'We'd have run the risk of letting the big fish get away, sir, and that was the second reason for my going that day. I had to lay the bait to get Charles Richards back in England, and so I told Conrad that we had to have a statement from him and that it was going to be Sergeant Lewis who would take it down. You see, Lewis knew the real Conrad Richards: he'd taken his fingerprints. And so any statement would have to be made by the genuine Charles Richards; and to do that he'd have to get back from Spain fairly quickly. As, in fact, he did, sir.'
'And he walked into our men at Gatwick-and then you walked into him at St. Aldates.'
'Yes. Once I'd mentioned that we needed to take his prints again and that Sergeant Lewis was going to try to do a better job this time, he realised the game was finally up. Lewis had never taken his prints at all, you see-and, well, Charles could see no point in pretending any longer. I offered him a cigarette-and that was that!'
'How kind of you, Morse! I suppose, by the way, the prints were Charles Richards'?'
'Er, well, as a matter of fact they weren't, sir. I'm afraid I must have been just a little careless er myself when I examined the head-board and-'
The ACC got to his feet and his face showed pained incredulity. 'Don't-don't tell me they were-'
Morse nodded guiltily. 'I'm afraid so-yes, sir: they were mine.'
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale
– A. E. Housman, Last Poems
Apart from a few small details the case of the Jericho killings was solved, but Morse knew as he sat in his office the following morning that it wasn't yet quite the time to pack away the two box files on the shelves of the Record Office. There were two things really that still nagged at his brain. The first was the realisation that his Sophoclean hypothesis about Anne Scott's suicide had been largely undermined by Lewis's patient inquiries… (Where was Lewis, by the way? Not like Lewis to be late…) The second thing was that the letter Charles Richards had written to Anne Scott had still not been found. Was that important, though? Beyond much doubt it had led directly to Anne's death, but it wasn't difficult to guess at its contents: not difficult to reconstruct the events of that morning when Anne had received one letter from the clinic saying, yes, she was pregnant, and another from Charles Richards saying, no, he wasn't going to see her again.
Morse nodded to himself: it had been the post that morning that had been the final catalyst-not the previous night's talk at the bridge club of birthdays and adoptions. But why should Anne have been up so early that morning? Usually, as he'd learned, she would stay in bed until about lunchtime on a Wednesday, after getting to bed so very late after bridge. And, then again, why had she cancelled her lesson with Edward Murdoch? Had Anne Scott really had a morbid sense of the gods' ill-favour as they played their sport with men and women? If not, what had she done when she got home early that morning? What if-? Ye-es. He'd been assuming that she'd stayed awake that terrible night largely because the bed had not been slept in. Or so it had appeared. But surely she could have gone to bed? Gone to sleep, got up early, made the bed, and then… But why had she got up so early that morning?
Morse shook his head. It wasn't quite adding up, he knew that, and he needed to talk to Lewis. (Where the hell was Lewis?) Morse reached for another cigarette and his mind wandered back to the night when he had met Anne… the night when but for some miserable ill-luck that had taken him away… when Lewis had come in and dragged him off…
'Morning, sir!' Lewis looked as bright and cheerful as the golden sunlight outside. 'Sorry to be a bit late, but-'
'Bit late? You're bloody late!' Morse's face was sour.
'But you said-'
'Got your car here?'
'Outside.' Lewis permitted himself a gentle smile and said no more.
'I want to take a last little look at Jericho, Lewis. There's that bloody letter from Richards for a start. Bell's lot looked for it; you looked for it; Richards himself looked for it-and nobody can find it, right? So it's about time I had a look for it! You all swear it's not there, but the trouble is you've probably all been looking in the wrong place. I'm not saying I know where the right place is, but I’ll be surprised if I don't do a bit better than the rest of you. Can't do worse, can I? You need a bit of imagination in these things, Lewis…'
'As you wish, sir.'
Morse was unusually talkative as they drove down the Woodstock Road and turned down the one-way Observatory Street towards Jericho. 'Beautiful morning, Lewis! Almost makes you feel glad to be alive.'
'I'm always glad to be alive.'
'Really?' Morse vaguely looked along the stuccoed fronts of the terraced houses and then, as Lewis waited to turn into Walton Street, he suddenly caught sight of the Jericho Tackle Shop, and a beautiful new idea jumped across the threshold of his mind.
'Jackson was buying his new rod from there, wasn't he?' Morse asked casually.
'That's right.'
Lewis parked the police car by the bollards at Canal Reach. 'Which key do you want first, sir?'
'Perhaps we shan't need either of them.'
The two men walked up the narrow little street, where Morse led the way through to the boatyard before turning right and climbing over the fence into the back garden which the late George Jackson had fitfully tended. The shed door was still secured only by the rickety latch that Morse had opened once before, and now again he looked inside and surveyed the vast assortment of Jackson's fishing tackle.
'Is that the new rod?' he asked.
'Looks like it, sir.'
Morse carefully disconnected the jointed sections and examined them. 'You see, Lewis? They're hollow inside. Just the place to hide a letter, wouldn't you say? Just roll the letter up into a cylinder and then…' Morse was busily peering and feeling inside the sections, but for the moment, as Lewis stood idly by, he could find nothing.
'It's here, Lewis! It's here somewhere. I know it is.'
But a quarter of an hour later he had still found nothing. And however Morse twisted and pulled and cursed the collection of rods, it soon became clear that no letter was concealed in any of them.
'You've not been much bloody help!' he said finally.
'Never mind, sir-it was a good idea,' said Lewis cheerfully. 'Why don't we nip over the way and have a noggin? What do you say?'
Morse looked at his sergeant in a peculiar way. 'You feeling all right, Lewis?'
'Well, we've solved another case, haven't we? It’ll be a little celebration, sort of thing.'
'I don't like these loose ends, though.'
'Forget it, sir!' Lewis led the way through the back yard and out once more into Canal Reach, where Morse stopped and looked up at the bedroom window of number 9. Still no curtains.
'I wonder…' said Morse slowly.
'Pardon, sir?'
'You got the key, you say?' Lewis fiddled in his pocket and found it. 'I was just wondering,' said Morse, 'if she had an alarm clock in her bedroom. Can you remember?'
'Not off hand, sir. Let's go and have a look.'
Morse opened the door and suddenly stopped. Déjà vu. There, on the inside door-mat, was another brown envelope, and he picked it up and looked at it: 'Southern Gas Board' was printed along the bottom of the cover.
'Just nip upstairs then, Lewis, and bring the alarm clock down-if there is one.' When Lewis had left him, Morse put his hand inside his breast pocket and pulled out the envelope he had previously found-and until this moment forgotten about. Slitting open the top in a ragged tear he took out a single typed sheet of paper: