He’d done enough. Almost enough. Just the police now. He had to ring the police, immediately; and suddenly he realized he couldn’t ring them — he’d just made sure of that himself. But there was his mobile, the mobile on which he’d already rung Sarah several times from the train and once from Flynn’s taxi. He could always lose it though: and the longer he waited to ring for help, the better the chances for that confusion he’d tried so hard to effect. In detective stories he’d often read of the difficulties pathologists encountered in establishing the time parameters for any murder. Yes! He’d just go up to the main road and walk (run!) the half-mile or so to the next house. Which indeed he was doing when he heard the voice at the gate that led to the drive. He remembered Flynn’s words exactly:
“I t’ink you moight be needin’ a little help, sorr?”...
epilogue
Certainly the gods are ironicaclass="underline" they always punish one for one’s virtues rather than for one’s sins.
“Didn’t you want any food?”
“No thank you, sir. I’ve got a meal waiting at home.”
“Ah yes. Of course.”
“And I didn’t particularly want to watch Dixon eating doughnuts.”
“No, I understand.” Strange lowered himself rather gingerly on to the inappropriately small chair opposite. “Talking of eating, Lewis, what the hell’s eating you, pray?”
As he’d requested (and as we have seen) Lewis had nothing further to do with the Harrison case. He had tried, and with some considerable success, to distance himself from the whole affair, even from thinking about it. There was just that one persistent, niggling worry that tugged away at his mind like some overindulged infant tugging away at its mother’s skirts in a supermarket: the knowledge that Morse, on his own admission, and for the first time in their collaboration, had acted dishonestly and dishonorably.
He looked up at Strange.
“What makes you think something’s eating me?”
“Come on, Lewis! I wasn’t born yesterday.”
So Lewis told him.
Told him of the unease he’d felt from the beginning of the case: that Morse had known far too little about it, and then again far too much; that Morse had originally voiced such vehement opposition to taking on the case, and yet had spent the last days of his life doing little else than trying to fathom its complexity.
“And that’s all that’s been bothering you?”
“All?”
“Look! Tell me! What’s the very worst thing you think he could have done? There’s this attractive nurse pulling him through a serious illness in hospital — a place where patients can get a bit low, and a bit vulnerable. Nurses, too, for that matter. And she fell for him a bit—”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me so. She told me one night in hospital when she was looking after me! Morse fell for her a bit, too — anybody would! — and after he’s discharged he writes and asks her why she’s not been in touch with him. But she doesn’t write back, although she keeps his letter. Know why, Lewis? Because she doesn’t really know how to cope with being in love herself.”
“How do you know that?”
“Does it matter? When she was murdered — well, you know the rest. Morse was on another case at the time — you were on it with him, for God’s sake! And he said it was too much for the pair of you to take on another.”
“Only after he’d found his own letter.”
“Lewis!”
“Only after he’d recognized the handcuffs.”
“Lewis! Listen! Nothing Morse did then — nothing — affected that inquiry in the slightest way. Yvonne had kept some letters from her men friends, the kinkies and the straights alike. She certainly didn’t keep any from Barron. Maybe because he never wrote any, I dunno. Maybe because she just didn’t want to.”
“Just the ones from her favorite clients.”
“You know that. You’ve seen them.”
“Some of them,” said Lewis slowly.
“Well I saw all the bloody letters!”
“Including the one from Morse.”
“Not a crime you know, writing a letter. It was immaterial anyway, as I keep trying to tell you.” Strange looked exasperated. “It’s just that it would have been awkward, wouldn’t it? Bloody awkward! I wanted to protect the silly sod. You never thought he was a saint, did you?”
Lewis was silent for a while. No. He’d never thought of Morse as a possible candidate for sanctification.
But there was something wrong about what he’d just heard.
“So you saw the letter before Morse saw it, is that what you’re saying?”
“Morse never saw the letter, not till you showed him that page of it. You see, Lewis, I took it — not Morse.”
“And you didn’t check—”
“Couldn’t have done, could I? It was a longish letter. But I didn’t read it, so I wouldn’t have spotted if there was any gap.”
“So it was you who kept some of the evidence separate?”
“Afraid so, yes. I was scared stiff one of my letters might be there, if you want the truth. And as things turned out it just became impossible for me to put that stuff back in the folder while the original inquiry was still going on.”
“So you got a new box-file when the case was reopened...”
Strange nodded. “Always felt guilty about it but—”
“Why didn’t Morse spot the page you’d missed?”
“Perhaps he didn’t look all that carefully. Not his way usually, was it? Perhaps he wasn’t too interested in the literary shortcomings of her other admirers. Not very fond of spelling mistakes, now was he...? or perhaps he just felt the letters were too private, like he’d hoped his own letter would be. How do I know? What I do know is that he wasn’t looking for a list of lovers who might have been in bed with Yvonne that night. Somehow he was convinced he knew who the man was. He told me who it was; and he told you who it was. And he was right.”
Lewis nodded.
But the supermarket brat was giving a final tug.
“Plenty of letters and none of them any help, I agree, sir. But just the one pair of handcuffs! And Morse realized there’d be no problem in tracing them, so he destroyed the issue list. And we both know why, don’t we, sir? Because they were his.”
“Come off it, Lewis! There’s a hundred and one worse things in life than him giving some bloody cuffs he’d never used once in his life to some woman who’d asked him for them — whatever the reason.”
Slowly shaking his head, Lewis stared down at the canteen carpet disconsolately.
“It’s just that he seems not quite the man...”
“And you can’t forgive him for that.”
“Course I can forgive him! Just a bit of a jolt, that’s all. Can’t you understand that? After all those years we were together?”
“That’s what’s really eating you, isn’t it? Be honest! It’s just that you don’t think as much of old Morse as you used to.”
“Not quite as much, no.”
Strange struggled to his feet. “Must be off. Good to talk. I’d better get back downstairs.”