The Riddle Of The Third Mile (23 page)

About the time that Lewis received his last call that morning, Morse was turning left at Hanger Lane on to the North Circular. He’d still (he knew) a further half-hour’s driving in front of him, and with a fairly clear road he drove in a manner that verged occasionally upon the dangerous. But already he was too late. It had been a quarter of an hour earlier that the ambulance had taken away the broken body that lay directly beneath a seventh-storey window in Berrywood Court, just along the Seven Sisters Road.

Later the same afternoon, a business executive, immaculately dressed in a pin-striped suit, walked into the farthest cubicle of the gentlemen’s toilet at the Station Hotel, Paddington. When he pulled the chain, the cistern seemed to be working perfectly, as though the presence of a pair of human hands as yet was causing little problem to the flushing mechanism.

It was with growing impatience that Lewis waited from 8.15 a.m. onwards. Morse had arrived back in Oxford late the previous evening and had called in to see him, readily accepting Mrs Lewis’s offer to cook him something, and thereafter settling down to watch television with the joyous dedication of a child. He had refused to answer Lewis’s questions, affirming only that the sun would almost certainly rise on the morrow, and that he would be in the office-early.

At 9 a.m. there was still no sign of him, and for the umpteenth time Lewis found himself thinking about the astonishing fact that, of the four dubiously associated and oddly assorted men who had played their parts in the case, not
one
of them could now lay the slightest claim to be mistaken for the corpse that still lay in Max’s deep-refrigeration unit: Browne-Smith had died of a brain haemorrhage beside a railway-track; Westerby had been strangled to death in a cheap hotel near Paddington; Alfred Gilbert had been found murdered in a room a couple of floors above Westerby’s flat in Cambridge Way; and Albert Gilbert had thrown himself from a seventh-storey window in Berry-wood Court. So the same old question still remained unanswered, and the simple truth was that they were running out of bodies.

But there
were
one or two items that Lewis had discovered for himself, and at 9.30 a.m. he browsed through his neatly typed reports once more. He’d learned, for example-from the manager of the topless bar-that Browne-Smith seemed to have been unaccountably slow in identifying himself by the agreed words: ‘It’s exactly twelve o’clock, I see.’ Then (after applying a good deal of pressure) he’d learned from the same source that the “cine” equipment had definitely not been returned to the bar the next day; in fact, it had been nearer a week before any of the bar-clients could indulge their voyeuristic fantasies again. There was a third fact, too: that neither the manager nor any of his hostesses had previously set eyes upon the man with the brownish beard who had sat beside the bar that fateful Friday when Browne-Smith had been tempted down from Oxford…

Morse finally arrived just before 9.45 a.m., his lower lip caked with blood.

‘Sorry to be late. Just had her out. No trouble. Hardly felt a thing. “Decayed beyond redemption”-that’s what the little fellow said.’ He sat down expansively in his chair. ‘Well, where do you want me to start?’

‘At the beginning, perhaps?”

‘No. Let’s start before then, and get a bit of the background clear. While you were off gallivanting in London, Lewis, I called in to see your pal at the Examination Schools, and I asked him just one thing: I asked him what he thought were the potential areas for any crooked dealings in this whole business of the final lists. And he made some interesting suggestions. First, of course, there’s the possibility of someone getting results ahead of the proper time. Now this isn’t perhaps one of the major sins; but, as you told me yourself, all that waiting can become a matter of great anxiety: sometimes perhaps
enough
anxiety to make one or two people willing to pay-pay in
some
way-for learning results early. That’s only the start of it, though. You see if there’s some undergraduate who’s
nearly
up to the first-class honours bracket, he’s put forward for a viva-voce examination, but he’s never told which particular part of his work he’s going to be re-examined in. Now, if he
did
know, he’d be able to swot up on that side of things and get ready to catch all the hand-grenades they lobbed at him. Agreed? But let’s go on a stage further. Our budding “first” would be an even shorter-odds favourite if he knew the
name
of the man who was going to viva him: he could soon find out this fellow’s hobby-horses, read his books, and generally tune himself in to the right wavelength. Which leads on to the final consideration. If he did know exactly who it was who was going to settle his future, there’d always be the potential for a bit of
bribery,
the offer of money in return for that glowing recommendation for a “first”. You see, Lewis? The whole process is full of loop-holes! I’m not saying anyone wriggles through ‘em: I’m just telling you they’re
there.
And, depending on what the rewards are, there might be a few susceptible dons who could feel tempted to go along with one or two suggestions, don’t you think?’

