‘We’re only talking about a name, sir.’ Lewis was feeling that” incipient surge of frustrated anger he’d so often experienced with Morse.
‘Only? What are you talking about? “Simon”? With a surname like “Rowbotham”? Lew-is! Now George Rowbotnam -that’s fine, that squares with your actual proletarian parentage. Or Simon Comakers, or something-that’s what you’d expect from some aristocrat from Saffron Waldon. But Simon Rowbotham’? Come off it, Lewis. The fellow who rang was making it up as he went along.’
The surgeon, who had remained sipping placidly during this oddly intemperate exchange, now decided it was time to rescue the hapless Lewis. ‘You do talk a load of nonsense, Morse. I’ve never known your first name, and I don’t give a sod what it is. For all I know, it’s “Eric” or “Ernie” or something. But so} bloody what?’
Morse, who had ever sought to surround his Christian name in the decent mists of anonymity, made no reply. Instead, he poured himself another measure of the pale yellow spirit, thereafter lapsing into silent thought.
It was Max who picked up the thread of the earlier discussion. ‘At least you’re not likely to get bogged down in any doubts about accident or suicide – unless you find some boat-propeller’s sliced his head off-and his hands-and his legs.’
‘No chance of that?’
‘I haven’t examined the body yet, have I?’ f
Morse grunted with frustration. ‘I asked you, and I ask you again. How long’s he been in the water?’
‘I just told you. I haven’t-’
‘Can’t you try a feeble bloody guess?’
‘Not all that long-in the water, that is. But he may have been dead a few days before then.’
‘Have a guess, for Christ’s sake!’
‘That’s tricky.’
‘It’s always “tricky” for you, isn’t it? You do actually think the fellow’s dead, I suppose?’
The surgeon finished his whisky, and poured himself more, his lined face creasing into something approaching geniality. ‘Time of death? That’s always going to play a prominent part in your business, Morse. But it’s never been my view that an experienced pathologist-such as myself-can ever really put too much faith in the accuracy of his observations. So many variables, you see -’
‘Forget it!’
‘Ah! But if someone actually saw this fellow being chucked in-well, we’d have a much better ideas of things, um?’
Morse nodded slowly and turned his eyes to Lewis; and Lewis, in turn, nodded his own understanding.
‘It shouldn’t take long, sir. There’s only a dozen or so houses along the towpath.’
He prepared to go. Before leaving, however, he asked one question of the surgeon. ‘Have you got the slightest idea, sir, when the body might have been put in the canal?’
‘Two, three days ago, sergeant.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’ growled Morse after Lewis had gone.
‘I don’t really. But he’s a polite fellow, your Lewis, isn’t he? Deserves a bit of help, as I see it.’
‘About two or three days, then…’
‘Not much more-and probably been dead about a day longer. His skin’s gone past the “washerwoman” effect, and that suggests he’s certainly been in the water more than twenty-four hours. And I’d guess -guess, mind! -that we’re past the “sodden” stage and almost up to the time when the skin gets blanched. Let’s say about two, two-and-a-half days.’
‘And nobody would be fool enough to dump him in during the hours of daylight, so-’
‘Yep. Sunday night- that’s about the time I’d suggest, Morse. But if I find a few live fleas on him, it’ll mean I’m talking a load of balls; they’d usually be dead after twenty-four hours in the water.’
‘He doesn’t look much like a fellow who had fleas, does he?’
‘Depends where he was before they pushed him in. For all we know, he could have been lying in the boot of a car next to a dead dog.’ He looked across and saw the Chief Inspector looking less than happily into his glass.
‘I can understand somebody chopping his head off, Max -even his hands. But why in the name of Sweeney Todd should anyone want to slice his legs?’
‘Same thing. Identification.’
‘You mean… there was something below his knees -couple of wooden legs, or something?’
‘ “Artificial prostheses”, that’s what they call ‘em now.’
‘Or he might have had no toes?’
‘Not many of that sort around…’
But Morse’s mind was far awayr the image of the gruesome corpse producing a further spasm in some section of his gut.
‘You’re right, you know, Morse!’ The surgeon happily poured himself another drink. ‘He probably wouldn’t have recognized a flea! Good cut of cloth, that suit. Pretty classy shirt, too. Sort of chap who had a very-nice-job-thank-you: good salary, pleasant conditions of work, carpet all round the office, decent pension…’ Suddenly the surgeon broke off, and seemed to arrive at one of his few firm conclusions. ‘You know what, Morse? I reckon he was probably a bank manager!’
‘Or an Oxford don,’ added Morse quietly.
CHAPTER TEN
In spite of his toothache, Morse begins his investigations with the reconstruction of a letter.
In spite of his unorthodox, intuitive, and seemingly lazy approach to the solving of crime, Morse was an extremely competent administrator; and when he sat down again at his office desk that same evening, all the procedures called for in a case of murder (and this was murder) had been, or were about to be, put into effect. Superintendent Strange, to whom Morse had reported on his return to HQ, knew his chief inspector only too well.
‘You’ll want Lewis, of course?’
‘Thank you, sir. Couple of frogmen, too.’
‘How many extra men?’
‘Well-er-none; not for the minute, anyway.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I wouldn’t quite know what to ask them to do, sir,’ had been Morse’s simple and honest explanation.
And, indeed, as he looked at his wrist-watch (7.30 p.m.-’Blast, missed The Archers), he was not at all sure what to ask himself, either. On his desk lay the soddenly promising letter found on the corpse; but his immediate preoccupation was a throbbing toothache which had been getting worse all day. He decided he would do something about it in the morning.
As he sat there, he was conscious that there was a deeper reason for his refusal of the Superintendent’s offer of extra personnel. By temperament he was a loner, if only because, although never wholly content in the solitary state, he was almost invariably even more miserable in the company of others. There were a few exceptions, of course, and Lewis was one of them. Exactly why he enjoyed Lewis’s company so much, Morse had never really stopped to analyse; but perhaps it was because Lewis was so totally unlike himself. Lewis was placid, good-natured, methodical, honest, unassuming, faithful, and (yes, he might as well come clean about it!) a bit stolid, too. Even that afternoon, the good Lewis had been insistently anxious to stay on until whatever hour, if by any chance Morse should consider his availability of any potential value. But Morse had not. As he had pointed out to his sergeant, they might’pretty soon have a bit of luck and find out who the dead man was; the frogmen might just find a few oddments of identifiable limbs in the sludge of the canal waters by Aubrey’s Bridge. But Morse doubted it. For, even at this very early stage of the case, he sensed that his major problem would not so much be who the murderer was, but who exactly had been murdered. It was Morse’s job, though, to find the answer to both these questions; and so he started on his task, alternately stroking his slightly swollen left jaw and prodding down viciously on the offending double-fang. He took the letter lying on the desk in front of him, pressed it very carefully between sheets of blotting-paper, and then removed it. The paper was not so sopped and sodden as he had feared, and with a pair of tweezers he was soon able to unfold a strip about two inches wide and eight inches long. It was immediately apparent that this formed the left-hand side of a typewritten letter; and, furthermore, except for some minor blurring of letters at the torn edge, the message was gladdeningly legible: