Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

Morse looked up, his face puzzled.

'You mean - you went jogging - together - this morning? What time was that?'

'Far too early, wasn't it, David!'

The landlord smiled. 'Stupid, really. On a Sunday morning, too.'

'What time?' repeated Morse.

'Quarter to seven. We met outside the pub here.'

'And where did the pair of you run?'

'Five of us actually, wasn't it, Denis? We ran up to the Plain, up the Iffley Road, across Donnington Bridge, along the Abingdon Road up to Carfax, then through Cornmarket and St Giles' up to the Woodstock Road as far as North Parade, then across to the Banbury, South Parks, and we got back here ...'

'Just before eight,' added Cornford, pointing to Morse's empty glass.

'What's it to be?'

'No, it's my round-'

'Nonsense!'

'Well, if you insist.'

In fact, however, it was the landlord who insisted, and who now walked to the bar as Cornford seated himself.

'You told me earlier' (Morse was anxious to get things

straight) 'you'd been on your own when you went out jogging.'

'No. If I did, you misunderstood me. You said, I think, 'Just you?' And when I said yes, I'd assumed that you were asking if both of us had gone - Shelly and me.'

'And she didn't go?'

'No. She never does.'

'She just stayed in bed?'

'Where else?'

Morse made no suggestion.

'Do you ever go jogging, Inspector?' The question was wearily mechanical.

'Me? No. I walk a bit, though. I sometimes walk down to Summertown for a newspaper. Just to keep fit.'

Cornford almost grinned. 'If you're going to be Master of Lonsdale, you're supposed to be fit It's in the Statutes somewhere.'

'Makes you wonder how Sir Clixby ever managed it!'

Cornford's answer was unexpected.

You know, as you get older it's difficult for young people to imagine you were ever young yourself - good at games, that sort of thing. Don't you agree?'

'Fair point, yes.'

'And the Master was a very fine hockey player - had an England trial, I understand.'

The landlord came back with two pints of bitter; then returned to his bar-tending duties.

Cornford was uneasy, Morse felt sure of that. Something regarding his wife, perhaps? Had she had anything to do with the murder of Geoffrey Owens? Unlikely, surely. One thing looked an odds-on certainty, though:

if Denis Comford had ever figured on the suspeci list, he figured there no longer.

Very soon, after a few desultory passages of conversation, Morse had finished his beer, and was taking his leave, putting Deborah's card into the inside pocket of his jacket, and forgetting it.

Forgetting it only temporarily, though; for later that same evening he was to look at it again - more carefully. And with a sudden, strange enlightenment.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger

(Lamentations, ch. i, v. 12)

FEELING A WONDERFUL sense of relief, Shelly Comford heard the scratch of the key in the front door at twenty-five past eleven. For over two hours she had been sitting upright against the pillows, a white bedjacket over her pyjamas, her mind tormented with the terrifying fear that her husband had disappeared into the dark night, never to return: to throw himself over Magdalen Bridge, perhaps; to lay himself across the railway lines; to slash his wrists; to leap from some high tower. And it was to little avail that she'd listened to any logic that her tortured mind could muster: that the water was hardly deep enough, perhaps; that the railway lines were inaccessible; that he had no razor in his pocket; that Carfax Tower, St Mary's, St Michael's - all were now long shut...

Come back to me, Denis! I don't care what happens

to me; but come back tonight! Oh, God - please,'God - let