Death Is Now My Neighbor

by Colin Dexter

  The bedroom door opened a few moments after Morse had reached the bottom of the creaking wooden staircase.

  “And what do you think all that was about?”

  “Couldn’t you hear?”

  “Most of it,” she admitted.

  She wore a high-necked, low-skirted black dress, with an oval amethyst pinned to the bodice—suitably ensembled for a seat next to her husband in the Fellows’ pews.

  “His hair is whiter than yours, Denis. I saw him when he walked out.”

  The bell still tolled.

  Five minutes to go.

  Cornford pulled on his gown and threw his hood back over his shoulders with practiced precision; then repeated Housman (again inaccurately) as he put his arms around his wife and looked unblinkingly into her eyes.

  “Have you got anything to pray for? Anything that’s worrying you?”

  Shelly Cornford smiled sweetly, trusting that such deep dissimulation would mask her growing, now almost desperate, sense of guilt.

  “I’m going to pray for you, Denis—for you to become Master of Lonsdale. That’s what I want more than anything else in the world,” her voice very quiet now, “and that’s not for me, my darling—it’s for you.”

  “Nothing else to pray for?”

  She moved away from him, smoothing the dress over her energetic hips.

  “Such as what?”

  “Some people pray for forgiveness, that sort of thing, sometimes,” said Denis Cornford softly.

  Morse had walked to the Lodge, where he stood in the shadows for a couple of minutes, reading the various notices about the College’s sporting fifteens, and elevens, and eights; and hoping that his presence there was unobserved—when he saw them. An academically accoutred Cornford, accompanied by a woman in black, had emerged from the foot of the Old Staircase, and now turned away from him toward the Chapel in the inner quad.

  The bell had stopped ringing.

  And Morse walked out into Radcliffe Square; then across into the King’s Arms in Broad Street, where he ordered a pint of bitter, and sat down in the back bar, considering so many things—including a wholly unprecedented sense of gratitude to the Tory Government for its reform of the Sunday licensing laws.

  Chapter Forty-five

  I’d seen myself a don,

  Reading old poets in the library,

  Attending chapel in an MA gown

  And sipping vintage port by candlelight.

  —JOHN BETJEMAN, Summoned by Bells

  In the Hilary Term, in Lonsdale College, on Sunday evenings only, it had become a tradition for the electric lighting to be switched off, and for candles in their sconces to provide the only means of illumination in the Great Hall. Such a procedure was popular with the students, almost all of whom had never experienced the romance of candlelight except during power cuts, and particularly enjoyable for those on the dais whereon the High Table stood, constantly aware as they were of flickering candles reflected in the polished silver of saltcellars and tureens, and the glitter of the cutlery laid out with geometrical precision at every place.

  On such evenings, no particular table plan was provided, although it was the regular custom for the visiting preacher (on this occasion a black bishop from Central Africa) to sit on the right side of the Master, with the College Chaplain on the left. The other occupants of High Table (which was usually fully booked on Sunday evenings) were regularly those who had earlier attended the Chapel service, often with their wives or with a guest; and in recent years, one student invited by each of the Fellows in rotation.

  That evening the student in question was Antony Plummer, the new organ scholar, who had been invited by Julian Storrs for the very good reason that the two of them had attended the same school, the Services School, Dartmouth, to which establishment some members of the armed forces were wont to send their sons while they themselves were being shunted from one posting to another around the world—in former colonies, protectorates, mandated territories, and the few remaining overseas possessions.

  Plummer had never previously been so honored, and from his new perspective, seated between Mr. and Mrs. Storrs, he looked around him lovingly at the gilded, dimly illuminated portraits of the famous alumni—the poets and the politicians, the soldiers and the scientists—who figured so largely in the lineage of Lonsdale. The rafted timbers of the ceiling were lost in darkness, and the shadows were deep on the somber paneling of the walls, as deftly and deferentially the scouts poured wine into the sparkling glasses.

  Storrs, just a little late in the proceedings perhaps, decided it was time to play the expansive host.

  “Where is your father now, Plummer?”

  “Last I heard he was running some NATO exercise in Belgium.”

  “Colonel now, isn’t he?”

  “Brigadier.”

  “My goodness!”

  “You were with him in India, I think.”

  Storrs nodded: “Only a captain, though! I followed my father into the Royal Artillery there, and spent a couple of years trying to teach the natives how to shoot. Not much good at it, I’m afraid.”

  “Who—the natives?”

  Storrs laughed good-naturedly. “No—me. Most of ’em could have taught me a few things, and I wasn’t really cut out for service life anyway. So I opted for a gentler life and applied for a Fellowship here.”

  Angela Storrs had finished the bisque soup, and now complimented Plummer on the anthem through which he had conducted his largely female choir during the Chapel service.

  “You enjoyed it, Mrs. Storrs?”

  “Er, yes. But to be quite truthful, I prefer boy sopranos.”

  “Can you say why that is?”

  “Oh, yes! One just feels it, that’s all. We heard the Fauré Requiem yesterday evening. Absolutely wonderful—especially the ‘In Paradisum,’ wasn’t it, Julian?”

