The Complete Inspector Morse Read online

  Morse is not a man burdened by regrets. He takes The Times but only enjoys the letters page and the crossword. He would take The Sun, but doesn’t wish to disappoint the woman who runs the newsagent.

  Lewis swears about once a fortnight.

  In a poll of Inspector Morse Society members, The Secret of Annexe 3 was voted the third worst book in the series.

  THE VERDICT: The Secret of Annexe 3 is a fun read. Almost everything is some sort of red herring, and even the identity of the dead man remains unclear for the first two thirds of the book. But two things jar amid the fun and games. Why doesn’t Morse have the wit to leave somebody watching the Bowmans’ house? Not once but twice does Margaret slip back home while the detectives are elsewhere. Secondly, the discovery of the real Rastafarian is a total coincidence, right at the end of the action. But Morse novels always rely on a hefty helping of happenstance. Strangely, of all the Morse novels, this is the only one that was never adapted for or from the TV series. Perhaps the show’s makers felt the fake Rastafarian would be hard to carry off, as well as potentially controversial.

  MORSE’S GREATEST MYSTERY

  ‘Clues? What clues, Lewis? I didn’t know we had any.’ Morse gets a little Christmas spirit when a pub’s charity collection is stolen.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 1987

  STORYLINE: Morse argues with his bank manager about charges for going overdrawn on his current account. He demands to be informed in advance if any such charges are to be levied in future.

  The detectives visit the George pub in Oxford, where £400 cash has been stolen from the landlady’s shopping bag. The money was collected for a mentally handicapped children’s charity. Morse conducts perfunctory interviews with the pub’s staff and patrons. He asks the landlady if she owns a pair of green shoes. She does and Morse smiles.

  The inspector announces to those gathered that he knows who stole the money. He predicts the culprit will not be able to quell his conscience and will return the money. Morse says they should send it to Lewis. Lewis is astounded by his boss’ deduction, until Morse admits he has no clues. The questions about green shoes were a verdant herring, so to speak.

  Next day the money appears on the sergeant’s desk, but the serial numbers do not match those of the notes stolen. Morse is unconcerned. The inspector’s bank manager calls him at home about a withdrawal of £400. Morse brushes him off, saying he will replace the funds tomorrow.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: Morse tells his bank manager he is too busy with a paint brush to visit the branch today. In fact he is working on the Times crossword.

  MORSE DECODED: The inspector used to know an auburn-haired beauty who had six pairs of bright green shoes.

  QUOTE-UNQUOTE: Lewis’ eyebrows ascend a centimetre when he overhears Morse talking to the bank manager: ‘It’s not that I’m mean with money...’

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: In 1993 this festive frolic provided the title for Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction by Dexter published as a stopgap between novels.

  Morse doesn’t like Christmas or Christmas cake and never has. The inspector plans to redecorate. He always reads a Dickens novel at Christmas. He rates Bleak House as the author’s best, with Little Dorrit second. Morse wins a £50 gift token in the Police Charity Raffle.

  Lewis never feels himself unduly welcome at Morse’s flat.

  THE VERDICT: This story is short, slight and probably best read in the afterglow of an enormous Christmas dinner in front of a roaring fire.

  THE WENCH IS DEAD

  ‘It was done a long time ago, Lewis, and done ill.’ Morse is taken to hospital with a stomach haemorrhage, but the detective solves a 130-year-old murder from his sick bed

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 1989

  STORYLINE: Morse is taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital after vomiting blood. He has a stomach haemorrhage. A fellow patient dies and the dead man’s widow gives Morse a copy of a short book her husband had written, Murder on the Oxford Canal.

  The inspector is soon absorbed by the true story. A 38-year-old woman, Joanna Franks, was drowned in the Oxford Canal on 22 June 1859. The Derby woman’s first husband had been an Irish magician, F T Donavan. He died in 1858 and was buried at Bertnaghboy Bay in Ireland. His widow soon met and married Charles Franks. He went to London in search of work and Joanna followed him, travelling south by canal on a boat called the Barbara Bray. It had a crew of three men and a teenage boy.

