Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour
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moving to somewhere nearer the children or the grandchildren, since his marriage to Lady Muriel had been sine prole. Moreover, he was blessedly free from the usual uxorial bleatings about a nice little thatched cottage in Dorset or Devon, since Lady Muriel had been in her grave these past three years.
The position of Head of House at any of the Oxbridge Colleges was just about the acme of academic ambition; and since three of the last four Masters had been knighted within eighteen months of their appointments, it had been natural for him to be attracted by the opportunity of such pleasing preferment And he had been so attracted; as, even more strongly, had the late Lady Muriel.
Indeed, the incumbent Master, a distinguished mathematician in his earlier days, had never enjoyed living anywhere as much as in Oxford - ten years of it now. He'd learned to love the old city more and more the longer he was there: it was as simple as that. Of course he was somewhat saddened by the thought of his imminent retirement: he would miss the College - miss the challenges of running the place - and he knew that the sight of the furniture van outside the wisteria-clad front of the Master's Lodge would occasion some aching regret But there were a few unexpected consolations, perhaps. In particular, he would be able (he supposed) to sit back and survey with a degree of detachment and sardonic amusement the in-fighting that would doubtless arise among his potential successors.
It was the duty of the Fellows' Appointments Com-
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mittee (its legality long established by one of the more readily comprehensible of die College Statutes) to stipulate diree conditions for diose seeking election as Master: first, that any candidate should be 'of sound mind and in good health'; second, that die candidate should 'not have taken Holy Orders'; diird, that die candidate should have no criminal record widiin 'die territories administered under die governance of His (or Her) Most Glorious Majesty'.
Such stipulations had often amused the present Master.
If one judged by die longevity of almost all die Masters appointed during die twentiedi century, physical well-being had seldom posed much of a problem; yet mental stability had never been a particularly prominent feature of his immediate predecessor, nor (by all accounts) of his predecessor's predecessor. And occasionally Sir Clixby wondered what die College would say of himself once he was gone ... With regard to die exclusion of die clergy, he assumed that die Founders (like Edward Gibbon diree centuries later) had managed to trace die source of all human wickedness back to die Popes and die Prelates, and had rallied to die cause of anticlerical-ism ... But it was die possibility of die candidate's criminality which was die most amusing. Presumably any convictions for murder, rape, sodomy, treason, or similar misdemeanours, were to be discounted if shown to have taken place outside die jurisdiction of His (or Her) Most Glorious Majesty. Very strange.
Strangest of all, however, was die absence of any mention in die original Statute of academic pedigree;
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and, at least theoretically, there could be no bar to a candidate presenting himself with only a Grade E in GCSE Media Studies. Nor was there any stipulation that the successful candidate should be a senior (or, for that matter, a junior) member of the College, and on several occasions 'outsiders' had been appointed. Indeed, he himself, Sir Clixby, had been imported into Oxford from 'the other place', and then (chiefly) in recognition of his reputation as a resourceful fund-raiser.
On this occasion, however, outsiders seemed out of favour. The College itself could offer at least two candidates, each of whom would be an admirable choice; or so it was thought. In the Senior Common Room the consensus was most decidedly in favour of such 'internal' preferment, and the betting had hardened accordingly.
By some curious omission no entry had hitherto been granted to either of these ante-post favourites in the pages of Who's Who. From which one may be forgiven for concluding that the aforesaid work is rather more concerned with the third cousins of secondary aristocrats than with eminent academics. Happily, however, both of these personages had been considered worthy of mention in Debrett's People of Today 1995:
STORRS, Julian Charles; b 9 July 1935; Educ Christ's Hosp, Services S Dartmouth, Emmanuel Coll Cambridge (BA, MA); m Angela Miriam Martin 31 March 1974; Career Capt RA (Indian Army Secondment); Pitt Rivers Reader in Social Anthropology and Senior Fellow Lonsdale Coll Oxford; Recreations taking taxis, playing bridge.
