The dead of Jericho (22 page)

'Rewiring, eh? I wonder how much Jackson knocked her back for that? My place needs doing and someone told me it'll cost about ?250.'

'Well, it's quite a big job, you know.'

'?250 isn't really a lot these days, though, is it?' said Morse slowly.

'Not enough to keep Jackson quiet, you mean?'

'I keep telling you, Lewis — Jackson didn't write the letter!'

'Who do you think did, then?'

Morse tilted his head slightly and opened the palms of his hands. 'I dunno, except that he — or she — is well enough educated to know how to
pretend
to be uneducated, if you see what I mean. That letter would have been just the sort
I'd
have written, Lewis, if someone had asked me to try to write a semi-literate letter.'

'But you're a
very
well educated man, sir!'

'Certainly so — and don't you forget it! And whilst we're on this education business, I just wonder, Lewis, exactly where Mrs Purvis went to school when she was a girl.'

It seemed to Lewis the oddest question that had so far posed itself to his unpredictable chief, and the reason for it was still puzzling him as he brought the police car to a halt in front of the bollards that guarded Canal Reach.

Morse had known — even before he'd noticed the rows of paperback Catherine Cooksons and Georgette Heyers along the two shelves in the little sitting room.

'His name's Graymalkin,' Mrs Purvis had replied, looking down lovingly at the grey-haired Persian that wove its feline figures-of-eight round her legs. 'It's from
Macbeth,
Inspector — by William Shakespeare, you know.'

‘Oh yes?’

Lewis listened patiently whilst Mrs Purvis was duly cosseted and encouraged, and it was a relief when Morse finally brought forward the heavier artillery.

'You know, you're making me forget what we called for, Mrs Purvis. It's about Mr Jackson, of course, and there are just a few little points to clear up — you know how it is? We're trying to find out a little bit more about the sort of odd jobs he was doing — just to check up on the sort of income he had. By the way, he was doing some work for you, wasn't he?'

'He'd finished. Rewiring the house, it was. He wasn't the
neatest
sort of man, but he always did a good job.'

'He'd finished, you say?'

'Yes — when would it be now?'

'And you'd squared up with him?'

Mrs Purvis leaned down to stroke Graymalkin, and Lewis thought that her eyes were suddenly evasive. 'I squared up with him, yes, before...'

'Mind telling me how much he charged?’

'Well, he wasn't a
professional,
you know.’

'How much, Mrs Purvis?'

'?75.' (Why, wondered Lewis, did she make it sound like a guilty admission?)

'Very reasonable,' said Morse.

Mrs Purvis was stroking the Persian again. 'Quite reasonable, yes.'

'Did he often do jobs for you?'

'Not really. One or two little things. He fixed up the lavatory— '

'Did you ever do any little jobs for
him
?’

Mrs Purvis looked up with startled eyes. 'I don't quite see— '

'Mr Jackson couldn't write very well, could he?'

'Write? I — I don't know really. Of course he hadn't had much education, I knew that, but— '

'You never wrote a letter for him?'

'No, Inspector, I didn't.'

'Not a single letter?'

'Never once in my life! I swear that on the Holy Bible.'

'There's nothing wrong in writing a letter for a neighbour, is there?'

'No, of course there isn't. It's just that I thought— '

'Did you ever
read
a letter for him, though?'

The effect of the question on the poor woman was instantaneous and devastating. The muscles round her mouth were quivering now as two or three times she opened her lips to speak. But no words came out.

'It's all right,' said Morse gently. 'I know all about it, you see, but I'd like to hear it from you, Mrs Purvis.'

