'Mm.' The monosyllable sounded sceptical.
'How else, sir?'
'I dunno,' said Morse. It might have happened the way Lewis had suggested, but he doubted it. From the look of the dead Jackson's face, it seemed quite clear that someone had definitely meant business: something more than mere gentle persuasion followed by an accidental bang against a bedpost. The man had been clouted and punched about the head by someone made of much sterner stuff than Conrad Richards, surely, for (from the little Morse had learned of him) Conrad was considered by all to be one of the mildest and most amenable of men. Everyone, as Morse supposed, was just about capable of murder, but why should Conrad be put forward as the likeliest perpetrator of such uncharacteristic malice? He ought to see Conrad, though: ought to have seen him that afternoon instead of-
'Turn the car round!'
'Pardon, sir?'
'We're going back there-and put your foot down!'
But Conrad Richards was no longer in his upper-storey office. According to the young receptionist, he had brought two suitcases with him that morning, and he had gone off in a taxi about ten minutes ago. He had mentioned something about a business trip, but had given no indication of where he was going or when he would be returning.
Morse was angry with himself and his displeasure was taken out on the receptionist, she appearing to be the only other person on the premises. After impressively invoking the awful majesty of the law, and magisterially demanding whatever keys were available, he stood with Lewis in Charles Richards' office and looked around: bills in the in-trays, ash in the ash-trays, and the same serried ranks of box files on the shelves he had seen before. It seemed a daunting prospect, and leaving Lewis to 'get on with it' he himself climbed the stairs to Conrad Richards' office.
One way and another, however, it wasn't to be Morse's day. In the (unlocked) drawers of Conrad's desk he found nothing that could raise a twitch from a hyper-suspicious eyebrow: invoices, statements, contracts, costings-it all seemed so futile and tedious. The man had hidden nothing; and might that not be because he had nothing to hide? There were box files galore here, too, but Morse sat back in Conrad's chair and gave up the unequal struggle. On the walls of the office were two pictures only: one a coloured reproduction of a delicate wall-painting from Pompeii; the other a large black-and-white aerial photograph of the medieval walled city of Carcassone. And what the hell were they supposed to tell him?
It was Lewis who found it-underneath a sheaf of papers in the bottom (locked) drawer of Charles Richards' desk; and as he climbed the stairs he sought to mask the beam of triumph on his face. Putting his nose round the door, he saw Morse seated at the desk, scowling fecklessly around him. 'Any luck, sir?'
'Er, not for the minute, no. What about you?'
Lewis entered the office and sat down opposite his chief. 'Almost all of it business stuff, sir. But I did find this.'
Morse took the folded letter and began to read:
Dear Mister Richards Its about Missis Scott who died, I now all about you and her but does Missis Richards…
As they walked out of the office below, Morse spoke to the receptionist once more.
'You weren't here when I called on Tuesday, were you?'
'Pardon, sir?' The young girl seemed very flustered and a red flush spread round her throat.
'You took the day off, didn't you? Why was that?'
'Mr. Richards told me I needn't-'
'Which Mr. Richards was that?'
'Mr. Charles, sir. He said-'
But Morse dismissed her explanation with a curt wave of his hand, and walked down to the street.
'Bit short with her, weren't you, sir?'
'They're all a load of liars, Lewis! Her, too, I shouldn't wonder. Let's get back!'
Morse said nothing on the return drive. The letter that Lewis had found lay on his lap the whole time, and occasionally he looked down to read it yet again. It perplexed him sorely, and by the time the police car pulled into the HQ yard at Kidlington, whatever look of irritation had earlier marked his face had changed to one of utter puzzlement.
'D'you know, Lewis,' he said as they walked into the building together, 'I'm beginning to think we're on the wrong track completely!'
'Pardon, sir?'
'Is everybody going bloody deaf all of a sudden?'
Lewis said no more, and the two men called into the canteen for a cup of tea.
'I'll just be off and see about these prints, sir. Keep your fingers crossed for me. What's the betting?'
'I thought you weren't a gambling man, Lewis? And if you were, I shouldn't put more than a coupla bob on it.'
Lewis shrugged his shoulders, and left his chief staring glumly down at the muddy-brown tea-as yet untouched. He'd frequently seen Morse in this sort of mood, and it worried him no more. Just because one of the chief's fanciful notions took a hefty knock now and then! A bit of bread-and-butter investigation was worth a good deal more than some of that top-of-the-head stuff, and the truth was that they'd found-he'd found!-the blackmail letter. Morse might be a brilliant fellow but… Well, it hardly called for much brilliance, this case, did it? With the prints confirmed, everything would be all tied up, and Lewis was already thinking of a nationwide alert at the airports, because Conrad Richards couldn't have got very far yet, surely. Luton? Heathrow? Gatwick? Wherever it was, there'd be plenty of time.
Half an hour later Lewis was to discover that between the excellent facsimiles of the fingerprints lifted from Jackson's bedroom and those taken only that afternoon from Conrad Richards, there was not a single line or whorl of correspondence anywhere.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.
– Genesis, xxv, 28
Edward Murdoch felt ill-tempered and sweaty as he cycled homewards late that Wednesday afternoon. Much against his will, he had been roped into making up the number for his house rugby team, and his own ineffectualness and incompetence had been at least partly to blame for their narrow defeat. He was almost always free on Wednesday afternoons, and here was one afternoon he could have used profitably to get on with those two essays to be handed in the next morning. The traffic in Summertown was its usual bloody self, too, with cars seeking to pull into the precious parking bays, their nearside blinkers flashing as they waited for other cars to back out. Twice he had to swerve dangerously as motorists, seemingly oblivious to the rights of any cyclist, cut over in front of him. It was always the same, of course; but today everything seemed to be going wrong, and he felt increasingly irritated. He came to the conclusion that his biorhythms were heterodyning. The two words were very new to him, and he rather liked them both. He was getting hungry, too, and he just hoped that his mother had got something decent in the oven-for a change! The last ten days or so, meals had been pretty skimpy: it had been mince, stew, and baked beans in a dreary cyclical trio, and he longed for roast potatoes and thinly sliced beef. Not, he knew, that he ought to blame his mother too much-considering all that she'd been going through. Yet somehow his own selfish interests seemed almost invariably to triumph over his daily resolutions to try to help, even fractionally, during these tragic and traumatic days in the life of the Murdoch family.
He pushed his bike roughly into the garden shed, ignored the tin of nails which spilt on to the floor as his handlebars knocked it over, unfastened his briefcase from the rack over the back wheel, and slammed the shed door noisily to.