help, the better the chances for that confusion he'd tried so hard to effect.
In detective stories he'd often read of the difficulties pathologists
encountered in establishing the time parameters for any murder. Yes! He'd
just go up to the main road and walk (run! ) the half-mile or so to the next
house. Which indeed he was doing when he heard the voice at the gate that
led to the drive. He remembered Flynn's words exactly: 'I t'ink you moight
be needin' a little help, sorr?' . . .
epilogue Certainly the gods are ironical: they always punish one for one's
virtues rather than for one's sins (Ernest Dowson, Letters) 'didn't you want
any food? '
'No thank you, sir. I've got a meal waiting at home.'
'Ah yes. Of course.'
'And I didn't particularly want to watch Dixon eating doughnuts.'
'No, I understand.' Strange lowered himself rather gingerly on to the
inappropriately small chair opposite.
'Talking of eadng, Lewis, what the hell's eating you, pray?'
As he'd requested (and as we have seen) Lewis had nothing further to do with
the Harrison case. He had tried, and with some considerable success, to
distance himself from the whole affair, even from thinking about it. There
was just that one persistent, niggling worry that tugged away at his mind
like some over-indulged infant tugging away at its mother's skirts in a
supermarket: the knowledge that Morse, on his own admission, and for the
first time in their collaboration, had acted dishonestly and dishonourably.
He looked up at Strange.
'What makes you think something's eadng me?'
'Come on, Lewis! I wasn't born yesterday.'
So Lewis told him.
Told him of the unease he'd felt from the beginning of the
3G9
case: that Morse had known far too little about it, and then again far too
much; that Morse had originally voiced such vehement opposition to taking on
the case, and yet had spent the last days of his life doing little else than
trying to fathom its complexity.
'And that's all that's been bothering you?'
'And ' Look! Tell me! What's the very worst thing you think he could have
done? There's this attractive nurse pulling him through a serious illness in
hospital a place where patients can get a bit low, and a bit vulnerable.
Nurses, too, for that matter. And she fell for him a bit ' 'How do you know
that?'
'She told me so. She told me one night in hospital when she was looking
after me Morse fell for her a bit, too anybody would! and after he's
discharged he writes and asks her why she's not been in touch with him. But
she doesn't write back, although she keeps his letter. Know why, Lewis?
Because she doesn't really know how to cope with being in love herself.'
'How do you know that?'
'Does it matter? When she was murdered well, you know the rest.
Morse was on another case at the time you were on it with him, for God's
sake! And he said it was too much for the pair of you to take on another. '
'Only after he'd found his own letter.'
'Lewis!'
'Only after he'd recognized the handcuffs.'
'Lewis! Listen! Nothing Morse did then nothing- affected that enquiry in
the slightest way. Yvonne had kept some letters from her men-friends, the
kinkies and the straights alike. She certainly didn't keep any from Ban-on.
Maybe because he never wrote any, I dunno. Maybe because she just didn't
want to.'
'Just the ones from her favourite clients.'
'You know that. You've seen them.'
'Some of them,' said Lewis slowly.
'Well I saw all the bloody letters!'
'Including the one from Morse.'
'Not a crime you know, writing a letter. It was immaterial anyway, as I keep
trying to tell you.' Strange looked exasperated.
'It's just that it would have been awkward, wouldn't it? Bloody awkward! I
wanted to protect the silly sod. You never thought he was a saint, did you?'
Lewis was silent for a while. No. He'd never thought of Morse as a possible
candidate for sanctification.
But there was something wrong about what he'd just heard.
'So you saw the letter before Morse saw it, is that what you're saying?'
'Morse never saw the letter, not till you showed him that page of it.
You see, Lewis, Ztook it not Morse. '
'And you didn't check ' ' Couldn't have done, could I? It was a longish
letter. But I didn't read it, so I wouldn't have spotted if there was any
gap. '
'So it was you who kept some of the evidence separate?'
'Afraid so, yes. I was scared stiff one of my letters might be there, if you
