The Wench Is Dead

for the months (and years) ahead. Furthermore, as a token of their muted optimism, the patient was that very evening be allowed one half-bowl of oxtail soup and a portion vanilla ice-cream – and for Morse any gourmand a la carte menu could hardly have been more gloriously welcome.

Lewis reported to Sister Maclean at 7.30 p.m., and was unsmilingly nodded through Customs without having to declare one get-well card (from Morse's secretary), a tube of mint-flavoured toothpaste (from Mrs Lewis), and clean hand-towel (same provenance). Contentedly, for ten minutes or so, the two men talked of this and that, with Lewis receiving the firm impression that his chief as recovering rapidly.

Fiona the Fair put in a brief appearance towards the end of this visit, shaking out Morse's pillows and placing jug of cold water on his locker.

'Lovely girl,' ventured Lewis.

'You're married – remember?'

'Done any reading yet?' Lewis nodded towards the locker.

'Why do you ask?'

Lewis grinned: 'It's the missus – she was just wondering…'

‘I’m half-way through it, tell her. Riveting stuff!'

'You're not serious-'

'Do you know how to spell 'riveting'?'

'What – one 't' or two, you mean?'

'And do you know what 'stools' are?'

'Things you sit on?'

Morse laughed – a genuine, carefree, pain-free laugh. It was good to have Lewis around; and the vaguely puzzled Lewis was glad to find the invalid in such good spirits.

Suddenly, there beside the bed, re-mitreing the bottom right-hand corner of the blankets, was Sister Maclean herself.

'Who brought the jug of water?' she enquired in her soft but awesome voice.

'It's all right, Sister,' began Morse, 'the doctor said-'

'Nurse Welch!' The ominously quiet words carried easily across the ward, and Lewis stared at the floor in pained embarrassment as Student Nurse Welch walked warily over to Morse's bed, where she was firmly admonished by her superior. Free access to liquids was to be available only w.e.f. the following dawn – and not before. Had the student nurse not read the notes before going the rounds with her water-jugs? And if she had, did she not realize that no hospital could function satisfactorily with such sloppiness? If it mightn't seem important on this occasion, did the student nurse not realize that it could be absolutely vital on the next.

* * *

Another sickening little episode; and for Lewis one still having a nasty taste when a few minutes later he bade chief farewell. Morse himself had said nothing at the time, and said nothing now. Never, he told himself, would have reprimanded any member of his own staff in such cavalier fashion in front of other people: and then, sadly, recalled that quite frequently he had done precisely that. All the same, he would have welcomed the opportunity of a few quiet words with the duly chastened Fiono before she went home.

There was virtually no one around in the ward now: the Ethiopian athlete was doing the hospital rounds once more and two of the other patients had shuffled their way to the gents. Only a woman of about thirty, a slimly attractive blonde-headed woman (Walter Greenaway's daughter, he guessed – and guessed correctly) still sat beside her father. She had given Morse a quick glance as she'd come in but now hardly appeared to notice him as she made way out of the ward, and pressed the 'Down' button in front of the top-floor lifts. It was her father who was monopolising her thoughts, and she gave no more than a cursory thought to the man whose name appeared to be ‘Morse' and whose eyes, as she had noticed, had followed figure with a lively interest on her exit

The time was 8.40 p.m.

Feeling minimally guilty that he had not as yet so much as opened the cover of the precious work that Mrs Lewis had vouchsafed to his keeping, Morse reached for book from his locker, and skimmed through its first paragraph:

‘Diversity rather than uniformity has almost invariably been seen to characterize the criminal behaviour- patterns of any technologically developing society. The attempt to resolve any conflicts and/or inconsistencies which may arise in the analysis and interpretation of such patterns (see Appendix 3, pp. 492 ff.) is absolutely vital; and the inevitable re-interpretation of this perpetually variable data is the raw material for several recent studies into the causation of criminal behaviour. Yet conflicting strategic choices within heterogeneous areas, starkly differentiated creeds, greater knowledge of variable economic performances, as well as physical, physiological, or physiognomical peculiarities -all these facts (as we shall maintain) can suggest possible avenues never exhaustively explored by any previous student of criminal behaviour in nineteen-century Britain.'

'Christ!' muttered Morse (for the second time that evening). A few years ago he might possibly have considered persevering with such incomprehensible twaddle. But no longer. Stopping momentarily only to marvel at the idiocy of the publisher who had allowed such pompous polysyllaby ever to reach the compositor in the first place, he closed the stout work smartly – and resolved to open it never again.

As it happened, he was to break this instant resolution very shortly; but for the moment there was a rather more attractive proposition awaiting him in his locker: the pornographic paperback which Lewis (praise the Lord!) had smuggled in.

A yellow flash across the glossy cover made its promise to the reader of Scorching Lust and Primitive Sensuality – this claim supported by the picture of a superbly buxom beauty sunning herself on some golden-sanded South-sea island, completely naked except for a string of native beads around her neck. Morse opened the book and skimmed (though a little more slowly than before) a second paragraph that evening. And he was immediately aware of a no-nonsense, clear-cut English style that was going to take the palm every time from the sprawling, spawning, sociological nonsense he had just encountered:

'She surfaced from the pool and began to unbutton her clinging, sodden blouse. And as she did so, the young men all fell silent, urging her – praying her! – in some unheard but deafening chorus, to strip herself quickly and completely – their eyes now riveted to the carmined tips of her slimly sinuous fingers as they slipped inside her blouse, and so slowly, so tantalizingly, flicked open a further button…'

'Christ!!' It was the third time that Morse had used the same word that evening, and the one that took the prize for blasphemous vehemence. He leaned back against his pillows with a satisfied smile about his lips, clasping to himself the prospect of a couple of hours of delicious titillation on the morrow. He could bend those covers back easily enough; and it would be no great difficulty temporarily to assume the facial expression of a theological student reading some verses from the Minor Prophets. But whatever happened, the chances that Chief Inspector Morse would ever be fully informed about crime and its punishment in nineteenth-century Shropshire had sunk to zero.

For the moment, at any rate.

He replaced The Blue Ticket in his locker, on top Scales of Injustice – both books now lying on top of the hitherto neglected Murder on the Oxford Canal, that slim volume printed privately under the auspices of The Oxford and County Local History Society.

As Morse nodded off once more, his brain was debating whether there was just the one word misspelled in the brief paragraph he had just read. He would look it up in Chambers when he got home. Lewis hadn't seemed to know, either…