The Riddle Of The Third Mile (16 page)

‘Where are we then? Ah, yes. I went. I went through the doors that had been clearly labelled for my attention, and I knew where I was going; I knew exactly. It will be of little value to you so have a comprehensive account of subsequent events, although (to be fair to myself) they were not particularly sordid. The whole drama (I must admit it) was played with a carefully rehearsed verisimilitude, with myself acting a role that was equally carefully rehearsed. Yet at one stage (if I may continue
-
the
metaphor), I forgot my lines completely. And so, perhaps, would you have done. For a devastatingly lovely woman-a Siren fit to beguile the wily Ulysses himself- was almost, almost rob me of my robe of honour; and, perhaps more importantly to rob me of my one defence-an army revolver which I had kept since my days in the desert, and which was even now still bulging reassuringly in my jacket-pocket.

‘But things are getting out of sequence, and we must go back. Who was the man I had seen on Staircase T at Lonsdale College? You will have to know. Yes, I am afraid you will have to know.

‘I was a young officer in the desert during the battle of El Alamein. I was, I think, a good officer, in the sense that I tried to look after the men in my charge, left little to needless chance, enforced the orders I was given and faced the enemy with the conviction that this conflict-this one, surely-was as fully justified as any in the, annals of Christendom. But I knew one thing that no one else could know. I knew that at heart I was a physical coward; and I always feared the thought that, if there were to come a time when I should be called upon to show a personal, an individual-as against a communal, corporate-act of courage, well, I knew that I would fail. And that moment came. And I failed. It came-I need not relate the shameful details-when a man pleaded with me to risk my own life in trying to save the life of a man who was trapped in a fiercely burning tank. But enough of that. It hurts me deeply, even now, to recall my cowardice.

‘Let us now switch forward again. It was all phoney: I soon began to realize that. There were those two bottles of everything, for example: two of them-in whatever the client (in this case, me) should happen to indulge. Why two? The one of them about two thirds empty (or is it one third full?); the other completely intact, with the plastic seal fixed round its top. Why go, then, to the new bottle for the first, perfunctory drinks? I didn’t know, but I soon began to wonder. And then her accent! Oh dear! Had she been at an audition, any director worth a tuppence of salt would have told her to flush her Gallic vowels down the nearest ladies’ lavatory. And then at one point she opened her handbag-a handbag she must have owned for twenty years. A professional whore with an aged handbag? And not only that. She was introduced to me by an unconvincing old hag as “Yvonne”; so why are the faded gilt initials on the inside flap of her handbag clearly printed “W.S.”? You see where all this suspicion is leading? But I had my revolver. I was going to be all right. I was all right. (How I hate underlining words in typescript- but often it is necessary.) It was only when this lovely girl (oh dear, she was lovely!) poured my final drink from the other bottle (not the bottle I had drunk from before) that I knew exactly what my situation was. I asked her to open the curtains a little, and whilst she was doing this I poured the (doubtless doctored) contents of my glass inside my trousers, in order that the impression should be given that I had been incapable of controlling myself. (I know you will understand the sense of what, so delicately, I have tried to express.) You must understand that at this point she was quite openly and wantonly naked, and I myself quite justifiably aroused.

‘After that? If I may say so, I performed my part professionally. Making vaguely somnolent noises, I now assumed the role of a man (as the Americans have it) in a totally negative response situation. Then the woman left me; and after hearing whispered communications on the other side of the door, I sensed that someone else was in the room. Let us leave it there.

‘I am getting tired with this lengthy typing, but it is important that I should go on a little longer.

