The Way Through The Woods

Inspector Johnson, 'not many of my colleagues here are all that hot on poetry, and that's why we thought The Times might help. It would be a sort of poetic justice if it could.' Final word with Mr Phillipson: 'It might all be a cruel hoax, and the link with the earlier case does appear rather tenuous, perhaps. But the police certainly seem to think they are on to something. So do I!'

Morse read the article at his own pace; then again, rather morel quickly. After which, for several minutes, he sat where he was, his eyes still, his expression quite emotionless – before turning to the back page and reading the clue he hadn't quite been able to see I the evening before:

'Work without hope draws nectar in a -' (Coleridge) (5).

Huh! If the poem was a 'riddle', so was the answer! A quotation from Coleridge, too! Half smiling, he sat back in his chair ancj marvelled once more at the frequency of that extraordinarily common phenomenon called 'coincidence'.

Had he but known it, however, a far greater coincidence had already occurred the previous evening when (purely by chance surely?) he had been ushered into the dining room to share a table with the delectable occupant of Room 14. But as yet he couldn't I know such a thing; and taking from his pocket his silver Parker pen, he wrote I and 'V in the empty squares which she had left in S-E-E – before reaching for the telephone again.

'No, sir – Superintendent Strange is still not answering. Can anyone else help?'

'Yes, perhaps so,' said Morse. 'Put me through to Traffic Control, will you?'

chapter eight

Extract from a diary dated 2 July 1992 (one day before Morse had found himself in Lyme Regis)

I must write a chapter on 'Gradualism' in my definitive opus on pornography, for it is the gradual nature of the erotic process that is all important, as even that old fascist Plato had the nous to see. Yet this is a factor increasingly forgotten by the writers and the film-directors and the video-makers. If they ever knew it 'Process' is what it should be all about. The process typified in the lifting of a full-length skirt to a point just above the ankle, or the first unfastening of a button on a blouse! Do I make things clear? Without the skirt, what man will glory in the ankle? Without the blouse, what man will find himself aroused by the mere button? Nudity itself is nothing: it is the intent of nudity which guarantees the glorious engagement. Never did nudity in itself mean very much to me, even when I was a young boy. Never did I have any interest in all those Italian paintings of naked women. Likewise it seems to me that few of our licentious and promiscuous youth take overmuch notice of the women who flaunt their bodies daily in the tabloid press. Such young men are more interested in back-page soccer stories. Is there a moral here?

I've just read through all that shit I've just written and it makes me sound almost sane. Almost as if I'd laugh outright at any quack who suggested that I ought to go along and see somebody. But in truth there's not much to laugh about considering the wreck I've now become – I've always been pererhaps. These others are bloody lucky. Christ, how lucky they are! They have their erotic fancies and imaginings and get their fixes from their filthy mags and porno flicks and casual sex. But me? Ha!,I study those articles in the quality press about the efects of pornography on the sex-crime statistics. That's what the civilized sex maniacs do. Does then pornography have the effect that is claimed? I doubt it. Yet I wish it did. Yes! Then almost everyone would be committing some dreadful sex-offence each day. I know – of course I do! – that such a state of affairs wouldn't be all that bloody marvellous for the goody-goody girls who've been guarding their virginity. But at least I would be normal! I would be normal.

Come on Time! Hurry along there! It is tomorrow that I see her and I can hardly wait to watch the hours go by. Why do I wait? Because although I have never really loved my wife (or my children all that much) I would sacrifice almost everything in my life if by so doing I could spare her the despairing humiliation of learning about my own shame.

(Later) I picked up The Guardian in the SCR and read about a Jap who murdered a young model and feasted off her flesh for a fortnight. They didn't keep him in jail very long because he was manifestly crackers. But when they transferred him to a loony asylum he kicked up such a fuss that they didn't keep him there long either. Why? Because the authorities became convinced that he was normal. After they'd let him go he said to a newspaper reporter: 'My time in the mental ward was like Hell. Everyone else in there was real crazy, but the doctors saw that I wasn't like the rest of them. They saw I was normal. So they let me go.' I wasn't too upset about what this weirdo said. What really upset me was what the reporter said. He said the most distressing aspect of this strange and solitary cannibal was the fact that he really believed himself to be normal! Don't you see what I'm saying?

chapter nine

And I wonder how they should have been together!

(T. S. Eliot, La Figlia Che Piange)

he made his way from the dining room to the bar. The meal had been a lonely affair; but Morse was never too worried about periods of loneliness, and felt himself unable to appreciate the distinction that some folk made between solitude and loneliness. In any case, he'd enjoyed the meal. Venison, no less! He now ordered a pint:: Best Bitter arid sat down, his back to the sea, with the current issue of The Times. He looked at his wrist-watch, wrote the time (8.21) in the small rectangle of space beside the crossword, and began.

At 8.35, as he struggled a little over the last two clues, he heard her voice:

'Not finished it yet?'

Morse felt a sudden rush of happiness.

'Mind if I join you?' She sat down beside him, to his right, on the wall-seat. 'I've ordered some coffee. Are you having any?'

'Er, no. Coffee's never figured all that prominently in my life.'

‘Water neither, by the look of things.'

Morse turned towards her and saw she was smiling at him. ‘Water's all right,' he admitted '- in moderation.'

'Not original!' -

'No. Mark Twain.'

A young bow-tied waiter had brought the coffee, and she poured almost full cup before adding a little very thick cream; and Morse looked down at those slim fingers as she circled the spoon in a slow-motion, almost sensual stir.

'You got the paper?'

Morse nodded his gratitude. 'Yes.'

'Let me tell you something – I'm not even going to ask why you wanted it so badly.'

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, you told me in your note.'

'And for another?'

She hesitated now, and turned to look at him. 'Why don't you offer me a cigarette?'

Morse's new-found happiness scaled yet another peak.