The Riddle Of The Third Mile (12 page)

‘No, but I believe most of it,’ replied Andrews simply and tellingly; and Morse abruptly switched his questioning.

‘Dr Browne-Smith, sir. Was he a fit man-considering his age, I mean?’

For the first time Andrews appeared less than completely at ease. ‘You know something about that?’

‘Well, not officially, but

Andrews stared down at the threadbare carpet. ‘Look, Inspector, the only reason the Master mentioned anything to me…’

‘Go on!’

‘… well, it’s because I shall be taking over his duties in the College, you see.’

‘After he retires?’

‘Or before, I’m afraid. You-er-you knew, didn’t you, that he’d only a few months to live?’

Morse nodded, quite convincingly.

‘Tragic thing, Inspector – cancer of the brain.’

Morse shook his head. ‘You’re as bad as the Master, sir. “Cancer”? Forget the word! “Tumour”, if you like-or “neoplasm”. They’re the generic terms we use these days for all those nasty things we used to call “cancer”.’ (He congratulated himself on remembering the gist of what the surgeon had told him earlier that afternoon.)

‘I’m not a medical man myself, Inspector.’

‘Nor me, really. But, you know, in this job you have to pick up a few things, sometimes. By the way, are you likely yourself to be much better off-financially, I mean-with Dr Browne-Smith out of the way?’

‘What the hell’s
that
supposed to mean?’

‘It means we’re dealing with murder, that’s all,’ said Morse, looking across the table with guileless eyes. ‘And that’s what they pay me for, sir-trying to find out who murdered people.’

‘All right. If you must know, I shall be just over two thousand a year better off.”

‘You’re gradually shinning up the tree, sir.’

‘Not so gradually, either!’ Andrews’ eyes glinted momentarily with the future prospects of further academic preferment, and momentarily Morse was taken aback by the honesty of his answer.

‘But the Master’s still got about ten years to go,’ objected Morse.

‘Eight actually.’

Strangely, this was neither an unpleasant nor an embarrassing moment, as though each man had perfectly understood and perfectly respected the other’s thoughts.

‘Head of House!’ said Morse slowly. ‘Great honour, isn’t it?’

‘For me it’s always seemed the greatest honour.”

‘Do most of the dons share your view?’

‘Most of them-if they’re honest.’

‘Did Browne-Smith?’

‘Oh, quite certainly, yes.’

‘So he was a disappointed man?’

‘Life’s full of disappointments, Inspector.’

Morse nodded. ‘Had Browne-Smith any physical abnormalities you can remember?’

‘Don’t think so – except for his finger, of course. He lost most of his right index finger-accident in the war. But you probably know all about that.’

Morse nodded, again quite convincingly. God, he’d forgotten all about that! And suddenly the hooked atoms were engaging and re-engaging themselves so rapidly in his mind that he was desperately anxious to rid himself of the worthy man seated opposite who had put the fire to so many fuses. So he stood up, expressed his thanks and showed the Lonsdale don to the door.

‘There is just one thing,’ said Andrews. ‘I was meaning to mention it earlier, but you side-tracked me. Browne-Smith was never down to College breakfast in
my
time at Lonsdale-and that’s fifteen years, now.’

‘Well, that’s very interesting, sir,’ said Morse in a light tone that masked a heavy blow. ‘You’ve been extremely helpful, sir, and thank you for coming along. There’s just one more thing. Please, if you will, convey my apologies to the College secretary. I’m sorry I was rude to her-I’d like her to know that.’

‘I’ll certainly see that she does. She was upset, as I told you-and she’s a lovely girl.’

‘Is she?’ said Morse.

As soon as Andrews had gone, Morse reached for the phone to put his query to the curator of the Medical Science Library at the Bodleian, and, a few minutes later, he was listening carefully to the answer.

‘It’s the definitive work, Inspector – Dr J. P. F. Coole on
Carcinoma in the Brain.
This is what he’s got to say – chapter six, by the way: “Tumours are broadly divided into malignant tumours, which invade and destroy surrounding tissues; and benign tumours, which do not. Most malignant tumours have the additional property of giving rise to metastases or secondary tumours in parts of the body remote from the primary growth. A minority of malignant tumours fall into the category of tumours of local malignancy which invade and destroy surrounding tissues, but never metastasize. There are several tumours of
local
malignancy that occur in or on the head.” ‘

‘Bit slower now,’
interposed Morse.

