The Wench Is Dead (18 page)

'I thought that Joanna's father – No! Let's start again' Joanna's father gets a job as an insurance rep. Like most people in that position he gets a few of his own family, if they're daft enough, to take out a policy with him. He gets a bit of commission, and he's not selling a phoney product, anyway, is he? I think that both Joanna and her
first
husband, our conjurer friend, were soon enlisted in the ranks of the policy-holders. Then times get tough; and to crown all the misfortunes, Mr Donavan, the greatest man in all the world, goes and dies. And when Joanna's natural grief has abated – or evaporated, rather – she finds she's done very-nicely-thank-you out of the insurance taken on his life. She receives £100, with profits, on what had been a policy taken out only two or three years previously. Now, £100 plus in 1850-whenever was a very considerable sum of money; and Joanna perhaps began, at that point, to appreciate the potential for
malpractice
in the system. She began to see the insurance business not only as a potential
future
benefit, but as an actual,
present
source of profit. So, after Donavan's death, when she met and married Franks, one of the first things she insisted on was his taking out a policy – not on
his life –
but on
hers.
Her father could, and did, effect such a transaction without any trouble, although it was probably soon after this that the Notts and Midlands Friendly Society got a
little
suspicious about Joanna's father, Carrick – Daniel Carrick – and told him his services were no longer-'

'Sir!'

Morse held up his right hand. 'Joanna Franks was
never
murdered, Lewis! She was the mastermind – mistressmind – behind a deception that was going to rake in some considerable, and desperately needed, profit. It was
another
woman, roughly the same age and the same height, who was found in the Oxford Canal; a woman provided by Joanna's
second
husband, the ostler from the Edgware Road, who had already made his journey – not difficult for
him –
with horse and carriage from London, to join his wife at Oxford. Or, to be more accurate, Lewis, at some few points
north
of Oxford. You remember in the Colonel's book?' (Morse turned to the passage he had in mind.) 'He – here it is! -"he explained how in consequence of some information he had come into Oxfordshire" – Bloody liar!'

Lewis, now interested despite himself, nodded a vague concurrence of thought. 'So what you're saying, sir, is that Joanna worked this insurance fiddle and probably made quite a nice little packet for herself and for her father as well?'

'Yes! But not only that. Listen! I may just be wrong, Lewis, but I think that not only was Joanna wrongly identified as the lawful wife of Charles Franks – by Charles Franks – but that Charles Franks was the
only
husband of the woman supposedly murdered on the
Barbara Bray.
In short, the "Charles Franks" who broke down in tears at the second trial was
none other than Donavan.'

'Phew!'

'A man of many parts: he was an actor, he was a conjurer, he was an impersonator, he was a swindler, he was a cunning schemer, he was a callous murderer, he was a loving husband, he was a tearful witness, he was the first and
only
husband of Joanna Franks: F. T. Donavan! We all thought – you thought – even I thought – that there were three principal characters playing their roles in our little drama; and now I'm telling you, Lewis, that in all probability we've only got
two.
Joanna; and her husband – the greatest man in all the world; the man buried out on the west coast of Ireland, where the breakers come rolling in from the Atlantic… so they tell me……'

Lewis was silent. How else? He had a precious little piece of evidence in his pocket, but while Morse's mind was still coursing through the upper atmosphere, there was little point in interrupting again for the minute. He put the envelope containing the single photocopied sheet on the coffee-table – and listened further.

'In the account of Joanna's last few days, we've got some evidence that she could have been a bit deranged; and part of the evidence for such a possibility is the fact that at some point she kept calling out her husband's name – "Franks! Franks! Franks!" Agreed? But she
wasn't
calling out that at all – she was calling
her first
husband, Lewis! I was sitting here thinking of "Waggie" Greenaway-'

'And his daughter,' mumbled Lewis, inaudibly.

'- and I thought of "Hefty" Donavan. F. T. Donavan. And I'll put my next month's salary on that "F" standing for "Frank"! Huh! Who's ever heard of a wife calling her husband by his surname?'

'I have, sir.'

'Nonsense! Not these days.'

'But it's
not
these days. It was-'

'She was calling
Frank Donavan –
believe me!'

'But she
could
have been queer in the head, and if so-'

'Nonsense!'

'Well, we shan't ever know for sure, shall we, sir?'

'Nonsense!'

Morse sat back with the self-satisfied, authoritative of a man who believes that what he has called 'nonsense three times must, by the laws of the universe, be necessarily untrue. 'If
only
we knew how tall they were – Joanna and… and whoever the other woman was. But then
is
just a chance, isn't there? That cemetery, Lewis-'

'Which do you want first, sir? The good news or the bad news?'

Morse frowned at him. 'That's…?' pointing to the
envelope.

'That's the good news.'

Morse slowly withdrew and studied the photocopied sheet.

‘Not the Coroner's Report, sir, but the next best thing.

