Whatever the case, financial arrangements were made, and as far as we know faithfully met. After the murder of his wife, much money was diverted from the assets of Frank H. into other channels, although I’m still surprised to learn that there may well have been some serious misappropriation of funds at the Swiss Helvetia Bank.
All of which leaves one or two (or three!) points unresolved.
First, the burglar alarm. Now on his train trip from London Frank H. must have had thoughts galore. Several times he would have phoned home from the train, and Sarah must surely have been there to take the calls. And it was probably from the back of the taxi that Frank had the clever idea of ringing Sarah and telling her he would be ringing again, when the taxi was only half a minute or so from home, and asking her (Flynn wouldn’t have heard, would he?) to turn on the burglar alarm. It was a clever idea, let’s agree on that. It certainly and understandably caused huge confusion in the original police inquiry. The only person not wholly confused was Strange. It was he, from the word go, who suggested that the alarm might well have been set off deliberately by the murderer himself. (Never underrate that man, Lewis!)
The time, as Morse saw, was 3:40 A.M., almost exactly one hour after he’d started writing. He was feeling pleasantly tired, and he knew he would slip into sleep so easily now. Yet he wanted to go (as Flecker had said) “always that little further”; and perhaps more immediately to the point he wanted to pour himself a further Scotch — which he did before resuming.
There is one more thing to consider, and it is of vital importance, as well as being (almost!) the only thing about which I was less than honest with you. That is, the extraordinary relationship between a drink-doped, drug-doped juvenile lout and an insignificant-looking little schoolma’am: between Roy Holmes and Christine Coverley. Something must have happened, probably at school, which had forged a wholly improbable but strangely strong bond between them — including a sexual relationship (she confessed as much). That’s the reason she stayed on in Burford after the end of the summer term. Why is this important? Because we have been making one fundamental assumption in our inquiries which thus far has been completely unverified by any single independent witness. But truth will out! And first, and forthwith, we shall call in on Ms. Coverley for further questioning. How wise it was to hold our horses before facing Frank Harrison with a whole
(Here the narrative breaks off.)
Morse, who had been deeply asleep at his study desk, his head pillowed on folded arms, jerked awake just before 7:30 A.M., feeling wonderfully refreshed.
Life was a funny old business.
Chapter sixty-seven
To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice; and, whilst it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
The following morning Lewis was pleased with himself. Before Morse arrived, he’d turned to the Police Gazette’s “Puzzle Corner” and easily solved the challenge there:
“Initially—” that was the clue; and once you twigged it, the answer stared you in the face vertically.
Morse made an appearance at 9:10 A.M., looking (in Lewis’s view) a little fitter than of late.
“Want to test your brain, sir?”
“Certainly not!”
Lewis pushed the puzzle across the desk, and Morse considered it, though for no more than a few seconds:
“Do you know the answer?”
“Easy! ‘Initially,’ sir — that’s what you’ve got to think about. Just look at the first letters. Cyclist? Get it?”
“I thought the question was what would an intelligent cyclist’s thought be.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“Not difficult surely, Lewis? You’ve just got the answer wrong, that’s all. Any intelligent cyclist, any bright bus driver — anyone! — would think exactly the same thing immediately.”
“They would?”
“The question’s phony. Based on a false premise, isn’t it? Based on the assumption that the facts you’ve been given are true.”
“You mean they’re not?”
“Tosca? Written by Verdi?”
Oh dear! “You were quick to spot that.”
Morse grinned. “Not really. They often ask me to submit a little brainteaser to the Gazette.”
“You mean—?”
Morse nodded. “And talking of false premises, that’s been a big part of our trouble. We’ve both been trying to check up on such a lot of things, haven’t we? But there’s one thing we’ve been prepared to accept without one ha’poth of evidence. So we’ll get on to that without delay. Couple of cars we’ll need. I’ll just give Dixon a ring—”
Lewis got to his feet. “I can deal with all that, sir.”
“Si’ down, Lewis! I want to talk to you.”
Through the glass-paneled door Dixon finally saw the silhouette moving toward him: a woman in a wheelchair who brusquely informed him that she knew nothing of the whereabouts of her son. He had not been home the previous evening. He had a key. He was sometimes out all night, yes. No, she didn’t know where. And if it was of any interest to the police, she didn’t care — didn’t bloody well care.
There was no reply to PC Kershaw’s importunate ringing and knocking. But at last he was able to locate the mildly disgruntled middle-aged woman who looked after the two “lets”; and who accompanied him back to the ground-floor flat. She appeared to have little affection for either of the two lessees, although when she opened the door she must have felt a horrified shock of sympathy for one of them.
Christine Coverley lay supine on a sheepskin rug in front of an unlit electric fire. She was wearing a summery, sleeveless, salmon-pink dress, her arms very white, hands palm-upward, with each of her wrists slashed deeply and neatly across. A black-handled kitchen knife lay beside her left shoulder.
Young Kershaw was unused to such horrors; and over the next few days the visual image was to refigure repeatedly in his nightmares. Two patches on the rug were deeply steeped in blood; and Kershaw was reminded of the Welsh hill farm where he’d once stayed and where the backs of each of the owner’s sheep had been daubed with a dye of the deepest crimson.
No note was found by Kershaw; indeed no note was found by anyone afterward. It was as if Christine had left this world with a despair she’d found incommunicable to anyone: even to her parents; even to the uncouth lout who penetrated her so pleasurably now, though at first against her will; even to the rather nice police inspector who’d seemed to her to understand so much about her. Far too much... including (she’d known it!) the fact that she had lied. Roy could never have been cycling along Sheep Street when Barron fell to his death because at that very moment he had been in bed with her...
Chapter sixty-eight