Colin Dexter: The Dead of Jericho

'Do you want to go in, sir?'

'No-o. No. I just happened to be around here-er, at the Clarendon Institute, actually. Talk, you know. We er we've just had a talk and I just happened…'

'Nothing we can do, I'm afraid, sir.'

'Is she-is she dead?'

'Been dead a long time. The doc's in there now and he'll probably-'

'How did she die?'

'Hanged herself. Stood on a-'

'How did you hear about it?'

'Phone call-anonymous one, sir. That's about the only thing that's at all odd if you ask me. You couldn't have seen from the back unless-'

'She leave a note?'

'Not found one yet. Haven't looked much upstairs, though.' What do you do, Morse? What do you do?

'Was-er-was the front door open?'

The constable (Morse remembered him now-Detective Constable Walters) looked interested.

'Funny you should ask that, sir, because it was open. We just walked straight in-same as anybody else could've done.'

'Was that door locked?' asked Morse, pointing to the kitchen.

'No. We thought it was though, first of all. As you can see, sir, it's sagging on its hinges and what with the damp and all that it must have stuck even more. A real push, it needed!'

He took a step towards the door as though about to illustrate the aforesaid exertion, but Morse gestured him to stop. 'Have you moved anything in here?'

'Not a thing, sir-well, except the key that was on the middle of the door-mat there.'

Morse looked up sharply. 'Key?'

'Yes, sir. newish-looking sort of key. Looked as if someone had just pushed it through the letter box. It was the first thing we saw, really.'

Morse turned to go, and on the light-green Marley tiles beside the front door saw a few spots of brownish rainwater. But the black gentleman's umbrella he'd seen there earlier had gone.

'Have you moved anything here, Constable?'

'You just asked me that, sir.'

'Oh yes. I-I was just thinking er-well, you know, just thinking.'

'Sure you don't want to have a word with Chief Inspector Bell, sir?'

'No. As I say, I just happened…' Morse's words trailed off into feeble mumblings as he opened the door on to the street and stood there hesitantly over the door-sill. 'You haven't been upstairs yet, you say?'

'Well, not really, sir. You know, we just looked in-'

'Were there any lights on?'

'No, sir. Black as night up there, it was. There's two rooms leading off the little landing…'

Morse nodded. He could visualise the first-floor geography of the house as well as if he'd stayed there-as he might well have stayed there once, not all that long ago; might well have made love in one of the rooms up there himself in the arms of a woman who was now stretched out on the cold, tiled floor of the kitchen. Dead, dead, dead. And-oh Christ!-she'd hanged herself, they said. A warm, attractive, living, loving woman-and she'd hanged herself. Why? Why? Why? For Christ's sake why?

As he stood in the middle of the narrow street, Morse was conscious that his brain had virtually seized up, barely capable for the moment of putting two consecutive thoughts together. Lights were blazing behind all the windows except for that of number 10, immediately opposite, against which darkened house there stood an ancient bicycle, with a low saddle and upright handlebars, firmly chained to the sagging drainpipe. Three slow paces and Morse stood beside it, where he turned and looked up again at the front bedroom of number 9. No light, just as the constable had said. No light at all… Suddenly, Morse found himself sniffing slightly. Fish? He heard a disturbance in the canal behind the Reach as some mallard splashed down into the water. And then he turned and sniffed specifically at the cycle. Fish! Yes, quite certainly it was fish. Someone had brought some fish home from somewhere.

Morse was conscious of many eyes upon him as he edged his way through the little crowd conversing quietly with one another about the excitement of the night. He turned right to retrace his steps and spotted the telephone kiosk-empty. For no apparent reason he pulled open the stiff door and stepped inside. The floor was littered with waste paper and cigarette stubs, but the instrument itself appeared unvandalised. Picking up the receiver, he heard the buzzing tone, and was quietly replacing it when he noticed that the blue telephone directory was lying open on the little shelf to his right. His eyes were no longer as keen as they once had been, and the light was poor; but the bold black print stood out clearly along the top of the pages: Plumeridge-Pollard-Pollard-Popper. And then he saw the big capitals in the middle of the right-hand page: POLICE. And under the Police entries he could just make out the familiar details, including one that caught and held his eye: Oxford Central, St. Aldates, Oxford 49881. And there was something else, too-or was he imagining it? He sniffed closely at the open pages, and again the blood was tingling across his shoulders. He was right-he knew it! There was the smell of fish.

Morse walked away from Jericho then, across Walton Street, across Woodstock Road, and thence into Banbury Road and up to his bachelor apartment in North Oxford, where he slumped into an armchair and sat unmoving for almost an hour. He then selected the Barenboim recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto number 21, switched on the gramophone to 'play', and sought to switch his mind away from all terrestrial troubles as the etherial Andante opened. Sometimes, this way, he almost managed to forget.

But not tonight.

When Constable Walters closed the door, his eyes were puzzled, and the slight frown on his forehead was perpetuated for several minutes as he recalled the strange things that Morse had asked him. He'd heard of Morse many times, of course, albeit Morse worked up at the Thames Valley HQ in Kidlington whilst he himself was attached to the City force in St. Aldates. Indeed, that very morning he'd heard Morse giving a lecture: just a little disappointing that had been, though. People said what an eccentric, irascible old sod he could be; they also said that he'd solved more murders than anyone else for many leagues around, and that the gods had blessed him with a brain that worked as swiftly and as cleanly as the lightning.

'Chief Inspector Morse was here a few minutes ago.'

Bell, a tall, black-haired man, looked across at Walters with a mixture of suspicion and distaste. 'What the 'ell did he want?'

'Nothing really, sir. He just asked-'

'What the 'ell was he doing here?'

'Said he'd been to some do at the Clarendon Institute or something. I suppose he must have heard about it.'

Bell's somewhat dour features relaxed into a hint of a grin, but he said nothing.

'Do you know him well, sir?'

'Morse? Ye-es, I suppose you could say that. We've worked together once or twice.'

'They say he's an odd sort of chap.'

'Bloody odd!' Bell shook his head slowly from side to side.

'They say he's clever, though.'

'Clever?' The tone of voice suggested that Bell was not firmly convinced of the allegation; but he was an honest man. 'Cleverest bugger I've ever met. I'm not saying he's always right, though-God, no! But he usually seems to be able to see things, I don't know, half a dozen moves ahead of most of us.'

'Perhaps he's a good chess player.'

'Morse? He's never pushed a pawn in his life! Spends most of his free time in the pubs-or listening to his beloved Wagner.'

'He never got married, did he?'

'Too lazy and selfish to be a family man, I reckon, flirt-' Bell stopped and his eyes suddenly looked sharp. 'Perhaps you'd like to tell me, would you, Walters, exactly what this sudden interest in Morse is all about?'