Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'Oh.'

'Why do you ask?'

'No reason, darling. Night-night! Sweet dreams, my sweetie!'

She blew a kiss across the narrow space between their beds, turned her back towards him, and snuggled her head into the green pillows.

'Don't be too long with the light, please.'

A few minutes later she was lying still, breathing quite rhythmically, and he thought she was asleep.

As quietly as he could, he manoeuvred himself down beneath the bedclothes, and straightway turned off the light And tried, tried far too hard, to go to sleep himself...

... After evensong earlier that same evening in the College Chapel, the Fellows and their guests had been invited (as was the custom) to the Master's Lodge, where they partook of a glass of sherry before dining at 7.30 p.m. at the top-table in the main hall, the students seated on the long rows of benches below them. It was just before leaving the Master's Lodge that Denis had looked round for his wife and found her by the fireplace speaking to David Mackenzie, one of the younger dons, a brilliant mathematician, of considerable corpulence, who hastily folded the letter he had been showing to Shelly and put it away.

Nothing in that, perhaps? Not in itself, no. But he, Denis Cornford, knew what was in the letter. And that, for the simplest of all reasons, since Mackenzie had shown him the same scented purple sheets in the SCR the previous week; and Cornford could recall pretty accurately, though naturally not verbatim, the passage he'd been invited to consider. Clearly the letter had been, thus far, the highlight of Mackenzie's term:

Remember what you scribbled on my menu that night? Your handwriting was a bit wobbly(!) and I couldn't quite make out just that one word: 'I'd love to take you out and make a f- of you'. I think it was

'fuss' and it certainly begins with an 'F. Could be naughty; could be perfectly innocent. Please enlighten me!

Surely it was ridiculous to worry about such a thing. But there was something else. The two of them had been giggling together like a pair of adolescents, and looking at each other, and she had put a hand on his arm. And it was almost as if they had established a curious kind of intimacy from which he, Denis Comford, was temporarily excluded.

Could be naughty.

Could be perfectly innocent...

'Would you still love me if I'd got a spot on my nose?'

'Depends how big it was, my love.'

'But you still want my body, don't you,' she whispered, 'in spite of my varicose veins?'

Metaphorically, as he lay beside her, Sir Clixby sidestepped her full-frontal assault as she turned herself towards him.

'You're a very desirable woman, and what's more you know it!' He moved his hands down her naked shoulders and fondled the curves of her bosom.

'I hope I can still do something for you,' she whispered. 'After all, you've promised to do something for me, haven't you?'

Perhaps Sir Clixby should have been a diplomat:

'Do you know something? I thought the Bishop was never going to finish tonight, didn't you? I shall have to

have a word with the Chaplain., God knows where he found him?'

She moved even closer to the Master. 'Come on! We haven't got all night. Julian's train gets in at ten past ten.'

Two of the College dons stood speaking together on the cobblestones outside Lonsdale as the clock on Saint Mary the Virgin struck ten o'clock; and a sole undergraduate passing through the main gate thought he heard a brief snatch of their conversation:

'Having a woman like her in the Lodge? The idea's undiinkable!'

But who the woman was, the passer-by was not to know.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Monday, 26 February

How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? How shall I cast thee off, O Israel?

(Hoj^ch.II.v.8)

AT 8.45 A.M. THERE were just the two of them, Morse and Lewis, exchanging somewhat random thoughts about the case, when the young blonde girl (whom Strange had already noticed) came in with the morning post. She was a very recent addition to the typing pool, strongly recommended by the prestigious Marlborough College in the High, her secretarial skills corroborated by considerable evidence, including a Pitman Shorthand Certificate for 120 wpm.

'Your mail, sir. I'm ...' (she looked frightened) 'I'm terribly sorry about the one on top. I just didn't notice.'

But Morse had already taken the letter from its white envelope, the latter marked, in the top left-hand corner, 'Strictly Private and Personal'.

Hullo Morse

Tried you on the blower at Christmas but they said you were otherwise engaged probably in the boozer.