Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (9 page)

Evans suddenly looked a little happier.
“Clever
, sir. Very clever, that was—’ow to get a couple o’ pints of blood into a cell, eh? When there’s none there to start off
with, and when, er, and when the ‘invigilator,’ shall we say, gets searched before ’e comes in. Yes, sir. You can well ask about that, and I dunno if I ought to tell you. After all, I might want to use that particular—”

“Anything to do with a little rubber ring for piles, perhaps?”

Evans grinned feebly. “Clever, though, wasn’t it?”

“Must have been a tricky job sticking a couple of pints—”

“Nah! You’ve got it wrong, sir. No problem about
that.”

“No?”

“Nah! It’s the
clotting
, you see. That’s the big trouble. We got the blood easy enough. Pig’s blood, it was—from the slaughter’ouse in Kidlington. But to stop it clotting you’ve got to mix yer actual blood” (Evans took a breath) “with one tenth of its own volume of 3.8 per cent trisodium citrate! Didn’t know that, did you, sir?”

The Governor shook his head in a token of reluctant admiration. “We learn something new every day, they tell me. Come on, m’lad.”

Evans made no show of resistance, and side by side the two men walked slowly down the stairs.

“Tell me, Evans. How did you manage to plan all this business? You’ve had no visitors—I’ve seen to that. You’ve had no letters—”

“I’ve got lots of friends, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Me German teacher, for a start.”

“You mean—? But he was from the Technical College.”

“Was
’e?” Evans was almost enjoying it all now. “Ever check up on ’im, sir?”

“God Almighty! There’s far more going on than I—”

“Always will be, sir.”

“Everything ready?” asked the Governor as they stood by the reception desk.

“The van’s out the front, sir,” said the pretty blonde receptionist. Evans winked at her; and she winked back at him. It almost made his day.

A silent prison officer handcuffed the recaptured Evans, and together the two men clambered awkwardly into the back seat of the prison van.

“See you soon, Evans.” It was almost as if the Governor were saying farewell to an old friend after a cocktail party.

“Cheerio, sir. I, er, I was just wonderin’. I know your German’s pretty good, sir, but do you know any more o’ these modern languages?”

“Not very well. Why?”

Evans settled himself comfortably on the back seat, and grinned happily. “Nothin’, really. I just ’appened to notice that you’ve got some O-level Italian classes comin’ up next September, that’s all.”

“Perhaps you won’t be with us next September, Eivans.”

James Roderick Evans appeared to ponder the Governor’s words deeply. “No. P’r’aps I won’t,” he said.

As the prison van turned right from Chipping Norton on to the Oxford road, the hitherto silent prison officer unlocked the handcuffs and leaned forward towards the driver. “For Christ’s sake get a
move
on! It won’t take ’em long to find out—”

“Where do ye suggest we make for?” asked the driver, in a broad Scots accent.

“What about Newbury?” suggested Evans.

It was more from necessity than from kindliness, just after 5
P.M.
on a rain-soaked evening in early February 1990, that Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police leaned over and opened the Jaguar’s near-side door. One of his neighbours from the North Oxford bachelor flats was standing at the bus stop, was getting very wet—and was staring hard at him.

“Most kind!” said Philip Wise, inserting his kyphotic self into the passenger seat.

Morse grunted a vague acknowledgement as the car made a few further slow yards up the Banbury Road in the red-tail-lighted queue, his wipers clearing short-lived swaths across the screen. Only three quarters of a mile to go, but at this time of day twenty minutes would be par for the progressively paralytic crawl to the flats. Never an easy conversationalist himself—indeed, known occasionally to lapse into total aphasia when driving a car—Morse
was glad that Wise was doing all the talking. “Something quite extraordinary’s happened to me,” said the man in the dripping mackintosh.

In retrospect, Morse was aware that he’d listened, at least initially, with no more than polite passivity. But listen he had done.

