Colin Dexter - The Riddle Of The Third Mile

‘You’ve been cleaning in here, too?’ asked Morse.

The walls were professionally painted in lilac emulsion, the doors and fitted cupboards in brilliant-white gloss. And Morse, suddenly thinking back to his own bachelor flat with the heavy old walnut suite his mother had left him, began to envisage some lighter, brighter, modernistic furniture for himself as he opened one of the fitted wardrobes in the bedroom with its inbuilt racks and airy, deep recesses. And not just one of them!

But the second one was locked.

‘You got the key for this, Hoskins?’

No, sir. I only keep the keys for the doors. If people wants to lock things up…’

‘Let’s look in the kitchen!’

Beside the sink, Morse found a medium-sized screwdriver, the only object of any kind abandoned (it seemed) by the previous owner.

‘Think this’ll open it, Hoskins?’

‘I-I don’t want to get you in any trouble, sir-or me. I shouldn’t really ‘ave… I just don’t think it’s right to mess up the place and damage things, sir.’

(The “sir”s were coming thick and fast)

It was time, Morse thought, for some reassurance. ‘Look, Hoskins, this is my responsibility. I’m doing my duty as a police officer-you’re doing your duty as a good citizen. You understand that?’

The miserable man appeared a modicum mollified and nodded silently. And indeed it was he, after a brief and ineffectual effort from Morse, who proved the more successful; for he managed to insert the screwdriver far enough into the gap between the side of the cupboard door and the surrounding architrave to gain sufficient leverage. Then, with a joint prizing, the lock finally snapped, the wood splintered, and the door swung slowly open. Inside, slumped on the floor of the deep recess, was the body of a man, the head turned towards the wall; and almost exactly half-way between the shoulder-blades was a round hole in the dead man’s sports-jacket, from which was oozing still a steady drip of bright-red blood, feeding a darker pool upon the floor. Almost squeamishly, Morse inserted his left hand under the lifeless, lolling head… and turned it towards him.

‘My God!’

For a few moments the two men stood looking down on the face that stared back up at them with open, bulging eyes.

‘Do you know who it is?’ croaked Morse.

‘I never seen him before, sir. I swear I ‘aven’t.’ The man was shaking all over, and Morse noticed the ashen-grey pallor in his cheeks and the beads of sweat upon his forehead.

‘Take it easy, old boy!’ said Morse in a kindly, understanding voice. ‘Just tell me where the nearest telephone is-then you’d better get off home for a while. We can always-’

Morse was about to lay a comforting hand upon the man’s shoulder; but he was already too late, for now he found another body slumped about his feet.

Five minutes later, after dialling 999 from the telephone in the sitting room, and after sending the old boy off home (having elicited a full name and home address from those gibbering lips), Morse stood once again looking down at the corpse in the cupboard recess. A tiny triangle of white card was showing above the top pocket of the jacket, and Morse bent down to extract it. There were a dozen or so similar cards there, but he took only one and read it-his face betraying only the grimmest -confirmation. He’d known anyway, because he’d recognized the face immediately. It was the face of the man whom Morse had last (and first) seen in the rooms of George Westerby, Geography don at Lonsdale College, Oxford: the face of A. Gilbert, Esq., late proprietor of the firm Removals Anywhere.

Morse meets a remarkable woman, and learns of another woman who might be more remarkable still.

On the left sat a very black gentleman in a very smart pin-striped suit, studying the pink pages of the Financial Times; on the right sat a long-haired young brunette, wearing enormous earrings, and reading Ulysses; in the middle sat Morse, impatiently fingering a small white oblong card; and all the while the tube-train clattered along the stations on the northbound Piccadilly line.

To Morse it seemed an inordinately long journey, and one during which he found it almost impossible to concentrate his mind. Perhaps it had been improper for him (as the plain-clothes sergeant had diffidently hinted) to have fled the scene of the recent crime so precipitately; quite certainly it had bordered upon the criminally negligent (as the plain-clothes sergeant had more forcefully asserted) that he had allowed the one and only other witness to have left the premises in Cambridge Way – whatever the state of shock that had paralysed the man’s frame. But at least Morse had explained where he was going-had even given the address and the telephone number. And he could always do his best to explain, to apologize… later.

Arsenal. (Nearly there.)

The brunette’s eyes flickered over Morse’s face, but flashed back immediately to Bloom, as though the latter were a subject of considerably greater interest.

Finsbury Park. (Next stop.)

Suddenly Morse stiffened bolt upright in his seat, and this time it was the gentleman from the city whose bloodshot eyes turned suspiciously towards his travelling companion, as though he half expected to find a man in the initial throes of an epileptic fit.

That screwdriver… and that small, round hole in the middle of those sagging shoulder-blades… and he, Morse, a man who had lectured so often on proper procedure in cases of homicide, he had just left his own fine set of fingerprints around the bulbous handle of-the murder-weapon! Oh dear! Yes, there might well come, and fairly soon, the time for more than an apology, more than a little explanation.

For the moment, however, Morse was totally convinced that be was right (as indeed for once he was) in recognizing the signs of a tide in the affairs of men that must be taken at the flood; and when he emerged from the underground into the litter-strewn streets of Manor House, he suspected that the gods were smiling happily upon him, for almost immediately he spotted Berry-wood Court, a tall tenement block only some hundred yards away down Seven Sisters Road.

Mrs Emily Gilbert, an unlovely woman in her late fifties (her teeth darkly stained) capitulated quickly to Morse’s urgent questioning. She’d known it was all silly; and she’d told her husband it might be dangerous as well. But it was just a joke, he’d said. Some joke! She’d met another woman there in Camabridge Way-an attractive Scandanavian-looking woman who (so Mrs G. had thought) had been hired from one of the beetter-class clubs in Soho. They’d both been briefed by Albert (her husband) and-well, that was it really. This man had come to the place, and she (Mrs G.) had left the pair of them together in a first-floor flat (yes, Mr Westerby’s flat). Then, after an hour or so, Albert had come up to tell her (she was waiting in an empty top-floor flat) that he was very pleased with the way things had gone, that she (Mrs G.) was a good old girl, and that the odd little episode could now be happily forgotten.

She had a strangely intense and rather pleasing voice, and Morse found himself gradually reassessing her. ‘This other woman,’ he asked, ‘what was her name?’

‘I was told to call her “Yvonne”.’

‘She didn’t tell you where she lived? Where she worked?’

‘No. But she was “class”-you know what I mean? She was sort of tasteful-beautifully made-up, lovely figure.’

‘You don’t know where she lives?’

‘No. Albert’ll probably be able to tell you, though.’

‘Do you know where he is, Mrs Gilbert?’