiss, was he not? As you say, I respect your own judgement of what may or may not be important; though, to be honest, I'm disappointed that you don't expect a slightly higher standard of accuracy and thoroughness in your colleagues' reports. But let's forget that. Walters doesn't work for me, does he?'
   'What have I done wrong, sir?' asked Lewis quietly.
   'What have you done wrong? I'll tell you, Lewis. You're bloody careless, that's what! Careless in the way you've been writing your reports— '
   'You know my spelling— '
   'I'm not talking about your bloody spelling. Listen, man! There are half a dozen things here that are purely, simply, plainly, absolutely bloody wrong. You're getting slack, Lewis. Instead of getting better, you're getting a bloody sight worse. Did you know that?' Lewis looked down at the desk and said nothing. He knew, deep down, that he'd rushed a few things; but he'd tried so hard. Whenever Morse picked up his coat for the night and asked, as he often did, for 'a report in the morning', he could have had little idea of how long and difficult a job it was for his sergeant to get the sentences right in his mind, and then tick-tick away on the typewriter until late into the evening while his chief was sitting with his cronies in the local. No, it wasn't fair at all, and Lewis felt a sense of hurt and injustice.
   'Let me just see what you mean, if you don't mind, sir. I know I— '
   'There's this for a start. Remember it?' Morse's right forefinger flicked the statement taken by Lewis from Mrs Celia Richards. 'And with this one, Lewis, if I remember rightly - as you can be bloody sure I do! - I specifically asked you to take care. Specifically.'
   Lewis looked down at the statement brusquely thrust across to him and he remembered exactly what Morse had said. He opened his mouth to say something, but Etna was still erupting.
   'What the hell's the good of a sergeant who can't even get an address right? A sergeant who can't even copy three figures without getting 'em cock-eyed? And then look at this one here!' Morse had now picked up another sheet and was launching a second front somewhere else - but Lewis was no longer listening. This wasn't just unfair; it was wrong. The address on the statement he held was perfectly correct - he was convinced of that. And so he waited, like a deaf man watching a film of Hitler ranting at a Nuremburg rally; and then, when the reverberations had settled, he spoke four simple words, with the massive authority of the Almighty addressing Moses.
   'This address is right.'
   Morse's mouth opened - and closed. Reaching across the desk, he retrieved Celia Richasds' statement, and then fingered through the other documents in front of him until he found what he was looking for.
   'You mean to say, Lewis, that she lives at two-six-one, and that this address here' - he passed across a Xerox copy of the letter which had accompanied the parking-fine - 'is also correct?' The last three words were whispered, and Lewis felt a shiver of excitement as he looked at the copy:

   Dear Sirs,
   Enclosed herewith please find cheque for £6, being the penalty fixed for the traffic offence detailed on the ticket (also enclosed). I apologize for the trouble caused.
   Yours faithfully,

C. Richards.
   On the original letterhead, the address had been pre-printed at the top right-hand corner: 216 Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, Oxon.
   It was Lewis who spoke first. 'This means that Celia Richards never paid the fine at all, doesn't it, sir? This is Conrad Richards' address.'
   Morse nodded agreement. 'That's about it. And I drove past the wretched place myself when...' His voice trailed off, and in his mind at that very moment it was as if a colossal flash of lightning had suddenly illuminated the landscape for a pilot flying lost and blind in the blackest night.
   Morse's eyes were still shining as he stood up. 'Calls for a little celebration, don't you think?'.
   'No, sir. Before we do anything else, I want to know about all those other things in the reports where— '
   'Forget 'em! Trivialities, Lewis! Minimal blemishes on some otherwise excellent documentation.' He walked round the table and his right hand gripped Lewis's shoulder. 'We're a team, we are - you realize that, don't you? You and me, when we work together - Christ! We're bloody near invincible! Get your coat!'
   Lewis rose reluctantly from his seat. He couldn't really understand why Morse should invariably win, but he supposed it would always be so. 'You reckon you've puzzled it all out, sir?'
   'Reckon? Know, more like. I'll tell you all about it over a pint.'
   'I'd rather you told me now.'
   'All right, Lewis. The fact of the matter is that we now not only know who killed Anne Scott, my old friend, but we also know who killed George Jackson. And you want the names? Want 'em now?'
   So Morse gave the two different names. The first one left Lewis utterly perplexed, since it was completely unknown to him; the second left him open-mouthed and flabbergasted.