Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

Had he been left to himself, had he been without any knowledge of the context in which the apparent “accident” had occurred, Lewis would not have suspected that it all amounted to murder. But it had been murder, he felt sure of that; and four hours earlier he had taken personal responsibility for initiating the whole apparatus of yet another murder inquiry. Same SOCOs as in the Sutton Courtenay murder, same pathologist, same everything; but with almost every sign of immediate activity over when, just before 3 P.M., Morse finally put in an appearance, very soon to be seating himself in Mrs. Bayley’s north-facing sitting room on the ground floor.

“Northamptonshire faring any better?” he asked the senior SOCO.

“Next year, perhaps,” said Eddie Andrews pessimistically.

“You’d be out of a job without me,” continued Morse. “Just like Dr. Hobson here.”

But the unsmiling pathologist could find little place in her heart for any banter and ignored the comment. As did Edwards.

The gloomy room was suddenly empty, apart from Sergeant Lewis. “You said there wasn’t any danger of him being murdered, sir.”

Morse could find no satisfactory answer and stared silently out of the window until Mrs. Bayley came in with (for Morse) wholly unwelcome cups of coffee and the same two digestive biscuits that Barron would have eaten with his oversugared tea.

“You mentioned to Sergeant Lewis what you saw from the window? The one above this, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “It made such a vivid imprint on the, er...”

“Retina?” suggested Lewis.

“Thank you, Sergeant. I did myself once work in the Oxford Eye Hospital.” She turned to Morse. “You’ll think me a silly old woman, but it reminded me of something I saw quite a few years ago now in one of the Sundays. There were these outline drawings sent in by readers and you had to guess what they were; and one of them always stuck in my, er...” (This time Lewis desisted.) She took a pencil and without permission made a quick little drawing in Lewis’s notebook:

“Can’t you guess, Inspector?” Her eyes twinkled.

Morse frowned, about to suggest something wildly inappropriate when the undeterred Lewis intervened:

“Giraffe walking past a window?”

“You clever man.”

“No!” Lewis smiled deprecatingly. “I’d seen it before.”

He took a pencil and made an equally quick little drawing underneath:

“Aristocratic sardine in a tin!” she cried triumphantly.

“You clever woman!”

She shook her head. “I’d seen it before.”

Morse sounded wearily impatient. “I’m very sorry to interrupt the fun, Mrs. Bayley, but...”

“Of course. Forgive me!”

“Which way was your, er, giraffe walking? Left to right? Right to left?”

“Left to right — exactly like I’ve drawn it, Inspector.”

“So if the ladder fell across the window from left to right, the bottom of the ladder must have slipped from right to left — that is, from your point of view here in the house, Mrs. Bayley?”

“I’m not quite sure I follow you.”

“I mean, if someone had come along and given the ladder a hefty kick at the bottom, he’d probably have been coming from” (Morse pointed to the right) “the center of Burford, say, to” (Morse pointed vaguely to the left) “wherever this road leads to?”

“Bourton on the Water.”

“Thank you, Lewis!”

“But we know that, sir — about the ladder, I mean. They found him six or seven yards to the right of the front door. That’s from Mrs. Bayley’s point of view of course,” he added mischievously.

“Yes!” whispered the lady of the household, as so vividly she recalled that terrible sight, with the red Stanley knife lying there beside the shattered skull.

Morse was looking far from pleased. Even less so when a further cup of coffee was suggested. The room had become chillier, and he shivered slightly as he got to his feet. It was time for the clichés:

“If you do remember anything else — anything odd — anything unusual — anything at all...”

And suddenly she had remembered something. It was Morse’s involuntarily shivering shoulders that had jogged — yes, jogged — her memory.

The jogger.

“There was something a bit unusual. We don’t get many people jogging here — we’re all a bit too old. But there was one this morning, about a quarter-to-eight. He’d pulled the hood of his tracksuit over his head as if he was feeling the cold a bit.”

“Or wasn’t anxious to be recognized,” added Morse quietly.

“Perhaps you could recognize him though, Inspector. You see, he was wearing a very distinctive pair of training shoes. Red , they were.”

The two policemen left with appropriate expressions of gratitude; and with the two digestive biscuits still untouched on the circular tray, beside two cups, one of them full, of stone-cold coffee.

After Lewis had turned right at the junction of Sheep Street and High Street and slipped the marked police car into the queue up to the A40 roundabout, Morse pointed peremptorily to the right, to the Cotswold Gateway Hotel.

Seated at a wall-settle in the bar, Morse tasted his pint of cask-conditioned ale and proclaimed it “not so bad.” And Lewis, seated opposite, sipped his iced orange juice and said nothing.

Morse looked sourly out of sorts.

“Just nip and get me a packet of cigarettes, Lewis. Dunhill, if they’ve got them. I don’t seem to...” In time-honored fashion, he patted his trouser pockets with little prospect, as it seemed, of finding any funds therein.

“I thought you’d stopped,” ventured Lewis, as minutes later Morse peeled off the cellophane.

“First today!” said Morse as with obvious gratification he inhaled deeply.

In turn, Lewis took a deep breath himself:

“You mustn’t get cross with me if—”

“Certainly not.” Morse pushed his empty glass across the table.

Waiting at the bar, Lewis was rehearsing his carefully formulated sentence; was ready with it once he took his seat again.

“You mustn’t be cross with me, sir, but—”

“Someone’s been round to Mrs. Barron? You’ve seen to that?”

“Dixon, yes. With WPC Towle — she’s an experienced officer.”

“PC Towle, you mean. They’re all PCs now, whatever the sex. Stands for Politically Correct.”

For the umpteenth time in his working life with Morse, Lewis knew that any potentially favorable wind had suddenly stopped blowing for him; and that it would be Morse who would now be sailing serenely on, whatever the state of the weather. As he did now:

“Something worrying you, Lewis?”

“Yes. Something is. We started off with two murders and you said you knew who the murderer was. And now this murderer of yours gets murdered himself and...”