The Riddle Of The Third Mile (20 page)

It was several minutes before he was able to disengage himself and finally to stand upon the threshold of the opened door. ‘Please look after yourself, Mrs Gilbert.’

‘I will. Don’t worry about that.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help…’

She almost smiled. ‘Be gentle with the girl, Inspector. You see, I know you’re anxious to get away from here and see her, and I just want you to know that she’s the loveliest girl-woman-I’ve ever met in all my life-that’s all.’

Tears were spurting again now, and Morse leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead, in the sure knowledge that this woman had somewhere touched his feelings deeply. And as he walked slowly away up the road towards Manor House tube-station he doubted whether Albert Gilbert had ever really known the woman he had asked to marry him.

For all his conviction that the tide was running fully in his favour, the open doors of the Manor Hotel proved irresistible, and Morse wondered as he drained his pints and watched the pimps and prostitutes walk by whether, in a life so full of strange coincidence, he might at last be facing the wildest and most wonderful coincidence of them all: “W.S”! Browne-Smith had mentioned those initials… and Emily Gilbert had just repeated them… and those were the selfsame glorious initials of a girl whom once he’d known, and loved too well.

Twenty minutes after Morse had left the seventh floor of Berrywood Court, a key was inserted into the outer door of the Gilberts’ flat, and a man walked in and flung his jacket carelessly down upon the sofa.

Two minutes later, Albert Gilbert, of Removals Anywhere, was talking (somewhat incoherently) over the phone to his GP, explaining how, for no apparent reason, his wife had fainted quite away on his return, and desperately demanding some instructions, since even now she showed no signs of sense or sanity returning.

As Mrs Gilbert had told him, Colebourne Road was no more than five minutes’ walk from East Putney tube station. But Morse appeared in no hurry, and when he reached the street-sign he stopped awhile and stood beneath it, deep in thought. Surely he couldn’t be so utterly and stupidly sentimental as to harbour even the faintest hope that he was just about to see once more the woman whom he’d worshipped all those years ago. No, he told himself, he couldn’t. And yet a wild, improbable hope lived on; and as if to nourish the hope, he entered the Richmond Arms on the corner of the street and ordered a double Scotch. As he drank, his thoughts went back to the time when he’d visited his old mother in the Midlands, and gone off to an evening Methodist service to see if a girl, a very precious girl, was still in her place in the choir-stalls, still raising her eyes to his at the end of each verse of every hymn and smiling at him sweetly and seraphically. But she hadn’t been there-hadn’t been there for thirty years, perhaps-and he’d sat by a pillar alone that night. Morse walked to the bar, (‘Same again, please-Bell’s’), and the name of Wendy Spencer tripped trochaically across his brain… It couldn’t be the same woman, though. It wasn’t the same woman. And yet, ye gods-if gods ye be-please make it her!

Morse’s heart was beating at an alarming rate and his throat felt very dry as he rang the bell of Number 23. There was a light downstairs, a light upstairs; and the odds were very strongly on her being in.

‘Yes?’ The door was opened by a youngish, dark-complexioned woman.

‘I’m a police inspector, Miss-’

‘Mrs-Mrs Price.’

‘Ah yes-well, I’m looking for someone I think lives here. I’m not quite sure of her name but -’

‘I can’t help you much then, can I?’

‘I think she’s sometimes called “Yvonne”.’

‘There’s no one here by that name.’

‘The door had already closed an inch or two, but now there was another voice. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

A taller woman was standing behind Mrs Price, a woman in a white bathrobe, a woman with freshly showered and almost shining skin, a woman awkwardly re-making the tumbled beauty of her hair.

‘He says he’s a police inspector-says he’s looking for someone called “Yvonne”,’ explained an aggressive Mrs Price.

‘Do you know her surname. Inspector?’

Morse looked at the white-clad woman who now had moved towards the centre of the doorway, and a crushing wave of disappointment broke over him. ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. But I know she lives here-or she was staying-staying here until very recently.’

‘Well you must have got it wrong-’ began Mrs Price.

But the woman in white was interrupting her: ‘Leave this to me Angela-it’s all right. I think I may be able to help you, inspector. Won’t you come in?’

