The Wench Is Dead by Colin Dexter

she was "out of her mind", "sadly deranged", off her head"… And there had, it appeared, been no conflict of evidence between the crewmen that on one occasion at least (did that mean two?) they had been called upon to save Joanna from drowning herself. The one vital point Jarnell disclosed was that Oldfield had not only protested his own innocence of the murder, but had also sought to shift all responsibility on to his fellow crewmen. Not, to be sure, a very praiseworthy piece of behaviour! Yet, if Oldfield himself were innocent, where else could he have laid the blame? At the time, in any case, no one had been willing to listen seriously either to what Jarnell or to what Oldfield might have say. But if they were right? Or if one of them were right?
    A curious little thought struck Morse at this point, and dredged itself in a corner of his brain – for future reference. And a rather bigger thought struck him simultaneously: that he needed to remember he was only playing a game with himself; only trying to get through a few days' illness with a happy little problem to amuse himself with – like a tricky cryptic crossword from The Listener. It was just a little worrying, that was all… the way the dice had been loaded all the time against those drunkards who had murdered Joanna Franks.
    And the niggling doubt persisted.
    If they had…

Chapter Seventeen
The detective novelist, as a class, hankers after complication and ingenuity, and is disposed to reject the obvious and acquit the accused if possible. He is uneasy until he has gone further and found some new and satisfying explanation of the problem
    (Dorothy L. Sayers, The Murder of Julia Wallace)
     
    The thought that the crewmen may not have been guilty 'Joanna Franks's murder proved to be one of those heady notions that evaporate in the sunrise of reason. For if the crewmen had not been responsible, who on earth had? Nevertheless, it seemed to Morse pretty much odds-on that if the case had been heard a century later, there would been no certain conviction. Doubtless, at the time, the jury's verdict had looked safe and satisfactory, especially to hostile crowds lining the streets and baying for blood, but should the verdict have been reached? True, there was enough circumstantial suspicion to sentence a saint; yet no really direct evidence, was there? No witnesses to murder; no indication of how the murder had been committed; no adequately convincing motive for why. Just a time, and a place, and Joanna lying face-downwards in Duke's Cut all that while ago.
    Unless, of course, there were some passages of evidence not reported – either from the first or the second trial? The Colonel had clearly been rather more interested in the lax morals of the boatmen than in any substantiation of the evidence, and he could just have omitted the testimony of any corroborative witnesses who might have been called. Perhaps it would be of some interest – in this harmless! game he was playing – to have a quick look through those Court Registers, if they still existed; or through the relevant copies of Jackson's Oxford Journal, which certainly did exist: as Morse knew, filed on microfiche in the Oxford Central Library. (Doubtless in the Bodley, too!) And, in any case he hadn't finished the Colonel's book yet. Why, there might be much still to be revealed in that last exciting episode! Which he now began to read.
     
    Almost immediately he was conscious of Fiona standing beside him – the amply bosomed Fiona, smelling vaguely of the summer and strongly of disinfectant. Then she sat down on the bed, and he felt the pneumatic pressure of her against him as she leaned across and looked over his shoulder.
    'Interesting?'
    Morse nodded. 'It's the book the old girl brought round – you know, the Colonel's wife.'
    Fiona stayed where she was, and Morse found himself, reading the same short sentence for the third, fourth, fifth time – without the slightest degree of comprehension – as her