The Dead of Jericho

The life of a man without letters is death.

– Cicero

In the light of a bright October morning the streets assumed a different aspect, and the terraced houses seemed less squeezed and mean. Along the pavements the women talked and polished the door fixtures, visited the corner shops and in general reasserted, with the men-folk now at work, their quiet and natural birthright. A sense of community was evident once more and the sunlight had brought back the colour of things.

Yes, Sergeant Lewis had spent an enjoyable and reasonably profitable morning in Jericho, and after lunch he reported to Morse's office in the Thames Valley Police HQ buildings in Kidlington. Discreet inquiries had produced a few further items of information about Jackson. Odd jobs had brought him a considerable supplement to his pension, and such jobs had hardly been fitful and minor. Indeed, it was quite clear that the man was far from being a pauper. The house had been his own, he had almost ?1,500 in the Post Office Savings Bank, a very recent acquisition of ?250 in Retirement Bonds, and (as Lewis guessed) perhaps some ?1,000 of fishing equipment. Yet his business dealings with the Jericho traders had been marked by a grudging frugality, and the occasional granting of credit. But it seemed that he always met his debts in the end, and he was up to date with the Walton Tackle Shop on his instalments of ?7.50 for a carbon-fibre fishing rod. He had no immediate relatives, and the assumption had to be that Jackson was the last of an inglorious line. But Lewis had met no real ill-feeling against the man: just plain indifference. And somehow it seemed almost sadder that way.

Morse listened with interest, and in turn recounted his own rather more dramatic news.

'Did you get a statement from her?' asked Lewis.

'Statement?'

'Well, we shall need one, shan't we?'

So it was that Lewis rang the number Morse gave him, discovered that Mrs. Celia Richards was at home, and arranged to meet her that same afternoon. It seemed to Lewis an unnecessary duplication of mileage, but he forbore to make the point. As for Morse, his interest in the Richards' clan appeared to be waning, and at 3.40 p.m. he found himself entering 10 Canal Reach-though he couldn't have told anyone exactly why.

The bloodstained sheets had been removed from the bedroom in which Jackson had died, but the blankets were still there, neatly folded at the foot of the bare, striped mattress. On the floor the magazines had been stacked in their two categories, and Morse sat down on the bed and picked up some of the pornographic ones once more, flipping through the lewd and lurid photographs. One or two pages had an accompanying text in what looked to him like Swedish or Danish, but most of the magazines had abdicated the requirement of venturing into the suburbs of literature to enhance their visual impact. The angling magazines remained untouched.

Downstairs, the kitchen boasted few of the latest gadgets, and the tiny larder was ill-stocked. Some copies of the Sun lay under the grimy sink, and the crockery and cutlery used by Jackson for his last meagre meal on earth still stood on the dingy, yellow rack on the draining-board. Nothing, really. In the front room, similarly, there seemed little of interest. A small brass model of a cannon from the Boer War era was the only object on the dusty mantelpiece, and the sole adornment to the faded green wallpaper was a calendar from one of the Angling Associations, still turned to the month of September. A small transistor radio stood on a pile of oddments on the cupboard, and Morse turned on the switch. But the batteries appeared to have run out. There were one or two things in the pile which Morse had vaguely noted on his previous visit, but now he looked at them again: an out-of-date mail-order catalogue; a current pension book; an unopened gas bill; an old copy of The Oxford Journal; an illustrated guide to 'Fish of the British Isles'; two leaflets entitled On The Move; a slim box containing two white handkerchiefs; a circular- Suddenly Morse stopped and turned back to the leaflets. Yes. He remembered reading about the successful TV series On The Move, catering, as it did, for those viewers who were illiterate-or virtually so. Would illiteracy account for the lack of reading material in the Jackson household? Many a pornographic pose, but hardly a line of pornographic prose? What a different set-up across the way at number 9, where Anne Scott had surrounded herself with books galore! That long line of Penguin Classics, for example-many of them showing the telltale white furrows down their black spines: Homer, Plato, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Horace, Livy, Virgil… If poor old Jackson could only have seen… He had seen though: he'd almost certainly seen more than he should have done, both of the house itself and of the woman who regularly unbuttoned her blouse at the bedroom window.

