The Complete Inspector Morse Page 9

  Among the tourists is a troublesome vegan called Janet Roscoe and a quiet, tolerant man called Phil Aldrich. Roscoe has a large handbag. They both attend the same church in Sacramento, California.

  Next morning Kemp is meant to be helping with the tourists. But he goes to London for a meeting with his publisher. Kemp calls from London, saying he hopes to be back by mid-afternoon. Ashenden arranges for a taxi to collect Kemp at 3.00 pm. But the taxi goes unused. Lewis sees Stratton leave the hotel.

  That night two teenagers discover Kemp’s naked body in the Cherwell at a secluded spot called Parson’s Pleasure. A piece of paper belonging to one of the tour group is found nearby. The document has a hand-written number seven on it, the seven crossed through horizontally in the Continental style.

  Morse sees a drunken Stratton return to the Randolph after midnight. Lewis tells Marion Kemp her husband is dead, but before he can get the news out she says how much she hates her philandering spouse.

  Next day the tour’s departure from Oxford is delayed while investigations continue. The detectives collect a writing sample from the tourists. Only Howard Brown writes his sevens in Continental style. He is one of three men who do not have an alibi for the time of Kemp’s murder.

  Max says Kemp was killed by a blow to the head. He had a paper-thin skull and was already dead when he was put into the water.

  Stratton explains his absence. He went to the railway museum at Didcot. Stratton returned to Oxford and had a meal by himself before bumping into Sheila, who invited him home for a night-cap. Stratton recalls seeing Aldrich on the train travelling back to Oxford.

  The detectives interview Lucy Downes, who is married to Cedric, one of the Oxford academics helping with the tour. She is just off to London to have some curtains altered. The curtains are in a suitcase.

  Phil Aldrich writes out a statement for the police, explaining his whereabouts at the time of Kemp’s murder. He went to London in search of a child he sired while stationed in Oxford during the war. Aldrich makes only three corrections, two of them eliminating the word ‘we’ from his statement.

  Howard Brown met an old flame from the Second World War at Parson’s Pleasure on the day Kemp died. The American says he must have dropped his document there. The tour leaves Oxford for Stratford.

  Marion tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She is taken to hospital but dies later that day.

  Morse arrests Cedric Downes on suspicion of murdering Kemp. The inspector thinks the dead man had been having an affair with Downes’ wife. The accused man denies the charge and demands to speak with his wife.

  The detectives receive word that Lucy has been struck by a car in London. She is taken to St Pancras Hospital. Morse believes Downes went to London and tried to kill his wife. He says the suitcase contained Kemp’s clothing. But the inspector is proved wrong and releases Downes from custody.

  Stratton leaves the country, flying back to America with the corpse of his wife. Morse belatedly deduces who killed Kemp and has Stratton arrested on arrival in New York. The suspect is flown back to Britain.

  The detectives go to Bath, where Morse addresses the tourists one last time. He says Janet Roscoe overheard the Strattons talking about having the Wolvercote Tongue ‘stolen’ so they could claim the insurance. She volunteered to steal the jewel in exchange for Eddie’s help with another matter. She simply slipped Laura’s handbag containing the jewel into her own, large handbag. Roscoe later hid the stolen handbag in a display of bags for sale. Laura’s untimely death from natural causes complicated events somewhat.

  Morse says Roscoe and Aldrich are actually married. Their only child was killed by Kemp in the car accident. The couple decided to murder Kemp as revenge, aided by the complicity of his wife Marion. Stratton helped them by disposing of the corpse. He says he threw the jewel into the river at Wolvercote. But police divers search without success...

  THE MORE THINGS CHANGE: This novel is an oddity, Dexter reworking the original storyline he wrote for the television story ‘The Wolvercote Tongue’. Just as the TV screenwriters streamlined the novels they adapted, Dexter expanded upon his television source material. A new character, John Ashenden, is added as the tour’s travelling guide. Some surnames are altered – the Poindexters become the Strattons, for example.

  But the biggest change is to the actual ‘whodunit’ part. On television Downes murdered Kemp after catching the curator in bed with Lucy. In the novel this version of events is dismissed 50 pages from the end. An entirely new murderer and motivation are invented by Dexter. Also, Lucy Downes gets to survive the novel – in the TV story she was murdered by her husband.

