'Please, stay!' whispered Morse, his hand over tl mouthpiece. 'Yes, sir. Yes... Can you just give me fi'. minutes...? I'll be straight along.'
'Why d'you want me to stay?' she asked, after Mort had put down the receiver.
He took the little black box from the drawer and hande it to her.
'It's not wrapped up, I'm afraid. I'm not much good that sort of thing.'
'Wha--?' She held the box in her left hand and opene it with her right, taking hold of the gold chain lovingly an( gently, and slowly lifting up St. Anthony.
'Wha's this for?'
'I bought it for you.'
'But like I say--'
'I want you to have it, that's all. I've never bought any-thing like that for anybody--and, as I say, I just want you to have it.'
Ellie had been looking down at the pendant and suddenly. the tears began. 'Oh god!' she whispered.
'Do you like it?'
'It's... it's the most wonderful...' But she could get no further. She stood up and walked round the desk, and kissed Morse fully and softly on the mouth; and Morse felt the wetness of her cheek against his own.
'I must go,' said Morse. 'My boss'Il be getting impa-tient.'
She nodded. 'You know what I just said--about Ashley? That I couldn't marry him because I didn't love him? Well, that wasn't really the reason why I broke it off.'
In his brain Morse had become convinced that Eleanor Smith must be guilty of her step-father's murder; but in his heart he felt grieved as he awaited her words, for he knew exactly what they would be. Yet he was wrong. Spectacularly wrong.
'The real reason is I've... I've fallen in love with somebody else.'
Morse wondered if he'd heard correctly. 'What?'
'You gettin' deaf or something?'
'Not--not with that charlatan from the modelling agency, surely?'
She shook her head crossly, like some unhappy, exasper-ated little girl who will stamp her foot until she can get her own way, her own selfish way. Now.
'Are you going to listen to me, or not? Can't you guess? Can't you see? Can't you see?' She was standing beside the door, her head held high, her sludgy-green eyes closed, trying so hard to hold back the brimming tears. 'I've fallen in love with you, you stupid sod!'
Chapter Sixty-two dactyloscopy (n): the examination of fingerprintg (Early · Twentieth Century)
(The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)
Always had Morse been a reluctant dactyloscopist, and throughout his police career all the arches and whorls and loops, all the peaks and the troughs and the ridges, had ever remained a deep mystery to him--like electricity, and the Wheatstone Bridge. He was therefore perfectly happy, on Friday, September 30, to delegate the fingerprinting of Mes-dames Brooks and Stevens to Sergeant Lewis--for the two overseas travellers had returned to Oxford early that after-noon.
Immigration officials at Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted airports had been alerted about them; and the phone-call from Heathrow had been received at Thames Valley HQ just after midday: the two had boarded the Ox- ford City Link coach, scheduled to arrive at its Gloucester Green terminus in Oxford at 2:30 '.M.
Neither had appeared to show any undue surprise or dis-comfiture when Lewis, accompanied by a fingerprint offi-cer, had taken them into the manager's office there, and trotted out the 'purely for elimination' line.
After his colleague had left for the fingerprint bureau at St. Aldate's (where there was now a computerised search facility) Lewis had returned to Kidlington HQ, to find Morse dispiritedly scanning some of the documents in the Case.
But the Chief Inspector perked up with the return of his sergeant.
'No problems?'
'No problems, sir.'
'You're a betting man, Lewis?'
'Only very occasionally: Derby, Grand National...'
'Will you have a bet with me?'
'50p?'
'Can't we be devils, and make it a quid?'
'All right. I've got to be careful with the money, though--we've got the decorators in.'
Morse appeared surprised. 'I thought you did all that sort of stuff yourself?'.'
'I used to, sir, when I had the time and the energy. Be fore I started working for you.'
'Well, take your pick!'
'Pardon T'
