The Way Through The Woods (2 page)

'You know who I am, then?'

'Oh yes, my child. I think I knew you long ago.'

morse never took his fair share of holidays, so he told himself. So he was telling Chief Superintendent Strange that morning in early June.

'Remember you've also got to take into consideration the time you regularly spend in pubs, Morse!'

'A few hours here and there, perhaps, I agree. It wouldn't be all that difficult to work out how much – '

' "Quantify", that's the word you're looking for.'

'I'd never look for ugly words like "quantify".'

'A useful word, Morse. It means – well, it means to say how much…'

'That's just what I said, isn't it?'

'I don't know why I argue with you!'

Nor did Morse.

For many years now, holidays for Chief Inspector Morse of Thames Valley CID had been periods of continuous and virtually intolerable stress. And what they must normally be like for men with the extra handicaps of wives and children, even Morse for all his extravagant imagination could scarcely conceive. But for this year, for the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-two, he was resolutely determined that things would be different: he would have a holiday away from Oxford. Not abroad, though. He had no wanderlust for Xanadu or Isfahan; indeed he very seldom travelled abroad at all – although it should be recorded that several of his colleagues attributed such insularity more than anything to Morse's faint-hearted fear of aeroplanes. Yet as it happened it had been one of those same colleagues who had first set things in motion.

'Lime, mate! Lime's marvellous!'

Lime?

Only several months later had the word finally registered in Morse's mind, when he had read the advertisement in
The Observer:

THE BAY HOTEL

Surely one of the finest settings of any hotel in the West Country! We are the only hotel on the Marine Parade and we enjoy panoramic views from Portland Bill to the east, to the historic Cobb Harbour to the west. The hotel provides a high standard of comfort and cuisine, and a friendly relaxed atmosphere. There are level walks to the shops and harbour, and traffic-free access to the beach, which is immediately in front of the hotel.

For full details please write to The Bay Hotel, Lyme Regis, Dorset; or just telephone (0297) 442059.

'It gets tricky,' resumed Strange, 'when a senior man takes more than a fortnight's furlough – you realize that, of course.'

'I'm not taking more than what's due to me.'

'Where are you thinking of?'

'Lyme Regis.'

'Ah. Glorious Devon.'

'Dorset, sir.'

'Next door, surely?'

'Persuasion –
it's where some of the scenes in
Persuasion
are set.'

'Ah.' Strange looked suitably blank.

'And
The French Lieutenant's Woman.'

'Ah. I'm with you. Saw that at the pictures with the wife… Or was it on the box?'

'Well, there we are then,' said Morse lamely.

For a while there was a silence. Then Strange shook his head.

'You couldn't stick being away that long! Building sand-castles? For
over a fortnight?'

'Coleridge country too, sir. I'll probably drive around a bit -have a look at Ottery St Mary… some of the old haunts.'

A low chuckle emanated from somewhere deep in Strange's belly. 'He's been dead for ages, man – more Max's cup o' tea than yours.'

Morse smiled wanly. 'But you wouldn't mind me seeing his -place?'

‘It's gone. The rectory's gone. Bulldozed years ago.'

‘Really?'

Strange puckered his lips, and nodded his head. 'You think I'm an ignorant sod, don't you, Morse? But let me tell you something. There was none of this child-centred nonsense when I was at school. In those days we all had to learn things off by heart -things like yer actual Ancient Bloody Mariner.'

'My days too, sir.' It irked Morse that Strange, only a year his senior, would always treat him like a representative of some much Younger generation.

But Strange was in full flow.

^‘
You don't forget it, Morse. It sticks.' He peered briefly but earnestly around the lumber room of some olden memories; then found what he was seeking, and with high seriousness intoned a stanza learned long since:

'All in a hot and copper sky

The bloody sun at noon

Right up above the mast did stand

No bigger than the bloody moon!'

'Very good, sir,' said Morse, uncertain whether the monstrous misquotation were deliberate or not, for he found the chief superintendent watching him shrewdly.

'No. You won't last the distance. You'll be back in Oxford within the week. You'll see!'

'So what? There's plenty for me to do here.'

'Oh?'

'For a start there's a drain-pipe outside the flat that's leaking-'

Strange's eyebrows shot up. 'And you're telling
me you're
going to fix
that?'

'I'll get it fixed,' said Morse ambiguously. 'I've already got a bit of extra piping but the, er, diameter of the cross-section is… rather too narrow.'

'It's too bloody
small,
you mean? Is
that
what you're trying to say’

Morse nodded, a little sheepishly.

The score was one-all.

'If I may say so, sir, you really are rather lucky.'

The proprietor of the only hotel on the Marine Parade pushed the register across and Morse quickly completed the Date – Name – Address – Car Registration – Nationality columns. As he did so, it was out of long habit rather than any interest or curiosity that his eye took in just a few, details about the half-dozen or so persons, single and married, who had signed in just before him.

There had been a lad amongst Morse's fellow pupils in the sixth form who had possessed a virtually photographic memory – a memory which Morse had much admired. Not that his own memory was at all bad; short term, in fact, it was still functioning splendidly. And that is why, in one of those pre-signed lines, there was just that single little detail which very soon would be drifting back towards the shores of Morse's consciousness…

'To be honest, sir, you're
very
lucky. The good lady who had to cancel – one of our regular clients – had booked the room as soon as she knew when we were opening for the season, and she especially wanted – she
always
wanted – a room overlooking the bay, with bath and WC
en suite
facilities, of course.'

