month's time he might well be the Master of Lonsdale College. By nature a diffident man, he was for some curious reason beginning to feel a litde more confident about his chances. Life was a funny business - and the favourite often failed to win the Derby, did it not?
Yes, odd things were likely to happen in life.
Against all the odds, as it were.
His black-stockinged student was sitting cross-legged on the wooden steps outside his room, getting to her feet as soon as she saw him. Being with Cornford, talking with him for an hour every week - that had become the highlight of her time at Oxford. But History was the great fascination in his life - not her.
She knew that
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Prosopagnoia (n.): the failure of any person to recognize the face of any other person, howsoever recently the aforementioned persons may have mingled in each other's company
FROM OXFORD RAILWAY station, at 10.20 a.m., Lewis had tried to ring Morse at HQ. But to no avail. The dramatic news would have to wait awhile, and at least Lewis now had ample time to execute his second order of the day.
There had been just the two of them at the Oxford Physiotherapy Centre - although 'Centre' seemed a rather grandiloquent description of the ground-floor premises of the large, detached red-brick house halfway down the Woodstock Road ('1901' showing on the black drainpipe): the small office, off the spacious foyer; the single treatment room, to the right, its two beds separated by mobile wooden screens; and an inappropriately luxurious loo, to the left.
Rachel James's distressed partner, a plain-featured,
muscular divorcee in her mid-forties, could apparently throw little or no light on the recent tragedy. Each of them a fully qualified physiotherapist, they had gone freelance after a difference of opinion with the Hospital Trust, and two years earlier had decided to join forces and form their own private practice: women for the most part, troubled with ankles and knees and elbows and shoulders. The venture had been fairly successful, although they would have welcomed a few more clients - especially Rachel, perhaps, who (as Lewis learned for a second time) had been wading deeper and deeper into negative equity.
Boyfriends? - Lewis had ventured.
Well, she was attractive - face, figure - and doubdess diere had been a good many admirers. But no specific beau; no one that Rachel spoke of as anyone special; no incoming calls on the office phone, for example.
'That hers?' Lewis had asked.
·Yes.'
Lewis took down a white coat from its hook behind die door and looked at die oval badge: CHARTERED SOCIETY OF PHYSIOTHERAPY printed round a yellow crest He felt inside die stiffly starched pockets.
Nodiing.
Not even Morse (Lewis allowed die thought) could have made much of
Each of die two women had a personal drawer in die office desk, and Lewis looked carefully through die items which Rachel had kept at hand during her own working hours: lip-stick; lip-salve; powder-compact; deodorant stick; a small packet of tissues; two Biros, blue and red; a
yellow pencil; a pocket English dictionary (OUP); and a library book. Nothing else. No personal diary; no letters. Again Lewis felt (though wrongly this time) that Morse would have shared his disappointment.
As for Morse, he had called in at his bachelor flat in North Oxford before returning to Police HQ. Always, after a haircut, he went through the ritual of washing his hair - and changing his shirt, upon which even a few stray hairs left clinging seemed able to effect an intense irritation on what, as he told himself (and others), was a particularly sensitive skin.
When he finally returned to HQ he found Lewis already back from his missions.
'You're looking younger, sir.'
'No, you're wrong. I reckon this case has put years on me already.'
'I meant the haircut.'
'Ah, yes. Radier nicely done, isn't it?'
'You had a good morning, sir - apart from the haircut?'
'Well, you know - er - satisfactory. What about you?'
Lewis smiled happily.
'Do you want the good news first or the bad news?'
'The bad news.'
'Well, not 'bad' -just not 'news' at all, really. I don't think we're going to get many leads from her work-place. In fact I don't think we're going to get any.' And Lewis proceeded to give an account of his visit to the Oxford Physiotherapy Centre.
'What time did she get there every morning?'
Lewis consulted his notes. 'Five past, ten past eight - about then. Bit early. But if she left it much later she'd hit the heavy Kidlington traffic down into Oxford, wouldn't she?'
'Mm ... The first treatments don't begin till quarter to nine, you say.'
'Or nine o'clock.'