“Many brain tumours are local in their malignancy; for example, the
spongioblostoma multiforme
and the diffuse
astro-cytoma.
All tumours inside the skull are potentially fatal, even if they are quite benign-as this term has already been defined in-”

‘Thanks. That’s fine. From what you’re saying, then, it’s possible that a brain-tumour might not spread to somewhere else in the body?’

‘That’s what this fellow says.’

‘Good. Now, one more thing. Would one of these brain-tumours perhaps result in some sort of irrationality? You know, doing things quite out of character?’

‘Ah! That’s in chapter seven. Just let me-’

‘No, no. Just tell me vaguely, that’ll be fine.’

‘Well, judging from the case-histories, the answer’s a pretty definite “yes”.
Very
strange things, some of them did.’

‘You see, I’m just wondering whether a man who’d got a brain-tumour, a man who’d been sober and meticulous all his life, might suddenly snap and-’

‘By Jove, yes! Let me just quote that case of Olive Mainwearing from Manchester. Now, just let me-’

‘No! Please don’t bother. You’ve been wonderfully helpful, and I’m most grateful. The beer’s on me next time we’re together in the King’s Arms.’

Morse sat back in his black leather chair, happily ignorant of the aforementioned Olive’s extraordinary behaviour, and happily confident that at last he was beginning to see, through the mists, the outline of those further horizons.

When Lewis came in half an hour later, he found Morse sitting motionless at his desk, staring down fixedly at his blotting-pad, the orange-and-brown-striped scarf still round his jaw, and the signature ‘On-no-account-disturb-me’ written overall.

Yet Lewis shattered the peace enthusiastically. ‘It was Browne-Smith’s typewriter, sir! Portable job, like you said. No doubt about it.’

Morse looked up slowly. ‘It was Westerby’s typewriter-I thought I told you that.’

‘No, sir. It was
Browne-Smith’s.
You must have made a mistake. Believe me-you can’t get two identical typewriters.’

‘I told you it was Westerby’s,’ repeated Morse calmly. ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear me properly.”

Lewis felt the anger rising within him: why couldn’t Morse-just for once -allow a fraction of credit for what, so conscientiously, he tried to do? ‘I
did
hear what you said. You told me to find the typewriter-’

‘I told you no such thing!’ snapped Morse.
I
told you to get
Westerby’s
typewriter. You
deafi’

Lewis breathed deeply, and very slowly shook his head.

‘Well?
Did
you get Westerby’s typewriter?
¹

‘It wasn’t there,’ growled Lewis. ‘The removal must have taken it. And don’t blame me for that! As I just said, sir, it would do me good just once in a while to get a bit of thanks for-’

‘Lew-is!’ beamed Morse. ‘When-
when
will you begin to understand the value of virtually everything you do for me? Why do you misjudge me all the time? Listen! I remember perfectly well that the first sentence I typed out was done on Browne-Smith’s typewriter, and the second on Westerby’s. Now, just think! Since it was the
second,
as we know, that matched the letter we found in the dead man’s pocket, it was on Westerby’s typewriter that someone wrote our letter. Agreed? And now you come and tell me it was typed on Browne-Smith’s? Well… you see what it all means, don’t you?’

Over the years, Lewis had become skilled in situations such as this, knowing that Morse, like some inexperienced schoolmaster, was far more anxious to parade his own cleverness than to elicit any halting answer from his dimmer pupils. So it was that Lewis, with a knowing nod, sat back to listen.

‘Of course you do!
Someone changed those typewriters.
And that, Lewis – does it not? – throws a completely new perspective on the whole case. And you know who’s given me that new perspective? You!’

Sergeant Lewis sat back helplessly in his chair, feeling like a man just presented with the Wimbledon Challenge Cup after losing the last point of the tennis match. So he bowed towards the royal box, and waited. Not for long either, since Morse seemed excited.

