Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

by Colin Dexter

  Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

  Colin Dexter

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR BY COLIN DEXTER.

  PROLEGOMENON

  January, 1996

  A decided boon, therefore, are any multiple-choice items for those pupils in our classrooms who are either inured to idleness, or guilty of wilful ignorance. Such pupils, if simply and appropriately instructed, have only to plump for the same answer on each occasion - let us say, choice (a) from choices (a) (b) (c) (d) - in order to achieve a reasonably regular score of some 25% of the total marks available. This is a wholly satisfactory return for academic incompetence

  (Crosscurrents in Assessment Criteria: Theory and Practice, HMSO, 1983)

  'WHAT TIME DO you call this, Lewis?'

  'The missus's fault. Not like her to be late with the breakfast.'

  Morse made no answer as he stared down at the one remaining unsolved due:

  'Stand for soldiers? (5-4)'

  Lewis took the chair opposite his chief and sat waiting for some considerable while, leafing through a magazine.

  'Stuck, sir?' he asked finally.

  COLIN DEXTER

  'If I was - if I were - I doubt I'd get much help from you.'

  "You never know,' suggested Lewis good-naturedly. 'Perhaps-'

  'Ah!' burst out Morse triumphantly - as he wrote in TOASTRACK. He folded The Times away and beamed across at his sergeant

  "You - are - a - genius, Lewis.'

  'So you've often told me, sir.'

  'And I bet you had a boiled egg for breakfast - with soldiers. Am I right?'

  'What's that got-?'

  'What are you reading there?'

  Lewis held up the tide page of his magazine.

  'Lew-is! There are more important things in life than the Thames Valley Police Gazette.'

  'Just thought you might be interested in one of die articles here ...'

  Morse rose to the bait. 'Such as?'

  'There's a sort of test - you know, see how many points you can score: ARE YOU REALLY WISE AND CULTURED?'

  'Very doubtful in your case, I should think.'

  "You reckon you could do better than I did?'

  'Quite certain of it.'

  Lewis grinned. 'Quitecertain, sir?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'Want to have a go, then?' Lewis's moudi betrayed gende amusement as Morse shrugged his indifference.

  'Multiple-choice questions - you know all about-?'

  'Get on with it!'

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

  'All you've got to do is imagine the world's going to end in exactly one week's time, OK? Then you've got to answer five questions, as honestly as you can.'

  'And you've already answered these questions yourself?'

  Lewis nodded.

  'Well, if you can answer them ... Fire away!'

  Lewis read aloud from the article:

  Question One

  Given the choice of only four CDs or cassettes, which one of the following would you be likely to play at least once?

  (a) A Beatles album

  (b) Faure's Requiem

  (c) An Evening with Victor Borge

  (d) The complete overtures to Wagner's operas

  With a swift flourish, Morse wrote down a letter.

  Question Two

  Which of these videos would you want to watch?

  (a) Casablanca (the film)

  (b) England's World Cup victory (1966)

  (c) Copenhagen Red-Hot Sex (2 hours)

  (d) The Habitat of the Kingfisher (RSPB)

  A second swift flourish from Morse.

  Question Three

  With which of the following women would you wish to spend some, if not all, of your surviving hours?

  COLIN DEXTER

  (a) Lady Thatcher

  (b) Kim Basinger

  (c) Mother Teresa

  (d) Princess Diana

  A third swift flourish.

  Question Four

  If you could gladden your final days with one of the following, which would it be?

  (a) Two dozen bottles of vintage champagne

  (b) Five hundred cigarettes

  (c) A large bottle of tranquillizers

  (d) A barrel of real ale

  Flourish number four, and the candidate (confident of imminent success, it appeared) sat back in the black-leather armchair.

  Question Five

  Which of the following would you read during this period?

  (a) Cervantes' Don Quixote

  (b) Dante's The Divine Comedy

  (c) A bound volume of Private Eye (1995)

  (d) Homer's Iliad

  This time Morse hesitated some while before writing on the pad in front of him. "You did the test yourself, you say?'