Philip Wise had gone up to Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1938; and in due course his linguistic abilities (particularly in German) had ensured for him, when war broke out a year later, a cushy little job in an Intelligence Unit housed on the outskirts of Bicester. For two years he had lived there in a disagreeable and draughty Nissenhut; and when the chance came of his taking digs back in Oxford, he’d jumped at it. Thus it was that in October 1941 he had moved into Crozier Road, a sunless thoroughfare just off the west of St. Giles’; and it was there that he’d first met Miss Dodo Whitaker (“Only the one ‘t’, Inspector”) who had a tiny top-floor bedsitter immediately above his own room in the grimy four-storey property that stood at number 14.

Why on earth she’d been saddled with a name like “Dodo,” he’d never discovered—nor enquired; but she was certainly a considerably livelier specimen than the defunct
Didus ineptus
of Mauritius. Although physically hardly warranting any second glance, especially in the wartime “Utility” boiler-suit she almost invariably wore, she had the inestimable merit of being interesting. And sometimes, over half a glass of mild beer in the ill-lit bar at the rear of the Bird and Baby, her wonted nervousness would disappear, and in her rather deep, husky voice she would talk with knowledge, volubility, and wit, about the class-structure, about the progress of the war—and about
music. Yes, above all about music. The pair of them had joined the Record Library, thereafter spending a few candle-lit evenings together in Dodo’s room listening to everything from Vivaldi to Wagner. On one occasion, Wise had almost been on the verge of telling her of the Platonic-plus pleasure he was beginning to experience in her company.

Almost.

Dodo had a brother called Ambrose who now and then managed to get a weekend leave-pass and come to stay with Dodo, usually (though quite unofficially) sleeping on the floor of her single room. Almost immediately, Philip Wise and Ambrose Whitaker became firm friends, spending (somewhat to Dodo’s annoyance) rather too many hours together drinking whisky—a commodity plentiful enough, if over-priced, in the Bird and Baby, but a rare one in the wilds of Bodmin, where Ambrose, with two stripes on each arm, spent his days initiating recruits into the mysteries of antiquated artillery pieces. He was a winsome, albeit somewhat raffish, sort of fellow whose attraction to alcohol apparently eclipsed even his love of music (Dodo spoke of Ambrose, amongst other things, as a virtuoso on the piano). Those weekends had flashed by, with Wise far too soon finding himself walking across Gloucester Green to see his friend off at the Great Western station late on Sunday afternoons.

Brother and sister—what an engaging couple they were!

Rich, too—at least their parents were.

Dodo, in particular, made no secret of her parents’ extremely comfortable lifestyle, which Wise himself had once (and only once) experienced at first hand, when Dodo had suggested—on his having to spend a week in
Bristol in February 1942—that he stay with them; had even loaned him a key to the family mansion in case they were out when he arrived. Wise had already known that Dodo’s parents lived in Bristol, since he’d noticed the postmark on the letter (doubtless from Mummy) that lay each week on the undusted mahogany table in the small entrance hall of number 14—her name in the address, incidentally, always prefixed by the letter “A.” Alice? Angela? Anne? Audrey?—Wise had never been told and, again, had never enquired. But that little fact was something else he’d known earlier, too, since he was with her when, with a practised flourish of those slim and sinewy fingers, she’d signed her membership card at the Record Library. As for the parents, they turned out to be a straight-laced, tight-faced pair who remained frigidly reserved towards their guest throughout his short stay, and who appeared less than effusively appreciative of Dodo—and almost embarrassingly dismissive of Ambrose. Oddly, Wise had not found a single fond memento of their talented offspring in the Whitakers’ gauntly luxurious villa, and not a single family photograph to grace the daily-dusted mantelpieces.

It was three weeks after his return from his ill-starred visit that Dodo left Oxford, her wartime work (something “hush-hush,” it was understood) necessitating a move to Cheltenham. Only about forty miles away—and she’d keep in touch, she said.

