The Wench Is Dead

Morse's finger on the kitchen switch produced only an empty 'click', in spite of what looked like a recent bulb in the fixture that hung, shadeless, from the disintegrating plaster-boards. The yellowish, and further yellowing, paper had been peeled away from several sections of the wall in irregular gashes, and in the damp top-corner above the sink it hung away in a great flap.

'Whereabouts did you use to measure things, Lewis?'

' 'Bout here, sir.' Lewis stood against the inner door of the kitchen, his back to the wall, where he placed his left palm horizontally across the top of his head, before turning round and assessing the point at which his fingertips had marked the height.

'Five-eleven, that is – unless I've shrunk a bit.'

The wallpaper at this point was grubby with a myriad fingerprints, appearing not to have been renovated for half a century or more; and around the non-functioning light-switch the plaster had been knocked out, exposing some of the bricks in the partition-wall. Morse tore a strip from the yellow paper, to reveal a surprisingly well- preserved, light-blue paper beneath. But marked memorials to Joanna, there were none; and the two men stood silent and still there, as the afternoon seemed to grow perceptibly colder and darker by the minute.

'It was a thought, though, wasn't it?' asked Morse.

'Good thought, sir!'

'Well, one thing's certain! We are not going to stand here all afternoon in the gathering gloom and strip all these walls of generations of wallpaper.'

'Wouldn't take all that long, would it?'

'What? All this bloody stuff-'

'We'd know where to look.'

'We would?'

'I mean, it's only a little house; and if we just looked along at some point, say, between four feet and five feet from the floor – downstairs only, I should think-'

'You're a genius – did you know that?'

'And you've got a good torch in the car.'

'No,' admitted Morse. I’m afraid-'

'Never mind, sir! We've got about half an hour before it gets too dark.'

It was twenty minutes to four when Lewis emitted a child-like squeak of excitement from the narrow hallway. 'Something here, sir! And I think, I think-' 'Careful! Careful' muttered Morse, coming nervously alongside, a triumphant look now blazing in his blue-grey eyes.

Gradually the paper was pulled away as the last streaks of that December day filtered through the filthy skylight above the heads of Morse and Lewis, each of them looking occasionally at the other with wholly disproportionate excitement. For there, inscribed on the original plaster of the wall, below three layers of subsequent papering – and still clearly visible – were two sets of black-pencilled lines: the one to the right marking a series of eight calibrations, from about 3' 6' of the lowest one to about 5' of the top, with a full date shown for each; the one to the left with only two calibrations (though with four dates) – a diagonal of crumbled plaster quite definitely precluding further evidence below.

For several moments Morse stood there in the darkened hallway and gazed upon the wall as if upon some holy relic.

'Get a torch, Lewis! And a tape-measure!'

'Where-?'

'Anywhere. Everybody's got a torch, man.'

'Except you, sir!'

'Tell 'em you're from the Gas Board and there's a leak in Number 12.'

‘The house isn't on gas.'

'Get on with it, Lewis!'

When Lewis returned, Morse was still considering his wall-marks – beaming as happily at the eight lines on the right as a pools-punter surveying a winning-line of score-draws on the Treble Chance; and, taking the torch, he played it joyously over the evidence. The new light (as it were) upon the situation quickly confirmed that any writing below the present extent of their findings was irredeemably lost; it also showed a letter in between the two sets of measurements, slightly towards the right, and therefore probably belonging with the second set.

The letter 'D'!

Daniel!

The lines on the right must mark the heights of Daniel Carrick; and, if that were so, then those to the left were those of Joanna Franksl

'Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Lewis?'

'I reckon so, sir.'

'Joanna married in 1841 or 1842' – Morse was talking to himself as much as to Lewis – 'and that fits well because the measurements end in 1841, finishing at the same height as she was in 1840. And her younger brother, Daniel, was gradually catching her up – about the same height in 1836, and quite a few inches taller in 1841.'

Lewis found himself agreeing. 'And you'd expect them that way round, sir, wouldn't you? Joanna first; and then her brother, to Joanna's right.'

'Ye-es.' Morse took the white tape-measure and let it roll out to the floor. 'Only five foot, this.'

'Don't think we're going to need a much longer one, sir.'

Lewis was right. As Morse held the 'nought-inches' end of the tape to the top of Joanna's putative measurements, Lewis shone the torch on the other end as he knelt on the dirty red tiles. No! A longer tape- measure was certainly not needed here, for the height measured only 4' 9', and as Lewis knew, the woman who had been pulled out of Duke's Cut had been 5' 3³/₄' – almost seven inches taller than Joanna had been after leaving Spring Street for her marriage! Was it possible – even wildly possible – that she had grown those seven inches between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-eight? He put his thoughts into words:

'I don't think, sir, that a woman could have-'

'No, Lewis – nor do I! If not impossible, at the very least unprecedented, surely.'

'So you were right, sir… '

'Beyond any reasonable doubt? Yes, I think so.'

'Beyond all doubt?' asked Lewis quietly.

'There'll always be that one per cent of doubt about most things, I suppose.'

'You'd be happier, though, if-'

Morse nodded: 'If we'd found just that one little thing extra, yes. Like a 'J' on the wall here or… I don't know.'

'There's nothing else to find, then, sir?'

'No, I'm sure there isn't,' said Morse, but only after hesitating for just a little while.

Chapter Forty

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning

(Ivy Baker Priest, Parade)

It sounded an anti-climactic question: 'What do we do now, sir?'