  Lewis nodded. 'Victor Borge; the football; Princess

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

  Diana; the champagne; and Private Eye. Just hope Princess Di likes Champers, that's all.'

  'There must be worse ways of spending your last week on earth,' admitted Morse.

  'I didn't do so well, though - not on the marking. I'm not up diere among the cultured and the wise, I'm afraid.'

  'Did you expect to be?'

  'Wouldn't you?'

  'Of course.'

  'Let's hear what you picked, then.'

  'My preferences, Lewis' (Morse articulated his words with precision) 'were as follows: (b); (c); (b); (c); none of them.'

  Turning to the back page, Lewis reminded himself of the answers putanvely adjudged to be correct

  'I don't believe it,' he whispered to himself. Then, to Morse: "You scored the maximum!'

  'Are you surprised?'

  Lewis shook his head in mild bewilderment

  "You chose, what, the Requiem?'

  'Well?'

  'But you've never believed in all that religious stuff.'

  'It's important if it's true, though, isn't it' Let's just say it's a bit like an insurance policy. A beautiful work, anyway.'

  'Says here: "Score four marks for (b). Sufficient recommendation that it was chosen by three of the last four Popes for their funerals."'

  Morse lifted his eyebrows. *You didn't know that''

  COLIN DEXTER

  Lewis ignored the question and continued:

  "Then you chose the sex video!'

  'Well, it was either that or the kingfisher. I've already seen Casablanca a couple of times - and no one's ever going to make me watch a football match again.'

  'But I mean, a sex video ...'

  Morse, however, was clearly unimpressed by such obvious disapprobation. 'It'd be the choice of those three Popes as well, like as not'

  'But it all gets - well, it gets so plain boring after a while.'

  'So you keep telling me, Lewis. And all I'm asking is the chance to get as bored as everybody else. I've only got a week, remember.'

  'I like your next choice, though. Beautiful girl, Kim Basinger. Beautiful'

  'Something of a toss-up, that - between her and Mother Teresa. But I'd already played the God-card.'

  'Then' (Lewis considered the next answer) 'Arrghh, come off it, sir! You didn't even go for the beer! You're supposed to answer these questions honestly.'

  'I've already got plenty of booze in,' said Morse. 'Certainly enough to see me through to Judgment Day. And I don't fancy facing the Great Beyond with a blinding hangover. It'll be a new experience for me -tranquillizers...'

  Lewis looked down again, and proceeded to read out the reasons for Morse's greatest triumph. 'It says here, on Question Five, "Those choosing any of the suggested titles are clearly unfit for high honours. If any choi
ce

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

  whatsoever is made, four marks will therefore be deducted from the final score. If the answer is a timid dash - or similar - no marks will be awarded, but no marks will be deducted. A more positively negative answer - e.g. 'Come off it!' - will be rewarded with a bonus of four marks."' Again Lewis shook his head. 'Nonsense, isn't it? "Positively negative", I mean.'

  'Rather nicely put, I'd've thought,' said Morse.

  'Anyway,' conceded Lewis, 'you score twenty out of twenty according to this fellow who seems to have all the answers.' Lewis looked again at the name printed below the article.' "Rhadamanthus" - whoever he is.'

  'Lord Chief Justice of Appeal in the Underworld.'

  Lewis frowned, then grinned. 'You've been cheating! You've got a copy-'

  'No!' Morse's blue eyes gazed fiercely across at his sergeant. 'The first I saw of that Gazette was when you brought it in just now.'

  'If you say so.' But Lewis sounded less than convinced.

  'Not surprised, are you, to find me perched up there on the topmost twig amongst the intelligentsia?'

  '"The wise and the cultured", actually.'

  'And that's another thing. I think I shall go crackers if I hear three things in my life much more: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; and that wretched bloody word "actually".'

  'Sony, sir.'

