Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

“What—?”

A uniformed police officer stood beside the small table: “I’m sorry, sir, but we need to speak to you. Routine check.”

“Thames Valley Police, is this?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“What exactly—?”

“ It’s not just that. Your employers want to speak to you as well.”

Harrison’s eyes squinted in bewilderment.

“What the hell do they want? I’m on official furlough, for God’s sake. They’ll have to wait till I get back.”

“Will you come this way, sir? Please!”

A second uniformed policeman — young, dark-haired — stood just inside the entrance to the executive lounge; was still standing there a quarter of an hour later when Maxine, after drinking the one and then the other glass of champagne, went over to speak to him.

“Do you mind telling me, Officer, by whose authority—?”

“Not mine, miss,” said PC Kershaw. “Please believe me. I also am a man under authority.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m from Thames Valley — we both are.”

“Who sent you here?”

“The CID.”

“Who?”

“Chief Inspector Morse.”

“Who’s he when he’s in his office?”

“He’s an important man.”

“Very important?”

“Oh yes!” Kershaw nodded with a reverential smile.

“You talk as if he’s God Almighty.”

“Some people think he is.”

“Do you?”

“Not always.”

“How long will you be keeping Mr. Harrison?”

“I just don’t know, Mrs. Ridgway.”

Maxine poured herself a further glass of champagne, and pondered as she sat alone at the small table. They knew her name too...

He wasn’t a particularly lucky man to associate with, Frank Harrison. The last time she’d been with him, over a year ago, he’d had that phone call from — well, he’d never said who from — to tell him that his wife had been murdered...

She was tempted to get up and — well, just leave. Just get out of there. Her case was on the plane by now though — suits, dresses, lingerie, shoes — but it could be returned perhaps? She still had her handbag with its far more important items: cards, keys, diary, money...

But she felt sure the PC at the door would never let her out. That’s why he was there. Why else?

An announcement over the lounge Tannoy informed her that first-class passengers for British Airways Flight 338 to Paris should now proceed to Gate 3; and a dozen or so people were draining their drinks and gathering up their hand luggage. But for Maxine Ridgway it was now a feeling of deep sadness that had overtaken those earlier minutes of indecision and despair. She was no fool. She knew by heart the role she’d been asked to play in the Ritz; and she’d accepted the bargain, because it would have been a bargain.

She was not even bothering to wonder what she should do next when she heard the voice behind her: “Come on, sweetheart! You heard the announcement. Gate 3.”

With her mind in a mingled state of amazement and relief, she picked up her hand luggage and followed him to the exit-doors, where there was now no sign of PC Kershaw, the man who had seemed to have a greater familiarity with Holy Writ than she had herself.

“Routine check, that’s all,” asserted Frank Harrison. “Just like the man said.”

“Let him go, Kershaw. Let him catch his flight.”

“You think that’s wise, sir?”

“What?”

“I just wondered—”

“Look, lad! If I ever have to look to you as a fount of wisdom, it’ll be the day you’re dry behind the ears. Is that clear?”

“Sir!”

Morse put down the phone. It was 6:10 P.M.

“Do you think that was fair, sir?” asked Lewis.

“Probably not,” conceded Morse.

It had been Lewis, an hour earlier, who had received the call from the Bank: profound apology; embarrassing recantation; chagrin unspeakable! Over £500,000 indeed was still unaccountably missing; but not, not from Harrison’s department. Inquiries subsequent to Lewis’s visit had now established that any embezzlement or misappropriation of funds was most definitely not to be laid at the door of one of the Bank’s most experienced, most trusted, most valued blah blah blah. It was a call in which Morse was most interested, now repeating (with some self-congratulation) what he had earlier maintained: that Frank Harrison might well be, most likely was , capable of murder; but that it was quite out of character, definitely infra dignitatem , for him to stoop to cooking the books and fiddling the balance-and-loss ledgers.

“Do you think you may be wrong, sir?”

“Certainly not. He’ll be back from Paris, believe me! There’s no hiding place for him. Not from me, there isn’t.”

“You think he murdered his wife?”

“No. But he knows who did. You know who did. But we’ve got to get some evidence. We’ve been checking alibis — recent ones. But we’ve got to check those earlier alibis again.”

“Who are you thinking of?”

“Of whom am I thinking?” (Morse recalled the suspicion he’d voiced in his earlier notes.) “I’m thinking of the only other person apart from Frank Harrison who had a sufficient motive to kill Yvonne.”

“You mean—?”

“Do you ever go to the pictures?”

“They don’t call it the ‘pictures’ any more.”

“I went to the pictures a year and a bit ago to see The Full Monty.”

“Surely not your sort of—?”

“Exactly my sort of thing. I laughed and I cried.”

“Oh yes.” (The penny had dropped.) “Simon Harrison said he’d gone—”

“ ‘Said,’ yes.”

“Said he’d gone with someone else, didn’t he? A girlfriend.”

“Wasn’t checked though, as far as I can see.”

“Understandable, isn’t it? Nobody ever really thought of someone inside the family—”

“Oh yes they did. Frank Harrison was one of their first suspects.”

“But with those signs of burglary, the broken window, the burglar alarm...”

Morse nodded. “At first almost everything pointed to an outside job. But then it slowly began to look like something else: a lover, a tryst, a sex session, a quarrel, a murder...”

“And now we’re coming back to the family, you say.”

“No one seems to have bothered to get a statement from the young lady Simon Harrison took to the pictures that evening.”

“Perhaps we could still trace her, sir?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a long time ago though. She’d never remember—”

“Of course she would! It was all over the papers: ‘Woman Murdered’ — and she’d been with that same woman’s son the evening when it happened. She could never forget it!”

“It’s still a long time—”

“Lewis! I don’t eat all that much as you know. But when I’m cooking for myself—”

(Lewis’s eyebrows rose.)

“—I always make sure the plate’s hot. I can’t abide eating off a cold plate.”

“You mean we could heat the plate up again?”

“The plate’s already hot again. She’s still around. She’s a proud, married mum now living in Witney.”