Morse went upstairs to the front bedroom once more, took the binoculars that hung behind the door, and focused them upon the boudoir opposite. Phew! It was almost like being inside the actual room! He walked into the tiny back bedroom and looked out in the fading light along the narrow strip of garden to the shed at the far end, about thirty yards away. He focused the binoculars again, but finding the dirty panes hardly conducive to adequate delineation he took the catch off the window and pushed up the stiff, squeaky frame. Then he saw something, and his blood raced. He put the binoculars to his eyes once more-and he was sure of it: someone was looking around in Jackson's shed. Morse hurriedly made his way downstairs, put the key quietly into the kitchen door, took a deep breath, flicked open the lock, and rushed out.

Unfortunately, however, his right shin collided with the dustbin standing just beside the coalhouse, and he suppressed a yowl of pain as the lid fell clangingly onto the concrete and rolled round like an expiring spinning-top. It was more than sufficient warning, and Morse had the feeling that his quarry had probably been alerted in any case by the opening of the window upstairs. A quick glimpse of a man disappearing over the low wall that separated number 10 from the bank of the canal, and that was all. The garden was suddenly still again in the gathering darkness. If Lewis had been there, Morse would have felt more stomach for the chase. But, alone, he felt useless, and just a little scared.

The hut was a junk-house. Fishing gear crowded every square inch that was not already taken up by gardening tools, and it seemed impossible to take out anything without either moving everything else or sending precariously balanced items clattering to the floor. Against the left-hand wall Morse noticed seven fishing rods, the nearest one a shiny and sophisticated affair-doubtless the latest acquisition from the tackle shop. But his attention was not held by the rods, for it was perfectly clear to see where the intruder had been concentrating his search. The large wickerwork fisherman's basket lay open on the top of a bag of compost, its contents scattered around: hooks, tins of bait, floats, weights, pliers, reels, lengths of line, knives… Morse looked around him helplessly. Who was it who had been so anxious to search the basket, and why? It was seldom that Morse had no inkling whatsoever of the answers to the questions that he posed himself, but such was the case now.

Before leaving Canal Reach, he walked across to number 9, unlocked the door, and turned on the wall switch immediately to his left. But clearly the electricity had been disconnected, and he decided that his nerves were in no fit state to look around the empty, darkened house. On the mat he saw a cheap brown envelope, with the name and address of Anne Scott typed behind the cellophane window. A bill, no doubt, that probably wouldn't be settled for a few months yet-if at all. Morse picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.

He drove along Canal Street and found himself facing the green gates of Lucy's Iron Works, where he turned right and followed Juxon Street up to the top. As he waited to turn left into the main thoroughfare of Walton Street, his eyes casually noticed the signs and plaques on the new buildings there: The Residents' Welfare Club; The Jericho Testing Laboratories; Welsh & Cohen, Dentists… Yet still nothing clicked in his mind.

***

Lewis was already back from Abingdon. He had seen Celia Richards alone at the house, and Morse glanced cursorily through her statement.

'Get it typed, Lewis. There are three 'r's in 'corroborate', and it's an 'e' in the middle of 'desperate'. And make sure you've got the address right.'

Lewis said nothing. Spelling, as he knew, was not his strongest suit.

'How much exactly did that new rod of Jackson's cost?' asked Morse suddenly.

'I didn't ask, sir. These modern ones are very light, sort of hollow-but they're very strong, I think.'

'I asked you how much it cost-not what a bloody miracle it was!'

Lewis had often seen Morse in this mood before-snappy and irritable. It usually meant the chief was cross with himself about something; usually, too, it meant that it wasn't going to be long before his mind leaped prodigiously