The Wench Is Dead

Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship

And social comfort, in a hospital

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh)

There is a sadness which invariably and mysteriously accompanies the conclusion of any journey, and the end of any sojourn. Whether or not such sadness is a presage of the last journey we all must take; whether or not it is, more simply, a series of last, protracted goodbyes – it is not of any import here to speculate. But for Morse, the news that he was forthwith to be discharged from the JR2 was simultaneously wonderful and woeful. Music awaited him? Indeed! Soon he would be luxuriating again in Wotan's Farewell from the last act of Die Walkure; and turning up Pavarotti fff from one of the Puccini’s – certainly in mid- morning, when his immediate neighbours were always out and about on their good works for Oxfam. Books, too. He trusted that the Neighbourhood Watch had done its duty in North Oxford, and that his first edition of A Shropshire Lad (1896) was still in its place on his shelves, that slim, white volume that stood proudly amongst its fellows, carrying no extra insurance-cover, like a Royal Prince without a personal bodyguard. Yes, it would be good to get home again: to please himself about what he listened to, or read, or ate… or drank. Well, within reason. Yet, quite certainly, he would miss the hospital! Miss the nurses, miss the fellow-patients, miss the routine, miss the visitors miss so much about the institution which, with its few faults and its many virtues, had admitted him in his sickness and was now discharging him in a comparative health.

But the departure from Ward 7C was not, for Morse, to be a memorable experience. When the message came – hardly a bugle-call! – to join a group of people who were to be ambulanced up to North Oxford, he had little opportunity of saying farewell to anyone. One of his ward-mates ('Waggie') was performing his first post-operatively independent ablutions in the wash-room; another was very fast asleep; one had just been taken to the X-ray Department; the Ethiopian torch-bearer was sitting in his bed, with Do-Not-Disturb written all over him, reading The Blue Ticket (!); and the last was (and had been for hours) closeted behind his curtains, clearly destined little longer for this earthly life; perhaps, indeed, having already said his own farewells to everybody. As for the nurses, most were bustling purposively about their duties (one or two new faces, anyway), and Morse realized that he was just another patient, and one no longer requiring that special care of just one week ago. Eileen he had not expected to see again, now back to her normal Nights, as she'd told him. Nor was Sister herself anywhere to be seen as he was wheeled out of the ward by a cheerful young porter with a crew-cut and ear-rings. The Fair Fiona, though, he did see – sitting patiently in the next bay beside an ancient citizen, holding a sputum-pot in front of his dribbling lips. With her free hand she waved, and mouthed a 'Good luck!'. But Morse was no lip-reader and, uncomprehending, he was pushed on through the exit corridor where he and his attendant waited for the service-lift to arrive at Level 7.

Chapter Thirty

Lente currite, noctis equi!

(Oh gallop slow, you horses of the night!)

(Ovid, Amores)

Although Mrs Green had kept Morse's partial central-heating partially on, the flat seemed cold and unwelcoming. It would have been good for anyone to be there to welcome him: certainly (and especially) Christine – or Eileen, or Fiona; even, come to think of it, the dreaded Dragon of the Loch herself. But there was no one. Lewis had not been in to clear up the stuff stuck through the letter-box, and Morse picked up two white-enveloped Christmas cards (one from his insurance company, with the facsimiled signature of the managing director); and his two Sunday newspapers. Such newspapers, although there was an occasional permutation of titles, invariably reflected the conflict in Morse's mind between the Cultured and the Coarse – the choice between the front page of the present one, Synod in Dispute over Disestablishment, and Sex Slave's Six-Week Ordeal in Silk-lined Coffin of the other. If Morse chose the latter first (as, in fact, he did) at least he had the excuse that it was undoubtedly the finer headline. And this Sunday, as usual, he first flicked through the pages of full-breasted photographs and features on Hollywood intrigues and Soap infidelities. Then, he made himself a cup of instant coffee (which he much preferred to 'the real thing') before settling down to read about the most recent fluctuations on the world's stock-markets, and the bleak prospects for the diseased and starving millions of the world's unhappy continents.

At half-past five the phone rang, and Morse knew that if he had one wish only it would be for the caller to be Christine.

The caller was Christine.

Not only had she located the rare (and extraordinarily valuable) book of which Morse had enquired, but she had spent an hour or so that afternoon ('Don't tell anyone!') reading through the relevant pages, and discovering ('Don't be disappointed!') that only one short chapter was given over to the interview, between Samuel Carter and an ageing Walter Towns, concerning the trial of the boatmen.

'That's wonderful!' said Morse. 'Where are you ringing from?'

'From, er, from home.' (Why the hesitation?)

'Perhaps-'

'Look!' she interrupted. 'I've made a photocopy. Would you like me to send it through the post? Or I could-'

'Could you read it quickly over the phone? It's fairly short, you say?'

'I'm not a very good reader.'

‘Put the phone down – and I'll ring you back! Then we can talk as long as we like.'

'I'm not as hard up as all that, you know.'

'All right – fire away!'

'Page 187, it begins – ready?'

'Ready, miss!'

'Of the persons encountered in Perth in these last months of 1884 was a man called Walter Towns. Although he was known as a local celebrity, I found it difficult to guess the quality which had avowedly brought such renown to the rather – nay, wholly! – miserable specimen to whom I soon was introduced. He was a small man, of only some five feet in stature, thin, and of a gaunt mien, with deeply furrowed creases down each of his cheeks from eye to mouth; furthermore, his exceedingly sallow complexion had remained untouched by the rays of a sun that is powerful in this region, and his hollow aspect was further enhanced by the complete absence of teeth in the upper jaw. Yet his eyes spoke a latent (if limited) intelligence; and also a certain dolefulness, as if he were remembering things done long ago and things done ill. In truth, the situation pertaining to this man was fully as melodramatic as my readers could have wished; for he had been reprieved from the gallows with minutes only to spare. It was with the utmost interest and curiosity, therefore, that I questioned him.

A woman had been murdered near Oxford in 1860, on the local canal, and suspicion had centred on the crew of a narrowboat plying south towards London. The four members of the crew, including both Towns himself and a lad of some fourteen years, had duly been arrested and brought to Court. Whilst the youth had been acquitted, the three others had been convicted, and incarcerated in the gaol in the city of Oxford, awaiting public execution. It was here, two or three minutes following the final visit of the Court Chaplain to the prisoners in their condemned cells, that Towns had received the news of his reprieve. Few humans, certainly, can have experienced a peripeteia' (Christine here reverted to the spelling) 'so dramatic to their fortunes. Yet my conversation with Towns proved a matter of some considerable disappointment. Barely literate as the man was (though wholly understandably so) he was also barely comprehensible. His West Country dialect (as I straightway placed it) was to such an extent o'erlaid with the excesses of the Australian manner of speech that I could follow some of his statements only with