The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn

WHEN?

CHAPTER NINE

MORSE HAD NEVER been in the slightest degree interested in the technicalities of the science of pathology, and on Wednesday morning he read the reports before him with the selectivity of a dedicated pornophilist seeking out the juciest crudities. The smallest dose which has proved fatal is a ? drachm of the pharmacopoeial acid, or 0.6 gram of anhydrous hydrocyanic acid. . rapidly altered in the body after death, uniting with sulphur. .' Ah, here we are: '. . and such in this instance were the post-mortem appearances that there is reason to believe that death must have occurred almost immediately. . fruitless, in the absence of scratches or abrasions, to speculate on the possibility of the body having been moved after death. .' Interesting. Morse skipped his way along. '. . would suggest a period of between 72-120 hours before the body was discovered. Any greater precision about these time limits is precluded in this case. .' As in all cases you ever have, muttered Morse. He had never ceased to wonder why, with the staggering advances in medical science, all pronouncements concerning times of death remained so disconcertingly vague. For that was the real question: when had Quinn died? If Aristotle could be believed (why not?) the truth would probably lie somewhere in the middle 94 hours, say. That meant Friday lunchtime or thereabouts. Was that possible? Morse put the report aside, and reconsidered the little he as yet knew of Quinn's whereabouts on the previous Friday. Yes. Perhaps he should have asked Quinn's colleagues where they were on Friday, not when they had last seen Quinn. But there was plenty of time; he would have to see them all again soon, anyway. At least one thing was clear. Whoever had tinkered with Quinn's sherry bottle had known something about poison — known a great deal about poison, in fact. Now who. .? Morse went to his shelves, took down Glaister and Rentoul's bulky and definitive tome on Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, and looked up 'Hydrocyanic Acid' (page 566); and as he skimmed over the headings he smiled to himself. The compiler of the medical report he had just read had beaten him to it: some of the sentences were lifted almost verbatim. Why not, though? Cyanide wasn't going to change much over the years. . He recalled Hitler and his clique in the Berlin bunker. That was cyanide, wasn't it? Cyanide. Suicide! Huh! The obvious was usually the very last thing that occurred to Morse's mind; but he suddenly realized that the most obvious answer to his problem was this: that Quinn had committed suicide. Yet, come to think of it, that was no real answer either. For if he had, why on earth. .?

Lewis was surprised when half an hour later Morse took him to his home in North Oxford. It was two years since he had been there, and he was pleasurably surprised to find how comparatively neat and clean it was. Morse disappeared for a while, but put his head round the door and told Lewis to help himself to a drink.

'I'm all right, sir. Shall I pour one for you?'

'Yes. Pour me a sherry. And pour one for yourself.'

'I'd rather—'

'Do as you're told for a change, man!'

It wasn't unusual for Morse suddenly to turn sour, and Lewis resigned himself to the whims of his superior officer. The cabinet was well-stocked with booze, and Lewis took two small glasses and filled them from a bottle of medium sherry, sat back in an armchair, and wondered what was in store for him now.

He was sipping his sherry effeminately when Morse reappeared, picked up his own, lifted it to his lips and then put it down. 'Do you realize, Lewis, that if that sherry had been poisoned, you'd be a goner by now?'

'So would you, sir.'

'Ah, no. I've not touched mine.'

Lewis slowly put down his own glass, half-empty now, and began to understand the purpose of the little charade. 'And there'd be my prints on the bottle and on the glass. .'

'And if I'd carefully wiped them both before we started, I've just got to pour my own sherry down the sink, wash the glass — and Bob's your uncle.'

'Somebody still had to get into Quinn's place to poison the sherry.'

'Not necessarily. Someone could have given Quinn the bottle as a present.'

'But you don't give someone a bottle that's been opened! You'd have a hell of a job trying to reseal a sherry bottle. In fact, you couldn't do it.'

'Perhaps there wasn't any need for that,' said Morse slowly; but he enlightened Lewis no further. For a moment he stood quite still, his eyes staring into the hazy past where a distant memory lingered on the threshold of his consciousness but refused the invitation to come in. It was something to do with a lovely young girl; but she merged into other lovely young girls. There had been so many of them, once. . Think of something else! It would come. He drained his sherry at a gulp and poured himself another. 'Bit like drinking lemonade, isn't it, Lewis?'

'What's the programme, sir?'

'Well — I think we've got to play things a bit delicately. We might be on to something big, you must realize that; but it's no good rushing things. I want to know what all of 'em in the office were doing on Friday, but I want 'em to know what I'm going to ask them.'

'Wouldn't it be better—?'

'No. It wouldn't be fair, anyway.'

Lewis was getting lost. 'You think one of the four of them murdered Quinn?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't know, sir. But if you let them know beforehand—'

'Yes?'

'Well, they'd have something ready. Make something up—'

That's what I want them to do.'

'But surely if one of them murdered Quinn—?'

'He'd have an alibi all ready, you mean?'

'Yes.'