The Riddle Of The Third Mile (25 page)

‘The manager of the Flamenco, Lewis, has a wife, called “Racquet”. When I got there, he tipped her the wink that something was seriously askew, and she made an urgent phone-call to’ ‘Mr Sullivan” – alias Alfred Gilbert – who in turn told her that whatever happened they’d got to keep me in the place for a while. Why? Clearly because there was something that had to be done quickly, something that
could
be done quickly, before I turned up in Cambridge Way. The Gilberts, you see, were already collecting their pickings from Browne-Smith, but not as yet from Westerby. And so to remind Westerby that
he
was still up to his neck in hot water, too, they’d decided on a most appropriate niche for a corpse’s head-that space in one of Westerby’s crates where another head had originally nestled. It was imperative, therefore, that one of the Gilberts – Alfred, as it turned out-should go and clear away the damning evidence waiting in Westerby’s flat. But late that same morning Westerby himself decided that it was reasonably safe now for him to return to his flat, and the first thing he saw there was the head of Mercator on the mantelpiece, and he suspected the grim truth immediately. Which is more than I did, Lewis! When Alfred

Gilbert let himself in, Westerby was probably just opening the fateful crate; and somehow Westerby killed him-’

‘Sir! That’s not good enough.
How
did he do it? And why should he
need
to do it? They were both accomplices, surely?’

Morse nodded. ‘Yes, they were. But just think a minute, Lewis, and try to picture things. Alfred Gilbert is in a frenetic rush to reach Cambridge Way. He doesn’t know
why
the police have got on to Cambridge Way, but he does know what they’ll find if they visit Westerby’s flat. They’ll find what he himself and his brother have left there, almost certainly with the intention of some future blackmail. And, as I say, that evidence has got to be removed with the utmost urgency. So he lets himself into the flat, never expecting to find Westerby there, and never, I suspect, actually seeing him anyway. Westerby’s got his hearing-aid plugged in, although, as your own notes say, Lewis, he’s only slightly deaf; and when he hears the scrape of the key in the lock, he beats a panic-stricken retreat into the bathroom, where he watches the intruder through the hinged gap of the partially open door.

‘Now Westerby himself hasn’t the faintest idea that the police are on their way, has he? What he
suspects-what
he’s been strongly suspecting even before opening the crate-is that it’s been Gilbert – who else? – who’s misled him so wickedly. Instead of Gilbert getting rid of the murdered man’s head, that same head is resting even now in one of his own crates! He’s just found it! I think he sees in a flash how crude, how indescribably callous, his so-called accomplice has been. He sees something else, too, Lewis. He sees Gilbert walking straight over to the crate, and at that point he
knows
who it is who’s been plotting to implicate him further-doubtless for even more money-in this tragic and increasingly hopeless mess. He feels in his soul a savage compulsion to rid himself of that fiend who’s kneeling over the crate, and he creeps back into the room and with all the force he can muster he stabs his screwdriver between those shoulder-blades.

‘Then? Well, I can only guess that Westerby must have dragged him into the bathroom straightway: because while there were no blood-stains on the carpet, the bathroom floor had only just been cleaned. Yes, I saw that, Lewis!

‘Next, using the bunch of keys he found in Gilbert’s pocket, Westerby took the body up in the lift to the top-floor flat – a flat be knew was still vacant-a flat he’d probably looked over himself when he was deciding on his future home. He locked away the body in a cupboard there, then went down again, cleaned up his own flat in his apron, and heard – at last!-someone ringing the main doorbell-me!-and
answered
it.
Why,
Lewis? Surely that’s utter folly for him! Unless-unless he’d previously arranged to
meet
someone in Cambridge Way. And the only man he’d have been anxious to meet at that point is the one man he’s been avoiding like the plague for the last five years of his life-Browne-Smith! But instead-he finds
me!
And he now gives the performance of his life-impersonating a concierge called “Hoskins”. You knew, Lewis, he was a Londoner? Yes. It’s in your admirable notes on the man. I ought to have seen through the deception earlier, though; certainly I ought to have read the signs more intelligently when one of the tenants turned round and stared so curiously at me. But it
wasn’t
just me: he was staring at
two
strangers!

