Colin Dexter - The Riddle Of The Third Mile

‘What about that drink?’ he asked.

Mrs Angela Price looked knowingly at her husband when she I finally heard the quiet voices on the doorstep. It was a quarter to midnight, and BBC 1 had already finished its transmission.

Lewis had finally gone to bed about ten minutes before Morse found a taxi on the Richmond Road. He’d hoped that Morse would have been back before now, and had tried repeatedly to get in touch with him, both at HQ and at his home. For he had received a remarkable piece of news that same afternoon from the young porter at Lonsdale, who had received a card by second post; a card from Greece; a card from Mr Westerby.

At 2a.m., Winifred Stewart was still lying awake. The night was sultry and she wore no nightdress as she lay upon her bed, covered by a lightweight sheet. She thought of Morse, and she felt inexpressibly glad that she had met him; longed, too, with one half of her mind, that he would come to visit her again. And yet knew, quite certainly, that if he did her soul would be completely bared and she would tell him all she knew. Two thirds of the tragic tale had now been told; and if ever he began to guess the final truth… Yet, with the other half of her mind she didn’t want him back – ever – for she was now a very frightened woman.

At 3 a.m. she went to the bathroom to take some Disprin tablets.

At 4 a.m. she was still awake, and suddenly she felt the night had grown so very cold.

In which ‘The Religion of the Second Mile’ is fully explained, and Morse is peremptorily summoned to his superior.

As he sat back comfortably in a first-class compartment of the 10 a.m. “125” from Paddington, Morse felt the residual glow of a great elation. For now (as he knew) the veil of the temple had been rent in twain.

The previous night he had missed the last train to Oxford and only just managed to find, on the highest floor of a cheap hotel, a cramped and claustrophobic room in which the water-pipes had groaned and gurgled through the early hours. But it was in this selfsame mean and miserable room that Morse, as he lay on his back in the darkness with both hands behind his head, had finally seen the amazing light of truth. Half occupied with the lovely woman he had left so recently, half with the other problems that beset him still, his mind had steadfastly refused to rest. He sensed that he was almost there, and the facts of the case raced round and round his brain like an ever-accelerating whirligig. The old facts… and the new facts.

Not that he had learned much that was surprisingly new from Mrs Emily Gilbert. Nor, for that matter, from Miss Winifred Stewart-except for the confirmation that she had, indeed, agreed to entertain a second special guest from Oxford whose name was Mr Westerby. There had been a few other things, though. She’d told him, for example, that Emily had been simultaneously wooed by each of the Gilbert brothers; that, of the two, Alfred was considerably the more interesting and cultured-particularly because of his love of music; but that it was Albert who had won the prize with his livelier, albeit coarser, ways. The brothers were still very much alike (she’d told him)-extraordinarily so in appearance-but if they’d been holidaying together in Salzburg Alfred would have gone to a Mozart concert and Albert to The Sound of Music… Yes, that was something new; but it hardly seemed to Morse of much importance. Far more important was what she hadn’t told him, for he had sensed the deep unease within her when she’d told him of her time with Westerby: not the unease of a woman telling obvious untruths; the unease, rather, of a woman telling something less than all she knew…

It was at that very point in his whirling thoughts that Morse had jerked himself up in his bed, switched on the bedside lamp, and reached for the only object of comfort that the sombre room could offer him: the Gideon Bible that rested there beside the lamp. In two minutes his fumbling and excited fingers had found what he was seeking. There it was- St Matthew, Chapter Five, Verse Forty-One: ‘And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.’ He remembered vividly from his youth a sermon on that very text-from a wild, Welsh minister: The Religion of the Second Mile’. And it was with the forty watt bulb shedding its feeble light over the Gideon Bible that Morse smiled to himself in unspeakable joy, like one who has travelled on a longer journey still – that third and final mile…

At last he knew the truth.

‘In two minutes we shall be arriving at Oxford station,’ came the voice over the microphone. ‘Passengers for Banbury, Birmingham, Charlbury…’ Morse looked at his watch: 10:1 a.m. No need for any great rush now-no need for any rush at all. He walked from the station up to the bus-stop in Cornmarket; and at 11.30 was back at Police HQ in Kidlington, where a relieved-looking Lewis awaited him.

‘Good time, sir?’

‘Marvellous!’ said Morse, seating himself in the black leather chair and beaming benignly. ‘We expected you back yesterday.’

‘ “We”? Who’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The super was after your blood last night, sir-and this morning.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘I said you’d ring him as soon as you got in.’

Morse dialled Strange’s number immediately. Engaged. ‘How about you, Lewis? You have a good time?’

‘I don’t know, sir. There’s this.’

He handed over the postcard he had picked up the previous I evening from Lonsdale, and Morse looked down at a glossy photograph of ancient stones. He turned the card over, and read that such crumbling masonry was nothing less than the remains of the royal palace of Philip II of Macedon (382-336 BC). Then he saw the large Hellas stamp, featuring sea shells set against a blue-green background; then the message, neatly penned and very brief: ‘Wonderful weather. Any mail to Cambridge Way. Staying on a further week. Regards to the Master-and to your good selves. G.W.’

‘Lovely place, Greece, Lewis.’

‘I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid.’

‘Perhaps Westerby doesn’t know either,’ said Morse slowly

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘You’d better keep it, of course-but he’s not in Greece. It’s; forgery-you can see that, surely!’

‘But-’

‘Look, Lewis! Look at that franking.’ Lewis looked closely but saw little more than a blackened circle, with whatever lettering there may have been so smudged that it was quite illegible. He could, though, just about decipher one or two of the letters: there was an “O” (certainly) and: “N” (possibly) near the beginning of one word, and the next word probably ended in an “E”. But he could make nothing of it, and looked up to find that Morse was smiling still.

‘I shouldn’t take too much notice of it, Lewis. It’s not too difficult to get hold of a Greek postage-stamp, is it? And then if you get a date-stamp and push it vaguely one way instead of banging it straight down you’ll get the same sort of blur as that. You see, someone just brought the card into the Lodge and left it handily upon a pile of mail. It’s all a fake! And, if you like, I’ll tell you where the date-stamp comes from: it comes from Lonsdale College.’

The phone rang before Lewis could make any answer, and a harsh voice barked across the line: ‘That you, Morse? Get over here-and get over here quick!’

‘I think you’re in the dog-house,’ said Lewis quietly.

But Morse appeared completely unconcerned as he rose to his feet and put his jacket on.

‘I’ll tell you something else about that card, Lewis. We know a man, don’t we, who’s been writing a book about our Mister Philip Two of Macedon-remember?’