Suddenly Morse was conscious of the tingling excitement in the nape of his neck, and then in his shoulders. His eyes dilated and sparkled as if some inner current had been activated; and he sat back in the armchair and smiled slowly to himself.

What, he wondered, was the routine in the Irish Republic for exhumation'?

Chapter Thirty-two

'You what? asked a flabbergasted Lewis, who had called round at 7.30 p.m. ('Not till The Archers has finished' had been his strict instruction.) He himself had made an interesting little discovery – well, the WPC in St Aldates' had made it, really – and he was hoping that it might amuse Morse in his wholly inconsequential game of 'Find Joanna Franks'. But to witness Morse galloping ahead of the Hunt, chasing (as Lewis was fairly certain) after some imaginary fox of his own, was, if not particularly unusual, just a little disconcerting.

'You see, Lewis' (Morse was straightway in full swing) 'this is one of the most beautiful little deceptions we've ever come across. The problems inherent in the case – almost all of them – are resolved immediately once we take one further step into imaginative improbability.'

'You've lost me already, sir,' protested Lewis.

'No, I haven't! Just take one more step yourself. You think you're in the dark? Right? But the dark is where we all are. The dark is where I was, until I took one more step into the dark. And then, when I'd taken it, I found myself in the sunshine,'

'I'm very glad to hear it,' mumbled Lewis.

'It's like this. Once I read that story, I was uneasy about it – doubtful, uncomfortable. It was the identification bit that worried me – and it would have worried any officer in the Force today, you know that! But, more significantly, if we consider the psychology of the whole-'

'Sir!' (It was almost unprecedented for Lewis to interrupt the Chief in such peremptory fashion.)

'Could we – could you – please forget all this psychological referencing? I just about get my fill of it all from some of these Social Services people. Could you just tell me, simply and-'

'I'm boring you – is that what you're saying?'

'Exactly what I'm saying, sir.'

Morse nodded to himself happily. 'Let's put it simply. then, all right? I read a story in hospital. I get interested. I think – think – the wrong people got arrested, and some of 'em hanged, for the murder of that little tart from Liverpool. As I say, I thought the identification of that lady was a bit questionable; and when I read the words the boatmen were alleged to have used about her – well, I knew there must be something fundamentally wrong. You see-'

'You said you'd get to the point, sir.'

'I thought that Joanna's father – No! Let's start again' Joanna's father gets a job as an insurance rep. Like most people in that position he gets a few of his own family, if they're daft enough, to take out a policy with him. He gets a bit of commission, and he's not selling a phoney product, anyway, is he? I think that both Joanna and her first husband, our conjurer friend, were soon enlisted in the ranks of the policy-holders. Then times get tough; and to crown all the misfortunes, Mr Donavan, the greatest man in all the world, goes and dies. And when Joanna's natural grief has abated – or evaporated, rather – she finds she's done very-nicely-thank-you out of the insurance taken on his life. She receives £100, with profits, on what had been a policy taken out only two or three years previously. Now, £100 plus in 1850-whenever was a very considerable sum of money; and Joanna perhaps began, at that point, to appreciate the potential for malpractice in the system. She began to see the insurance business not only as a potential future benefit, but as an actual, present source of profit. So, after Donavan's death, when she met and married Franks, one of the first things she insisted on was his taking out a policy – not on his life – but on hers. Her father could, and did, effect such a transaction without any trouble, although it was probably soon after this that the Notts and Midlands Friendly Society got a little suspicious about Joanna's father, Carrick – Daniel Carrick – and told him his services were no longer-'

'Sir!'

Morse held up his right hand. 'Joanna Franks was never murdered, Lewis! She was the mastermind – mistressmind – behind a deception that was going to rake in some considerable, and desperately needed, profit. It was another woman, roughly the same age and the same height, who was found in the Oxford Canal; a woman provided by Joanna's second husband, the ostler from the Edgware Road, who had already made his journey – not difficult for him – with horse and carriage from London, to join his wife at Oxford. Or, to be more accurate, Lewis, at some few points north of Oxford. You remember in the Colonel's book?' (Morse turned to the passage he had in mind.) 'He – here it is! -"he explained how in consequence of some information he had come into Oxfordshire" – Bloody liar!'

Lewis, now interested despite himself, nodded a vague concurrence of thought. 'So what you're saying, sir, is that Joanna worked this insurance fiddle and probably made quite a nice little packet for herself and for her father as well?'

'Yes! But not only that. Listen! I may just be wrong, Lewis, but I think that not only was Joanna wrongly identified as the lawful wife of Charles Franks – by Charles Franks – but that Charles Franks was the only husband of the woman supposedly murdered on the Barbara Bray. In short, the "Charles Franks" who broke down in tears at the second trial was none other than Donavan.'

'Phew!'

'A man of many parts: he was an actor, he was a conjurer, he was an impersonator, he was a swindler, he was a cunning schemer, he was a callous murderer, he was a loving husband, he was a tearful witness, he was the first and only husband of Joanna Franks: F. T. Donavan! We all thought – you thought – even I thought – that there were three principal characters playing their roles in our little drama; and now I'm telling you, Lewis, that in all probability we've only got two. Joanna; and her husband – the greatest man in all the world; the man buried out on the west coast of Ireland, where the breakers come rolling in from the Atlantic… so they tell me……'

Chapter Thirty-three

Lewis was silent. How else? He had a precious little piece of evidence in his pocket, but while Morse's mind was still coursing through the upper atmosphere, there was little point in interrupting again for the minute. He put the envelope containing the single photocopied sheet on the coffee-table – and listened further.

'In the account of Joanna's last few days, we've got some evidence that she could have been a bit deranged; and part of the evidence for such a possibility is the fact that at some point she kept calling out her husband's name – "Franks! Franks! Franks!" Agreed? But she wasn't calling out that at all – she was calling her first husband, Lewis! I was sitting here thinking of "Waggie" Greenaway-'

'And his daughter,' mumbled Lewis, inaudibly.