The silent world of Nicholas Quinn (23 page)

numbers 93592.

'What do you make of it?'

'He
was
there after all, then, sir.'

'
Four
of them. Just think of it. Four out of the five!'

Lewis himself picked up the diary and looked with his usual thorough care at every

page in turn. It was clear that Ogleby had never used the diary during the year. But on

a page headed 'Notes' at the back of the diary, Lewis saw something that made his

eyeballs bulge. 'Sir!' He said it very quietly, as though the slightest noise might frighten it away. 'Look at this.'

Morse looked at the diary, and felt the familiar constriction of the temples as an electric charge seemed to flash across his head. There, drawn with accuracy and neatness,

was a small diagram:

'My God!' said Morse. '
It's the same number as the ticket we found on Quinn
.'

Half an hour later, as the two policemen left the house in Walton Street, Morse found

himself recalling the words of Dr. Hans Gross, one-time Professor of Criminology at

the University of Prague. He had them by heart: 'No human action happens by pure

chance unconnected with other happenings. None is incapable of explanation.' It was

a belief that Morse had always cherished. Yet as he stepped out into the silent street,

he began to wonder if it were really true.

No more than fifty or sixty yards down the street he saw the building which housed

both Studio 1 and Studio 2. The neon lighting still illuminated the white boards above

the foyer, the red and royal-blue lettering garish and bright in the almost eerie stillness:
The Nymphomaniac X
(Strictly Adults Only). Was she trying to tell him something? He walked down to the cinema with Lewis and stood looking at the stills outside. She was

certainly a big and bouncy girl, although a series of five-pointed stars had been

superimposed by some incomparable idiot over the incomparable Inga's nipples.

MORSE WAS IN HIS office at 7.30 a.m. the next morning, tired and unshaven. He had

tried to catch a few hours' sleep, but his mind would give him no rest, and he had

finally given up the unequal struggle. He knew that he would be infinitely better able to cope with his problems if he had a complete change. But while there was no chance

of that, at least he could sharpen his brain on the crossword; and he folded over the

back page of
The Times
, looked at his watch1, wrote the time in the left-hand margin, and began. It took him twelve and a half minutes. Not his best, this week; but not bad.

And barring that one clue, he would have been within ten minutes:
In which are the

Islets of Langerhans
(8).—A—C—E—S had been staring him in the face for well over

two minutes before he'd seen the answer. He'd finally remembered it from a quiz

programme on the radio: one contestant had suggested the South China Sea, another

the Baltic, and a third the Mediterranean; and what a laugh from the studio audience

when the question master had told them the answer!

During the morning the seemingly endless flood of news poured in. Lewis had

managed to see Martin who (so he said) had felt restless and worried the previous

evening, gone out about 7.30 p.m., and got back home at about a quarter to eleven.

He had taken his car, called at several pubs near Radcliffe Square, and on his return

had been banished by his wife to the dog-house. Roope (so he said) had been at

home working all evening. No callers—seldom did have any callers. He was

preparing a series of lectures on some aspect of Inorganic Chemistry which Lewis had

been unable to understand at the time, and was unable to remember now. 'So far as I

can see, sir, they're both very strongly in the running. The trouble is we seem to be

running out of suspects. Unless you think Miss Height—'

'It's a possibility, I suppose.'

Lewis grudgingly conceded the point. 'That's still only three, though.'

'Aren't you forgetting Ogleby?'

Lewis stared at him. 'I don't follow you, sir.'

'He's still on my list, Lewis, and I see no earthly or heavenly reason why I should cross him off. Do you?'

Lewis opened his mouth but shut it again. And the phone went.

It was the Dean of the Examinations Syndicate, phoning from Lonsdale. Bartlett had

rung him up the previous evening. What a terrible business it all was! Frightening. He

just wanted to mention a little thing that had occurred to him. Did Morse remember

asking about relationships within the Syndicate? Well, somehow the murders of Quinn

and Ogleby had brought it all back. It had been just a
little
odd, he'd thought. It was the night when they'd had the big do at the Sheridan, with the Al-jamara lot. Some of them

had stayed very late, long after the others had gone off to bed. Quinn was one of them,

and Ogleby another; and the Dean had felt at the time (he could be
totally
wrong, of course) that Ogleby had been waiting for Quinn to go; had been watching him in a

rather curious way. And when Quinn had left, Ogleby had followed him out almost

immediately. It was only a
very
small thing, and actually putting it into words made it seem even smaller. But there it was. The Dean had now unburdened himself, and he

hoped he hadn't wasted the Inspector's time.

Morse thanked him and put the phone down. As the Dean said, it didn't seem to add

up to much.

In mid-morning Bell rang from Oxford. The medical evidence suggested that Ogleby

had died only minutes before he was found. There were no prints other than Ogleby's

on the poker or on the desk where the papers had been strewn around; Morse could

re-examine whatever he wanted at any time, of course, but there seemed (in Bell's

view) little that was going to help him very much. The blow that had crushed Ogleby's

thin skull must have been struck with considerable ferocity, but may have required

only minimal strength. It had probably been delivered by a right-handed person, and

the central point of impact was roughly 1five centimetres above the occipital bone, and

roughly two centimetres to the right of the parietal foramen. The result of the blow—'

'Skip it,' said Morse.

