The Remorseful Day (4 page)

Soon, he found himself standing alongside the slowly lapping water, debating with himself whether the tide was just coming in or just going out, and staring down at the glasslike circular configuration of a jellyfish.

“Is it dead?”

Until she spoke, Morse had been unaware of the auburn-haired young woman who now stood beside him, almost wearing a bikini.

“I don't know. But in the absence of anything better to do, I'm going to stand here till the tide comes in and find out.”

“But the tide's going
out
, surely?”

Morse nodded somewhat wistfully. “You may be right.”

“Poor jellyfish!”

“Mm!” Morse looked down again at the apparently doomed, transparent creature at his feet: “How very sad to be a jellyfish!”

He'd sounded a comparatively interesting man, and the woman would have liked to stay there awhile. But she forced herself to forget the intensely blue eyes which momentarily had held her own and walked away without a further word, for she felt a sudden, slight suspicion concerning the sanity of the man who stood there staring at the ground.

It was on Tuesday the 14th, the day
before
Strange's visit to Morse, that Lewis had presented himself at the Chief Superintendent's office in Thames Valley Police HQ, in punctual obedience to the internal phone call.

“Something for you, Lewis. Remember the Lower Swinstead murder?”

“Well, vaguely, yes. And I've seen the bits in the paper, you know, about the calls. I was never really on the case myself though. We were on another—”

“Well, you're on it now—from next Monday morning, that is—once Morse gets back from Bermuda.”

“He hasn't left Oxford, has he?”

“Joke
, Lewis.” Strange beamed with bonhomie, settling his chin into his others.

“The Chief Inspector's agreed?”

“Not much option, had he? And you enjoy working with the old sod. I know you do.”

“Not always.”

“Well, he always enjoys working with
you.”

A strangely gratified Lewis made no reply.

“So?”

“Well, if it's OK with Morse …”

“Which it is.”

“I'll give him a ring.”

“No, you won't. He's tired, isn't he? Needs a rest. Give him a bit of time to himself—you know, crosswords, booze …”

“Wagner, sir. Don't forget his precious Wagner. He's
just bought
another
recording of that
Ring Cycle
stuff, so he told me.”

“Which recording's that?”

“Conductor called ‘Sholty,’ I think.”

“Mm …” Strange pointed to three bulging green box-files stacked on the side of his desk. “Little bit of reading there. All right? Chance for you to get a few moves ahead of Morse.”

Lewis got to his feet, picked up the files, and held them awkwardly in front of him, his chin clamping the top one firm.

“I've never been even
one
move in front of him, sir.”

“No? Don't you underestimate yourself, Lewis! Let others do it for you.”

Lewis managed a good-natured grin. “Not many people manage to get a move ahead of Morse.”

“Oh, really? Just a minute! Let me hold the door for you … And you're not quite right about what you just said, you know. There
are
one or two people who just occasionally manage it.”

“Perhaps you're right, sir. I've just not met one of ‘em, that's all.”

“You have though,” said Strange quietly.

Lewis's eyes turned quizzically as he maneuvered his triple burden through the door.

That same evening, Lewis had just finished his eggs and chips, had trawled the last slice of brown bread across the residual HP sauce, and was swallowing the last mouthful of full-cream cold milk, when he heard the call from above:

“Dad? Da—ad?”

Lewis looked down at the (presumably problematical) first sentence of his son's A-level French Prose Composition: “Another bottle of this excellent wine, waiter!”

“Easy enough, that, isn't it?”

“What gender's'bottle’?”

“How am I supposed to know? What do you think I bought you that dictionary for?”

“Left it at school, didn't I!”

“So?”

“So you mean you don't know?”

“You're brighter than I thought, son.”

“Can't you guess?”

“Either masculine or feminine, sure to be.”

“That's
great.”

“Feminine, say? So it's, er,
'Garçon! Une autre bouteille de cette
—’”

“No! You're useless, Dad! If you say
'Une autre bouteille,’
you mean a
different
bottle of wine.”

“Oh.”

“You say
'Encore une bouteille de’
whatever it is.”

“Why do you ever ask me to help you?”

“Agh! Forget it! Like I say, you're bloody useless.”

Lewis had never himself read
Bleak House
and, unlike Morse, would not have known the soothing secret of counting up to however-many. And in truth he felt angry and belittled as he walked silently down the stairs, picked up the box-files from the table in the entrance hall, walked past the living room, where Mrs. Lewis sat deeply submerged in a TV soap, and settled himself down at the kitchen table, where he began to acquaint himself with the strangely assorted members of the Harrison family—wife, husband, daughter, son—four of the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.

He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne, the mother, who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead, Oxon.

At first he'd felt some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4:30
P.M.

At which time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress's study.

“Come in!”

She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him, across the desk.

Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early sixties—the internationally renowned chief-guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary's Diabetes Centre in Oxford.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.

“Look, we're probably going to be together at lots of do's these next few months—years, perhaps—so, please, let's forget this ‘Sir’ business, shall we? Please call me'Robert.'”

Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.

Not for long.

“I've sat in with you once or twice, haven't I?”

“Three times.”

“And I think you're going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I mean?”

“Thank you.”