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CORNFORD, Denis Jack; b 23 April 1942; EtfweWygges-ton GS Leicester, Magdalen Coll Oxford (MA, DPhil); m Shelly Ann Benson 28 May 1994; Career University Reader in Mediaeval History and Fellow Lonsdale Coll Oxford; Recreations kite-flying, cultivation of orchids.
Each of these entries may appear comparatively unin-formative. Yet perhaps in the more perceptive reader they may provoke one or two interesting considerations.
Was, for example, the Senior Fellow of Lonsdale so affluent that he could afford to take a taxi everywhere? Did he never travel by car, coach, or train? Well, quite certainly on special occasions he would travel by train.
Oh, yes.
As we shall see.
And why was Dr Comford, soon to be fifty-four years old, so recently converted to the advantages of latter-day matrimony? Had he met some worthy woman of comparable age?
Oh, no.
As we shall see.
CHAPTER THREE
How right
I should have been to keep away, and let You have your innocent-guilty-innocent night Of switching partners in your own sad set: How useless to invite
The sickening breathlessness of being young Into my life again
(Philip Larkin, UK Dante)
DENIS CORNFORD, omnium consensu, was a fine his- · torian. Allied with a mind both sharp and rigorously honest was a capacity for the assemblage and interpretation of evidence that was the envy of the History Faculty at Oxford. Yet in spite of such qualities, he'was best known for a brief monograph on the Battle of Hastings, in which he maintained that the momentous conflict between Harold of England and William of Normandy had taken place one year earlier than universally acknowledged. In 1065.
In the Trinity Term of 1994, Cornford - a slimty-built, smallish, pleasantly featured man - had taken sabbatical leave at Harvard; and there - somehow and somewhere,
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in Cambridge, Massachusetts - something quite extraordinary had occurred. For six months later, to the amazement and amusement of his colleagues, the confirmed bachelor of Lonsdale had returned to Oxford with a woman who had agreed to change her name from Shelly Benson to Shelly Cornford: a student from Harvard who had just gained her Master's degree in American History, twenty-six years old - exactly half the age of her new husband (for this was her second marriage).
It is perhaps not likely that Shelly would have reached the semi-final heats of any Miss Massachusetts beauty competition: her jawline was slightly too square, her shoulders rather too strong, her legs perhaps a little on the sturdy side. Yet there were a good many in Lonsdale College - both dons and undergraduates - who were to experience a curious attraction to the woman now putting in fairly regular appearances in Chapel, at Guest Nights, and at College functions during the Michaelmas Term of 1994. Her wavy, shoulder-length brown hair framed a face in which the widely set dark brown eyes seemed sometimes to convey the half-promise of a potential intimacy, whilst her quietly voiced New England accent could occasionally sound as sweetly sensual as some enchantress's.
Many were the comments made about the former Shelly Benson during those first few terms. But no one could ever doubt what Denis Cornford had seen in her, for it was simply what others could now so clearly see for themselves. So from the start Shelly Cornford was regularly lusted after; her husband secretly envied. But the
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couple themselves appeared perfectly happy: no hint of infidelity on her part; no cause for jeal
ousy on his.
Not yet
Frequently during those days they were to be seen walking hand-in-hand the short distances from their rooms in Holywell Street to the King's Arms, or the Turf Tavern ('Find Us If You Can!'), where in bars blessedly free from juke-box and fruit-machine Shelly had quickly acquired a taste for real ale and a love for the ambience of the English public house.
Occasionally the two of them ventured further afield in and around Oxford; and one evening, just before Christmas 1994, they had taken the No. 2 bus from Cornmarket up to another King's Arms, the one in the Banbury road, where amid many unashamedly festive young revellers Cornford watched as his (equally young) wife, with eyes half-closed, had rocked her shoulders sensuously to the thudding rhythm of some pop music, her black-stockinged diighs alternately lifted and lowered as though she were mentally disco-dancing. And at diat point he was conscious of being the oldest person in the bar, by about twenty years; inhabiting alien territory there; wholly excluded from the magic circle of die night; and suddenly sadly aware that he could never even begin to share the girlish animality of die woman he had married.
