The Way Through The Woods (24 page)

For a while Father Richards offered no words of consolation; it was important, he knew, for the waters to be drained from the poisoned cistern. But soon – soon he would speak to her. And so it was that he sat and waited and listened until she was dry-eyed again; until her guilt and humiliation and self-pity were for the moment spent. She may have told him a lot or a little, she wasn't sure; but she had told him enough, and now it was time for him to speak.

'You must talk to your son, my child, and you must feel able to forgive him; and you must pray to God for guidance and strength. And this I promise – that I too will pray to God for you.' Momentarily there was a twinkle in the old priest's eyes. 'You know, with the two of us praying for the same thing, He might just listen a little bit harder.'

'Thank you, Father,' she whispered.

The priest placed his hand gently on hers, and closed his eyes as he recited the absolution: 'May God Almighty have mercy on you, forgive your sins, and lead you in the paths of righteousness.'

An 'Amen' was called for, but Margaret Daley had been unable to enunciate a single word, and now walked out of the Manse, and fiddled in her handbag for the car keys. The Mini was the only car remaining on the parking area, but another person was standing there, probably waiting for a lift, it seemed; the person who had been kneeling in the church after everyone else had gone; a person who now turned round and looked into Margaret's face -then looked past her face, unrecognizing, and turned away. The look had lasted but a second, yet in that second Margaret Daley's scalp had thrilled with sudden fear.

on the morning of Monday, 27 July, Morse and Lewis were back in business at Kidlington HQ: Lewis (at Morse's insistence) once more going through his Swedish trip in meticulous detail -especially through the furnishings and the photographs on view in Irma Eriksson's living room; and Morse (as always) seeking to convince himself that there was probably some vital clue he'd already missed; or, if not
missed
exactly, some clue whose true significance had hitherto eluded him. Since early that morning he had, as it were, been shaking the atoms laterally in the frying pan, hoping that a few hooks and eyes might link together and forge some new chain of thought; a new
train
of thought… train
spotting… bird-spotting…
birds… Yes, birds (like dogs!) had figured all over the place so far, especially the lesser-spotted woodpecker – 'spotted' (that word again!) – yet still the link refused to make itself. He considered once again Karin's list of hopefully-soon-to-be-identified British birds, and realized that as yet he had made no contact with the woman who lived down near Llandovery… the home of the red kites… Llandovery, out into Wales along the A40… A40, the third of the possibilities… the third of the roads that led off from the Woodstock Road roundabout. Inspector Johnson had done his pedestrian best with the road out to Blenheim Park; and he himself, Morse, had done his (equally pedestrian?) best with the road posted down to Wolver-cote and Wytham. But what if
both
of them had been wrong? Morse had re-read the statement made by Mrs Dorothy Evans (not an aunt, it appeared, but some second or third cousin, twice or thrice removed) in which she'd affirmed quite simply that Karin Eriksson had never visited her, never even telephoned her at that time; in fact had not seen 'little Karin' since that now largish girl was ten years old. No! The solution to the murder lay there in Oxford, in the environs of Oxford, Morse was convinced of that.

At 10.30 a.m. he decided that he had to speak to David Michaels once more; the man who had pointed the way – almost literally so – to the body found in Pasticks; the man who knew the woodland ridings out at Wytham better than almost any man alive.

From the very roundabout where Karin Eriksson might well have made her fatal decision, Lewis drove down through the twisting road of Lower Wolvercote, past the Trout Inn, and then up the hill towards Wytham village.

'What exactly
is
a handbrake-turn?' Morse had asked suddenly.

'Don't you know – really?'

'Well, of course, I've got a vague idea…'

'Just a minute, sir. Wait till we're round this next bend and I'll show you.'

'No! I didn't-'

'Only a joke, sir.'

Lewis laughed at his chief's discomfiture, and even Morse managed to produce a weak smile.

The police car drove up to the T-junction at Wytham village, turned left, then immediately right, past the dovecote in the car park of the White Hart, then right again into the lane that led up into Wytham Woods. On a gate-post to the right was fixed a bold notice, black lettering on an orange background:

WYTHAM AMATEUR OPERATIC SOCIETY

THE MIKADO

BY

GILBERT & SULLIVAN Thursday July 30th, Friday

July 3ist, & Saturday August 1st TICKETS £3.50

(Senior Citizens & Children £2.50)

'The wife's very fond of Gilbert and Sullivan. Far better than all your Wagner stuff, that,' ventured Lewis.

'If you say so, Lewis.'

'Full o' tunes – you know what I mean?'

'We don't go in for "tunes" in Wagner – we go in for "continuous melody".'

'If you say so, sir.'

They drove up to the semi-circular clearing at the edge of the Great Wood.

'We did it at school. I wasn't in it myself, but I remember, you know, everybody dressing up in all that oriental clobber.'

'The Mikado,
you mean? Oh, yes. Well done!'

Morse seemed for a while almost half asleep, as Lewis stopped the car and looked across at the stone cottage where Michaels lived.

'We're in luck, sir.' Lewis wound down his window and pointed to the forester, a rifle under his right arm, its barrel tilted earthwards at 45 degrees, the black and white Bobbie happily sniffling the route ahead of him.

'Start the car up again, Lewis,' said Morse very quietly.

'Pardon?'

'Back to the village!' hissed Morse.

As the car momentarily drew alongside, it was Morse's turn to -wind his window down.

'Morning, Mr Michaels. Lovely morning!'

But before the forester could reply, the car had drawn away; and in his rear-view mirror Lewis could see Michaels standing and staring after them, a look of considerable puzzlement on his face.

They were almost the first customers in the White Hart, and Morse ordered a pint of Best Bitter for himself.

