Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

At a quarter to twelve I was there — standing in my overcoat and waiting happily. (Lucy had never been early in her life.) I lit another cigarette; then another. By twelve forty-five I was beginning to worry a little; by one forty-five I was beginning to worry a lot; and by two forty-five I was beginning to guess at the truth. Yet still I waited — waited and waited and waited. And, in a sense, I suppose, I’ve been waiting for Lucy ever since...

It was when the big hand on the station clock came round to four that I finally called it a day and walked over to look at the Departure Board. I found a train that was due for New York in forty-five minutes, and I thought that that had better be that. I walked into the buffet and sat down with a coffee. So? So, here was yet another of life’s illusions lying shattered in the dust, and yet... Poor, poor, lovely Lucy! I nearly allowed myself a saddened little smile as I thought of her opening up those two big envelopes in the briefcase — and finding there those 480 pieces of crisp, new paper, each exactly the size of a 500-dollar bill. She must have thought I was pretty — well, pretty gullible, I suppose, when we’d both agreed that she should take the briefcase...

A single to New York would cost about fifty or sixty dollars, I reckoned; and as I joined what seemed to be the shorter queue at the ticket office I took the bulky envelope from the right-hand pocket of the overcoat, opened it — and stood there stunned and gorgonized. Inside were about 240 pieces of crisp, new paper, each exactly the size of a 500-dollar bill; and my hands were trembling as I stood away from the queue and opened the other envelope. Exactly the same. Well, no — not exactly the same. On the top piece of blank paper there were three sentences of writing in Louis’s unmistakably minuscule hand:

I did my best to tell you Danny boy but you never did really understand that filosofy of mine now did you? It’s just what I kept on telling you all along. People...

By now, though, I reckon you’ll know those last few words that Louis wrote.

I walked back across to the buffet and ordered another coffee, counting up what I had in my pockets: just ten dollars and forty cents; and I fell to wondering where it was I went from here. Perhaps... perhaps there were one or two things in my favour. At least I could spell “philosophy”; and then there was always the pretty big certainty (just as Louis said so often) that somewhere soon I’d find a few nice, kindly, gullible folk.

But as I glance around at the faces of my fellow men and women in the station buffet now, they all look very mean, and very hard.

“We must never make the criminal the hero , though!” proclaimed Marcus Price, Fellow of All Souls, as he drained his beer and put down his glass with the gesture of a man announcing to the company that he’d bought the previous round himself and whose turn, pray, was it now.

“What about old Raffles, though? Gentleman-burglar and all that. Remember him?”

The speaker was another Oxford don, Denis Stockman, an authority ( the authority) on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fifteenth century.

“Stole the Crown Jewels or something,” Stockman continued, “then took ’em back when he found out what they were. No chivalry like that these days, eh, Morse?”

“Oh no,” mumbled Morse.

Oh dear! But Morse had only himself to blame. He’d meant to nip into the King’s Arms just briefly that Wednesday lunchtime; and for a start things had looked promising. The one other customer was a very attractive thirty-odd-year-old brunette with sludgy green eyes. She had smiled momentarily as he’d sat down a few feet from her — before turning her attention back to The Times crossword puzzle, in which even as he took his first draught she wrote another word, with her left hand, the middle fingernail marked with a broad, white lateral line, as if she might have trapped it in a door. Yes, only himself to blame...

Almost as soon as they’d spotted him there they’d pounced. How long is it? Mind if we join you? What are you drinking? Morse should, of course, have pleaded urgency in some criminal pursuit. But he didn’t. The prospect of a further pint gladdened his heart, and he heard himself saying, “Best Bitter.”

It was the fourth member of the quartet who now volunteered to get in the second round of drinks — a small, bald-headed man with a beer-belly and an NHS hearing-aid in his right ear. Morse had met him once or twice before and recalled that he’d been a refugee from pre-war Germany who now lived (very near Morse, wasn’t it?) in a large North Oxford property reputedly stuffed with eminently collectable furniture and ornaments. Yes! Dr. Eric Ullman — that was his name! A bachelor — like Morse.

“Good health, gentlemen!” Ullman’s diction was precise, pedantic almost, as he raised his glass and toasted his two university acquaintances — and the chief inspector. “And please forgive me perhaps if I tell you something — well, something that may surprise you a little?”

If any of the three pairs of eyebrows raised themselves, it was by little more than a millimetre.

“You’re wrong, I think,” began Ullman, “about there being no honour among thieves these days. Please let me explain. Last Friday I went to see Così fan Tutte at the Apollo Theatre here in Oxford. The Welsh National were doing it — doing it this week, too, as you’ll know. I got home at about a quarter past eleven, and most foolishly I didn’t bother to put my car away in the garage. Next morning, when I looked out of the window? The drive was completely empty. The car was gone!”

“Metro, wasn’t it?” asked Price.

Ullman nodded. “I’ve had it for nine years.”

Stockman coughed slightly. “Was it worth pinching, Eric?”

“It was worth a lot to me,” said Ullman simply.

Price grinned. “Three hundred quid — in part exchange? No more.”

“You didn’t hear anything?” asked Morse.

“No. And shall I tell you something else? They’d even closed the gates behind them.”

“Probably pushed it out of the drive,” suggested Morse. “Saves any noise. And you’re only a couple of hundred yards from the Ring Road...”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you ring us? Ring the police?”

“Straightaway. It would probably turn up in three or four days, they said. Out on one of the estates — minus wheels, minus radio, minus anything detachable — panels kicked in — windows smashed...”

“Bloody mind -less, isn’t it!” Price shook his head vehemently. “I know what I’d give some of these young sods — and it wouldn’t be a few gentle hours of community service!”

“Just — just a minute.” Ullman raised his right hand, and the others were silent again. “You see, they didn’t find it out in East Oxford. Oh no. Three days went by, and then on Monday — last Monday — I was invited out to dinner at The Randolph. And when I got back, about eleven or so, there — there in the drive...”

Ullman was telling his little tale well, and three pairs of eyes now betrayed an unexpected interest.

“... completely undamaged — in fact looking very spick-and-span. And under the windscreen wiper — this!”

From his breast-pocket he took out a letter, a letter written in a small, neat, upright script, with no address, no date, no salutation, no valediction; a letter which each of Ullman’s immediate audience now read in turn: