'He was going to Mrs. Phillotson's funeral this lunch-time.'
'What? Nobody told me about that.'
'No, well... we didn't want to, er... Not a nice sub-ject, death, is it.'
The clock showed 2:45 P.M. when Strange made his way out of Ward 7; and for several minutes Morse lay back on his pillows and pondered. Perhaps a hospital was an appro-priate place to meditate on death, for there was plenty of it going on all around. But most men or women preferred not to think or talk about it. Morse had known only one person who positively relished discussing the topic--Max the po-lice pathologist, who in a macabre kind of way had almost made a friend of Death. But Death had made no reciprocal arrangement; and Max was police pathologist no longer.
(iv)
Although the autumn term had only begun the day before, clearly one or two of the local schools had been planning, well in advance, to despatch their pupils on some of the dreaded GCSE 'projects' at the earliest possible opportu-nity. Certainly, until about 4:05 P.M., twenty or so school-children had still been studying a range of anthropological exhibits in the Upper Gallery of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Which was rather worrying.
But by 4:15 P.M., the galleries were virtually--by 4:20 P.M., totally---deserted. And from where he stood, beside the collection made in the South Pacific by Captain Cook on his second visit there in 1772, the young man observed most carefully whilst a suntanned, balding attendant walked briskly round the Upper Gallery, doubtless checking that no bags or satchels or writing-pads had inadvertently been left behind; and in so doing, as was immediately apparent, giving a quick, upward 'lift' to each of the glass covers of the locked cabinets there, like a potential car- thief swiftly mow ing along a line of vehicles in a Park and Ride and testing the doors.
Two minutes later, the young man was following in the attendant's same pre-closure tracks; but stopping now, at a particular spot, where he looked down at a collection of knives--knives of all shapes and sizes, knives from many parts of the world--displayed in Cabinet Number 52.
Quickly, his heart pounding, he took a chisel from his summer sweatshirt and inserted its recenfiy sharpened edge between the metal rim of the display-case top and the darkly stained wooden slat below it, into which the cabi net's lock was set.
Easy!
No great splintering of wood or moaning of metal. Just a single, quick 'click.' Yet it had been a bad moment; and the young man checked anxiously to his left, then to his right, before lifting the glass lid and putting a hand inside.
It was 4:29 v.M. when he walked through the museum shop. He might have bought a postcard of the forty- foot-high Haida Totem Pole (British Columbia), but an assistant was already totting up the takings, and he wished to cause no trouble. As the prominent notice had advised him as he'd entered, the Pitt Rivers Museum of Ethnology and Pre-History closed at 4:30 V.M. each day.
At the Proctor Memorial School, the take-up for the Twelfth Night trip to the Shakespeare Theatre had been encouraging. Before the end of the summer term, Julia Stevens had made her usual block-booking of thirty-one seats; and with twenty-three pupils (mostly fifth- and sixth-formers), two other members of staff, plus two parents, only three tickets had been going begging. Only two, in fact--and those soon to be snapped up with alacrity at the box office--because Julia Stevens had invited Brenda Brooks (as she had done the previous year) to join the school-party.
At the Stratford Coach Park, the three teachers had dis-tributed the brown-paper-wrapped rations: two rolls, one with mayonnaised-curried-chicken, the other with a soft-cheese filling; one packet of crisps; and one banana-- with a plastic cup of orangeade.
On the way back, though not on the way out, Mrs. Stev-ens and Mrs. Brooks sat side by side in the front seats: the former semi-listening (with some gratification) to her pu-pils' pronouncements on the performances of Sirs Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek; the latter, until Woodstock, trying to read the latest instalment of a romantic serial in Woman Weekly, before apparenfiy falling into a deep slum ber, and not awakening therefrom until, two minutes before midnight on Wednesday, September 7, the coach made it,, first stop at Carfax Tower, from where the streets of Oxfor looked strangely beautiful; and slightly sinister.
Chapter Thirty-five
In me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch Of greatness to know well I am not great (ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine)
After ringing the emergency number the previous Sunday, it had been a sad sight that confronted Lewis in the bathroom: Morse standing creased over the pedestal basin, his cheeks wholly drained of colour, his vomit streaked with blood forming a chrysanthemum pattern, scarlet on white, across the porcelain.
Dr. Paul Roblin had been adamant.
Ambulance!
Lewis had woken up to the troth an hour or so later: for a while at least, be was going to be left alone with a murder investigation.
Such a prospect would normally have daunted him; yet the present case was unusual in that it had already estab-lished itself into a pattern. In the past, the more spectacu-lar cases on which he and Morse had worked together had often involved some bizarre, occasionally some almost incredible, twists of fate. But the murder of Dr. Felix Mc Clure appeared--surely was--a comparatively straight-forward affair. There could be little doubt none in Morse's mind--about the identity of the murderer. It was just a question of timing now, and patience: of the accumulation, the aggregation of evidence, against a man who'd had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to murder Mc Clure.
Only concerning the actual commission of the crime was there lack of positive evidence. Lack of any evidence. And what a feather in his cap it would be if he, Lewis, could come up with something on that, during Morse's reluctant, yet enforced, immobility.
For the present, then, it was he who was sole arbiter of the course of further enquiries; of the most productive de-ployment of police resources. He had not been bom great, Lewis was aware of that; nor did the rank of Detective Ser-geant mark him out as a man who had achieved any signif-icant greamess. Yet for a few days now, some measure of vicarious greatness was being thrust upon him; and he would have been encouraged by the Latin proverb (had he known it) that 'Greatness is but many small littles,' since it was upon a series of 'small littles'