The truth came out then, reluctantly confessed but perfectly clear. The bill for rewiring the tiny property had been ?100, but Jackson had been willing to reduce it by ?25 if she was prepared to help him. All she'd got to do was to read a letter to him — and then to say nothing about it to anyone. That was all. And, of course, it was only after beginning to read it to him that she'd realized it must have been a letter that Ms Scott had left on the kitchen table when she'd hanged herself. There had been four sheets of writing, she recalled that quite clearly, although Jackson had taken the letter from her after she'd read only about half of it. It was a sort of love letter, really (said Mrs Purvis), but she couldn't remember much of the detail. It said that this man she was writing to was the only one she'd ever really loved and that whatever happened she wanted him to know that; and never to blame himself in any way. She said it was all her fault — not his, and...

But Mrs Purvis could remember no more.

Morse had listened without interruption as the frightened woman exhausted her recollections, 'You didn't do anything else for him — anything else at all?'

'No, honestly I didn't. That was all. I swear on the— '

'You didn't even try to find a telephone number for him?' Morse had spoken evenly and calmly, but Mrs Purvis broke down completely now. Between sobs Morse learned that she
hadn't
looked up a telephone number, but that Jackson had asked her how to get through to directory enquiries, and that she'd told him. It was only later, really, that she'd begun to realize what Mr Jackson might be up to.

'You're not very well off, are you, my love?' said Morse gently, laying a comforting hand on the woman's shoulder. 'I can understand what you did, and we're going to forget all about it — aren't we, Lewis?'

Rather startled at being brought so late into the action, Lewis swallowed hard and made an indeterminate grunt that sounded vaguely corroborative.

'It's just that if you can remember anything — anything at all — about this man Ms Scott was writing to — well, we'd be able to tie the whole thing up, wouldn't we?'

Mrs Purvis nodded helplessly. 'Yes, I see that, but I can't— '

'Do you remember where he lived?'

'I'm sorry, but I didn't see the envelope.'

'Name? There must have been a name somewhere, surely? She must have written "Dear Somebody", or ‘My dear Somebody", or something? Please try to remember!'

'Oh dear!'

'It wasn't "Charles", was it?'

The light of redemption now beamed in Mrs Purvis's eyes, as though her certain remembrance of things past had atoned at last for her earlier sins. ' "My dearest Charles",' she said, slowly and quietly. 'That's what it was, Inspector: that's how she started the letter!'

Graymalkin's eyes watched the two detectives as they left — eyes that stared after them with indifferent intelligence: neither hostility against the intruders, nor compassion for the mistress. Now left in peace, the cat curled up on the armchair beside the fire, resting its head on its paws and closing its large, all-seeing eyes. It had been another interlude — no more.

That same evening Morse drove up to the J.R.2 in Headington, and spoke with the sister in the Intensive Care Unit. Silent-footed, they walked to the bed where Michael Murdoch lay asleep.

'I can't let you wake
him
,' whispered the sister.

Morse nodded and looked down at the boy, his head turbaned in layers of white bandaging. Picking up the chart from the foot of the bed, Morse nodded his ignorant head as his eyes followed the mountain-peaks of pulse-rate and temperature. The top of the chart read
Murdoch, Michael; date of birth: the second of Octo —
But Morse's eyes travelled no further, and his mind was many miles away.

The clues were almost all assembled now, although it was not until four hours and a bottle of Teacher's later that Morse finally solved the first of the two problems that the case of the Jericho killings had presented to him. To be more precise, it was at five minutes past midnight that he discovered the name of the man who had killed Ms Anne Scott.

Detective Constable Walters had experienced little glamour since his appearance on the stage in the first act of the Jericho killings, and his latest assignment, a hefty burglary in North Oxford, had made no great demands on his ratiocinative skills. An upper window had been left open, and the burglars (two of them, perhaps) had helped themselves to the pickings whilst the owners were celebrating their silver wedding at the Randolph. The only fingerprints that might have been left had disappeared with the articles stolen, a list of which Walters had painstakingly made late the previous evening. No clues at all really, except that one of the intruders had urinated over the lounge carpet — an attendant circumstance which had elicited little enthusiasm when reported to the path boys. In fact, even the suggestion that there were two of them had been entertained only because one of the neighbours thought she may have seen a couple of suspicious youngsters walking up and down the road the day before. No, it was going to be one of those unsolved crimes — until perhaps the culprits were caught red-handed, asking for umpteen other offences to be taken into consideration. It was, therefore, a pleasurable relief for Walters when Lewis walked in on Friday morning.

