‘Nothing really to tell you, sir-not yet, anyway.’
‘You don’t even want to tell me why your sergeant took the key to Westerby’s room as well?’
‘Ah, that! Yes, I ought to have mentioned that, sir. You see, there’s just a possibility that the corpse we found up in the canal wasn’t Browne-Smith’s after all.’
‘Really?’
But Morse declined to elaborate further as he made his farewell and strode away across the quad, sensing those highly intelligent eyes upon him as he turned into the Porters’ Lodge. From there he progressed, only some hundred yards, into the bar of the Mitre, where he had agreed to meet Lewis. He would be half an hour early, he realized that; but a thirty-minute wait in a pub was no great trial of patience to Morse.
Once inside Browne-Smith’s room, Lewis had taken out of its plastic wrapper the dark-blue jacket found on the corpse and measured it carefully against the jackets in the bedroom wardrobe: it was the same length, the same measurement round the chest, of the same sartorial style, with a single slit at the back and slim lapels. There could be little doubt about it: the jacket bad belonged to Browne-Smith. After rehanging the suits, Lewis methodically looked through the rest of the clothes, but learned only that each of the five pairs of shoes was size nine, and that four brand-new pairs of socks were all of navy-blue cotton with two light blue rings round the tops.
Westerby’s rooms opposite were silent and empty now, only the faded brown fitted carpet remaining, with oblong patches of pristine colour marking the erstwhile positions of the heavier furniture. Nothing else at all, except a plastic spoon and an jar of Nescafe on the draining-board in the kitchen.
Lewis’s highly discreet inquiries in the college office produced (amongst other things) the information that Browne-Smith certainly wore a suit very similar to the one he now unwrapped once more; and the college secretary herself (whom even Lewis considered very beautiful) was firmest of all in such sad corroboration.
The young porter was still on duty when Lewis handed back the two keys, and was soon chatting freely enough when Lewis asked about “Gilbert Removals”. As far as the porter could remember, Mr Gilbert himself had been down to T Staircase about four or five times; but he’d finished now, for Mr Westerby had at last been ‘shifted’.
‘Funny you should ask about Mr Gilbert, sergeant. He’s like your chief- both of ‘em got the jaw-ache by the look of things.’
Lewis nodded and prepared to leave. ‘Nuisance, teeth are, yes. Nothing much worse than an abscess on one of your front teeth, you know.’
The porter looked strangely at Lewis for a few seconds, for the words he had just heard were almost exactly (he could swear it) the words he had heard from the afflicted furniture-remover.
He told Lewis so… and Lewis told Morse, in the Mitre. Yet neither of them realized, at least for the present, that this brief and seemingly insignificant little episode was to have a profound effect upon the later stages of the case.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Our two detectives have not yet quite finished with the implications of severe dismemberment.
The case was working out well enough, thought Lewis, as he drove Morse back through Summertown. The shops were in the same order as they’d been two hours earlier when he had driven past them: the RAG building, Budgens, Straw Hat Bakery, Allied Carpets, Chicken Barbecue… yes, just the same. It was only a question of seeing them in reverse order now, tracing them backwards, as it were. Just like this case. Morse had traced things backwards fairly well thus far, if somewhat haphazardly… And he wanted to ask Morse two questions, though he knew better than to interrupt the great man’s thoughts in transit.
In Morse’s mind, too, far more was surfacing from the murky waters of a local canal than a bloated, mutilated corpse that had been dragged in by a boat-hook as it threatened to drift down again and out of reach. Other things had been surfacing all the way along the towpath, as clue had followed clue. One thing at least was fairly firmly established: the murderer-whoever that might be-had either been quite extraordinarily subtle, or quite – inordinately stupid, in going to the lengths of dismembering a body, and then leaving it in its own clothes. If it was in its own suit… Lewis had done his job; and Lewis was sure that the *nt was Browne-Smith’s. But what about the body? Oh yes, •deed – but what about the body?
Back in Morse’s office, Lewis launched into his questions: ‘It’s pretty certainly Browne-Smith’s body, don’t you think, sir?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘But surely-’
‘I said I don’t bloody know!’
So, Lewis, after a decent interval, asked his other question: ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that you and this Gilbert fellow should have a bad tooth at the same time?’
Morse appeared to find this an infinitely more interesting question, and he made no immediate reply. Then he shook his head decisively. ‘No. Coincidences are far more commonplace than any of us are willing to accept. It’s this whole business of chance, Lewis. We don’t go in much for talking about chance and luck, and what a huge part they play in all our lives. But the Greeks did-and the Romans; they both used to worship the goddess of luck. And if you must go on about coincidences, you just go home tonight and find the forty-sixth word from the beginning of the forty-sixth psalm, and the forty-sixth word from the end of it- and see what you land up with! Authorized Version, by the way.’
‘Say that again, sir?’
‘Forget it, Lewis! Now, listen! Let’s just get back to this case we’re landed with and what we were talking about at lunch-time. If our murderer wants his victim to be identified, he does not-repeat not chop his head off. Quite apart from the facial features-features that could be recognized by some myopic moron from thirty yards away-you’ve got your balding head, your missing mandibles, and whatever-even the angle of your ears; and all of those things are going to lead to a certain identification. Somebody’s going to know who he is, whether he’s been floating in the Mississippi for a fortnight, or whether he’s been up in Thrupp for three months. Agreed? And if our murderer is still anxious for his corpse to be identified, he does not – repeat not cut his hands off, either. Because that removes at one fell chop the one thing we know that gives him a unique and unquestionable individuality-his fingerprints!’
‘What about the legs, sir?’
‘Shut up a minute! And for Christ’s sake try to follow’ I’m telling you! It’s hard enough for me!’
‘I’m not finding much trouble, sir.’
‘All I’m saying is that if the murderer wants the body to be recognized, he doesn’t chop off his head and he doesn’t chop off his hands-agreed?’
Lewis nodded: he agreed.
‘And yet, Lewis, there are two other clues that lead quite dearly to a positive identification of the body; the suit-quite certainly now it seems it was Browne-Smith’s suit; and then the letter- almost as certainly that was written to Browne-Smith. All right, it wasn’t all that obvious; but you’d hardly need to be a Shylock-’
‘ “Sherlock”, sir.’
‘You see what I’m getting at, though?’
Lewis pondered the question, and finally answered, ‘No.’
Morse, too, was beginning to wonder whether he himself was following the drift of his own logic, but he’d always had the greatest faith in the policy of mouthing the most improbable notions, in the sure certainty that by the law of averages some of them stood a more reasonable chance of being nearer to the truth than others. So he burbled on.