The dead of Jericho (24 page)

Morse's voice trailed off, and his eyes drifted along the other tables in the lounge bar where groups of people sat exchanging the amusing ephemera of a happier, if somewhat shallower, life than Anne Scott could ever have known. His glass was empty, and Lewis, as he picked it up and walked over to the bar, decided on this occasion not to remind Morse whose turn it was.

'So,' resumed Morse, lapping his lips into the level of his pint without a word of gratitude, 'Anne Scott's making a bit of a mess of her life. She's still attractive enough to middle-aged men like you and me, Lewis; but most of those are already bespoke, like you, and the ones that are left, like me, are a load of old remaindered books — out of date and going cheap. But her real tragedy is that she's still attractive to some of the young pupils who come along to that piddling little property of hers in Jericho. She's got no regular income except for the fees from a succession of half-wits whose parents are rich enough and stupid enough to cough up and keep hoping. She goes out quite a bit, of course, and occasionally she meets a nice enough chap but... No! Things don't work out, and she begins to think — she begins to
believe
— that they never will. She's got a deeply pessimistic and fatalistic streak in her make-up, and in the end, as you know, she abandons all hope. Charles Richards, as she thinks, doesn't give a sod about her any longer: just at the time when she desperately needs a friend,
he
can't even fork out an envelope and stamp. But she was a pretty tough girl, I should think, and she'd have been able to cope with her problems — if it hadn't been for that shattering revelation at the bridge evening.'

'She'd been reading the Oedipus story again in the Penguin translation — probably with one of her pupils — and the ground's all naked and ready for the seeds that were sown that fateful evening. Adoption and birthdays — they were the seeds, Lewis, and it must have been the most traumatic shock of her whole life when the terrible truth dawned on her:
Michael Murdoch was her own son.
And as the implications whirled round in her mind, she must have seen the whole thing in terms of the fates marking her out as another Jocasta. Everything fitted. Her husband had been killed — killed in a road accident — killed by her own son — a son with whom she'd been having sex — a son who was the father of the child she was expecting. She must have felt utterly powerless against the workings of what she saw as the pre-ordained tragedy of her own benighted life. And so she decides to do the one thing that was left open to her: to stop all the struggling and to surrender to her fate; to co-operate with the forces that were now driving her inexorably to her own death — a death she slowly determines, as she sits through that long and hopeless night, will be the death that Queen Jocasta chose. And so, my old friend, she hanged herself... And had she but known it, the curse had still not finally worked itself out. Michael Murdoch is in the Intensive Care Unit at the J.R.2, and he's blinded himself, Lewis — just as Oedipus did. The whole wretched thing's nothing less than a ghastly re-enactment of the old myth as you can read it in Sophocles. And as I told you, if there was one man guilty of Anne Scott's death, that man was Sophocles.'

The beer glasses were empty again and the mood of the two men was sombre as Morse took out his wallet and passed a five-pound note over to Lewis.

'My round, I think.'

It was a turn up for the books; an even bigger one when Morse insisted that Lewis kept the change.

'You've been far too generous with your round recently, Lewis. I've noticed that. But over-generosity is just as big a fault as stinginess, you know. That's what Aristotle said, anyway.'

Lewis was feeling a little light-headed in the rarefied air of these Greek philosophers and tragedians, but he was anxious to get one thing straight.

'You still don't believe in fate, sir?'

'Course I bloody don't!' snapped Morse.

'But you just think of all those coincidences— '

What are you talking about? There's only one real coincidence in the business: the fact that Anne Scott should find that one of her pupils is her own son. That's all! And what's so odd about that, anyway? She's had hundreds of pupils, and Oxford's not all that big— '

'What about the accident?'

'Augh! There are millions of accidents every year — thousands of 'em in Oxford— '

'You exaggerate a bit, sir.'

