The dead of Jericho (17 page)

And Lewis's hearing was good.

Morse himself, however, had heard nothing whatsoever about Jackson: it seemed that darts, football, and the price of beer had resumed their customary conversational priorities. Life went on as before — except for Anne Scott and George Jackson.

When, considerably over-beered, Morse looked back in his office at 9 p.m., he found an interesting report awaiting him. He had insisted that the fingerprint men should go and have another look round 10 Canal Reach; and they had found something new. Two prints — two fairly clear ones, too. And they weren't Jackson's.

Morse felt he'd had a pretty good day.

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?'

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.