  Her body was discovered in the canal at 5.30 am. The crew were tried on charges of murder, rape and robbery. At the first trial the boy was not named in the final indictments. No evidence was offered on the charge of rape and this was dismissed. A second trial was required and took place in April 1860. Witnesses spoke of arguments between the crew and Joanna on the day before her body was discovered. The crew were drinking heavily. The post-mortem found no trace of alcohol in the dead woman’s body. During the night, Joanna left the boat on several occasions to walk along the towpath. She enquired about other ways of getting to London, but always returned to the boat.

  Her body had no shoes or bonnet when it was found in the canal. The corpse was still warm. The crew of boatmen claimed to have seen a man walking the towpath at 4.00 am. A man answering the description given by the boatmen was registered at a hotel in Oxford at the time, using the name Donald Favant, but he never came forward. The boatmen told several people that Joanna was out of her mind and must have committed suicide.

  During the second trial the dead woman’s husband confirmed his identification of her corpse. He refused to look at the prisoners. Shoes matching the dead woman’s feet were found on the Barbara Bray. The three men were found guilt of murder and sentenced to death. But one was reprieved just before the sentence was carried out and later transported to Australia for life. The other two men were publicly hanged.

  Morse asks a librarian at the Bodleian to do some research for him into Midlands insurance companies of the mid-19th century. He also gets Lewis searching for the trial transcripts and any material remaining in the Oxford police archives. The sergeant finds a small chest containing some of Joanna’s possessions, including a pair of shoes and her calico knickers.

  Morse learns there were several opportunities for Joanna to have continued her journey to London without great expense. Why did she keep returning to the boat? The second trial heard the boatmen caught up with Franks at about 4.00 am on the towpath. She was shouting her husband’s name. Joanna agreed to get back on the boat with them but soon jumped off again. The inspector decides the shoes found on the boat did belong to the body found in the canal, but that the corpse was not that of Joanna.

  A hospital consultant predicts Morse might live to see 60, but the inspector will be a diabetic long before then. Morse is discharged from hospital.

  The inspector has a theory. Joanna’s father worked in insurance. Franks collected £100 when her first husband died – a considerable sum in the 1850s. Morse claims Charles Franks and F T Donavan were the same person. Joanna decided to use the same ruse as her husband, staging her own death and collecting the insurance money.

  The doctor who first examined the body found in the canal recorded its height as 5’3¾”. The inspector realises the words interpreted as ‘body warm full clothes’ actually say ‘body was in full clothes’. The body found in the canal was cold. It could have been dead for hours. The average height of a woman in the 1850s was less than five feet.

  Morse goes to Ireland and has the grave of F T Donavan dug up. Inside is a roll of carpet and squares of peat. The magician staged his own death.

  The inspector and Lewis go to Derby, searching for the house where Joanna grew up. Under layers of wallpaper the detectives find pencil marks on a wall, showing the heights at various ages of Joanna and her brother as they grew up. She was only 4’9” at the age of 20.

  Morse belatedly realises Don Favant is an anagram of F T Donavan. The reason Charles Franks couldn’t look at the boatmen during the trial was because they
might have recognised him as Favant, the man who was on the towpath at 4.00 am on the fateful day.

  UNLUCKY IN LOVE: Morse is attracted to librarian Christine Greenaway, the daughter of a fellow patient in his ward. For her part, she can’t stop thinking about Morse. She would willingly run a marathon in clogs and callipers for him. But their efforts to spend time together are repeatedly frustrated. Later Christine gives up a cocktail reception to visit her father and Morse in hospital. But she is living with someone and can’t get involved with the inspector.

  The inspector also gets close to one of the nurses, Eileen, who is having trouble with the men in her life. Morse offers to join the fight for her affections. He has no such feelings for the ward sister, nicknamed Nessie.

  The inspector is later invited to a Christmas party by the nursing staff. He bumps into Nessie, whose real name is Sheila Maclean. She invites him to dance but Morse declines. He feels jealous when another man steps in. Next day he tries to phone Sheila but she has left for a job in Derby. Morse contacts her while visiting Derby and spends the night with her.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: The inspector is interrogated about his alcohol consumption. He estimates his drinking at six to nine pints of beer a day, and a bottle of spirits every three days. But he only admits to a third of this consumption. Lewis slips him a small bottle of Bell’s. The inspector dreams of a topless blonde holding a pint of beer with a head of winking froth.

