The Way Through The Woods (12 page)

He'd spoken simply, and his eyes lifted from her legs to her face; and all the frustration, all the infuriation, suddenly drained away from her, and the tautness in her shoulders was wonderfully relaxed as she leaned back against the soft contours of the settee. For a long time neither of them spoke. Then Claire sat forward, emptied her glass, and got to her feet.

‘Have you got to go?' asked Morse quietly.

‘Fairly soon.'

‘I’ve got another bottle.'

‘Only if you promise to be nice to me.'

‘If I tell you what lovely legs you've got again?'

‘
And
if you put the record on again.'

‘CD actually.
Bruckner Eight.'

‘
Is
that
what it was? Not all that far off, was I?

'Very close, really,' said Morse. Then virtually to himself: for a minute or two, very close indeed.

It was halfway through the second movement and three-quarters of the way through the second bottle that the front doorbell rang.

‘I can’t see you for the minute, I'm afraid, sir.'

Strange sniffed, his small eyes suspicious.

‘Really? I'm a little bit surprised about that, Morse. In fact I'm suprisedyou can't see
two
of me!'

there were just the two of them in Strange's office the following morning, Tuesday, 14 July.

It had surprised Strange not a little to hear of Morse's quite unequivocal refusal to postpone a few days of his furlough and return immediately to HQ to take official charge of the case especially in view of the latest letter – surely the break they'd all been hoping for. On the other hand there were more things in life than a blonde damozel who might or might not have been murdrered a year ago. This bloody 'joy' (huh!)-riding, for a start – now hitting the national news and the newspaper headlines. It served, though, to put things into perspective a bit – like the letter he himself had received in the post ('Strictly Personal') that very morning:

To Chief Superintendent Strange, Kidlington Police HQ

Dear Sir,

It is naturally proper that our excellent whodunnit writers should pretend that the average criminal in the UK can boast the capacity for quite exceptional ingenuity in the commission of crime. But those of us who (like you) have given our lives to the detection of such crime should at this present juncture be reminding everyone that the vast majority of criminals are not (fortunately!) blessed with the sort of alpha-plus mentality that is commonly assumed.

Obviously if
any
criminal is brought to book as a result of the correspondence etc. being conducted in sections of the national press, we shall all be most grateful. But I am myself most doubtful about such an outcome, and indeed in a wider sense I am very much concerned about the precedent involved. We have all heard of trial by TV, and we now seem to be heading for investigation by correspondence column. This is patently absurd. As I read things, the present business is pretty certainly a hoax in any case, with its perpetrator enjoying himself (or I suppose herself?) most hugely as various correspondents vie with one another in scaling ever steeper and steeper peaks of interpretive ingenuity. If the thing is
not
a hoax, I must urge that all investigation into the matter be communicated
in the first instance
to the appropriate police personnel, and most certainly not to radio, TV, or newspapers, so that the case may be solved through the official channels of criminal investigation.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Armitage

(former Assistant Commissioner, New Scotland Yard)

PS I need hardly add, I feel sure, that this letter is not for publication in any way.

But this must almost certainly have been written before its author had seen the latest communiqué from the most intrepid mountaineer so far: the writer of the quite extraordinary letter – which had appeared in the correspondence columns of
The Times
the previous morning, Strange now turned to Lewis. 'You realize it's the break, don't you’

Lewis, like every other police officer at HQ, had read the letter; and yes, he too thought it was the break. How else? But he couldn’t understand why Strange had asked him –
him –
along this morning. He was very tired anyway, and should by rights have been a-bed. On both Saturday and Sunday nights, like most officers in the local forces, his time had been spent until almost dawn behind a riot-shield, facing volleys of bricks and insults from gangs of yobbos clapping the skidding-skills of youths in stolen cars – amongst whom (had Lewis known it) was a seventeen-year-old schoolboy who was later to provide the key to the Swedish Maiden mystery.

`'Lewis! You're listening, aren't you?'

'Sorry, sir?'

'You do
remember
Morse belly-aching about transferring the search from Blenheim to Wytham?'

'Yes, sir. But he wasn't on the case more than a day or so.'

'I know that,' snapped Strange. 'But he must have had some
reason,
surely?'

'I've never quite been able to follow some of his reasons.'

'Do you know how much some of these bloody searches cost?

'No, sir.'

Nor perhaps did Strange himself, for he immediately changed tack: 'Do you think Morse was right?'

'I dunno, sir. I mean, I think he's a great man, but he sometimes gets things awfully wrong, doesn't he?'

'And he more often gets things bloody
right'
said Strange with vehemence.

It was an odd reversal of roles, and Lewis hastened to put the record straight. 'I think myself, sir, that-'

'I don't give a
sod
what you think, Sergeant! If I want to search Wytham Woods I'll bloody well search 'em till a year next Friday if I – If
I
think it's worth the candle. All right?'

Lewis nodded wordlessly across the table, watching the rising florid exasperation in the Super's face.

'I'm not sure where I come into all this – ' he began.

'Well, I'll tell you! There's only one thing you can do and I can't, Sergeant, and that's to get the morose old bugger back to work here – smartish. I'm under all sorts of bloody pressure…'

'But he's on holiday, sir.'

'I
know
he's on bloody holiday. I saw him yesterday, drinkin shampers and listening to Schubert – with some tart or other.'

'Sure it was
champagne,
sir?'

But quietly now, rather movingly, Strange was making his plea 'Christ knows why, Lewis, but he'll always put himself out a for you. Did you realize that?'

He rang from Morse's own (empty) office.

'Me, sir. Lewis.'

'I'm on holiday.'

'Super's just had a word with me-'

'Friday – that's what I told him.'

