Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

“She hadn’t been drinking, Inspector.”

“Oh!”

Morse placed his hand lightly on the young pathologist’s shoulder and thanked her. Her eyes looked interesting — and interested. Sometimes Morse thought he could fall in love with Laura Hobson; and sometimes he thought he couldn’t.

It was almost midday before Morse gave the order for the body to be removed. The scene-of-crime personnel had finished their work, and a thick, transparent sheeting had now been laid across the carpet. Lewis, with two DCs, had long since been despatched to cover the preliminary tasks: to check Bayley’s alibi, to question the neighbours, and to discover whatever they could of Sheila Poster’s past. And Morse himself now stood alone, and gazed around the room in which Sheila Poster had been murdered.

Almost immediately, however, it was apparent that little was likely to be found. The eight drawers of the modern desk which stood against the inside wall were completely empty; with the almost inevitable conclusion to be drawn that the murderer had systematically emptied the contents of each, as well as whatever had stood on the desk-top, into... well, into something — black plastic-bag, say? And then disappeared into the night; in gloves, like as not, for Morse had learned that no extraneous prints had been discovered — only those left almost everywhere by the murdered tenant. The surfaces of the desk, the shelving, the furniture, the window — all had been dutifully daubed and dusted with fingerprint powder; but it seemed highly improbable that such a methodical murderer had left behind any easily legible signature.

No handbag, either; no documents of any sort; nothing.

Or was there?

Above the desk, hanging by a cord from the picture-rail, was a plywood board, some thirty inches square, on which ten items were fixed by multicoloured drawing-pins: five Medici reproductions of well-known paintings (including two Pre-Raphaelites); a manuscript facsimile of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”; a postcard showing the death-mask of Tutankhamen; a photograph of a kingfisher, a large fish balanced in its mouth, perched on a “No Fishing” sign; a printed invitation to a St. Hilda’s Old Girls’ evening in March 1993; and a leaflet announcing a crime short-story competition organized by Oxfordshire County Libraries: “First prize £1,000— Judges Julian Symons and H. R. F. Keating — Final date 10 April 1993.”

Huh! Still seven weeks to go. But there’d now be no entry from Sheila Poster, would there, Morse?

He methodically unpinned each of the cards and turned them over. Four were blank — obviously purchased for decorative purposes. But two had brief messages written on them. On the Egyptian card, in what Morse took to be a masculine hand, were the words: “Cairo’s bloody hot but wish you were here — B.” And on the back of Collins’s “Convent Thoughts,” in what Morse took to be a feminine hand: “On a weekend retreat! I knew I wouldn’t miss men. But I do!! Susan.”

On each side of the boarded-up fireplace were five bookshelves, their contents systematically stacked in order: Austen novels, top left, Wordsworth poems, bottom right. Housman’s Collected Poems suddenly caught Morse’s eye, and he extracted his old hero, the book falling open immediately at “Last Poems” XXVI, where a postcard (another one) had been inserted: the front showing a photograph of streets in San Jose (so it said) and, on the back, a couplet written out in black Biro:

And wide apart lie we, my love,

And seas between the twain.

(7.v.92)

Morse smiled to himself, for the poem from which the lines were taken had been part of his own mental furniture for many moons.

Yet so very soon the smile had become a frown. He’d seen that same handwriting only a few seconds since, surely? He unpinned the postcard from Cairo again; and, yes, the handwriting was more than a reasonable match.

So what?

So what, Morse? Yet for many seconds his eyes were as still as the eyes that stared from the mask of Tutankhamen.

Lewis came briskly into the room twenty minutes later, promptly reading from his note-book:

“Sheila Emily Poster; second-class honours degree in English from St. Hilda’s 1990; aged twenty-five — comes from Bristol; Dad died in ’eighty-four — Hodgkin’s disease; Mum in a special home there — Alzheimer’s; only child; worked for a while with the University Geology Department in the reference section; here in this property almost ten months — £490 a month; £207 in the Building Society; £69.40 in her current account at Lloyds.”

“You can get interest on current accounts these days, did you know that, Lewis?”

“Useful thing for you to know, sir.”

“You’ve been quick.”

“Easy! Bursar of St. Hilda’s, DSS, Lloyds Bank — no problems. Murder does help sometimes, doesn’t it?”

A sudden splash of rain hatched the front window and Morse stared out at the melancholy day:

“I know not if it rains,

my love,

In the land where you

do lie...”

“Pardon, sir?”

But Morse seemed not to hear. “There’s all this stuff here, Lewis...” Morse pointed vaguely to the piles of magazines lying around. “You’d better have a look through.”

“Can’t we get somebody else—”

“No!” thundered Morse. “I need help — your help, Lewis. For Chrissake get on with it!”

Far from any annoyance, Lewis felt a secret contentment. In only one respect was he unequivocally in a class of his own as a police officer, he knew that: for there was only one person with whom the curmudgeonly Morse could ever work with any kind of equanimity — and that was himself, Lewis.

He now settled therefore with his accustomed measure of commitment to the fourth-grade clerical chore of sorting through the piles of women’s magazines, fashion journals, brochures, circulars, and the like, that were stacked on the floor-space in the two alcoves of the living room.

He was still working when just over an hour later Morse returned from his lunchtime ration of calories, taken entirely in liquid form.

“Found anything?”

Lewis shook his head. “One or two amusing bits, though.”

“Well? Let’s share the joke. Life’s grim enough.”

Lewis looked back into one of the piles, found a copy of the Oxford Gazette (May 1992), and read from the back page.

Morse was unimpressed. “We’re all of us overqualified in Oxford.”

“Not all of us.”

“How long will you be?”

“Another half-hour or so.”

“I’ll leave you then.”

“What’ll you be doing, sir?”

“I’ll still be thinking. See you back at HQ.”

Morse walked out again, down Cowley Road to the Plain; over Magdalen Bridge, along the High, and then up Catte Street to the Broad; and was standing, undecided for a few seconds, in front of Blackwell’s book shop and the narrow frontage of the adjoining White Horse (“Open All Day”) — when the idea suddenly struck him.

He caught a taxi from St. Giles’ out to Kidlington. Not to Police HQ though, but to 45 Blenheim Close, the address given on the leaflet advertising the Oxfordshire short-story competition.

“You’re a bit premature, really,” suggested Rex De Lincto, the short, fat, balding, slightly deaf Chairman of the Oxford Book Association. “There’s still about a couple of months to go and we’ll only receive most of the entries in the last week or so.”

“You’ve had some already, though?”

“Nine.”

De Lincto walked over to a cabinet, took out a handwritten list of names, and passed it across.