The silent world of Nicholas Quinn (34 page)

that this was as good a chance as he was going to get to poke around in Bartlett's

room. Whether Quinn had told him that he suspected Bartlett
and
Roope, or just

Bartlett—we can't know for certain. But he's got cause to suspect Bartlett, and he

decides to do a bit of investigation. No one is going to come in, because no one's

there. At about 4.30 he hears voices outside—Roope's and Noake's—and he doesn't

want to get caught. Where's the obvious place for him to hide, Lewis? In the small

cloakroom just behind Bartlett's desk, where I went the first afternoon we went to the

office. Ideal! He just stands inside and waits; and he doesn't have to wait long. But

what does Ogleby find when he emerges from the cloakroom? He discovers that the

cinema ticket and the keys which he'd found earlier have gone! His thoughts must

have been in a complete whirl, and he daren't leave Bartlett's office. He hears Noakes

in the1 corridor outside, and later he hears someone walking about, and a few doors

opening and slamming to. And still he has to stay where he is. Anyway, he finally

satisfies himself that it's safe to come out, and the first thing he notices is that Quinn's car has gone! Perhaps he looks into Quinn's room, I don't know. Has Quinn come in?

And gone out again? I don't know how much of the truth he suspected at that point—

not much, perhaps; but he knows that Roope has taken some keys and a mysterious

cinema ticket, a ticket which he has carefully copied into his diary. It's his one piece of real evidence, and he does what I did. He rang Studio 2, and tried to find out—'

'But he couldn't. So he went along himself.'

Morse nodded. 'And found nothing, poor blighter, except one thing: that in all

probability the ticket he'd found must have been bought
that very afternoon
.'

'Funny, isn't it, sir? They were
all
there that afternoon.'

'All except Quinn,' corrected Morse sombrely. "Have you got your car here?'

'Where are we going, sir?'

'I think we'd better follow in Ogleby's footsteps, and have a look around in Bartlett's

office.'

As Lewis drove him for the last time to the Syndicate building, Morse allowed his mind

to come to tentative grips with the one or two slight inconsistencies (very slight, he told himself) that still remained. People did odd things on occasions; you could hardly

expect a smoothly logical motive behind
every
action, could you? The machine was in good working order now, there was no doubt of that, the cogs fitting neady and biting

powerfully. Just a bit of grit in the works somewhere. Only a little bit, though . . .

In Cell No 2, the little Secretary sat on the bare bed, his mind, like Yeats's long-legged fly, floating on silence.

WHO?

THE SYNDICATE BUILDING had been locked up, and all the staff informed to stay away

until further notice. Only Noakes was performing his wonted dudes, and was on hand

to let the two policemen in.

Seated at Bartlett's desk, Morse amused himself by switching the red and green lights

on and off. He seemed like a little lad with a new toy, and it was clear to Lewis that as usual he would have to do the donkey-work himself.

It was over half an hour later, after Lewis had methodically gone through the safe (and

found nothing of interest) that Morse, who had hitherto been staring vacantly round the

room, finally condescended to bestir himself. The top right-hand drawer of Bartlett's

desk had little to offer but neatly-stacked piles of office notepaper, and Morse idly

abstracted a sheet and surveyed the decimated graduate team:

T. G. Bartlett, PhD, MA Secretary

P. Ogleby, MA Deputy Secretary

G. Bland, MA

Miss M. M. Height, MA

D. J. Martin, BA

Mm. The typists had been instructed to strike through Bland's name, and print in

Quinn's at the bottom. But that wouldn't be necessary any longer. Just strike through

the top three; much quicker . . . And then there were two . . . Would Miss Height be

asked to take over? Advertise for new personnel? Or would the Syndicate just fold up?

God knew that Donald Martin wasn't going to make much of a Deputy if it were to carry

on. What a wet he was! And God help the young men they might appoint if Monica

twitched her bewitching backside at 'em! Morse took out his Parker pen and slowly

crossed through the names: Dr. Bartlett; Philip Ogleby; George Bland. Yes, just the

two of them left—and now they could fornicate for a few months to their hearts' content.

A few months! Huh! That's all Quinn had been there; not even long enough to get his

name printed on the notepaper. Nicholas Quinn . . . Morse thought back for a few

moments to the lip-reading class he'd attended. Would Quinn have been able to cope

at the office if his hearing had failed him completely? No, perhaps not. Lip-reading

might be a wonderful thing, but even the teacher of the class had made a mistake,

hadn't she? When he'd asked her . . .

Morse froze where he sat, and the blood seemed to surge away from his arms and

from his shoulders, leaving the top of his body numbed and tingling. Oh God—no! No!

Surely not! Oh Christ, oh Blessed Virgin Mary, oh all the Saints and all the Angels—

no! His hand was shaking as he wrote out the two names on the notepaper, and he

found it impossible to keep his voice steady.

'Lewis! Drop whatever you're doing. Go and stand over by the door and take this

notepaper with you.'

A puzzled Lewis did as he was told. 'What now, sir?'

'I want you to read those two names to me—just using your lips. Don't whisper them.

Just mouth them, if you know what I mean.'