“But you're not quite good enough yet.”

“I'd hoped I was improving.”

“Certainly. But you're still strangely naive, I'm sorry to say. You seem to believe everything your patients tell you!”

“There's not much else to go on, is there?”

“Oh, but there is! There's a certain healthy and necessary skepticism; and then there's experience. You'll soon realize all this. What I'm saying is that you might as well learn it now rather than later.”

“Is there anything particular… ?”

“Things, plural. I'm thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their alcohol intake. You see, the only thing they can't fool you about is their
weight.”

“And their blood pressure.”

Turner smiled gently at his pupil. “I haven't got
quite
as much faith as you in our measurements of blood pressure.”

“But they don't all of them make their answers up.”

“Not
all
of them, no. It's just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all tend to say we're fine, even if we're feeling lousy. Don't we?”

“I suppose so.”

“And
our
main job” (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) “is to give
information
—and to exert some sort of
influence
—about the way our patients cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness.”

Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.

And he continued: “There are a good many patients here who are professional liars. Some of them I've known for years, and they've known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn't matter—because we
know
we're telling each other lies … Anyway, that's enough about that.” (Turner looked down at her folder.) “I see you've got Mr. David Mackenzie on your
list next Monday. I'll sit in with you on him. I think he did once tell me his date of birth correctly, but he makes everything else up as he goes along. You'll enjoy him!”

Again Sarah said nothing. And she was preparing to leave when Turner changed the subject abruptly, and in an unexpected direction.

Or
was
it unexpected?

“I couldn't help seeing the articles in the newspapers … and the department was talking about them.”

Sarah nodded.

“Would it mean a lot to you if they found who murdered your mother?”

“What do
you
think?” The tone of her voice bordered almost on the insolent, but Turner interpreted her reply tolerantly, for it was (he knew) hardly the most intelligent question he'd ever formulated.

“Let's just wish them better luck,” he said.

“Better brains, too!”

“Perhaps they'll put Morse on to it this time.”

Sarah's eyes locked steadily on his.

“Morse?”

“You don't know him?”

“No.”

“Heard of him, perhaps?” Turner's eyes grew suddenly shrewd on hers, and she hesitated before answering:

“Didn't my mother mention she'd nursed him somewhere?”

“Would you like to meet him, next time he comes in?”

“Pardon?”

“You didn't know he was diabetic?”

“We've got an awful lot of diabetics here.”

“Not too many like him, thank the Lord! Four hefty injections a day, and he informs me that he's devised a carefully calibrated dosage that exactly counterbalances his considerable daily intake of alcohol. And when I say considerable … Quite a dab hand, too, is Morse, at extrapolating his blood-sugar readings—backwards!”

“Isn't he worried about… about what he's doing to himself?”

“Why not ask him? I'll put him on your list.”

“Only if you promise to come along to monitor me.”

“With
you
around? Oh, no! Morse wouldn't like that.”

“How old is he?”

“Too old for you.”

“Single.”

“Gracious, yes! Far too independent a spirit for marriage … Anyway, have a good weekend! Anything exciting on?”

“Important, perhaps, rather than exciting. We've got a meeting up at Hook Norton tomorrow at the Pear Tree Inn. We're organizing another Countryside March.”

“That's the ‘rural pursuits’ thing, isn't it? Foxhunting—”

“Among other things.”

“The ‘toffs and the serfs.’”

Sarah shook her head with annoyance. “That's just the sort of comment we get from the urban chattering-classes!”

“Sorry!” Turner held up his right hand in surrender. “You're quite right. I know next to nothing about foxhunting, and I'm sure there must be things to be said in favor of it. But—please!—don't go and tell Morse about them. We just happened to be talking about foxhunting the last time he was here—it was in the news—and I can't help remembering what he said.”

“Which was?” she asked coldly.

“First, he said he'd never thought much of the argument that the fox enjoys being chased and being pulled to little pieces by the hounds.”

“Does he think the chickens enjoy being pulled to little pieces by the fox?”

“Second, that the sort of people who hunt do considerably more harm to themselves than they do to the animals they hunt. He said they run a big risk of brutalizing themselves… dehumanizing themselves.”

The two of them, master and pupil, looked at each other over the desk for an awkward while; and the Professor of Diabetes Studies thought he may have seen a
flash of something approaching fury in the dark-brown eyes of his probationary consultant.

It was the latter who spoke first:

“Mind if I say something?”

“Of course not.”

“I'm surprised, that's all. I fully,
almost
fully, accept your criticisms of my professional manner and my strategy with patients. But from what you've just said
you
sometimes seem to talk to your patients about other things than diabetes.”

“Touché.”

“But you're right… Robert. I've been getting too chatty, I realize that. And I promise that when I see Mr. Morse I'll try very hard, as you suggest, to instill some sort of disciplined regimen into his daily life.”

Turner said nothing in reply. It was a good thing for her to have the last word: she'd feel so much better when she came to think back on the interview. As she would, he knew that. Many times. But he allowed himself a few quietly spoken words after the door had closed behind her:

“Oh Lady in Pink—Oh lovely Lady in Pink! There is very, very little chance of a disciplined regimen in Morse's life.”