Comford had said nothing dial evening.
Nor had he said anydiing when, diree months later, at die end-of-term Gaudy, he had noticed, beneadi die table, die left hand of Julian Storrs pressed briefly against Shelly's right thigh as she sat drinking rather a lot of
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Madeira, after drinking rather a lot of red wine at dinner, after drinking rather a lot of gin at the earlier reception .!. her chair perhaps unnecessarily close to the Senior Fellow seated on her right, the laughing pair leaning together in some whispered, mutual, mouth-to-ear exchange. Perhaps it was all perfectly harmless; and Cornford sought to make little of it. Yet he ought (he knew it!) to have said a few words on that occasion -lighdy, with a heavy heart.
It was only late in die Michaelmas Term 1995 that Cornford finally did say something to his wife ...
They had been seated one Tuesday lunchtime in the Turf Tavern, he immediately opposite his wife as she sat in one of the wooden wall-seats in die main bar, each of them enjoying a pint of London Pride. He was eagerly expounding to her his growing conviction dial die statistical evidence concerning the number of deadis resultant from die Black Deadi in 1348 had been wildly misinterpreted, and dial die supposed demographic effects consequent upon that plague were - most decidedly! - extremely suspect. It should all have been of some interest, surely? And yet Cornford was conscious of a semi-preoccupied gaze in Shelly's eyes as she stared over his left shoulder into some more fascinating area.
All right. She ought to have been interested - but she wasn't. Not everyone, not even a trained historian like his wife, was going to be automatically endiralled by any re-evaluation of some abstruse mediaeval evidence.
He'd diought litde of it.
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And had drunk his ale.
They were about to leave when a man, in his early thirties or so, walked over to them - a tall, dark, slimly built Arab with a bushy moustache. Looking direcdy into Shelly's eyes, he spoke softly to her:
'Madame! You are the most beautiful lady I see!'
Then, turning to Cornford: 'Please excuse, sir!' With which, picking up Shelly's right hand, he imprinted his full-lipped mouth most earnesdy upon die back of her wrist.
After the pair of them had emerged into the cobbled lane that led up again into Holywell Street, Cornford stopped and so roughly pushed his wife's shoulder dial she had no choice but to stand diere facing him.
'You - are - a - bloody - flirt! Did you know diat? All the time we were in diere - all die time I was telling you-'
But he got no further.
The tall figure of Sir Clixby Bream was striding down towards diem.
'Hell-o! You're both just off, I can see that. But what about anodier litde snifter? Just to please me?'
'Not for me, Master.' Cornford trusted diat he'd masked die bitterness of his earlier tone. 'But if... ?' He turned to his wife.
'No. Not now. Anodier time. Thank you, Master.'
Widi Shelly still beside him, Cornford walked radier blindly on, suspecting (how odierwise?) diat die Master had witnessed die awkward, angry scene. And then, a few steps later - almost miraculously - he felt his wife's arm link with his own; heard die wonderful words spoken in
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her quiet voice: 'Denis, I'm so very sorry. Do please forgive me, my darling.'
As the Master stooped slightly to pass beneath the entrance of the Turf Tavern, an observer skilled in the art of labiomancy would have read the two words on his smoothly smiling mouth: 'Well! Well!'
CHAPTER FOUR
Wednesday, 7 February
DISCIPLE (weeping): O Master, .1 disturb thy meditations.
MASTER: Thy tears are plural; the Divine
Will is one.
DISCIPLE: I seek wisdom and truth, yet my
thoughts are ever of lust and die necessary pleasures of a woman.
MASTER: Seek not wisdom and truth, my
son; seek radier forgiveness. Now go in peace, for verily hast diou disturbed my meditations - of lust and of the necessary pleasures of a woman
(K'ung-Fu-Tsu, from Analects XXIII)
'WELL, AT LEAST it's left on time.'
'Not surprising, is it? The bloody thing starts from Oxford. Give it a chance, though. We'll probably run into signalling failure somewhere along the line.'
