The Riddle Of The Third Mile (19 page)

‘ ‘e can afford to, guv.’

‘Yes. Like you can, sometimes, Hoskins! Take me up to the flat that’s just been sold!’

The small but extraordinarily efficient lift brought them swiftly up to the top storey, where Hoskins nervously fingered a bouquet of silvery keys, finally finding the correct one, and pushing open the door for the policeman to enter.

Things were at last falling into place in Morse’s mind, and as they stood by the opened door his aim was more deliberate.

‘Did they give you the afternoon off, Hoskins
?

‘What afternoon, guv?’ the man protested. But not for long.

It had been on the Friday, he confessed. He’d had a phone
call, and been given a couple of fivers-huh! -just for staying away from the place.

Morse was nodding to himself as he entered the rooms. Yes… the Gilbert twins: one of them a housing agent; the other a removals man. Sell some property-and recommend a highly reputable and efficient removals firm; buy some property-and also recommend the same paragon of pantechniconic skills. Very convenient, and very profitable. Over the years the two brothers must have worked a neatly dovetailed little business…

Now, again, Morse looked around him at a potentially luxurious flat in central London: the small entrance hall, the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom – all newly decorated. No carpets yet, though; no curtains, either. But there was not a flick of cigarette ash, not even a forgotten tin-tack, on the light-oak boards, as spotless as those of an army barrack floor before the CO’s inspection.

‘You’ve been cleaning in here, too?’ asked Morse.

The walls were professionally painted in lilac emulsion, the doors and fitted cupboards in brilliant-white gloss. And Morse, suddenly thinking back to his own bachelor flat with the heavy old walnut suite his mother had left him, began to envisage some lighter, brighter, modernistic furniture for himself as he opened one of the fitted wardrobes in the bedroom with its inbuilt racks and airy, deep recesses. And not just one of them!

But the second one was locked.

‘You got the key for this, Hoskins?’

No, sir. I only keep the keys for the doors. If people wants to lock things up…’

‘Let’s look in the kitchen!’

Beside the sink, Morse found a medium-sized screwdriver, the only object of any kind abandoned (it seemed) by the previous owner.

‘Think this’ll open it, Hoskins?’

‘I-I don’t want to get you in any trouble, sir-or me. I shouldn’t really ‘ave… I just don’t think it’s right to mess up the place and damage things, sir.’

(The “sir”s were coming thick and fast)

It was time, Morse thought, for some reassurance. ‘Look, Hoskins, this is my responsibility. I’m doing my duty as a police officer-you’re doing your duty as a good citizen. You understand that?’

The miserable man appeared a modicum mollified and nodded silently. And indeed it was he, after a brief and ineffectual effort from Morse, who proved the more successful; for he managed to insert the screwdriver far enough into the gap between the side of the cupboard door and the surrounding architrave to gain sufficient leverage. Then, with a joint prizing, the lock finally snapped, the wood splintered, and the door swung slowly open. Inside, slumped on the floor of the deep recess, was the body of a man, the head turned towards the wall; and almost exactly half-way between the shoulder-blades was a round hole in the dead man’s sports-jacket, from which was oozing still a steady drip of bright-red blood, feeding a darker pool upon the floor. Almost squeamishly, Morse inserted his left hand under the lifeless, lolling head… and turned it towards him.

‘My God!’

For a few moments the two men stood looking down on the face that stared back up at them with open, bulging eyes.

‘Do you know who it is?’ croaked Morse.

‘I never seen him before, sir. I swear I ‘aven’t.’ The man was shaking all over, and Morse noticed the ashen-grey pallor in his cheeks and the beads of sweat upon his forehead.

‘Take it easy, old boy!’ said Morse in a kindly, understanding voice. ‘Just tell me where the nearest telephone is-then you’d better get off home for a while. We can always-’

Morse was about to lay a comforting hand upon the man’s shoulder; but he was already too late, for now he found another body slumped about his feet.

