The Dead of Jericho

'No, I haven't.'

'Do you remember where you were on the afternoon of the day she died?'

'Yes, I do. I read about her death in the Oxford Mail and-'

'Where were you, sir?'

'Look, Inspector, I don't want to tell you that. But, please believe me, if it really-'

'Another girl friend?'

'It could have been, couldn't it? But I'm-'

'You deny your car was parked in Jericho at the bottom of Victor Street that afternoon?'

'I certainly do!'

'And what if I told you I could prove that it was?'

'You'd be making one almighty mistake, Inspector.'

'Mm.' It was Morse's turn to hesitate now. 'Well, let's forget that for the minute, sir. But it's my official duty, I'm afraid, to ask you about er about this person you saw that afternoon. You see-'

'All right, Inspector. But you must promise me on your honour that this whole thing won't go an inch further if-'

'I promise that, sir.'

***

Morse rang the girl immediately, and she sounded a honey-although a progressively angrier honey. She was reluctant to answer any of Morse's questions for a start, but she slowly capitulated. Yes, if he must know, she'd been in bed with Charles Richards. How long for? Well, she'd tell him how long for. From about eleven thirty in the morning to after five in the afternoon. All the bloody time! So there! As he put down the phone Morse wondered what she was like, this girl. She sounded sensuous and passionate, and he thought perhaps that it might be in the long-term interests of justice as well as to his own short-term benefit if he kept a note of her address and telephone number. Yes. Mrs. Jennifer Hills who lived at Radley-just between Oxford and Abingdon: Jennifer Hills… yet another part of the new picture that was gradually forming in his mind. It was rather like the painting by numbers he'd seen in the toy shops: some areas were numbered for green, some for orange, some for blue, some for red, some for yellow-and, suddenly, there it was! The picture of something you'd little chance of guessing if you hadn't known: 'Sunset over Galway Bay', perhaps-or 'Donald Duck and Goofy'.

***

If Morse had but known it, Jennifer Hills was thinking along very similar lines. Her husband, Keith, a representative for the Gulf Petroleum Company, was still away in South Africa, and she herself, long-legged, lonely, randy and ready enough this featureless Saturday morning, had liked the sound of the chief inspector's voice. Sort of educated-but sort of close, too, and confidential-if only she could have explained it. Perhaps he might call and give her some 'inter-' something. Interrogation, that was it! And possibly some inter-something-else as well… How silly she'd been to get so cross with him! It was all Charles Richards' fault! She'd heard nothing from him since that exasperating phone call, and instinct told her to keep well away-at least for the time being. Yes… it might be nice, though, if the inspector called, and she found herself willing the phone to ring again. But it didn't.

Chapter Twenty

Certum est quia impossibile est.

– Tertullian, De Came Christi

'You were quite right, you know,' conceded Bell, when Morse looked into his office in the middle of that Saturday afternoon. 'Jackson had been bashed about the head quite a bit, it seems, but nothing all that serious. Certainly not serious enough to give him his ticket. The real trouble was the edge of that head-post on the bed-just like you said, Morse. Someone must have tried to shake his teeth out and cracked his skull against the upright.'

'You make it sound like a football match.'

'Boxing match, more like.'

'Blood all over the other fellow?'

'Pretty certainly, I'd think. Wouldn't you?'

Morse nodded. 'Accidental, perhaps?'

'Accidentally bloody deliberate, Morse-and don't you forget it.'

Morse nodded again. As soon as the surgeon had mentioned 'a squarish sharp-edged weapon', it had merely corroborated the suspicion he'd originally formed when he'd examined the bedpost, only about a foot from Jackson's head. To his naked eye, at the time, there had been nothing to confirm the suspicion, but he was as happy as the rest of them to rely upon the refinements of forensic tests. The weapon was settled then, and Morse felt he ought to put his colleague on the right lines about motive, too.

'Whoever killed him was pretty obviously looking for something, don't you think, Bell? And not just the address of some deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac, or the results of the latest pike-angling competition.'

'You think he found what he was looking for?'

'I dunno,' said Morse.

'Well, I'll tell you one thing. We've been over the house with a nit-comb, and-nothing! Nothing that's going to help us. Fishing tackle galore, tools, drills, saws-you name it, he's got it in the do-it-yourself line. So what, though? He goes fishing most days, and he does a few handyman jobs round the streets. Good luck to him!'

'Did you find a trowel?' asked Morse quietly.

'Trowel? What's that got to-'

'He mended the Scott woman's wall-did you know that?'

Bell looked up sharply. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And if I may say so, Morse. I'm beginning to wonder-'

'What about bird watching?'

'What the 'ell's-'

'There was a pair of binoculars in the bedroom, you knew that.'

'All right. He went fishing, and he occasionally had a look at the kingfishers.'

'Why keep 'em in the bedroom, though?'

'You tell me!'

'I reckon he used to have a look at the bird across the way every now and then.'

'You mean, he-'

'No curtains, were there?'

'The dirty little sod!'

'Come off it! I'd have done the same myself.'

'Funny, isn't it? The way you just happened to be in Jericho. Both times, too.'

'Coincidence. Life's full of coincidences.'

'Do you appreciate, Morse, what the statistical chances are of you-'

'Phooey! Let me tell you something, Bell. Statistically, a woman should have her first baby at the age of nineteen, did you know that? But she shouldn't really start copulating before the age of twenty-six!'

Bell let it go, and his shoulders sagged as he sat at his desk. 'It's going to be one helluva job getting to the bottom of this latest business, you know. Nothing to go on, really. No one saw anybody go into the house-no one! It's that bloody boatyard, you see. All of 'em there just get used to seeing people drifting in and out all the time. Augh! I don't know!'

'You interviewed the people who saw Jackson in the pub that night?'

'Most of 'em. The landlord sets his clock about five minutes fast, but you can take it from me that Jackson was there until about twenty past eight.'

Morse pursed his lips. Charles Richards certainly seemed to have provided himself with a krugerrand alibi, for he-Morse himself-had been sitting in the audience listening to the beggar, from about five past eight to way gone half past nine. It was absolutely and literally impossible for Richards to have murdered Jackson! Shouldn't he accept that indisputable fact? But Morse enjoyed standing face-to-face with the impossible, and his brain kept telling him he could-and must-begin to undermine that impregnable-looking alibi. It was the second telephone call that worried him: someone had been anxious for the police to have a very definite idea indeed of the time when Jackson had died-a time that put Charles Richards completely in the clear. And who was it who had made that call? It couldn't, quite definitely, have been Jackson this time. But, just a minute. Could it just conceivably have been Jackson? What if…?

Bell's thoughts had clearly been following along a parallel track. 'Who do you think phoned us about it, Morse? Do you think it was the same person who rang us about the Scott woman?'