‘Tell me how you see this case, Lewis. You know-just in general.’

‘Well, I reckon Browne-Smith gets a letter from somebody who’s terribly anxious to know how someone’s got on in this examination, and he says if you’ll scratch my back I’ll scratch yours: just tell me that little bit early and I’ll see you get your little reward.’

‘And then?’

‘Well-like you, sir-this fellow Browne-Smith’s a bachelor: he’s quite tempted with the proposition put to him, and goes along with it.’

‘So?’

‘Well, then he finds out that the people who run these sex
-
places in Soho are pretty hard boys.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t start off every sentence with “With”’

‘You don’t sound very convinced, sir?’

‘Well, it all sounds a bit feeble, doesn’t it? I mean, going to all that trouble just to get a girl’s results a week or so early?’

‘But you wouldn’t understand these things. You’ve never had any children yourself, so you can’t begin to imagine what it’s like. I remember when my girls were expecting their eleven-plus results – then their O-Levels- waiting for the letter-box to rattle and then being scared to open the envelope; just hoping and praying there’d be some good news inside. It sort of gets you, sir-all that waiting. It’s always at the back of your mind, and sometimes you’d give anything just to
know.
You realize
somebody
knows-somebody typing out the results and putting them into envelopes and all the rest of it. And I tell you one thing, sir: I’d have given a few quid myself to save me all that waiting and all that worrying.”

Morse appeared temporarily touched by his sergeant’s eloquence. ‘Look, Lewis. If that’s all there is to it, why don’t we just ring up this girl’s father? You don’t honestly think
he
wrote that letter, do you?’

‘Jane Summers’s dad, you mean?’ Lewis shook his head. “Quite impossible, sir.’

Morse sat upright in his chair. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Both her parents were killed in a car-crash six years ago-I rang up the college secretary. Very helpful, she was.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Morse unwound his scarf and looked a little lost. “Do you know, Lewis, I think you’re a bit ahead of me in this case.’

‘No! I’m miles behind, sir-as well you know. But in my opinion we shouldn’t rule out the parent angle altogether. She could only have been in her late teens when her parents died, and somebody must have had legal responsibility for her-an uncle or a guardian or something.’

Morse’s eyes were suddenly shining; and taking the torn letter from a drawer in his desk, he concentrated his brain upon it once more, his perusal punctuated by ‘Yes!’, ‘Of course!’, and finally ‘My son, you’re a genius!’; whilst Lewis himself sank back in his chair and dropped back a further furlong in the case

‘Very illuminating,’ said Morse. ‘You say that not even the chairman would know the final results until a few hours before the lists are put up?’

Lewis nodded: ‘That’s right.’

‘But doesn’t that cock up just about everything?’

‘Unless, sir,’ Lewis now felt happy with himself, ‘she was way out at the top of the list- the star of the whole show, sort of thing.’

‘Mm. We could ring up the chairman?’

‘Which I have done, sir.’

It was Morse himself who was happy now. The penicillin was working its wonders, and he felt strangely content. ‘And she
was
the top of the list, of course?’

Lewis, too, knew that life was sometimes very good. ‘She was, sir. And if you want my opinion-’

‘Of course, I do!’

‘ – if this girl’s uncle or whatever turns out to own a sex-club in Soho, we’ve probably found the key to the case, and the sooner we get up there the better.’

‘You’ve got a good point there, Lewis. On the other hand it’s vital for one of us to stay here.’

‘Vital for
me, I
suppose?’

But Morse ignored the sarcasm, and adumbrated for the next half-hour to his sergeant a few of the stranger thoughts that had criss-crossed his brain throughout the day.

It was getting late now; and, when Lewis left, Morse was free once more to indulge his own thoughts. At one time his mind would leap like a nimble-footed Himalayan goat; at another, it would stick for minutes on end like a leaden-footed, diver in a sandbank. It was time to call it a day, that was obvious.

He was not quite finished, however, and before he left his office he did two things.

First, he amended his reconstruction of the fifth line of the tornm letter so that it now read:

both you and me. My ward, Jane Summers of Lonsdale