  Suddenly Morse grinned. 'No need to be, old friend. And at least you're right about one thing. I did cheat -in a way.'

  COLIN DEXTER

  "You don't mean you... ?' Morse nodded.

  It had been a playful, pleasant interlude. Yet it would have warranted no inclusion in this chronicle had it not been that one or two of the details recorded herein were to linger significandy in the memory of Chief Inspector E. Morse, of the Thames Valley Police HQ.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  In hypothetical sentences introduced by 'if' and referring to past time, where conditions are deemed to be 'unfulfilled', the verb will regularly be found in the pluperfect subjunctive, in both protasis and apodosis

  (Donet, Principles of Elementary Latin Syntax)

  IT is PERHAPS unusual to begin a tale of murder with a reminder to the reader of the rules governing conditional sentences in a language that is incontrovertibly dead. In the present case, however, such a course appears not wholly inappropriate.

  If (if) Chief Inspector Morse had been on hand to observe the receptionist's dress - an irregularly triangled affair in blues, greys, and reds - he might have been reminded of the uniform issued to a British Airways stewardess. More probably, though, he might not, since he had never flown on British Airways. His only flight during the previous decade had occasioned so many fears concerning his personal survival that he had determined to restrict all future travel to those (statistically) far more precarious means of conveyance - the car, the coach, the train, and the steamer.

  11

  COLIN DEXTER

  Yet almost certainly the Chief Inspector would have noted, with approval, the receptionist herself, for in Yorkshire she would have been reckoned a bonny lass: a vivacious, dark-eyed woman, long-legged and well figured; a woman - judging from her ringless, well-manicured fingers - not overdy advertising any marital commitment, and not averse, perhaps, to the occasional overture from the occasional man.

  Pinned at the top-left of her colourful dress was a name-tag: 'Dawn Charles'.

  Unlike several of her friends (certainly unlike Morse) she was quite content with her Christian name. Sometimes she'd felt slightly dubious about it; but no longer. Out with some friends in the Bird and Baby the previous month, she'd been introduced to a rather dashing, radier dishy undergraduate from Pembroke College. And when, a little later, she'd found herself doodling inconsequentially on a Burton beer-mat, the young man, on observing her sinistrality, had initiated a wholly memorable conversation.

  'Dawn? That is your name?'

  She'd nodded.

  'Left-handed?'

  She'd nodded.

  'Do you know that line from Omar Khayyam? "Dreaming when Dawn's left hand was in the sky ..." Lovely, isn't it?'

  Yes, it was. Lovely.

  She'd peeled die top off the beer-mat and made him write it down for her.

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

  Then, very quietly, he'd asked her if he could see her again. At the start of the new term, perhaps?

  She'd known it was silly, for there must have been at least twenty years difference in their ages. If only ... if only he'd been ten, a dozen years older...

  But people did do silly things, and hoped their silly hopes. And that very day, 15 January, was the first full day of the new Hilary Term hi the University of Oxford.

  Her Monday-Friday job, 6-10 p.m., at the clinic on the Banbury Road (just north of St Giles') was really quite enjoyable. Over three years of it now, and she was becoming a fixture there. Most of the consultants greeted her with a genuine smile; several of them, these days, with her Christian name.

  Nice.

  She'd once stayed at a four-star hotel which offered a glass of sherry to incoming guests; and although the private Harvey Clinic was unwilling (perhaps on medical grounds?) to provide such laudable hospitality, Dawn ever kept two jugs of genuine coffee piping hot for her clients, most of them soberly suited and well-heeled gentlemen. A number of whom, as she well knew, were most seriously ill.

  Yes, there had been several occasions when she had heard a few brief passages of conversation between consultant and client which she shouldn't have heard; or which, having heard, she should have forgotten; and which she should never have been willing to report to anyone.

  Not even to the police.

  COLIN DEXTER

  Quite certainly not to the Press ...