‘You were a fool when you were an undergraduate-wasting, as you did, the precious talent of a clear, clean mind. It was me (or do you prefer “I”?) who marked some of your Greats papers, and even amidst the widespread evidence of your appalling ignorance there were moments of rare perception and sensitivity. But since that time you have made a distinguished reputation for yourself as a man of the Detective (as Dickens has it), and I was anxious that it should be a worthy brain that was to be pitted against my own. Why else should the body be discovered where it was? Who made sure that it should be found at Thrupp-a place almost in your own back-yard? You will, I suspect, have almost certainly discovered by now why I was not able to leave the head and the hands for your inspection? Yes, I think so. You would have been quite certain that it was not my body had I done so, and I wished to sharpen up your brain, for (believe me!) it will need to be as sharp as the sword of Achilles before your work is finished. Here then is a chance for you to show the sort of quality that was apparent in your early days at Oxford. Perhaps this case of yours will afford for you the opportunity to kill an ancient ghost, since I shall quite certainly (albeit posthumously) award you a “first” this time if you can grasp the inevitable (and basically so simple) logic of all these strange events.

‘I shall make no further communication to you; and I advise you not to try to track me down, for you will not find me.

‘Post Scriptum. I have just read this letter through and wish to apologize for the profusion of brackets. (I am not often over-influenced by the work of Bernard Levin.)’

So many clues now, and as Morse and Lewis saw things there were four main areas of inquiry:

1. What were the real facts about that far-off day in the desert when Browne-Smith had faced his one real test of character-and (apparently) failed so lamentably?

2. Where exactly did Westerby (a name cropping up repeatedly now) fit into the increasingly complex pattern?

3. Who was the person whom Browne-Smith had met after his anti-climactic sexual encounter with the pseudonymous “Yvonne”?

4. And (still, to Morse the most vital question of all) whose was the body they had found?

Obviously the strands of these inquiries would interweave at many points; but it seemed sensible to the two detectives that each should make his own investigations for a day or two, with Lewis concentrating his attentions on the first two areas, and Morse on the second two.

Lewis spent most of the morning on the telephone, ringing,

amongst other numbers, those of the War Office, the Ministry of Defence, the HQ of the Wiltshire Regiment, and the Territorial Unit at Devizes. It was a long, frustrating business; but by lunch-time he had a great deal of information, much of it useless, but some of it absolutely vital.

First, he discovered more about Browne-Smith: Captain, acting Major, (Royal Wiltshires); served North Africa (1941-42); wounded El Alamein; Italy (1944-45); awarded the MC (1945).

Second, he learned something about Gilbert. There had been three Gilbert brothers, Albert, Alfred, and John. All had fought at El Alamein; the first two, both full corporals, had survived the campaign (although both of them had been wounded); the third, the youngest brother, had died in the same campaign. That was all.

But it couldn’t be quite all, Lewis knew that. And it was from the Swindon branch of the British Legion that he learned the address of a man in the Wiltshires who must certainly have known the Gilbert brothers fairly well. Immediately after lunch, Lewis was driving out along the A420.

‘Yes, I knew ‘em, Sergeant – s’funny, I wur a sergeant, too, you know. Yes, there wur Alf ‘n’ Bert – like as two peas in a pod, they wur. One of ‘em, ‘e got a bit o’ the ol’ shrapnel in the leg, and I ‘ad a bit in the ‘ead. We wur at base ‘ospital for a while together, but I can’t quite recolleck… Real lads, they wur – the pair of ‘em!’

‘Did you know the other one?’ asked Lewis.

‘Johnny! That wur ‘is name. I didn’t know ‘im very well, though.’

‘You don’t know how he was killed?”

‘No, I don’t.’

‘They were all tank-drivers, weren’t they?’

‘All of’em-like me.’

‘Was he killed in his tank?’

For the second time the old soldier looked rather vague and puzzled, and Lewis wondered whether the man’s memory could be relied upon.

‘There wur a bit of an accident as I recolleck. But ‘e wurn’t with us that morning, Sergeant – not when we all moved up long Kidney Ridge.’

‘You don’t remember what sort of accident?’

‘No. It wur back at base, I seem to… But you get a lot of accidents in wartime, Sergeant. More’n they tell the folk back
‘ome in Blighty.’

He was an engaging old boy; a sixty-nine-year-old widower for whom, it seemed, the war had been the only intermission of importance in a largely anonymous life, for there was no real sadness in him as he recalled those weeks and months of fighting in the desert-only an almost understandable nostalgia. So Lewis wrote down the facts, such as they were, in his painstakingly slow long-hand, and then took his leave.

Morse was away from the office when Lewis returned at 4.30 p.m and of this fact he was strangely glad. All the way back from Swindon he had been wondering what that ‘accident’ might have been. He suspected that had Morse been there he would of guessed immediately; and it was a pleasant change to be able tackle the problem at his own, rather slower, pace. He rang the War Office once again, was put through to the Archives section, and soon began to realize that he was on to something important.

‘Yes we might be able to help in some way. You’re Thames Valley Police you say?’

‘That’s right’

‘Why are you asking for information about this man?’

‘It’s in connection with a with a murder, sir.’

‘I see what’s your number? Can’t be too careful in these things -you’ll know all about that.’ He spoke with the bark of a machine-gun.

So Lewis gave him his number and was rung back inside thirty seconds, and was given an extraordinary piece of information. Private John Gilbert of the Royal Wiltshires had not been killed in the El Alamein campaign. He had played no part in it. The night before the offensive, he had taken his army rifle, placed the muzzle inside his mouth, and shot himself through the brain. The incident had been hushed up on the highest orders; and that for obvious reasons. A few had known, of course –
had
to know. But “officially” John Gilbert died on active service in the desert, and that is how his family and his friends had been informed.

‘This is all in the strictest confidence, you understand that?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Never good for morale, that sort of thing, eh?’

Morse was having a far less fruitful day. He realized that with the first of his self-imposed assignments he could for the present make little headway, since that would necessitate some far from disagreeable investigations in Soho-a journey he had planned for the morrow. Which only left him with the same old tantalizing problem that had monopolized his mind from the beginning: the identity of the corpse. From the embarrassment of clues contained in Browne-Smith’s letter, the shortest odds must now be surely on the man whom Browne-Smith had finally encountered in London. But who was that man? Had it been
Gilbert,
as the letter so obviously suggested? Or was the body
Westerby’s?
If Browne-Smith had killed anyone, then Westerby was surely the most likely of candidates. Or was the body that of someone who had not yet featured in the investigations? Some outsider? Someone as yet unknown who would make a dramatic entry only towards the finale of Act Five? A sort of
deus ex machinal
Morse doubted this last possibility-and amidst his doubts, quite suddenly the astonishing thought flashed through his mind that there might just be a
fourth
possibility. And the more Morse pondered the idea, the more he convinced himself that there was: the possibility that the puffed and sodden salt-white corpse was that of
Dr Browne-Smith.

On the way home that evening, Lewis decided to risk his w &’s wrath, to face the prospect of almost certainly reheated
daps-
and to call on Simon Rowbotham in Botley.

Simon Rowbotham invited him into the small terraced bouse in which he lived with his mother. But Lewis declined, learning over the doorstep that Simon had been one of three anglers who had spotted the body, and that it was he, Simon, who had readily volunteered to dial the police in lieu of looking further upon the horror just emerging from the waters. He often fished out along the banks at Thrupp, a good place for specialists such as himself. As it happened, they were just about to form a new angling club there, for which he had volunteered his services as secretary. In fact (just as Lewis had called) he had been checking a proof of the new association’s letter-head for the printer. They had managed to persuade a few well-known people to support them; and clearly, for Simon Rowbotham, the world was entering an exciting phase.

Lewis waited until 8.30 p.m. before ringing Morse (who had been strangely absent somewhere since lunch-time). He found him at his flat and promptly reported on his day’s work.

When he had finished, Morse could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘Just go over that bit about John Gilbert again, will you, Lewis?’

So Lewis repeated, as accurately as he could recall it, the news he had gleaned from the War Office archivist; and he felt very happy as he did so, for he knew that the news was pleasing to his master-a master, incidentally, who now had guessed the whole truth about the desert episode.