Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

Morse found himself pondering on the funeral. “I wonder why he put in an appearance.”

“Who? Frank Harrison? Why shouldn’t he? Lived in the same village — had him in to do those house repairs—”

“Knew his wife had been in bed with him.”

“Fasten your seat belt, Morse!”

“Er, before we drive off, there’s something—”

“Fasten your seat belt! Know what that’s an anagram of, by the way? ‘Truss neatly to be safe.’ Clever, eh? Somebody told me that once. You probably.”

For a few seconds Morse looked slightly puzzled.

“Couldn’t have been me. It’s got to be ‘belts.’ Otherwise there’s one V short.”

“Just put the bloody thing on!”

But Morse left the bloody thing off as he looked directly ahead of him and completed his earlier sentence: “Just before we drive off, sir, there’s something I ought to mention. It’s about Lewis. I’m fairly sure he’s beginning to get some odd ideas about my being involved in some way with Yvonne Harrison.”

It was Strange’s turn to look directly ahead of him.

“And you think I wasn’t aware of that?” he asked quietly.

Once in Charlton Kings, a suburb on the eastern side of Cheltenham, Sergeant Lewis had followed the map directions carefully (he loved that sort of thing), turning right from the A40 through a maze of residential streets, and finally driving the unmarked police car past the sign on the whitewashed wall beside the gateway — “Sisters of the Covenant: Preparatory Boarding School for Girls” — and along the short graveled drive that led to a large, detached Georgian house.

Destination reached; and purpose, shortly afterward, fulfilled.

With a few extra suggestions from Morse, Lewis had found it comparatively easy to fill in most of the picture. The Barrons’ GP had professional and wholly proper reasons for his guarded reticence. But other sources had been considerably less cautious with their help and information: the Burford Social Services, the NSPCC, the headmistress of the village primary school, the local Catholic priest, and, last of all, the middle-aged nun, dressed in a chocolate-brown habit and white wimple, who was expecting him and who found little difficulty in answering his brief, pointed questions.

Five nuns, all of them resident, looked after the school, which was specifically dedicated to the physical and spiritual well-being of girls between the ages of four and eleven (currently eighteen of them) who for varied reasons — poverty, indifference, criminality, cruelty — had been ill-used in their family homes. In spite of a modest benefaction, the school was a place of limited resources, at least in human terms, and was appropriately designated “Private,” with the majority of parents paying fees of between £1,000 and £1,500 per term.

Alice Barron, yes — now aged six — was one of the pupils there, referred to the school by her mother. She had been abused, not sexually, it seemed, but certainly physically; certainly psychologically.

No, Alice was not one of our Lord’s brightest intellects; in fact she was in some ways a slow-witted child. This may have been the result of her home environment, but probably only partially so. Her younger sister (the teaching staff had learned) was as bright as the proverbial button; and such a circumstance could well have accounted to some degree for an impatient, expectant, aggressive parent to have...

“The father, you mean?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth, Sergeant.”

“But if you were a betting woman — which I know you’re not, of course...”

“What on earth makes you think that?” Her eyes momentarily glinted with humor. “But if I were , I would not be putting much money on the mother, no.”

“How are the accounts for each term settled?”

“I looked that up, as you asked me. I can’t be quite sure, but I suspect it’s been in cash.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Does Alice know about her father’s death?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Do you think this whole business is going to...?”

“Difficult to tell, isn’t it? She’s improving, right enough. She’s stopped wetting her bed, and she doesn’t scream so loudly in the night.”

“But if you were going to have another bet?”

“If I were a bookmaker, I’d lay you even money on it.”

As he drove back up to the A40, Lewis felt fairly sure he knew only a quarter as much about horse racing (and probably about life) as Sister Benedicta.

Back at HQ Lewis found a handwritten note for his personal attention:

It was in Morse’s hand, that small, neatly formed upright script that was recognizable anywhere; as indeed, for that matter, was Strange’s hand — large, spidery, with a perpetual list to starboard, and often only semilegible.

But Lewis was unconcerned. He would type up a report on his wholly satisfactory morning’s work. And then he would sit back and let things slowly sink in, for it had now become clear that the Repp-Flynn-Barron mystery was solved. Completely solved now, with the knowledge that it was Linda Barron who had taken the hush money; Linda Barron who must have insisted that if her husband ever thought of siphoning some of it off for himself she would expose him for the child abuser that he was, and expose him to Social Services, to the police, to the folk in the village, to the Press. And she would have meant it, for she was past caring. My God, yes! And Barron had agreed.

Yes...

The big moments in the case were over; and he rang Mrs. Lewis and asked her to have the chip-pan ready half an hour earlier than usual.

Yes...

In a strange kind of way, his confidence in himself had grown steadily throughout the present case, in spite of a few irritations like Dixon! And there was that one thing that had been interesting him and troubling him, in equal measure, for some considerable time now. Very soon he’d have to face up to telling Morse of his suspicions. But not just yet. He’d need to know a bit more about the Harrison murder first; especially about the contents of that fourth green box-file which had mysteriously added itself to the documents in the case, and which now sat alongside the other three on a shelf in Morse’s office. Perhaps a bit later that afternoon, since Morse was unlikely to return.

What if he did, anyway?

Yes...

Lewis sat back after typing his report, his thoughts dwelling on the case that to all intents and purposes had now closed. He was right, wasn’t he? But there were just one or two tiny items he hadn’t as yet checked; and he knew that his conscience would be niggling him about them. No time like the present.

But not much luck. Still, those alibis for the Monday morning didn’t much matter any longer. Or rather non-alibis, since neither Harrison Senior nor Harrison Junior had any alibi at all. And whilst Sarah Harrison did have an alibi, it still remained unchecked.

He rang the Diabetes Centre in the Radcliffe Infirmary, with almost immediate if unexpected success, since Professor Turner (clearly not a Monday-Friday medic) now confirmed everything that Miss Harrison herself had affirmed: “In fact, Sergeant, she had to take over some of my patients mid-morning when I was summoned by my superiors—”