  A doctor says Morse could soon be a diabetic. The physician also warns the inspector not to touch his Bell’s until the ward sister is off-duty – she would insist on equal shares. Morse waits several days before having a finger of Scotch and water.

  The inspector drinks three pints at speed while visiting Derby with Lewis. The sergeant sips a St Clements.

  ONE FOR THE MORGUE: A murdered woman’s body was found in the Oxford Canal on 22 June 1859 and wrongly identified as Joanna Franks. Two boatmen, Jack ‘Rory’ Oldfield and Alfred Musson, were wrongly hanged for Joanna’s murder. The author of the short book which inspires Morse’s investigation, Colonel Wilfrid Deniston, dies of septicaemia in hospital.

  MURDERS: one. BODY COUNT: four.

  INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY: Morse feels just a little lachrymose (ready to shed tears) when Lewis first visits him in hospital. The inspector is appalled by the pompous polysyllaby (use of many syllables) in a book sent to him by Mrs Lewis. F T Donavan used the grandiloquent (bombastic) title of Emperor of All the Illusionists. Morse admires the peroration (concluding part) of the canal murder book’s opening. The inspector dreams in Technicolor, despite the claims of oneirologists (scientists who study dreams). A book talks about a reprieved man experiencing a peripeteia (reversal of fortunes).

  THE MANY LUSTS OF MORSE: Morse lusts after several of the nurses at the John Radcliffe Hospital, particularly the Fair Fiona.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: Morse completes the Times crossword and reads the Letters to the Editor in 20 minutes while in hospital. He inspires the envy of a fellow patient by later finishing the crossword in about 10 minutes flat. They discuss a clue in the Oxford Times crossword: ‘Bradman’s famous duck (6)’. The answer is ‘Donald’.

  During the epilogue Morse finishes the Times crossword by the time his train from Oxford to London reaches Didcot – except for one clue. He finishes the Oxford Times crossword in 12 minutes.

  YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN, LEWIS: Lewis talks about his mother marking the growth in height of her children on the wallpaper in the kitchen. This leads Morse to discover how tall Joanna Franks was.

  MORSE DECODED: The inspector’s knowledge of geography is minimal. Since the age of eight he has known the capital cities of all the states in North America – except South Dakota. (The capital is Pierre, not Rapid City, as you might expect.)

  Morse won a scholarship to his local grammar school and was thrust into learning Greek. He got to School Certificate level in History.

  The inspector once went on a narrow boat but did not enjoy it. So many things went wrong, there was hardly any drinking time left at journey’s end.

  As a boy Morse was shepherded around various archaeological sites. But his curiosity was pricked by the written word, not the actual artefact.

  PORN TO BE WILD: Lewis gives Morse an erotic novel called The Blue Ticket. Its cover promises scorching lust and primitive sensuality. The inspector looks forward to delicious titillation but his interest is soon taken by the mystery surrounding the murder of Joanna. Twice he is embarrassed to be caught reading the mildly pornographic novel. Morse leaves the book in the hospital’s day room for patients.

  PEOPLE JUST CALL ME MORSE: Christine Greenaway asks what the initial E stands for in Morse’s telephone directory listing. She never knows what to call him. The inspector says he is just called Morse.

  SOUNDTRACK: Morse is so overjoyed at making a solo trip to the washroom while in hospital that he feels like Florestan newly released from confinement in Act Two of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. The Wagner Society invites the inspector to enter a raffle to see Wagner’s Ring cycle in Bayreuth.

  Morse can’t wait to get home so he can luxuriate in Wotan’s Farewell from the last act of Wagner’s Die Walküre and Pavarotti singing Puccini. At home he’s listening to the first act love duet from Die Walküre when Max phones.

  Morse recently bought himself the old Furtwängler recording of The Ring.

