Colin Dexter - The Dead of Jericho

'Have you got the letter?' asked Richards quietly.

'No,' said Morse slowly. 'No-we haven't.'

'Aren't you going to have to do a bit better than this, Inspector?'

'Well, your brother was looking for something in that shed at the bottom of Jackson's garden. Or was that you , sir?'

'In a shed?'

Morse ignored the apparent incredulity in Richards' voice and continued. 'That letter would have been a bad thing for your brother, sir. It could have broken up his marriage if-'

'But Celia knew about Anne Scott.'

'Only very recently, I think.'

'Yes, that's true.'

'Do you love your sister-in-law?'

Richards looked down sadly at the concrete floor and nodded. 'I shall always love her, I suppose.'

Morse nodded, too, as if he also was not unacquainted with the agonies of unrequited love.

'Where does this leave us, Inspector?'

'Where we started, I'm afraid, sir. You've been charged with the murder of Jackson, and that charge still stands. So we'd better get back to thinking about where you were on the night when-'

Richards got up from the bed, a new note of exasperation in his voice. 'I've told you-I don't know . If you like, I'll try-I'll try like hell-to get hold of somebody who may have seen me. But there are millions of people who couldn't prove where they were that night!'

'That's true.'

'Well, why pick on me? What possible evidence-?'

'Ah!' said Morse. 'I wondered when you were going to ask me about the evidence. You can't honestly think we'd have you brought here just because no one saw you reading Gibbon that night? Give us a little credit!'

Richards looked puzzled. 'You've got some evidence? Against me? '

'Well, we're not absolutely sure, but-yes, we've got some evidence. You see there were several fingerprints in Jackson's bedroom, and as you know I asked my sergeant to take yours.'

'But he did! And I'll tell you one thing, Inspector, my prints could quite definitely not have matched up with anything there, because I've never been in the bloody house-never!'

'I think you've missed my point, sir. We didn't really get a chance of matching up your prints at all. I know it's our fault-but you must forgive Sergeant Lewis. You see, he's not very well up in that sort of thing and-well, to be truthful, sir-he mucked things up a bit. But he's a good man, and he's willing to have another go. It's important, don't you think, to give a man a second chance? In fact he's waiting outside now.'

Richards sat down on the bed again, his head between his hands. For several minutes he said nothing, and Morse looked down at a man who now seemed utterly weary and defeated.

'Cigarette?' said Morse.

Richards took one, and inhaled the smoke like a dying man gasping at oxygen.

'When did you find out?' he asked very quietly.

'Find out that you weren't Conrad Richards, you mean? Well, let me see now…' Morse himself inhaled deeply on his own cigarette; and as he briefly told of his discoveries, the same wan and wistful half-smile returned to the face of the man who sat on the edge of the narrow bed.

It was the face of Charles Richards.

'When did you find out, Morse?' asked the ACC that afternoon.

'Looking back on it, sir, I think the first inkling should have come when I went to the Book Association and learned that it had been Anne Scott who had suggested to the committee that Charles Richards should be invited along to talk about the small publishing business. Such a meeting would attract a few people, the committee felt, especially some of the young students from the Polytechnic who might be thinking of starting up for themselves. But "small" is the operative word, sir. In a limited and very specialised field the Richards brothers had managed to run a thriving little concern. But who had heard of them? Who-except for Anne Scott-knew them? Virtually no one in Oxford, that's for certain-just as virtually no one would recognise the managing directors even of your big national publishers. And, remember, the Richards brothers had only just moved into Oxfordshire a few months earlier-half a dozen miles outside Oxford itself-and the chances that anyone would recognise either of them in a small meeting were very slim indeed. The only person who would have known them both was dead: Anne Scott. So they laid their plan-and decided to follow the same routine as the one which had proved so successful earlier in the week, when it was Conrad Richards who drove the Rolls to Oxford and Charles Richards who followed Jackson to Canal Reach.'

'Perhaps from the little we've learned about the two brothers' characters this wasn't surprising: it was Conrad who'd always been ready to play second fiddle, and Charles who'd always been the more dynamic. So they decided to swap roles again for the Friday evening, with Conrad taking his brother's place in a talk which-very much at the eleventh hour-had been brought forward, thus almost certainly cutting down what would have been a meagre audience at the best of times. Charles had already written out his notes for the speech, and Conrad probably knew more about the workings of the business, anyway. Conrad, I'm sure, was quite happy to do this; what he adamantly refused to do was to go down to Canal Reach. As ever, in his own mild way, he was quite willing to co-operate wherever he felt he could-but it had to be Charles who went to face Jackson. Now, I'm fairly sure in my own mind, sir, that although Charles Richards wasn't reckoning on murder, he was determined to get that letter back-or else. He tried to scare Jackson and pushed him around from room to room as he tried to find what he wanted-the letter which would implicate him deeply in Anne Scott's death, and pretty certainly put paid to his marriage-and possibly his business, too. And when they got to the bedroom he got so exasperated that he literally shook the life out of Jackson against the bedpost. At that point Charles Richards was in a tight spot. He knew his own name was likely to crop up somewhere in police inquiries into Anne Scott's death, and he realised how vital it was that Conrad, who was at that very moment talking to an audience under the alias of 'Charles Richards', should be given an utterly unassailable alibi. So he rang up the police-and then he got the hell out of Jericho and waited at the Martyrs' Memorial for Conrad to pick him up.'

'He didn't find the letter?'

'So he says-and I'm inclined to believe him.'

'What about the change of date for the meeting? Was that deliberate?'

'I don't really see how it could have been, sir: there wasn't the time, I don't think. No. Charles had to go to Spain on business some time this month, and it so happened that one of his girl friends told him that she could get away, too, and join him. But only during that week. So Charles pleaded urgent business, the meeting was changed, and the brothers took full advantage of-'

'Lucky for them, wasn't it? Keeping the audience down, I mean.'

'Luckier than you realise, sir. Miss Universe or World or something was on the telly that night and-'

'I’m surprised you weren't watching it, Morse.'

'Did they pick the right girl, sir?'

'Well, personally I'd have gone for Miss- Go on!'

'I should think things must have looked pretty black as they went home that night and talked over what had happened. But very soon one thing must have become increasingly clear to the pair of them. Perhaps all would be well, if only they could keep up the pretence . The real danger would come if the police, in connection with Anne Scott's death, discovered that the "Charles Richards" of the OBA talk was not Charles Richards at all-but his brother Conrad, because the speaker that night had an alibi that no one in the world could shake. So the brothers made their decision. Celia Richards had to be brought into the picture straight away, and Charles had no option but to tell her everything about his affair with Anne Scott and to plead with her to take her part-a pretty big part, too-in the deception that followed.'