‘This fellow must have seen her before the
post-mortem.
Interesting, isn't it?'

‘Very
interesting.'

The report was set out on an unruled sheet of paper, dated, and subscribed by what appeared as a 'Dr Willis', for writing was not only fairly typical of the semi-legibility forever associated with the medical profession, but was also beset by a confusion with 'm's, 'w's, 'n's, and 'u's – all these letters appearing to be incised with a series of what looked like semi-circular fish-hooks. Clearly the notes of an orderly-minded local doctor called upon to certify death and to
take the necessary action – in this case, almost certainly, to pass the whole business over to some higher authority. Yet there were one or two real nuggets of gold here: the good Willis had made an exact measurement of height, and had written one or two most pertinent (and, apparently, correct) observations. Sad, however, from Morse's point of
view, was the unequivocal assertion made here that
the
body was still warm.
It must have been this document which had been incorporated into the subsequent
post-mortem
findings, thenceforth duly reiterated both in Court and in the Colonel's history. And it was a pity; for if Morse had been correct in believing that another body had been substituted for that of Joanna Franks, that woman must surely have been killed in the early hours of the morning, and could
not
therefore have been drowned some three or four hours later.
Far
too risky. It was odd, certainly, that the dead woman's face had turned black so very quickly; but there was no escaping the plain fact that the first medical man who had examined the corpse had found it still
warm.

Is that what the report had said, though – 'still warm'? No! No, it hadn't! It just said 'warm'… Or
did
it?

Carefully Morse looked again at the report – and sensed the old familiar tingling around his shoulders.
Could
it be? Had everyone else read the report wrongly? In every case the various notes were separated from each other by some form of punctuation – either dashes (eight of them) or full stops (four) or question-marks (only one). All the notes
except one,
that is: the exception being that 'body warm / full clothes… ' etc. There was neither a dash nor a stop between these two, clearly disparate, items – unless the photocopier had borne unfaithful witness. No! The solution was far simpler. There had been
no
break requiring any punctuation! Morse looked again at line 10 of the report,

and considered three further facts. Throughout, the 's's were written almost as straight vertical lines; of the fifteen or so 'i' dots, no fewer than six had remained un-dotted; and on this showing Willis seemed particularly fond of the word 'was'. So the line should perhaps – should certainly! – read as follows: 'on mouth (rt side) – body was in'. The body 'was in full clothes'! The body was
not
'warm'; not] in Morse's book. There, suddenly, the body was very, very cold.

Lewis, whilst fully accepting the probability of the alternative reading, did not appear to share the excitement which was now visibly affecting Morse; and it was time for the bad news.

'No chance of checking this out in the old Summertown graveyard, sir.'

'Why not? The gravestones are still there, some of them – it says so, doesn't it? – and I've seen them myself – '

'They were all removed, when they built the flats there.'

'Even those the Colonel mentioned?'

Lewis nodded.

Morse knew full well, of course, that any chance of getting an exhumation order to dig up a corner of the greenery in a retirement-home garden was extremely remote. Yet the thought that he might have clinched his theory… It was not a matter of supreme moment, though, he knew that; it wasn't even important in putting to rights a past and grievous injustice. It was of no great matter to anyone – except to himself. Ever since he had first come into contact with problems, from his early schooldays inwards – with the meanings of words, with algebra, with detective stories, with cryptic clues – he had always been desperately anxious to know the
answers,
whether those answers were wholly satisfactory or whether they were not. And now, whatever had been the motive leading to that far-off murder, he found himself irked in the extreme to realize that the woman – or
a
woman – he sought had until so very recently been lying in a marked grave in North Oxford. Had she been Joanna Franks, after all? No chance of knowing now – not for certain. But if the meticulous Dr Willis had been correct in his measurements, she
couldn't
have been Joanna, surely?

After Lewis had gone, Morse made a phone call.

'What was the average height of women in the nineteenth century?'

'Which end of the nineteenth century, Morse?'

'Let's say the middle.'

'Interesting question!'

'Well?'

'It varied, I suppose.'

'Come on!'

'Poor food, lack of protein – all that sort of stuff. Not very big, most of 'em. Certainly no bigger than the Ripper's victims in the 1880s: four foot nine, four foot ten, four foot eleven – that sort of height: well, that's about what
those
dear ladies were. Except one. Stride, wasn't her name? Yes, Liz Stride. They called her "Long Liz" – so much taller than all the other women in the work-houses. You follow that, Morse?'

'How tall was
she –
"Long Liz"?'

'Dunno.'

'Can you find out?'

'What, now?'

'And ring me back?'

'Bloody hell!'

Thanks.'

Morse was three minutes into the love duet from Act One of
Die Walkiire
when the phone rang.

'Morse? Five foot three.'

Morse whistled.

'Pardon?'

'Thanks, Max! By the way, are you at the lab all day tomorrow? Something I want to bring to show you.'