Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (21 page)

Lewis didn’t. But he nodded.

Why not?

“Then there was Clue Number Five—that walloping great clue
you
found straightaway: the fact that Sheila Poster had worked in the
Geology
Department here. Huh! I was blind.

“Then there was Clue Number Six … from
The Times
crossword yesterday … Well, no, perhaps that was just a coincidence.

“And to cap it all you tell me about those almighty cracks in your bedroom wall …”

“Crack
—only
one
crack, sir—in the
kitchen
, actually.”

Morse waved his right hand as if dismissing such trivial inaccuracies as of minor moment.

“And
, Lewis, the dates all match—
all
of ’em. In each case they fall about ten days or a fortnight after the events—I’ve checked ’em with a lovely girl called Eunice Gill in the OUP cartographical section.”

(What
hadn’t
Morse done, Lewis was beginning to wonder.)

“And she faxed me this,” continued Morse.

Lewis took the sheet and read a newspaper paragraph, dated 28.xi.92:

It had all taken Lewis far too long, of course; but now he let the information sink in. And finally he spoke:

“So what we need is a list of the delegates at the conference. Shouldn’t take—”

But he got no further, for Morse handed him a sheet on which the members of the UK delegation were listed.

“Good man—Sergeant Dixon—you know,” said Morse.

Lewis ignored the tribute. “None of ’em with the initial ‘B,’ though.”

“Why not try ‘R’?” asked Morse quietly.

So an embarrassed Lewis tried “R,” and looked again at the middle name of the five: Robert Grainger, D.Phil., MA.

“So all we need is to find out his address—”

“Cumnor Hill, Lewis. Not far off, is it? Palmer traced him. Good man—Palmer—you know.”

“Why do you think he did it?” asked Lewis as they drove along the Botley Road.

“Grainger’s possible motives, you mean? Well, he was hot favourite for the chair in Geology—you’ve just discovered that for yourself. Great honour, you know, having a professorial chair at Oxford. Biggest prize of the lot. For some people.”

Lewis nodded, for he half understood now, and himself took up the thread: “And Sheila Poster was going to ruin it all. Just as he’s going to claim his birthright, he’s suddenly faced with the prospect of scandal and failure
and divorce … and the nightmare of some squawking infant into the bargain.”

Morse was unusually slow in his reply as they started to climb Cumnor Hill. “I wouldn’t know about those last two things, Lewis.”

They walked along the flagged path that bisected the well-tended lawn, weedless even in winter, and knocked on a front door which was immediately opened by a prematurely grey-haired man, slimly built, in his late forties or so, his eyes looking at them over half-lensed spectacles.

“You’re the police, I suppose?”

Morse showed his warranty. “Dr. Grainger?”

For a few seconds the man hesitated. Then stood back and ushered his visitors into a well-appointed lounge, three of its walls completely lined with books.

“Yes. I suppose we’d better get it over with.”

He spoke quite slowly, and without emotion—at least to begin with. Yes, he knew that Sheila Poster had been murdered. He’d read it in the
Oxford Mail
. Yes, he’d had an affair with her; she’d been putting pressure on him to leave his wife and go to live with her; she’d told him she was pregnant—though he’d doubted the claim. His wife now knew most of the truth, but had only become directly involved because Sheila had contrived somehow to get a job as a cleaning-woman in the house there, and then had sought to poison the marital relationship—what little there was left of it …

It was at this point that the belittled Lewis (seemingly to Morse’s mild amusement?) decided to assert himself.

“It’ll be up to
Mrs
. Grainger to give us details about her
side of things, sir. You yourself weren’t here, were you, when Miss Poster was working for your wife?”

Grainger, who hitherto had been speaking directly to Morse, now turned his eyes upon Lewis.

“You mean you’re not prepared to take
my
word about what my wife has told me?”

“We’re not here to answer questions, Dr. Grainger—we’re here to ask them,” snapped Lewis.

