THE SECOND MILE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Morse, having been put on the right track by the wrong clues, now finds his judgement almost wholly vindicated.
Morse opened the door of his office a few minutes after eight to find Lewis reading the Daily Mirror.
‘You seem very anxious to further our inquiries this morning, Lewis.’
Lewis folded up the newspaper. ‘I’m afraid you’ve made a bad mistake, sir.’
‘You mean you are busy on the case?’
‘Not only that, sir. As I say, you’ve made a bad mistake.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘I was trying to do the coffee-break crossword and there was a clue there that just said “Carthorse (anagram)”-’ ‘ “Orchestra”,’ interrupted Morse. ‘I know that, sir. But “Simon Rowbotham” is not an anagram of “O.M.A. Browne-Smith”!’
‘Of course it is!’ Morse immediately wrote down the letters, was checking them off one by one when suddenly he stopped. ‘My God! You’re right. There’s an “o” instead of an “e” isn’t there?’
‘It was only by chance I checked it when I was-’
But Morse wasn’t listening. Was he wrong, after all his mighty thoughts and bold deductions? Was Lewis right-with his simple minded assertion that the case was becoming quite unnecessarily complicated? He shook his head in some dismay. Perhaps (he clutched at straws), perhaps if he himself had made a mistake over an anagram, so might Browne-Smith have done in concocting a completely bogus name? But he couldn’t convince even himself for a second, and the truth was that he felt lost.
At eight-thirty the phone rang, an excited voice announcing itself as Constable Dickson.
‘I’ve just been reading last week’s Oxford Times, sir.’
‘Not on duty, I hope.’
‘I’m off duty, sir. I’m at home.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve found him!’
‘Found who?’
‘Simon Rowbotham. I was reading the angling page-and his name’s there. He came second in a fishing match out at King’s Weir last Sunday.’
‘Oh.’
‘He lives in Botley, so it says.’
‘I don’t give a sod if he lives in Bootle.’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Thanks for letting me know, anyway.’
‘Remember what you said about those doughnuts, sir?’
‘No, I forget,’ said Morse, and put the receiver down.
‘Shall I go out and see him?’ asked Lewis quietly.
‘What the hell good would that do?’ snapped Morse, thereafter lapsing into sullen silence.
Since it was marked “Strictly Private and Confidential”, the Registry had not opened the bulky white envelope, and it was lying there on Morse’s blue blotting-pad when later the two men returned from coffee. Inside the envelope was a further sealed envelope (addressed, like the outer cover, to Chief Inspector E. Morse), and a covering letter from the Manager of the High Street branch of Barclays Bank, dated 26th July. It read as follows:
Dear Sir,
We received the sealed envelope enclosed on Monday, 21st July, with instructions that it be posted to you personally on Saturday, 26th July. We trust you agree that we have discharged our obligation.
Yours faithfully…
Morse handed the note over to Lewis. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘Seems a lot of palaver to me, sir. Why not just post it straight to you?’
‘I dunno,’ said Morse. ‘Let’s hope it’s full of fivers.’
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
‘Interesting,’ said Morse, apparently unhearing. ‘If this letter reached the bank on Monday, the 21st, it was probably written on Sunday, the 20th-and Max says that’s the likeliest day that someone put the corpse in the canal.’
‘But it’s probably nothing to do with the case.’
‘Well, we’ll soon know.’ Morse slit the envelope and began reading and apart from a solitary “My God!” (after the first few lines of the typewritten script) he read in utter silence, as totally engrossed, it seemed, as a dedicated pornophilist in a sex shop.
When he had finished the long letter, he wore that look of almost sickening self-satisfaction frequently found on the face of any man whose judgement has been called into question, but thereafter proved correct.
Lewis took the letter now, immediately turning to the last page. There’s no signature, sir.’
‘Read it-just read it, Lewis,’ said Morse blandly, as he reached for the phone and dialled the number of the bank.
‘Manager please’
‘He’s rather tied up at the minute. Could you-’
‘Constable of Oxfordshire here, lad. Just tell him to get to the phone please.’ (Lewis had by now read the first page of the letter.)
‘Can I help you?’ asked the manager.
‘I want to know whether Dr Browne-Smith-Dr O. M. A. Browne-Smith-of Lonsdale College is one of your clients.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘We received a letter from you today, sir, and it’s my duty to] ask you if it was Dr Browne-Smith himself who asked you to forward it to us.’
‘Ah, the letter, yes. I hoped the Post Office wouldn’t keep yon waiting too long.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, sir.’
‘No, I haven’t. And I can’t, I’m afraid.’
‘I think you can, sir, and I think you will-because we’re caught up in a case of murder.’
‘Murder? You’re not-you’re not saying Dr Browne-Smith’s been murdered, surely?’
‘No, I didn’t say that.’
‘Could you tell me exactly who it is that’s been murdered?’
Morse hesitated-for too long. ‘No, I can’t, not just for the present. Inquiries are still at a very – er – delicate stage, and that’s why we’ve got to expect the co-operation of everyone concerned-people like yourself, sir.’
The manager was also hesitant. ‘It’s very difficult for me. You see, it involves the whole question of the confidentiality of the bank.’
Morse sounded surprisingly mild and accommodating. ‘I understand, sir. Let’s leave it, shall we, for the present? But if it becomes an absolutely vital piece of information, we shall naturally have to come and question you.’
‘Yes, I see that. But I shall have to take the matter up with the bank’s legal advisers, of course.’
‘Very sensible, sir. And thank you for your co-operation.’
Lewis, who had been half-reading the letter (with continued amazement) and also half-listening to this strange telephone conversation, now looked up to see Morse smiling serenely and waiting patiently for him to finish.
When he had done so, but before he had the chance to pass any comment, Morse asked him to give Barclays another ring. and tell them he was Chief Inspector Morse, and to find out whether they had a second client on their books: a Mr George Westerby, of Lonsdale.
The answer was quick and unequivocaclass="underline" yes, they had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We have an exact transcript of the long letter, which was without salutation or subscription, studied by Chief Inspector Morse and by Sergeant Lewis, in the mid-morning of Monday, 28th July.
‘Perhaps it is not too much to expect that you have made the necessary investigations? It would scarcely need an intellect as (potentially) powerful as your own accurately to have traced the sequence of events thus far. After all, you had my suit, did you not? That, most surely, should have led your assistants to my (agreed, rather limited) wardrobe at Lonsdale, where (I assume) the waist-band inches and the inside-leg measurements have already been minutely matched. But let us agree: the body was not mine. I did try, perhaps amateurishly, to make you think it was; yet I had little doubt that you would quickly piece together a reasonably coherent letter, the torn half of which I left in the back pocket of the trousers. You might therefore have had the reasonable suspicion that the corpse was me – but not for long, if I assess you right.