Morse climbed the narrow stairs, noting the slim ankles of the woman who preceded him.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked, as they sat opposite each other in the small but beautifully furnished living-room.

‘Er-no. Perhaps not.’

‘You’ve had enough already, you mean?’

‘Does it show?’

She nodded-a faint smile upon lips that were thin and completely devoid of make-up. ‘It’s the “s”s that are always difficult, isn’t it? When you’ve had too much drink, I mean-or when you begin wearing false teeth.”

Morse looked at her own, most beautifully healthy teeth. ‘How would you know about that?’

‘I sometimes drink too much.’

Morse let it go, for things were going very nicely-the conversation moving already on to a plane of easy familiarity. But it wasn’t to last.

‘What do you want, Inspector?’ A hard, no-nonsense tone had come into her voice.

So Morse told her; and she listened in silence, occasionally crossing one naked leg over the other and then covering her knees with a sharp little tug at the robe, like some puritanical parson’s wife at a vicarage tea-party. And almost from the start Morse felt the virtual certainty that “Yvonne” had now been found-found sitting here in front of him, her head slightly to one side, sweeping up her blonde hair with her left hand and reinserting a few of the multitudinous pins with her right.

When Morse had finished the first part of his tale, she reached for her handbag. ‘Do you smoke, Inspector?’

Morse patted his jacket pocket, and suspected that he must have left his own recently purchased packet in the pub.

‘Here, have one of these.’ Her bag was open now, the flap towards him; and seeing the faded gilt initials Morse knew that his silly hope was finally extinguished.

‘You’re very kind,’ he heard himself say.

Had she seen something vulnerable in this strange inspector of police? In his mien? In his eyes? On his lips? Perhaps, indeed, she had, for her voice had been more gentle, and she now stood up and lit his cigarette, unconscious (or uncaring) that her robe was partly open at the top as she leaned towards him. Then she sat back in her chair again, and told him her own side of the story, still occasionally recrossing her lovely legs, but now no longer too concerned about concealing them.

She’d known Bert Gilbert for only a few weeks. He’d come into the sauna one morning-very much in control of himself-and asked her if she’d be willing to entertain a very special client of his; yes, at the address Morse had mentioned; and, yes, with a sequel much as he’d described it. After that Gilbert had obviously taken a liking to her, spent a fair amount of money on her, and wanted to keep seeing her.
Had
kept seeing her. But he’d got jealous and morose, and was soon telling her that he wanted her to pack up her job and go to live with him. For her part, the whole thing had been the old familiar story of an ageing man behaving like an infatuated schoolboy-and she’d told him so.

That was all.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Morse.

Her eyes were looking down at the thickly-piled carpet: “Winifred- Winifred Stewart. Not much of a name, is it? Some people are christened with horrid names.’

‘Mm.’

She looked up. ‘What’s your name?’

‘They call me Morse: Inspector Morse.’

‘But that’s your
surname.’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t want to tell me your Christian name?’

‘No.’

‘Like that, is it?’ (She was smiling.)

Morse nodded.

‘What about that drink? You’ve sobered up a bit, you know.’

But (quite amazingly) Morse had hardly heard her. ‘Do you – do you go with lots of men?’

‘Not lots, no. I’m a very expensive item.’

‘You earn a lot of money?’

‘More than you do.’ Her voice had grown harsh again, and Morse felt sad and dejected.

‘Do you get much pleasure from-er-’

‘From having sex with clients? Not much, no. Occasionally though-if you want me to be honest.’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ said Morse.

She stood up and poured herself a glass of dry Vermouth, without renewing her offer to the Chief Inspector. ‘You don’t know much about life, do you?’

‘Not much, no.’ He seemed to her to look so lost and tired now, and she guessed he must have had a busy day. But had she known it, his mind was working at a furious rate. There was
something
(he knew it!) that he’d been missing all the way along; something he doubted he would learn from this disturbingly attractive woman; something that she probably couldn’t tell him, anyway, even when she came (as he knew she would) to the second part of the tale she had to tell.

‘When did you last see Gilbert?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure-’

‘You say you saw him quite a few times after you entertained his special client?’