Irritatedly, Grainger turned back to Morse. “Is it necessary for us to have this man with us, Inspector? I am
not
used to being spoken to in this way and I find it wholly and unnecessarily offensive!”

“This is a
murder
enquiry, sir,” began Morse rather lamely. “You must understand—”

“But I
do
understand. And I’m telling you you’re wasting your time if you think you’ll find any murderer in
this
house.”

“Where were you on Sunday night?” asked Morse quietly.

“Huh! I’ll tell you. I was in America—that’s where I was.”

“And you can prove that?”

Grainger stood up, and followed by Lewis walked over to a bureau on which, beside a framed wedding-photograph, lay an envelope (as it proved) of travel documents. He handed it to Morse.

“As you’ll see, I arrived back only yesterday afternoon—Monday. The plane, believe it or not, landed punctually at 4:15
P.M.
I caught the Heathrow bus just after five o’clock, and I got to Oxford about quarter to seven.”

“It’ll certainly be pretty easy to check up, then,” said Lewis, smiling serenely; and it was Morse who now
looked round at his sergeant, more in admiration than in anger. Yet he himself sat silent and listened only, as Grainger snarled at Lewis once more, the antagonism between the two men now almost physically tangible.

“Oh yes. It’ll hardly require a man of your calibre to check up on
that
. And it’ll be pretty easy to check up on my wife as well. But let me tell you something. Sergeant! It won’t be
you
who sees her. Is that clear? She’s extremely upset—and you can understand why, can’t you? Sheila was here
working
for her until a fortnight or so ago. All right? Now
you
might get a bit blasé about murders, Sergeant—but other people
don’t
. My wife is under sedation and she’s not going to see
anyone
—not today she isn’t. And she won’t see
you
, in any case! Your inspector here sounds a reasonably humane and civilized sort of fellow—and perhaps there are still a few others like him in the Force. So any of
them
can see my wife. All right? But it won’t be
you
, Sergeant. Why?
Because I say so!”

Phew!

Morse now intervened between the warring parties: “That’ll be fine, sir. Have no fears! I’ll be interviewing your wife myself. But … but it would help us, sir, if you
do
happen to know where Mrs. Grainger was on Sunday night?”

“She went to some gala do in London with one of her friends—lady-friends. As I understand it, the pair of them missed the 11:20 from Paddington and had to catch the 12:20—the ‘milk-float,’ I think they call it—landing up here at about 2
A.M.
They got a taxi home from the station. That’s all I know.”

“Have you got this friend’s telephone number?”

“You won’t need it. She lives next door.”

Grainger pointed vaguely to the right; and Morse nodded his unspoken instruction to Lewis.

And Lewis left.

Morse was already seated in the Jaguar when Lewis rejoined him ten minutes later.

“He’s right, sir. They got back here to Cumnor about half-past two in the early hours of Monday morning.”

Morse showed no emotion, for he’d fully expected confirmation of Mrs. Grainger’s alibi.

And he began to explain.

“You see, Lewis, it’s not the
who
-dunnit aspect of this particular case that’s really important—but the
why
-dunnit.
Why
was Sheila Poster murdered? She must surely have posed a threat to someone, either a man or a woman. And more likely a man, I’m thinking. She must have stood in the way of some man’s hopes and calculated advancement. So
much
of a threat that when she refused to compromise, at some show-down between them, she was murdered precisely for that refusal of hers. So we’d no option but to work backwards—agreed? And we knew
her
side of things, to some extent, from the story she wrote. Now
some
things in that story reflected actuality fairly closely, didn’t they? The Graingers’ house—‘The Grange,’ huh!—her job there—her affair with the husband—her overwhelming wish to force the issue with the wife—”

“Don’t forget the baby, sir!”

“No, I won’t forget the baby. But Grainger didn’t seem to think she was telling the truth about that, did he?”

“She
was
pregnant, though.”

