Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

'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

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

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

28

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

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

COLIN DEXTER

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 Turbo 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.