  UNLUCKY IN LOVE: Morse thinks Sheila is a most attractive woman, vulnerable and sensual. She finds him awfully attractive, sort of dishy and sexy.

  Once the case is all but over, Sheila offers to make him happy for a night. ‘I ought to make it quite clear to you, ma’am, that any knickers you may be wearing may well be taken down and used in evidence,’ Morse says. They go to her house for sex. The inspector leaves at dawn, walking home in the rain.

  They arrange to meet again but Morse arrives to find Sheila with another man. He resists a jealous urge to confront her.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: Lewis fetches a gin and tonic for Sheila when she is being questioned by the detectives in the manager’s office at the Randolph.

  The sergeant offers Morse a drink but the inspector declines as he is on duty – much to Lewis’ surprise! Morse waits until he is alone before pouring himself half a tumbler of Glenfiddich. He is joined by Max. They enjoy the manager’s whisky.

  Soon after, Morse invites Lewis for a drink in the hotel bar but the sergeant declines. Lewis estimates his salary as being only 60 per cent of the inspector’s, yet finds himself buying about 75 per cent of their drinks – most of which Morse consumes.

  The inspector goes to the Chapters Bar and orders a pint of best bitter. Sheila buys his next pint for him. Morse has two more.

  The next night Ashenden buys Morse a large Glenlivet in the same bar. Later Morse drinks a gin and tonic at Sheila’s house.

  The inspector invites Max to a pub for a glass of Brakspear, but the pathologist is too busy. Morse and Lewis go to the Cherwell Arms. The inspector has a pint while his sergeant drinks a half. Lewis pays for the first round, then soon has to get Morse another.

  Once the case is cracked, the inspector goes back to the Chapters Bar to drink just for the sake of drinking.

  As the book ends, Morse has a pint of Flowers bitter at the King’s Arms.

  ONE FOR THE MORGUE: Laura Stratton dies of a massive heart attack. Dr Theodore Kemp is murdered by a blow to the head from either Janet Roscoe or Phil Aldrich. Marion Kemp commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

  MURDERS: one. BODY COUNT: three.

  INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY: Phil Aldrich is a small, dolichocephalic (long-headed) senior citizen. Morse wonders about a concatenation (joining together of a successive series) of events. The inspector thinks Kemp found the lubricious (lust-inducing) Lucy Downes irresistible.

  CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS: Morse finishes the bottom right-hand quarter of the Times crossword in two minutes. The inspector recalls a crossword in the Observer in which all the clues were susceptible to two quite different solutions.

  YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN, LEWIS: The sergeant’s talk of carpets and curtains triggers an epiphany for Morse. ‘You’ve done it, Lewis! You’ve done it again!’

  MORSE DECODED: Morse had a girlfriend called Sheila when he was an undergraduate at St John’s College.

  PORN TO BE WILD: Morse occasionally requires some mildly erotic fancy to meet the demands of his libido. He recently reacquainted himself with several semi-pornographic titles by flicking through their pages at a service station

  SOPHOCLES DID DO IT: Morse wrongly guesses that the corpse found in the Cherwell is Eddie Stratton. The inspector believes it wasn’t Kemp who called from London. Morse wonders if Aldrich met Kemp in L
ondon. He speculates that Howard Brown was having an affair with Laura Stratton. The inspector decides Downes murdered Kemp after finding the curator in bed with Lucy.

  LEWIS’ KITH AND KIN: The sergeant’s wife keeps badgering him to get some new curtains for the family home.

  Mr and Mrs Lewis usually try to do the Daily Mirror Quick Crossword at night.

  The sergeant doesn’t want to go home because decorators are refurbishing the house and he will only be nagged about getting new carpets and curtains.

  PEOPLE JUST CALL ME MORSE: Sheila asks for the inspector’s first name. ‘Morse. They just call me Morse,’ he replies, as usual.

  SOUNDTRACK: Morse is listening to the well-worn grooves of a Furtwängler recording of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung when the tour first arrives in Oxford. During the early stages of the case he would rather be at home listening to the Second Movement of the Bruckner No 7 than interviewing suspects. When he finally gets home, he plays the first two movements before going to bed.

