Colin Dexter - The Dead of Jericho

The beer glasses were empty again and the mood of the two men was sombre as Morse took out his wallet and passed a five-pound note over to Lewis.

'My round, I think.'

It was a turn up for the books; an even bigger one when Morse insisted that Lewis kept the change.

'You've been far too generous with your round recently, Lewis. I've noticed that. But over-generosity is just as big a fault as stinginess, you know. That's what Aristotle said, anyway.'

Lewis was feeling a little light-headed in the rarefied air of these Greek philosophers and tragedians, but he was anxious to get one thing straight.

'You still don't believe in fate, sir?'

''Course I bloody don't!' snapped Morse.

'But you just think of all those coincidences-'

'What are you talking about? There's only one real coincidence in the business: the fact that Anne Scott should find that one of her pupils is her own son. That's all! And what's so odd about that, anyway? She's had hundreds of pupils, and Oxford's not all that big-'

'What about the accident?'

'Augh! There are millions of accidents every year-thousands of 'em in Oxford-'

'You exaggerate a bit, sir.'

'Nonsense! And that's where the coincidences stop, isn't it? Anne Scott decided to hang herself- she decided that. It was a conscious human decision, and had nothing to do with those wretched fates spinning your threads or lopping 'em off or whatever else they're supposed to do. And the fact that Michael Murdoch squirted so much dope into himself and then did what he did-well, that was a sheer fluke, wasn't it? He could have done anything.'

'Fluke, sir? You seem to want to have it all ways. Flukes, coincidences, decisions, fates…'

Morse nodded rather sadly. He wasn't quite sure where his own pervasively cynical philosophy of life was leading him, but the facts in this particular case remained what they were; for the life and death of Anne Scott had traced with awesome accuracy those murderous, incestuous, and self-destructive patterns of that early story…

'Do you know, Lewis, I could just do justice to some egg and chips.'

Lewis was losing count of his surprises. 'I reckon I'll join you, sir.'

'I'm afraid you'll have to treat me, though. I don't seem to have any money left.'

The hotel room could have been almost anywhere: a neat, well-furnished room, with a white-tiled bathroom annexe, its racks replete with fluffy, white towels. A cosmopolitan room-a little antiseptic and anaemic, perhaps, but moderately expensive and adequately cosy. Two separate lights were affixed to the wall just above the head-board of the double bed, though neither was turned on as Charles Richards lay on his back, his left hand behind his head, smoking silently. He wasn't sure of the exact time, but he thought it must be about 7.30 a.m., and he had been awake for over an hour. Beside him, her back towards him, lay a young woman, the mauve-striped sheet draped closely round her naked body. Occasionally she stirred slightly and once or twice her lips had mumbled some somnolent endearment. But Charles Richards felt no erotic stirrings towards her that morning. For much of the time as he lay there he was thinking of his wife, and wondering sadly why it was that now, when she was willing to let him go, his thoughts kept drifting back to her. She had not cried or created any scene when at last the truth of his relations with Anne Scott had been forced into the open. But her eyes had betrayed her hurt and disappointment, and a hardness that made her face seem older and plainer; yet later she had looked so tender and so very vulnerable that he had almost found himself falling in love with her afresh. She had said little, apart from a few practical suggestions about the days immediately ahead: she was proud and wounded. He wondered where exactly she was at that moment. Almost certainly back home from Cambridge by now. And if she was, her bed would already have been made up neatly, the sheets stretched taut across the mattress and lovingly smoothed as she had always smoothed them…

And then there was Conrad-his dear and loyal brother Conrad-who had turned up the previous day and managed to book a single room in one of the cheaper hotels across the plaza. Outwardly Conrad seemed as calm as ever, yet underneath were indications of an unwonted anxiety. Which, of course, was all perfectly understandable, for Conrad had been left with a difficult choice. But, as Charles saw it, his brother had almost certainly made the wrong one. Why come out to Madrid? There was virtually no chance that the police could suspect Conrad of anything; so why hadn't he arranged some quiet little business trip in England? All right, he just had to get away, so he'd said-though Charles doubted even that.

There was a light knock on the door, followed by the rattle of a key in the bedroom lock, and a young, heavily moustached Spanish waiter brought in the breakfast tray. But the woman still slept on. And Charles was glad of that, for the previous morning she had suddenly jerked herself up to a sitting position, completely naked to the waist; and for some deeply innate reason, he had felt himself madly jealous as the waiter's dark eyes had feasted on her breasts.

For five minutes the tray by the bedside remained untouched, and then Jennifer turned over towards him, her long, painted fingers feeling inside the top of his pyjama jacket. He knew then beyond doubt that after breakfast he would be making love to her again, and momentarily he despised himself-despised that utterly selfish self of his that almost invariably sought some compensating gratification from every situation: just as he had sought out Jennifer Hills after Celia had learned the truth. He shook his head slowly on the pillow, and reached out for the coffee pot; but the woman's fingertips were detouring tantalisingly towards his pyjama trousers, and he turned himself towards her. 'Can't you even wait till after breakfast?'

'No-o! I want you now .'

'You're a sexy bitch, aren't you?'

'Mm. Specially in the mornings. You know that…'

When the Spanish chambermaid came in to clean up at 10.30 a.m., she found the toast untouched, as it had been the previous morning; and smiling knowingly to herself she turned her attention to smoothing out the rumpled mauve-striped sheets.

Conrad Richards ate little breakfast, either, for he was a deeply worried man. He'd suspected the previous day that Charles had been most displeased to see him, and now he wished he'd never come. But he needed some advice and reassurance, and for those he had depended on his brother all his life. He walked across to the Tourist Office at nine o'clock and found that if he wanted to he could fly back to Gatwick that same afternoon. Yes, that would probably be the best thing: get back, and see Celia again, and face things…

But when, at 11 a.m., the brothers met in the cocktail bar of the Palace Hotel, Charles seemed his bright, ebullient self once more.

'Go back today? Nonsense! You've not even had a chance to look round. Look at that!' He pointed out across the plaza to the fountains playing beside the statue of Neptune. 'Beautiful, isn't it? We'll do a bit of sightseeing together, Conrad. What do you say?'

'What about er-?'

'Don't worry about her. She's flying back to Gatwick this afternoon-on my instructions.'

Celia, too, had been up early that morning, deciding as she had done to follow Charles's practice of putting some time in at the office on Saturday. The previous day, a measure of greatness had been thrust upon her, for she had found herself making decisions about contracts and payments without the slightest hesitation-and she'd enjoyed it all. Seated in Charles's chair, she'd dictated letters and memorandums, answered the telephone, greeted two prospective clients and one ineffectual salesman-all with a newfound confidence that had surprised her. Action! That's what she told herself she needed-and plenty of it; and she just said 'No, no, no!' whenever the waves of worry threatened to wash all other thoughts away. Indeed, for some brief periods of time she found herself almost succeeding in her self-imposed discipline. But the currents of anxiety were often too strong, and like her brother-in-law she felt the urgent need of having Charles beside her. Charles, who was so strong and confident; Charles whom, in spite of everything that had happened, she knew was the only man she could ever fully love.