Had she been lying there completely unclothed when some intruder had disturbed her? Surely it was an unusually early hour for her to be abed; and if she had been abed then, and if she had heard the front doorbell, or heard something, it seemed quite improbable that she would have confronted 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 uncooperative?) 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 loath to be signatories to any specific allegations, were fairly strongly in favor 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 inquiries, painstakingly strenuous investigations had produced (as one of the final reports admitted) no sustainable line of positive inquiry...
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 inquiry.” 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.
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.
The following is an extract from The Times, Monday, July 20, 1998:
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 ease, 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:
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 acquired a Rottweiler puppy, christened Rodney, who had subsequently displayed a healthier taste for Walkers Crisps than for any unwelcome visitors, and who had sadly been run over a few months previously.
With the smashed rear window, the burglary theory was at first the favourite, although there was no apparent theft of several readily displayed items of silverware and non-too-subtly concealed pieces of jewellery. What was far more obvious to those who entered the house later that night was a body the body of Yvonne Harrison, lying on the bed in the main bedroom: naked, handcuffed, and gagged. And dead.
What immediately caught public interest was the fact that the man who discovered the body was none other than the murdered woman’s husband.
A somewhat delayed post-mortem established that Yvonne Harrison had probably been murdered by some sort of “tubular metal rod” two or three hours before her body was discovered at 11:20 p.m.. and fairly certainly not after 9:30 p.m. Independent evidence corroborated the pathologist’s findings. A local builder. Mr. John Barron, had rung Mrs. Harrison at 9 p.m. on the dot. as instructed. But he had heard only the “engaged” signal. At about 9:30 p.m. he had rung again; but although he had persisted there had been no reply. The phone was quite certainly ringing at the other end. Hither the Ansaphone had not been activated... or else the lady of the house was not alive to take the call.
Another call however had been made more successfully that evening. An extraordinarily puzzling call. At just after 9 p.m. Yvonne’s husband picked up his phone in Pavilion Road. London, to hear a man’s voice informing him that his wife was in trouble and that he ought to get out there immediately. Normally he would have driven home post-haste in his BMW. But with the car in for repairs, he took a taxi to Paddington where he caught the 9:48 train to Oxford, arriving at 10:50, where he took another taxi for the ten-mile journey out to Lower Swinstead.
Late-night traffic was thin, and when Mr Patrick Flynn braked his Radio Taxi outside “The Windhovers” at 11:20 p.m. he saw a village mansion ablaze with lights turned on in almost every room, and the burglar-alarm box emitting sharp blue flashes and a continuous ringing. The front door stood open... and the rest is history.
Or it was history until a fortnight ago. when two anonymous phone calls were received at Thames Valley Police HQ. where it is the view of Chief Superintendent Strange that promising new lines of enquiry may soon be opened.
It is surely universally to be hoped that the identity of Yvonne Harrison’s murderer will finally be revealed; and that on some more permanent memorial in St. Mary’s churchyard the name of the murdered woman will be spelt correctly.
Chapter thirteen
Ponderanda sunt testimonia, non numeranda.
(All testimonies aggregate Not by their number, but their weight.)
Most of the Thames Valley Police personnel were ever wont to pounce quickly upon any newspaper clipping concerning their competence, or alleged lack of competence. And that morning Lewis had been almost immediately apprised of the article in The Times — which he’d read and assimilated swiftly; far more swiftly (he suspected) than Morse would read it when he took it along at 8:30 A.M. The Chief was a notoriously slow reader, except of crossword clues.