Morse nodded his acknowledgement of the anonymous woman's admirable taste. 'How long had she booked for?'

'Three nights: Friday, Saturday, Sunday.'

Morse nodded again. ‘I’ll stay the same three nights – if that's all right,' he decided, wondering what was preventing the poor old biddy from once more enjoying her private view of the waves and -exclusive use of a water-closet. Bladder, like as not.

'Enjoy your stay with us!' The proprietor handed Morse three keys on a ring: one to Room 27; one (as he learned) for the hotel's garage, situated two minutes' walk away from the sea front; and one for the front entrance, should he arrive back after midnight. If you'd just like to get your luggage out, I'll see it's taken up to your room while you put the car away. The police allow our guests to park temporarily of course, but…'

Morse looked down at the street-map given to him, and turned to go. Thanks very much. And let's hope the old girl manages to get down here a bit later in the season,' he added, considering it proper to grant her a limited commiseration.

'Afraid she won't do that.'

'No?'

'She's dead.'

^;
Oh dear!'

'Very sad.'

'Still, perhaps she had a pretty good innings?'

‘I wouldn't call forty-one a very good innings. Would you?'

‘No.'

‘Hodgkin's disease. You know what that's like.'

'Yes,' lied the chief inspector, as he backed towards the exit in chastened mood. I’ll just get the luggage out. We don't want any trouble with the police. Funny lot, sometimes!'

"They may be in your part of the world, but they're very fair to is here.'

‘I didn't mean-'

‘Will you be taking dinner with us, sir?'

‘Yes.
Yes, please. I think I'd enjoy that.'

A few minutes after Morse had driven the maroon Jaguar slowly along the Lower Road, a woman (who certainly looked no older a the one who had earlier that year written in to book Room 27) turned into the Bay Hotel, stood for a minute or so by the reception desk, then pressed the Please-Ring-For-Service bell.

She had just returned from a walk along the upper level of Marine Parade, on the west side, and out to the Cobb – that great granite barrier that circles a protective arm around the harbour and assuages the incessant pounding of the sea. It was not a happy walk. That late afternoon a breeze had sprung up from the south, the sky had clouded over, and several people now promenading along the front in the intermittent drizzle were struggling into lightweight plastic macs.

'No calls for me?' she asked, when the proprietor reappeared.

'No, Mrs Hardinge. There's been nothing else.'

'OK.' But she said it in such a way as if it weren't OK, and the proprietor found himself wondering if the call he'd taken in mid-afternoon had been of greater significance than he'd thought. Possibly not, though; for suddenly she seemed to relax, and she smiled at him – most attractively.

The grid that guarded the drinks behind reception was no longer in place and already two couples were seated in the bar enjoying their dry sherries; and with them one elderly spinster fussing over a dachshund, one of those small dogs accepted at the management's discretion: £2.50
per diem,
excluding food'.

'I think I'll have a large malt.'

'Soda?'

'Just ordinary water, please.'

'Say when.'

' "When"!'

'On your room-bill, Mrs Hardinge?'

'Please! Room fourteen.'

She sat on the green leather wall-seat just beside the main entrance. The whisky tasted good and she told herself that however powerful the arguments for total abstinence might be, few could challenge the fact that after alcohol the world almost invariably appeared a kinder, friendlier place.

The Times
lay on the coffee table beside her, and she picked it up and scanned the headlines briefly before turning to the back page, folding the paper horizontally, then vertically, and then studying one across.

It was a fairly easy puzzle; and some twenty minutes later her not inconsiderable cruciverbalist skills had coped with all but a couple of clues – one of them a tantalizingly half-familiar quotation from Samuel Taylor Coleridge – over which she was still frowning when the lady of the establishment interrupted her with the evening's menu, and asked if she were taking dinner.

For a few minutes after ordering Seafood Soup with Fresh garden Herbs, followed by Guinea Fowl in Leek and Mushroom Sauce, she sat with eyes downcast and smoked a king-sized Dunhill cigarette. Then, as if on sudden impulse, she went into the glass-pandled telephone booth that stood beside the entrance and rang a number, her lips soon working in a sort of silent charade, like the mouth of some frenetic goldfish, as she fed a succession of 20p’s into the coin-slot. But no one could hear what she was saying.

morse found his instructions fairly easy to follow. Driving from the small car park at the eastern end of Marine Parade, then turning right, then left just before the traffic lights, he had immediately spotted the large shed-like building on his left in the narrow one-way Coombe Street; 'Private Garage for Residents of The Bay Hotel'. Herein, as Morse saw after propping open the two high wooden gates, were eighteen parking spaces, marked out in diagonal white lines, nine on each side of a central keep clear corridor. By reason of incipient spondylosis, he was not nowadays particularly skilled at reversing into such things as slanting parking bays; and since the garage was already almost full, it took him rather longer than it should have done to back the Jaguar into a happily angled position, with the sides of his car equidistant from a J-reg Mercedes and a Y-reg Vauxhall. It was out of habit as before that he scanned the number plates of the cars there; but when about a quarter of an hour earlier he'd glanced through the hotel register, at least
something
had clicked in his mind.

Now though? Nothing. Nothing at all.

There was no real need for Morse immediately to explore the facilities of Room 27, and the drinks-bar faced him as he turned into the hotel. So he ordered a pint of Best Bitter, and sat down in the wall-seat, just by the entrance, and almost exactly on the same square footage of green leather that had been vacated ten minutes earlier by one of the two scheduled occupants of Room 14.