Read Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories for Free Online Page A

uneasy—before leaning over the almost empty plate of treacle-tart, a mischievous glint in his eye.
    “To tell you the truth, Morse, his mother rang us only last night. Seems she left him with a baby-sitter when she went to church for Easter-morning service. And d’you know what the little bugger did? He went and bit the bloody baby-sitter’s hand!”
    “Just a temporary lapse,” suggested Morse.
    “Course it was! We can’t be good
all
the time, can we? None of us can.”
    Morse nodded slowly. “No, sir. We all have the occasional moment when we’re not—we’re not particularly proud of ourselves.”
    Strange appeared gratified by this latter sentiment; and after spooning up his last mouthful of custard he sat back, replete and relaxed. Taking out his wallet, he extracted, just as he had done a week earlier, the latest snapshot of Grandson Number One (two years, three months).
    “Super little chap, Morse. You can leave him with anybody—well,
almost
anybody! As good as gold, almost.”
    As if with mutual understanding, the two policemen looked at each other then.
    And smiled.

MORSE’S
GREATEST MYSTERY

    “Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”
    (Dickens,
A Christmas Carol
)
    He had knocked diffidently at Morse’s North Oxford flat. Few had been invited into those book-lined, Wagner-haunted rooms: and even he—Sergeant Lewis—had never felt himself an over-welcome guest. Even at Christmas time. Not that it sounded much like the season of goodwill as Morse waved Lewis inside and concluded his ill-tempered conversation with the bank manager.
    “Look! If I keep a couple of hundred in my current account, that’s
my
look-out. I’m not even asking for any interest on it. All I
am
asking is that you don’t stick these bloody bank charges on when I go—what? once, twice a year?—into the red. It’s not that I’m mean with money”—Lewis’s eyebrows ascended a centimeter—“but if you charge me again I want you to ring and tell me
why
!”
    Morse banged down the receiver and sat silent.
    “You don’t sound as if you’ve caught much of the Christmas spirit,” ventured Lewis.
    “I don’t like Christmas—never have.”
    “You staying in Oxford, sir?”
    “I’m going to decorate.”
    “What—decorate the Christmas cake?”
    “Decorate the kitchen. I don’t like Christmas cake—never did.”
    “You sound more like Scrooge every minute, sir.”
    “And
I shall read a Dickens novel. I always do over Christmas,
Re
-read, rather.”
    “If I were just
starting
on Dickens, which one—?”
    “I’d put
Bleak House
first,
Little Dorrit
second—”
    The phone rang and Morse’s secretary at HQ informed him that he’d won a £50 gift-token in the Police Charity Raffle, and this time Morse cradled the receiver with considerably better grace.
    “ ‘Scrooge,’ did you say, Lewis? I’ll have you know I bought five tickets—a quid apiece!—in that Charity Raffle.”
    “I bought five tickets myself, sir.”
    Morse smiled complacently. “Let’s be more charitable, Lewis! It’s
supporting
these causes that’s important, not
winning.”
    “I’ll be in the car, sir,” said Lewis quietly. In truth, he was beginning to feel irritated. Morse’s irascibility he could stomach; but he couldn’t stick hearing much more about Morse’s selfless generosity!
    Morse’s old Jaguar was in dock again (“Too mean to buy a new one!” his colleagues claimed) and it was Lewis’s job that day to ferry the chief inspector around; doubtless, too (if things went to form) to treat him to the odd pint or two. Which indeed appeared a fair probability, since Morse had so managed things on that Tuesday morning that their arrival at the George wouldcoincide with opening time. As they drove out past the railway station, Lewis told Morse what he’d managed to discover about the previous day’s events …
    The