Morse’s Greatest Mystery
Colin Dexter
‘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 centimetre – ‘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 L50 gift-token in the Police Charity Raffle, and this time Morse cradled the receiver with considerably better grace.
. . .