Lewis did his best

'Again,' said Morse, and Lewis complied.

'And again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again.' Morse nodded and nodded and

nodded and nodded, and there was a vibrant excitement in his voice as he spoke

again. 'Get your coat, Lewis. We've finished here.'

She would say nothing at all for a start, but Morse was merciless. 'Did
you
clean the blood off?' (He'd asked the question a dozen times already.) 'My God, you must be

blind if you can't see what's been happening. How many other women has he had?

Who was he with last night? Don't you know? Have you never suspected? Did
you

clean the blood off? Did you? Or did he? Don't you understand?—I've got to know. Did

you
clean it off?
I've got to know
.'

Suddenly she broke down completely and burst into bitter, hysterical tears. 'He said—

there'd been—an accident. And he—he said he'd—tried—tried to help—until—the

ambulance came. It was—it was in—in the Broad—just opposite—opposite

Blackwells—and—'

The door opened and a man came in. 'What the
hell?
' His voice had the lash of a

whip, and his eyes shone with a primitive, blazing madness. 'What's that fucking man

Roope been telling you, you snooping bastard?' He advanced on Morse, and lashed

out wildly, whilst Mrs. Martin rushed from the room with a piercing scream.

'You should get yourself into better shape, Morse. You're pretty flabby, you kn1ow.'

'It's the beer,' mumbled Morse. 'Ouch!'

'That's the last one. See me in a week's time, and we'll take 'em out. You're all right'

'Bloody good job I had Lewis with me! Otherwise you'd have had another corpse.'

'Good, was he?'

Morse smiled crookedly and nodded. 'Christ, you should have seen him, doc!'

In Morse's office the next morning it was Lewis's turn to grin. 'Must be a bit tricky

talking, sir—with all those stitches round your mouth.'

'Mm.'

Well? Tell me, then.'

'What do you want to know?'

'What finally put you on to Martin?'

'Well, it's what I said before, though I didn't really have a clue what I was talking about I told you the key to this case lay in the fact that Quinn was deaf. And so it was. But I kept on thinking what a marvel he must have become at lip-reading, and I overlooked

the most obvious thing of all: that even the best lip-reader in the world is sometimes

going to make a few mistakes; and Quinn did just that. He saw Roope talking to the

sheik, and
he read a name wrongly on his lips
. I learned from the lip-reading class that the commonest difficulty for the deaf is between the consonants "p", "b" and "m", and if you mouth the words "Bartlett" and "Martin", there's very little difference on the lips.

The "B" and the "M" are absolutely identical, and the second part of each of the names gets swallowed up in the mouth somewhere. But that's not all. It was
Doctor
Bartlett, and
Donald
Martin. Just try them again.
Very
little difference to see; and if you put the two names together, there's every excuse for a deaf person mixing them up. You see,

Roope would never have called the Secretary "Tom", would he? He'd never been on Christian name terms with him, and he never would be. He'd have called him "Bartlett"

or "
Doctor
Bartlett". And the sheik would almost certainly have given him his full title.

But Martin—well, he was one of them; one of the boys. He was
Donald Martin
.'

'Bit of a jump in the dark, if you ask me.'

'No, it wasn't. Not really. There were one or two loose ends that somehow refused to

tuck themselves away, and I had an uneasy feeling that I might have got it all wrong.

As you yourself said, it was so much out of character. Bartlett's spent so much of his

life building up the work of the Syndicate that it's very difficult to see him stooping to the sort of corruption we've got in this case—let alone murder. But I still couldn't see in what other direction the facts were pointing. Not, that is, until I suddenly saw the light as we sat in Bartlett's office, and then all the loose ends seemed to tidy themselves up

automatically. Just think. Quinn discovered—or so he believed—that Bartlett was

crooked, and he rang him up. Rang him up, Lewis! You can guess how Quinn

dreaded ringing
anyone
up. The fact of the matter was that he couldn't face Bartlett with it any other way, because
he just couldn't believe that he was guilty
.'

'Did Quinn tell Bartlett that he suspected Roope as well?'

'I should think so. Quinn must have been a man remarkably free from any deception,

and he probably told both Bartlett and Roope everything he suspected.'

'But why didn't Bartlett do something about it?'1blockquote>

'He must have thought that Quinn had got everything cockeyed, mustn't

he? Quinn was accusing him—the Secretary!—of swindling the Syndicate;

and if Quinn was totally wrong about himself, why should he think that

Quinn was right about Roope?'

Lewis shook his head slowly. 'All a bit thin, if you ask me, sir.'

'In itself, yes. But let's turn to Monica Height. How on earth are we to

account for the bundle of lies she was prepared to tell? It's fairly easy now

to see why Martin must have been happy to agree to the lies they cooked

up together after Monica told him she'd seen Bartlett coming out of the

cinema. In fact I should think that he almost certainly instigated them

himself, because it was going to suit his book very well not to have himself

associated with Studio 2 in any way. And later, after Monica learned that

Quinn himself might have been in Studio 2 that same afternoon she

immediately realized that things would look pretty black for Bartlett if she

said anything about seeing him there. And so she continued to conceal the

truth. Why, Lewis? For the very same reason that Quinn couldn't face