Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

At 8:45 A.M. there were just the two of them, Morse and Lewis, exchanging somewhat random thoughts about the case, when the young blonde girl (whom Strange had already noticed) came in with the morning post. She was a very recent addition to the typing pool, strongly recommended by the prestigious Marlborough College in the High, her secretarial skills corroborated by considerable evidence, including a Pitman Shorthand Certificate for 120 wpm.

“Your mail, sir. I’m...” (she looked frightened) “I’m terribly sorry about the one on top. I just didn’t notice.”

But Morse had already taken the letter from its white envelope, the latter marked, in the top left-hand corner, “Strictly Private and Personal.”

Hullo Morse,

Tried you on the blower at Christmas but they said you were otherwise engaged probably in the boozer. I’m getting spliced. No, don’t worry! I’m not asking you for anything this time!! He’s nice and he’s got a decent job and he says he loves me and he’s okay in bed so what the hell. I don’t really love him and you bloody well know why that is, don’t you, you miserable stupid sod. Because I fell in love with you and I’m just as stupid as you are. St. Anthony told me to tell you something but I’m not going to. I want to put my arms round you and hug you tight. God help me! Why didn’t you look for me a bit harder Morse?

No address.

Of course, there was no address.

“Did you read this?” Morse spoke in level tones, looking up at his secretary with unblinking eyes.

“Only till... you know, I realized...”

“You shouldn’t have opened it.”

“No, sir,” she whispered.

“You can type all right?”

She nodded.

“And you can take shorthand?”

She nodded, despairingly.

“But you can’t read?”

“As I said, sir...” The tears were starting.

“I heard what you said. Now just you listen to what I’m saying. This sort of thing will never happen again!”

“I promise, sir, it’ll—”

“Listen!” Morse’s eyes suddenly widened with an almost manic gleam, his nostrils flaring with suppressed fury as he repeated in a slow, soft voice: “It won’t happen again — not if you want to work for me any longer. Is that clear? Never. Now get out,” he hissed, “and leave me, before I get angry with you.”

After she had left, Lewis too felt almost afraid to speak.

“What was all that about?” he asked finally.

“Don’t you start poking your bloody nose—” But the sentence went no further. Instead, Morse picked up the letter and passed it over, his saddened eyes focused on the wainscoting.

After reading the letter, Lewis said nothing.

“I don’t have much luck with the ladies, do I?”

“She’s still obviously wearing the pendant.”

“I hope so,” said Morse; who might have said rather more, but there was a knock on the door, and DC Learoyd was invited into the sanctum.

Morse handed over the newspaper cuttings concerning Lord Hardiman, together with the photograph, and explained Learoyd’s assignment:

“Your job’s to find out all you can. It doesn’t look all that promising, I know. Hardly blackmail stuff these days, is it? But Owens thinks it is. And that’s the point. We’re not really interested in how many times he’s been knocking on the doors of the knocking shops. It’s finding the nature of his connection with Owens. ”

Learoyd nodded his understanding, albeit a little unhappily.

“Off you go, then.”

But Learoyd delayed. “Whereabouts do you think would be a good place to start, sir?”

Morse’s eyeballs turned ceilingward.

“What about looking up His Lordship in Debrett’s Peerage , mm? It might just tell you where he lives, don’t you think?”

“But where can I find a copy?”

“What about that big building in the center of Oxford — in Bonn Square. You’ve heard of it? It’s called the Central Library.”

Item 2 in the manila file, as Lewis had discovered earlier that morning, was OBE (Overtaken By Events, in Morse’s shorthand). The Cheltenham firm of solicitors had been disbanded in 1992, its clientele dispersed, to all intents and purposes now permanently incommunicado.

Item 3 was to be entrusted into the huge hands of DC Elton, who now made his entrance; and almost immediately his exit, since he passed no observations, and asked no questions, as he looked down at the paunchy pedophiliac from St. Albans.

“Leave it to me, sir.”

“And while you’re at it, see how the land lies here. ” Morse handed over the documentation on Item 4 — the accounts sheets from the surgical appliances company in Croydon.

“Good man, that,” commented Lewis, as the door closed behind the massive frame of DC Elton.

“Give me Learoyd every time!” confided Morse. “At least he’s got the intelligence to ask a few half-witted questions.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“Wouldn’t you need a bit of advice if you called in at some place selling surgical appliances? With Elton’s great beer gut they’ll probably think he’s called in for a temporary truss.”

Lewis didn’t argue.

He knew better.

Also OBE, as Lewis had already discovered, was Item 5. The address Owens had written on the letter was — had been — that of a home for the mentally handicapped in Wimbledon. A Social Services inspection had uncovered gross and negligent malpractices; and the establishment had been closed down two years previously, its management and nursing staff redeployed or declared redundant. Yet no prosecutions had ensued.

“Forlorn hope,” Lewis had ventured.

And Morse had agreed. “Did you know that ‘forlorn hope’ has got nothing to do with ‘forlorn’ or ‘hope’? It’s all Dutch: ‘Verloren hoop’ — ‘lost troop.’ ”

“Very useful to know, sir.”

Seemingly oblivious to such sarcasm, Morse contemplated once more the four sets of initials that comprised Item 6:

with those small ticks in red Biro set against the first three of them.

“Any ideas?” asked Lewis.

“ ‘Jonathan Swift,’ obviously, for ‘JS.’ I was only talking about him to the Super yesterday.”

“Julian Storrs?”

Morse grinned. “Perhaps all of ’em are dons at Lonsdale.”

“I’ll check.”

“So that leaves Items seven and eight — both of which I leave in your capable hands, Lewis. And lastly my own little assignment in Soho, Item nine.”

“Coffee, sir?”

“Glass of iced orange juice!”

After Lewis had gone, Morse reread Ellie’s letter, deeply hurt, and wondering whether people in the ancient past had found it quite so difficult to cope with disappointments deep as his. But at least things were over; and in the long run that might make things much easier. He tore the letter in two, in four, in eight, in sixteen, and then in thirty-two — would have torn it in sixtyfour, had his fingers been strong enough — before dropping the little square pieces into his wastepaper basket.

“No ice in the canteen, sir. Machine’s gone kaput.”

Morse shrugged indifferently and Lewis, sensing that the time might be opportune, decided to say something which had been on his mind:

“Just one thing I’d like to ask...”

Morse looked up sharply. “You’re not going to ask me where Lonsdale is, I hope!”

“No. I’d just like to ask you not to be too hard on that new secretary of yours, that’s all.”