"The Dead of Jericho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

Chapter Twenty

'You were quite right, you know,' conceded Bell, when Morse looked into his office in the middle of that Saturday afternoon. 'Jackson had been bashed about the head quite a bit, it seems, but nothing all that serious. Certainly not serious enough to give him his ticket. The real trouble was the edge of that head-post on the bed-just like you said, Morse. Someone must have tried to shake his teeth out and cracked his skull against the upright.'

'You make it sound like a football match.'

'Boxing match, more like.'

'Blood all over the other fellow?'

'Pretty certainly, I'd think. Wouldn't you?'

Morse nodded. 'Accidental, perhaps?'

'Accidentally bloody deliberate, Morse-and don't you forget it.'

Morse nodded again. As soon as the surgeon had mentioned 'a squarish sharp-edged weapon', it had merely corroborated the suspicion he'd originally formed when he'd examined the bedpost, only about a foot from Jackson's head. To his naked eye, at the time, there had been nothing to confirm the suspicion, but he was as happy as the rest of them to rely upon the refinements of forensic tests. The weapon was settled then, and Morse felt he ought to put his colleague on the right lines about motive, too.

'Whoever killed him was pretty obviously looking for something, don't you think, Bell? And not just the address of some deaf-and-dumb nymphomaniac, or the results of the latest pike-angling competition.'

'You think he found what he was looking for?'

'I dunno,' said Morse.

'Well, I'll tell you one thing. We've been over the house with a nit-comb, and-nothing! Nothing that's going to help us. Fishing tackle galore, tools, drills, saws-you name it, he's got it in the do-it-yourself line. So what, though? He goes fishing most days, and he does a few handyman jobs round the streets. Good luck to him!'

'Did you find a trowel?' asked Morse quietly.

'Trowel? What's that got to-'

'He mended the Scott woman's wall-did you know that?'

Bell looked up sharply. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And if I may say so, Morse. I'm beginning to wonder-'

'What about bird watching?'

'What the 'ell's-'

'There was a pair of binoculars in the bedroom, you knew that.'

'All right. He went fishing, and he occasionally had a look at the kingfishers.'

'Why keep 'em in the bedroom, though?'

'You tell me!'

'I reckon he used to have a look at the bird across the way every now and then.'

'You mean, he-'

'No curtains, were there?'

'The dirty little sod!'

'Come off it! I'd have done the same myself.'

'Funny, isn't it? The way you just happened to be in Jericho. Both times, too.'

'Coincidence. Life's full of coincidences.'

'Do you appreciate, Morse, what the statistical chances are of you-'

'Phooey! Let me tell you something, Bell. Statistically, a woman should have her first baby at the age of nineteen, did you know that? But she shouldn't really start copulating before the age of twenty-six!'

Bell let it go, and his shoulders sagged as he sat at his desk. 'It's going to be one helluva job getting to the bottom of this latest business, you know. Nothing to go on, really. No one saw anybody go into the house-no one! It's that bloody boatyard, you see. All of 'em there just get used to seeing people drifting in and out all the time. Augh! I don't know!'

'You interviewed the people who saw Jackson in the pub that night?'

'Most of 'em. The landlord sets his clock about five minutes fast, but you can take it from me that Jackson was there until about twenty past eight.'

Morse pursed his lips. Charles Richards certainly seemed to have provided himself with a krugerrand alibi, for he-Morse himself-had been sitting in the audience listening to the beggar, from about five past eight to way gone half past nine. It was absolutely and literally impossible for Richards to have murdered Jackson! Shouldn't he accept that indisputable fact? But Morse enjoyed standing face-to-face with the impossible, and his brain kept telling him he could-and must-begin to undermine that impregnable-looking alibi. It was the second telephone call that worried him: someone had been anxious for the police to have a very definite idea indeed of the time when Jackson had died-a time that put Charles Richards completely in the clear. And who was it who had made that call? It couldn't, quite definitely, have been Jackson this time. But, just a minute. Could it just conceivably have been Jackson? What if…?

Bell's thoughts had clearly been following along a parallel track. 'Who do you think phoned us about it, Morse? Do you think it was the same person who rang us about the Scott woman?'

'I don't think so, somehow.'

'Morse! Have you got any ideas about this whole business?'

Morse sat silently for a while, and then decided to tell Bell everything he knew, starting with the evening when he'd met Anne Scott, and finishing with his telephone call to Jennifer Hills. He even told Bell about the illicit fiver handed over to the Jericho locksmith. And, in fact (could the two men but have realised it) several of the colours in the pattern were already painted in, although the general picture seemed obstinately determined not to reveal itself.

'If you can help me in any way,' said Bell quietly, 'I'll be grateful-you know that, don't you.'

'Yes, I know that, my old friend,' said Morse. 'And I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll try to think a bit more. Because there's something, somewhere, that we're all missing. God knows what it is, though-I don't.'