‘During that same lunch-time there were other things afoot. Alfred Gilbert had left a message for his brother, and now it was Bert Gilbert who got round to Cambridge Way as quickly as he could. There-I’m almost sure of it! -he met Browne-Smith; and Browne-Smith told Bert Gilbert that he’d seen
me
go in, admitted by Westerby. At that moment, Bert must have seen the emergency signals flashing at full beam. He had no key- Alfred had taken the bunch-either to the front door or the back; so the two of them agreed to split up, with Browne-Smith watching the front and Bert Gilbert the back. What happened then? Gilbert saw Westerby leave! So he went round to tell Browne-Smith; and both of them were very puzzled, and very frightened. I was still in there, and so was Alfred Gilbert! Probably it was at that point that Bert Gilbert got to know from Browne-Smith where Westerby was staying, because it’s clear that later on he
did
know. For the moment, however, they observed from a discreet distance-only to find that I didn’t come
out
before the police went
in.
So they knew something had gone terribly wrong. Later, of course, they both learned of the murder of Alfred Gilbert, and they both drew their own conclusion-the
same
conclusion.

‘In the days that followed Gilbert must have watched and waited, because he knew that it would now be imperative for Westerby to return to the flat to find out, one way or the other, whether the police had discovered those objects hidden in a relidded crate- objects, Lewis, which must have been a cause of recurrent nightmares to him. When Westerby finally risked his expedition, Gilbert made no attempt to abort the mission, because it was just as valuable for himself as for Westerby. He followed his quarry back from the flat to Paddington-for all I know he might even have followed him into the gents where the London lads found the corpse’s hands. By the way, Lewis, you’d better tell the missus you’ve got another trip tomorrow.

‘But then Gilbert stopped tailing Westerby, and went along to that nearby hotel, where he found an easy access to Westerby’s room-either by the fire-escape or by the seldom-tenanted reception desk… But let’s leave those details to our metropolitan colleagues, shall we? They’re going to find one or two people who saw something surely? It’s not our job. After Westerby got his to his room? Well, I dunno. But I’d like to bet that Westerby almost jumped out of his wilting wits when he found himself confronted by the man be thought he’d killed! You see, I doubt if a any stage Westerby was aware that there
were
two Gilberts that they were still extraordinarily alike in physical appearance. Whatever the truth of that may be, Westerby was strangled in his room, and the long and tragic sequence of cvents has almost ran its Aeschylean course.

‘Not quite though. Browne-Smith had now decided that things had gone far too far, and I vaguely suspect that he was on his way to see
me last
Saturday. At least, we’ve got the evidence of the ticket-collector that Browne-Smith had some very urgent business here in Oxford. Pity… but, perhaps it was for the best, Lewis. Then, the same Saturday, Bert Gilbert went home and found-as the police found-a note from his wife, Emily, saying that she couldn’t stand any more of it, and that she’d left him. And Bert Gilbert-without any doubt the bravest of the three brothers-now faced both the fear of discovery and the knowledge of failure. So he opened his seventh-floor window – and he jumped… Poor sod! Perhaps you think it’s a bit out of character, Lewis, for Bert Gilbert to do something as cowardly as that? But it was in the family, if you remember…’

During this account, Morse had forgotten his coffee, and he now looked down with distaste at the dark brown skin that had formed on its surface.

‘Are the pubs open yet?’ he asked.

‘As always, sir, I think you know the answers to your own questions better than I do.’

‘Well, they will be, I should think, by the time we get to Thrupp. Yes, we’re going to have a quiet little drink together, my old friend, at the end of yet another case.’

‘But you haven’t told me yet -’

‘You’re quite right. There’s one big central jigsaw-piece that’s missing, isn’t there?’

In normal circumstances, thought Lewis, Morse would have looked a good deal happier as he mumbled ‘Cheers’ before burying his nose in the froth; but there was a sombre expression in the chief’s face as he spoke quietly across a small table in the lounge-bar of the Boat Inn.

