Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

Lewis came back into the kitchen once more.

Dr. Cornford would be happy to meet Morse whenever it suited. Five o’clock that afternoon? Before Chapel? In his room in Lonsdale?

Morse nodded.

“And I rang the Storrs again, sir. They’re back in Oxford. Seems they had a bit of lunch in Burford on the way. Do you want me to go round?”

Morse looked up in some puzzlement.

“What the hell for, Lewis?”

The bells would ring to call her

In valleys miles away:

“Come all to church, good people;

Good people, come and pray.”

But here my love would stay.

Morse inquired at the Lodge, then turned left and walked along the side of the quad to the Old Staircase, where on the first floor he saw, above the door to his right, the Gothic-style white lettering on its black background: DR. D. J. CORNFORD.

“I suppose it’s a bit early to offer you a drink, Chief Inspector?”

Morse looked at his wristwatch.

“Is it?”

“Scotch? Gin? Vodka?”

“Scotch, please.”

Cornford began to pour an ever increasingly liberal tot of Glenmorangie into a tumbler.

“Say ‘when’!”

It seemed that the Chief Inspector may have had some difficulty in enunciating the monosyllable, for Cornford paused when the tumbler was half filled with the pale-golden malt.

“When!” said Morse.

“No ice here, I’m afraid. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to adulterate it, anyway.”

“Yes, I would, if you don’t mind. Same amount of water, please. We’ve all got to look after our livers.”

Two doors led off the high-ceilinged, oak-paneled, book-lined room; and Cornford opened the one that led to a small kitchen, coming back with a jug of cold water.

“I would have joined you normally — without the water! — but I’m reading the Second Lesson in Chapel tonight,” it was Cornford’s turn to consult his wristwatch, “so we mustn’t be all that long. It’s that bit from the Epistle to the Romans, Chapter thirteen — the bit about drunkenness. Do you know it?”

“Er, just remind me, sir.”

Clearly Cornford needed no copy of the text in front of him, for he immediately recited the key verse, with appropriately ecclesiastical intonation:

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying...

“You’ll be reading from the King James version, then?”

“Absolutely! I’m an agnostic myself; but what a tragedy that so many of our Christian brethren have opted for these new-fangled versions! ‘Boozing and Bonking,’ I should think they translate it.”

Morse sat sipping his Scotch contentedly. He could have suggested “Fux and Sux”; but decided against it.

Cornford smiled. “What do you want to see me about?”

“Well, in a way it’s about that last bit of your text: the ‘strife and envying’ bit. You see, I know you’re standing for the Mastership here...”

“Yes?”

Morse took a deep breath, took a further deepish draught, and then told Cornford of the murder that morning of Geoffrey Owens; told him that various documents from the Owens household pointed to a systematic campaign of blackmail on Owens’ part; informed him that there was reason to believe that he, Cornford, might have been — almost certainly would have been — one of the potential victims.

Cornford nodded quietly. “Are you sure of this?”

“No, not sure at all, sir. But—”

“But you’ve got your job to do.”

“You haven’t received any blackmail letters yourself?”

“No.”

“I’ll be quite blunt, if I may, sir. Is there anything you can think of in the recent past, or distant past, that could have been used to compromise you in some way? Compromise your candidature, say?”

Cornford considered the question. “I’ve done a few things I’m not very proud of — haven’t we all? — but I’m fairly sure I got away with them. That was in another country, anyway...”

Morse finished the quotation for him: “… and, besides, the wench is dead.”

Cornford’s pale gray eyes looked across at Morse with almost childlike innocence.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me about them?”

“No. But only because it would be an embarrassment for me and a waste of time for you.”

“You’re a married man, I understand.”

“Yes. And before someone else tells you, my wife is American, about half my age, and extremely attractive.” The voice was still pleasantly relaxed, yet Morse sensed a tone of quiet, underlying strength.

“ She hasn’t been troubled by letters, anonymous letters, anything like that?”

“She hasn’t told me of anything.”

“ Would she tell you?”

Did Morse sense a hint of uneasy hesitation in Cornford’s reply?

“She would, I think, yes. But you’d have to ask her. ”

Morse nodded. “I know it’s a bit of a bother — but I shall have to do that, I’m afraid. She’s, er, she’s not around?”

Cornford again looked at his wristwatch.

“She’ll be coming over to Chapel very shortly.”

“Has there been much feeling — much tension — between you and the, er, other candidate?”

“The atmosphere on High Table has been a little, let’s say, uncomfortable once or twice, yes. To be expected, though, isn’t it?”

“But you don’t throw insults at each other like those boxers before a big fight?”

“No, we just think them.”

“No whispers? No rumors?”

“Not as far as I’m aware, no.”

“And you get on reasonably well with Mr. Storrs?”

Cornford got to his feet and smiled again, his head slightly to one side.

“I’ve never got to know Julian all that well, really.”

The Chapel bell had begun to ring — a series of monotonous notes, melancholy, ominous almost, like a curfew.

Ten minutes to go.

“ Come ye to church, good people,

Good people, come and pray ,”

quoted Cornford.

Morse nodded, as he ventured one final question:

“Do you mind me asking you when you got up this morning, sir?”

“Early. I went out jogging — just before seven.”

“Just you?”

Cornford nodded vaguely.

“You didn’t go out after that — for a paper? In the car, perhaps?”

“I don’t have a car, myself. My wife does, but it’s garaged out on New Road.”

“Quite a way away.”

“Yes,” repeated Cornford slowly, “quite a way away.”

As Morse walked down the stairs, he thought he’d recognized Cornford for exactly what he was: a civilized, courteous, clever man; a man of quiet yet unmistakable resolve, who would probably make a splendid new Master of Lonsdale.

Just two things worried him, the first of them only slightly: If Cornford was going to quote Housman, he jolly well ought to do it accurately.

And he might be wholly wrong about the second…

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.