'I know what you mean.'

'Is Miss Height still—?'

'You can't see her till Iunchtime. Doc's orders.'

'Still in the Radcliffe?'

'Yep. And you'll be the second person to see her, I promise.'

A young nurse put her head round the screens curtaining the bed on the women's

accident ward. 'You've got another visitor.'

Monica appeared drawn and nervous as Morse looked down at her, sitting up against

the pillow, her ample hospital nightie softening the contours of her lovely body. Tell

me about it,' said Morse simply.

Her voice was quiet but firm: 'There's not much to tell, really. I called to see him about half past eight. He was just lying—'

'You had a key?'

She nodded. 'Yes.' Her eyes seemed suddenly very sad, and Morse pressed the point

no further. Whether Philip Ogleby had been to see
The Nymphomaniac
was a

question still in doubt; but it was perfectly clear that the nymphomaniac had been to

see
him
—at fairly regular intervals.

'He was lying there—?'

She nodded. 'I thought he must have had a heart attack or something. I wasn't

frightened, or anything like that. I knelt down and touched his shoulder—and his—his

head was—was almost in the fireplace, and I saw the blood—' She shook her head,

as though to rid herself of that horrific sight. 'And I got blood and—and stuff, over my

hands—and I didn't know what to do. I just couldn't stay in that terrible room. I knew

there was a phone there but—but I went out into the street and rang the police from the

phone box. I don't remember any more. I must have stepped out of the box and just—

fainted. The next thing I remember was being in the ambulance.'

'Why did you go to see him?' (He had to ask it.)

'I—I hadn't really had any chance to talk to him about—about Nick and—' (Lying

again!)

'You think he knew something about Quinn's murder?'

She smiled sadly and wearily. 'He was a very clever man, Inspector.'

'You didn't see anyone else?'

She shook her head.

'Could there have been anyone else—in the house?'

'I don't know. I just don't know.'

Should he believe her? She'd told so many lies already. But there must have been

some
cause for the lies; and Morse was convinced that if only he could discover that cause he would make the biggest leap forward in the case so far . . . It was the Studio

2 business that worried him most. Why, he repeated to himself,
why
had Monica and Donald Martin lied so clumsily about it? And as he wrestled with the problem once

again, he began to convince himself that all four of them—Monica, Martin, Ogleby, and

Quinn—must have had some collective reason for being in Studio 2 that Friday

afternoon, for he just could not bring himself to believe that their several paths had

converged for 1purely fortuitous reasons. Even Morse, who accepted the majority of

improbable coincidences with a curiously credulous gullibility, was not prepared to

swallow that! Something—
something
must have happened at Studio 2 that afternoon.

What? Think of anything, Morse, anything—it wouldn't matter. Quinn had got there

early, just after the doors opened. Then Martin had come in, sneaking into the back

row and waiting and looking nervously around. Had he seen Quinn? Had Quinn seen

him? The lights must have been dim; but not so dim as all that, especially as the eyes

slowly accustomed themselves to the gloom.
Then
, what? Monica had come in, and

Martin saw her, and they sat there together, and Martin told her that he had seen

Quinn
. What would they do? They'd leave. Pronto! Go on, Morse. If Martin had seen Quinn—and Quinn had not seen him—he would have left the cinema immediately,

waited outside for Monica, told her that they couldn't stay there, and suggested

somewhere else . . . Yes. But where had Ogleby fitted in? The number on his ticket,

some forty-odd numbers after Quinn's, suggested (if the manageress had done her

sums right) that Ogleby had not appeared in Studio 2 until about four or five o'clock.

How did
that
fit into the pattern, though? Augh! It didn't fit. Try again, Morse. Something must have frightened
Monica
off, perhaps. Yes. That was a slightly more promising hypothesis. Had she seen something? Someone? The cause of all the lies? After

learning that Quinn had been in Studio 2, she had told another lie, and . . . Oh Christ!

What a muddle his mind was in! The pictures flickered fitfully upon the wall, the faces

fading and changing, and fading again . . .

'You've been a long way away, Inspector.'

'Mm? Oh, sorry. Just daydreaming.'

'About me?'

'Among others.'

On the table beside the bed was a copy of
The Times
, folded at the crossword page; but only three or four words were written into the diagram, and Morse found himself

wondering and wandering off again. Wondering if Monica knew where the Islets of

Langerhans were situated . . . Well, if she didn't, the nurse could soon—
Just a minute!

His thinning hair seemed to be standing on end, and his scalp suddenly tingled with a

thousand tiny prickles. Oh yes! It was a beautiful idea, and the old questions flooded

his brain. In what sea are the Islets of Langerhans? When was George Washington

assassinated? Who was Kansas-Nebraska Bill? In what year did R.A. Butler become