'Nothing specific'
'What d'you mean?' he repeated.
'As I say
...'
'Come on! Tell me!'
'Well, let's say if it became known in the College that Shelly
Cornford
was an insadable nymphomaniac
...
?' 'That
just isn't
fair!’
Angela Storrs got to her feet and drained the last drop of her third drink: 'Who said it
was?
'Where are you going?'
'Upstairs, for a lie-down, if you don't object. I'd had a few before you got back - hadn't you noticed? But I don't suppose so, no. You haven't really noticed me much at all rece
ntly
, have you?'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
But she was already leaving the room, and seemed not to hear.
Storrs took another small sip of his brandy, and pulled the copy of the previous evening's
Oxford Mail
from the lower shelf of the coffee-table, its front-page headline staring at him again:
MURDER AT KIDLINGTON
Woman Shot Through Kitchen Window
'What did you tell Denis?'
'He's got a tutorial, anyway. I just said I'd be out shopping.'
'He told you about the College Meeting?'
She nodded.
‘Y
ou pleased?'
'Uh,uh!'
'It'll be a bit of a nerve-racking time for you.'
You should know!'
'Only a month
of it, diough.'
'What d'you think his chances are?'
'Difficult to say.'
'Will
you
vote for him?'
‘I
don't have a vote.'
'Unless it's a tie
.'
'Agreed. But tha
t's unlikely, they tell me. Arith
imetic
ally quite impossible - if all twenty-three Fellows decide to vote.'
'So you won't really have much say in things at all.'
'Oh, I wouldn't say that. I'll be a bit surprised if one or two of the Fellows don't ask me for a
little
advice about, er, about their choice.'
'And?'
'And I shall try to be helpful
.' 'To Denis, you mean?' 'Now I
didn't
say
that, did I?'
The great cooling-towers of Didcot power-station loomed into view on the left, and for a while
little
more
was said as the two of diem conti
nued the drive south along the A34, before turning off, just before the Ridge-way, towards the charming
little
village of West Ilsley.
‘I
feel I'm letting poor old Denis down a bit,' he said, as the dark blue Daimler pulled up in front of the village pub.
'Don't you think I
do?' she snapped. 'But I don't keep on about it.'
At the bar, he ordered a dry white wine for Shelly Cornford and a pint o
f Old Speckled Hen for himself;
and the pair of them studied the Egon Ronay menu chalked up on a blackboard before making their choices, and sitting down at a window-table overlooking the sodden village green.
'Do you think we should stop meeting?' He asked it qui
etly
.
She appeared to consider the question more as an exercise in logical evaluation than as any emotional dilemma.
'I
don't want that to happen.'
She brushed the back of her right wrist down the front of his dark grey suit.
'Pity we've ordered lunch,' he said qui
etly
. 'We can always give it a miss.' 'Where shall we go?'
'Before we go anywhere,
I
shall want
you
to do something for
me.'
"You mean something for Denis?' She nodded decisively.
'I
can't really promise you too much, you know that.'
She looked swi
ftly
around the tables there, befor
e moving her lips to his ear. 'I
can, though.
I
can promise you everything, Clixby,' she whispered.
From his room in College, Denis Cornford had rung Shelly briefly just before
11
a.m. She'd be out later, as she'd mentioned, but he wanted to tell her about the College Meeting as soon as possible. He told her.
He was pleased - she could sense that.
She
was
pleased - he could sense that
Cornford had half an hour to spare before his next tutorial with a very bright fir
st-year undergraduette from Notti
ngham who possessed one of the most astonishingly retentive memories he had ever encountered, and a pair of the loveliest legs
that
had ever folded themselves opposite him. Yet he experienced not even the mildest of erotic day-dreams as now, briefly, he thought about her.
He walked over to the White Horse, the narrow pub between the two Blackwell's shops just opposite the Sheldonian; and soon h
e was sipping a large Glenmoran
gie, and slowly coming to terms with the prospect that in a month's time he might well be the Master of Lonsdale College. By nature a diffident man, he was for some curious reason beginning to feel a
little
more confident about his chances. Life was a funny business - and the favourite often failed to win the Derby, did it not?
Yes, odd things were likely to happen in life.
Against all the odds, as it were.
His black-stockinged student was sitting cross-legged on the wooden steps outside his room, getting to her feet as soon as she saw him. Being with Cornford, talking with him for an hour every week - that had become the highlight of her time at Oxford. But History was the great fascination in his life - not her.
She knew that.
Prosopagnoia (n.): the failure of any person to recognize the face of any other person, howsoever recently the aforementioned persons may have mingled in each other's company
(Small's Enlarged English Dictionary,
13th
Edition,
1806)
From Oxford railway
station, at 10.20 a.m., Lewis had tried to ring Morse at
HQ.
But to no avail. The dramatic news would have to wait awhile, and at least Lewis now had ample time to execute his second order of the day.
