The Wench Is Dead

fare for the canal-trip had been sent up from her husband in London; and even facing the terrible risks of travelling with a drunken, lecherous crew – certainly after Banbury had been reached – she had not taken, or not been able to take, any alternative means of transport to get to the husband who was awaiting her in the Edgware Road. So? So what had she got, if anything, that was worth stealing?

There were those shoes again, too! Did Joanna deliberately leave off her shoes? Did she enjoy the feel of the mud between her toes along the tow-path – like some bare-foot hippie on a watery walk round Stonehenge in the dawn?

What a strange case it had been! The more he thought about it, the greater the number of questions that kept occurring to Morse's mind. He had a good deal of experience in cases where the forensic and pathological evidence had been vital to the outcome of a court case. But he wasn't particularly impressed with the conclusions that (presumably) must have been drawn from Mr Samuels' comparatively scientific findings. For Morse (wholly, it must be admitted, without medical or scientific qualifications) the state of the dress, and the bruising described, would have been much more consistent with Joanna being held firmly from behind, with the assailant's (?) left hand gripping her left wrist; and his (her?) right hand being held forcibly across her mouth, where thumb and forefinger would almost invariably produce the sort of bruising mentioned in the recorded description.

What of this Jarnell fellow? The Prosecution must have been considerably impressed, at the first hearing, with his potential testimony. Why, otherwise, would anone be willing to postpone a trial for six months – on the word of a gaolbird? Even the Colonel had given the fellow a good write-up! So why was it that when he duly turned up to tell his tale, at the second trial, no one wished to listen to him? Had there been something, some knowledge, somewhere, that had caused the court to discount, or at least discredit, the disclosures his cell-mate, Oldfield, had allegedly made to him? Because whatever accusations could be levelled against Oldfield, the charge of inconsistency was not amongst them. On three occasions, after Joanna's death, he had insisted that she was 'out of her mind', 'sadly deranged', off her head'… And there had, it appeared, been no conflict of evidence between the crewmen that on one occasion at least (did that mean two?) they had been called upon to save Joanna from drowning herself. The one vital point Jarnell disclosed was that Oldfield had not only protested his own innocence of the murder, but had also sought to shift all responsibility on to his fellow crewmen. Not, to be sure, a very praiseworthy piece of behaviour! Yet, if Oldfield himself were innocent, where else could he have laid the blame? At the time, in any case, no one had been willing to listen seriously either to what Jarnell or to what Oldfield might have say. But if they were right? Or if one of them were right?

A curious little thought struck Morse at this point, and dredged itself in a corner of his brain – for future reference. And a rather bigger thought struck him simultaneously: that he needed to remember he was only playing a game with himself; only trying to get through a few days' illness with a happy little problem to amuse himself with – like a tricky cryptic crossword from The Listener. It was just a little worrying, that was all… the way the dice had been loaded all the time against those drunkards who had murdered Joanna Franks.

And the niggling doubt persisted.

If they had…

Chapter Seventeen

The detective novelist, as a class, hankers after complication and ingenuity, and is disposed to reject the obvious and acquit the accused if possible. He is uneasy until he has gone further and found some new and satisfying explanation of the problem

(Dorothy L. Sayers, The Murder of Julia Wallace)

The thought that the crewmen may not have been guilty 'Joanna Franks's murder proved to be one of those heady notions that evaporate in the sunrise of reason. For if the crewmen had not been responsible, who on earth had? Nevertheless, it seemed to Morse pretty much odds-on that if the case had been heard a century later, there would been no certain conviction. Doubtless, at the time, the jury's verdict had looked safe and satisfactory, especially to hostile crowds lining the streets and baying for blood, but should the verdict have been reached? True, there was enough circumstantial suspicion to sentence a saint; yet no really direct evidence, was there? No witnesses to murder; no indication of how the murder had been committed; no adequately convincing motive for why. Just a time, and a place, and Joanna lying face-downwards in Duke's Cut all that while ago.

Unless, of course, there were some passages of evidence not reported – either from the first or the second trial? The Colonel had clearly been rather more interested in the lax morals of the boatmen than in any substantiation of the evidence, and he could just have omitted the testimony of any corroborative witnesses who might have been called. Perhaps it would be of some interest – in this harmless! game he was playing – to have a quick look through those Court Registers, if they still existed; or through the relevant copies of Jackson's Oxford Journal, which certainly did exist: as Morse knew, filed on microfiche in the Oxford Central Library. (Doubtless in the Bodley, too!) And, in any case he hadn't finished the Colonel's book yet. Why, there might be much still to be revealed in that last exciting episode! Which he now began to read.

Almost immediately he was conscious of Fiona standing beside him – the amply bosomed Fiona, smelling vaguely of the summer and strongly of disinfectant. Then she sat down on the bed, and he felt the pneumatic pressure of her against him as she leaned across and looked over his shoulder.

'Interesting?'

Morse nodded. 'It's the book the old girl brought round – you know, the Colonel's wife.'

Fiona stayed where she was, and Morse found himself, reading the same short sentence for the third, fourth, fifth time – without the slightest degree of comprehension – as her softness gently pressed against him. Was she conscious, herself, of taking the initiative in such memorable intimacy, however mild?

Then she ruined everything.

'I don't go in much for reading these days. Last book I read was Jane Eyre – for GCSE, that was.'

'Did you enjoy it?' (Poor, dear Charlotte had long had a special place in Morse's heart.)

'Pretty boring stuff. We just had to do it, you know, for the exam.'

Oh dear!

Crossing her black-stockinged legs, she took off one of her flat-heeled black shoes, and shook out some invisible irritant on to the ward floor.

'When do people take their shoes off?' asked Morse. ‘Normally, I mean?'

'Funny question, isn't it?'

'When they've a stone in them – like you?'

Fiona nodded. 'And when they go to bed.'

'And?'

'Well – when they go paddling at Blackpool.'

'Yes?'

'When they sit watching the telly with their feet on the sofa – if they've got a mum as fussy as mine.'

'Anything else?'

'What do you want to know all this for?'

‘If they've got corns or something,' persisted Morse, and go to the chiropodist.' ('Kyropodist', in Morse's book.)

'Yes. Or if their feet get sore or tired. Or if they have to take their tights off for some reason-'

'Such as?'