‘If this case ever comes to court, Lewis, there’ll be several crucial witnesses – but the most important of all of them will be the man who tries to tell the judge about the power of hatred that can spring from thwarted ambition; and there were two men in Lonsdale College who had exemplified that terrible hatred for many years.

‘The particular reason for their hatred was an unusual one, perhaps-but also an extremely simple one. Each of them had failed to be elected to the Mastership of Lonsdale, the position they’d both craved. Now, as we found out, the College rules require a minimum of six of the eight votes available to be cast in favour of any candidate, and not a single vote against. So a man would be elected with six votes in his favour and two abstentions-but not with one abstention,
and one against.
Which, in Browne-Smith’s case, is exactly what happened! Again, in Westerby’s case, it’s exactly what happened! So you hardly need to be a roaring genius to come up with the explanation that Westerby had probably voted against Browne-Smith, and Browne-Smith against Westerby. Hence the mutual, simmering hatred of those two senior fellows.

‘But let me tell you a very strange thing, Lewis. In fact, you
do
need to be a genius to understand it! Not so much now, of course – but certainly at any earlier point in the case. Let’s recap. The first man who went to London was confronted with a ghost from his past – the ghost of cowardice in war. But it was
the wrong ghost
that the Gilbert brothers conjured up that day, because Browne-Smith had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of their younger brother. Then a second man went to London, and you know what I’m going to say, don’t you, Lewis? He, too was confronted with
the wrong ghost
from his own past. Westerby had
not
voted against Browne-Smith-he’d abstained. And, in turn, Westerby learned that Browne-Smith had
not
cast the solitary vote against his own election: he, too, had abstained. Yet
someone
had voted against each of them; and as they spoke together that night in London the blindingly obvious fact must have occurred to them – that it could well have been
the same man
in each case! And if it was, then they knew beyond any reasonable doubt exactly who that man must be!

‘So we find a third man going to London to face his own particular ghost-this time
the right ghost.
And soon a man is found in the canal here: a man minus a very distinguished-looking head that was framed with a luxuriant crop of grey hair; a man minus the hands-particularly minus the little finger of his left hand on which he wore the large, onyx dress-ring that he never took off, and which his murderers couldn’t remove from his fleshy finger; a man minus one of those flamboyant suits of his that were famed throughout the University; a man, Lewis, who had voted against two of his colleagues in the last election for the Mastership; a man –
the
man – who by his own machinations had finally been adopted as a compromise, third-choice candidate, and duly elected
nem. con
.; the man whose own ambition was even greater than that of his other colleagues, and his practical cunning infinitely more so; the same man who at the beginning of the case invited me to try to find out what had happened to Browne-Smith- not because he was worried, but because it was his
duty
- as Head of House! Yes, Lewis! The man we found in the water here was the
Master of Lonsdale.’

At the end of the Michaelmas term that followed the events recorded in these chapters, it was no great surprise for Morse (or ‘ indeed for anyone) to hear that the man whom Dr Browne-Smith had once described as ‘quite a good young man’ had been elected to the Mastership of Lonsdale. More of a surprise for Morse was subsequently to receive an invitation to a buffet supper in Lonsdale to celebrate Andrews’ election. And, without enthusiasm, he went.

Little was said that night about the tragic past, and Morse mingled amiably
enough with the college members and then-guests. The food was excellent, the wine plentiful; and Morse was just on his way out, feeling that after all it hadn’t been so bad, when an extraordinarily attractive woman came up to him -a woman with vivacious eyes and blonde hair piled up on her head.

‘You’re Chief Inspector Morse, I think.’

He nodded, and she smiled.

‘You don’t know me, but we spoke on the phone once -only once! I, well, I just thought I’d like to say “hello”, that’s all. I’m the college secretary here.’ Her left hand went up to her hair to re-align a straying strand-a hand that wore no ring.

‘I’m awfully sorry about that! I sometimes get a bit cross, I’m afraid.’

‘I did notice, yes.’

‘You’ve forgiven me?’