'I don't have a car, myself. My wife does, but it's garaged out in New Road.'
'Quite away away.' ,
'Yes,' repeated Cornford slowly, 'quite a way away.'
As Morse walked down the stairs, he diought he'd
recognized Cornford for exactly what he was: a civilized, courteous, clever man; a man of quiet yet unmistakable resolve, who would probably make a splendid new Master of Lonsdale.
Just two things worried him, the first of them only slightly: if Cornford was going to quote Housman, he jolly well ought to do it accurately.
And he might be wholly wrong about the second ...
The bedroom door opened a few moments after Morse had reached the bottom of the creaking wooden staircase.
'And what do you think all
'Couldn't you hear?'
'Most of it,' she admitted.
She wore a high-necked, low-skirted black dress, with an oval amethyst pinned to the bodice - suitably ensemb-led for a seat next to her husband in the Fellows' pews.
'His hair is whiter than yours, Denis. I saw him when he walked out.'
The bell still tolled.
Five minutes to go.
Cornford pulled on his gown and threw his hood back over his shoulders with practised precision; then repeated Housman (again inaccurately) as he put his arms around his wife and looked unblinkingly into her eyes.
'Have you got anything to pray for? Anything that's worrying you?'
Shelly Cornford smiled sweetly, trusting that such
deep dissimulation would mask her1 growing, now almost desperate, sense of guilt.
'I'm going to pray for you, Denis - for you to become Master of Lonsdale. That's what I want more than anything else in the world' (her voice very quiet now) 'and that's not for me, my darling - it's for you.'
'Nothing else to pray for?'
She moved away from him, smoothing the dress over her energetic hips.
'Such as what?'
'Some people pray for forgiveness, that sort of thing, sometimes,' said Denis Cornford softly.
Morse had walked to the Lodge, where he stood in the shadows for a couple of minutes, reading the various notices about the College's sporting fifteens, and elevens, and eights; and hoping that his presence there was unobserved - when he saw them. An academically accoutred Cornford, accompanied by a woman in black, had emerged from the foot of the Old Staircase, and now turned away from him towards the Chapel in the inner quad.
The bell had stopped ringing.
And Morse walked out into Radcliffe Square; thence across into the King's Arms in Broad Street, where he ordered a pint of bitter, and sat down in the back bar, considering so many things - including a wholly unprecedented sense of gratitude to the Tory Government for its reform of the Sunday licensing laws.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
IN THE HILARY Term, in Lonsdale College, on Sunday evenings only, it had become a tradition for the electric lighting to be switched off, and for candles in their sconces to provide the only means of illumination in the Great Hall. Such a procedure was popular with the students, almost all of whom had never experienced the romance of candlelight except during power-cuts, and particularly enjoyable for those on the dais whereon the High Table stood, constandy aware as they were of flickering candles reflected in die polished silver of saltcellars and tureens, and the glitter of die cudery laid out with geometrical precision at every place.
On such evenings, no particular table-plan was provided, although it was the regular custom for die visiting preacher (on diis occasion a black bishop from Central
Africa) to sit on the right side of the Master, with the College Chaplain on the left. The other occupants of High Table (which was usually fully booked on Sunday evenings) were regularly those who had earlier attended the Chapel service, often with their wives or with a guest; and in recent years, one student invited by each of the Fellows in rotation.
That evening the student hi question was Antony Plummer, the new organ scholar, who had been invited by Julian Storrs for the very good reason that the two of them had attended the same school, the Services School, Dartmouth, to which establishment some members of the armed forces were wont to send their sons whilst they themselves were being shunted from one posting to another around the world - in former colonies, protectorates, mandated territories, and the few remaining overseas possessions.
Plummer had never previously been so honoured, and from his new perspective, seated between Mr and Mrs Storrs, he looked around him lovingly at the gilded, dimly illuminated portraits of the famous alumni - the poets and the politicians, the soldiers and the scientists -who figured so largely in the lineage of Lonsdale. The rafted timbers of the ceiling were lost in darkness, and the shadows were deep on the sombre panelling of die walls, as deftly and deferentially die scouts poured wine into die sparkling glasses.
