Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

He unlocked his bedroom door and closed it quietly behind him — and then stood frozen to the spot, like a man who has just caught a glimpse of the Gorgon.

Sitting on the narrow bed was the very last man in the world that Evans had expected — or wanted — to see.

“It’s not worth trying anything,” said the Governor quietly, as Evans’s eyes darted desperately around the room. “I’ve got men all round the place.” (Well, there were only two , really: but Evans needn’t know that.) He let the words sink in. “Women, too. Didn’t you think the blonde girl in reception was rather sweet?”

Evans was visibly shaken. He sat down slowly in the only chair the small room could offer, and held his head between his hands. For several minutes there was utter silence.

Finally, he spoke. “It was that bloody correction slip, I s’pose.”

“We-ell” (the Governor failed to mask the deep satisfaction in his voice) “there are a few people who know a little German.”

Slowly, very slowly, Evans relaxed. He was beaten — and he knew it. He sat up at last, and managed to smile ruefully. “You know, it wasn’t really a mistake. You see, we ’adn’t been able to fix up any ’otel, but we could’ve worked that some other way. No. The really important thing was for the phone to ring just before the exam finished — to get the screws out of the way for a coupla minutes. So we ’ad to know exactly when the exam started , didn’t we?”

“And, like a fool, I presented you with that little piece of information on a plate.”

“Well, somebody did. So, you see, sir, that correction slip killed two little birds with a single stone, didn’t it? The name of the ’otel for me , and the exact time the exam started for, er, for, er...”

The Governor nodded. “It’s a pretty common word, though, “Löwe.” It’s on the beer labels for a start.”

“Good job it is pretty common, sir, or I’d never ’ave known where to come to, would I?”

“Nice name, though: zum goldenen Löwen.”

“ ’Ow did you know which Golden Lion it was? There’s ’undreds of ’em.”

“Same as you, Evans. Index number 313; Centre number 271. Remember? Six figures? And if you take an Ordnance Survey Map for Oxfordshire, you find that the six-figure reference 313/271 lands you bang in the middle of Chipping Norton.”

“Yea, you’re right. Huh! We’d ’oped you’d bugger off to Newbury.”

“We did.”

“Well, that’s something, I s’pose.”

“That question paper, Evans. Could you really understand all that German? I could hardly—”

“Nah! Course I couldn’t. I knew roughly what it was all about, but we just Oped it’d throw a few spanners in the works — you know, sort of muddle everybody a bit.”

The Governor stood up. “Tell me one thing before we go. How on earth did you get all that blood to pour over your head?”

Evans suddenly looked a little happier. “Clever , sir. Very clever, that was — ’ow to get a couple o’ pints of blood into a cell, eh? When there’s none there to start off with, and when, er, and when the ‘invigilator,’ shall we say, gets searched before ’e comes in. Yes, sir. You can well ask about that, and I dunno if I ought to tell you. After all, I might want to use that particular—”

“Anything to do with a little rubber ring for piles, perhaps?”

Evans grinned feebly. “Clever, though, wasn’t it?”

“Must have been a tricky job sticking a couple of pints—”

“Nah! You’ve got it wrong, sir. No problem about that.”

“No?”

“Nah! It’s the clotting , you see. That’s the big trouble. We got the blood easy enough. Pig’s blood, it was — from the slaughter’ouse in Kidlington. But to stop it clotting you’ve got to mix yer actual blood” (Evans took a breath) “with one tenth of its own volume of 3.8 per cent trisodium citrate! Didn’t know that, did you, sir?”

The Governor shook his head in a token of reluctant admiration. “We learn something new every day, they tell me. Come on, m’lad.”

Evans made no show of resistance, and side by side the two men walked slowly down the stairs.

“Tell me, Evans. How did you manage to plan all this business? You’ve had no visitors — I’ve seen to that. You’ve had no letters—”

“I’ve got lots of friends, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Me German teacher, for a start.”

“You mean—? But he was from the Technical College.”

“Was ’e?” Evans was almost enjoying it all now. “Ever check up on ’im, sir?”

“God Almighty! There’s far more going on than I—”

“Always will be, sir.”

“Everything ready?” asked the Governor as they stood by the reception desk.

“The van’s out the front, sir,” said the pretty blonde receptionist. Evans winked at her; and she winked back at him. It almost made his day.

A silent prison officer handcuffed the recaptured Evans, and together the two men clambered awkwardly into the back seat of the prison van.

“See you soon, Evans.” It was almost as if the Governor were saying farewell to an old friend after a cocktail party.

“Cheerio, sir. I, er, I was just wonderin’. I know your German’s pretty good, sir, but do you know any more o’ these modern languages?”

“Not very well. Why?”

Evans settled himself comfortably on the back seat, and grinned happily. “Nothin’, really. I just ’appened to notice that you’ve got some O-level Italian classes comin’ up next September, that’s all.”

“Perhaps you won’t be with us next September, Eivans.”

James Roderick Evans appeared to ponder the Governor’s words deeply. “No. P’r’aps I won’t,” he said.

As the prison van turned right from Chipping Norton on to the Oxford road, the hitherto silent prison officer unlocked the handcuffs and leaned forward towards the driver. “For Christ’s sake get a move on! It won’t take ’em long to find out—”

“Where do ye suggest we make for?” asked the driver, in a broad Scots accent.

“What about Newbury?” suggested Evans.

It was more from necessity than from kindliness, just after 5 P.M. on a rain-soaked evening in early February 1990, that Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police leaned over and opened the Jaguar’s near-side door. One of his neighbours from the North Oxford bachelor flats was standing at the bus stop, was getting very wet — and was staring hard at him.

“Most kind!” said Philip Wise, inserting his kyphotic self into the passenger seat.

Morse grunted a vague acknowledgement as the car made a few further slow yards up the Banbury Road in the red-tail-lighted queue, his wipers clearing short-lived swaths across the screen. Only three quarters of a mile to go, but at this time of day twenty minutes would be par for the progressively paralytic crawl to the flats. Never an easy conversationalist himself — indeed, known occasionally to lapse into total aphasia when driving a car — Morse was glad that Wise was doing all the talking. “Something quite extraordinary’s happened to me,” said the man in the dripping mackintosh.

In retrospect, Morse was aware that he’d listened, at least initially, with no more than polite passivity. But listen he had done.

Philip Wise had gone up to Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1938; and in due course his linguistic abilities (particularly in German) had ensured for him, when war broke out a year later, a cushy little job in an Intelligence Unit housed on the outskirts of Bicester. For two years he had lived there in a disagreeable and draughty Nissenhut; and when the chance came of his taking digs back in Oxford, he’d jumped at it. Thus it was that in October 1941 he had moved into Crozier Road, a sunless thoroughfare just off the west of St. Giles’; and it was there that he’d first met Miss Dodo Whitaker (“Only the one ‘t’, Inspector”) who had a tiny top-floor bedsitter immediately above his own room in the grimy four-storey property that stood at number 14.