'Nonsense! And that's where the coincidences stop, isn't it? Anne Scott decided to hang herself
— she
decided that. It was a conscious human decision, and had nothing to do with those wretched fates spinning your threads or lopping 'em off or whatever else they're supposed to do. And the fact that Michael Murdoch squirted so much dope into himself and then did what he did — well, that was a sheer fluke, wasn't it? He could have done anything.'

'Fluke, sir? You seem to want to have it all ways. Flukes, coincidences, decisions, fates...'

Morse nodded rather sadly. He wasn't quite sure where his own pervasively cynical philosophy of life was leading him, but the facts in this particular case remained what they were; for the life and death of Anne Scott had traced with awesome accuracy those murderous, incestuous, and self-destructive patterns of that early story...

'Do you know, Lewis, I could just do justice to some egg and chips.'

Lewis was losing count of his surprises. 'I reckon I'll join you, sir.'

'I'm afraid you'll have to treat me, though. I don't seem to have any money left.'

The hotel room could have been almost anywhere: a neat, well-furnished room, with a white-tiled bathroom annexe, its racks replete with fluffy, white towels. A cosmopolitan room — a little antiseptic and anaemic, perhaps, but moderately expensive and adequately cosy. Two separate lights were affixed to the wall just above the head-board of the double bed, though neither was turned on as Charles Richards lay on his back, his left hand behind his head, smoking silently. He wasn't sure of the exact time, but he thought it must be about 7.30 am., and he had been awake for over an hour. Beside him, her back towards him, lay a young woman, the mauve-striped sheet draped closely round her naked body. Occasionally she stirred slightly and once or twice her lips had mumbled some somnolent endearment. But Charles Richards felt no erotic stirrings towards her that morning. For much of the time as he lay there he was thinking of his wife, and wondering sadly why it was that now, when she was willing to let him go, his thoughts kept drifting back to her. She had not cried or created any scene when at last the truth of his relations with Anne Scott had been forced into the open. But her eyes had betrayed her hurt and disappointment, and a hardness that made her face seem older and plainer; yet later she had looked so tender and so very vulnerable that he had almost found himself falling in love with her afresh. She had said little, apart from a few practical suggestions about the days immediately ahead: she was proud and wounded. He wondered where exactly she was at that moment. Almost certainly back home from Cambridge by now. And if she was, her bed would already have been made up neatly, the sheets stretched taut across the mattress and lovingly smoothed as she had always smoothed them...

And then there was Conrad — his dear and loyal brother Conrad — who had turned up the previous day and managed to book a single room in one of the cheaper hotels across the plaza. Outwardly Conrad seemed as calm as ever, yet underneath were indications of an unwonted anxiety. Which, of course, was all perfectly understandable, for Conrad had been left with a difficult choice. But, as Charles saw it, his brother had almost certainly made the wrong one. Why come out to Madrid? There was virtually no chance that the police could suspect Conrad of anything; so why hadn't he arranged some quiet little business trip in England? All right, he just
had
to get away, so he'd said — though Charles doubted even that.

There was a light knock on the door, followed by the rattle of a key in the bedroom lock, and a young, heavily moustached Spanish waiter brought in the breakfast tray. But the woman still slept on. And Charles was glad of that, for the previous morning she had suddenly jerked herself up to a sitting position, completely naked to the waist; and for some deeply innate reason, he had felt himself madly jealous as the waiter's dark eyes had feasted on her breasts.

For five minutes the tray by the bedside remained untouched, and then Jennifer turned over towards him, her long, painted fingers feeling inside the top of his pyjama jacket. He knew then beyond doubt that after breakfast he would be making love to her again, and momentarily he despised himself — despised that utterly
selfish
self of his that almost invariably sought some compensating gratification from every situation: just as he had sought out Jennifer Hills after Celia had learned the truth. He shook his head slowly on the pillow, and reached out for the coffee pot; but the woman's fingertips were detouring tantalizingly towards his pyjama trousers, and he turned himself towards her. 'Can't you even wait till after breakfast?'

'No-o! I want you
now.'

'You're a sexy bitch, aren't you?'

