Colin Dexter - The Dead of Jericho

The ACC nodded. 'Ye-es. You'd better tell me how they worked that.'

'To an outsider, sir, I think that one thing about this case would seem particularly odd: the fact that Sergeant Lewis and myself had never been together when we'd met Conrad Richards; and, at the same time, we'd neither of us met the two brothers when they were together. Let me explain, sir. I met Charles Richards-or rather the man I thought was Charles Richards-for the first time at the OBA, when his physical appearance was firmly fixed for me as Charles Richards. As it happened, I did ring up the actual Charles Richards the next day, but the line, as I well remember, was very poor and crackly, and we ended up almost shouting to each other. In any case, I'd only heard him speak the once-and it just didn't occur to me that the man I was speaking to was any other than the man I'd sat listening to on the back row. Then, a day or two later, I rang Charles Richards again; but he was out at the time and so I left a message with his secretary for him to ring back. As we now know, sir, the two brothers were able to solve that little problem without too much trouble. When Charles received the message, he got Conrad to ring me back. Easy, But I asked for a meeting with him the next day, and that took a bit more organisation. When I called at Charles Richards' office I was treated to a neat and convincing little charade by Celia-acting as the receptionist-and by Conrad-playing the part of Charles. It was, by the way, sir, at that point that I should have taken more notice of one very significant fact. Celia asked me for a cigarette that day-something she surely would never have done if the man who was with her was really her husband, because I was later to learn that Charles Richards was a heavy smoker. Anyway, I suspected nothing at the time, and the three of them must have felt encouraged about keeping up the pretence if the police were to bother them again.'

'Then we were a bit unlucky. Lewis and myself paid a surprise visit to Abingdon one afternoon, to get Conrad's fingerprints. But I didn't join him for a start, sir. I had another er lead to follow up, and so I wasn't with Lewis when he called at the office and met Conrad-the same man who'd twice passed himself off to me as Charles . We had reason to believe that Conrad might have been involved in things somehow, and we wanted to find whether his prints matched those found in Jackson's bedroom. So Lewis got the prints-Conrad's prints-and of course they matched nothing, because it had been Charles who had been in Jackson's house. That same afternoon we returned to the Richards' firm-but we were too late. We searched the offices that the brothers used, and as you know we found the blackmail note in Charles's desk. But the real clue I missed, I'm afraid. It was pretty clear from the ashtrays full of stubs that Charles was virtually a chain-smoker, but in Conrad's room there was no physical sign whatsoever of smoking and not the faintest smell of stale tobacco. Then we made a final visit to Abingdon, when Celia and Conrad-this time with ample warning-put on another little performance for me, playing the parts of a reconciled couple very cleverly. But they were wasting their time, I'm afraid. You see, there were two reasons for my visit. First, to get the man I'd been interviewing to the front door so that Lewis could see him and so corroborate what we'd suspected-that the man I'd been meeting all the time was in fact Conrad Richards.'

'But why all the clever-clever stuff, Morse? Why didn't you just arrest him there and then and get it over with?'

'We'd have run the risk of letting the big fish get away, sir, and that was the second reason for my going that day. I had to lay the bait to get Charles Richards back in England, and so I told Conrad that we had to have a statement from him and that it was going to be Sergeant Lewis who would take it down. You see, Lewis knew the real Conrad Richards: he'd taken his fingerprints. And so any statement would have to be made by the genuine Charles Richards; and to do that he'd have to get back from Spain fairly quickly. As, in fact, he did, sir.'

'And he walked into our men at Gatwick-and then you walked into him at St. Aldates.'

'Yes. Once I'd mentioned that we needed to take his prints again and that Sergeant Lewis was going to try to do a better job this time, he realised the game was finally up. Lewis had never taken his prints at all, you see-and, well, Charles could see no point in pretending any longer. I offered him a cigarette-and that was that!'

'How kind of you, Morse! I suppose, by the way, the prints were Charles Richards'?'

'Er, well, as a matter of fact they weren't, sir. I'm afraid I must have been just a little careless er myself when I examined the head-board and-'

The ACC got to his feet and his face showed pained incredulity. 'Don't-don't tell me they were-'

Morse nodded guiltily. 'I'm afraid so-yes, sir: they were mine .'

Apart from a few small details the case of the Jericho killings was solved, but Morse knew as he sat in his office the following morning that it wasn't yet quite the time to pack away the two box files on the shelves of the Record Office. There were two things really that still nagged at his brain. The first was the realisation that his Sophoclean hypothesis about Anne Scott's suicide had been largely undermined by Lewis's patient inquiries… (Where was Lewis, by the way? Not like Lewis to be late…) The second thing was that the letter Charles Richards had written to Anne Scott had still not been found. Was that important, though? Beyond much doubt it had led directly to Anne's death, but it wasn't difficult to guess at its contents: not difficult to reconstruct the events of that morning when Anne had received one letter from the clinic saying, yes, she was pregnant, and another from Charles Richards saying, no, he wasn't going to see her again.

Morse nodded to himself: it had been the post that morning that had been the final catalyst-not the previous night's talk at the bridge club of birthdays and adoptions. But why should Anne have been up so early that morning? Usually, as he'd learned, she would stay in bed until about lunchtime on a Wednesday, after getting to bed so very late after bridge. And, then again, why had she cancelled her lesson with Edward Murdoch? Had Anne Scott really had a morbid sense of the gods' ill-favour as they played their sport with men and women? If not, what had she done when she got home early that morning? What if-? Ye-es. He'd been assuming that she'd stayed awake that terrible night largely because the bed had not been slept in. Or so it had appeared. But surely she could have gone to bed? Gone to sleep, got up early, made the bed, and then… But why had she got up so early that morning?

Morse shook his head. It wasn't quite adding up, he knew that, and he needed to talk to Lewis. (Where the hell was Lewis?) Morse reached for another cigarette and his mind wandered back to the night when he had met Anne… the night when but for some miserable ill-luck that had taken him away… when Lewis had come in and dragged him off…

'Morning, sir!' Lewis looked as bright and cheerful as the golden sunlight outside. 'Sorry to be a bit late, but-'

' Bit late? You're bloody late!' Morse's face was sour.