“Yes, she was telling the truth about being pregnant. In fact, she was telling a whole lot more of the truth perhaps
than she was prepared to admit—even to herself. Let’s make a hypothetical case. What, say, if she really wanted to murder
not
the married couple she was telling herself she hated? What if—in her story—she wanted to murder the very people she
did
in fact murder: the lady-of-the-house and
that lady’s lover
? What if the pair of
them
had fallen deeply in love? What if—again as in the story—the lady-of-the-house had been only too glad to learn of her husband’s infidelity? Because then she could divorce him, and marry her new lover … the man who stood by the flower-beds and tended the lawns there …”

“The man who came in for a cup of coffee, sir.”

“Perhaps so. But don’t forget she wasn’t just telling us a string of
facts
in the story—she was making a whole lot of it up as she went along.”

“Really, sir?”

Lewis, as Morse could just about make out in the gloaming, was smiling quietly to himself.

“What the hell’s got
into
you, Lewis? You antagonize one of our leading witnesses; you go off and find an unshakeable alibi for his missus; and now you sit there grinning like a Cheshire—”

“By the way, sir, they do have a cat—I asked next door. ‘Johnson,’ its name is.”

“You’ve nothing
else
to tell me, have you?” asked Morse, looking curiously at his sergeant.

“Actually, there is, sir—yes.”

“Out with it, man!”

“Yesterday, sir, when we interviewed Paul Bayley, he said he’d been with his girlfriend all night.”

“You told me that. You told me you’d checked.”

“I did check. Bayley told me she was in the middle of moving flats that very day—seemed she’d been a little bit
too generous with her favours for the landlord’s liking; and—just temporarily, mind—she was registered as of no fixed address. But Bayley said she’d almost certainly be in the City Centre Westgate Library—where she went most mornings—in the Local History Section—”

“Where she was!”

Lewis nodded. “Doing some research on Nuneham Courtenay and the Deserted Village. So she told me.”

“Well?”

“Well … that’s about it.”

“Is it?”

“She’s a very beautiful woman, sir.”

“More beautiful than Sheila Poster?”

“I’d say so. More to my taste, anyway.”

“And most men would fancy her?”

“If they had the chance.”

“And Bayley
did
have the chance.”

“I’m pretty sure he did. He’s been in Jowett Place for about four months or so now. Unemployed for a start; but then
in
work—so his landlord says.”

“His landlord? When did you see
him
?”

“He called in yesterday lunchtime, when you were in the pub. And from what he said—”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“Thought I’d just do a bit of investigation off my own bat, sir. You didn’t mind?”

“See if
you
could solve the case, you mean?”

“Try to, yes. And the landlord said it was Sheila Poster who’d told Bayley about the vacancy in the flat upstairs and who’d put in a good word for him, you know—gave him a good-behaviour reference. Not only that, though. I reckon she was the one who told Bayley about the odd-job vacancy going up at the Graingers’ place.”

“Phew!” Morse whistled quietly. “You’re saying
Bayley
was the odd-job man?”

“I’m saying exactly that, sir!”

“You’re
sure
of this?”

“Not yet,” replied Lewis, beaming happily.

“Let me get this clear. You’re suggesting that Bayley goes to work for Mrs. Sylvia Grainger—she falls for
him
—he falls for
her
—she knows her husband’s having an affair with the
charwoman
—she’s proof of it. Then” (Morse paused slightly for dramatic effect) “just when things are looking hunky-dory, this charwoman claims she’s pregnant. Not by Grainger, though …”

“… but by
Bayley
. Yes, sir.”

“And Bayley goes down on Sunday night—has it out with her—she refuses to play ball—and she gets herself murdered. Is that the idea?”

“Exactly!”

“But Bayley’s got an alibi! This local history woman of yours—she says she was with him all night.”

“From about nine
P.M.
to seven
A.M.
the following morning. Correct. Slept on the floor together in a friend’s house in Cowley somewhere—she refuses to say exactly where.”

“She’s probably trying to protect her friends or something.”