The Dead of Jericho

'What the 'ell are you doing here, Morse?'

For the next hour the biggest difficulty was for the three policemen, the two fingerprint men, and the photographer to keep out of one another's way in the rooms of the tiny house. Indeed, when the humpbacked police surgeon arrived, he flatly refused to look at the corpse unless everyone else cleared out and went downstairs; and when he finally descended from his splendid isolation, his findings appeared to have done little to tone down his tetchiness.

'Between half-past seven and nine, at a guess,' he replied to Bell's inevitable question.

Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs.

'You still sex-mad, I see, Morse,' said the surgeon.

'I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max.' Morse turned over a page. 'And you don't improve much, either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.'

'When do you think he died?' From his tone the surgeon seemed far more at ease than at any time since he'd entered.

'Me? What's it matter what I think? But if you want me to try to be a fraction more precise than you, Max, I'd say-mm-I'd say between a quarter past seven and a quarter to eight.'

The surgeon allowed himself a lop-sided grin. 'Want a bet, Morse?'

'You can't loose with your bloody bets, can you? What's your bet? He died sometime tonight-is that it?'

'I think-think, mind you, Morse-that he might well have died a little later than you're suggesting; though why anyone should take an atom of notice of your ideas, God only knows. What really astounds me is that with your profound ignorance of pathology and its kindred sciences you have the effrontery to have any ideas at all.'

'What's your bet, Max?' asked Morse in the mildest tones.

The surgeon mused. 'Off the record, this is agreed? I'll say between er- No! You only allowed yourself half an hour, didn't you? So, I’ll do the same. I'll say between a quarter past eight and a quarter to nine. Exactly one hour later than you.'

'How much?'

'A tenner?'

The two men shook hands on it, and the surgeon left.

'Very interesting!' mumbled Bell, but Morse appeared to have resumed his reading. In fact, however, Morse's mind was peculiarly active as he turned the pages of the lurid and crudely explicit magazine. After all, he was at least contemplating one of the few clues furnished at the scene of the crime: mags (pornographic); mags (piscatorial); fingerprints (Jackson's); body (Jackson's)-and little else of much importance. A bare, stark murder. No obvious motive; no murder weapon; a crudely commonplace scene; well, that was what Bell would be thinking. With Morse it was quite different. He was confident he knew the solution even before the problem had been posed, and his cursory look round Jackson's bedroom had done little more than to corroborate his convictions: he knew the time of the murder, the weapon of the murder, the motive of the murder-even the name of the murderer. Poor old Bell!

Morse was still thinking, ten minutes later, that he had probably missed the boat in life and should have been a very highly paid and inordinately successful writer of really erotic pornography-when Walters came back into the room and reported to Bell.

Jackson, it appeared, had been seen around in Jericho that evening: at half-past five he had called in the corner grocery store for a small loaf of brown bread; at a quarter to seven he had gone across to Mrs. Purvis's to try to normalise the flushing functions of her recently installed water closet; at above five past eight-

'What!' cried Morse.

'-at about five past eight, Jackson went across to the Printer's Devil and bought a couple of pints of-'

'Nonsense.'

'But he did, sir! He was there. He played the fruit-machine for about ten minutes and finally left about twenty past eight.'

Morse's body sank limply into the uncomfortable armchair. Had he got it all wrong? All of it? For if Jackson was blowing the froth off his second pint and feeding l0p's into the slot after eight o'clock, then without the slimmest shadow of doubt it could assuredly not have been Charles Richards who murdered George Alfred Jackson, late resident of 10 Canal Reach, Jericho, Oxford.

'Better have that tenner ready, Morse!' said Bell.

Chapter Nineteen

Alibi: (L. 'alibi', elsewhere); the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.

– Oxford English Dictionary

In the current telephone directory, neither Richards (C.) nor Richards Publishing Company (or whatever) of Abingdon was listed, and Morse realised he would have saved himself the bother of looking if he had remembered Richards' recent arrival in Oxfordshire. But the supervisor of Telephone Enquiries was able, after finally convincing herself of Morse's bona fides, to give him two numbers: those of Richards, C., 261 Oxford Avenue, Abingdon, and of Richards Press, 14 White Swan Lane, Abingdon. Morse tried the latter first, and heard a recorded female voice inform him that in gratitude for his esteemed enquiry the answering machine was about to be activated. He tried the other number. Success.

'I was just on my way to the office, Inspector, but I don't suppose you've rung up about a printing contract, have you?'

'No, sir. I just wondered if you'd heard about the trouble in Jericho last night.'

'Trouble? You don't mean my vast audience rioted after my little talk?'

'A man was murdered in Jericho last night.'

'Yes?' (Had Charles Richards' tone inserted the question-mark? The line was very crackly.)

'Pardon?'

'I didn't say anything, Inspector.'

'His name was Jackson-George Jackson, and I think you may have known him, sir.'

'I'm afraid you're mistaken, Inspector. I don't know any Jackson in Jericho. In fact, I don't think I know anyone in Jericho.'

'You used to, though.'

'Pardon, Inspector?' (Surely the line wasn't all that bad?)

'You knew Anne Scott-you told me so.'

'What's that got to do with this?'

'Jackson lived in the house immediately opposite her.'

'Really?'

'You didn't know where she lived?'

'No, I didn't. You tell me she lived in Jericho but-well, to be truthful, I thought Jericho was somewhere near Jerusalem until…' Charles Richards hesitated.

'Until what?'

'Until I heard of Anne's-suicide.'

'You were, shall we say, pretty friendly with her once?'

'Yes, I was.'

'Too friendly, perhaps?'

'Yes, you could say that,' said Richards quietly.

'You never visited her in Jericho?'

'No, I did not!'

'But she got in touch with you?'

'She wrote-yes. She wrote on behalf of the Book Association, asking me if I'd talk about-well, you know that. I said I would-that's all.'

'She must have known you were coming to Abingdon.'

'We're beating about the bush, aren't we, Inspector? Look, I was very much in love with her once, and we-we nearly went off together, if you must know. But it didn't work out like that. Anne left the company-and then things settled down a bit.'

'A bit.'

'We wrote to each other.'

'Not purely casual, chatty letters, though?'

Again Richards hesitated and Morse heard the intake of breath at the other end. 'I loved the girl, Inspector.'

'And she loved you in return.'

'For a long time, yes.'

'You've no idea why she killed herself?'