Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

reluctantly, unhappily—and made his decision.
    “I’m going back to see Inspector Crawford. I’m not having anything to do with it. I’m letting him down, I know—after what I told him. But I—it’s just not on. I can’t do it. He’ll have to find somebody else.”
    Morse came round the desk and placed a hand on Lewis’s shoulder.
    “You get off home and see the missus. Leave all this to me. I’ll go along and see Crawford myself. Have no fears!”
    “You’re sure, sir?”
    “Absolutely. There’ll be no trouble finding somebody to take your place.”
    After Lewis had gone, Morse walked over to the window, and spent several minutes gazing out across the car-park.
(xi)
    All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can’t be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.
    (Henry Ward Beecher,
Proverbs from a
Plymouth Pulpit
)
    When, after Muldoon, he had squeezed himself through the gap in the fencing, Morse stood beside his charge and unlocked the handcuffs—almost immediately to realize that the man with only one leg and an elbow-crutch was considerably more nimble than he in negotiating the grassy slope at the rear of the Bannister Close flats.
    But Muldoon was patiently waiting for his escort, on the concreted path, when Morse finally effected his descent, the palm of his left hand ever reaching out for support to the side wall of a row of sheds in which the residents of the block doubtless stored bicycles, and old lawnmowers, and (inevitably) virtually empty pots of house-paint.
    The ground here was liberally littered with crisp and cigarette packets and all the usual detritus of a run-down neighbourhood: a circumstance most grievous to ChiefInspector Morse. But the first part of the operation had been accomplished successfully, and sufficient light was thrown from the lace-curtained, white-painted windows there for Morse to see exactly where they were. Behind the kitchen window of Number 13, beside a carton of Persil washing-powder, was a “Vote Conservative” poster, propped upside-down against a broken pane.
    Morse had done his homework too.
    “Sh!”
    Morse raised a finger to his lips, then pointed across to the right—towards the far end of the flats. He spoke very quietly:
    “Let me know if you hear a whistle. That’ll be Sergeant Wilkins, giving us the all-clear.”
    Muldoon nodded.
    “Or if you hear anything else for that matter,” mumbled Morse, moving over to Muldoon’s right.
    For half a minute or so, the two men stood there side by side, unmoving, silent.
    No noise.
    Then, all of a sudden, to the left, at some point at the side of the sheds, there was the sound of a metal dust-bin lid, as if blown off its base in a gust of wind and now rumbling in a decelerating circle.
    Muldoon whipped himself round immediately to face the direction whence the rattle had originated, crouching down instinctively, and remaining frozen for several seconds—both he and Morse (the latter still facing the opposite way) experiencing a frisson of fear, though each for a different reason.
    “Wha’s tha’?” whispered Muldoon.
    But Morse made no answer, and the night, beneath the darkly overcast sky, was wholly still once more.
    No more noise at all, in fact; and if there had been a low whistle from the far end of the block, it was heard by neither escort nor prisoner.
    Instead, Inspector Crawford now appeared at the double-fronted glass doors slightly further along; and first Muldoon, then Morse, stepped over the threshold into the living-room of Number 13 Bannister Close.
(xii)
    High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, ‘high definition.’
    (Marshal McLuhan,
Understanding Media
)
    Although he had lost his religious faith many years since, Morse still retained a sort of residual religiosity; and two days after the bizarre incidents just described, he was seated, in mid-morning, in his North Oxford flat, listening with