'You've seen the letter about Wytham, sir?'

'Unlike you and your philistine cronies, Lewis, my daily reading includes the royal circulars in
The Times,
the editorials – '

^‘
What do I tell the Super, sir? He wants us – you and me – to take over straightaway.'

‘Tell him I'll be in touch – tomorrow.'

'Tell him you'll ring, you mean?'

'No. Tell him I'll be back on duty tomorrow morning. Tell him be in my office any time after seven a.m.'

'He won't be awake then, sir.'

'Don't be too hard on him, Lewis. He's getting old – and I think he's
got high blood pressure.'

As he put down the phone, with supreme contentment, Lewis knew that Strange had been right – about Morse and himself; realized that in the case of the Swedish Maiden, the pair of them were in business again – w.e.f. the following morning.

In his office, Strange picked up the cutting from
The Times
and read the letter yet again. Quite extraordinary!

Sir, Like most of your other correspondents I must assume that the 'Swedish Maiden' verses were composed by the person responsible for the murder of that unfortunate young lady. It is of course possible they were sent as a hoax, but such is not my view. In my opinion it is far more probable that the writer is exasperated by the inability of the police to come anywhere near the discovery of a
body,
let alone the arrest of a murderer. The verses, as I read them, are a cry from the murderer – not the victim – a cry for some discovery, some absolution, some relief from sleepless, haunted nights. But I would not have written to you, sir, merely to air such vague and dubious generalities. I write because I am a setter of crossword puzzles, and when I first studied the verses I had just completed a puzzle in which the answer to every clue was indicated by a definition of the word to be entered, and also by a sequenced
anagram
of the same word. It was with considerable interest therefore – and a good measure of incredulity – that I gradually spotted the fact that the word wytham crops up, in anagrammatized form, in each of the five stanzas. Thus: thaw my (stanza 1); [stre]AM why T[ell’st] (stanza 2); what my (stanza 3); [s]aw thym[e] (stanza 4); and [no]w thy MA[iden] (stanza 5).

The occurrence of
five
such instances is surely way beyond the bounds of coincidence. (I have consulted my mathematical friends on this matter.) 'Wytham', I learn (I am not an Oxford man), is the name of some woods situated to the west of Oxford. If the verse tells us anything then, it is surely that the body sought is to be found in Wytham Woods, and it is my humble suggestion that any further searches undertaken should be conducted in that quarter.

Yours,

LIONEL REGIS,

16 Cathedral Mews,

Salisbury.

Like Lewis, Strange remembered exactly what Morse had on his postcard: 'I reckon
I
know what the poem means!', and pushed the newspaper aside, and looked out across the car park.

'Lionel Regis, my arse!' he said quietly to himself.

Wednesday, 15 July, was never going to be a particularly memorable day. No fire-faced prophet was to bring news of the Message or the name of the One True God. Just a fairly ordinary transitional sort of day in which events appeared discrete and only semi-sequential; when some of the protagonists in the Swedish Maiden case were moved to their new positions on the chessboard, but before the game was yet begun.

At a slightly frosty meeting held in the Assistant Chief Constable’s office at 10.30 a.m., the Swedish Maiden case was reviewed in considerable detail by the ACC himself, Chief Superintendent Strange and Detective Chief Inspectors Johnson and Morse. General agreement was reached (only one dissident voice) that perhaps there was little now to be gained from any prolongation of the extensive and expensive search-programme on the Blenheim Palace Estate. The decision was reported too, emanating from ‘Higher authority', that Morse was now i/c and that Johnson would therefore be enabled to take his midsummer furlough as scheduled, official verbiage would fool no one, of course – but it was possibly better than nothing at all.

Amongst the items reviewed was yet another letter, printed that morning in
The Times:

Sir, The Wood (singular not plural please) at Wytham is a place most familiar to me and I suspect to almost all generations of young men who have taken their degrees at Oxford University. Well do I remember the summer weekends in the late 40’s when together with many of my fellow undergraduates I cycled up through Lower Wolvercote to Wytham.

In lines 14 and 15 of the (now notorious!) verses, we find 'A creature white'
(sic)
Trapped in a gin'
(sic),
'Panting like a hunted deer'
(sic).
Now if this is
not
a cryptic reference to a gin-and-whatnot in that splendid old hostelry in Wytham, the White Hart – then I'm a Dutchman, sir! But I am convinced (as an Englishman) that such a reference can only serve to corroborate the brilliant analysis of the verses made by Mr Lionel Regis (Letters, July 13).

Yours faithfully,

JOHN C. CHAVASSE,

21 Hayward Road,

Bishop Auckland.

Around the table, 'Mr Lionel Regis' looked slightly sheepish but not for long, and now it was all an open secret anyway. He realized that there would be little he could do for a day or so – except to re-read all the material that had accumulated from the earlier enquiries; to sit tight; to get Lewis cracking on the admin and perhaps to try to think a bit more clearly about his own odd/-irrational conviction that the young student's body
would
be found – and found in Wytham Wood(s). There
was
that little bit of new evidence, too – the call from the O'Kanes. For if their memories! served them to any degree aright, then Karin Eriksson had some point gone
down
the Banbury Road from the roundabout; was the testimony of the man who had been waiting for a bus then that Sunday noon-time which should have been given credence not that of the man who had driven along Sunderland Avenue.

Such and similar thoughts Morse shared with Sergeant in the early afternoon. Already arrangements were well in hand for the availability of about twenty further members of various local forces to supplement the thirty due to be switched immediately from Blenheim. One annoying little hold-up, though, head forester at Wytham, Mr David Michaels, was unfortunately away that day at a National Trust conference in Durham. But he was expected home later that night, his wife said, and would almost certainly be available the following morning.