'Which would you prefer, sir? We've got-'

'Whatever the locals drink.'

'Straight glass or handle?'

'Straight. Optical illusion, I know, but it always looks as if it holds more.'

'Both hold exactly-'

But Morse had turned to Lewis: 'You'd better not have too much. You're driving, remember.'

'Orange juice – that'll be fine, sir.'

'And, er…' Morse fiddled in his trouser pockets. 'I don't seem to have any coins on me. I'm sure the landlord doesn't want to change a twenty this early in the day.'

'Plenty of change-' began the landlord, but Morse had turned to the wall with his pint and was studying a medieval map of the old parishes around Wytham…

At the time Morse was lifting his first pint, Alasdair McBryde was standing beside reception at the Prince William Hotel in Spring Street, just opposite Paddington railway station. After leaving Oxford -with what a frenetic burst of mental and physical energy! – he had driven the swiftly, chaotically loaded van via the M40 up to London, where he'd parked it in a lock-up garage off the Seven Sisters Road before taking the tube, and a suitcase, to Paddington – to the Prince William. It gave him considerable confidence that he could, if necessary, be standing in front of the departure board of the mainline BR station within one minute of stepping outside this hotel – or if need be
by jumping
outside it, for the sole window of his
en suite
bedroom was no more than six feet above the pavement.

The hotel proprietor was a small, perpetually semi-shaven Italian who spent half his working hours at reception studying the racing columns of the
Sporting Life.
He looked up as McBryde took out his wallet.

'You stay another day, Mr Mac?'

'Mc' had been the only part he could read of the semi-legible scrawl with which his guest had signed the register. And there was no typed name on any cheque to help; no cheque at all – just the two crisp twenty-pound notes he received each day for the following night's B & B, with the repeated injunction (as now) from Mr Mac: 'Give the change to the breakfast girl!' Not a big tip though, for the daily rate was £39.50.

Soon Luigi Bertolese was again reading through the runners in the 2 p.m. at Sandown Park, and looking especially at a horse there named 'Full English', with some moderate form behind him. He looked down too at one of the twenties, and wondered if the Almighty had whispered a tip in his ear.

'So you see, old friend? You
see?'
Morse beamed hugely as he finished his second pint. 'It was all due you Again!'

Lewis
could
see: for once was able to see perfectly clearly. And this for him was the joy of working with the strange man called Morse; a man who was somehow able to extricate himself from the strait-jacketing circumstances of any crime and to look at that crime from some exterior vantage point. It wasn't fair really! Yet Lewis was very proud to know that he, with all his limitations, could sometimes (as now) be the catalytic factor in the curious chemistry of Morse's mind.

'You having any lunch, sir?'

Morse had been talking for half an hour or so, quietly, earnestly, excitedly. It was now 12.15 pm

'No. Today I'll take my calories in liquid form.'

'Well, I think I'll get myself-'

'Here!' Morse took the precious twenty-pound note from his wallet. 'Don't go mad with it! Get yourself a cheese sandwich or something – and another pint for me.' He pushed his glass across the slightly rickety table. 'And get a beer-mat or something and stick it under one of these legs.'

For a few seconds as he stood at the bar Lewis looked back at his chief. Several other customers were now seated around, and one youth looked almost embarrassingly blissful as he gazed into the bespectacled eyes of the rather plain young woman sitting beside him. He looked, Lewis decided, almost as happy as Chief Inspector Morse.

in her laboratory, Dr Laura Hobson had now begun to write her report, after resuming her analysis of the Wytham bones. Not really 'resuming' though, for the bones had hardly left her over the weekend. Quite early on she'd spotted the slight groove on the lower-left rib: it might have been the sharp incision of a rodent's tooth, of course; but it looked so distinctive, that thinly V-shaped mark. It was almost as if someone had deliberately made a notch in the rib – with a knife or similar instrument. It might be important? But no, that was the wrong way of looking at things. It
might
be important – no question mark; and Laura was oddly anxious to score a few Brownie-points on her first real enquiry. In any case she'd very much like to ingratiate herself a little with the strange policeman who had monopolized her thoughts these last few days. It was odd how you couldn't shake someone out of your mind, however hard you tried. And for Laura that weekend Morse should, she felt, have been reported to the Monopolies' Commission…

Once more she studied the scene-of-crime photographs, and she could identify quite easily the bone that was engaging her interest now. It had obviously lain
in situ –
not disseminated as so many of the others; and she felt fairly certain that the incision which her patient investigation had revealed was unlikely to have been caused by the tooth of some wild creature, tearing away a morsel from the still-fleshed bones.
Could
the notch have been caused by a knife, she wondered: after all, she was working, was she not, upon a
murder'?
So if it wasn't the foxes or the badgers or the birds…Again she adjusted the focus of the powerful microscope upon the top of the rib-bone, but she knew there could never be any
definite
forensic findings here. The very most she would suggest in her report was that the marked incision made slantwise across the top of the bottom-left rib-bone might possibly have been caused by some incisor tooth, or more probably some sharp implement – a knife, say. And if it
were
a knife that had been driven through the lower chest, it could well be, probably
was,
the cause of death. The body would have bled a good deal, with the blood saturating the clothing (if any?) and then seeping into the soil beneath the body; and not even the intervening months of winter, not even the last of the leaves and the accumulating debris from the growth all round, would ever completely obliterate such traces. That angle, though, was being pursued in the University Agricultural Research Station (coincidentally situated out at Wytham) and doubtless she would be hearing something soon. So what, though? Even if there were clear signs of blood to be found there, at the very most
she
would have a blood group, and
Morse
would be able to assume that the body had been murdered
in situ.
Big deal.