The Wench is Dead (15 page)

‘Can I help you?’

Sergeant Lewis nodded and looked down at her. ‘Special instructions. I’ve got to report to the boss whenever I bring the Chief Inspector a bag of plastic explosive. You’re the
boss tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t be too hard on Sister Maclean!’

Lewis bent forward and spoke softly. ‘It’s not me – it’s him! He says she’s an argumentative, bitchy old … old something.’

Eileen smiled. ‘She’s not very tactful, sometimes.’

‘He’s, er – looks like he’s got a visitor for the moment.’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps I’d better not interrupt, had I? He gets very cross sometimes.’

‘Does he?’

‘Especially if …’

Eileen nodded, and looked up into Lewis’s kindly face, feeling that menfolk weren’t quite so bad as she’d begun to think.

‘What’s he like – Inspector Morse?’ she asked.

Christine Greenaway stood up to go, and Morse was suddenly conscious, as she stood so closely beside the bed, how small she was – in spite of the high-heeled shoes she
habitually wore. Words came back to his mind, the words he’d read again so recently: ‘… petite and attractive figure, wearing an Oxford-blue dress …’

‘How tall are you?’ asked Morse, as she smoothed her dress down over her thighs.

‘How
small
am I, don’t you mean?’ Her eyes flashed and seemed to mock him. ‘In stockinged feet, I’m five feet, half an inch. And don’t forget that
half-inch: it may not be very important to you, but it is to me. I wear heels all the time – so I come up to about normal, usually. About five three.’

‘What size shoes do you take?’

‘Threes. You wouldn’t be able to get your feet in them.’

‘I’ve got very nice feet,’ said Morse seriously.

‘I think I ought to be more worried about my father than about your feet,’ she whispered quietly, as she touched his arm once more, and as Morse in turn placed his own left hand so
briefly, so lightly upon hers. It was a little moment of magic, for both of them.

‘And you’ll look up that—?’

‘I won’t forget.’

Then she was gone, and only the smell of some expensive perfume lingered around the bed.

‘I just wonder,’ said Morse, almost absently, as Lewis took Christine’s place in the plastic chair, ‘I just wonder what size shoes Joanna Franks took. I’m assuming,
of course, they
had
shoe-sizes in those days. Not a modern invention, like women’s tights, are they? – shoe-sizes? What do you think, Lewis?’

‘Would you like me to show you exactly what size she
did
take, sir?’

M
ORSE WAS INVARIABLY
credited, by his police colleagues, with an alpha-plus intelligence, of a kind which surfaced rarely on the tides of human affairs,
and which almost always gave him about six furlongs’ start in any criminal investigation. Whatever the truth of this matter, Morse himself knew that one gift had never been bestowed on him
– that of
reading
quickly. It was to be observed, therefore, that he seemed to spend a disproportionately long time that evening – Christine gone, Lewis gone, Horlicks drunk,
pills swallowed, injection injected – in reading through the photocopied columns from
Jackson’s Oxford Journal
. Christine had not mentioned to him that, dissatisfied with her
hand-written notes, she had returned to the Central Library in the early afternoon and prevailed upon one of her vague acquaintances there to let her jump the queue and photocopy the original
material directly from their bulky originals. Not that Morse, even had he known, would have exhibited any excessive gratitude. One of his weaknesses was his disposition to accept loyalty without
ever really understanding, certainly not appreciating, the sacrifices that might be involved.

When, as a boy, he had been shepherded around various archaeological sites, Morse had been unable to share the passion of some fanatic drooling over a few (disintegrating) Roman bricks. Even
then, it had been the written word, rather than the tangible artefact, which had pricked his curiosity, and promoted his subsequent delight in the ancient world. It was to be expected, therefore,
that although Lewis’s quite extraordinary discovery was to prove the single most dramatic break-through in the supposed ‘case’, the sight of a sad-looking pair of shrivelled shoes
and an even sadder-looking pair of crumpled knickers was, for Morse, a little anti-climactic. At least, for the present. As for Christine’s offerings, though, how wonderfully attractive and
suggestive they were!