Five minutes later, after dialling 999 from the telephone in the sitting room, and after sending the old boy off home (having elicited a full name and home address from those gibbering lips), Morse stood once again looking down at the corpse in the cupboard recess. A tiny triangle of white card was showing above the top pocket of the jacket, and Morse bent down to extract it. There were a dozen or so similar cards there, but he took only one and read it-his face betraying only the grimmest -confirmation. He’d known anyway, because he’d recognized the face immediately. It was the face of the man whom Morse had last (and first) seen in the rooms of George Westerby, Geography don at Lonsdale College, Oxford: the face of A. Gilbert, Esq., late proprietor of the firm Removals Anywhere.

On the left sat a very black gentleman in a very smart pin-striped suit, studying the pink pages of the
Financial Times;
on the right sat a long-haired young brunette, wearing enormous earrings, and reading
Ulysses;
in the middle sat Morse, impatiently fingering a small white oblong card; and all the while the tube-train clattered along the stations on the northbound Piccadilly line.

To Morse it seemed an inordinately long journey, and one during which he found it almost impossible to concentrate his mind. Perhaps it had been improper for him (as the plain-clothes sergeant had diffidently hinted) to have fled the scene of the recent crime so precipitately; quite certainly it had bordered upon the criminally negligent (as the plain-clothes sergeant had more forcefully asserted) that he had allowed the one and only other witness to have left the premises in Cambridge Way – whatever the state of shock that had paralysed the man’s frame. But at least Morse had explained where he was going-had even given the address and the telephone number. And he could always do his best to explain, to apologize… later.

Arsenal. (Nearly there.)

The brunette’s eyes flickered over Morse’s face, but flashed back immediately to Bloom, as though the latter were a subject of considerably greater interest.

Finsbury Park. (Next stop.)

Suddenly Morse stiffened bolt upright in his seat, and this time it was the gentleman from the city whose bloodshot eyes turned suspiciously towards his travelling companion, as though he half expected to find a man in the initial throes of an epileptic fit.

That screwdriver… and that small, round hole in the middle of those sagging shoulder-blades… and he, Morse, a man who had lectured so often on proper procedure in cases of homicide,
he
had just left his own fine set of fingerprints around the bulbous handle of-the murder-weapon! Oh dear! Yes, there might well come, and fairly soon, the time for more than an apology, more than a little explanation.

For the moment, however, Morse was totally convinced that be was right (as indeed for once he was) in recognizing the signs of a tide in the affairs of men that must be taken at the flood; and when he emerged from the underground into the litter-strewn streets of Manor House, he suspected that the gods were smiling happily upon him, for almost immediately he spotted Berry-wood Court, a tall tenement block only some hundred yards away down Seven Sisters Road.

Mrs Emily Gilbert, an unlovely woman in her late fifties (her teeth darkly stained) capitulated quickly to Morse’s urgent questioning. She’d known it was all silly; and she’d told her husband it might be dangerous as well. But it was just a joke, he’d said. Some joke! She’d met another woman there in Camabridge Way-an attractive Scandanavian-looking woman who (so Mrs G. had thought) had been hired from one of the beetter-class clubs in Soho. They’d both been briefed by Albert (her husband) and-well, that was it really. This man had come to the place, and she (Mrs G.) had left the pair of them together in a first-floor flat (yes, Mr Westerby’s flat). Then, after an hour or so, Albert had come up to tell her (she was waiting in an empty top-floor flat) that he was very pleased with the way things had gone, that she (Mrs G.) was a good old girl, and that the odd little episode could now be happily forgotten.

She had a strangely intense and rather pleasing voice, and Morse found himself gradually reassessing her. ‘This other woman,’ he asked, ‘what was her name?’

‘I was told to call her “Yvonne”.’

‘She didn’t tell you where she lived? Where she worked?’

‘No. But she was “class”-you know what I mean? She was sort of tasteful-beautifully made-up, lovely figure.’

‘You don’t know where she lives?’

‘No. Albert’ll probably be able to tell you, though.’

‘Do you know where
he
is, Mrs Gilbert?’

She shook her head. ‘In his sort of business you’re off all the time. I know he’s got a
few jobs on in the Midlands-and one in Scotland-but he’s always on the move. He just turns up here when he gets back.’

