'It's a bit of a let-down,' went on Greenaway in his embarrassingly stentorian voice. 'My daughter sometimes brings me one or two books like that.'
'She was the woman – last night?'
The other nodded. 'In library work ever since she was eighteen – twelve years. In the Bodley these last six.'
Morse listened patiently to a few well-rehearsed statistics about the mileage of book-shelving in the warrens beneath the Bodleian; and was already learning something of the daughter's
At 1.30 p.m., after what seemed to him a wretchedly insubstantial lunch, Morse was informed that he was scheduled that afternoon to visit various investigative departments; and that for this purpose the saline-drip would be temporarily removed. And when a hospital porter finally got him comfortably into a wheelchair, Morse felt that he had certainly climbed a rung or two up the convalescence ladder.
It was not until 3.30 p.m. that he returned to the ward, weary, impatient, and thirsty – in reverse order of severity. Roughly, though oddly painlessly, a silent Nessie, just before going off duty, had reaffixed into his right wrist the tube running down from a newly hung drip; and with the eyes of a now fully alert Greenaway upon him, Morse decided that Steve Mingella's sexual fantasies might have to be postponed a while. And when a small, mean-faced Englishwoman (doubtless Violet's understudy) had dispensed just about enough viscous liquid from her tureen to cover the bottom of his soup bowl, Morse's earlier euphoria had almost evaporated. He wouldn't even be seeing Lewis – the latter (as he'd told Morse) taking out the missus for some celebration (reason unspecified). At 7.05 p.m. he managed to sort out his headphones for
Chapter Seven
Copyright ©1978 by Wilfrid M. Deniston, QBE, MC. No part whatsoever of this publication may be reproduced, by any process, without the written authority of the copyright owner.
The author wishes to acknowledge the help he has so freely received from several sources; but particularly from the Bodleian Library, Oxford; from the
Further details of the trials mentioned in the following pages may be found in the editions of
Those who explore the back-streets and the by-ways of great cities, or indeed our small cities, will sometimes stumble (almost literally, perhaps) upon sad memorials, hidden in neglected churchyards – churchyards which seem wholly separated from any formal ecclesiastical edifice and which are come across purely by accident at far side of red-bricked walls, or pressed upon by tall houses – untended, silent, forgotten. Until recent years, such a churchyard was to be found at the lower end of pretty little road in North Oxford, now designated Middle Way, which links the line of Summertown shops South Parade with the expensively elegant houses along Squitchey Lane, to the north. But in the early nineteen-sixties most of those tomb-stones which had stood in irregular ranks in the Summertown Parish Churchyard (for such was its official name) were removed from their original, supra-corporal sites in order to afford a rather less melancholic aspect to those who were about pay their deposits on the flats being built upon those highly desirable if slightly lugubrious acres. Each there in narrow cell had once been laid, and each would there remain; yet after 1963 no one, for certain, could have marked that final resting place.
The few headstones which are adequately preserved which are to be found – even to this day -leaning almost upright against the northern perimeter of the aforesaid enclave, are but one tenth or so of the memorials once erected there, in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, by relatives, and friends whose earnest wish was to perpetuate the
names of those souls, now perhaps known only to God, who passed their terrestrial lives in His faith and fear. One of these headstones, a moss-greened, limestone slab (standing the furthest away but three from the present thoroughfare) bears an epitaph which may still be traced by the practised eye of the patient epigraphist – though make haste if you are to decipher that disintegrating lettering!
Beyond this poignant (if unusually lengthy) epitaph there lies a tale of unbridled lust and drunken lechery; a tale of a hapless and a helpless young woman who found herself at the mercy of coarse and most brutally uninhibited boatmen, during an horrendous journey made nearly one hundred and twenty years ago -a journey whose details are the subject-matter of our present narrative.
Joanna Franks hailed originally from Derby. Her father, Daniel Carrick, had been accredited as an agent to the Nottinghamshire and Midlands Friendly Society; and for a good deal of his married life he appears to have maintained a position as a reasonably prosperous and well-respected figure in his home community. Later, however – and certainly in the few years prior to the tragic death of his only daughter (there was a younger brother, Daniel) – he encountered a period of hard times.
Joanna's first husband was F. T. Donavan, whose family sprang from County Meath. He is described by one of his contemporaries as 'an Irishman of many parts', and being a man of large physique we learn that he was familiarly (and predictably) known by the nickname of Hefty' Donavan. He was a conjurer by profession (or byone of them!) and appeared in many theatres and music-halls, both in London and in the provinces. In order to attract some badly needed publicity, he had at some unspecified date assumed the splendidly grandiloquent title of 'Emperor of all the Illusionists'; and the following theatre handbill was printed at his own expense to herald his appearance at the City of Nottingham Music Hall in early September 1856:
'Mr DONAVAN, citizen of the World and of Ireland, most humbly and respectfully informs all members of the upper and the lower nobilities, folk of the landed gentry, and the citizens of the historic district of Nottingham, that in view of his superior and unrivalled excellencies in MAGIC and DECEPTION, he has had conferred upon him, by the supreme conclave of the Assembly of Superior Magicians, this last year, the unchallenged title of EMPEROR of all the Illusionists, and this particularly by virtue of the amazing trick of cutting off a cockerel's head and then restoring the bird to its pristine animation. It was this same DONAVAN, the greatest man in the World, who last week diverted his great audience in Croydon by immersing his whole body, tightly secured and chained, in a tank of the most corrosive acid for eleven minutes and forty-five seconds, as accurately measured by scientific chronometer.'
Three years earlier Donavan had written (and found a publisher for) his only legacy to us, a work entitled