From the newspaper records, it was soon clear that the Colonel had omitted no details of any obvious importance. Yet, as in most criminal cases, it was the apparently innocuous, incidental,
almost irrelevant, details that could change, in a flash, the interpretation of accepted facts. And there were quite a few details here (to Morse, hitherto unknown) which caused him more than a
millimetric rise of the eyebrows.

First, reading between the somewhat smudged lines of the photocopied material, it seemed fairly clear that the charge of theft had probably been dropped at the first trial for the reason that
the evidence (such as it was) had pointed predominantly to the youth, Wootton, therefore necessitating an individual prosecution – and that against a minor. If any of the other crewmen were
involved, it was Towns (the man deported to Australia) who figured as the safest bet; and quite certainly no obvious evidence could be levelled against the two men eventually hanged for
murder
. What was it then that the young man’s covetous eyes may have sought to steal from Joanna Franks’s baggage? No answer emerged clearly from the evidence. But there was
surely one thing, above all, that thieves went for, whether in 1859 or 1989:
money
.

Mmm.

Second, there was sufficient contemporary evidence to suggest that it was Joanna who was probably the sustaining partner in her second marriage. Whatever it was that had caused her to
‘fall deeply in love with Charles Franks, an ostler from Liverpool’, it was
Joanna
who had besought her new husband to keep up his spirits during the ill fortune which had beset
the early months of their marriage. An extract from a letter to Charles Franks had indeed been read out in court, presumably (as Morse saw things) to substantiate the point that, quite contrary to
the boatmen’s claim of
Joanna
being demented, it was
Charles
who seemed the nearer to a mental breakdown: ‘Sorry I am to read, my dear husband, your sadly wandering letter
– do, my dear, strive against what I fear will await you should you not rest your tortured mind. The loss of reason is a terrible thing and will blight our hopes. Be strong and know we shall
soon be together and well provided for.’ A poignant and eloquent letter.

Were
both
of them a bit unbalanced?

Mmm.

Third, various depositions from both trials made it clear that although ‘fly’ boats worked best with a strict enforcement of a ‘two on – two off’ arrangement, it
was quite usual, in practice, for the four members of such a crew to permutate their different duties in order to accommodate individual likings or requirements. Or
desires
, perhaps? For
Morse now read, with considerable interest, the evidence adduced in court (Where were you, Colonel Deniston?) that Oldfield, captain of the
Barbara Bray
, had paid Walter Towns 6
d
to
take over from him the arduous business of ‘legging’ the boat through the Barton tunnel. Morse nodded to himself: for his imagination had already travelled there.

Mmm.

Fourth, the evidence, taken as a whole, suggested strongly that for the first half of the journey Joanna had joined in quite happily with the boatmen at the various stops: staying in their
company, eating at the same table, drinking with them, laughing with them at their jokes. Few jokes, though, on the latter half of the journey, when, as the prosecution had pressed home again and
again, Joanna figured only as a helpless, hapless soul – crying out (at times, literally) for help, sympathy, protection, mercy. And one decisive and dramatic fact: as the crew themselves
grew progressively inebriated, Joanna was becoming increasingly sober; for the coroner’s evidence, as reported at the trial, was incontestable:
no alcohol at all was found in her
body
.

Mmm.

Morse proceeded to underline in blue Biro the various, and most curious, altercations which the law-writer of
Jackson’s Oxford Journal
had deemed it worthy to record:

‘Will you have anything of this?’ (Oldfield) ‘No, I have no inclination.’ (Bloxham) ‘—’s already had his concerns with her tonight; and I will, or else
I shall — her.’ (Oldfield) ‘D—n and blast the woman! If she has drowned herself, I cannot help it.’ (Oldfield) ‘She said she’d do it afore, and now she
seems to ’a done it proper.’ (Musson) ‘I hope the b—y w—e is burning in hell!’ (Oldfield) ‘Blast the woman! What do we know about her? If she had a mind to
drown herself, why should we be in all this trouble?’ (Towns) ‘If he is going to be a witness against us, it is for other things, not for the woman.’ (Oldfield)

Mmm.

Randomly quoted, incoherent, unchronological as they were, these extracts from the trials served most strongly to reinforce Morse’s earlier conviction that they were not the sort of
comments one would expect from murderers. One might expect some measure of shame, remorse, fear – yes! – even, in a few cases, triumph and jubilation in the actual performance of the
deed. But not – no! – not the fierce anger and loathing perpetuated by the boatman through the hours and the days after Joanna had met her death.

