The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn

numbering, had the intelligence to understand the various amendments and printing symbols. Then he'd have to copy what he'd got, of course. Every page of proofs and revises is carefully numbered, and no one could get away with just pinching a page.'

'Mm. What about examiners? Let's say they put a high mark down for a particular candidate who's as thick as a plank.'

'Wouldn't work, I'm afraid. The arithmetic of every single script is checked against the marksheet.'

'Well, let's say an examiner gives high marks for all of the answers on the script — even if they're rubbish.'

'If an examiner did that, he would have been kicked out years ago. You see the examiners are themselves examined by a team of what we call 'awarders', who report on all the members of the various panels after each examination.'

'But the awarders could. .' No, Morse, let it go. He began to see that it was all far more complex that he had imagined.

But Ogleby finished the thought for him. 'Oh, yes, Inspector. If one of the people at the top was crooked, it would be very easy. Very easy indeed. But why are you asking me all this?'

Morse pondered a while, and then told him. 'We've got to find a motive for Quinn's murder, sir. There are a hundred and one possibilities, of course, but I was just wondering if — if perhaps he'd found some er some suggestion of jiggery-pokery, that's all. Anyway, you've been very helpful.'

Ogleby stood up to go, and Morse too rose from his chair. 'I've been asking the others what they were doing last Friday afternoon. I suppose I ought to ask you too. If you can remember, that is.'

'Oh, yes. That's easy enough. I went down to the Oxford University Press in the morning, had a pretty late lunch at the Berni place there with the chief printer, and got back here about, oh, about half past three, I should think.'

'And you spent the rest of the afternoon in the office here?'

'Yes.'

'Are you sure about that, sir?'

Ogleby looked at him with steady eyes. 'Quite sure.'

Morse hesitated, and debated whether to face it now or later.

'What is it, Inspector?'

'It's a bit awkward, sir. I understand from, er, from other sources that there was no one here in the latter part of Friday afternoon.'

'Well, your sources of information must be wrong.'

'You couldn't have slipped out for a while? Gone up to see the chief clerk or something?'

'I certainly didn't go out of the office. I might have gone upstairs, but I don't think so. And if I had, it would only have been for a minute or two, at the very outside.'

'What would you say, then, sir, if someone said there was no one here on Friday afternoon between a quarter past four and a quarter to five?'

'I'd say this someone was mistaken, Inspector.'

'But what if he insisted—?'

'He'd be a liar, then, wouldn't he?' Ogleby smiled serenly, and gently closed the door behind him.

Or you would, thought Morse, as he sat alone. And although you don't know it, my good friend Ogleby, there are two someones who say you weren't here. And if you weren't here, where the hell were you?

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE POLICE CAR, white with a broad, pale-blue stripe along its middle, stood parked by the pavement, and Constable Dickson knocked at the spruce detached bungalow in Old Marston. The door was immediately opened by a smartly-dressed, attractive woman.

'Miss Height?'

'Yes?'

'Is your daughter in?'

Miss Height's features crumpled into a girlish giggle. 'Don't be silly! 'I'm only sixteen!'

Dickson himself grinned oafishly, and accepted the young lady's invitation to step inside.

'It's about Mr. Quinn, isn't it? Ever so exciting. Coo. Just think. He worked in the same office as Mummy!'

'Did you ever meet him, miss?'

'No, worse luck.'

'He never came here?'

She giggled again. 'Not unless Mummy brought him here while I was slaving away at school!'

'She wouldn't do that, would she?'

She smiled happily. 'You don't know Mummy!'