'Shall I tell you?' repeated Morse. 'You see, there's a regular procedure which you know all about; which every CID man knows all about. A procedure that wasn't--couldn't have been followed in this case: that when you take fingerprints from the scene of any murder you take everybody's--including the corpse's.'
Lewis felt the blood in his veins growing cold--like the plate in front of him.
'You can't mean...?'
'But I do, Lewis. That's exactly what I do mean. The prints are those of Edward Brooks himself.'
Chapter Sixty-four
Gestalt (n): chiefly Psychol. An integrated perceptual struc-ture or unity conceived as functionally more than the sum of its parts (The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary)
As Morse well knew, it was difficult enough to describe to someone else such a comparatively simple physical action as walking, say--let alone something considerably more complicated such as serving a ball in a gmne of tennis, How much more difficult then, later that same evening, for him to answer Lewis's direct question about the cerebral equivalent of such a process.
'What put you on to it, sir?'
What indeed?
It was perhaps perfectly possible to describe the menta! gymnastics involved in the solving of a cryptic crossword clue. But how did one explain those virtually inexplicable convolutions of the mind which occasionally led to some dramatic, some penny-dropping moment, when the answer:: to a whole series of cryptic clues--and those not of th cruciverbalist but of the criminological variety--combine; to cast some completely new illumination on the scene How did one begin to explain such a sudden, almost irra tional, psychological process?
'With difficulty,' was the obvious answer; but Morse was trying much harder than that, as he now sought to identify the main constituents which had led him to his quite exlraordinary conclusion.
It was all to do with the fortuitous collocation of several memories, several recollections, which although occurring at disparate points in the case--and before had suddenly come together in his mind, and coalesced.
There had been the report (Lewis's own) on the inter-view with Mrs. Rodway, when he had so easily been able to re-visualise some of the smallest details of the room in which they had spoken with her, and particularly that ob- long patch above the radiator where a picture had been hanging.
Then there had been (only that very evening) a second oblong, prompting memory further, when he had looked down at the pristine strawberry-red in the lounge there, and when Mrs. Lewis had spoken of the unfading linings in her cupboards.
And then, working backwards (or was it forwards?) there had been the visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, when the Ad-ministrator had pointed with pride to the fine quality of the hessian lining for her cabinet-exhibits, with its optimistic guarantee of Tithonian immortality.
Then again, a much more distant memory from his child-hood of a case of cutlery, a family heirloom, where over the years each knife, each fork, each spoon, had left its own imprint, its own silhouette, on the blue plush- lining of the case. Things always left their impressions, did they not? Or did they?
Perhaps in the Pitt Rivers cabinets, in those slightly som-bre, sunless galleries, the objects displayed there the arte-facts, the relics from the past--were leaving only very faint impressions, like the utensils in Mrs. Lewis's kitchen-cupboards.
No impressions at all, possibly...
Then, and above all, the discrepancy between the pathol-ogist's report on the knife used to murder Mc Clure, and the statement given by the Raysons about the knife found in their own front garden: the 'blade not really sharp,' in the former;, the 'blade in no immediate need of sharpening,' in the lat. tter. Not a big discrepancy, perhaps; but a hugely sig~ nifi Cahnt one--and one which should never, never have passectd unnoticed.
?es, all the constituents were there: separate, though, and unsyn'nthesized--waiting for a catalyst.
Le XCwis!
Lebwis the Catalyst.
Fortr it was Lewis who had returned from his P.M. inves-tigati%ons with the information that one of the small keys foun Cltzl in Brooks's pocket fitted a wall-safe in the museum; in vh'hich, in turn, were to be found row upon row of other key S,, including the key to Cabinet 52. It was Lewis, too, who so innocently had asserted, as he picked up a knife with which to eat his meal, that his own fingerprints would soon be found thereon...
At,nd whither had such ratiocination finally led the Chief Inspector, as, like Abraham, he had made his way forth from · his tent in the desert knowing not whither he went? To at strangest of all conclusions: that on Wednesday, September 7, from Cabinet 52 in the Pitt Rivers Museum in OCrd nothing whatsoever had been stolen.
Chapter Sixty-five ehold, I shew you a mystery 5, v.51)
(St. Pnu[, I Corinthians, ch .1 %ouncil of war was called in Caesar's tent two days later, Sunday, October 2, with three other officers joining Chiief Superintendent Strange in the latter's Kidlington HQ office at 10 A.M.: Chief Inspector Morse, Chief Inspector?hillotson, and Sergeant Lewis. Morse, invited to put a case for a dramatic intensification of enquiries, for a series of warrants, and for a small cohort of forensic specialists, did so with complete conviction.
He knew now (or so he claimed) what had been the cir-cumstanees of each of the murders, those of Mc Clure and Brooks; and he would, with his colleagues' permission, give an account of those circumstances, not seeking to dwell on motives (not for the present) but on methods--on modi operandi.
Strange now listened, occasionally nodding, occasionally lifting his eyebrows in apparent incredulity, to the burden of Morse's reconstructions.
Mc Clure lived on a staircase where Brooks was the scout. The latter had gained access to drugs and became a supplier to several undergraduates, one of whom, Matthew Rodway, had become very friendly with Mc Clure-- probably not a homosexual relationship, though---before committing sui-cide in tragic and semi-suspicious circumstances. As a re-salt of this, Mc Clure had insisted that Brooks resign from his job; but agreed that he, Mc
