Sixty-one
character (n.) handwriting, style of writing: Shakes. Meas. for M. Here is the hand and seal of the Duke. You know the character, I doubt not.
(Small's Enlarged English Dict., 18th ed.)
Back at HQ Lewis found a handwritten note for his personal attention:
It was in Morse's hand, that small, neatly formed upright script that was recognizable anywhere; as indeed, for that matter, was Strange's hand—large, spidery, with a perpetual list to starboard, and often only semilegible.
But Lewis was unconcerned. He would type up a report on his wholly satisfactory morning's work. And then he would sit back and let things slowly sink in, for it had now become clear that the Repp-Flynn-Barron mystery was solved. Completely solved now, with the knowledge that it was Linda Barron who had taken the hush money; Linda Barron who must have insisted that if her husband ever thought of siphoning some of it off for himself she would expose him for the child abuser that he was, and expose him to Social Services, to the police, to the folk in the village, to the Press. And she would have meant it, for she was past caring. My God, yes! And Barron had agreed.
Yes…
The big moments in the case were over; and he rang Mrs. Lewis and asked her to have the chip-pan ready half an hour earlier than usual.
Yes…
In a strange kind of way, his confidence in himself had grown steadily throughout the present case, in spite of a few irritations like Dixon! And there was that one thing that had been interesting him and troubling him, in equal measure, for some considerable time now. Very soon he'd have to face up to telling Morse of his suspicions. But not just yet. He'd need to know a bit more about the Harrison murder first; especially about the contents of that fourth green box-file which had mysteriously added itself to the documents in the case, and which now sat alongside the other three on a shelf in Morse's office. Perhaps a bit later that afternoon, since Morse was unlikely to return.
What if he did, anyway?
Yes…
Lewis sat back after typing his report, his thoughts dwelling on the case that to all intents and purposes had now closed. He was right, wasn't he? But there were just one or two tiny items he hadn't as yet checked; and he knew that his conscience would be niggling him about them. No time like the present.
But not much luck. Still, those alibis for the Monday morning didn't much matter any longer. Or rather non-alibis, since neither Harrison Senior nor Harrison Junior had any alibi at all. And whilst Sarah Harrison did have an alibi, it still remained unchecked.
He rang the Diabetes Centre in the Radcliffe Infirmary, with almost immediate if unexpected success, since Professor Turner (clearly not a Monday-Friday medic) now confirmed everything that Miss Harrison herself had affirmed: “In fact, Sergeant, she had to take over some of my patients mid-morning when I was summoned by my superiors—”
“Do you have any superiors, sir?”
On reflection, Lewis was more than a little pleased with that last question: just the sort of thing Morse would have asked. Was he, Lewis, just a little—after all this time—moving gradually nearer to Morsean wavelength?
At a quarter past four he walked along the corridor to Morse's office, to cast a fresh eye (so he promised himself) on that bizarre, that puzzling, that haunting evening of Yvonne Harrison's murder—the source of so much trouble and tragedy.
Very soon he was virtually certain that he had seen none of the contents of that fourth box-file before; and had convinced himself that this was not merely a matter of some redistribution of the case documents. The file contained the sort of personal items that many women, and doubtless many men, keep in one of the locked drawers of their desks or bureaus, often with some sense of guilt.
There were all the usual things that from experience Lewis had known so well: letters, many of them in their original envelopes, some from women, most of them from men; photographs, many of them of Yvonne herself (one topless) with a variety of men friends; postcards from many a quarter of the globe, but mostly from Greece and Switzerland; three slim (unopened) bottles of perfume; various receipts for the purchase of ultraexpensive clothes and shoes. But for all the variety of material there, the box was scarcely half-full, and Lewis took his time. He looked at the photographs reasonably quickly (not quite so quickly at one of them, perhaps), before reading slowly (though not as slowly as Morse would have done) through the letters.
Then he saw it:
That was all. Just one small page of a longer letter. No date, no address, no salutation, no valediction, no name—nothing. And yet everything. Because the letter was written in that small, neatly formed upright script that was recognizable everywhere in the Thames Valley Police HQ.
As he reread the page, Lewis was suddenly aware of another presence in the office; and looked up to find Chief Inspector Morse standing silently in the doorway.