The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn

P. Ogleby, MA Deputy Secretary

G. Bland, MA

Miss M. M. Height, MA

D. J. Martin, BA

Mm. The typists had been instructed to strike through Bland's name, and print in Quinn's at the bottom. But that wouldn't be necessary any longer. Just strike through the top three; much quicker. . And then there were two. . Would Miss Height be asked to take over? Advertise for new personnel? Or would the Syndicate just fold up? God knew that Donald Martin wasn't going to make much of a Deputy if it were to carry on. What a wet he was! And God help the young men they might appoint if Monica twitched her bewitching backside at 'em! Morse took out his Parker pen and slowly crossed through the names: Dr. Bartlett; Philip Ogleby; George Bland. Yes, just the two of them left — and now they could fornicate for a few months to their hearts' content. A few months! Huh! That's all Quinn had been there; not even long enough to get his name printed on the notepaper. Nicholas Quinn. . Morse thought back for a few moments to the lip-reading class he'd attended. Would Quinn have been able to cope at the office if his hearing had failed him completely? No, perhaps not. Lip-reading might be a wonderful thing, but even the teacher of the class had made a mistake, hadn't she? When he'd asked her. .

Morse froze where he sat, and the blood seemed to surge away from his arms and from his shoulders, leaving the top of his body numbed and tingling. Oh God — no! No! Surely not! Oh Christ, oh Blessed Virgin Mary, oh all the Saints and all the Angels — no! His hand was shaking as he wrote out the two names on the notepaper, and he found it impossible to keep his voice steady.

'Lewis! Drop whatever you're doing. Go and stand over by the door and take this notepaper with you.'

A puzzled Lewis did as he was told. 'What now, sir?'

'I want you to read those two names to me — just using your lips. Don't whisper them. Just mouth them, if you know what I mean.'

Lewis did his best

'Again,' said Morse, and Lewis complied.

'And again. . and again. . and again. . and again.' Morse nodded and nodded and nodded and nodded, and there was a vibrant excitement in his voice as he spoke again. 'Get your coat, Lewis. We've finished here.'

She would say nothing at all for a start, but Morse was merciless. 'Did you clean the blood off?' (He'd asked the question a dozen times already.) 'My God, you must be blind if you can't see what's been happening. How many other women has he had? Who was he with last night? Don't you know? Have you never suspected? Did you clean the blood off? Did you? Or did he? Don't you understand? — I've got to know. Did you clean it off? I've got to know.'

Suddenly she broke down completely and burst into bitter, hysterical tears. 'He said — there'd been — an accident. And he — he said he'd — tried — tried to help — until — the ambulance came. It was — it was in — in the Broad — just opposite — opposite Blackwells — and—'

The door opened and a man came in. 'What the hell?' His voice had the lash of a whip, and his eyes shone with a primitive, blazing madness. 'What's that fucking man Roope been telling you, you snooping bastard?' He advanced on Morse, and lashed out wildly, whilst Mrs. Martin rushed from the room with a piercing scream.

'You should get yourself into better shape, Morse. You're pretty flabby, you know.'

'It's the beer,' mumbled Morse. 'Ouch!'

'That's the last one. See me in a week's time, and we'll take 'em out. You're all right'

'Bloody good job I had Lewis with me! Otherwise you'd have had another corpse.'

'Good, was he?'

Morse smiled crookedly and nodded. 'Christ, you should have seen him, doc!'

In Morse's office the next morning it was Lewis's turn to grin. 'Must be a bit tricky talking, sir — with all those stitches round your mouth.'

'Mm.'

Well? Tell me, then.'

'What do you want to know?'

'What finally put you on to Martin?'

'Well, it's what I said before, though I didn't really have a clue what I was talking about I told you the key to this case lay in the fact that Quinn was deaf. And so it was. But I kept on thinking what a marvel he must have become at lip-reading, and I overlooked the most obvious thing of all: that even the best lip-reader in the world is sometimes going to make a few mistakes; and Quinn did just that. He saw Roope talking to the sheik, and he read a name wrongly on his lips. I learned from the lip-reading class that the commonest difficulty for the deaf is between the consonants 'p', 'b' and 'm', and if you mouth the words 'Bartlett' and 'Martin', there's very little difference on the lips. The 'B' and the 'M' are absolutely identical, and the second part of each of the names gets swallowed up in the mouth somewhere. But that's not all. It was Doctor Bartlett, and Donald Martin. Just try them again. Very little difference to see; and if you put the two names together, there's every excuse for a deaf person mixing them up. You see, Roope would never have called the Secretary 'Tom', would he? He'd never been on Christian name terms with him, and he never would be. He'd have called him 'Bartlett' or 'Doctor Bartlett'. And the sheik would almost certainly have given him his full title. But Martin — well, he was one of them; one of the boys. He was Donald Martin.'

'Bit of a jump in the dark, if you ask me.'

'No, it wasn't. Not really. There were one or two loose ends that somehow refused to tuck themselves away, and I had an uneasy feeling that I might have got it all wrong. As you yourself said, it was so much out of character. Bartlett's spent so much of his life building up the work of the Syndicate that it's very difficult to see him stooping to the sort of corruption we've got in this case — let alone murder. But I still couldn't see in what other direction the