The Silent World Of Nicholas Quinn

mud with the noise of someone trampling on corn flakes.

He left the house and got into the Lancia. But then he got out again, walked back, closed the garage doors, and finally the garden gate behind him.

Ten minutes later he drew up outside the darkened house in Walton Street, where a City constable stood guard before the door.

'No one's tried to get in, Constable?'

'No, sir. Few sightseers always hanging around, but no one's been in.'

'Good. I'll only be ten minutes.'

Ogleby's bedroom seemed lonely and bleak. No pictures on the walls, no books on the bedside table, no ornaments on the dressing table, no visible signs of heating. The large double-bed monopolized the confined space, and Morse turned back the coverlet. Two head pillows lay there, side by side, and a pair of pale-yellow pyjamas were tucked just beneath the top sheet Morse picked up the nearer pillow, and there he found a neatly-folded neglige—black, flimsy, almost transparent, with a label proclaiming 'St. Michael'.

No one had yet bothered to clean up the other room, and the fire which had blazed merrily the night before was nothing now but cold, fine ash into which some of the detectives had thrown the dropped butts of their cigarettes. It looked almost obscene. Morse turned his attention to the books which lined the high shelves on each side of the fireplace. The vast majority of them were technical treatises on Ogleby's specialisms, and Morse was interested in only one: Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, by Glaister and Rentoul. It was an old friend. A folded sheet of paper protruded from the top, and Morse opened the book at that point: page 566. In heavy type, a quarter of the way down the page, stood the heading 'Hydrocyanic Acid'.

At the Summertown Health Clinic, Morse was shown immediately into Dr Parker's consulting room.

'''Yes, Inspector, I'd looked after Mr. Ogleby for — oh, seven or eight years now. Very sad really. Something may have turned up, but I very much doubt it. Extremely rare blood disease — nobody knows much about it.'

'You gave him about a year, you say?'

'Eighteen months, perhaps. No longer.'

'He knew this?'

'Oh yes. He insisted on knowing everything. Anyway, it would have been useless trying to keep it from him. Medically speaking, he was a very well-informed man. Knew more about his illness than I did. Or the specialists at the Radcliffe, come to that.'

'Do you think he told anybody?'

'I doubt it. Might have told one or two close friends, I suppose. But I knew nothing about his private life. For all I know, he didn't have any close friends.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I don't know. He was a — a bit of a loner, I think. Bit uncommunicative.'

'Did he have much pain?'

'I don't think so. He never said so, anyway.'

'He wasn't the suicidal sort, was he?'

'I don't think so. Seemed a pretty balanced sort of chap. If he were going to kill himself, he would have done it simply and quickly, I should have thought. He would certainly have been in his right mind.'

'What would you say is the simplest and quickest way?'

Parker shrugged his shoulders. 'I think I'd have a quick swig of cyanide, myself.'

Morse walked thoughtfully to the car: he felt a sadder, if not a much wiser man. Anyway, one more call to make. He just hoped Margaret Freeman hadn't gone off to a Saturday night hop.

Although earlier in the evening Lewis had been quite unable to fathom the Inspector's purposes, he had quite looked forward to the duties assigned to him.

Joyce Greenaway was pleasantly cooperative, and she tried her best to. answer the Sergeant's strange questions. As she had told Inspector Morse, she couldn't be certain that the name was Bartlett, and she could see no point whatsoever in trying (although she did try) to remember whether he'd been addressed as Bartlett or Dr. Bartlett. She was quite sure, too, that she could never hope to recognize the voice again: her hearing wasn't all that good at the best of times and — well, you couldn't recognize a voice again just like that, could you. What were they talking about? Well, as a matter of fact, she did just have the feeling that they were arranging to meet somewhere. But further than that — when, where, why — no. No ideas at all.

Lewis got it all down in his notebook; and when he'd finished he made the appropriate noises to the little bundle of life that lay beside the bed.

'Have you got any family, Sergeant?'

'Two daughters.'

'We had a name all ready if it had been a girl.'

'There's a lot of nice boys' names.'

'Yeah, I suppose so. But somehow — What's your Christian name, Sergeant?'

Lewis told her. He'd never liked it much.

'What about the Inspector? What's his Christian name?'

Lewis frowned for a few seconds. Funny, really. He'd never thought of Morse as having one. 'I don't know. I've never heard anyone call him by his Christian name.'