any burglar or (unknown? ) caller without first putting something on to
cover a body fully acknowledged to be beautiful. Such considerations had led
the police to speculate on the likelihood of the murderer being well known to
Mrs Harrison; and indeed to speculate on the possibility of the murderer
living in the immediate and very circumscribed vicinity, and of being rather
too well known to Mrs Harrison. Her husband was away
from home a good deal, and few of the (strangely unco- operative? )
villagers would have been too surprised, it seemed, if his wife conveniently
forgot her marriage vows occasionally. In fact it had not been difficult to
guess that most of the villagers, though loth to be signatories to any
specific allegations, were fairly strongly in favour of some sort of 'lover-
theory'. Yet although the Harrisons often appeared more than merely
geographically distanced, no evidence was found of likely divorce proceedings.
Once Mr Frank Harrison, with a very solid (if very unusual) alibi, had been
eliminated from the enquiries, painstakingly strenuous investigations had
produced (as one of the final reports admitted) no sustainable line of
positive enquiry . As he pulled off right, into Thames Valley Police HQ,
Lewis was smiling quietly to himself. Morse would very soon have established
some 'sustainable line of positive enquiry'. Even if it was a wrong line.
So what?
Morse was very often wrong at the start.
So what?
Morse was almost always right at the finish.
53
chapter twelve Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect Some frail
memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhimes and shapeless sculpture
deck'd, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh (Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard) the following is an extract from The Times, Monday 20
July 1998:
A VILLAGE MURDER
Two psychics and a hypnotist have already been involved in the case.
It has caught the attention of the Still a Mystery series on ITV, although it
has yet to be promoted to the Premier Division of such classical unsolved
cases as the disappearance of Lord Lucan, the fate of the racehorse Shergar,
or the quest for the Holy Grail itself.
Although the murder of Yvonne Harrison has long been out of the immediate
headlines, we are led to believe that the box-files concerning the case,
stacked on the shelves at Thames Valley Police HQ, are definitely not
accumulating layer upon layer of undisturbed dust. After all it is only just
over a year since the body of Mrs Harrison was discovered in the living room
of her Grade-II-listed Georgian house, set in four acres of wooded ground in
the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead. The home,
'The Windhovers', was sold for 350,000 fairly soon after the murder,
and the family have long since left the quiet leafy village all except
Yvonne, of course, who is buried in the small, neatly mown churchyard of St
Mary's, where, in the form of a Christian cross, a low, wooden stake is the
only memorial to the body reposing beneath it:
RIP. YVONNE HARISON 1947- 1997
Perhaps, when the ground is sufficiently settled, the murdered woman will
have some worthier monument. But for the present the grave shows little if
any sign of tender loving care, and flowers no longer adorn this
semi-neglected spot.
Yvonne Harrison, a fully qualified nurse, had resumed work in Oxford after
her two children had left home, and on the evening of her murder had returned
to an empty house, her husband Frank, as normally during the week, spending
his time in his London apartment
'The Windhovers' had been broken into a few years earlier, when TV sets,
video-equipment, radios, a computer, and sundry electrical items had been
stolen. As a result, the Harrisons had installed a fairly sophisticated
burglar alarm, with 'panic-buttons' in the main bedroom and beside the main
entrance door; had enlisted in the local Neighbourhood Watch group; and had
