Colin Dexter: The Remorseful Day

“What gender’s ‘bottle’?”

“How am I supposed to know? What do you think I bought you that dictionary for?”

“Left it at school, didn’t I!”

“So?”

“So you mean you don’t know?”

“You’re brighter than I thought, son.”

“Can’t you guess?”

“Either masculine or feminine, sure to be.”

“That’s great.”

“Feminine, say? So it’s, er, ‘Garçon! Une autre bouteille de cette —’”

“No! You’re useless, Dad! If you say ‘Une autre bouteille,’ you mean a different bottle of wine.”

“Oh.”

“You say ‘Encore une bouteille de’ whatever it is.”

“Why do you ever ask me to help you?”

“Agh! Forget it! Like I say, you’re bloody useless.”

Lewis had never himself read Bleak House and, unlike Morse, would not have known the soothing secret of counting up to however-many. And in truth he felt angry and belittled as he walked silently down the stairs, picked up the box-files from the table in the entrance hall, walked past the living room, where Mrs. Lewis sat deeply submerged in a TV soap, and settled himself down at the kitchen table, where he began to acquaint himself with the strangely assorted members of the Harrison family — wife, husband, daughter, son — four of the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.

He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne, the mother, who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead, Oxon.

At first he’d felt some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4:30 P.M.

At which time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress’s study.

“Come in!”

She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him, across the desk.

Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early sixties — the internationally renowned chief-guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary’s Diabetes Centre in Oxford.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.

“Look, we’re probably going to be together at lots of do’s these next few months — years, perhaps — so, please, let’s forget this ‘Sir’ business, shall we? Please call me ‘Robert.’”

Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.

Not for long.

“I’ve sat in with you once or twice, haven’t I?”

“Three times.”

“And I think you’re going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I mean?”

“Thank you.”

“But you’re not quite good enough yet.”

“I’d hoped I was improving.”

“Certainly. But you’re still strangely naive, I’m sorry to say. You seem to believe everything your patients tell you!”

“There’s not much else to go on, is there?”

“Oh, but there is! There’s a certain healthy and necessary skepticism; and then there’s experience. You’ll soon realize all this. What I’m saying is that you might as well learn it now rather than later.”

“Is there anything particular...?”

“Things, plural. I’m thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their alcohol intake. You see, the only thing they can’t fool you about is their weight.”

“And their blood pressure.”

Turner smiled gently at his pupil. “I haven’t got quite as much faith as you in our measurements of blood pressure.”

“But they don’t all of them make their answers up.”

“Not all of them, no. It’s just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all tend to say we’re fine, even if we’re feeling lousy. Don’t we?”

“I suppose so.”

“And our main job” (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) “is to give information — and to exert some sort of influence — about the way our patients cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness.”

Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.

And he continued: “There are a good many patients here who are professional liars. Some of them I’ve known for years, and they’ve known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn’t matter — because we know we’re telling each other lies... Anyway, that’s enough about that.” (Turner looked down at her folder.) “I see you’ve got Mr. David Mackenzie on your list next Monday. I’ll sit in with you on him. I think he did once tell me his date of birth correctly, but he makes everything else up as he goes along. You’ll enjoy him!”

Again Sarah said nothing. And she was preparing to leave when Turner changed the subject abruptly, and in an unexpected direction.

Or was it unexpected?

“I couldn’t help seeing the articles in the newspapers... and the department was talking about them.”

Sarah nodded.

“Would it mean a lot to you if they found who murdered your mother?”

“What do you think?” The tone of her voice bordered almost on the insolent, but Turner interpreted her reply tolerantly, for it was (he knew) hardly the most intelligent question he’d ever formulated.

“Let’s just wish them better luck,” he said.

“Better brains, too!”

“Perhaps they’ll put Morse on to it this time.”

Sarah’s eyes locked steadily on his.

“Morse?”

“You don’t know him?”

“No.”

“Heard of him, perhaps?” Turner’s eyes grew suddenly shrewd on hers, and she hesitated before answering:

“Didn’t my mother mention she’d nursed him somewhere?”

“Would you like to meet him, next time he comes in?”

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t know he was diabetic?”

“We’ve got an awful lot of diabetics here.”

“Not too many like him, thank the Lord! Four hefty injections a day, and he informs me that he’s devised a carefully calibrated dosage that exactly counterbalances his considerable daily intake of alcohol. And when I say considerable... Quite a dab hand, too, is Morse, at extrapolating his blood-sugar readings — backwards!”

“Isn’t he worried about... about what he’s doing to himself?”

“Why not ask him? I’ll put him on your list.”

“Only if you promise to come along to monitor me.”

“With you around? Oh, no! Morse wouldn’t like that.”

“How old is he?”

“Too old for you.”

“Single.”

“Gracious, yes! Far too independent a spirit for marriage... Anyway, have a good weekend! Anything exciting on?”

“Important, perhaps, rather than exciting. We’ve got a meeting up at Hook Norton tomorrow at the Pear Tree Inn. We’re organizing another Countryside March.”

“That’s the ‘rural pursuits’ thing, isn’t it? Foxhunting—”

“Among other things.”

“The ‘toffs and the serfs.’”