  “Very fine, yes.”

  “And you see,” continued Angela, “I would have known they were boys, even with my eyes shut. But don’t ask me why. One just feels that sort of thing, as I said. Don’t you agree? One shouldn’t try to rationalize everything.”

  Three places lower down the table, one of the other dons whispered into his neighbor’s ear:

  “If that woman gets into the Lodge, I’ll go and piss all over her primroses!”

  By coincidence, colonialism was a topic at the far end of the table, too, where Denis Cornford, his wife beside him, was listening rather abstractedly to a visiting History Professor from Yale.

  “No. Don’t be too hard on yourselves. The Brits didn’t treat the natives all that badly, really. Wouldn’t you agree, Denis?”

  “No, I wouldn’t, I’m afraid,” replied Cornford simply. “I haven’t made any particular study of the subject, but my impression is that the British treated most of their colonials quite abominably.”

  Shelly slipped her left hand beneath the starched white tablecloth, and gently moved it along his thigh. But she could feel no perceptible response.

  At the head of the splendid oak plank that constituted the High Table at Lonsdale, over the roast lamb, served with St. Julien ’93, Sir Clixby had been seeking to mollify the bishop’s bitter condemnation of the English Examination Boards for expecting Rwandan refugees to study the Wars of the Roses. And soon after the profiteroles, the atmosphere seemed markedly improved.

  All the conversation which had been crisscrossing the evening—amusing, interesting, pompous, spiteful—ceased abruptly as the Master banged his gavel, and the assembled company rose to its feet.

  Benedictus benedicatur.

  The words came easily and suavely, from lips that were slightly overred, slightly overfull, in a face so smooth one might assume that it seldom had need of the razor.

  Those who wished, and that was most of them, now repaired to the SCR where coffee and port were being served (though wholly informally) and where the Master and Julian Storrs stood side-by-side, buttocks turned toward the remarkably realistic gas fire.

&nbs
p; “Bishop on his way back to the railway station then?” queried Storrs.

  “On his way back to Africa, I hope!” said the Master with a grin. “Bloody taxi would have to be late tonight, wouldn’t it? And none of you lot with a car here.”

  “It’s this drink-driving business, Master. I’m all in favor of it. In fact, I’d vote for random checks myself.”

  “And Denis there—hullo, Denis!—he was no help either.”

  Cornford had followed their conversation and now edged toward them, sipping his coffee.

  “I sold my old Metro just before Christmas. And if you recall, Master, I only live three hundred yards away.”

  The words could have sounded lighthearted, yet somehow they didn’t.

  “Shelly’s got a car, though?”

  Cornford nodded cautiously. “Parked a mile away.”

  The Master smiled. “Ah, yes. I remember now.”

  Half an hour later, as they walked across the cobbles of Radcliffe Square toward Holywell Street, Shelly Cornford put her arm through her husband’s and squeezed it. But, as before, she could feel no perceptible response.

  Chapter Forty-six

  But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things that would have been better left to silence.

  “Angel!—Angel! I was a child—a child when it happened! I knew nothing of men.”

  “You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit.”

  “Then you will not forgive me?”

  “I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all.”

  “And love me?”

  To this question he did not answer.

  —THOMAS HARDY, Tess of the d’Urbervilles

  “Coffee?” she suggested, as Cornford was hanging up his overcoat in the entrance hall.

  “I’ve just had some.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “No! Leave it a while. I want to talk to you.”

  They sat together, if opposite is together, in the lounge.

  “What did you do when the Chaplain invited us all to confess our manifold sins and wickedness?”

  The measured, civilized tone of Cornford’s voice had shifted to a slightly higher, yet strangely quieter key; and the eyes, normally so kindly, seemed to concentrate ever narrowingly upon her, like an ornithologist focusing binoculars on an interesting species.

  “Pardon?”

  “ ‘In thought, word, and deed’—wasn’t that the formula?”

  She shook her head in apparent puzzlement. “I haven’t the faintest—”

  But his words cut sharply across her protestation. “Why are you lying to me?”

  “What—?”

  “Shut up!” The voice had lost its control. “You’ve been unfaithful to me! I know that. You know that. Let’s start from there!”

  “But I haven’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me! I’ve put up with your infidelity, but I can’t put up with your lies!”

  The last word was hissed, like a whiplash across his wife’s face.

  “Only once, really,” she whispered.

  “Recently?”

  She nodded, in helpless misery.

  “Who with?”

  In great gouts, the tears were falling now. “Why do you have to know? Why do you have to torture yourself? It didn’t mean anything, Denis! It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Hah!” He laughed bitterly. “Didn’t you think it might mean something to me?”

  “He just wanted—”

  “Who was it?”

  She closed her eyes, cheeks curtained with mascara’d tears, unable to answer him.

  “Who was it?”

  But still she made no answer to the piercing question.

  “Shall I tell you?”

  He knew—she realized he knew. And now, her eyes still firmly shut, she spoke the name of the adulterer.

  “He didn’t come here? You went over to the Master’s Lodge?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you went to his bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you undressed for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You stripped naked for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you got between the sheets with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you had sex? The pair of you had sex together?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “Only once.”

