Dexter, Colin - Death is now my Neighbour (rtf).rtf

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR by Colin Dexter.

prolegomenon

January, 1996

A decided boon, therefore, are any multiple-choice items for those pupils in our classrooms who are either inured to idleness, or guilty of wilful ignorance. Such pupils, if simply and appropriately instructed, have only to plump for the same answer on each occasion - let us say, choice (a) from choices (a) (b) (c) (d) - in order to achieve a reasonably regular score of some 25% of the total marks available. This is a wholly satisfactory return for academic incompetence

(Crosscurrents in Assessment Criteria: Theory and Practice, HMSO, 1983)

'what time do you call this, Lewis?'

'The missus's fault. Not like her to be late with the breakfast.'

Morse made no answer as he stared down at the one remaining unsolved due:

'Stand for soldiers? (5-4)'

Lewis took the chair opposite his chief and sat wait­ing for some considerable while, leafing through a magazine.

'Stuck, sir?' he asked finally.

COLIN DEXTER

'If I was - if I were - I doubt I'd get much help from you.'

"You never know,' suggested Lewis good-naturedly. 'Perhaps-'

'Ah!' burst out Morse triumphantly - as he wrote in toastrack. He folded The Times away and beamed across at his sergeant

"You - are - a - genius, Lewis.'

'So you've often told me, sir.'

'And I bet you had a boiled egg for breakfast - with soldiers. Am I right?'

'What's that got-?'

'What are you reading there?'

Lewis held up the tide page of his magazine.

'Lew-is! There are more important things in life than the Thames Valley Police Gazette.'

'Just thought you might be interested in one of die articles here ...'

Morse rose to the bait. 'Such as?'

'There's a sort of test - you know, see how many points you can score: are you really wise and cultured?'

'Very doubtful in your case, I should think.'

"You reckon you could do better than I did?'

'Quite certain of it.'

Lewis grinned. 'Quitecertain, sir?'

'Absolutely.'

'Want to have a go, then?' Lewis's moudi betrayed gende amusement as Morse shrugged his indifference.

'Multiple-choice questions - you know all about-?'

'Get on with it!'

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

'All you've got to do is imagine the world's going to end in exactly one week's time, OK? Then you've got to answer five questions, as honestly as you can.'

'And you've already answered these questions yourself?'

Lewis nodded.

'Well, if you can answer them ... Fire away!'

Lewis read aloud from the article:

Question One

Given the choice of only four CDs or cassettes, which one of the following would you be likely to play at least once?

(a) A Beatles album

(b) Faure's Requiem

(c) An Evening with Victor Borge

(d) The complete overtures to Wagner's operas

With a swift flourish, Morse wrote down a letter.

Question Two

Which of these videos would you want to watch?

(a) Casablanca (the film)

(b) England's World Cup victory (1966)

(c) Copenhagen Red-Hot Sex (2 hours)

(d) The Habitat of the Kingfisher (RSPB)

A second swift flourish from Morse.

Question Three

With which of the following women would you wish to spend some, if not all, of your surviving hours?

COLIN DEXTER

(a) Lady Thatcher

(b) Kim Basinger

(c) Mother Teresa

(d) Princess Diana

A third swift flourish.

Question Four

If you could gladden your final days with one of the following, which would it be?

(a) Two dozen bottles of vintage champagne

(b) Five hundred cigarettes

(c) A large bottle of tranquillizers

(d) A barrel of real ale

Flourish number four, and the candidate (confident of imminent success, it appeared) sat back in the black-leather armchair.

Question Five

Which of the following would you read during this period?

(a) Cervantes' Don Quixote

(b) Dante's The Divine Comedy

(c) A bound volume of Private Eye (1995)

(d) Homer's Iliad

This time Morse hesitated some while before writing on the pad in front of him. "You did the test yourself, you say?'

Lewis nodded. 'Victor Borge; the football; Princess

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

Diana; the champagne; and Private Eye. Just hope Princess Di likes Champers, that's all.'

'There must be worse ways of spending your last week on earth,' admitted Morse.

'I didn't do so well, though - not on the marking. I'm not up diere among the cultured and the wise, I'm afraid.'

'Did you expect to be?'

'Wouldn't you?'

'Of course.'

'Let's hear what you picked, then.'

'My preferences, Lewis' (Morse articulated his words with precision) 'were as follows: (b); (c); (b); (c); none of them.'

Turning to the back page, Lewis reminded himself of the answers putanvely adjudged to be correct

'I don't believe it,' he whispered to himself. Then, to Morse: "You scored the maximum!'

'Are you surprised?'

Lewis shook his head in mild bewilderment

"You chose, what, the Requiem?'

'Well?'

'But you've never believed in all that religious stuff.'

'It's important if it's true, though, isn't it' Let's just say it's a bit like an insurance policy. A beautiful work, anyway.'

'Says here: "Score four marks for (b). Sufficient recom­mendation that it was chosen by three of the last four Popes for their funerals."'

Morse lifted his eyebrows. *You didn't know that''

COLIN DEXTER

Lewis ignored the question and continued:

"Then you chose the sex video!'