'You want to see the new super, Sarge?'

'No. Actually, it's Constable Walters I'm after.'

'Your chief a bit sore about the promotion?'

'Sore? Morse? He looked like he'd won the pools when I last saw him.'

'Can we help you?'

'Morse says you looked into Ms Scott's early marriage, and found where her husband had been living before he was killed.'

'That's right.'

'You — spoke to the landlady?'

Walters nodded.

'Tell me all about it,' said Lewis.

'Important, is it?’

'So Morse says.'

By the end of the morning, after a visit to the landlady, after inspecting the medical records in the Radcliffe Infirmary's Accident Department, and after matching his findings with the road accident records in the archives at Police HQ, Lewis knew it all. Yet he felt oddly frustrated about his three hours' research, for Morse — who would never stoop to such fourth-grade clerical stuff himself — had already told him what he'd find: that the other driver involved in the fatal accident with Anne Scott's former husband had been
Michael Murdoch.

Back in Morse's office, Lewis began to recount his morning's findings, but his reception was surprisingly cool.

'Cut out the weasel words, Lewis! It was just as I said, wasn't it?'

'Just as you said, sir,' replied Lewis mildly.

'And why didn't that incompetent Walters take the trouble to put the landlady's address in his report?'

'I didn't ask him. He probably didn't think it was important.'

‘Didn’t
think
? What the hell's he got to think
with
?’

‘He’s only a young fellow—'

'And doubtless
you,
Lewis, with your vast experience, wouldn't have thought it very important either?'

'No, I don't think I would, sir,' replied Lewis, marvelling at his own intrepidity. 'And I know how much you value my own idea of what's important and what isn't.'

'I see.' But there was an icy note in Morse's reply that suddenly alerted Lewis to an imminent gale, force ten.

'I'd always thought, Lewis, that the job of a detective, however feebleminded he may be, was to produce a faithful and accurate report on whatever facts he'd been able to establish — however insignificant those facts might appear.' The voice was monotonous, didactic, with the slow, refined articulation of a schoolmaster explaining the school rules to a particularly stupid boy. 'You see, it's often the small, seemingly insignificant detail that later assumes a new-born magnitude. You would agree with that, would you not?'

Lewis swallowed hard and nodded feebly. He was in for a carpeting, he knew that. But what had gone wrong?

'So your friend Walters was somewhat remiss, was he not? As you say, I respect your own judgement of what may or may not be important; though, to be honest, I'm disappointed that you don't expect a slightly higher standard of accuracy and thoroughness in your colleagues' reports. But let's forget that. Walters doesn't work for
me,
does he?'

'What have I done wrong, sir?' asked Lewis quietly.

'What have you done wrong? I'll tell you, Lewis. You're bloody careless, that's what! Careless in the way you've been writing your reports— '

'You know my spelling— '

'I'm not talking about your bloody spelling. Listen, man! There are half a dozen things here that are purely, simply, plainly, absolutely bloody
wrong.
You're getting
slack,
Lewis. Instead of getting better, you're getting a bloody sight
worse.
Did you
know
that?' Lewis looked down at the desk and said nothing. He knew, deep down, that he'd rushed a few things; but he'd tried so hard. Whenever Morse picked up his coat for the night and asked, as he often did, for 'a report in the morning', he could have had little idea of how long and difficult a job it was for his sergeant to get the sentences right in his mind, and then tick-tick away on the typewriter until late into the evening while his chief was sitting with his cronies in the local. No, it wasn't fair at all, and Lewis felt a sense of hurt and injustice.