  The inspector is halfway through the slow movement of Dvorák’s American Quartet when he is called with news of a body in the Cherwell. Morse debates whether the piece edges out the ‘In Paradisum’ from the Fauré Requiem for the number eight slot in his Desert Island music selection.

  A pianist plays ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ on a Steinway Grand in the Randolph’s Lancaster Room.

  Morse listens to Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, after the case concludes.

  QUOTE-UNQUOTE: Kemp affects a lisp: ‘Abtholutely pritheless, Inthpector!’

  Morse is no fan of Kemp: ‘I’d rather not think at all about that inflated bladder of wind and piss.’

  One of the tourists was not fond of the deceased Laura: ‘She was always talking about lying down, and now she was lying down. Permanently.’

  Lewis invokes his personal catchphrase to explain how he deduced Morse would be in the Chapters Bar at the Randolph: ‘I’m a detective, sir.’

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: The novel’s title is taken from a poem by Lilian Cooper.

  Morse begins the novel in one of his temporary ‘get fit’ phases. It soon passes. He entertains a healthy suspicion of anyone found first on the scene of a crime. The inspector is at least 55 years old. Accidents worry him above everything else. He is usually early for appointments.

  Fast driving is one of the sergeant’s few vices, but he never drives at more than 45 mph in a built-up area.

  THE VERDICT: The Jewel That Was Ours is an adequate novel which is hamstrung by its origins. For anyone who has already seen ‘The Wolvercote Tongue’, this book will read like exactly what it is – recycled material. Of course, Colin Dexter altered many elements and added fresh characters, conflicts and twists to the tale. But this all seems like over-elaboration – complication for its own sake. The final scenes where Morse gives a 20-page explanation of the plot seems particularly weak.

  It’s easy to understand why the author chose to re-use the storyline he had created for the television series. But the end results are disappointing, especially after the intriguing and highly original novel that preceded it.

  DEAD AS A DODO

  ‘The half-smile on Wise’s face made Morse rather uncomfortably aware that a slightly more intelligent analysis had been expected of him.’ The inspector solves a mystery dating back nearly half a century.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 1991

  STORYLINE: Morse gives a neighbour a lift home. Philip Wise tells him of a puzzling mystery. In 1941 Wise was working for an Intelligence Unit in Oxford. He had a bed sitter flat in Crozier Road. The room above him was rented by a woman called Dodo Whitaker. She invariably wore a wartime boiler-suit and had a rather deep, husky voice. She also had a big scar on one side of her face. Wise shared a love of music with Dodo and felt attracted to her.

  Dodo had a brother, Ambrose, who came to stay. Wise and Ambrose became firm friends. Dodo told Wise that Ambrose was a piano virtuoso. She loaned Wise a key to her parent’s home in Bristol when he was visiting the city in 1942. They write to her every week, prefixing her name with the initial ‘A’. But Dodo’s parents did not have a single photo of their daughter at home.

  Dodo moved to Cheltenham and did not keep in touch with Wise. Nearly 50 years later he saw an obituary for Ambrose in The Times. Wise attended the memorial service, hoping to meet Dodo. He talked to Ambrose’s widow and learned Ambrose never had a sister called Dodo.

  Morse discovers that Ambrose survived a German dive-bomber attack at Dunkirk and was taken to a rehabilitation camp at Oxford. Soon afterwards, he walked out of the camp with a friend from his regiment, before either of them could be given new documentation. The friend agreed to assume the identity of Ambrose for the rest of the war. The real Ambrose pretended to be his own, fictional sister Dodo to escape further active service.

  Wise is sent a photograph of Ambrose in uniform taken before Dunkirk. He has a big scar on his face. He is Dodo Whitaker.

  DRINK UP, LEWIS: Morse drinks several measures of whisky with Wise but leaves when there is little prospect of further replenishment.

  INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY: Philip Wise inserts his kyphotic (hunchbacked) self into Morse’s passenger seat. The inspector is known to lapse into total aphasia (loss of the power of speech) when driving a car. Morse notes that Dodo had the sinewy fingers of an executant (performing) musician.

