The dead of Jericho (11 page)

He heard himself shriek out in terror.

Miss Catharine Edgeley returned to Oxford that night. Her mother had died of a brain tumour; her mother was now buried. And there was little room in Miss Edgeley's mind that night for any thoughts of the last time she had played bridge in North Oxford. Indeed, she had no knowledge at that time that Anne Scott, too, was dead.

Morse's mind was curiously detached as he 'kept walking', eyes frozen forward, along the short length of Canal Reach. With Teutonic recollections the order of the night, he recalled that in Germany the situation might have been regarded as serious but not hopeless, in Austria, hopeless but not serious. Or was it the other way round? To his astonishment, however, he found himself being firmly manipulated towards a police car, parked just round the corner, its gaily-coloured emblem illuminated by the orange glare of a street lamp. And as he reached the car and turned about, he found himself looking slightly upwards into the face of a rather frightened-looking young man.

'You,
sir!' It was Detective Constable Walters who was the first to speak, and Morse's shoulders sagged with a combination of relief and exasperation.

'Are you in the habit of arresting your superior officers, Constable?'

A flustered Walters followed the Lancia up to Morse's North Oxford flat, where over a few whiskies the two of them sat and talked until way after midnight. On his own side, Morse came almost completely clean, omitting only any mention of his bribing of the Jericho locksmith. For his part, Walters admitted to his own anxiety about Morse's behaviour, recounted in detail his own investigations, and revealed that after working late in St Aldates that night he had been on his way to return the few items taken from Canal Reach when he had seen the yellow glow flitting about the dark and silent rooms. Throughout Walters' somewhat discontinuous narrative, Morse remained silent, attentive, and seemingly impassive. When Walters had mentioned the strange discoveries of the chair in the kitchen and the key on the door-mat, Morse had nodded non-committally, as though the incidents were either of little moment or perfectly explicable. Only during Walters' account of his visit to the Summertown Bridge Club had Morse's eyes appeared to harden to a deeper blue.

'You're in a tricky position, young fellow,' said Morse finally. 'You find a superior officer snooping around in an empty house — a house in which he'd poked his nose the day the dead woman was found — an officer who had no more right to be there than a fourth-grade burglar — so what do you do, Walters?'

'I just don't know, sir.'

‘I'll tell you what you
ought
to have done.' The sudden sharp edge on Morse's voice made Walters look up anxiously. 'If you had any nous at all you would have asked me how I
got in.
Not really good enough, was it?'

Walters opened his mouth to say something, but Morse continued. 'How long have you been in the Force?'

'Eighteen months altogether, but only three— '

'You've got a lot to learn.'

'I'm learning all the time, sir.'

Morse grinned at the young man. 'Well, you've got something else to learn; and that's exactly what your duty has got to be now. And in case you don't know, I'll tell you. It's your duty to report everything that's happened tonight to Chief Inspector Bell, agreed?'

Walters nodded. The point had been worrying him sorely, and he felt glad that Morse had made things so easy for him. Again he was about to say something, but again he was interrupted.

'But not just yet, understand? I'll see the Assistant Chief Constable first and explain the whole position. You see, Walters, there's something a bit odd about this business; something that needs an older and a wiser head than yours.'

He poured another liberal dose of whisky into Walters' glass, another into his own, and spent the next half-hour asking Walters about his training, his prospects and his ambition; and Walters responded fully and eagerly to such sympathetic interest. At half past midnight he felt the profound wish that he could work with this man; and at a quarter to one, when about to leave, he was only too happy to leave with Morse the items he had originally set out to deposit in the house on Canal Reach.

'How
did
you get in there, sir?' he asked on the doorstep. 'Did you have a key or— '

'When you've been around as long as I have, Constable, you'll find you don't need a key to get through most doors. You see, the lock on the back door there is a Yale, and with a Yale the bevel's always facing you when you're on the outside. So if you take a credit card and slip it in, you'll find it's just strong enough and just flexible enough to— '

'I know, sir. I've seen it done on the telly.'

'Oh.'

'And er the lock on the back door there
isn't
a Yale, is it? Goodnight, sir. And thanks for the whisky.'

Morse spent the next hour or so looking through the two Letts' diaries now in his possession, the one (for the current year) just handed to him by Walters, the other (for the previous year) taken a few hours earlier from Canal Reach. If Walters could be trusted, no letters of even minimal significance had been found in the drawers of the desk; and so the diaries were probably as near as anyone could ever come to unlocking the secret life of the late Anne Scott. Not that the entries seemed to Morse particularly promising. Times, mostly: times of trains; times of social events; times of pupils' lessons — yes, that was doubtless the meaning of those scores of initials scattered throughout the pages, several of them recurring at regular (often weekly) intervals over months, and in a few cases over a year or more. The 'E.M.' entry on the Wednesday she'd died held his attention for a while as he knew it must have held the attention of Walters and of Bell. But, like them, he could only think of one person with those same initials: himself. And he had never quite forgiven his parents for christening their only offspring as they had.

Morse slept soundly, and woke late next morning, his brain clear and keen. The images and impressions of all he had learned had flashed across his mind but once, yet already the hooks and eyes of his memories were beginning to combine in strange and varied patterns.

Almost all of them wrong.

