“Because I’m like the case, Lewis. I’m old and tired myself.”
The ringing of the telephone on Morse’s desk cut across the tetchy stichomythia.
“Morse?”
“Sir?”
“You ready?”
“Half-past nine, you said.”
“So what?”
“It’s only—”
“So what?”
“Shall I bring Sergeant Lewis along?”
“Please yourself.”
The phone was dead.
“That was Strange.”
“I could hear.”
“I’d like you to come along. All right with you?”
Lewis nodded. “I’m a man under authority too.”
“Lew-is! Quote it accurately: ‘a man set under authority.’”
“Sorry!”
But Morse was continuing with the text, as if the well-remembered words brought some momentary respite to his peevishness: “ ‘Having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go and he goeth; and to another, Come and he cometh’.”
“Lewis cometh,” said Lewis quietly.
Chapter fifteen
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
“C’m in! C’m in!”
It was 8:45 A.M.
“Ah! Morse. Lewis.”
Perhaps, in all good faith, Strange had intended to sound brisk rather than brusque; yet, judging from Morse’s silence as he sat down, the Chief Superintendent had not effected a particularly good start. He contrived to beam expansively at his two subordinates, and especially at Morse.
“What does ‘The Ringer’ mean to you?”
“Story by Edgar Wallace. I read it in my youth.”
Morse had spoken in clipped, formal tones; and Lewis, with a millimeter rise of the eyebrows, glanced quickly at his impassive face.
Something was wrong.
“What about you, Sergeant? You ever read Edgar Wallace?”
“Me?” Lewis grinned weakly. “No, sir. I was a Beano-boy myself.”
“Anything else, Morse?”
“A campanologist?”
“Could be.”
Morse sat silently on.
“Anything else?”
“It’s a horse that’s raced under the name of a different horse — a practice, so they tell me, occasionally employed by unscrupulous owners.”
“How does it work?”
Morse shook his head. “I’ve seldom donated any money to the bookmakers.”
“Or anyone else for that matter.”
Morse sat silently on.
“Anything else?”
“I can think of nothing else.”
“Well, let me tell you something. In Oz, it’s what you call the quickest fellow in a sheep-shearing competition. What about that?”
“Useful thing to know, sir.”
“What about a ‘dead ringer’?”
“Somebody almost identical with somebody else.”
“Good! You’re coming on nicely, Morse.”
“No, I’m not. I’ve stopped.”
Strange shook his massive head and smiled bleakly. “You’re an odd sod. You never seem to see anything that’s staring you in the face. You have to look round half a dozen corners first, when all you’ve really got to do is to look straight up the bloody street in front of you!”
Lewis, as he sat beside his chief, knew that such a criticism was marginally undeserved, and he would have wished to set the record aright. But he didn’t, or couldn’t. As for Morse, he seemed quietly unconcerned about the situation: in fact (or was Lewis misunderstanding things?) even a little pleased.
“What about this, then?” Suddenly, confidently, Strange thrust the letter across the desk; and after what seemed to both the other men an unnecessarily prolonged perusal, the slow-reading Morse handed it back. Without comment.
“Well?”
“‘The Ringer’, you mean? You think it’s the fellow who decided to ring you—”
“Ring me twice!”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Where do you think it was posted?”
“Dunno. You’ll have to show me the envelope.”
“Guess!”
“You’re expecting me to say Lower Swinstead.”
“No. Just waiting for your answer.”
“Lower Swinstead.”
“Explain that, then!” Strange produced a white envelope on which, above the lurid red capitals, the pewter-gold first-class stamp was canceled with a circular franking:
“All right,” conceded Morse. “I’ll try another guess. What about Oxford?”
“Hm! What about the writing on the envelope?”
“Probably an A-level examiner using up one of his red pens. His scripts were sending him bananas and he happened to see your invitation in one of the newspapers. He just wondered why it was only the candidates who were allowed to make things up, so he decided to have a go for himself. He’s a nutter, sir. A harmless nutter. We always get them — you know that.”
“Oh, thank you, Morse!”
“No fingerprints, sir?” asked Lewis diffidently.
“Ah, no. No fingerprints. Good question, though!”
“Best forget it, then,” counseled Morse.
“Rea-lly?” Strange allowed the disyllable to linger ominously. “When I was a lad, Morse, I once wrote off an entry for a Walt Disney competition and I drew a picture of Mickey Mouse on the front of the envelope.”
“Did you win?”
“No, I didn’t. But let me just tell you one thing, matey: I’d like to bet you that somebody noticed it! That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“You’ve lost me, sir.”
Strange leaned back expansively. “When I asked Sergeant Dixon where he thought the letter was posted, he agreed with you: Lower Swinstead. And when I showed him the postmark he said it might still have been posted there, because he knew that some of the letters from that part of the Cotswolds were brought to Oxford for franking. So he went out and did a bit of legwork, and he traced the fellow who did the collections last week; and the postman remembered the envelope! There’d only been three letters that day in the box, and he’d noticed one of ‘em in particular. Not surprising, eh? So Dixon decided to test things, just for his own satisfaction. He addressed an envelope to himself and posted it at Lower Swinstead.”
Strange now produced a white unopened envelope and passed it across the desk. It was addressed in red Biro to Sergeant Dixon at Police HQ Kidlington, the pewter-gold first-class stamp canceled with the same circular franking:
Strange paused for effect. “Perhaps you ought to start eating doughnuts, Morse.”
“They won’t let me have any sugar these days, sir.”
“There’s no sugar in beer, you’re saying?”
Lewis was expecting some semiflippant, semiprepared answer from his chief — something about balancing his intake of alcohol with his intake of insulin. But Morse said nothing, just sat there staring at the intricate design upon the carpet.
“One of these days, perhaps,” persisted Strange quietly, “you might revise your opinion of Dixon.”
“Why not put him in charge of the case? If you’re still determined—”
“Steady on, Morse! That’s enough of that. Just remember who you’re talking to. And I’ll tell you exactly why I’m not putting that idiot Dixon in charge. Because I’ve already put somebody else in charge — you and Lewis! Remember?”
“Lewis maybe, sir, but I can’t do it.”
Feeling most uncomfortable during these exchanges, Lewis watched the color rise in Strange’s cheeks as several times his mouth opened and closed like that of a stranded goldfish.