Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'You don't sound all diat surprised?'

'Little in life surprises me any longer. The big thing is that we're getting things straight at last. Well done!'

'So your girl wasn't involved.'

'I don't think so.'

'Did she tell you anything important?'

'I'm not sure. We know Owens had got something on Storrs, and perhaps ... it might be he had something on Cornford as well.'

'Cornford? How does he come into things?'

'She tells me, our Tory lass, that she saw him going into Owens' house last Thursday.'

'Phew!'

'I'm just going back to HQ, and then I'll be off to see our friends the Cornfords - both of 'em - if I can park.'

'Last time you parked on the pavement in front of the Clarendon Building.'

'Ah, yes. Thank you, Lewis. I'd almost forgotten that'

'Not forgotten your injection, I hope?'

'Oh no. That's now become an automatic part of my lifestyle,' said Morse, who had forgotten all about his lunchtimejab.

The phone was ringing when Morse opened the door of his office.

'Saw you coming in,' explained Strange.

·Yes, sir?'

'It's all these forms I've got to fill in - retirement forms. They give me a headache.'

'They give me a headache.'

'At least you know how to fill 'em in.'

'Can we leave it just a litde while, sir? I don't seem able to cope with two things at once these days, and I've got to get down to Oxford.'

'Let it wait! Just don't forget you'Vi be filling in die same forms pretty soon.'

Bloxham Drive was still cordoned off, the police presence still pervasively evident But Adele Beatrice Cecil -alias Ann Berkeley Cox, author of Topless in Torremolinos - was waved dirough by a sentinel PC, just as Geoffrey Owens had been waved through over a fortnight earlier, on die morning diat Rachel James had been murdered.

As she let herself into Number i, she was immediately aware dial the house was (literally) almost freezing. Why

hadn't she left the heating on? How good to have been able to jump straight into a hot bath; or into an electric-blanketed bed; or into a lover's arms ...

For several minutes she thought of Morse, and of what he had asked her. What on earth had he suspected? And suddenly, alone again now, in her cold house, she found herself shivering.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

To an outsider it may appear that the average Oxbridge don works but twenty-four weeks out of the annual fifty-two. If therefore at any point in the academic year it is difficult to locate the whereabouts of such an individual, most assuredly this circumstance may not constitute any adequate cause for universal alarm

(A Workload Analysis of University Teachers, ed. HARRY JUDGE)

JUST AFTER 4 P.M. that same day, Morse rang the bell beside the red-painted front door of an elegant, ashlared house just across from the Holywell Music Room. It was the right house, he knew that, with the Lonsdale Crest fixed halfway between the neatly paned windows of the middle and upper storeys.

There was no answer.

There were no answers.

Morse retraced his steps up to Broad Street and crossed die cobbles of Radcliffe Square to the Porters' Lodge at Lonsdale.

'Do you know if Dr Cornfbrd's in College?'

The duty porter rang a number; then shook his head.

'Doesn't seem to be in his rooms, sir.*

'Has he been in today?'

'He was in this morning. Called for his mail - what, ten? Quarter past?'

'You've no idea where he is?'

The porter shook his head. 'Doesn't come in much of a Wednesday, Dr Cornford. Usually has his Faculty Meeting Wednesdays.'

'Can you try him for me there? It's important'