Colin Dexter - The Dead of Jericho

'How are you, Michael?'

'All right. I feel tired, though-ever so tired.'

'Hungry?'

'No, not really. I've had something to eat.'

'That was a little while ago, though, and you've been asleep since then. Have you any idea of the time now?' He still held the watch steadily in front of the boy's remaining eye.

'Must be about tea time, is it? About five?'

The wristwatch said 8.45, and still the surgeon held it out. But the boy's horridly blood-shot eye stared past the watch, unseeing still, and as the surgeon replaced the bandage he shook his head sadly at the nurse who was standing anxiously beside him.

On his way back from the Friar Bacon at ten minutes to eleven that night, Morse chanced to meet Mrs. Murdoch, her Labrador straining mightily from her; and for the first time he learned of the tragic fate of her elder boy. He listened dutifully and compassionately, but somehow he couldn't seem to find the appropriate words of comfort, mumbling only the occasional 'Oh dear!', the occasional 'I am sorry', as he stood staring blankly at the grass verge. Fortunately the dog came to his rescue, and Morse felt relieved as the sandy-coloured beast finally wrenched his mistress off to pastures new.

As he walked the remaining few hundred yards to his home, he pondered briefly upon the Murdoch family and their links with Anne Scott. But he was tired and over-beered, and nothing was to click in Morse's rather muddled mind that night.

Thursday saw Morse late into his office, where he greeted Lewis with a perfunctory nod. He had slept badly, and silently vowed to give the booze a rest that day. Whilst Lewis amateurishly tapped the keys as he typed up a report, Morse forced his attention back to the blackmail note discovered in Charles Richards' desk. At one reading, it seemed a typically semi-literate specimen of the sort of note so often received by blackmail victims-ill-spelt, ill-punctuated, and ill-expressed. And yet, at another reading, it seemed not to fall into the conventional category at all. He handed the note across to Lewis.

'What do you make of it?'

'His spelling's even worse than mine, isn't it? Still, we knew all along he'd never been to Eton.'

'By "he", you mean Jackson, I suppose?'

Lewis turned from the typewriter and frowned. 'Who else, sir?'

'You think Jackson wrote this?'

'Don't you? '

'No, I don't. In fact, I'm absolutely sure that Jackson himself couldn't have written one line of this-let alone the whole caboodle. You'll find in Jackson's pathetic little pile of possessions a couple of pamphlets about that telly programme On the Move -and that wasn't a programme for your actual semi-complete illiterates, Lewis: it was for your complete illiterates, who've never managed to read or write and who get embarrassed about ever admitting it to anyone. So I reckon Jackson must have got somebody-'

'But it's pretty bad , that letter, sir. Probably get about Grade Five CSE, if you ask me.'

'Really? Well, if you honestly think that, I'm sure the nation is most relieved to know that you're not going to be called up to exercise your ignorant prejudices upon the essays written by most of our sixteen-year-olds! You see, you're quite wrong . Here! Look at it again!' Morse thrust the letter across once more, and sat back in his chair like some smug pedagogue. 'What you want a letter to do, Lewis, is to communicate -got that? Now the spelling there is a bit weak, and the punctuation's infantile. But , Lewis, I'll tell you this: the upshot of that particular letter is so clear, so unequivocal, so clever , that no one who read it could have misunderstood one syllable! Mistakes galore, I agree; but when it comes down to telling Richards exactly where and exactly when and the rest of it-why, the letter's a bloody model of clarity! Look at it! Is your understanding held up by some dyslexic correspondent who spells "receive" the wrong way round? Never!'

'But-'

'Yes, I know. If you've got some little typist next door who can't spell, you give her the sack. And quite right, too. That's her job, and none of us want to sign illiterate letters. But I'll say it again: whoever wrote this letter knew exactly what he was up to. And it's just the same with the punctuation, if you look a little more closely. Full stops and question marks are all cock-eyed-but they don't affect what's being said .' Morse banged the table with a rather frightening intensity. 'No! Jackson did not write that letter. '

He wrote two words on the pad in front of him and passed the sheet over. 'What do you make of those?'

Lewis looked down at egog and metantatopi , but managed to decipher neither of these orthographic monstrosities.

'You've no idea, have you?' continued Morse. 'And I don't blame you, because that's the sort of thing your illiterate johnnies sink to. The first word's supposed to be "hedgehog", and the second's "meat and potato pie"-and they're both genuine! Chap from the examination board told me. Do you see what I mean?'

Yes, Lewis was beginning to wonder if the chief hadn't got something; but wasn't he assuming that Jackson was illiterate? If someone found a book on your shelves entitled Teach Yourself to Spell , it didn't automatically mean…

But Morse was still going on. 'And then there's this business of the money, isn't there? If Jackson thought he'd got a soft touch for a nice little bit of blackmail, I reckon he'd have asked for one helluva sight more than a measly-'

'Perhaps he did, sir.'

The interjection stopped Morse in his tracks, and he nodded in reluctant agreement. 'Ye-es. You know, I hadn't thought of that.'

'Don't you think, anyway, that it might be better to find out about this? Find out whether Jackson could write?'

'You're right! Get on to that woman at the Post Office down there, Mrs. Whatsername-'

'Mrs. Beavers.'

'That's her. Get on to her and ask her how Jackson signed for his OAP. And since she's such a nosy old bugger, ask her who Jackson was doing a bit of work for before he died-apart from Anne Scott. Do you know what, Lewis? I reckon you'll find that Jackson was doing one or two other little jobs as well.'

Three-quarters of an hour later Lewis learned that Jackson was able, just, to render in alphabetical characters a tentative, resemblance to 'G. Jackson' on his OAP slips. But it wouldn't much have mattered if he'd not even been able to manage that-so Mrs. Beavers asserted. There were one or two of the old 'uns who got by with an 'X', provided that it was inscribed on PO premises in view of one of the staff, or vouched for by some close relative or friend. Mrs. Beavers herself had often had to read or explain to Jackson some notification of change or renewal, or some information about supplementary benefit or rate rebate. And Jackson had readily understood such things-and acted upon them. He was, it seemed, far from unintelligent. The fact remained, however, that to all intents and purposes Jackson was illiterate.

Mrs. Beavers was just as well up with the odd-job needs of the local community as with the literary competences of her clientele. Mrs. Jones in Cardigan Street, had found occasion to hire Jackson's services in planning and rehanging several doors that were sagging and sticking; Mrs. Purvis in Canal Reach had asked Jackson if he could rewire the house for her-the estimate from the Electricity Board was quite ridiculous . Then there was that couple who'd just moved into Albert Street who wanted pelmets made for the windows…