“Of course!”
“I never seem to be able to put the clues together myself, sir.”
“Clues? What clues, Lewis? I didn’t know we had any.”
“Well, those shoes, for example. How do they fit in?”
“Who said they fitted in anywhere? It’s just that I used to know an auburn-haired beauty who had six — six, Lewis! — pairs of bright green shoes. They suited her, she said.”
“So... they’ve got nothing to do with the case at all?”
“Not so far as I know,” muttered Morse.
The next morning a white envelope was delivered to Lewis’s office, though no one at reception could recall when or whence it had arrived. Lewis immediately rang Morse to congratulate him on the happy outcome of the case.
“There’s just one thing, sir. I’d kept that scrappy bit of paper with the serial numbers on it, and these are brand-new notes all right — but they’re not the same ones!”
“Really?” Morse sounded supremely unconcerned.
“You’re not worried about it?”
“Good Lord, no! You just get that money back to ginger-knob at the George, and tell her to settle for a jumbo-cheque next time! Oh, and one other thing, Lewis. I’m on leave. So no interruptions from anybody — understand?”
“Yes, sir. And, er... Happy Christmas, sir!”
“And to you, old friend!” replied Morse quietly.
The bank manager rang just before lunch that same day. “It’s about the four hundred pounds you withdrew yesterday, Inspector. I did promise to ring about any further bank charges—”
“I explained to the girl,” protested Morse. “I needed the money quickly.”
“Oh, it’s perfectly all right. But you did say you’d call in this morning to transfer—”
“Tomorrow! I’m up a ladder with a paint brush at the moment.”
Morse put down the receiver and again sank back in the armchair with the crossword. But his mind was far away, and some of the words he himself had spoken kept echoing around his brain: something about one’s better self... And he smiled, for he knew that this would be a Christmas he might enjoy almost as much as the children up at Littlemore, perhaps. He had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all?
Evans tries an o-level
The unexamined life is not worth living.
(Plato)
Dramatis Personae
The Secretary of the Examinations Board
The Governor of HM Prison, Oxford
James Evans, a prisoner
Mr. Jackson, a prison officer
Mr. Stephens, a prison officer
The Reverend S. McLeery, an invigilator
Detective Superintendent Carter
Detective Chief Inspector Bell
It was in early March when the Secretary of the Examinations Board received the call from Oxford Prison.
“It’s a slightly unusual request, Governor, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to help. Just the one fellow, you say?”
“That’s it. Chap called Evans. Started night classes in O-level German last September. Says he’s dead keen to get some sort of academic qualification.”
“Is he any good?”
“He was the only one in the class, so you can say he’s had individual tuition all the time, really. Would have cost him a packet if he’d been outside.”
“We-ell, let’s give him a chance, shall we?”
“That’s jolly kind of you. What exactly’s the procedure now?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll be sending you all the forms and stuff. What’s his name, you say? Evans?”
“James Roderick Evans.” It sounded rather grand.
“Just one thing, Governor. He’s not a violent: sort of fellow, is he? I don’t want to know his criminal record or anything like that, but—”
“No. There’s no record of violence. Quite a pleasant sort of chap, they tell me. Bit of a card, really. One of the stars at the Christmas concert. Imitations, you know the sort of thing: Mike Yarwood stuff. No, he’s just a congenital kleptomaniac, that’s all.” The Governor was tempted to add something else, but he thought better of it. He’d look after that particular side of things himself.
“Presumably,” said the Secretary, “you can arrange a room where—”
“No problem. He’s in a cell on his own. If you’ve no objections, he can sit the exam in there.”
“That’s fine.”
“And we could easily get one of the parsons from St. Mary Mags to invigilate, if that’s—”
“Fine, yes. They seem to have a helluva lot of parsons there, don’t they?” The two men chuckled good-naturedly, and the Secretary had a final thought. “At least there’s one thing. You shouldn’t have much trouble keeping him incommunicado, should you?”
The Governor chuckled politely once more, reiterated his thanks, and slowly cradled the phone.
Evans!
“Evans the Break” as the prison officers called him. Three times he’d escaped from prison, and but for the recent wave of unrest in the maximum-security establishments up north, he wouldn’t now be gracing the Governor’s premises in Oxford; and the Governor was going to make absolutely certain that he wouldn’t be disgracing them. Not that Evans was a real burden: just a persistent, nagging presence. He’d be all right in Oxford, though: the Governor would see to that — would see to it person ally. And besides, there was just a possibility that Evans was genuinely interested in O-level German. Just a slight possibility. Just a very slight possibility.
At 8:30 P.M. on Monday 7 June, Evans’s German teacher shook him by the hand in the heavily guarded Recreational Block, just across from D Wing.
“Guten Glück, Herr Evans.”
“Pardon?”
“I said, ‘Good luck.’ Good luck for tomorrow.”
“Oh. Thanks, er, I mean, er, Danke schön.”
“You haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of getting through, of course, but—”
“I may surprise everybody,” said Evans.
At 8:30 the following morning, Evans had a visitor. Two visitors, in fact. He tucked his grubby string-vest into his equally grubby trousers, and stood up from his bunk, smiling cheerfully. “Mornin’, Mr. Jackson. This is indeed an honour.”
Jackson was the senior prison officer on D Wing, and he and Evans had already become warm enemies. At Jackson’s side stood Officer Stephens, a burly, surly-looking man, only recently recruited to the profession.
Jackson nodded curtly. “And how’s our little Einstein this morning, then?”
“Wasn’t ’e a mathematician, Mr. Jackson?”
“He was a bloody Kraut,” snapped Jackson. Evans’s quiet voice always riled him, and Evans’s present insight into his own vast ignorance riled him even more.
“I think ’e was a Jew, Mr. Jackson.”
“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck what he was, you scruffy sod.”
“Scruffy” was, perhaps, the right word. Evans’s face was unshaven, and he wore a filthy-looking red-and-white bobble hat upon his head. “Give me a chance, Mr. Jackson. I was just goin’ to shave when you bust in.”
“Which reminds me.” Jackson turned his eyes on Stephens. “Make sure you take his razor out of the cell when he’s finished scraping that ugly mug of his. Clear? One of these days he’ll do us all a favour and cut his bloody throat.”
For a few seconds Evans looked thoughtfully at the man standing ramrod straight in front of him, a string of Second World War medals proudly paraded over his left breast-pocket. “Mr. Jackson? Was it you who took me nail-scissors away?” Evans had always worried about his hands.