Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

“No.”

“So please tell me what you are saying! What’s all this about murder?”

“You wished to murder your husband, Mrs. Sherwood. You poisoned the insulin capsule. That’s what I’m saying.”

She turned to stare out of the window again.

“And if I did?” she asked finally.

“I don’t know,” replied Morse simply. “But I believe you intended to poison your husband. You’d lived with him for twenty-odd years and you knew him to be an extremely meticulous and methodical man. You knew perfectly well that in Oxford, just as here at home, he’d almost certainly be taking his insulin at six o’clock that evening. And the reason you rang him up just before six o’clock was to make sure he didn’t inject himself from the capsule you’d poisoned. Please tell me if I’m wrong, Mrs. Sherwood! But I think that in spite of all that had happened, in spite of all his infidelities, you didn’t hate him quite enough to go through with your plan. In the last analysis, you wanted him to stay alive. Perhaps you even hoped he’d come to love you once again.”

She nodded weakly, and spoke in a sing-song voice as if the events she now described were distanced and unreal.

“Five to six, it was when I rang. The line was engaged at first and I began to panic. But then I did get through. It was just like when I was a girl; when I used to play little games with myself. I just asked him if he was going to sleep with her that night... I wanted to shock him, you see... And if he said ‘no,’ I was going to tell him about the insulin.”

She stopped.

“And if he said ‘yes’?”

“It never got that far. I just — I just heard a great crash.”

“Don’t you think you may have murdered him just as surely as if you’d poisoned him yourself?”

She shook her head, more in bewilderment, it seemed, than in denial. “What will happen to me?”

“I just don’t know,” said Morse.

At the front door, she laid a hand lightly on his arm, and lowered her eyes.

“It was very kind of you — what you did.”

“But you won’t tell me who this other woman is?”

“No.”

Once the Jaguar had disappeared from view, Mrs. Sherwood moved back inside the house, a semi-smile upon her lips.

Too clever for his own good, that man! She’d played it mostly by ear, of course. But how easy he’d made it for her! With him pointing out the escape route she’d so desperately been seeking after his mention of the Sodium Fluoroacetate; him suggesting the blessedly mitigating circumstance that it was she, Pamela Sherwood, who had rung her husband; she who had tried not to cause , but to prevent her husband’s death. Why he’d even told her the time of that telephone call — a call she’d never made, of course.

Oh, she’d willingly enough have faced the consequences of poisoning her husband, because above all things in life she’d wanted him dead. But now? If by some happy chance she were to be seen as guilty only of causing him a heart attack — well, she’d settle for that all right. Why not? He was dead, that was the main thing. And that Jane bloody Ballantyre — pox-ridden strumpet! — would have to seek some other demerara daddy now.

“You were kind, you know,” said Lewis as he drove the Jaguar out of Leominster Drive.

“How come?”

“Well, the photo—”

“ ‘Stupid,’ do you mean?”

“—and the rail tickets.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do. You probably know you haven’t got a reputation for being too generous with money—”

“No?”

“—but I reckon underneath you’re a bit of an old softie, really. I mean, forking out of your own pocket for those tickets...”

Morse opened his mouth as if to reply; but decided against it. He would (he promised himself) inform Lewis about the expenses claim he had already submitted for £26 — but not for the time being.

“Where to now, sir?”

“We’re going to try to trace Peter Sherwood’s mistress.”

“But — but haven’t we cleared things up?”

“What? You didn’t believe all that stuff we got from Mrs. Sherwood, did you?”

“You mean — you mean you didn’t?”

“Lewis! Lewis! Why do you think she refused to tell us anything about her husband’s latest conquest?”

Lewis had no idea, and mercifully Morse continued.

“Because our dusky maiden is the only one who knows the truth in this case. And Mrs. Sherwood doesn’t want us to know the truth, does she?”

“Perhaps not,” mumbled Lewis, uncomprehendingly.

“So you ask me where were going? Well, it’s a longish shot, but not a hopeless one. The initials on the back of the photo were ‘JB’; she looked deeply tanned—”

“Perhaps she’s just back from a topless two weeks in Torremolinos.”

“You know, Lewis, you don’t often come out with such a splendid sentence as that.”

Lewis felt better. “You mean she might belong to a local health centre?”

“Lying on a sun-bed, yes. And if Mrs. Sherwood was able to find out a few things about her—”

“—she might not live a million miles from Leominster Drive.”

“Exactly so.”

“Sounds like my sort of job, sir.”

“Just what I was thinking, Lewis. So, if you’ll just drop me off at the nearest pub?”

Late that same afternoon, in a luxury flat rather less than a mile from the Sherwood residence, a dark-haired, totally and fatally attractive young woman, wearing thinly rimmed, schoolma’amish spectacles, was still in an agitated frame of mind.

For she knew that she had killed her lover.

Had it been foolish to ring the manager of The Randolph? Certainly the questions he’d asked were disturbingly shrewd; yet her conscience had compelled her to do something. Yes, even she had a conscience...

It had been five minutes to six when she’d finally managed to park the car — up in Norham Gardens, rather further out than she’d anticipated. But at least a telephone booth had stood near by, and (as arranged) she’d dialled the hotel and been put through without delay. And virtually verbatim could she recall that brief — that fatal — conversation:

“Peter?”

“Jane!”

“Everything OK?”

“Will be once you get here. Room 231.”

“Is it nice?”

“Lovely double bed!”

“I can hardly wait.”

“I’ll leave the door ajar.”

“Peter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m wanting you like crazy.”

“Jane! Please don’t say things like that!”

“Why on earth not?”

“You make me — you make me so excited—”

That was when she’d heard a great crash, although the terrible truth had not immediately dawned upon her consciousness...

Who the two men were she now saw walking up to the block of flats, she hadn’t the faintest notion. But they looked a well enough heeled pair, and the posh car parked at the kerbside hardly suggested a couple of double-glazing double-dealers. And when she answered the door-bell (yes, they had called to see her) she acknowledged to herself that she could really rather fancy one of the two men, the one whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey. For in spite of her anxieties, she was already casting round (as Mrs. Sherwood had suspected) for some replacement demerara daddy.

“Jane Ballantyre?”

She smiled invitingly. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

“You know, I rather think you can,” said the man whose hair looked somewhat prematurely grey.