The silent world of Nicholas Quinn (21 page)

(a) Position of Quinn's coffee table indicated that he'd probably been sitting

in the draught. (Steady, Sherlock!)

(b) No spent matches found in either kitchen or living room; no matches

found in Quinn's pockets. (Remember: Mrs. E had already cleaned; she'd

only returned for the ironing and had
not1
cleared the wastepaper basket

again.)

(c) More butter bought, when plenty in stock. (Forget it?)

(d) Note left by Quinn for Mrs. E: vague enough to fit virtually any

occasion? (Not
all
that vague though.)

Morse sat back and looked at his handiwork. Individually each point seemed pretty

thin; but collectively—did they add up to something? Something like assuming that

Quinn did not return from work at all that Friday evening?
Had it been somebody else who lit the fire, and bought the groceries, and wrote a note for Mrs. Evans? Think on,

Morse! Think on, my boy! It was possible. Another starting point. Could the mysterious

somebody have been Monica? (His mind kept coming back to her.) But she must have

gone home to Sally sometime. (Job for Lewis—check.) Martin? He must have gone

home to his wife sometime. When? (Job for Lewis—check.) And anyway, neither of

them knew enough about cyanide, did they? Poisoning was a highly specialized job.

(A woman's weapon, though.) Now, Roope was a chemist. And Ogleby knew enough .

. . Roope or Ogleby—a much likelier pair to choose from. But Roope was out of Oxford

until about 4.15 pm. (Or so he said.) And Ogleby went home a bit early. (Or so he

said.) Mm. And what about Bartlett? Kidlington was on the main road from Banbury,

and the main road passed no more than thirty yards from Pinewood Close. If he'd left

Banbury at 4.25 p.m. and really pushed it, 70 mph say, he could have been in

Kidlington by, well, ten to five? Opportunity enough for any of them really. For if Quinn had discovered that one of the four . . .

Morse knew he wasn't getting very far. It was the method he couldn't fathom. But one

thing was becoming an ever firmer conviction in his mind: whoever had come to

Pinewood Close that Friday evening,
it hadn't been Nicholas Quinn
. Leave it there for the minute, Morse. Think of something else. Always the best way, and there was one

thing he could check on straightaway.

He called in Peters, the handwriting pundit, showed him the note written to Mrs.

Evans, and gave him one of the sheets of Quinn's writing taken from Pinewood Close.

'What do you think?'

Peters hesitated. 'I'd need to study—'

'What's stopping you?'

Nothing had ever been known to hurry or ruffle Peters, an ex-Home Office pathologist,

who in his younger days had made a considerable name and a considerable income

for himself by disobeying the two cardinal rules for success—of thinking quickly and of

acting decisively. For Peters thought at the speed of an arthritic tortoise and acted with the decisiveness of a soporific sloth. And Morse knew him better than to do anything

but sit quietly and wait. If Peters said it was, it was. If Peters said that Quinn had

definitely written the note, Quinn had definitely written the note. If he said he wasn't

sure, he wasn't sure: and no one else in the world would be sure.

'How long will you be, Peters?'

'Ten, twelve minutes.'

Morse therefore knew that in about eleven minutes he would have his answer, and he

sat quietly and waited. The phone went a few minutes later.

'Morse. Can I help you?'

It was the switchboard. 'It's a Mrs. Greenaway, sir. From the John Radcliffe. Says she

wants to talk to the man in charge of the Quinn murder.'

'That's me,' said Morse, without much enthusiasm. Mrs. Greenaway, eh? The woman above

Quinn. Well, well.

She had read the report in the
Oxford Mail
(she said) and felt that she ought to ring the police. Her husband wouldn't be very happy but—(Come on, girl, come on!). Well, she

wasn't to have the baby until December, but she'd known—about four o'clock on

Friday. The contractions—(Come on, girl!). Well, she'd rung up the works where Frank

('my husband, Inspector'), where Frank worked, and tried to get a message to him. But

something must have gone wrong. She'd sat there by the window, watching and

waiting, but no one came; and then she'd rung the works again about a quarter to five.

She wasn't really worried, but she'd feel happier if Frank . . . Anyway she could always

ring the hospital herself. They would send an ambulance straightaway; and she wasn't

absolutely
sure. It could have been just—(Come
on!
). Anyway, she saw Quinn come in, in his car, just after five.

'You
saw
him?'

'Yes. About five past five, it must have been. He drove in and put his car in the garage.'

'Was anybody with him?'

'No.'

'Go on, Mrs. Greenaway.'

'Well, there's nothing else, really.'

'Did he go out again?'

'I didn't see him.'

'
Would
you have seen him?'

'Oh yes. As I say, I was looking out of the window all the time.'

'We think he went out to the shops, Mrs. Greenaway. But you say—'

'Well, he could have gone out the back way, I suppose. You can get through the fence

and on to the path, but—'

'But you don't think he did?'

'Well, I didn't hear him, and he wouldn't have gone over the back. It's ever so muddy.'

'I see.'

'Well I hope—'

'Mrs. Greenaway, are you absolutely sure you
saw
Mr. Quinn?'

'Well, perhaps I didn't actually . . . I
heard
him on the phone, though.'

