'Unlike you and your philistine cronies, Lewis, my daily reading includes the royal circulars in The Times, the editorials – '
‘What do I tell the Super, sir? He wants us – you and me – to take over straightaway.'
‘Tell him I'll be in touch – tomorrow.'
'Tell him you'll ring, you mean?'
'No. Tell him I'll be back on duty tomorrow morning. Tell him be in my office any time after seven a.m.'
'He won't be awake then, sir.'
'Don't be too hard on him, Lewis. He's getting old – and I think he's got high blood pressure.'
As he put down the phone, with supreme contentment, Lewis knew that Strange had been right – about Morse and himself; realized that in the case of the Swedish Maiden, the pair of them were in business again – w.e.f. the following morning.
In his office, Strange picked up the cutting from The Times and read the letter yet again. Quite extraordinary!
From Mr Lionel Regis
Sir, Like most of your other correspondents I must assume that the 'Swedish Maiden' verses were composed by the person responsible for the murder of that unfortunate young lady. It is of course possible they were sent as a hoax, but such is not my view. In my opinion it is far more probable that the writer is exasperated by the inability of the police to come anywhere near the discovery of a body, let alone the arrest of a murderer. The verses, as I read them, are a cry from the murderer – not the victim – a cry for some discovery, some absolution, some relief from sleepless, haunted nights. But I would not have written to you, sir, merely to air such vague and dubious generalities. I write because I am a setter of crossword puzzles, and when I first studied the verses I had just completed a puzzle in which the answer to every clue was indicated by a definition of the word to be entered, and also by a sequenced anagram of the same word. It was with considerable interest therefore – and a good measure of incredulity – that I gradually spotted the fact that the word wytham crops up, in anagrammatized form, in each of the five stanzas. Thus: thaw my (stanza 1); [stre]AM why T[ell’st] (stanza 2); what my (stanza 3); [s]aw thym[e] (stanza 4); and [no]w thy MA[iden] (stanza 5).
The occurrence of five such instances is surely way beyond the bounds of coincidence. (I have consulted my mathematical friends on this matter.) 'Wytham', I learn (I am not an Oxford man), is the name of some woods situated to the west of Oxford. If the verse tells us anything then, it is surely that the body sought is to be found in Wytham Woods, and it is my humble suggestion that any further searches undertaken should be conducted in that quarter.
Yours,
LIONEL REGIS,
16 Cathedral Mews,
Salisbury.
Like Lewis, Strange remembered exactly what Morse had on his postcard: 'I reckon I know what the poem means!', and pushed the newspaper aside, and looked out across the car park.
'Lionel Regis, my arse!' he said quietly to himself.
chapter twenty-three
On another occasion he was considering how best to welcome the postman, for he brought news from a world outside ourselves. I and he agreed to stand behind the front door at the time of his arrival and to ask him certain questions. On that day, however, the postman did not come
(Peter Champkin, The Sleeping Life of Aspern Williams]
Wednesday, 15 July, was never going to be a particularly memorable day. No fire-faced prophet was to bring news of the Message or the name of the One True God. Just a fairly ordinary transitional sort of day in which events appeared discrete and only semi-sequential; when some of the protagonists in the Swedish Maiden case were moved to their new positions on the chessboard, but before the game was yet begun.
At a slightly frosty meeting held in the Assistant Chief Constable’s office at 10.30 a.m., the Swedish Maiden case was reviewed in considerable detail by the ACC himself, Chief Superintendent Strange and Detective Chief Inspectors Johnson and Morse. General agreement was reached (only one dissident voice) that perhaps there was little now to be gained from any prolongation of the extensive and expensive search-programme on the Blenheim Palace Estate. The decision was reported too, emanating from ‘Higher authority', that Morse was now i/c and that Johnson would therefore be enabled to take his midsummer furlough as scheduled, official verbiage would fool no one, of course – but it was possibly better than nothing at all.
Amongst the items reviewed was yet another letter, printed that morning in The Times:
From Mr John C. Chavasse
Sir, The Wood (singular not plural please) at Wytham is a place most familiar to me and I suspect to almost all generations of young men who have taken their degrees at Oxford University. Well do I remember the summer weekends in the late 40’s when together with many of my fellow undergraduates I cycled up through Lower Wolvercote to Wytham.
In lines 14 and 15 of the (now notorious!) verses, we find 'A creature white' (sic) Trapped in a gin' (sic), 'Panting like a hunted deer' (sic). Now if this is not a cryptic reference to a gin-and-whatnot in that splendid old hostelry in Wytham, the White Hart – then I'm a Dutchman, sir! But I am convinced (as an Englishman) that such a reference can only serve to corroborate the brilliant analysis of the verses made by Mr Lionel Regis (Letters, July 13).
Yours faithfully,
JOHN C. CHAVASSE,
21 Hayward Road,
Bishop Auckland.
Around the table, 'Mr Lionel Regis' looked slightly sheepish but not for long, and now it was all an open secret anyway. He realized that there would be little he could do for a day or so – except to re-read all the material that had accumulated from the earlier enquiries; to sit tight; to get Lewis cracking on the admin and perhaps to try to think a bit more clearly about his own odd/-irrational conviction that the young student's body would be found – and found in Wytham Wood(s). There was that little bit of new evidence, too – the call from the O'Kanes. For if their memories! served them to any degree aright, then Karin Eriksson had some point gone down the Banbury Road from the roundabout; was the testimony of the man who had been waiting for a bus then that Sunday noon-time which should have been given credence not that of the man who had driven along Sunderland Avenue.
Such and similar thoughts Morse shared with Sergeant in the early afternoon. Already arrangements were well in hand for the availability of about twenty further members of various local forces to supplement the thirty due to be switched immediately from Blenheim. One annoying little hold-up, though, head forester at Wytham, Mr David Michaels, was unfortunately away that day at a National Trust conference in Durham. But he was expected home later that night, his wife said, and would almost certainly be available the following morning.
Things were moving, that afternoon. But slowly. And Morse was feeling restless and impatient. He returned home at 4 p.m., and r-egan typing a list of gramophone records.
Before leaving him the previous Monday, a quarter of an hour after Strange's inopportune interruption, Claire Osborne had asked him to send her his eight Desert Island Discs and the versions he possessed of the Mozart Requiem, It was high time she started to improve her mind a bit, she'd said; and if Morse would promise to try to help her…? So Morse had promised, and reiterated his promise as he'd kissed her briefly, sweetly, fully on the lips, at her departure.