Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

considerable consternation.  Not here, though.  Not at the land-fill site at

Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire.

chapter twenty-six undergraduate: But you're blowing up the wrong tyre, sir.

It's the back one that's flat.

don: Goodness me.  " You mean the two of them are not connected?

(Freshman seeking to assist his tutor outside Trinity College, Oxford) morse

(for some reason) was in that Saturday morning when Lewis knocked on his

office door just after ten.

"Spare a few minutes, sir?"

"C'm in!  I've finished the crossword."

"How long?"

"Let's just say the brain is deteriorating."

"Thirty thousand brain-cells a day we lose after thirty, so you told me once."

Morse nodded morosely.

"I just thought I was the exception, that's all.  Si' down!"

Lewis did so, and took a deep breath.

"I've been following you, sir."

Morse looked across at his sergeant uncomprehendingly.

"You were at Debbie Richardson's house before me; you were at the Maiden's

Arms before me; you were at Bulling- don before me; you were at Redbridge -

before me; you were out at Sutton Courtenay before me.  You've been one move

ahead of me all the time."

"5

 " Only oneT "Why couldn't you just tell me?"

"Tell you what?"  asked Morse.

"And don't forget that time when it was me following you: from Bullingdon.

At exactly the distance recommended in the Highway Code."

"Which is?"

"Next question?"

"You will be taking on the case, won't you?"

"Next question?"

"Why not?"

"Pass."

"You're getting people's backs up here, you know that?"

"Nothing new about that."

"But surely ?"

"Listen!"  Unblinking blue eyes glared across the desk.

"I am not taking on the Harrison case."

"I was just hoping you'd help me, that's all."

"Yes?"

"Well, do you mind me asking you if ... if you've got any personal interest

in all of this?"

"Nil."  If there had been a quick flicker of unease in Morse's eyes, it was

as quickly gone.

"But you know a lot about it, don't you?  So you must have some idea about

what happened on the night she was murdered?"

"Ideas plural."

"There was a logical sequence of events, as you would say."

"There was a concatenation of events, yes, with each link of the chain

causally connected to its predecessor."

"What do you think happened that night?"

"Not much argument about that, is there?"

"You'd agree with this, then?"  Lewis produced a sheet of A4 on which he had

typed a timetable for the day of the murder:

7 a.  m.  -l p.  m.  Yvonne on early shift at JR2 Ward 7C I.  15-2 p.  m.

Lunches in staff canteen 2.  15-4 p.  m.  (?  ) Drives down to Oxford

shopping at MS and Austin Reed 4.  00(?  )-4.  30 p.  m.  Drives home

avoiding main traffic exodus 6-7 p.  m.  Evening meal of mushroom omelette 9.

00p.  m.  Local builder rings number engaged or phone off hook 9.  10p.  m.

Frank H gets phone call and catches 21.  48 Paddington to Oxford train 9.  30

p.  m.  Builder rings again ringing- tone but no reply II.  00 p.  m.  F H

gets taxi to Lower Swinstead 11.  20p.  m.  Discovers wife naked, gagged,

handcuffed and dead Morse glanced at the sheet in perfunctory fashion.

"You ought to use the Oxford comma more."

"Pardon?"

"The presumption was is that somewhere between nine and half-past..."

' Pathologist's report seemed to confirm that.  "

"Would I had your faith in pathologists!"

"Not just that though, is it?  The whole thing hangs together.  Pretty well

everything there's confirmed: statements from the hospital; receipts from the

two shops; post-mortem details on the meal; phone calls checked out ' "

Nonsense!  The builder?  First time the number's engaged?  Second time nobody

answers?  How the hell do you check that?  "

"You can't check absolutely everything ' " What about the husband?  Odd sort

of call, wasn't it?  Drop 117

 whatever you're doing and get here

double-quick!  So who was it who rang him?  "

"That's what I'm asking you, sir."

"His number couldn't have been too well known.  He was renting a flat, wasn't

he?"

"Still is."

"But somebody knew it and rang him.  Did we check the phone records of the

suspects?"

"What suspects?"

"The two children?"

"They weren't suspects.  And if they were, why shouldn't they ring their dad

occasionally?"

"How did he pay for his train journey?"

"No credit-card record must have paid cash.  And for the taxi ride.

Anyway, he'd got the best alibi of anybody: taxi driver remembers the time

exactly.  He was just listening to the 11 o'clock news-headlines.  "

"Was the train a bit late that night?  If it's the one I some- times catch,

it's due in at 22.53."

"Too late to find out, sir."

"Rubbish!  Too difficult, possibly.  But they keep all these times of

arrivals: they make statistical tables out of 'em, for heaven's sake."

"Must've been on time, surely?"

"What?  Seven minutes for somebody in one helluva rush?  From Platform 2 to

the taxi-rank?  It'd only take a geriatric like me a couple of minutes."

"Perhaps there was a queue."

"Was there a queue?"

"Dunno.  Perhaps he nipped into the snack-bar."

"Closed."

"I don't quite see what you're getting at."

"What is essential, Lewis, is usually invisible to the outward eye."