"Dexter, Colin - Inspector Morse 11 - Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

And very soon afterwards, seeing little prospect of any further replenishment, he took his leave with the promise that he would give the problem 'a little consideration'.

The following Monday morning, Morse stood beside the Traffic Comptroller at Kidlington Police HQ and watched as "AW 1' was keyed into the Car Registration computer.

Immediately, the VDU spelled out the information that the car was still registered under the name of Mr. A. Whitaker, 6 West View Crescent, Bournemouth; and noting the address Morse walked thoughtfully back to his ground-floor office.

After ringing Directory Inquiries, and getting the Bournemouth telephone number, he was soon speaking to Mrs. Whitaker herself, who in turn was soon promising to do exactly as Morse had requested.

Then Morse rang the War Office.

Ten days later, Philip Wise returned from a week's holiday in Spain to find a long note from Morse.

P. W.

I've discovered a few more facts, but some of what follows may possibly be pure fiction. As you know, records galore got destroyed in the last war, affording limitless opportunity for people to cover up their traces by means of others' identity cards and so on, especially after a period of chaos and carnage when nobody knew who was who or which corpse was which.

After Dunkirk, for instance.

Gunner (as he then was) Whitaker was the only man of thirty on board who survived, quite miraculously, when the Edna (a flat-bottomed barge registered in Felixstowe) was blown out of the water by a German dive-bomber on May 30th, 1940. He was picked up, with only a pair of waterlogged pants and a wrist-watch to call his own, by the naval sloop Artemis, and was landed at Dover, along with tens of thousands of other soldiers from almost every regiment in the land. (My own imaginative faculties now come wholly into play.) In due course, he was put on a train and sent to a temporary rehabilitation camp as it happened, the one here in Oxford up on Headington Hill.

The fact that he was in a state of profound shock, with his nerves half-shot to pieces, is probably sufficient to account for his walking out of this camp (quite literally) after only one night under canvas, and hitch-hiking down to Bristol. But he didn't walk out alone. He took a friend with him, a man from the same regiment; and they both quite deliberately got out of the camp before either could be re-documented and reposted. This second man had only a mother and sister as close family, who were both killed in one of the very first air raids on Plymouth; and for some (doubtless considerable) sum of money, donated by the protective Whitaker parents, this man agreed to leave on permanent record the official War Office version of his fate after Dunkirk "Missing presumed killed' and for the rest of the war to assume the name and role of Ambrose Whitaker. In short, my guess is that the man who came up from Bodmin to see Dodo was not Ambrose Whitaker at all.

Your own guess about things fitted some of the facts well enough; but those facts also fit into a totally different pattern.

Just consider some of them again. First, there was the weekly letter from Bristol, from parents who seemingly didn't even want to acknowledge their daughter and who hid all the family photos when you stayed with them. Odd! Then, take this daughter of theirs, Dodo. No great shakes physically, and only just up to attracting an impressionable young man after he'd had a few pints (please don't think me unfair!) in a dim pub-lounge or a candle-lit bedroom yet she decided to hide whatever charms she'd got under a baggy boiler-suit.

Decidedly odd! What else did you tell me about her? She was nervy; she had a deepish voice; she wore too much face powder she knew a great deal about the war .. . (You've guessed the truth by now, I'm sure.) Her Christian name began with "A', and you saw her sign her name that way at the Record Library with the sinewy fingers of an executant musician. But that wasn't odd, was it? Her name did begin with "A', and Ambrose Whitaker, as we know, was himself a fine pianist. And so it wasn't only the scar on her jaw she was anxious to conceal with those layers of face-powder it was the stubble of a beard that grew there every day. Because Dodo Whitaker was a man! And not just any tuppenyha'penny old man, either: he was Ambrose Whitaker.

Two points remain to be cleared up. First, why was it necessary for Ambrose Whitaker to pose as a woman? Second, what was the relationship between Ambrose and the artillery corporal from Bodmin? On the first point, it's clear that if he wanted to avoid any further wartime traumas Ambrose couldn't stay in Bristol, where he was far too well known.

Even if he moved to a place where he wasn't known, it wouldn't have been completely safe to move as a man; because suspicious questions were always going to be asked in wartime about a young fellow who looked as if he might well be dodging the column. So he took out a double insurance on his deception for him a desperately needed deception not only by moving to Oxford, but also by dressing and living as a woman. On the second point, we don't perhaps need to probe too deeply into the reasons why the sensitive and effeminate Ambrose was happy to take every opportunity of spending his nights with (forgive me!) the rather crude, whisky-swilling opportunist you got to know in the war. Such speculation is always a little distasteful, and I will say no more about it.

I rang Ambrose's widow, asking for a wartime photograph of her husband, and I gave her your address, telling her you are an archivist working for the Imperial War Museum. You should hear from her soon; and when you do you'll be as near as anyone is ever likely to be to knowing the truth about this curious affair.

E. M.

It was two days later that a still-pyjamaed Wise took delivery of a stiff white envelope, in which he found a brief note, together with a photograph of a young man in army uniform, a photograph in which no attempt had been made to turn the left-hand side of the sitter's face away from the honesty of the camera lens, or to retouch the line of a cruel scar that stretched across the face's lower jaw. And as Philip Wise looked down at the photograph he saw staring back at him the familiar, faithless eyes of Dodo Whitaker.

"I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life."

Samuel Johnson, as reported by Boswell in Tour to the Hebrides) I shall never be able to forget what Louis said chiefly, no doubt, because he said it so often, a cynical smile slowly softening that calculating old mouth of his: "People are so gullible!" that's what he kept on saying, our Louis. And I've used those selfsame words a thousand times myself used them again last night to this fat-walleted coach-load of mine as they de bussed before tucking their starched napkins over their legs and starting into one of Louis' five-star four-coursers, with all the wines and a final slim liqueur. Yes, people are so gullible .. . Not quite all of them (make no mistake!) and please don't misunderstand me. This particular manifestation of our human frailty is of only marginal concern to me personally, since occasionally I cut a thinnish slice of that great cake for myself as I did just before I unloaded those matching sets of leather cases and hulked them round the motel corridors.

But let's get the chronology correct. All that hulking around comes right after we've pulled into the motel where as always I turn to all the good people (the black briefcase tight under my right arm) and tell them we're here, folks; here for the first-night stop on a wunnerful tour, which every single one o' you is goin' to enjoy real great. From tomorrow and I'm real sorry about this, folks you won't have me personally lookin' after you any more; but that's how the operation operates. I'm just the first-leg man myself, and someone else'll have the real privilege of drivin' you out on the second leg post-breakfast. Tonight itself, though, I'll be hangin' around the cocktail bar (got that?), and if you've any problems about .. . well, about anything, you just come along and talk to me, and we'll sort things out real easy. One thing, folks. Just one small friendly word o' counsel to you all.

There's one or two guys around these parts who are about as quick an' as slick an' as smooth as a well-soaped ferret. Now, the last thing I'd ever try to do is stop you enjoyin' your vaycaytions, and maybe one or two of you could fancy your chances with a deck o' cards against the deadliest dealer from here to Detroit. But.. . well, as I say, just a friendly word o' counsel, folks. Which is this: some people are so gullible! and I just wouldn't like it if any o' you well, as I say, I just wouldn't like it.

That's the way I usually dress it up, and not a bad little dressing up at that, as I think you'll agree.

"OK' (do I hear you say?) 'if some of them want to transfer their savings to someone else's account so what? You can't live other folks' lives for them, now can you? You did your best, Danny boy.