Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

mystery was solved.  Completely solved now, with the knowledge that it was

Linda Barren who

 had taken the hush-money; Linda Ban-on who must have

insisted that if her husband ever thought of syphoning some of it off for

himself she would expose him for the child-abuser that he was, and expose him

to Social Services, to the police, to the folk in the village, to the Press.

And she would have meant it, for she was past caring.  My God, yes!  And

Barren had agreed.

Yes .  The big moments in the case were over; and he rang Mrs Lewis and asked

her to have the chip-pan ready half an hour earlier than usual.

Yes .  In a strange kind of way, his confidence in himself had grown steadily

throughout the present case, in spite of a few irritations like Dixon!  And

there was that one thing that had been interesting him and troubling him, in

equal measure, for some considerable time now.  Very soon he'd have to face

up to telling Morse of his suspicions.  But not just yet.  He'd need to know

a bit more about the Harrison murder first; especially about the contents of

that fourth green box-file which had mysteriously added itself to the

documents in the case, and which now sat alongside the other three on a shelf

in Morse's office.  Perhaps a bit later that afternoon, since Morse was

unlikely to return.

What if he did, anyway?

Yes .  Lewis sat back after typing his report, his thoughts dwelling on the

case that to all intents and purposes had now closed.  He was right, wasn't

he?  But there were just one or two tiny items he hadn't as yet checked; and

he knew that his conscience would be niggling him about them.  No time like

the present.

But not much luck.  Still, those alibis for the Monday morning didn't much

matter any longer.  Or rather non-alibis, since neither Harrison Senior nor

Harrison Junior had any alibi at

all.  And whilst Sarah Harrison did have an alibi, it still remained

unchecked.

He rang the Diabetes Centre in the Radcliffe Infirmary, with almost immediate

if unexpected success, since Professor Turner (clearly not a Monday-Friday

medic) now confirmed everything that Miss Harrison herself had affirmed: "In

fact, Sergeant, she had to take over some of my patients mid- morning when I

was summoned by my superiors ' " Do you have any superiors, sir?  "

On reflection, Lewis was more than a little pleased with that last question:

just the sort of thing Morse would have asked.  Was he, Lewis, just a little

after all this time moving gradually nearer to Morsean wavelength?

At a quarter-past four he walked along the corridor to Morse's office, to

cast a fresh eye (so he promised himself) on that bizarre, that puzzling,

that haunting evening of Yvonne Ham- son's murder the source of so much

trouble and tragedy.

Very soon he was virtually certain that he had seen none of the contents of

that fourth box-file before; and had convinced himself that this was not

merely a matter of some redistribution of the case-documents.  The file

contained the sort of personal items that many women, and doubtless many men,

keep in one of the locked drawers of their desks or bureaux, often with some

sense of guilt.

There were all the usual things that from experience Lewis had known so well:

letters, many of them in their original envelopes, some from women, most of

them from men; photo- graphs, many of them of Yvonne herself (one topless)

with a variety of men-friends; postcards from many a quarter of the globe,

but mostly from Greece and Switzerland; three slim (unopened) bottles of

perfume; various receipts for the purchase of ultra-expensive clothes and

shoes.  But for all the variety of material there, the box was scarcely

half-full, and

 Lewis took his time.  He looked at the photographs

reasonably quickly (not quite so quickly at one of them, perhaps), before

reading slowly (though not as slowly as Morse would have done) through the

letters.

Then he saw it: that they would prefer to be ill in hospital and nursed by

you than to be in full health and never see you again.  I join them.  You

have monopolized my thoughts these last few days, ever since you promised -

remember?  - to get in touch once I was discharged.  But no invitation, no

phone call, no letter, nothing.

If you have decided diat it was all just a temporary infatuation, and if, on

your part, it was nothing more than diat - so be it.  Just for a while longer

though, let me look through my mail each morning in the hope That was all.

Just one small page of a longer letter.  No date, no address, no salutation,

no valediction, no name nothing.  And yet everything.  Because the letter was

written in that small, neatly formed upright script that was recognizable

everywhere in the Thames Valley Police HQ.

As he re-read the page, Lewis was suddenly aware of another presence in the

office; and looked up to find Chief Inspector Morse standing silently in the

doorway.

284

chapter sixty-two Don't tell me, sweet, that I'm unkind Each time I

black your eye, Or raise a weal on your behind I'm just a loving guy.