Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'At least one of them.'

Intense blue eyes, slightly pained, looked innocently across the desk at Sergeant Lewis.

'But I've already got this month's book - I bought it for myself for Christmas.'

He inserted the form into an envelope, on which he now wrote the Club's address. Then he took from his wallet a sheaf of plastic cards: Bodleian Library ticket; Lloyds payment card; RAG Breakdown Service; blood donor card; Blackwell's Bookshops; Oxford City Library ticket; phonecard ... but there appeared to be no booklet of first-class stamps there. Or of second-class.

'You don't, by any chance, happen to have a stamp on you, Lewis?'

'What CDs are you going for?'

'I've ordered Janacek, the dagolitic Mass - you may not know it. Splendid work - beautifully recorded by Simon Rattle. And Richard Strauss, Four Last Songs -Jessye Norman. I've got several recordings by other sopranos, of course.'

Of course...

Lewis nodded, and looked for a stamp.

It was not infrequent for Lewis to be reminded of what he had lost in life; or rather, what he'd never had in the first place. The one Strauss he knew was the 'Blue Danube' man. And he'd only recently learned there were two of those, as well - Senior and Junior; and which was which he'd no idea.

43

COLIN DEXTER

'Perhaps you'D be in for a bit of a let-down, sir. Some of these offers - they're not exactly up to what they promise.'

'You're an expert on these things?'

'No ... but... take Sergeant-' Lewis stopped himself hi time. Just as well to leave a colleague's weakness cloaked in anonymity. 'Take this chap I know. He read this advert in one of the tabloids about a free video - sex video - sent hi a brown envelope with no address to say where it had come from. You know, in case the wife ...'

'No, I don't know, Lewis. But please continue.'

'Well, he sent for one of the choices-'

' Copenhagen Red-Hot Sex?'

'No. Housewives on the Job - that was the title; and he expected, you know...'

Morse nodded. 'Housewives 'on the job' with the milkman, the postman, the itinerant button-salesmen ...'

Lewis grinned. 'But it wasn't, no. It just showed all these fully dressed Swedish housewives washing up the plates and peeling the potatoes.'

'Serves Sergeant Dixon right.'

'You won't mention it, sir!'

'Of course I won't And you're probably right. You never really get something for nothing in this life. I never seem to, anyway.'

'Really, sir?' .

Morse licked the flap of the white envelope. Then licked the back of the first-class stamp that Lewis had just given him.

The phone had been ringing for several seconds, and

44

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

Lewis now took the call, listening briefly but carefully, before putting his hand over the mouthpiece:

'There's been a murder, sir. On the doorstep, really -up in Bloxham Drive.'

45

PART TWO

CHAPTER SEVEN

In addition to your loyal support on the ballot paper, we shall be grateful if you can agree to display the enclosed sticker in one of your windows

(Extract from a 1994 local election leaflet distributed by the East Oxford Labour Party)

IT REMINDED Morse of something - that rear window of Number 17.

As a young lad he'd been fascinated by a photograph in one of his junior school text-books of the apparatus frequently fixed round the necks of slaves in the southern states of America: an iron ring from whose circumference, at regular intervals, there emanated lengthy, fearsome spikes, also of iron. The caption, as Morse recalled, had maintained that such a device readily prevented any absconding cotton-picker from passing himself off as an enfranchised citizen.

Morse had never really understood the caption.