Lewis nodded. ‘Perhaps a few might, I suppose.’

‘No “perhaps”, Lewis- just a few
did!’

Again Lewis nodded-rather sadly-and Morse continued.

‘Then we found a corpse with a great big question-mark on the label round its neck.’

‘It hadn’t got a neck, sir.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And there isn’t a question-mark any longer?’

‘Patience, Lewis!’

‘But we had the letter to go on.’

‘Even that, though. If we hadn’t had a line on things to start with, the whole thing would have been a load of gobbledygook. Would you have made much of it without-’

‘I wouldn’t have made anything of it, anyway.’

‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Lewis-let me do it for you!’

‘What about that blood-donor business?’

‘Ah! Now if you’ve been a donor for a good many years you get a lot of little tiny marks-’

‘As a matter of fact I got my gold badge last year-for fifty times, that is-in case you didn’t know.’

‘Oh!’

‘So I don’t really need you to tell me much about
that.’

‘But you
do.
Do you know when you have to pack up giving blood? What age, I mean?
^’

‘No.’

‘Well, you bloody should! Don’t you read any of the literature? It’s
sixty-five.’

Lewis let the information sink in. ‘You mean that Browne-Smith wouldn’t have been on the current records…’

‘Nor Westerby. They were both over sixty-five.”

‘Ye-es. I should have looked in the old records.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve already checked. Browne-Smith
was
a donor until a couple of years ago. Westerby never: he’d had jaundice and that put him out of court, as I’m sure you’ll know!’

‘But the body
wasn’t
Browne-Smith’s.’

‘No?’ Morse smiled and wiped the blood gently from his mouth. ‘Whose was it then?’

But Lewis shook his head. ‘I’m just here to listen, sir.’

‘All right. Let’s start at the beginning. George Westerby is iust finishing his stint at Lonsdale. He’s looking for a place in London, and he finds one, and buys it. The estate agent tells him that all the removals from Oxford can easily be arranged, and that suits Westerby fine. He’s got two places: his rooms at Lonsdale, and his little weekend cottage out at Thrupp. So Removals Anywhere come on to the scene-and the supremely important moment in the case arrives: Bert Gilbert notices the name opposite Westerby’s rooms on T Staircase-the name of Dr O. M. A. Browne-Smith-the name of a man he’d always ranked among the legion of the damned – the man who’d been responsible for his younger brother’s death.

‘Now, very soon after this point-I’m sure of it! -we get a switch of brothers. Bert reports his extraordinary finding to his brother, and it’s Alfred-by general consent the abler of the two – who now takes over. He finds out as much as he can about Browne-Smith, and devises a plan that makes it ridiculously easy for Browne-Smith to go along with things. He writes a letter on Westerby’s typewriter -he’s in Westerby’s rooms whenever he likes now, remember -inviting Browne-Smith to do him a very small favour, and one that would entail no real compromise to Browne-Smith’s academic integrity. This offer, as we know, was taken up, and off Browne-Smith goes to London. But we also know-because he told us-that
_;
Browne-Smith played his own cards with equal cunning. And in the end Gilbert’s plan misfired-whatever that plan had been originally.

‘Gilbert came into the room to find that Browne-Smith wasn’t unconscious, as he’d expected. So they talked together straight away; and it wasn’t long before Gilbert discovered that the military records of young brother John were hardly a striking example of dedication to duty. In fact, far from being killed in action, he’d shot himself the night before El Alamein-and one of the few people who knew all this was Browne-Smith, John Gilbert’s platoon officer. So when the whole story was out at last, there couldn’t have been much wind left in the Gilberts sails, because it was quite clear to them that Browne-Smith hadn’t the slightest responsibility, direct or indirect, for the brother’s death! Now, at that point everything could have been over, Lewis. And if it had been, certainly four of the five people who’ve died in this case would still be alive. But…’

Yes, Lewis understood all this. It seemed simpler,though, that now that Morse had put it into words. ‘But then,’ he said quietly, ‘Browne-Smith saw the chance to duplicate-’

‘ “Replicate”-that’s the word I’d use, Lewis.’

