Chapter Eleven
‘Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method
(Sir
As with Part One, Morse found himself making a few notes (mentally, this time) as he read through the unhappy narrative. For some reason he felt vaguely dissatisfied with himself. Something was nagging at his brain about Part One; but for the present he was unable to put a finger on
What was the normal pattern of entertainment for canal boatmen, like Oldfield, on those 'protracted stops' of theirs? Changing horses was obviously one of the key activities on such occasions, but one scarcely calculated to gladden every soul. Dropping in at the local knocking-shop, then? A likely port-of-call for a few of the more strongly sexed among them, most surely. And drink? Did they drink their wages away, these boatmen, in the low-beamed bars that were built along their way? How not? Why not? What else was there to do? And though drink (as the Porter once claimed) might take away the performance, who could gainsay that frequently provoked the desire? The desire, in this case, to rape a beautiful woman-passenger.
So many questions.
But if sex was at the bottom of things, why were the rape charges dropped at the first trial? Agreed, there was no biological fingerprinting in the 1850s; no genetic code that could be read into some desperate fellow's swift dilations. But even in that era, the charge of rape could be made to stick without too much difficulty; and Confucius's old pleasantry about the comparative immobility
The footnote referring to the
Was that 'wrong note' struck by Mrs Laurenson, perhaps? Whatever the situation had been with Joanna, this
Boots… shoes…
What
Morse, telling himself not to be so stupid, looked again, at the last couple of pages of the text. A bit over- written all that stuff about the sentinel-like old lock-house, look out over the dark waters. Not bad, though: and at least: made Morse resolve to drive out and see it for himself, once he was well again. Unless the planners and the developers had already pulled it down.
Like they'd pulled down St Ebbe's…
Such were some of Morse's thoughts after reading second instalment. It was quite natural that he should wish to eke out the pleasures afforded by the Colonel's text. Yet it: must be admitted that, once again, Morse had almost totally failed to conceive the real problems raised by this narrative. Usually, Morse was a league and a league in front of any competitive intellects; and even now his thought processes were clear and unorthodox. But for the time being, he far below his best. Too near the picture. He was standing where the coloured paints on the narrow-boat's sides had little chance of imposing any pattern on his eye. What he really needed was to stand that bit further back from the picture to get a more synoptic view of things. 'Synoptic' had always been one of Morse's favourite words. Quickly he re-read Part Two. But he seemed to see little more general terms than he had done earlier, although there e a few extra points of detail which had evaded him on first reading, and he stored them away, haphazardly, in his brain, there was that capital 'J', for example, that the Colonel favoured whenever he wished to emphasize the enormity of humnan iniquity and the infallibility of Jury and Judicature like the capital 'G' the Christian Churches always used for God.
Then there were those journeys through the two tunnels, when Oldfield had sat with Joanna… or when, as Morse translated things, he put his arm around the frightened girl in the eerie darkness, and told her not to be afraid…
And those last complex, confusing paragraphs! She had been desperately anxious to get off the boat and away from her tipsy persecutors – so much seemed beyond any reasonable doubt. But, if so, why, according to that selfsame evidence, had she always been so anxious to get back
Airy-fairy speculation, all this; but there were at least two things that could be factually checked. 'Nothing was convenient', it had said, and any researcher worth his salt could easily verify
Interesting…
As, come to think of it, were those double quotation marks in the text – presumably the actual words, direct transcribed, and reported
Again, it all seemed most interesting – at least to Morse What, finally, was he to make of that drink business? Had Joanna been drinking – or had she not? There was some curious ambivalence in the text; and perhaps this may have been in the Colonel's mind when he referred to 'a few conflicting statements'? But no – that was impossible Mr Bartholomew Samuels had found no alcohol in Joanna s body, and that was that!
Or, rather, would have been, to most men.
The thought of drink had begun to concentrate Morse's mind powerfully, and with great circumspection and care. Morse poured a finger of Scotch into his bedside glass, with the same amount of plain water. Wonderful! Pity