The Riddle Of The Third Mile by Colin Dexter

a ventriloquist at a dumb-show. ‘Remarkable things teeth, you know. No two sets of teeth can ever be the same. Each set-well, it’s unique, like fingerprints.’ He looked at the squalid lump of plastering with infinite compassion, and it seemed quite obvious that teeth obsessed not only his working life but his private soul as well.
    Morse stood beside him, waiting for the prescription; and when the dentist got to his feet Morse became surprisingly aware of how small a man the dentist was. Had it been the white coat that had given him the semblance of being taller? Had it been the fact that the last thing Morse had earlier been interested in was whether the kindly man who’d readily agreed to see one of his most irregular clients was a dwarf or a giant? Yet there was something else, wasn’t there?
    Morse’s mind suddenly grasped it as he stood waiting at the Summertown chemist’s. It had been when the dentist had been sitting at his desk-yes. Because the length of his back was that of a man of normal height; and so it must have been the legs…
    ‘Are you a pensioner, sir?’ asked the young assistant as she took his prescription. (My God! Could he really look as old as that?)
    After an exhortation to stick religiously to the stated dosage, and also to be sure to complete the course, Morse was soon on his way to Kidlington, quite convinced now of the perfectly obvious fact that whoever had dismembered the corpse had been at desperate pains to conceal its identity.
    Teeth? The murderer would have left a means of certain identification – ‘unique’, as his little torturer had said. Hands? If they had been deformed in any way, or one of them had? It was difficult for fellow humans to forget deformity. Legs? What if that exciting idea that had occurred to him at the chemist’s…
    But he was at HQ now, and the need for instant action was at hand. He swallowed twice the specified dosage of tablets, told himself that the marvellous stuff was already engaged in furious conflict with the ‘little infection’, and finally greeted Lewis at 9.30 a.m.
    ‘You said you’d be here by eight, sir.’
    ‘Your lucky to see me at all!’ Morse snapped, as he unwrapped his scarf and bared his bulging jaw.
    ‘Bad tooth, sir?’
    ‘Not just bad, Lewis. It’s the worst bloody tooth in England!’
    The missus always swears by-’
    Forget what your missus says! She’s not a dentist, is she?’
    So Lewis forgot it, and sat down silently.
    Soon Morse was feeling better, and for an hour he discussed with Lewis both the letter and the curious thoughts that had been occurring to him.
    ‘Someone certainly seems to be making it difficult for us,’ said Lewis; and the sentence did little more than state in simple English the even simpler thought that had gradually dawned on Morse’s mind. But for Lewis life was full of surprises, since he now heard Morse ask him to repeat exactly that same sentence. And as he did so, Lewis saw the familiar sight of his chief looking out over the concreted yard, or wherever it was those eyes, unblinking, stared with more than a hint of deeper understanding.
    ‘Or it could be just the opposite,’ Lewis heard him mumble enigmatically.
    ‘Pardon, sir?’
    ‘Do you reckon a cup of coffee would upset this tooth of mine?’
    ‘Be all right, unless it’s too hot.’
    ‘Nip and get a couple of cups.”
    After Lewis had gone, Morse unfolded The Times and looked at the crossword. 1 across: “He lived perched up, mostly in sites around East, shivering (6,8).” Anagram, obviously: “mostly in sites” round “e”. Yes! He quickly wrote in “Simon Stylites” -only to find himself one letter short. Of course! It was Simeon Stylites, and he was about to correct the letters, when he stopped.
    It couldn’t be, surely!
    He wrote a circle of letters in the bottom margin of the newspaper, crossed off a few letters, then a few more-and stopped again. Not only could it be, it was! What an extraordinary-
    ‘I