The Secret of Annexe 3

Take the food business,' continued Morse. 'We almost got in some hopelessly complex muddle about it, didn't we? I read carefully what dear old Max said in his report about what had been floating up and down in the ascending and descending colons. You, Lewis, were bemused enough to listen to what Miss Jonstone said about someone ringing up to ask what the menu was. Why the hell shouldn't someone ring up and ask if they're in for another few slices of the virtually inevitable turkey? And do you know what we didn't do amid all this cerebration, Lewis? We didn't ask ourselves a very simple question: if our man had eaten nothing of the first two courses, shouldn't we assume he might be getting a little hungry? And even if he's been told he'd better go through the evening secretly sticking all the goodies into a doggie-bag, you might have thought he'd be tempted when he came to the next two courses on the menu - especially a couple of succulent pork chops. So why. Lewis-just think simply! - why didn't he have a mouthful or two?' 'Like you say, sir, he was told not to, because it was vital —' 'No! You're still getting too complicated, Lewis. There's a very simple answer, you see! Rastafarians aren't allowed to eat pork!

'Now let's come to this business of the stains this man was leaving behind on whatever he touched - even after midnight! We took down all the evidence, didn't we - we got statements from Miss Palmer, and Mrs Smith, and Sarah Jonstone - about how the wretched fellow went round ruining their coats and their blouses. And we almost came to the point - well, ‘ did, Lewis - of getting them all analysed and seeing if the stains were the same, and trying to find out where the original theatre-black came from and - well, we were getting too complex again! The simple truth is that any make-up dries after a few hours; it comes off at first, of course, on anything that's touched - but after a while it's no problem at all. Yet in this case it remained a problem. And the simple answer to this particular mystery is that our man wanted to leave his marks late that evening; he deliberately put more stain on his hands; and he deliberately put his hands where they would leave marks. All right, Lewis? He had a stick of theatre-black in his pocket and he smeared it all over the palms of his hands in the final hour or so of the New Year party.

'And then there's the last point. The man won a prize, and we made all sorts of complex assumptions about it; he'd been the most painstaking and imaginative competitor of the lot; he'd been so successful with his make-up that no one could recognize him; he'd been anxious for some reason to carry off the first prize in the fancy-dress competition. And all a load of complex nonsense, Lewis. The fact is that the very last thing he wanted was to draw any attention to himself by winning the first prize that evening. And the almost childishly simple fact of the matter is that if you want to dress up and win first prize as, let's say, Prince Charles, well, the best way to do it is to be Prince Charles. And we all ought to have suspected, perhaps, that the man who dressed up in that Rastafarian rig-out and who put on such a convincing and successful performance that night as a Rastafarian, might perhaps have owed his success to the simple fact that he was a Rastafarian!' ‘Mr Winston Grant.'

'Yes, Mr Winston Grant! A man, in fact, I met outside the Friar only last night! And if anyone ever tells you, Lewis, that there isn't a quite extraordinary degree of coincidence in this world of ours - then you tell him to come to see me, and I'll tell him different!'

'Should you perhaps say "differently"?' asked Lewis.

'This man had been a builder's labourer; he'd worked on several sites in Oxford - including the Locals; he'd lost his job because of cutbacks in the building industry; he was getting short of money for himself and his family; he was made an extraordinarily generous offer - we still don't know how generous; and he agreed to accept that offer in return for playing - as he saw things - a minor role for a few hours at a New Year's party in an Oxford hotel. I doubt we shall ever know all the ins and outs of the matter but—.'

Sergeant Phillips knocked and announced that the prisoner was now in the interview room.

And Morse smiled.

And Lewis smiled.