The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn

'He was definitely murdered on the Friday, then?'

'I think if you pushed me I could tell you to within sixty seconds!' He looked very smug about the whole thing, and Lewis felt torn between the wish to satisfy his own curiosity and a reluctance to gratify the chiefs inflated ego even further. Yet he thought he caught a glimpse of the truth at last. . Yes, of course. Noakes had said. . He nodded several times, and his curiosity won.

'What about all this business at the cinema, though? Was that all a red herring?'

'Certainly not. It was meant to be a red herring, but as things turned out — not too luckily from the murderer's point of view — it presented a series of vital clues. Just think a minute. Everything we began to learn about Quinn's death seemed to take it further and further forward in time: he rang up a school in Bradford at about 12.20; he went to Studio 2 at about half past one, after leaving a note in his office for his secretary; he came back to the office about a quarter to five, and drove home; he left a note for his cleaning woman and got some shopping in; he's heard on the phone about ten past five; certainly no one except Mrs. Evans comes to see him before six-thirty or so, because Mrs. Greenaway is keeping an eagle eye on the drive. So? So Quinn must have been murdered later that evening, or even on the following morning. The medical report didn't help us much either way, and we had little option but to follow our noses — which we did. But when you come to add all the evidence up, no one actually saw Quinn after midday on Friday. Take the phone call to Bradford. If you're a schoolmaster — and all of the staff at the Syndicate had taught at one point — you know that 12.20 is just about the worst time in the whole day to try to get a member of staff. School lessons may finish earlier in a few schools but the vast majority don't. In other words that call was made with not the least expectation that its purpose would be successful. That is, unless the purpose was to mislead me—in which case I'm afraid it was highly successful. Now, take the note Quinn left. We know that Bartlett is a bit of a tartar about most aspects of office routine; and one of his rules is that his assistant secretaries must leave a note when they go out. Now, Quinn had been with the Syndicate for three months, and being a keen young fellow and anxious to please his boss, he must have left dozens of little notes during that time; and anyone, if he or she was so minded, could have taken one, especially if that someone needed one of the notes to further an alibi. And someone did. Then there's the phone call Mrs. Greenaway heard. But note once again that she didn't actually see him making it. She's nervous and anxious: she thinks the baby's due, and the very last thing she wants to indulge in is a bit of eavesdropping. All she wants is the line to be free! When she hears voices she doesn't want to listen to them — she wants them to finish. And if the other person — the one she thinks Quinn is ringing — is doing most of the talking at that point. . You see what I was getting at with Roope, Lewis? If Roope were talking — putting in just the occasional "yes" and "no" and so on — Mrs. Greenaway, who says she doesn't hear too well anyway, would automatically assume it was Quinn. Both Quinn and Roope came from Bradford, and both spoke with a pretty broad northern accent, and all Mrs. Greenaway remembers clearly is that one of the voices was a bit cultured and donnish. Now, that doesn't take us much further, I agree. At the most it tells us that the telephone conversation wasn't between Quinn and Roope. But I knew that, Lewis, because I knew that Quinn must have been dead for several hours when someone spoke from Quinn's front room.'

'It was a bit of luck for him that Mrs. Greenaway didn't—'

Morse was nodding. 'Yes. But the luck wasn't all on his side. Remember that Mrs. Evans—'

'You've explained how that could have happened, sir. It's just this Studio 2 business I can't follow.'

'I'm not surprised. We had everybody telling us lies about it. But let me give you one or two clues. Martin and Monica Height had decided to go to the pictures on Friday afternoon, and yet they stupidly tried to change their alibi — change a good alibi for a lousy alibi. Just ask yourself why, Lewis. The only sensible answer that I could think of was that they had seen something — or one of them had seen something — which they weren't prepared to talk about. Now, I think that Monica, at least on this point, was prepared to tell me the truth — the literal truth. I asked her whether she had seen someone else going in; and she said no.' Morse smiled slowly: 'Do you see what I mean now?'

'No, sir.'