video,
would she, if she didn't want to be? There are some people like her, you
know. The only real sexual thrill they get is from some sort of submission
you know, that sort of thing.'
'Odd sort of women!'
'Odd? Unusual, perhaps, but. . .'
'How come you know so much about this?'
'When we were in Amsterdam, they invited me to do some porno- filming.
Frank didn't mind. They made a pretty good offer. '
'So you negotiated a fee?'
'Hold on! I only said this particular woman was about my age-' ' - and had a
lovely figure.'
'Would you like to see if it was me?'
'One condition.'
What's that? '
'If I come, you mustn't hook your foot over the side of the mattress.'
'Not much danger of that.'
'Stay with me a bit longer!'
'No. You're not my only patient, and some of these poor devils'll be here
long after you've gone.'
'Will you come and give me a chaste little kiss before you go off duty?'
'No. I'm shooting straight back to Lower Swinstead. I told you: I'm
expecting a phone call.'
'From . . . your husband?'
'You must be kidding! Frank's in Switzerland for a few days. He's far too
mean to call me from there even on the cheap rates.'
'Another man in your life?'
'Jesus! You don't take me for a dyke, do you?'
'You're an amazing girl.'
'Girl? I'll be forty-eight this Thursday.'
'Can I take you out? Make a birthday fuss of you?'
'No chance. According to your notes, you're going to be in at least till the
end of the week.'
'You know, in a way, I wish I could stay in. Indefinitely.'
'Well, I promise one thing: as soon as you're out, I'll be in touch.'
'Please! If you can.'
'And you'll come and see me?'
'If you invite me.'
'I'm inviting you now.'
FR1;chapter one You holy Art, when all my hope is shaken, And through life's
raging tempest I am drawn, You make my heart with wannest love to waken, As
if into a tetter world reborn (From An Die Musik, translated by Basil Swift)
apart (of course) from Wagner, apart from Mozart's compositions for the
clarinet, Schubert was one of the select composers who could occasionally
transport him to the from- tier of tears. And it was Schubert's turn in the
early evening of Wednesday, 15 July 1998, when - The Archers over a bedroom-
slippered Chief Inspector Morse was to be found in his North Oxford bachelor
flat, sitting at his ease in Zion and listening to a Lieder recital on Radio
3, an amply filled tumbler of pale Glenfiddich beside him. And why not? He
was on a few days' furlough that had so far proved quite unexpectedly
pleasurable.
Morse had never enrolled in the itchy-footed regiment of truly adventurous
souls, feeling (as he did) little temptation to explore the remoter corners
even of his native land; and this, principally, because he could now imagine
few if any places closer to his heart than Oxford the city which, though not
his natural mother, had for so many years performed the duties of a loving
foster-parent. As for foreign travel, long
faded were his boyhood dreams
that roamed the sands round Samarkand; and a lifelong pterophobia still
precluded any airline bookings to Bayreuth, Salzburg, Vienna the trio of
cities he sometimes thought he ought to see.
Vienna . . .
The city Schubert had so rarely left; the city in which he'd gained so little
recognition; where he'd died of typhoid fever - only thirty-one.
Not much of an innings, was it thirty-one?
Morse leaned back, listened, and looked semi-contentedly through the french
window. In The Ballad of Heading Gaol, Oscar Wilde had spoken of that little
patch of blue that prisoners call the sky; and Morse now contemplated that
little patch of green that owners of North Oxford flats are wont to call the
garden. Flowers had always meant something to Morse, even from his school
days Yet in truth it was more the nomenclature of the several species, and
their context in the works of the great poets, that had compelled his
imagination: fast- fading violets, the globed peonies, the fields of asphodel
. .
Indeed Morse was fully aware of the etymology and the mythological
