Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

Yes, since the Burfbrd office had been closed, Carterton had assumed postal

responsibility for a pretty wide area.  Dixon was handed a printed list of

the Oxon districts now covered; was informed how many postmen were involved;

where the collection points were, and how frequently the boxes were emptied;

how and when the accumulated bags of mail were brought back to Carterton, and

how they were there duly sorted and categorized but not franked before being

sent on to Oxford.

"Any way a particular letter can be traced to a particular post-box?"

"No, none."

"Traced to a particular village?"

"No."

Dixon was not an officer of any great intellectual capacity; indeed Morse had

once cruelly described him as 'the lowest- watt bulb in the Thames Valley

Force'.  He had only five years to go before retirement, and he knew that his

recent elevation to the rank of sergeant was as high as he could ever hope to

climb.  Not too bad, though, for a man who had been given little

encouragement either from home or from school: if he'd made something of

himself he'd made something of himself himself, as he'd once put things.  Not

the most elegant of sentences.  But 'elegance' had never been a word

associated with Sergeant Dixon.

And yet, as he looked down at his outsize black boots, buffed and bulled, he

was thinking as hard as he'd thought for many a moon.  He was fully aware of

the importance of his present enquiries, and he felt gratified to have been

given the job.  How good it would be if he could impress his superiors

something (he knew) he'd seldom done in his heretofore somewhat nondescript

career.

So he took his time as he sat in that small postal office; took his time as

he wrote down a few words in his black notebook; then another few words; then

asked another question; then another.  .

When finally he drove back to Oxford, Sergeant Dixon was feeling rather

pleased with himself.

That letter-cum-envelope was still exercising Strange's mind to its limits;

but there seemed no cause for excitement.  In late morning he had driven down

to the Fingerprint Department at St Aldate's in Oxford only to learn that

there was little prospect of further enlightenment.  The faint, over-smeared

prints offered no hope: the envelope itself must have been handled by the

original correspondent, by the collecting post- man, by the sorter, by the

delivering postman, by a member of the HQ post department, by Strange's

secretary, by Strange himself and probably by a few extra intermediary

persons to boot.  How many fingers there, pray?

Forget it?

Forget it!

Handwriting?  Only those red-felt capitals on the cover.  Was it worth

getting in some under-employed graphologist to estimate the correspondent's

potential criminality?  To seek possible signs of his (?  ) childhood

neglect, parental abuse, sexual perversion, drugs .  .  .

Forget it?

Forget it!

The typewriter?  God!  How many typewriters were there to be found in

Oxfordshire?  In any case.  Strange held the view that in the early years of

the new millennium the streets of the UK's major cities would be lined with

past-sell-by-date typewriters and VDUs and computers and the rest.  And how

was he to find an obviously ancient typewriter for God's sake, one with a

dred and overworked ribbon of red and black?

49

 He might as well try to trace the animal-inventory from the Ark.

Forget it?

Forget it!

What Strange needed now was new ideas.

What Strange needed now was Morse to be around.

chapter eleven Take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast, For you have seen

him open 't.  Read o'er this; And after, this: and then to breakfast with

What appetite you have (Shakespeare, Henry VUT) detective sergeant lewis of

the Thames Valley CID kept himself pretty fit very fit, really in spite of a

diet clogged daily with cholesterol.  Quite simply, he had long held the view

that some things went with other things.  He had often heard, for example,

that caviare was best washed down with iced champagne, although in truth his

personal experience had occurred somewhat lower down the culinary ladder with

fried eggs necessarily complemented with chips and HP sauce; and (at

breakfast time) with bacon, buttered mushrooms, well- grilled tomatoes, and

soft fried bread.  And, indeed, such was the breakfast that Mrs Lewis had

prepared at 7.  15 a.  m.  on Monday, 20 July 1998.

It will be of no surprise therefore for the reader to learn that Sergeant

Lewis felt pleasingly replete when, just before 8 a.  m.  " he drove from

Headington down the Ring Road to the Cutteslowe roundabout, where he turned

north up to Police HQ, at Kidlington.  No problems.  All the traffic was

going the other way, down to Oxford City.

He was looking forward to the day.

He'd known that working with Morse was never going to be 51

 easy, but he

couldn't disguise the fact that his own service in the CID had been enriched

immeasurably because of his close association, over so many years now, with

his curmudgeonly, miserly, oddly vulnerable chief.

And now?  There was the prospect of another case: a big, fat, juicy puzzle