  “And you enjoyed it!”

  Cornford got to his feet and walked back into the entrance hall. He felt stunned, like someone who has just been kicked in the teeth by a recalcitrant shire horse.

  “Denis!” Shelly had followed him, standing beside him now as he pulled on his overcoat.

  “You know why I did it, Denis? I did it for you. You must know that!”

  He said nothing.

  “How did you know?” Her voice was virtually inaudible.

  “It’s not what people say, is it? It’s the way they say it. But I knew. I knew tonight … I knew before tonight.”

  “How could you have known? Tell me! Please!”

  Cornford turned up the catch on the Yale lock, and for a few moments stood there, the half-opened door admitting a draft of air that felt bitterly cold.

  “I didn’t know! Don’t you see? I just hoped you’d deny everything—even if it meant you had to lie to me. But you hadn’t even got the guts to lie to me! You didn’t even want to spare me all this pain.”

  The door banged shut behind him; and Shelly Cornford walked back into the lounge where she poured herself a vast gin with minimal tonic.

  And wished that she were dead.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Virgil G. Perkins, author of international best-seller Enjoying Jogging (Crown Publications NY, 1992) collapsed and died while jogging with a group of fellow enthusiasts in St. Paul yesterday. Mr. Perkins, aged 26, leaves behind his wife, Beverley, their daughter, Alexis, and seven other children by previous marriages.

  —Minnesota Clarion, December 23, 1995

  In the King’s Arms, that square, cream-painted hostelry on the corner of Parks Road and Holywell Street, Morse had been remarkably abstemious that evening. After his first pint, he had noticed on the door the pub’s recommendation in the Egon Ronay Guide (1995); and after visiting the loo to inject himself, he had ordered a spinach-and-mushroom lasagne with garlic bread and salad. The individual constituents of this particular offering had never much appealed to him; yet the hospital dietitian (as he recalled) had been particularly enthusiastic about such fare. And, let it be said, the meal had been marginally enjoyed.

  It was 7:45 P.M.

  A cigarette would have been a paradisal plus; and yet somehow he managed to resist. But as he looked around him, at the college crests, the colored prints, the photographs of distinguished local patrons, he was debating whether to take a few more calories in liquid form when the landlord was suddenly beside him.

  “Inspector! I hadn’t seen you come in. This is for you—it’s been here a couple of weeks.”

  Morse took the printed card:

  Let me tell you of a moving experience—very moving! The furniture van is fetching my effects from London to Oxford at last. And on March 18th I’ll be celebrating my south-facing patio with a shower of champagne at 53 Morris Villas, Cowley. Come and join me!

  RSVP (at above address)

  Deborah Crawford

  Across the bottom was a handwritten note: “Make it, Morse! DC.”

  Morse remembered her well … a slim, unmarried blonde who’d once invited him to stay overnight in her north London flat, following a comparatively sober Metropolitan Police party; when he’d said that after such a brief acquaintance such an accommodation might perhaps be inappropriate.

  Yes, that was the word he’d used: “inappropriate.”

  Pompous idiot!

  But he’d given her his address, which she’d vowed she’d never forget.

  Which clearly she had. />
  “She was ever so anxious for you to get it,” began the landlord—but even as he spoke the door that led to Holywell Street had opened, and he turned his attention to the newcomer.

  “Denis! I didn’t expect to see you in tonight. No good us both running six miles on a Sunday morning if we’re going to put all the weight back on on a Sunday night.”

  Morse looked up, his face puzzled.

  “You mean—you went jogging—together—this morning? What time was that?”

  “Far too early, wasn’t it, David!”

  The landlord smiled. “Stupid, really. On a Sunday morning, too.”

  “What time?” repeated Morse.

  “Quarter to seven. We met outside the pub here.”

  “And where did the pair of you run?”

  “Five of us actually, wasn’t it, Denis? We ran up to Plain, up Iffley Road, across Donnington Bridge, along Abingdon Road up to Carfax, then through Cornmarket and St. Giles’ up to Woodstock Road as far as North Parade, then across to Banbury, South Parks, and we got back here.…”

  “Just before eight,” added Cornford, pointing to Morse’s empty glass.

  “What’s it to be?”

  “No, it’s my round—”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Well, if you insist.”

  In fact, however, it was the landlord who insisted, and who now walked to the bar as Cornford seated himself.

  “You told me earlier,” Morse was anxious to get things straight, “you’d been on your own when you went out jogging.”

  “No. If I did, you misunderstood me. You said, I think, ‘Just you?’ And when I said yes, I’d assumed that you were asking if both of us had gone—Shelly and me.”

  “And she didn’t go?”

  “No. She never does.”

  “She just stayed in bed?”

  “Where else?”

  Morse made no suggestion.

  “Do you ever go jogging, Inspector?” The question was wearily mechanical.

  “Me? No. I walk a bit, though. I sometimes walk down to Summertown for a newspaper. Just to keep fit.”

  Cornford almost grinned. “If you’re going to be Master of Lonsdale, you’re supposed to be fit. It’s in the Statutes somewhere.”