'You
what?
'

'Yes. We've got a shared line, and it was just after he came in. I was really getting

worried, and I thought I'd try the works again; but I couldn't get through, because Mr.

Quinn was using the phone.'

'Did you listen to what he was saying?'

'No, I'm sorry, I didn't. I'm not nosy like that.' (Of course not!) 'You see I just wanted him to get off the line, that's all.'

'Was he talking for long?'

'Quite a while. I picked up the phone two or three times and they were still—'

'You don't remember a name,
any
name, that Mr. Quinn used? Christian name?

Surname? Anything at all that could help us?'

Joyce Greenaway was silent for a minute. There
was
a very vague recollection, but it slipped away from her. 'I—No, I can't remember.'

'Not a woman, was it?'

'Oh no. It was a man all right. Sounded an educated sort of man—well, you

know what I mean, it wasn't a common sort of voice.'

'Were they having a row?'

'No. I don't think so. But I didn't listen in. I didn't
really
. I was just getting impatient, that's all.'

'Why didn't you go down and tell Mr. Quinn what the situation was?'

Joyce Greenaway hesitated a little, and Morse wondered exactly why.

'Well, we weren't, you know, as friendly as all
that
.'

'Look, Mrs. Greenaway. Please think very hard. It's vitally important—do

you understand? If you could remember—even the slightest thing.'

But nothing would come, although the outline of that name still lurked

subliminally. If only—

Morse did it for her. 'Ogleby? Mr. Ogleby? Does that ring any bells?'

'No-o.'

'Roope? Mr. Roope? Bartlett? Dr. Bartlett? Mar—'

Joyce's scalp tingled. She'd been fishing for a verbal shape like 'Bartlett'.

Could it have been? She wasn't really listening to Morse now. 'I can't be

sure, Inspector, but it might have been Bartlett.'

Whew! What a turn-up for the books! Morse said somebody would be in to

see her, but it would have to be the next day; and Joyce Greenaway,

feeling a strange mixture of relief and trepidation, walked slowly back to

the maternity ward.

Peters had been sitting quite motionless for the past two or three minutes,

openly listening to the conversation, but he made no comment. 'Well?' said

Morse.

'Quinn wrote it.'

Morse opened his mouth, but closed it again. Any protestation was futile.

Peters said it was; so it
was
.

Why not go with the evidence, Morse and fling your flimsy fancies aside?

Quinn got back home about five; he wrote a note for Mrs. Evans; and he

rang somebody up—a well-spoken somebody, whose name may have

been Bartlett.

MRS. BARTLETT WAS something of a surprise. She was three or four inches taller than

her husband, and she ordered him around as if he were a naughty but lovable little

schoolboy. There was another surprise, too. No one had mentioned to Morse that the

Bartletts had a son, and the rather slovenly-dressed, sullen-looking, bearded young

man who was introduced as Richard seemed not particularly anxious to make an

immediately favourable impression. But whilst the four of them sat rather awkwardly

drinking their sherry, it became apparent that under his skin young Richard had a

pleasant and attractive personality. As the ice thawed, he spoke with an easy humour

and a total lack of self consciousness; and as he and Morse discussed the respective

merits of the Solti and Furtwängler recordings of
The Ring
, Mrs. Bartlett slipped away to push a cautious fork into the Brussels sprouts, and summoned her husband to open

the wine. The table was imm1aculately set for the four of them, the silver cutlery

winking and sparkling on the white tablecloth in the dimly lit room. The vegetables

were almost ready.

Bartlett himself refilled Morse's glass. 'Nice little sherry, isn't it?'

'Indeed,' said Morse. He noticed that the label was different from that on the sherry

bottle found in Quinn's rooms.

'Any more for you, Richard?'

'No.' It sounded oddly abrupt, as though there lurked some dark and hidden enmity

within the Bartlett clan.

The soup was ready now, and Morse tossed back the last of his sherry, got to his feet,

and walked across the wide room rubbing his hands together.

'Come on then, Richard.' His mother said it pleasantly, but Morse could hear the

underlying note of tension.

'Don't worry about me. I'm not hungry.'

'But you
must
, Richard. I've—'

The young man stood up, and a strange light momentarily blazed in his eyes. 'I've just

told you, mother, I'm not hungry.'

'But I've got it all ready for you. Just have a—'

'I don't want any bloody food. How many times do you want telling, you stupid

woman?' The words were cruel and harsh, the tone one of scarcely repressed fury. He

stalked out of the room, and almost immediately the front door slammed with a

thudded finality.

'I'm awfully sorry, Inspector.'

'Don't worry about me, Mrs. Bartlett. Some of the youngsters these days, you know—'

'It's not that, Inspector. You see . . . you see, Richard suffers from schizophrenia. He

can be absolutely charming, and then—well, he gets like you saw him just now.' She

was very near to tears and Morse tried hard to say the right things; but inevitably the

incident had cast its shadow deep across the evening, and for a while they ate in

awkward silence.

'Can it be treated?'

Mrs. Bartlett smiled sadly. 'Good question, Inspector. We've spent literally thousands,

haven't we, Tom? He's a voluntary patient at Littlemore at the moment. Sometimes he

comes home at the weekends, and just occasionally, like tonight, he'll drop in and sit

around or have something to eat.' Her voice was wavering and her husband patted her