Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

We both despise the gentle touch, So cut out the pretence; You wouldn't love

it half as much Without the violence (Roy Dean, Lovelace Bleeding) anyone

wishing to take up Morse's earlier promise of being available the following

Monday morning would have been disappointed, since he had put in no

appearance by lunchtime.  Yet he was not idle during those morning hours; and

any visitor to the bachelor flat would have found him seated at his desk for

much of the time; and for a fair proportion of that time found him writing

quite busily and (as we have seen) very neatly.  His old typewriter (with its

defective 'e' and 't's) sat at his elbow; but he had never mastered the

keyboard-skills with any real confidence, and he wrote now in long-hand with

a medium-blue Biro.

 For Priority Consideration Several things have happened these last few days

which have prompted me to put down in writing my own thoughts on the present

state of play.

First, I've been waking up every day recently, after some nightmarish nights,

with a premonition that some disaster is imminent.  Whether death comes into

such a category, I'm not sure.  I can't agree with Socrates, though, that

death is a blessing devoutly to be wished, even if it is (as I hope it is, as

I believe it is) one long completely dreamless sleep.  For the very fact of

being alive is surely the best thing that's happened to (almost) all of us.

Second, the last murder case entrusted to the pair of us has been (one or two

loose ends though) satisfactorily resolved.  Repp and Flynn were murdered by

Ban-on, and the murderer himself is now dead.

So any further insight into the original Harrison murder from their angles is

wholly precluded.

Third, I'm certain that Frank Harrison has been the pay- master.  It's high

time we brought him into HQ for intensive questioning, either directly about

the murder of his wife, or at the very least about some culpable complicity

of her murder.

Fourth, I'm also convinced that Yvonne H was murdered by one of her own

family.  Nothing else makes any sense at all, not to me anyway.

That murder was not premeditated: few of them are.  It was committed

spontaneously, viciously, involuntarily perhaps, by whichever of the three it

was who found Yvonne Harrison in a situation that was utterly unexpected

kinkiness, perversion, degradation, all rolled up into one.

On the face of it, the husband is the outsider of the three, so you will

appreciate, Lewis, that in my book he's the favourite.  It's the 'why' that

worries me, though.  He wasn't and isn't anybody's fool, and he must have

known more than

enough about his wife's tastes in bondage and possibly masochism.  So I just

can't see blazing jealousy as his motive, especially since, as I strongly

suspect, he regularly experienced the (reported) joys of extra-marital sex

himself.

A confession here.

Quite a few times I've found myself looking at the faces of people concerned

with this case and thinking I'd seen them somewhere before.

I thought it might be the result of inter- breeding in a small community no

wonder some of the villagers are pretty tight-lipped!

And I was right.  That fruit- machine addict, for example: Alien Thomas.

That's how you spell his name by the way, Lewis.  I found it in the village-

school records: Alien Alfred Thomas.  Unusual these days, that spelling of

"Alien'.  And

"Alfred' belongs more to the first half of the century, doesn't it?  I also

found out (well, Dixon found out) that the Christian names of Elizabeth Jane

Thomas's father were

"Harold Alfred'; and that someone else in the village had a father with the

Christian names

"Joseph Alien'.  That someone else was Frank Harrison.  And (believe me!) he

was the father of the lad, and Elizabeth decided to give him a couple of

Christian names that, at least for herself, could confer some little pretence

of legitimacy of her illegitimate son.  (I wonder if his father gives him a

fruit-machine allowance?) Let's turn to the Harrison children.

Either of them could have murdered their mother.  What would be the motive,

though?  I just can't see Sarah suddenly turning to murder because she finds

her mother abed with one of her many lovers.  What does it really matter to

her that her mother enjoys a bit of biting and bondage occasionally?  Shocked

and disgusted?  Yes, she'd certainly have been both.  But driven to murder?

No.  There's something about her, though something that tells me that she's

up to her very smooth neck in things.

What about Simon Harrison?  As we know he's always been 287

 a bit of a

mummy's darling: a boy disadvantaged because of early deafness; a boy always

needing extra understanding and extra love, and who found it (hardly

surprisingly) from his mother.  I'd guess myself that for Simon this

relationship had always been very precious.  Sacrosanct almost.  I'd also

guess that he had no notion whatsoever of his mother's idiosyncratic tastes

in sexual gratification.  Then one night, the night of the murder, he'd

driven out to see her.  And why not?  Just to say hello, perhaps?  Like his