  QUOTE-UNQUOTE: At his wife’s prompting, Lewis takes Morse a mighty tome about 18th century crime and punishment in Shropshire. ‘Perhaps you’ll do me a favour and leave it in the hospital library when you come out.’

  The sergeant borrows a pair of woman’s shoes and calico knickers from a police archive, but feels obliged to explain himself: ‘They’d be a bit small for me, anyway, wouldn’t they? The shoes, I mean.’

  Dexter sums up his creation’s temperament: ‘He was somewhat of a loner by temperament – because though never wholly happy when alone he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people.’

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: This is probably the shortest of the 13 Inspector Morse novels and won its author the coveted Gold Dagger award from the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain – the first time Dexter had been awarded this honour. He had been given the runner-up prize of a Silver Dagger twice before.

  The book’s title is extracted from Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta, with the relevant text quoted at the beginning of the novel. The tale was inspired by The Murder of Christine Collins, which Dexter describes as a fascinating account of an early Victorian murder. The plot device of an incapacitated detective solving an old crime is shared with Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel, The Daughter of Time.

  Morse wears pyjamas as gaudily striped as a deckchair. He is a low-church atheist. His charlady, Mrs Green, comes to clean his house on Tuesday and Saturday mornings. The inspector thinks about dying for the first time in his life when admitted to hospital. He tells the hospital he has no next of kin, but jokingly tells Lewis he has a great-aunt in Alnwich, aged 97. He considers Charles Dickens’ Bleak House the greatest novel in the English language. But Charlotte Brontë also has a special place in his heart. The inspector has a first edition (1896) of A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad at home.

  Morse prefers instant coffee to the ground and brewed variety. He has never and will never set foot inside the North Oxford Conservative Association.

  In a poll of Inspector Morse Society members, The Wench is Dead was voted both the second best book in the series – and the worst! It’s safe to say this is one novel that divides opinion among readers.

  THE VERDICT: The Wench is Dead is a break from the usual whodunit formula of murder, investigation and solution. Dexter confines Morse to hospital and presents the inspector with a 19th century murder to ponder. There can be no interrogations or confessions, as everyone involved with the case is long dead. But Morse still uncovers a miscarriage of justice, thanks to the assistance of his trusty sergeant and an attractive librarian.

  This boo
k rightly won Dexter his first Gold Dagger. The reader feels as if he’s lying in the next bed to Morse during the hospital sequences, while the murder mystery is intriguing and clever. One of the best Morse novels.

  THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS

  ‘One of the secrets of solving murders is never to believe anybody – not completely – not at the start.’ A sudden death and the theft of a priceless jewel lead to murder, suicide and a multi-layered mystery for Morse.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 1991

  STORYLINE: Sheila Williams is having an affair with Dr Theodore Kemp, curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. But he wants to end their relationship.

  The Historic Cities of England Tour arrives at Oxford. John Ashenden is the tour’s guide. He leads a coach party of 27 wealthy, retired Americans. Ashenden is a voyeur who attends private sex parties. When the tour arrives at the Randolph, Eddie Stratton squeezes into second spot in the queue for room keys. His wife Laura takes the key and loudly announces she is going upstairs to run a bath. Eddie tells her to leave the door open for him, as they only have one key. Fifty minutes later Eddie returns from a walk around Oxford with a fellow tourist, Shirley Brown. He discovers his wife dead on the floor and her handbag gone.

  Morse arrives to investigate. The hotel’s physician, Dr Swain, says Laura Stratton died of a massive heart attack. The detectives interview Sheila Williams, the local liaison for the tour. She says Laura came to Oxford to present a priceless Saxon jewel called the Wolvercote Tongue to the city’s Ashmolean Museum. This would have reunited the jewel with its counterpart, the Wolvercote Buckle. But the tongue was in the stolen handbag.

  Police pathologist Max confirms Swain’s diagnosis. Kemp is very upset about the theft of the jewel. He spent years negotiating for it to be given to the museum. Two years previously, Kemp crashed his car into another vehicle. The other driver, a 35-year-old married woman, was killed. Kemp’s wife Marion was crippled. The curator escaped serious punishment, only losing his driving licence for three years and getting a fine.