It was puzzling to Morse how the tone of her voice could vary so vastly (and so suddenly) between the gentle and jarring. It was the latter again now.

‘You mean did I go to bed with him?’

Morse nodded. And for the first time she was aware of the cold, almost merciless eyes that stared upon her, and she felt the sensation of a psychological and almost physical stripping as she answered him, her top lip quivering.

‘Yes!’

‘Was that after you’d met your
second
special client?’

Her startled eyes looked into his, and then down to the Wilton again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Please tell me all about that,’ said Morse quietly.

For a few moments she said nothing; then she picked up her glass and quickly drained it.

‘Before I do-would you like to come to bed with me?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’ She stood up and loosened her belt, allowing the sides of her bathrobe to fall apart before drawing them together again and retying the belt tightly around her waist.

‘Quite sure,’ lied Morse.

So Winifred Stewart (it was now past eight o’clock) told Morse about her second special client, a Mr Westerby, who also hailed from Oxford. And Morse listened very carefully, nodding at intervals and seemingly satisfied. But he wasn’t satisfied. It was all interesting-of course it was; but it merely corroborated what he’d already known, or guessed.

‘What about that drink?’ he asked.

Mrs Angela Price looked knowingly at her husband when she I finally heard the quiet voices on the doorstep. It was a quarter to midnight, and BBC 1 had already finished its transmission.

Lewis had finally gone to bed about ten minutes before Morse found a taxi on the Richmond Road. He’d hoped that Morse would have been back before now, and had tried repeatedly to get in touch with him, both at HQ and at his home. For he had received a remarkable piece of news that same afternoon from the young porter at Lonsdale, who had received a card by second post; a card from Greece; a card from Mr Westerby.

At 2a.m., Winifred Stewart was still lying awake. The night was sultry and she wore no nightdress as she lay upon her bed, covered by a lightweight sheet. She thought of Morse, and she felt inexpressibly glad that she had met him; longed, too, with one half of her mind, that he would come to visit her again. And yet knew, quite certainly, that if he did her soul would be completely bared and she would tell him all she knew. Two thirds of the tragic tale had now been told; and if ever he began to guess the final truth… Yet, with the other half of her mind she didn’t want him back – ever – for she was now a very frightened woman.

At 3 a.m. she went to the bathroom to take some Disprin tablets.

At 4 a.m. she was still awake, and suddenly she felt the night had grown so very cold.

As he sat back comfortably in a first-class compartment of the 10 a.m. “125” from Paddington, Morse felt the residual glow of a great elation. For now (as he knew) the veil of the temple had been rent in twain.

The previous night he had missed the last train to Oxford and only just managed to find, on the highest floor of a cheap hotel, a cramped and claustrophobic room in which the water-pipes had groaned and gurgled through the early hours. But it was in this selfsame mean and miserable room that Morse, as he lay on his back in the darkness with both hands behind his head, had finally seen the amazing light of truth. Half occupied with the lovely woman he had left so recently, half with the other problems that beset him still, his mind had steadfastly refused to rest. He sensed that he was
almost
there, and the facts of the case raced round and round his brain like an ever-accelerating whirligig. The old facts… and the new facts.

Not that he had learned much that was surprisingly new from Mrs Emily Gilbert. Nor, for that matter, from Miss Winifred Stewart-except for the confirmation that she had, indeed, agreed to entertain a second special guest from Oxford whose name was Mr Westerby. There had been a few other things,
though. She’d told him, for example, that Emily had been simultaneously wooed by each of the Gilbert brothers; that, of the two, Alfred was considerably the more interesting and cultured-particularly because of his love of music; but that it was Albert who had won the prize with his livelier, albeit coarser, ways. The brothers were still very much alike (she’d told him)-extraordinarily so in appearance-but if they’d been holidaying together in Salzburg Alfred would have gone to a Mozart concert and Albert to
The Sound of Music…
Yes, that was something new; but it hardly seemed to Morse of much importance. Far more important was what she
hadn’t
told him, for he had sensed the deep unease within her when she’d told him of her time with Westerby: not the unease of a woman telling obvious untruths; the unease, rather, of a woman telling something less than all she knew…