At this point, Morse felt a curious compassion for Emily Gilbert, for she seemed to him a brave sort of woman-yet one who would need to be even braver very soon. He knew, too, that time was running out; knew he had to find out more before he broke the cruel news.

‘Just tell me anything you can, please, about this other woman-this “Yvonne”. Anything you can remember.’

‘I’ve told you-I don’t-’

‘Didn’t you talk together?’

‘Well, yes-but-’

‘You don’t have any idea where I can find her?’

‘I think she lives south of the Thames somewhere.’

‘No name of the road? No number of the house? Come on! Think, woman!’

But Morse had pushed things too far, for Mrs Gilbert now broke down and wept, and Morse was at a loss as to what to do, or what to say. So he did nothing; and such masterly inactivity proved to be the prudent course, for very soon she had wiped her wide and pleasing eyes and apologized sweetly for what she called her “silliness”.

‘Have you any children?’ asked Morse.

She shook her head sadly.

It was hardly the most propitious moment, but Morse now rose from the sofa and placed his right hand firmly on her shoulder. ‘Please be brave, Mrs Gilbert! I’ve got to tell you, I’m afraid, that your husband is dead.’

With a dramatic, convulsive jerk, her right hand snapped up to meet Morse’s, and he felt the sinewy vigour of her fingers as they sought to clutch the comfort of his own. Then Morse told her, in a very quiet, gentle voice, as much (and as little) as he knew.

When he had finished, Mrs Gilbert asked him no questions, but got up from her chair, walked over to the window, lit a cigarette, and stared out over the long, bleak reservoir that lay below, where a swan glided effortlessly across the still waters. Then, finally, she turned towards him, and for the first time Morse realized that she must have been an adequately attractive woman… some few little summers ago. Her eyes, still glistening with tears, sought his.

‘I lied to you, Inspector, and I shouldn’t have done that. I
know
that other woman, you see. My husband occasionally gets-got involved in his brother’s-well, let’s say his brother’s… side of things, and he met her in one of the clubs a few weeks ago. I-I found out about it. You see-he wanted to leave me and -and-and go and live with her.

‘But she-’

Mrs Gilbert broke off, and Morse nodded his understanding.

‘But she didn’t want him.’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Did you tell him you’d found out?’

Mrs Gilbert smiled a wan sort of smile and she turned back to the
window, her eyes drifting over and beyond the reservoir to where a DC10 droned in towards Heathrow. ‘No! I wanted to keep him. Funny, isn’t it? But he was the only thing I had.’

‘It blew over?’

‘Not really very much time for that, was there?’

Morse sat and looked once more at this very ordinary woman he had come to visit, and his mind drifted back to Molly Bloom in
Ulysses,
and he knew that Mrs Gilbert, too, was a woman who had offered, once, a presence and a bosom and a rose.

‘Please tell me about this other woman.’

‘I don’t know her real name-they call her “Yvonne” at the clubs. But I know her initials-W.S.-and I know where she lives – 23A Colebourne Road, just south of Richmond Road. It’s only about five minutes walk from the tube-station…’

‘You went to
see
her?’

‘You don’t know much about women, do you?’

‘No, perhaps not,’ agreed Morse. But he was impatient now. He felt like a man with an enormously ‘distended bladder who has been kept talking on the phone for half an hour, and he walked across to the door. ‘Will you be all right, Mrs Gilbert?’

‘Don’t worry about me, Inspector. I’ll give the GP a ring when you’ve gone, and he’ll give me a few tablets. They should take care of me for a little while, shouldn’t they?’

‘Yes, I’m sure they will. I know how you must be feeling-’

‘Of course you don’t! You’ve not the faintest idea. It’s not today-it’s not tonight. It’s
tomorrow.
Can’t you see that? You tell me Albert’s dead, and in an odd sort of way it doesn’t register. It’s a shock, isn’t it? And I’d be more than happy to live through one shock after another, but…’

The tears were running freely again, and suddenly she moved towards him and buried her head on his shoulder. And Morse stood there by the door, awkward and inept; and (in his own strange way) almost loving the woman who was weeping out her heart against him.