Inspector Morse 13 The Remorseful Day

he'd just received: that Barron was a murderer the second thing in the whole

tragic business that now seemed wholly incontrovertible.

He rang Morse once again.  If the call wasn't answered, he would drive down

and see the situation for himself because he was getting a little worried.

The phone was ringing.

The call was answered.

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chapter fifty-seven Ah, could thy grave, at Carthage, be!

Care not for that, and lay me where I fall!

Everywhere heard will be the judgement-call: But at God's altar, oh!

remember me (Matthew Arnold) morse opened the front door.

"And there's me hoping for a rest day, like they tell me they have in the

middle of test matches."

But, in truth, he had not tried over hard to have much of a rest day.  Early

that morning (as we have seen) he had rung Sergeant Dixon and given him a

list of duties.

At 10 a.  m.  he had received a middle-aged, palely intelligent gentleman

from Lloyds Bank, a guru on (inter alia) Wills, Dispositions, Codicils, and

Covenants.

"From what you tell me, Mr Morse, you're not exactly going to bequeath a

large fortune, are you?  And with no relatives, no immediate depend ants no

unmanageable debts well, you might just as well write down a few things on

half a page of A4.  Save yourself money that way.  Do it now, if you like.

Just write a few simple sentences " I leave the house to blank, the bank

balance to blank, the books and records to blank, the residual estate to

blank.  "

That'll cover things for now and you say you do want things covered?  Just

sign it, I'll witness it,

 and I'll see it's carried through, in case, you

know .  Then we can flesh it out a bit later.  "

"No problems really then?"

"No.  We shall, as a bank, charge a small commission of course.  But you

expected that."

"Oh yes, Mr Daniel.  I'd expected that," said Morse.

At 11.  15 a.  m.  he had taken the 2A bus down the Banbury Road as far as

Keble Road, where he alighted and walked across the Woodstock Road to the

Radcliffe Infirmary, where he was directed up to an office on the first floor.

"Yes?  How can I help you?"  The woman behind the desk seemed to be a fairly

important personage with carefully coiffured grey hair and carefully clipped

diction.

"I'm thinking of leaving my body to the hospital."

"You've come to the right place."

What's the drill?  "

She took a form from a drawer.

"Just fill this in."

"Is that all?"

"Make sure you tell your wife and your children and your GP.  You'll avoid

quite a few problems that way."

"Thank you."

"Of course, I ought to tell you we may not want your body.  The situation

does, er, fluctuate.  But you'd expected that."

"Oh yes, I'd expected that," said Morse.

"And you must make sure you die somewhere fairly locally.  We can't come and

collect you from Canada, you know."

Perhaps it was a bleak joke.

"No, of course not."

It had been a joyless experience for Morse, who now walked slowly down St

Giles' towards The Randolph.  He'd thought at the very least they'd have

shown a little gratitude.  Instead, he felt as though they were doing him a

favour by agreeing (provisionally!  ) to accept a corpse that would surely be

presenting apprentice anatomists and pathologists with some

appreciably interesting items: liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, heart.  .

In the Chapters' Bar, Ailish Hurley, his favourite barmaid, greeted him in

her delightful Trish brogue; and two pints of bitter later, as he walked

round into Magdalen Street and almost immediately caught a bus back up to the

top of the Banbury Road, he felt that the world was a happier place than it

had been half an hour earlier.

Once home, he treated himself to a smallish Glenfiddich, deciding that his

liquid intake of calories that lunchtime would nicely balance his dosage of

insulin.  Yes, things were looking up, and particularly so since the phone

hadn't rung all day.  What a wonderful thing it would be to go back to the

days pre telephone (mobile and immobile alike), pre FAX, pre e-mail!

And, to cap it all, he'd bought himself a video in front of which, in mid

afternoon, he'd fallen fairly soundly asleep, though at some point

half-hearing, as he thought, a slippery flop through the letter-box.

It was an hour later when he opened the envelope and read Dixon's notes on

Simon Harrison; on Paddy Flynn; on Mrs Holmes.

Interesting!

Interesting!

Interesting!

And very much as he'd thought.  .

Only one thing was worrying him slightly.  Why hadn't Lewis been in touch?

He didn't want Lewis to get in touch but .  .  .  perhaps he did want Lewis

to get in touch.  So he rang Lewis himself only to discover that the phone

was out of order.  Or was it?  He banged the palm of his right hand against

his forehead.  He'd rung Dixon early that morning from the bedroom; then he'd

had to go downstairs to check an address

 in the phone book, finishing the

call there, and forgetting to replace the receiver in the bedroom.  He'd done

it before.  And he'd do it again.  It was not a matter of any great moment.

He'd ring Lewis himself not that he had anything much to say to him; not for

the minute anyway.