For someone who knew almost nothing about some things, Thomas Biffen seemed to know an awful lot about others.
“Where does he live?” asked Morse.
It was Bert’s son, a man already in his late fifties, who showed Morse up the narrow steepish steps to the bedroom where Bert himself lay, propped up against pillows, the backs of his hands, purple-veined and deeply foxed, resting on the top of the sheet.
“Missing the cribbage, I bet!” volunteered Morse.
The old face, yellowish and gaunt, lit up a little. “Alf’ll be glad of a rest. Hah!” He chuckled deeply in his throat. “Lost these last five times, he has.” “You’re a bit under the weather, they tell me.”
“Still got me wits about me though. More’n Alf has sometimes.”
“Still got a good memory, you mean?”
“Allus had a good memory since I were at school.”
“Mind if I ask you a few things? About the village? You know... gossip, scandal... that sort of thing? I had a few words with Alf, but I reckon his memory’s not as sharp as yours.”
“Never was, was it? Just you fire away, Inspector. Pleasure!”
Lewis, who had been left in the car, leaned across and opened the passenger door.
“Another member of the local football team?”
Morse smiled sadly and shook his head. “I think he’s in for a transfer.”
“What exactly did he—?”
“Get me home, Lewis.”
On the speedy journey back to Oxford, the pair spoke only once, and then in a fairly brief exchange:
“Listen, Lewis! We know exactly where Frank Harrison is; who’s with him; how long he’s booked in at his hotel; when his return flight is. So. I want you to make sure he’s met at Heathrow.”
“If he comes back.”
“He’ll be back. I want you to meet him. Charge him with anything you like, complicity in the murder of his missus; complicity in the murder of Barron — please yourself. Anything! But bring him back to me, all right? I’ve seldom looked forward—”
Morse suddenly rubbed his chest vigorously.
“You OK, sir?”
Morse made no reply immediately. But after a few miles had perked up considerably.
“Just drop me at the Woodstock Arms!”
“Do you think—?”
“And present my apologies to Mrs. Lewis. As per usual.”
Lewis nodded as he turned right at the Woodstock Road roundabout.
As per usual.
In Paris, in the Ritz, later that same evening — a good deal later — Maxine Ridgway was finding it difficult to finish the lobster dish and almost impossible to drink another mouthful of the expensive white wine that looked to her exactly the color and gravity of urine. She was tired; she was more than a little tipsy; she was slightly less than breathlessly eager for another bout of sexual frolicking on their king-size bed. And Frank, too (she’d sensed it all evening), had been strangely reticent and surprisingly sober.
She braved the exchange: “You’re not quite your usual self tonight, Frank.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s that business at Heathrow, isn’t it?”
Frank leaned across the table and placed his right hand on her arm. “I’ll be OK soon, sweetheart. Don’t worry! And I ought to tell you something: you’re looking absolutely gorgeous!”
“You think so?”
“Why do you reckon all the waiters keep making detours round our table?”
“Tell me!”
“To have a look down the front of your dress.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“You hadn’t noticed?”
“Frank! It’s been a long day — and I’m just so tired... so tired.”
“Not too tired, I hope? Nicht zu müder?”
“No, darling.”
“You don’t want a sweet? A coffee?”
“No.”
“Well, you go up. I’ll be with you soon. I’ve just got a couple of private phone calls to make. And I want to think for a little while — on my own, if you don’t mind? And make sure you put that see-through thing on, all right? The one that’ll send the garçon ga-ga when he brings our breakfast in the morning.”
“You’ve arranged that?”
Frank Harrison nodded; and watched the backs of her legs as she left the table.
Yes, he’d arranged for breakfast in their room.
He’d arranged everything.
Almost.
Chapter seventy-three
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain...
Slowly Morse walked homeward from the Woodstock Arms, disappointed (as we have seen) if not wholly surprised, that the favorite in the Harrison Stakes had fallen (like Devon Loch) within sight of the winning post. But now, at last (or so he told himself), Morse guessed the whole truth. And feeling pleasingly over-beered, he had earlier taken the unusual step of ordering a bar snack and had enjoyed his liberally horse-radished beef sandwiches. He thought he would probably sleep well enough that night. After a while. Not just for a minute though. Truth was that he felt eager to continue (to finish off?) the notes he’d already been making on the Harrison murder, just in case something happened; just in case no one would be aware of the sweetly logical solution that had formulated itself in his mind that day.
Much earlier (Morse knew it) he should have paid far more attention to the thing that had puzzled him most about the Harrison murder: motive. Until now, Simon had fitted that bill pretty well, since Morse was sure that the mother-son relationship had been very close; much too close. Good thinking, that! Then, that very afternoon, a busty lusty lass sitting with Simon in the three-and-sixpennies had innocently scuppered his carefully considered scheme of things.
Once home, Morse poured himself a modestly liberal measure of Glenfiddich, and changed into a gaudily striped pair of pajamas that blossomed in white and purple and red... before continuing, indeed completing, his written record.
This evening in Lower Swinstead I spoke at quite some length with Mr. Bert Bagshaw. Why did I not follow my first instincts? Had I done so, I would have realized that any clues to that (most elusive) motivation for the murder of Yvonne Harrison would ever be likely to lie in the immediate locality itself, rather than in some external rape or alien burglary. Hardy’s yokels usually knew all about the goings-on in the Wessex villages; and their role is paralleled today by the likes of the Alfs and the Berts in the Cotswold public houses. Although I now know who murdered Yvonne Harrison, it will not be easy to prove the guilt of the accused party. I am reminded of the Greek philosopher Protagoras, who found it difficult to be dogmatic about the existence of the gods, partly because of the obscurity of the subject matter, and partly because of the brevity of human life.
But herewith I give my final thoughts on the murder of Yvonne Harrison, that crisply uniformed nurse who looked after me in hospital once (but once!) with such tempting, loving care...
He finished writing an hour later at 12:45 A.M.
Or perhaps, to be accurate, he wrote no more thereafter.
At which hour Lewis was somewhat uneasily asleep, not at all sure in his mind whether things were going well or going ill. Morse had insisted that it should be he, Lewis, who would be on hand when Frank Harrison and his lady passed through Arrivals at Heathrow. No problem there though. Still thirty-six hours to go before the scheduled British Airways flight was due to land, and Morse had been adamant that Harrison would be on that flight, and not flitting off to Katmandu or the Cayman Islands. Yet one thing was ever troublously disturbing Lewis’s thoughts: the real nature of the puzzling and secret relationship that had clearly existed between Morse and Yvonne Harrison.