Mrs Gwendola Briggs was very soon aware of the different nature of the beast when, on the following Monday, Morse, after a rather skimped day's work at the Thames Valley HQ, finally found time to pursue his unofficial and part-time course of enquiries. This man (it seemed to Gwendola) was quite unnecessarily objectionable and bullying in the series of questions he bombarded her with. Who was there that night? Where had they sat? What were the topics of conversation? Had anyone cancelled? Had anyone turned up at the last minute? Were the bridge-pads still there? Exactly what time had they finished? Where were the cars parked? How many cars? It was all quite flustering for her, and quite unlike the vague and pleasant questions that the big and gentle constable had asked her.
This
man irritated her, making her feel almost guilty about not quite being able to remember things. Yet it was surprising (as she later confessed to herself) how much he'd compelled her to remember; and as Morse prepared to take his leave, holding the list of the names and addresses of those who had attended the bridge evening, he felt adequately satisfied. With the losing pair of each rubber (as he had learned) staying at the same table, and the winning pair moving along, it seemed more than likely that Anne had spoken with everyone there, at least for some intermittent minutes.

'Oh, yes. There
was
something else a little unusual about that night, Inspector. You see, it was our first anniversary, and we had a break about eleven to celebrate. You know, a couple of glasses of sherry to mark the occasion — drink to our future success and— ' Gwendola suddenly broke off, conscious of her tactlessness. But Morse refused to rescue her.

‘I’m sorry. I didn't mean to — Oh dear! What a tragedy it all is!'

'Did you meet last week, Mrs Briggs?'

'Yes, we did. We meet every— '

'You didn't feel that because of the er tragedy that— '

'Life must go on, mustn't it, Inspector?'

Morse's sour expression seemed to suggest that there was probably little justification for such continuance in the case of this mean-minded little woman, doubtless ever dreaming of over-tricks and gleefully doubling the dubious contracts of the recently initiated. But he made no answer as his eyes skimmed down the list she had given him. 'Mrs Murdoch'! Was that the same one? The same Mrs Murdoch who had invited him to the party when he and Anne... ? Surely it was! His thoughts floated back to that first — no, that only — evening when he and Anne had met; the evening when but for the cussedness of human affairs he — Augh! Forget it!
Should
he forget it, though? Had there been
something
he had learned that evening that he should, and must, remember? Already he had tried to dredge up what he could, but the simple truth was that he'd drunk too much on that occasion. Come to think of it, though, there was that bit of research he'd heard of only the previous week. Some team of educational psychologists in Oxford was suggesting that if you'd revised whilst you were drunk, and turned up sober for the next day's examinations, you'd be lucky to remember anything at all. Likewise, if you'd revised in a comparatively sober state of mind and then turned up drunk, you'd hardly stand much chance of self-distinction. But (and this was the point) if you'd revised whilst drunk, and maintained a similar degree of inebriation during the examination itself, then all was likely to be well. Interesting. Yes... Morse felt sure there
was
something he'd heard from Anne that night. Something. Almost he had it as he stood there on the doorstep; but it slipped away and left him frustrated and irritated. The sooner he got drunk, the better!

As he finally took his leave, he realized how less than gracious he'd been to the chairman of the Summertown Bridge Club.

When the door opened, Morse recognized one of the Murdoch boys he'd seen at the party, and his memory struggled for the name.

'Michael, is it?'

'No. I'm Ted.'

'Oh, yes. Is your mother in, Ted?'

‘No. She's gone down to the hospital. It's Michael.'

‘Road accident?' What made Morse suggest such a possible cause of hospitalisation, he could not have said; but he noticed the boy's quite inexplicable unease.

'No. He's — he's been on drugs.'

'Oh dear! Bad, is he?'

The boy swallowed. 'Pretty bad, yes.'

Things were beginning to stir a little in Morse's mind now. Yes. This was the
younger
brother he was talking to, by quite a few inches the taller of the two and slightly darker in complexion, due to sit his A-level examinations — which year had Mrs Murdoch said that was? Then it hit him. E.M.... Edward Murdoch! Wednesday afternoons. And (it flooded back) for the latter part of the previous year and the present year up until June, the initials M.M., too, had appeared regularly in the diaries: Michael Murdoch.

Morse took the plunge. 'Weren't you due for a lesson with Ms Scott the day she committed suicide?' His eyes left the boy's face not for the flutter of an eye-lash as he asked the brutal question; but, in turn, the boy's brown eyes were unblinking as a chameleon's.

'Yes, I was.'

'Did you go?'

'No. She told me the previous week that she wouldn't be able to see me.'

'I see.' Morse had noticed the hesitation, and a wayward fancy crossed his mind. 'Did you like her?' he asked simply.

'Yes, I did.' The voice, like the eyes, was firm — and oddly gentle.

Morse was tempted to pursue the theme, but switched instead to something different.

'A-levels this year?'

The boy nodded. 'German, French, and Latin.'

'You confident?'

'Not really.'

'Shouldn't worry too much about that,' said Morse in an objectionably avuncular tone. 'Over-rated quality confidence is.' (Weren't those the words of Mrs Murdoch, though? Yes, the memories of the night were stronger now.) 'Hard work — that's the secret. Put your foot through the telly, or something.' Morse heard himself drooling on tediously, and saw the boy looking at him with a hint of contempt in those honest eyes.

'I was working when you called, actually, Inspector.'

'Jolly good! Well, I er I mustn't interrupt you any longer, must I?' He turned to leave. 'By the way, did Ms Scott ever say anything to you about her — well, her private life?'

'Is that what you wanted to see mum about?'

‘Partly, yes.'

'She never said anything to me about it.' The boy's words were almost aggressive, and Morse felt puzzled.

'What about your brother? Did he ever say anything?'

'Say anything about what?'

'Forget it, lad! Just tell your mother I called, will you? And that I'll be calling again, all right?' For a few seconds his harsh blue eyes fixed Edward's, and then he turned around and walked away.

It says little for Morse's thoroughness that Miss Catharine Edgeley (next on his list and living so close to the Murdochs) was to be the last of the bridge party destined to be interviewed. Yes, she realized now, there
was
something that might be valuable for him to know: Anne had asked her to drop a note through the Murdochs' letter box, a note in a white, sealed envelope, addressed to Edward Murdoch.