There had been just the two of them at the Oxford Physiotherapy Centre - although 'Centre' seemed a rather grandiloquent description of the ground-floor premises of the large, detached red-brick house halfway down the Woodstock Road ('1901' showing on the black drainpipe): the small office, off the spacious foyer; the single treatment room, to the right, its two beds separated by mobile wooden screens; and an inappropriately luxurious loo, to the left.
Rachel James's distressed partner, a plain-featured, muscular divorcee in her mid-forties, could appare
ntly
throw
little
or no light on the recent tragedy. Each
of
them a fully qualified physiotherapist they had gone freelance after a difference
of
opinion with the Hospital Trust, and two years earlier had decided to join forces and form their own private practice: women for the most part, troubled with ankles and knees and elbows and shoulders. The venture had been fairly successful, although they would have welcomed a few more clients - especially Rachel, perhaps, who (as Lewis learned for a second time) had been wading deeper and deeper into negative equity.
Boyfriends? - Lewis had ventured.
Well, she was attractive - face, figure - and doub
tl
ess
there had been a good many admirers. But no specific beau; no one that Rachel spoke
of
as anyone special; no incoming calls on the office phone, for example.
"That hers?' Lewis had asked.
Yes.'
Lewis took down a white coat from its hook behind the door and
looked
at the oval badge:
chartered society of physiotherapy
printed
round a yellow
crest
He felt inside the stiffly
starched pockets
.
Nothing.
Not even Morse (Lewis allowed the thought) could have made much of
that
Each of the two women had a personal drawer in the office desk, and Lewis looked carefully through the items which Rachel had kept at hand during her own working hours: lip-stick; lip-salve; powder-compact; deodorant stick; a small packet of tissues; two Biros, blue and red; a yellow pencil; a pocket English dictionary (OUP); and a library book. Nothing else. No personal diary; no letters.
Again Lewis felt (though wrongly this
time
) that Morse would have shared his disappointment.
As for Morse, he had called
in at his bachelor flat in North
Oxford before returning to Police HQ. Always, after a haircut, he went through the ritual of washing his hair - and changing his shirt, upon which eve
n a few str
ay hairs left clinging seemed able to effect an intense irritation on what, as he told himself (and others), was a particularly sensitive skin.
When he finally returned to HQ he found Lewis already back from his missions.
'You're looking younger, sir.'
'No, you're wrong. I reckon this case has put years on me already.'
'I meant the haircut.'
'Ah, yes. Rather nicely done, isn't it?'
‘Y
ou had a good morning, sir - apart from the haircut?'
'Well, you know - er - satisfactory. What about you?' Lewis smiled happily.
'Do you want the good news first or the bad news?' 'The bad news.'
'Well, not "bad" - just not "n
ews" at all, really. I don't th
ink we're going to get many leads from her work-place. In fact I don't think we're going to get any.' And Lewis proceeded to give an account of his visit
to the Oxford Physiotherapy Centr
re.
'What time did she get there every morning?'
Lewis consulted his notes. 'Five past, ten past eight -about
then
. Bit early. But if she left it much later she'd hit the heavy Kidlington traffic down into Oxford, wouldn't she?'
'Mm
...
The first treatments don't begin till quarter to nine, you say.'
'Or nine o'clock.'
'What did she do before the place opened?'
'Dunno.'
'Read,
Lewis!'
'Well, like I said, there was a library book in her drawer.'
'What was it?'
'I didn't make a note.'
'Can't you remember?'
Ye-es, Lewis thought he could. Yes!
'Book called
The Masters,
sir - by P. C. Snow.'
Morse laughed and shook his head.
'He wasn't a bloody police constable, Lewis! You mean
C. P.
Snow.'
'Sorry, sir.'
'Interesting, though.' ‘I
n what way?'
But Morse ignored the question.
' When
did she get it from the library?'
'How do I know?'
You just,' said Morse slowly, sarcastically, 'take fourteen days from the date printed for the book's return, which you could have found, if you'd looked, by ge
ntly
opening the front cover.'
'Perhaps they let you have three weeks - at the library she borrowed it from.'
'And which library was that?'
Somehow Lewis managed to maintain his good humour.
'Well, at least I can give you a very straight answer to that: I haven't the faintest idea.' 'And what's the good news?'
This time, it was Lewis's turn to make a slow, impressive pronouncement:
'I know who the fellow is - the fellow in the photo.'
'You do?' Morse looked surprised.
‘
You mean he turned up at the station?'
'In a way, I suppose he did, yes. There was no one like him standing around waiting for his girlfriend. But I had a word with this ticket-collector - young chap who's only been on the job for a few weeks. And he recognized him straightaway. He'd asked to look at his rail pass and he remembered him because he got a bit shirty with him -and probably because of
that
he remembered his name as well.'