'Mm. Specially in the mornings. You know that...'

When the Spanish chambermaid came in to clean up at 10.30 a.m., she found the toast untouched, as it had been the previous morning; and smiling knowingly to herself she turned her attention to smoothing out the rumpled mauve-striped sheets.

Conrad Richards ate little breakfast, either, for he was a deeply worried man. He'd suspected the previous day that Charles had been most displeased to see him, and now he wished he'd never come. But he needed some advice and reassurance, and for those he had depended on his brother all his life. He walked across to the Tourist Office at nine o'clock and found that if he wanted to he could fly back to Gatwick that same afternoon. Yes, that would probably be the best thing: get back, and see Celia again, and face things...

But when, at 11 a.m., the brothers met in the cocktail bar of the Palace Hotel, Charles seemed his bright, ebullient self once more.

'Go back
today
?Nonsense! You've not even had a chance to look round. Look at that!' He pointed out across the plaza to the fountains playing beside the statue of Neptune. 'Beautiful, isn't it? We'll do a bit of sight-seeing together, Conrad. What do you say?'

'What about er— ?'

'Don't worry about her. She's flying back to Gatwick this afternoon — on my instructions.'

Celia, too, had been up early that morning, deciding as she had done to follow Charles's practice of putting some time in at the office on Saturday. The previous day, a measure of greatness had been thrust upon her, for she had found herself making decisions about contracts and payments without the slightest hesitation — and she'd enjoyed it all. Seated in Charles's chair, she'd dictated letters and memorandums, answered the telephone, greeted two prospective clients and one ineffectual salesman — all with a new-found confidence that had surprised her. Action! That's what she told herself she needed — and plenty of it; and she just said 'No, no, no!' whenever the waves of worry threatened to wash all other thoughts away. Indeed, for some brief periods of time she found herself almost succeeding in her self-imposed discipline. But the currents of anxiety were often too strong, and like her brother-in-law she felt the urgent need of having Charles beside her. Charles, who was so strong and confident; Charles whom, in spite of everything that had happened, she knew was the only man she could ever fully love.

She was still in the office when she took the call at ten-past twelve. It was from Madrid. From Charles.

She was at home two hours later when she received another call, this time from Detective Chief Inspector Morse, to whom she was able to report that her husband would be returning home on Monday morning, his flight scheduled to land at Gatwick at 10.40 a.m., and that she herself was driving up to meet him. If it was
really
necessary, yes, they could probably be back by about two o'clock — if the plane was on time, of course. Make it two-thirty then? Better still, three o'clock, just to be on the safe side. At the Richards' house? All right. Fine!

'Have you any idea where your husband's brother is?'

'Conrad? No, I haven't, I'm afraid. He's off on business somewhere, but no one seems to know where he's gone.'

'Oh, I see.'

Celia could hear the disappointment in the inspector's voice and was clearly anxious to appear co-operative. 'Can I give him a message — when he gets back?'

'No-o.' Morse sounded indecisive. 'Perhaps not, Mrs Richards. It was just — No, it doesn't matter. It's not important.'

Lewis had come into the office during the last part of the telephone conversation, and Morse winked at him broadly as he replaced the receiver. 'Monday, then! That's the big show-down, Lewis. Three o'clock. And you know something? I reckon I'm looking forward to it.'

Lewis, however, was looking unimpressed, and something in his face spelled trouble.

'Aren't
you,
Lewis?'

'I'm afraid I've got some rather odd news for you.'

Morse looked up sharply.

'It was very irregular, they said, and Saturday morning's hardly the best time to make inquiries, is it?'

'But you found out?'

Lewis nodded. 'You're not going to like this much, sir, but the Scotts' baby was adopted by a couple in North London: a Mr and Mrs Hawkins. They christened the boy "Joseph", and the poor little fellow died just before his third birthday — meningitis.'

Morse looked utterly blank and his eyes seemed to stare down into some vast abyss. 'You're quite sure about this?'