Colin Dexter: The Wench Is Dead

'Morse! M-O-R-S-E!'

'Yes – but it was expected, you know. They'd already me that Wilfrid had only a few days left to live. And we all do get older, don't we? Older every single day.'

Yes, yes, clear off! I'm bloody tired, can't you see?

'Fifty-two years, we'd been together.'

Morse, belatedly, realized who she was, and he nodded sympathetically now:’ Long time!'

‘He liked being here, you know. He was so grateful to you all-'

‘I'm afraid I only came in a couple of days ago-'

‘That's exactly why he wanted me to thank all of you – all his old friends here.' She spoke in a precise, prim manner, with the diction of a retired Latin mistress.

‘He was a fine man… ' began Morse, a little desperately. 'I wish I'd got to know him. As I say, though, I got in a day or two ago – stomach trouble – nothing serious… '

The hearing-aid began to whistle shrilly, picking up some internal feedback, and the old lady fiddled about ineffectually with the ear-piece and the control switches. 'And that's why (she began now to talk in intermittent italics) 'I've got this little book for you. He was so proud of it. Not that he said so, of course – but he was. It took him a very long time and it was a very happy day for him when it was printed.'

Morse nodded with gratitude as she handed him a little booklet in bottle-green paper covers. 'It's very kind of you because, as I say, I only came in-'

‘Wilfrid would have been so pleased.'

Oh dear.

‘And you will promise to read it, won't you?'

'Oh yes – certainly!'

The old lady fingered her whistling aid once more, smiled with the helplessness of a stranded angel, said 'Goodbye, Mr Horse!' and moved on to convey her undying gratitude to the occupant of the adjacent bed.

Morse looked down vaguely at the slim volume thus presented: it could contain no more than – what? – some twenty-odd pages. He would certainly look at it later, as he'd promised. Tomorrow, perhaps. For the moment, he could think of nothing but closing his weary eyes once more, and he placed Murder on the Oxford Canal, by Wilfrid M. Deniston, inside his locker, on top of Scales of Injustice and The Blue Ticket – the triad of new works he'd so recently acquired. Tomorrow, yes…

Almost immediately he fell into a deep slumber, where he dreamed of a long cross-country race over the fields of his boyhood, where there, at the distant finishing-line, sat a topless blonde, a silver buckle clasped around her waist, holding in her left hand a pint of beer with a head of winking froth.

The he endoscopy, performed under a mild anaesthetic at 10 o'clock the following morning (Monday), persuaded the surgeons at the JR2 that in Morse's case the knife was probably not needed; their prognosis, too, was modestly encouraging, provided the patient could settle into a more cautiously sober and restrictive regimen for the months (and years) ahead. Furthermore, as a token of their muted optimism, the patient was that very evening be allowed one half-bowl of oxtail soup and a portion vanilla ice-cream – and for Morse any gourmand àlacarte menu could hardly have been more gloriously welcome.

Lewis reported to Sister Maclean at 7.30 p.m., and was unsmilingly nodded through Customs without having to declare one get-well card (from Morse's secretary), a tube of mint-flavoured toothpaste (from Mrs Lewis), and clean hand-towel (same provenance). Contentedly, for ten minutes or so, the two men talked of this and that, with Lewis receiving the firm impression that his chief as recovering rapidly.

Fiona the Fair put in a brief appearance towards the end of this visit, shaking out Morse's pillows and placing jug of cold water on his locker.

'Lovely girl,' ventured Lewis.

'You're married – remember?'

'Done any reading yet?' Lewis nodded towards the locker.

'Why do you ask?'

Lewis grinned: 'It's the missus – she was just wondering…'

‘I’m half-way through it, tell her. Riveting stuff!'

'You're not serious-'

'Do you know how to spell "riveting"?'

'What – one "t" or two, you mean?'

'And do you know what "stools" are?'

'Things you sit on?'

Morse laughed – a genuine, carefree, pain-free laugh. It was good to have Lewis around; and the vaguely puzzled Lewis was glad to find the invalid in such good spirits.

Suddenly, there beside the bed, re-mitreing the bottom right-hand corner of the blankets, was Sister Maclean herself.

'Who brought the jug of water?' she enquired in her soft but awesome voice.

'It's all right, Sister,' began Morse, 'the doctor said-'

'Nurse Welch!' The ominously quiet words carried easily across the ward, and Lewis stared at the floor in pained embarrassment as Student Nurse Welch walked warily over to Morse's bed, where she was firmly admonished by her superior. Free access to liquids was to be available only w.e.f. the following dawn – and not before. Had the student nurse not read the notes before going the rounds with her water-jugs? And if she had, did she not realize that no hospital could function satisfactorily with such sloppiness? If it mightn't seem important on this occasion, did the student nurse not realize that it could be absolutely vital on the next.

Another sickening little episode; and for Lewis one still having a nasty taste when a few minutes later he bade chief farewell. Morse himself had said nothing at the time, and said nothing now. Never, he told himself, would have reprimanded any member of his own staff in such cavalier fashion in front of other people: and then, sadly, recalled that quite frequently he had done precisely that. All the same, he would have welcomed the opportunity of a few quiet words with the duly chastened Fiono before she went home.

There was virtually no one around in the ward now: the Ethiopian athlete was doing the hospital rounds once more and two of the other patients had shuffled their way to the gents. Only a woman of about thirty, a slimly attractive blonde-headed woman (Walter Greenaway's daughter, he guessed – and guessed correctly) still sat beside her father. She had given Morse a quick glance as she'd come in but now hardly appeared to notice him as she made way out of the ward, and pressed the 'Down' button in front of the top-floor lifts. It was her father who was monopolising her thoughts, and she gave no more than a cursory thought to the man whose name appeared to be ‘Morse' and whose eyes, as she had noticed, had followed figure with a lively interest on her exit

The time was 8.40 p.m.

Feeling minimally guilty that he had not as yet so much as opened the cover of the precious work that Mrs Lewis had vouchsafed to his keeping, Morse reached for book from his locker, and skimmed through its first paragraph:

‘Diversity rather than uniformity has almost invariably been seen to characterize the criminal behaviour-patterns of any technologically developing society. The attempt to resolve any conflicts and/or inconsistencies which may arise in the analysis and interpretation of such patterns (see Appendix 3, pp. 492 ff.) is absolutely vital; and the inevitable re-interpretation of this perpetually variable data is the raw material for several recent studies into the causation of criminal behaviour. Yet conflicting strategic choices within heterogeneous areas, starkly differentiated creeds, greater knowledge of variable economic performances, as well as physical, physiological, or physiognomical peculiarities -all these facts (as we shall maintain) can suggest possible avenues never exhaustively explored by any previous student of criminal behaviour in nineteen-century Britain.'