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patrons of the George had amassed £400 in aid of the Littlemore Charity for Mentally Handicapped Children, and this splendid total was to be presented to the Charity’s Secretary at the end of the week, with a photographer promised from
The Oxford Times
to record the grand occasion. Mrs. Michaels, the landlady, had been dropped off at the bank in Carfax by her husband at about 10:30 A.M. , and had there exchanged a motley assemblage of coins and notes for forty brand-new tenners. After this she had bought several items (including grapes for a daughter just admitted to hospital) before catching a minibus back home, where she had arrived just after midday. The money, in a long white envelope, was in her shopping bag, together with her morning’s purchases. Her husband had not yet returned from the Cash and Carry Stores, and on re-entering the George via the saloon bar, Mrs. Michaels had heard the telephone ringing. Thinking that it was probably the hospital (it was) she had dumped her bag on the bar counter and rushed to answer it. On her return, the envelope was gone.
    At the time of the theft, there had been about thirty people in the saloon bar, including the regular OAPs, the usual cohort of pool-playing unemployables, and a pre-Christmas party from a local firm. And—yes!—from the very beginning Lewis had known that the chances of recovering the money were virtually nil. Even so, the three perfunctory interviews that Morse conducted appeared to Lewis to be sadly unsatisfactory.
    After listening a while to the landlord’s unilluminating testimony, Morse asked him why it had taken him so longto conduct his business at the Cash and Carry; and although the explanation given seemed perfectly adequate, Morse’s dismissal of this first witness had seemed almost offensively abrupt. And no man could have been more quickly or more effectively antagonized than the temporary barman (on duty the previous morning) who refused to answer Morse’s brusque enquiry about the present state of his overdraft. What then of the attractive, auburn-haired Mrs. Michaels? After a rather lop-sided smile had introduced Morse to her regular if slightly nicotine-stained teeth, that distressed lady had been unable to fight back her tears as she sought to explain to Morse why she’d insisted on some genuine notes for the publicity photographer instead of a phonily magnified cheque.
    But wait! Something dramatic had just happened to Morse, Lewis could see that: as if the light had suddenly shined upon a man that hitherto had sat in darkness. He (Morse) now asked—amazingly!—whether by any chance the good lady possessed a pair of bright green, high-heeled leather shoes; and when she replied that, yes, she did, Morse smiled serenely, as though he had solved the secret of the universe, and promptly summoned into the lounge bar not only the three he’d just interviewed but all those now in the George who had been drinking there the previous morning.
    As they waited, Morse asked for the serial numbers of the stolen notes, and Lewis passed over a scrap of paper on which some figures had been hastily scribbled in blotchy Biro. “For Christ’s sake, man!” hissed Morse. “Didn’t they teach you to write at school?”
    Lewis breathed heavily, counted to five, and then painstakingly rewrote the numbers on a virginal piece of paper: 773741–773780. At which numbers Morse glancedcursorily before sticking the paper in his pocket, and proceeding to address the George’s regulars.
    He was
virtually
certain (he said) of who had stolen the money. What he was
absolutely
sure about was exactly where that money was
at that very moment
. He had the serial numbers of the notes—but that was of no importance whatsoever now. The thief might well have been tempted to spend the money earlier—but not any more! And why not? Because at this Christmas time that person
no longer had the power to resist his better self
.
    In that bar, stilled now and silent as the