Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

Morse now produced his second photograph - a small passport-sized photograph of two people: the woman, Rachel James (no doubt of that), turning partially round and slighdy upward in order to kiss die cheek of a considerably older man widi a pair of smiling eyes beneadi a distinguished head of greying hair.

'Who's he, sir?'

'Dunno. We could find out pretty quickly, though, if we put his photo in die local papers.'

'If he's local.'

'Even if he's not local, I should diink.'

'Bit dodgy, sir.'

'Too dodgy at this stage, I agree. But we can try another angle, can't we? Tomorrow's Tuesday, and die day after that's Wednesday - Woden's day..."

"You mean he may turn up at die station?'

'If die card's fairly recent, yes.'

'Unless he's heard she's been murdered.'

'Or unless he murdered her himself.'

'Worth a try, sir. And if he does turn up, it'll probably mean he didn't murder her..."

Morse made no comment

'Or, come to think of it, it might be a fairly clever tiling to do if he did murder her.'

Morse drained his glass and stood up.

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DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

"You know something? Ireckon orange juice occasionally germinates your brain cells.'

As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun.

"You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens - the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'

'Death is always the next-door neighbour,' said Morse sombrely. 'But don't let it affect your driving, Lewis!'

75

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wednesday, 21 February

Orandum est ut sit nuns sana in corpore sano (Our aim? Just a brain that's not addled with pox, And a guaranteed dean bill-of-health from the docs)

(Juvenal, Satires X)

THE NEXT MEETING of the Lonsdale Fellows had been convened for 10 a.m.

In the Stamper Room.

William Leslie Stamper, b. 1880, had graduated from Oxford University in 1903 with the highest marks (it is said) ever recorded in Classical Moderations. The bracketed caveat in the previous sentence would be unnecessary were it not that the claim for such distinction was perpetuated, in later years, by one person only - by W. L. Stamper himself. And it is pointless to dwell upon the matter since no independent verification is available: the relevant records had been removed from Oxford to a safe place, thereafter never to be seen again, during the First World War - a war in which Stamper had not been an active participant, owing to an illness which was unlikely to prolong his eminendy promising career as a don for more dian a couple of years or so. Such non-

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DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

participation in the great events of 1914-18 was a major sadness (it is said) to Stamper himself, who was frequently heard to lament his own failure to figure among the casualty lists from the fields of Flanders or Passchendaele.

Now, the reader may readily be forgiven for assuming from the preceding paragraph that Stamper had been a time-server; a dissembling self-seeker. Yet such an assumption is highly questionable, though not necessarily untrue. When, for example, in 1925, the Mastership of Lonsdale fell vacant, and nominations were sought amid the groves of Academe, Stamper had refused to let his name go forward, on the grounds that if ten years earlier he had been declared unfit to fight in defence of his country he could hardly be considered fit to undertake the governance of the College; specifically so, since the Statutes stipulated a candidate whose body was no less healthy than his brain.

Thereafter, in his gende, scholarly, pedantic manner, Stamper had passed his years teaching the esoteric skills of Greek Prose and Verse Composition - until retiring at the age of sixty-five, two years before the statutory limit, on the grounds of ill-health. No one, certainly not Stamper himself (it is said), anticipated any significant continuation of his life, and the College Fellows unanimously backed a proposal that the dear old boy should have die privilege, during the few remaining years of his life, of living in the finest set of rooms diat the College had to offer.

Thus it was that the legendary Stamper had stayed on in Lonsdale as an honorary Emeritus Fellow, with full

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COLIN DEXTER

dining rights, from the year of his retirement, 1945, to 1955; and then to 1965 ... and 1975; and almost indeed until 1985, when he had finally died at the age of 104 -and then not through any dysfunction of the bodily organs, but from a fall beside his rooms in the front quad after a heavy bout of drinking at a Gaudy, his last words (it is said) being a whispered request for the Madeira to be passed round once again.

The agenda which lay before Sir Clixby Bream and his colleagues that morning was short and fairly straightforward:

(i) To receive apologies for absence

(ii) To approve the minutes of the previous meeting

(already circulated) (iii) To consider the Auditors' statement on College