The Dead of Jericho

'The Martyrs' Memorial, actually.'

'You-you're not going to deny any of this?'

'No point, is there? It's all true-apart from the fact that I've got a folding bike of my own.'

'Ah well! Even the best of us make little mistakes here and there.'

'Big ones, too, Inspector-like the one I suspect you're about to make. But go on!'

'The plan had worked well, and you decided to repeat it. Charles had agreed to speak to the Oxford Book Association and he took you with him that Friday night. He probably dropped you somewhere near St. Barnabas' Church and arranged to pick you up at about a quarter to ten or so.'

Richards shook his head in quiet remonstration. 'Look, Inspector. If you really-'

'Just a minute! Hear me out! I don't think you meant to murder Jackson. The idea was that you-'

'I can't listen to this! You listen to me a minute! You may be right-you probably are-in saying that Charles meant to go and see Jackson. Knowing Charles as I do, I don't think he could have let a thing like that go. He'd like as not have gone to see Jackson and scared the living daylights out of him-because you mustn't underestimate my brother, Inspector: he's as tough and unscrupulous as they come-believe me! But don't you understand? Something put a whacking great full stop to any ideas that Charles may have had. And you know perfectly well what that something was: Jackson was murdered. And that, from our point of view, was that! We just felt-well, we needn't worry about him any more.'

'So you didn't go to Jackson's house that night?'

'I certainly did not.'

'Where were you that night, sir?' (Had the 'sir' crept in from conditioned reflex? Or was Morse feeling slightly less sure of himself?)

'I don't know,' replied Richards in a hopeless voice. 'I just don't know, Inspector. I don't go out much. I'm not a womaniser like Charles, and if I do go out it's usually only to the local.'

'But you didn't go to the local that night?'

'I may have done, but I can't remember; and it's no good saying I can. If I had gone, it would only have been for an hour or so, though.'

'Perhaps you stayed at home and watched the telly?'

'I haven't got a telly. If I was home that night I'd have been reading, I should think.'

'Anything interesting?'

'I've been reading Gibbon recently-and reading him with infinite pleasure, if I may say so-'

'Which volume are you up to?'

'Just past Alaric and the sacking of Rome. Volume Four.'

'Don't you mean Volume Three?'

'Depends which edition you're reading.'

Morse let it go. 'What was the real reason for your visit to Jackson's house that night?'

Richards smiled patiently. 'You must have a pretty poor opinion of my intelligence, Inspector.'

'Certainly not! Any man who reads Gibbon has got my vote from the start. But I still think no one actually intended murdering Jackson, you see. I think he was after something else.'

'Such as?'

'I think it was a letter-a letter that Jackson had found when he pushed his way through into Anne Scott's kitchen that morning. At first I thought it must have been a letter she'd written for the police-a suicide note-telling the whole story and perhaps telling it a bit too nastily from your brother's point of view. But now I don't think so, somehow. I think the letter Jackson found had probably been received through the post that very morning-a letter from your brother telling Anne Scott that he couldn't and wouldn't help her, and that everything between them was over.'

'Have you got the letter?' asked Richards quietly.

'No,' said Morse slowly. 'No-we haven't.'

'Aren't you going to have to do a bit better than this, Inspector?'

'Well, your brother was looking for something in that shed at the bottom of Jackson's garden. Or was that you, sir?'

'In a shed?'

Morse ignored the apparent incredulity in Richards' voice and continued. 'That letter would have been a bad thing for your brother, sir. It could have broken up his marriage if-'

'But Celia knew about Anne Scott.'

'Only very recently, I think.'

'Yes, that's true.'

'Do you love your sister-in-law?'

Richards looked down sadly at the concrete floor and nodded. 'I shall always love her, I suppose.'

Morse nodded, too, as if he also was not unacquainted with the agonies of unrequited love.

'Where does this leave us, Inspector?'

'Where we started, I'm afraid, sir. You've been charged with the murder of Jackson, and that charge still stands. So we'd better get back to thinking about where you were on the night when-'

Richards got up from the bed, a new note of exasperation in his voice. 'I've told you-I don't know. If you like, I'll try-I'll try like hell-to get hold of somebody who may have seen me. But there are millions of people who couldn't prove where they were that night!'

'That's true.'

'Well, why pick on me? What possible evidence-?'

'Ah!' said Morse. 'I wondered when you were going to ask me about the evidence. You can't honestly think we'd have you brought here just because no one saw you reading Gibbon that night? Give us a little credit!'

Richards looked puzzled. 'You've got some evidence? Against me?'

'Well, we're not absolutely sure, but-yes, we've got some evidence. You see there were several fingerprints in Jackson's bedroom, and as you know I asked my sergeant to take yours.'

'But he did! And I'll tell you one thing, Inspector, my prints could quite definitely not have matched up with anything there, because I've never been in the bloody house-never!'

'I think you've missed my point, sir. We didn't really get a chance of matching up your prints at all. I know it's our fault-but you must forgive Sergeant Lewis. You see, he's not very well up in that sort of thing and-well, to be truthful, sir-he mucked things up a bit. But he's a good man, and he's willing to have another go. It's important, don't you think, to give a man a second chance? In fact he's waiting outside now.'

Richards sat down on the bed again, his head between his hands. For several minutes he said nothing, and Morse looked down at a man who now seemed utterly weary and defeated.

'Cigarette?' said Morse.

Richards took one, and inhaled the smoke like a dying man gasping at oxygen.

'When did you find out?' he asked very quietly.

'Find out that you weren't Conrad Richards, you mean? Well, let me see now…' Morse himself inhaled deeply on his own cigarette; and as he briefly told of his discoveries, the same wan and wistful half-smile returned to the face of the man who sat on the edge of the narrow bed.

It was the face of Charles Richards.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Fingerprints are left at the scenes of crime often enough to put over 10,000 individual prints in the FBI files. Even the craftiest of perpetrators sometimes forget to wipe up everywhere.

– Murder Ink

'When did you find out, Morse?' asked the ACC that afternoon.

'Looking back on it, sir, I think the first inkling should have come when I went to the Book Association and learned that it had been Anne Scott who had suggested to the committee that Charles Richards should be invited along to talk about the small publishing business. Such a meeting would attract a few people, the committee felt, especially some of the young students from the Polytechnic who might be thinking of starting up for themselves. But "small" is the operative word, sir. In a limited and very specialised field the Richards brothers had managed to run a thriving little concern. But who had heard of them? Who-except for Anne Scott-knew them? Virtually no one in Oxford, that's for certain-just as virtually no one would recognise the managing directors even of your big national publishers. And, remember, the Richards brothers had only just moved into Oxfordshire a few months earlier-half a dozen miles outside Oxford itself-and the chances that anyone would recognise either of them in a small meeting were very slim indeed. The only person who would have known them both was dead: Anne Scott. So they laid their plan-and decided to follow the same routine as the one which had proved so successful earlier in the week, when it was Conrad Richards who drove the Rolls to Oxford and Charles Richards who followed Jackson to Canal Reach.'