‘-to replicate the process with Westerby.’

That’s it. That’s the end of the first mile, and we’re going to start on the second.’ ‘Off we go then, sir!’

‘Do you fancy a cup of coffee?’

Lewis got to his feet. ‘Any sugar?’

‘Just a little, perhaps. You know it’s a funny thing, were no end of tins of coffee in

Alfred Gilbert’s flat, and not single drop of alcohol!’

‘Not everybody drinks, sir.’

‘Course they do! He was just an oddball – that’s for certain. And I’ll tell you something else. When I was a lad I heard of a Methodist minister who was a bit embarrassed about being seen reading the Bible all the time-you know, on trains and buses. So he had a special cover made-a sort of cowboy cover with a gun-slinger on his horse; and he had this stuck round his Bible when he was reading Ezekiel or something. Well, I found a book in Gilbert’s flat that was exactly the opposite. It had a cover on it called
Know Your Kochel Numbers-’

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘ “Kochel”. He was the chap who put all Mozart’s works into some sort of chronological order and gave ‘em all numbers.’

‘Oh.’

‘I had a look in this book-and do you know what I found? It was a load of the lewdest pornography I’ve ever seen. I-er-I brought it with me, if you want to borrow it?’

‘No, sir. You read it yourself. I-’

‘I
have
read it.’ The numbed lips were smiling almost guiltily: read it twice, actually.’

‘Did you find anything else in the flat?’

‘Found a beard-a brownish beard. Sort of theatrical thing, stuck with Elastoplast.’

‘That all?’

‘Found a scarf, Lewis. Not quite so long as mine, but a nice scarf. Still, that was hardly a surprise, was it?’

‘Just a little sugar, you say?’

‘Well, perhaps a bit more than that.’

Lewis stood at the door. ‘I wonder whether Gilbert had
his t
ooth out.’

‘Didn’t need to, Lewis. He had false teeth – top and bottom.’

During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance. He was (he thought) like some tree-feller in the midst of the deepest forest who has effected a clearing large enough for his immediate purposes; but one, too, who sees around him the widening ring of undiscovered darkness wherein the wickedness of other men would never wholly be revealed. On his recent visit to London he had felled a few more trees; and doubtless he and Lewis (before the case was closed) would fell a few more still. But the men who might have directed his steps through the trackless forest were now all dead, leaving him with an odd collection of ugly, jagged stumps; ugly, jagged, awkward clues that could only tell a stark, truncated version of the truth. But that was all he had and-almost-it was enough, perhaps.

‘Tell me more about the Gilberts,’ said Lewis, handing across a paper cup of tepid coffee.

‘Well, you know as much about their background as I do. Just remember one thing, though. We learned they were identical twins, so closely alike that even their friends got them muddled up occasionally. But when you get to your sixties, Lewis, you’re bound to differ a bit: general signs of ageing, spots on the chin, gaps in the teeth, hair-style, scars, whether you’re fatter or thinner, the way you dress-almost everything is going to mark some ever-widening difference as the years go by. Now, I never saw Bert Gilbert alive-and I didn’t go and look at him when he was dead. You see, it was
Alfred
Gilbert I met in Westerby’s rooms that day-with a scarf wrapped round the bottom half of his face and a phoney tale about an abscessed tooth.’

‘He was frightened Browne-Smith would recognize him.’

‘Not just that, though. As it happened, Browne-Smith had already recognized his brother-although Alfred Gilbert wasn’t to know
that.
Like all visitors, Bert had already reported to the Porters’ Lodge a couple of times, and Alfred was anxious that
no one
should know that he and his brother had switched roles. He carefully selected a young assistant who’d only just joined the firm and who wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care which brother did what anyway-’