She smiled, attractively. 'Funny, really. They've been
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signalling on the railways for - what? - a hundred and fifty years, and with all these computers and things..."
'Over one hundred and seventy years, if we want to be accurate - and why shouldn't we? Eighteen twenty-five when the Stockton to Darlington line was opened.'
Yeah. We learned about that in school. You know, Stephenson's Rocket and all that'
'No, my dear girl. A few years later, that was. Stephen-son's first locomotive was called The Locomotion - not very difficult to remember, is it?'
'No.'
The monosyllable was quietly spoken, and he knew that he'd made her feel inadequate again.
She turned away from him to look through the carriage window, spotting the great sandstone house in Nuneham Park, up towards the skyline on the left More than once he'd told her something of its history, and about Capability Brown and Somebody Adams; but she was never able to remember things as accurately as he seemed to expect He'd told her on their last train journey, for example, about the nationalization of the railways after World War II: 1947 (or was it 1948?).
So what?
Yet there was one year she would never forget the year the network changed its name to 'British Rail'. Her father had told her about that; told her she'd been bom on that very same day. In diat very same year, too.
In 1965.
'Drinks? Refreshments?'
An overloaded trolley was squeezing a squeaky passage
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along the aisle; and the man looked at his wristwatch (10.40 a.m.) as it came alongside, before turning to the elegantly suited woman seated next to him:
'Fancy anything? Coffee? Bit too early for anything stronger, perhaps?'
'Gin and tonic for me. And a packet of plain crisps.'
Sod him! He'd been pretty insufferable so far.
A few minutes later, after pouring half his can of McEwan's Export Ale into a plastic container, he turned towards her again; and she felt his dry, slightly cracked lips pressed upon her right cheek. Then she heard him say the wonderful word that someone else had heard a month or two before; heard him say 'Sorry'.
She opened her white-leather handbag and took out a tube of lipsalve. As she passed it to him, she felt his firm, slim fingers move against the back of her wrist; then move along her lower arm, beneath the sleeve of her light-mauve Jaeger jacket the fingers of a pianist And she knew that very soon - the Tu
rbo Express had just left Reading - the pianist would have been granted the licence to play with her body once more, as though he were rejoicing in a gentle Schubert melody.
She had never known a man so much in control of himself.
Or of her. - .
The train stopped just before Slough.
When, ten minutes later, it slowly began to move forward again, the Senior Conductor decided to introduce himself over the intercom.
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'Ladies and Gentlemen. Due to a signalling failure at Slough, this train will now arrive at Paddington approximately fifteen minutes late. We apologize to customers for this delay.'
The man and the woman, seated now more closely together, turned to each other - and smiled.
'What are you thinking?' she asked.
You often ask me that, you know. Sometimes I'm not diinking of anything.'
'Well?'
'I was only thinking that our Senior Conductor doesn't seem to know the difference between "due to" and "owing to".'
'Not sure /do. Does it matter?'
'Of course it matters.'
'But you won't let it come between us?'
'I won't let anything come between us,' he whispered into her ear.
For a few seconds they looked lovingly at each other. Then he lowered his eyes, removed a splayed left hand from her stockinged thigh, and drank his last mouthful of beer.
'Just before we get into Paddington, Rachel, there's something important I ought to tell you.'
She turned to him - her eyes suddenly alarmed.
He wanted to put a stop to the affair?
He wanted to get rid of her?
He'd found another woman? (Apart from his wife, of course.)
'Tickets, please!'
He looked as if he might be making his maiden
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voyage, the young ticket-collector, for he was scrutinizing each ticket proffered to him with preternatural concentration.
The man took both his own and the young woman's ticket from his wallet: cheap-day returns.
'This yours, sir?'
·Yes.'
·You an GAP?'
'As a matter of fact I am not, no.' (The tone of his voice was quiedy arrogant.) 'To draw a seniorcitizen pension in the United Kingdom a man has to be sixty-five years of age. But a Senior Railcard is available to a man who has passed his sixtieth birthday - as doubdess you know.'