knowing that only a few of the pieces in the jigsaw remained to be fitted.
Earlier in the case the top half of the puzzle had presented itself as a
monochrome blue, like the sky earlier that evening, although of late the
weather had become sultry, as though a thunderstorm were brewing. But the
jigsaw's undifferentiated blue had been duly broken by a solitary seagull or
two, by a piece of soft-white cloud, and later perhaps (when Lewis arrived?
) by what Housman so memorably had called 'the orange band of eve'. He felt
almost happy. There was something else, too: he Would quite certainly wait
until that arrival before having his first drink of the day. It was quite
easy really (as he told himself) to refrain from alcohol for a limited period.
The storm reached North Oxford fifty minutes later, travel- ling from the
south-west at a pace commensurate with Lewis's speed along the
M40.
It may have had something to do with Wagner, but Morse enjoyed the intensity
and the electricity of a thunderstorm, and he watched with deep pleasure the
plashing rain and the dazzling flashes in the lightning-riven sky. From his
viewpoint by the window of his flat, a slightly sagging telephone-wire cut
the leaden heavens in two; and he watched as a succession of single drops of
rain ran along the wire before finally falling off, reminding him of soldiers
crossing a river on rope-harness, 303
and finally dropping off on the other
side. As he had once done himself.
Crossing the river . His mother would never speak of 'dying': always of
'crossing the river'. It was a pleasing conceit; a pleasing metaphor. If
he'd been a poet, he might have written a sonnet about that telephone-wire
just outside. But Morse wasn't a poet. And the storm now ceased as suddenly
as it had started.
And the front-door bell was ringing.
It was after 10 p. m. when, with Lewis now gone, Morse took stock of the
situation with renewed interest, though (truth to tell) with little great
surprise. Lewis had declined the offer of alcohol, and Morse had decided to
prolong his own virtually unprecedented abstinence. He felt tired, and at
10. 30 p. m. decided that he would be early abed. So many times had he
been counselled that beer made a lumpy mattress, that spirits made a hard
pillow, and that in general alcohol was the stuff that nightmares were made
of. So, if that were true, he could perhaps expect to be sleeping the sleep
of the just that night. It would be a new experience.
He put on the RSPB video, and once again watched the wonderful albatross
gliding effordessly across the Antarctic wastes. So relaxing . .
At 11. 15 he switched off the bedroom light and turned as ever on to his
right-hand side, conscious of a clear head, a freshness of mind, and a gently
slumbrous lassitude.
Wonderful.
In spite of his occasional disillusionment about being cast up on to the
shores of light in the first place, it would be wholly untrue to say that
Morse was over-eager to embark upon diat final journey to that further land.
Indeed, like the majority of
mortals, he was something of a hypochondriac; and that night he found himself
becoming increasingly fearful about his own physical well-being. Or
ill-being.
The illuminated green figures on the alarm clock showed 2. 42 a. m. when
he finally abandoned the unequal struggle. His mind was an uncontrollable
whirligig at St Giles' Fair, and the indigestion-pains in his chest and in
his arms were hard and unrelenting. He got up, poured himself a glass of
Alka-Seltzer, poured himself a glass of the single malt, took up his medium-
blue Parker pen, and resumed the exegesis he'd been writing when Lewis had
interrupted him, deciding however to cross out the last (and uncompleted)