Finally, there was a further (significant?) passage of evidence which the Colonel had
not
cited. It was, apparently, Oldfield’s claim that, at about 4 a.m. on the fateful morning,
the boatmen
had
, in fact, caught up with Joanna – the latter in a state of much mental confusion; both he and Musson had discovered her whereabouts only by the anguished cries in which
she called upon the name of her husband: ‘Franks! Franks! Franks!’ Furthermore, Oldfield claimed, he had actually persuaded her to get back on the boat, although he agreed that she had
fairly soon jumped off again (again!) to resume her walking along the tow-path. Then, according to Oldfield, two of them, he and Towns on this occasion, had once more gone ashore, where they met
another potential witness (the Donald Favant mentioned in the Colonel’s book). But the boatmen had not been believed. In particular this second meeting along the tow-path had come in for
withering scorn from the prosecution: at best, the confused recollection of hopelessly drunken minds; at worst, the invention of ‘these callous murderers’. Yes! That was exactly the
sort of comment which throughout had disquieted Morse’s passion for justice. As a policeman, he knew only the rudiments of English Law; but he was a fervent believer in the principle that a
man should be presumed innocent until he was pronounced guilty: it was a fundamental principle, not only of substantive law, but of natural justice …

‘You comfy?’ asked Eileen, automatically pulling the folds of his sheets tidy.

‘I thought you’d gone off duty.’

‘Just going.’

‘You’re spoiling me.’

‘You enjoy reading, don’t you?’

Morse nodded: ‘Sometimes.’

‘You like reading best of all?’

‘Well, music – music, I suppose, sometimes more.’

‘So, if you’re reading a book with the record-player going—’

‘I can’t enjoy them both together.’

‘But they’re the
best
?’

‘Apart from a candle-lit evening-meal with someone like you.’

Eileen coloured, her pale cheeks suddenly as bright as those of the dying Colonel.

Before going to sleep that night, Morse’s hand glided into the bedside cabinet and poured out a small measure; and as he sipped the Scotch, at his own pace, the world of
a sudden was none too bad a place …

When he awoke (was awoken, rather) the following morning (Sunday) he marvelled that the blindingly obvious notion that now occurred to him had taken such an age to materialize.
Usually, his cerebral analysis was as swift as the proverbial snap of a lizard’s eyelid.

Or so he told himself.

J
UST THE SAME
with crossword puzzles, wasn’t it? Sit and ponder more and more deeply over some abstruse clue – and get nowhere. Stand away,
though – further back! – further back still! – and the answer will shout at you with a sort of mocking triumph. It was those shoes, of course … shoes at which he’d been
staring so hard he hadn’t really seen them.

Morse waited with keen anticipation until his morning ablutions were complete before re-re-reading the Colonel’s work, lingering over things – as he’d always
done as a boy when he’d carved his way meticulously around the egg-white until he was left only with the golden circle of the yolk, into which, finally, to dip the calculated balance of his
chips.

What were the actual words of the trial report? Yes, Morse nodded to himself: when Charles Franks had looked at the body, he had recognized it, dreadfully disfigured as it was, by ‘a small
mark behind his wife’s left ear, a mark of which only a parent or an intimate lover could have known’.
Or a scoundrel
. By all the gods, was
ever
identification so
tenuously asserted and attested in the English Courts? Not only some tiny disfigurement in a place where no one else would have been aware of it, but a tiny disfigurement which existed
on
the head of Joanna Franks only because it existed
in
the head of her new husband! Oh, it must have been there all right! The doctor, the coroner, the inspector of police, those who’d
undressed the dead woman, and redressed her for a proper Christian burial – so many witnesses who could, if need ever arose, corroborate the existence of such a blemish on what had once been
such a pretty face. But who could, or did, corroborate the fact that the face had been
Joanna
’s? The husband? Yes, he’d had his say. But the only others who might have known, the
parents – where were they? Apparently, they’d played no part at all in the boatmen’s trial at Oxford. Why not? Was the mother too stricken with grief to give any coherent
testimony? Was she
alive
, even, at the time of the trial? The father was alive, though, wasn’t he? The insurance man …