But she hadn’t.

“Forty-eight years ago, this was, Inspector. Forty-eight! I was twenty-three myself, and she must have been about the same. Year or two older, perhaps—I’m not
sure. You see, I never even asked her how old she was. Pretty spineless specimen, wasn’t I?”

In the darkness, Morse nodded his silent assent, and the Jaguar finally turned into the Residents Only parking area.

Wise contrived to keep talking as the two men dashed through the rain to the entrance hall. “I’d be glad to give you a cup of tea … or something … You see, I haven’t really told you anything yet.”

As they sat opposite each other in the living area, Wise passed across a white, six-page booklet containing details of “A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of AMBROSE WHITAKER, MA (Cantab.), FRAM 1917–1989,” and Morse glanced cursorily at the contents: music; hymn; lesson; music; address; prayers; hymn; music; blessing; music; more music. Observing only that if he ever had a voice in his own funeral arrangements he would join Whitaker in choosing the “In Paradisum” from the Fauré
Requiem
, Morse handed the leaflet back.

“The thing is this,” continued Wise. “I saw an obituary in
The Times
in December, and I was sure it was the same man I’d known in the war. Quite apart from the pretty unusual Christian name, as well as the
very
unusual spelling of the surname, everything else fitted, too: born in Bristol, prodigy on the piano—everything! And I just couldn’t help thinking back and wondering whether
she
was still alive—Dodo, that is. Anyway, a fortnight ago I read about this Memorial Service in Holborn, and I decided to go up and pay my last respects to an old friend—and perhaps …”

“Find some plump-bosomed old spinster—”

“Yes!”

“Did you find her?” asked Morse quietly.

Wise shook his head. “There were an awful lot of important people from the musical world—I hadn’t realized what a name Ambrose had made for himself. I got to the church early and stayed outside for a good while watching the people going in, including—pretty obvious who she was—Ambrose’s wife, who drew up in a chauffeur-driven Rolls—registration AW 1! But I didn’t see the woman I was looking for—and she wasn’t in the church, either. I’d have spotted her straightaway if she had been. She was smallish, stockily built—just like her mother. And there was something else. She had a nasty little red scar—well, a nasty
big
scar really—just across the left-hand side of her jaw: a bicycle accident when she was a youngster, I think. She was awfully conscious of it and always used a lot of face-powder to try to cover it up a bit. But it was still pretty noticeable, I’m afraid. Well, to cut a long story a bit shorter, I went up to Ambrose’s wife after the service and told her I’d known her husband in the war and said how sorry I was and all the rest of it. She was pleasant enough, but she seemed a bit strained, and there were other people waiting to have a word with her. So I didn’t say much more except to mention that I’d known her husband’s sister as well.” Wise paused a second or two before continuing.

“Do you know what happened then, Inspector? Ambrose’s wife pointed to a grey-haired woman in a black dress standing with her back to us, a woman very much the same height and build as Dodo had been. “This gentleman here says he used to know you, Agnes …”

“Agnes!”

“But I didn’t hear any more—I just didn’t know what
to do—or say. You see, the woman in black turned round and faced me,
and she wasn’t Dodo Whitaker.”

It was Morse who broke the silence which followed. “Ambrose only had the one sister?”

Wise nodded, a wry, defeated smile upon his face. “Yes—Agnes. He never did have a sister named ‘Dodo’!”

Again the two men were silent.

“Well?” asked Wise, finally.

It had always appeared to Morse an undeniable fact that coincidence plays a far greater role in human affairs than is generally acknowledged. And here was yet another instance of it—it must be! Wise’s tale was interesting enough—assuredly so: but it wasn’t much of a
problem
, surely? Ostentatiously he drained his whisky, gratefully witnessed the replenishment, and then pronounced judgement: “There were two Ambrose Whitakers, both musical men, and both from Bristol, and the one you knew wasn’t the one who died.”