Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

Lewis knocked deferentially on Morse’s door before entering.

“Welcome home, sir! Nice break?”

“No!”

“You don’t sound very—”

“Sh!”

So Lewis sat down obediently in the chair opposite, as his chief contemplated the last clue: “Stiff examination (7)” A — T — P — Y; then immediately wrote in the answer and consulted his wristwatch.

“Not bad, Lewis. Ten and a half minutes. Still it’s usually a bit easier on Mondays.”

“Well done.”

“Have you done it, by the way?”

“Pardon?”

“That is a copy of today’s Times you’ve got with you?”

“They showed it to me in the canteen—”

“Does Mrs. Lewis know that the first place you head for after breakfast is the canteen?”

“Only for a coffee.”

“Not a crime, I suppose.”

“It’s this article, sir — about the Harrison case.”

“So?”

“So you’re not interested?”

“No!”

“But we’re supposed to be reopening the case, sir — you and me.”

“You and I , Lewis. And we are not.”

“But the Super said you’d agreed.”

“When am I supposed to have agreed?”

“Last week — Tuesday.”

“Last week — Wednesday! He came to see me on Wednesday.”

“You mean... he hadn’t seen you before he saw me?”

“You’re bright as a button this morning, Lewis.”

“But you must have agreed, surely?”

“In a way.”

“So what’s biting you?”

Morse’s blue eyes flashed across the desk. “I’d had too much Scotch, that’s what! I’d been trying to enjoy myself. I was on a week’s furlough, remember?”

“But why start the week off in such a foul mood?”

“Why not , pray?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that, you know — another case for us to solve perhaps? Gives you a good feeling, that.”

Morse nodded reluctantly.

“So why agree to it, if you’ve no stomach for it?”

Morse looked down at the threadbare carpet — a carpet stopping regularly six inches from the skirting boards. “I’ll tell you why. Strange’s carpet goes right up to the wall — you’ve noticed that? So if you ever get up to Super status, which I very much doubt, you just make sure you get a carpet that covers the whole floor — and a personal parking space while you’re at it!”

“At least you’ve got your name on the door.”

“Remember that fellow in Holy Writ, Lewis? ‘I also am a man set under authority.’ I’m just like him — under authority. Strange doesn’t ask me to do something: he tells me.”

“You could always have said no.”

“Stop sermonizing me! That case stinks of duplicity and corruption: the family, the locals, the police — shifty and thrifty with the truth, the whole bloody lot of them.”

“You sound as if you know quite a bit about it already.”

“Why shouldn’t I? About a local murder like that? I do occasionally pick up a few things from my fellow officers, all right? And if you remember I was on the case right at the beginning, if only for a very short while. And why was that? Because we were on another case. Were we not?”

Lewis nodded. “Another murder case.”

“Murder’s always been our business.”

“So why—?”

“Because the case is old and tired, that’s why.”

“Who’ll take it on if we don’t?”

“They’ll find another pair of idiots.”

“So you’re going to tell the Super...?”

“I’ve already told you. Give it a rest!”

“Why are you so sharp about it all?”

“Because I’m like the case, Lewis. I’m old and tired myself.”

The ringing of the telephone on Morse’s desk cut across the tetchy stichomythia.

“Morse?”

“Sir?”

“You ready?”

“Half-past nine, you said.”

“So what?”

“It’s only—”

“So what?”

“Shall I bring Sergeant Lewis along?”

“Please yourself.”

The phone was dead.

“That was Strange.”

“I could hear.”

“I’d like you to come along. All right with you?”

Lewis nodded. “I’m a man under authority too.”

“Lew-is! Quote it accurately: ‘a man set under authority.’”

“Sorry!”

But Morse was continuing with the text, as if the well-remembered words brought some momentary respite to his peevishness: “ ‘Having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go and he goeth; and to another, Come and he cometh’.”

“Lewis cometh,” said Lewis quietly.

“C’m in! C’m in!”

It was 8:45 A.M.

“Ah! Morse. Lewis.”

Perhaps, in all good faith, Strange had intended to sound brisk rather than brusque; yet, judging from Morse’s silence as he sat down, the Chief Superintendent had not effected a particularly good start. He contrived to beam expansively at his two subordinates, and especially at Morse.

“What does ‘The Ringer’ mean to you?”

“Story by Edgar Wallace. I read it in my youth.”

Morse had spoken in clipped, formal tones; and Lewis, with a millimeter rise of the eyebrows, glanced quickly at his impassive face.

Something was wrong.

“What about you, Sergeant? You ever read Edgar Wallace?”

“Me?” Lewis grinned weakly. “No, sir. I was a Beano-boy myself.”

“Anything else, Morse?”

“A campanologist?”

“Could be.”

Morse sat silently on.

“Anything else?”

“It’s a horse that’s raced under the name of a different horse — a practice, so they tell me, occasionally employed by unscrupulous owners.”

“How does it work?”

Morse shook his head. “I’ve seldom donated any money to the bookmakers.”

“Or anyone else for that matter.”

Morse sat silently on.

“Anything else?”

“I can think of nothing else.”

“Well, let me tell you something. In Oz, it’s what you call the quickest fellow in a sheep-shearing competition. What about that?”

“Useful thing to know, sir.”

“What about a ‘dead ringer’?”

“Somebody almost identical with somebody else.”

“Good! You’re coming on nicely, Morse.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve stopped.”

Strange shook his massive head and smiled bleakly. “You’re an odd sod. You never seem to see anything that’s staring you in the face. You have to look round half a dozen corners first, when all you’ve really got to do is to look straight up the bloody street in front of you!”

Lewis, as he sat beside his chief, knew that such a criticism was marginally undeserved, and he would have wished to set the record aright. But he didn’t, or couldn’t. As for Morse, he seemed quietly unconcerned about the situation: in fact (or was Lewis misunderstanding things?) even a little pleased.

“What about this, then?” Suddenly, confidently, Strange thrust the letter across the desk; and after what seemed to both the other men an unnecessarily prolonged perusal, the slow-reading Morse handed it back. Without comment.

“Well?”

“‘The Ringer’, you mean? You think it’s the fellow who decided to ring you—”

“Ring me twice!”