now, Simon had fitted that bill pretty well, since Morse was sure that the
mother-son relation- ship had been very close; much too close. Good
thinking, that! Then, that very afternoon, a busty lusty lass sitting with
Simon in the three-and-six pennies had innocently scuppered his care- fully
considered scheme of things.
Once home. Morse poured himself a modestly liberal measure of Glenfiddich,
and changed into a gaudily striped pair of pyjamas that blossomed in white
and purple and red . . before continuing, indeed completing, his written
record.
This evening in Lower Swinstead I spoke at quite some length with Mr Bert
Bagshaw. Why did I not follow nay first instincts? Had I done so, I would
have realized that any clues to that (most elusive) motivation for the murder
of Yvonne Harrison would ever be likely to lie in the immediate locality
itself, rather than in some external rape or alien burglary. Hardy's yokels
usually knew all about the goings on in the Wessex villages; and their role
is paralleled today by the likes of the Alfs and the Berts in the Cotswold
public houses.
Although I now know who murdered Yvonne Harrison, it will not be easy to
prove the guilt of the accused party. I am reminded of the Greek philosopher
Protagoras, who found it difficult to be dogmatic about the existence of the
gods, partly because of the obscurity of the subject matter, and partly
because of the brevity of human life.
But herewith I give my final thoughts on the murder of Yvonne Harrison, that
crisply uniformed nurse who looked after me in hospital once (but once! )
with such tempting, loving care . . .
He finished writing an hour later at 12. 45 a. m. Or perhaps, to be
accurate, he wrote no more thereafter.
At which hour Lewis was somewhat uneasily asleep, not at all sure in his mind
whether things were going well or going ill. Morse had insisted that it
should be he, Lewis, who would be on hand when Frank Harrison and his lady
passed through Arrivals at Heathrow. No problem there though. Still
thirty-six hours to go before the scheduled British Airways flight was 341
due to land, and Morse had been adamant that Harrison would be on that
flight, and not flitting off to Katmandu or the Cayman Islands.
Yet one thing was ever troublously disturbing Lewis's thoughts: the real
nature of the puzzling and secret relationship that had clearly existed
between Morse and Yvonne Harrison, 342
chapter seventy-four We are adhering
to life now with our last muscle the heart (Djuna Barnes, Nightwood) morse
awoke at 2. 15 a. m. ' his forehead wet with sweat, an excruciating ache
along the whole of his left arm running up as far as his neck and jaw, a
tightly constricting corselet of pain around his chest. He managed to reach
the bathroom sink where he vomited copiously. Thence, in pathetically slow
degrees, he negotiated the stairs, one by one finally reaching the
ground-floor telephone, where he dialled 999, and in a remarkably steady
voice selected the first of the Ambulance Fire Police options. He was seated
on the lime-green carpet beside the front door, its Yale lock and bolts now
opened, when the ambulance arrived six minutes later.
It all happened so quickly.
After being attached to a portable heart-monitor, after a pain-killing
injection, after chewing an aspirin, after having his blood pressure taken.
Morse found himself lying, contentedly almost, eyes open, on a stretcher in
the back of the ambulance.
Beside him a paramedic was looking down with well- disguised anxiety at the
ghastly pallor of the face and the lips of a purple- blue: 'We'll just get
the docs to have a look at you. We'll soon be there.
Don't worry. '
Morse closed his eyes, conscious that life had always been a bit of a worry
