perhaps all the girls at the local knocking-shop are known by a letter of the alphabet?'
'Didn't know you had one up here, sir.'
'Lewis, we have everything in North Oxford. It's just a question of knowing where it is, that's the secret.' Lewis mused aloud. 'Karen... or Kirsty...'
'Kylie?'
'You've heard of her, sir?'
'Only just.'
'Kathy...'
'Well, there's one pretty simple way of finding out, isn't there? Can't you just ring the number? Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing? That sort of thing?'
Lewis picked up the phone and dialled the five-digit number--and was answered immediately.
'Yeah? Wha' d'ya wan'?' a woman's voice bawled at him.
'Hullo. Er have I got the right number for 'K'?'
'Yeah. You 'ave. Bu' she's no'
'ere, is she.'?'
'No, obviously not. I'll try again later.'
'You a dur'y oi' man, or sump'n?'
Lewis quickly replaced the receiver, the colour rising in his pale cheeks.
Morse, who had heard the brief exchange clearly, grinned at his discomfited sergeant. 'You can't win 'em all.'
'Waste of time, if that's anything to go by.'
'You think so?'
'Don't you?'
'Lewis! You were only on the phone for about ten sec-onds but you learned she was a 'she,' probably a she with the name of 'Kay.''
'I didn't!'
'A she of easy virtue who old Felix here spent a few happy hours with. Or, as you'd prefer it, with whom old Felix regularly spent a few felicitous hours.'
'You can't just say that '
'Furthermore she's a local lass, judging by her curly Ox-fordshire accent and her typical habit of omitting all her 't's.'
'But I didn't even get the woman!'
Morse was silent for a few seconds; then he looked up, his face more serious. 'Am you sure, Lewis? Are you quite sure you haven't just been speaking to the cryptic 'K' her-self?.'
Lewis shook his head, grinned ruefully, and said nothing.
He knew knew again now--why he'd never rise to any great heights in life himself. Morse had got it wrong, of course. Morse nearly always got things hopelessly, ridicu-lously wrong at the start of every case. But he always seemed to have thoughts that no one else was capable of thinking. Like now.
'Anyway, what's this other thing you've found?'
But before Lewis could answer, there was a quiet tap on the door and PC Roberts stuck a reverential, unhelmeted head into the room.
'Where's a Mrs. Wynne-Wilson here, sir, from one of the other flats. Says she wants a word, like.'
Morse looked up from his Thucydides. 'Haven't we al-ready got a statement from her, Lewis?'
But it was Roberts who answered. 'She says she made a statement, sir, but when she heard someone else was in charge--well, she said Inspector Phillotson didn't really want to know, like.'
'Really?'
'And she's, well, she's a bit deaf, like.'
'Like what?' asked Morse. 'Pardon?'
'Forget it.'
'Shall I show her in, sir?'
'What? In here? You know what happened here, don't you? She'd probably faint, man.'
'Doubt it, sir. She says she was sort of in charge of nurses at some London hospital.'
'Ah, a matron,' said Morse.
'They don't call them 'matrons' any longer,' interposed Lewis.
'Thank you very much, Lewis! Send her in.'
