Margaret herself was becoming very angry. 'What's all the fuss about? Just because
'The children have been waiting no end of a time.'
'So what!' Margaret stormed into the house, and Bernard heard the high-pitched voices within. He closed the front gate and then the garage. He locked and bolted the front door. He felt happy, happier than he had felt for many days and many hours.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wednesday, Thursday; 6, 7 October
MORSE DID NOT know what had persuaded him, after seven months of promises and prevarications, to fill in the ragged gaping hole above the kitchen door where the electrician had led in the wires for a new power-point. Everything had been wrong from the start anyway. The Polyfilla powder, purchased some two years previously, had hardened into a solid block of semi-concrete within its packet; the spatula he used for cracking eggs and filling cracks had mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth; and the primitive household steps never had stood four-square on their rickety legs. Perhaps he had taken inspiration from Mr. Edward de Bono and his recipe for lateral thought. But whatever the motive for his sudden urge to see the wretched hole filled in, Morse had taken a vertical plunge, like some free-fall parachutist, from the top of the steps, when the cord restraining the uprights to a functional 30° angle suddenly snapped and the whole apparatus collapsed into a straight line beneath him. Like Hephaestus, thrown o'er the crystal battlements, he landed with an agonizing jolt upon his right foot, lay with a feeling of nausea for two or three minutes, wiping the cold sweat which formed upon his brow, and finally limped his way to the front room and lay breathing heavily on the settee. After a while the foot was a little easier and he felt somewhat reassured; but half an hour later the swelling began and a fitful, sharp pain nagged away at his instep. He wondered if he could drive, but knew it would be foolish to try. It was 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 5 October. Only one thing for it. He hobbled and hopped across to the telephone and rang Lewis, and within the half hour he was sitting disconsolately in the accident room of the Radcliffe Infirmary, waiting for the result of the X-ray. A young boy sitting on the bench next to Morse was wringing his left hand in some agony (car door) and two men badly injured in a road accident were wheeled by for priority treatment. He felt a little less depressed.
He was finally seen by an almost unintelligible Chinese doctor who held up his X-ray pictures to the light with the disinterestedness of a bored guest having a casual glance at one of the holiday slides of his host. 'Nobrocken. Creepancrushes.' From the competent nurse into whose hands he was now delivered, Morse gathered that no bones were broken and that the treatment prescribed was crepe bandage and hospital crutches.
He expressed his thanks to nurse and doctor as he swung along diffidently towards the waiting Lewis. 'You,' shouted the doctor after him. 'You, Mr. Morse. Nowork twodays. You rest. OK?'
'I think I shall be all right, thanks,' said Morse.
'You, Mr. Morse. Youwangebetter, eh? Nowork. Two days. Rest. OK?'
'OK. Oh God!'
Morse hardly slept through Tuesday night; he had a vicious toothache in each of the toes on his foot. He swallowed Disprin after Disprin and finally towards dawn dozed off from sheer exhaustion. Lewis called several times during the prolonged agonies of Wednesday and watched the Inspector fall into a blessedly deep sleep at about 9.00 p.m.
When Lewis greeted him the next morning, Morse felt better; and because he felt better, his mind reverted to the murder of Sylvia Kaye, and because his mind was not now wholly preoccupied with the tribulations of his right foot, he felt a great depression grow upon him. He felt like a quiz contestant who had almost got some of the answers right, had others on the tip of his tongue, but had finished up with nothing. One always longed to start again. .
He lay with these troubled thoughts on his mind. Lewis was fussing around. Good old Lewis. They'd all be having a good laugh at the station, he thought. Humiliating, falling off a ladder. Well he hadn't fallen
'Lewis! You told everybody what happened, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well?'
'They think you're making it up. They think you've got gout really. You know — too much port.'
Morse groaned. He could picture himself limping round with every other person stopping him to enquire into the circumstances of the disaster. He'd write it all out, have it photocopied, and distribute the literature around the station.
'Still painful, sir?'
'Of course it bloody well is. You've got millions of nerve endings all over your bloody toes. You know that, don't you?'
'I had an uncle, sir, who had a beer barrel run over his toes.'
'Shut up,' winced Morse. The thought of anything, let alone a beer barrel, being within three feet of his injured foot was quite unbearable. Beer barrel, though. Morse was getting better.
'Are the pubs open yet?'
'Fancy a drink, sir?' Lewis looked pleased with himself.
'Wouldn't mind a jar.'
'As a matter of fact I brought a few cans in last night, sir.'
'Well?'
Lewis found some glasses, and positioning a chair a goodly distance from 'the foot', poured out the beer.
'Nothing new?' asked Morse.
'Not yet.'