'Well, it was either that or the kingfisher. I've already seen Casablanca a couple of times - and no one's ever going to make me watch a football match again.'

'But I mean, a sex video ...'

Morse, however, was clearly unimpressed by such obvious disapprobation. 'It'd be the choice of those three Popes as well, like as not'

'But it all gets - well, it gets so plain boring after a while.'

'So you keep telling me, Lewis. And all I'm asking is the chance to get as bored as everybody else. I've only got a week, remember.'

'I like your next choice, though. Beautiful girl, Kim Basinger. Beautiful'

'Something of a toss-up, that - between her and Mother Teresa. But I'd already played the God-card.'

'Then' (Lewis considered the next answer) 'Arrghh, come off it, sir! You didn't even go for the beer! You're supposed to answer these questions honestly.'

'I've already got plenty of booze in,' said Morse. 'Certainly enough to see me through to Judgment Day. And I don't fancy facing the Great Beyond with a blinding hangover. It'll be a new experience for me -tranquillizers...'

Lewis looked down again, and proceeded to read out the reasons for Morse's greatest triumph. 'It says here, on Question Five, "Those choosing any of the suggested titles are clearly unfit for high honours. If any choice

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

whatsoever is made, four marks will therefore be deducted from the final score. If the answer is a timid dash - or similar - no marks will be awarded, but no marks will be deducted. A more positively negative answer - e.g. 'Come off it!' - will be rewarded with a bonus of four marks."' Again Lewis shook his head. 'Nonsense, isn't it? "Positively negative", I mean.'

'Rather nicely put, I'd've thought,' said Morse.

'Anyway,' conceded Lewis, 'you score twenty out of twenty according to this fellow who seems to have all the answers.' Lewis looked again at the name printed below the article.' "Rhadamanthus" - whoever he is.'

'Lord Chief Justice of Appeal in the Underworld.'

Lewis frowned, then grinned. 'You've been cheating! You've got a copy-'

'No!' Morse's blue eyes gazed fiercely across at his sergeant. 'The first I saw of that Gazette was when you brought it in just now.'

'If you say so.' But Lewis sounded less than convinced.

'Not surprised, are you, to find me perched up there on the topmost twig amongst the intelligentsia?'

'"The wise and the cultured", actually.'

'And that's another thing. I think I shall go crackers if I hear three things in my life much more: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; and that wretched bloody word "actually".'

'Sony, sir.'

Suddenly Morse grinned. 'No need to be, old friend. And at least you're right about one thing. I did cheat -in a way.'

COLIN DEXTER

"You don't mean you... ?' Morse nodded.

It had been a playful, pleasant interlude. Yet it would have warranted no inclusion in this chronicle had it not been that one or two of the details recorded herein were to linger significandy in the memory of Chief Inspector E. Morse, of the Thames Valley Police HQ.

PART ONE

chapter one

In hypothetical sentences introduced by 'if' and referring to past time, where conditions are deemed to be 'unful­filled', the verb will regularly be found in the pluperfect subjunctive, in both protasis and apodosis

(Donet, Principles of Elementary Latin Syntax)

it is perhaps unusual to begin a tale of murder with a reminder to the reader of the rules governing con­ditional sentences in a language that is incontrovertibly dead. In the present case, however, such a course appears not wholly inappropriate.

If (if) Chief Inspector Morse had been on hand to observe the receptionist's dress - an irregularly triangled affair in blues, greys, and reds - he might have been reminded of the uniform issued to a British Airways stewardess. More probably, though, he might not, since he had never flown on British Airways. His only flight during the previous decade had occasioned so many fears concerning his personal survival that he had deter­mined to restrict all future travel to those (statistically) far more precarious means of conveyance - the car, the coach, the train, and the steamer.

11

COLIN DEXTER

Yet almost certainly the Chief Inspector would have noted, with approval, the receptionist herself, for in Yorkshire she would have been reckoned a bonny lass: a vivacious, dark-eyed woman, long-legged and well figured; a woman - judging from her ringless, well-manicured fingers - not overdy advertising any marital commitment, and not averse, perhaps, to the occasional overture from the occasional man.

Pinned at the top-left of her colourful dress was a name-tag: 'Dawn Charles'.

Unlike several of her friends (certainly unlike Morse) she was quite content with her Christian name. Some­times she'd felt slightly dubious about it; but no longer. Out with some friends in the Bird and Baby the previous month, she'd been introduced to a rather dashing, radier dishy undergraduate from Pembroke College. And when, a little later, she'd found herself doodling inconsequentially on a Burton beer-mat, the young man, on observing her sinistrality, had initiated a wholly memorable conversation.

'Dawn? That is your name?'

She'd nodded.

'Left-handed?'

She'd nodded.

'Do you know that line from Omar Khayyam? "Dream­ing when Dawn's left hand was in the sky ..." Lovely, isn't it?'

Yes, it was. Lovely.

She'd peeled die top off the beer-mat and made him write it down for her.

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

Then, very quietly, he...