Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

Yes, I have. Seen him, anyway. Do you want to know his name, Sergeant? I remember it from his Railcard.'

87

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life (Oscar Wilde)

MORSE CAUGHT a No. aAbus into the centre of Oxford, alighting at Carfax, thence walking down the High and entering Shepherd and Woodward's, where he descended the stairs to Gerrard's hairdressing saloon.

'The usual, sir?'

Morse was glad that he was being attended to by Gerrard himself. It was not that the proprietor was gifted with trichological skills significantly superior to those of his attractive female assistants; it was just that Gerrard had always been an ardent admirer of Thomas Hardy, and during his life had acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the great manfs works.

'Yes, please,' answered Morse, looking morosely into the mirror at hair that had thinly drifted these last few years from ironish-grey to purish-white.

As Morse stood up to wipe the snippets of hair from his face with a hand-towel, he took out the photograph and showed it to Gerrard.

88

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

'Has he ever been in here?'

'Don't think so. Shall I ask the girls?'

Morse considered. 'No. Leave it for the present'

'Remember the Hardy poem, Mr Morse? 'The Photograph'?'

Morse did. Yet only vaguely.

'Remind me.'

'I used to have it by heart but...'

'We all get older,' admitted Morse.

Gerrard now scanned the pages of his extraordinary memory.

'You remember Hardy'd just burnt a photo of one of his old flames - he didn't know if she was alive or not - she was someone from the back of beyond of his life -but he felt awfully moved - as if he was putting her to death somehow - when he burned the photo ... Just a minute .. .just a minute, I think I've got it:

Well - she knew nothing thereof did she survive, And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;

Yet -yet - if on earth alive

Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive? If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?'

Morse felt saddened as he walked out into the High. Hardy always managed to make him feel sad. And particularly so now, since only a few days earlier he'd consigned a precious photograph to the flames: a photograph hitherto pressed between pages 88-89 °f h*s Collected Poems of A. E. Housman - the photograph of a dark-haired young woman seated on a broken classical

COLIN DEXTER

column somewhere in Crete. A woman named Ellie Smith; a woman whom he'd loved - and lost.

Morse pondered the probabilities. Had other photographs been burned or torn to little pieces since the murder of Rachel James - photographs hitherto kept in books or secret drawers?

Perhaps Lewis was right. Why not publish the photo in the Oxford Mail'? Assuredly, there'd be hundreds of incoming calls: so many of them wrong, of course - but some few of them probably right...

Morse turned left into Alfred Street, and walked down the narrow cobbled lane to the junction with Blue Boar Street, where he tried the saloon-bar door of the Bear Inn.

Locked - with the opening hour displayed disappointingly as midday. It was now 11.20 a.m., and Morse felt thirsty. Perhaps he was always diirsty. That morning, though, he felt pretematurally thirsty. In fact he would gladly have swallowed a pint or two of ice-cold lager - a drink which at almost any other time would have been considered a betrayal by a real-ale addict like Morse.

He tapped lightly on the glass of the door. Tapped again. The door was opened.

A few minutes later, after offering identification, after a brief explanation of his purpose, Morse was seated widi the landlord, Steven Lowbridge, at a table in the front bar.

'Would you like a coffee or something?' asked Sonya, his wife.

Morse turned round and looked towards the bar,

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

where a row of beers paraded their pedigrees on the hand-pumps.

'Is the Burton in good nick?'

The landlord (Morse learned) had been at the Bear Inn for five years, greatly enjoying his time there. A