  SOUNDTRACK: Morse would select the ‘In Paradisum’ from the Fauré Requiem for his funeral arrangement, if he ever had a voice in such matters. He calls it a lovely choice for any funeral. The inspector incorrectly recalls the Köchel catalogue number for the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as K662 – it should be K622.

  SURVEILLANCE REPORT: This short story was originally published in the first issue of fiction magazine Millions. It was subsequently reprinted in the 1993 anthology, Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories.

  THE VERDICT: This is an intriguing little tale, challenging the reader to guess Dodo’s real identity before the author can reveal it. Did you guess who she was?

  THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS

  ‘Tailor-made for Morse, this case of the Swedish Maiden...’ A mysterious riddle revives the search for a missing Swedish tourist. Morse’s investigation discovers a dead man but also leads to another murder.

  FIRST PUBLISHED: 1992

  STORYLINE: Morse goes on holiday for a fortnight and is intrigued by an article in The Times. Oxfordshire police have given the newspaper’s literary correspondent a riddle to solve, in the hope that it will help locate a Swedish tourist. Karin Eriksson went missing a year earlier after hitchhiking from London to Oxford. Her rucksack was found near Woodstock. She was short of cash. Karin had been staying at a YWCA hostel near King’s Cross. She spoke of plans to visit a family friend in mid-Wales.

  The rucksack was found by George Daley. He removed a camera and gave it to his teenage son, Philip. Daley’s wife, Margaret, persuaded him to give the rucksack to the police. Inside was Karin’s passport and £50. An unsuccessful search was made of Blenheim Park for the missing girl. At the time Morse suggested the search should be in Wytham Woods.

  The case is revived by interest in the cryptic riddle. The Times’ literary correspondent interprets it as meaning the girl is dead and her murderer is the author. Morse is given the case when he returns from holiday. He sends a letter to the newspaper using a false name and address. It notes the word Wytham appears as an anagram in each of the five stanzas.

  The head forester at Wytham, David Michaels, suggests places the police could search. The remains of a corpse are found on the first day.

  The detectives interview Daley and his wife. Margaret says her son developed the film in Karin’s camera. She gives Morse seven photos, including two of a young man. Morse recognises distinctive houses from a North Oxford suburb in some of the photos. Once the detectives have gone, Margaret tears up the rest of the pictures. They show Karin posing naked.

  Police pathologist Max is taken to hospital after a heart attack. Dr Laura Hobson t
akes over from Max. She says the bones are those of a man. The inspector, meanwhile, finds Seckham Villa, the house where Karin took her photos. The ground-floor flat is rented by an Australian called McBryde. He sends Morse to the rental agency. The inspector learns that McBryde was in the flat when Karin went missing. When Morse returns, the Australian has absconded. A room has been used for making pornographic movies. Lewis finds photographs of women offering their services as escorts and models. A client list includes Daley and Dr Alan Hardinge.

  Lewis flies to Sweden to interview Karin’s mother. She had three daughters – Katarina, Karin and Kristina. For his part, Morse interviews Hardinge. The Lonsdale College fellow recognises the man in Karin’s photograph as James Myton. Hardinge says he regularly went to Seckham Villa to watch erotic photography sessions, set up via a modelling agency – Elite Booking Services. Elite says Karin was referred to them by the YWCA superintendent. They booked her in for the session at Seckham Villa.

  Philip Daley is among a group of joyriders who steal a BMW and accidentally kill an eight-year-old. The quartet is later arrested.

  Dr Hobson says the dead man was killed by a knife-wound to the heart. He is identified as Myton. Hardinge then gives a statement to the police. He says McBryde, Daley, Myton, David Michaels and himself were at Seckham Villa on the day of Karin’s photographic session. Myton took the pictures but Karin refused to have an audience. After half an hour the other men heard a commotion. They found Myton and Karin both dead. The four men decided to cover up the tragedy. Myton’s body was dumped in Wytham Woods, while Karin’s corpse was pushed into the lake at Blenheim Park. Morse thinks the statement does not ring true.

  George Daley’s body is found at Blenheim. A gatekeeper recalls seeing Daley’s van driving into the park. The detectives then go to Wales to interview Dorothy Evans, a friend of the Eriksson family. Morse tricks her into admitting Karin is still alive. Philip Daley, meanwhile, runs away to London.