  As it happened, 15 January was to prove a day unusually easy for her to recall, since it marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the clinic's opening in 1971. By prior negotiation and arrangement, the clinic was visited that evening, between 7 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., by Radio Oxford, by the local press, and by Mr Wesley Smith and his crew from the Central TV studios out at Abingdon. And particularly memorable for Dawn had been those precious moments when the camera had focused upon her: first, when (as instructed) she had poured a cup of genuine coffee for a wholly bogus 'client'; second, when the cameraman had moved behind her left shoulder as she ran a felt-tipped pen through a name on the appointments list in front of her - but only, of course, after a full assurance that no viewer would be able to read the name itself when the feature was shown the following evening.

  Yet Dawn Charles was always to remember the name:

  Mr J. C. Storrs.

  It had been a fairly new name to her - another of those patients, as Dawn suspected (correctly), whose influence and affluence afforded the necessary leverage and £ s d to jump the queues awaiting their calls to the hospitals up in Headington.

  There was something else she would always remember, too...

  By one of those minor coincidences (so commonplace in Morse's life) it had been just as most of the personnel from the media were preparing to leave, at almost exactly 8.30 p.m., that Mr Robert Tumbull, the Senior Cancer

  DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

  Consultant, had passed her desk, nodded a greeting, and walked slowly to the exit, his right hand resting on the shoulder of Mr J. C. Storrs. The two men were talking quietly together for some while - Dawn was certain of that But certain of little else. The look on the consultant's face, as far as she could recall, had been neither that of a judge who has just condemned a man to death, nor that of one just granting a prisoner his freedom.

  No obvious grimness.

  No obvious joy.

  And indeed there was adequate cause for such uncertainty on Dawn's part, since the scene had been partially masked from her by the continued presence of several persons: a pony-tailed reporter scribbling a furious shorthand as he interviewed a nurse; the TV crew packing away its camera and tri
pods; the Lord Mayor speaking some congratulatory words into a Radio Oxford microphone - all of them standing between her and the top of the three blue-carpeted stairs which led down to the double-doored exit, outside which were affixed the vertical banks of well-polished brass plates, ten on each side, the fourth from the top on the left reading:

  ROBERT H. TURNBULL

  If only Dawn Charles could have recalled a little more.

  'If - that litde conjunction introducing those unfulfilled conditions in past time which, as Donet reminds us, demand the pluperfect subjunctive in both clauses -a syntactical rule which Morse himself had mastered

  COLIN DEXTER

  early on in an education which had been far more fortunate than that enjoyed by the receptionist at the Harvey Clinic.

  Indeed, over the next two weeks, most people in Oxford were destined to be considerably more fortunate than Dawn Charles: she received no communication from the poetry-lover of Pembroke; her mother was admitted to a psychiatric ward out at Litdemore; she was (twice) reminded by her bank manager of the increasing problems arising from the large margin of negative equity on her small flat; and finally, on Monday morning, 29 January, she was to hear on Fox FM Radio that her favourite consultant, Mr Robert H. Turnbull, MB, ChB, FRCS, had been fatally injured in a car accident on CumnorHill.

  16

  CHAPTER Two

  The Master shall not continue in his post beyond die age of sixty-seven. As a simple rule, dierefore, die incumbent Master will be requested to give notice of impending retirement during the University term immediately prior to that birthday. Where, however, such an accommodation does not present itself, the Master is required to propose a particular date not later dian the end of the first week of die second full term after die statutory termination (vide supra)

  (Paragraph 2 (a), translated from die Latin, from die Founders' Statutes of Lonsdale College, Oxford)

  SIR CLIXBY BREAM would be almost sixty-nine years old when he retired as Master of Lonsdale. A committee of Senior Fellows, including two eminent Latin scholars, had found itself unable to interpret the gobbledegook of die Founders' Statutes (vide supra); and since no 'accommodation' (whatever that was) had presented itself, Sir Clixby had first been persuaded to stay on for a short while - then for a longer while.

  Yet this involved no hardship.

  He was subject to none of the normal pressures about