The Wench Is Dead

Morse was soon well into the exploits of a blonde who would have had arrows on her black stockings pointing northward and reading 'This way for the knickers' – that is, if she'd worn any stockings; or worn any knickers, for that matter. And it was amid much parading of bodies, pawing of bosoms, and patting of buttocks, that Morse now spent in enjoyable little interval of erotic pleasure; indeed, was he engrossed that he did not mark her approach.

'What do you think you're doing?'

'I was just-'

'Lights go out at ten o'clock. You're disturbing everyone on the ward.'

'They're all asleep.'

'Not for much longer, with you around!'

'I'm sorry-'

'What's this you're reading?'

Before he could do anything about it, Nessie had removed the book from his hands, and he had no option but to watch her helplessly. She made no comment, passed no moral judgement, and for a brief second Morse wondered if he had not seen a glint of some semi-amusement in those-sharp eyes as they had skimmed a couple of paragraphs.

'Time you were asleep!' she said, in a not unkind; fashion, handing him back the book. Her voice was a crisp as her uniform, and Morse replaced the ill-starred volume in his locker. 'And be careful of your fruit juice She moved the half-filled glass one millimetre to the left turned off the light, and was gone. And Morse gently eased himself down into the warmth and comfort of his bed, like Te

That night he dreamed a dream in Technicolor (he swore it!), although he knew such a claim would be contradicted: by the oneirologists. He saw the ochre-ski

When he awoke (was woken, rather) the following morning, he felt wonderfully refreshed, and he resolved that he would take no risks of any third humiliation over The Blue Ticket. With breakfast, temperature, wash, shave, blood-pressure, newspaper, tablets, Bovril, all these now behind him – and with not a visitor in sight – he settled down to discover exactly what had happened to that young woman who had taken control of his nocturnal fantasies.

Chapter Fifteen

A Protracted Trial

Joa

passing alongside the canal at that early hour. In fact, it as Ward who had the presence of mind to arrange for the body, which was still warm, to be taken down to the Plough I

It appears from various strands of inter-weaving evidence, albeit some of it from the guilty parties themselves, that Oldfield and Musson (and, by one account, Towns also) left the Barbara Bray at roughly the point where Joa

(It is clear that this man's testimony could have been vital in substantiating the boatmen's claims. But he was never traced, in spite of wide-scale enquiries in the area. A man roughly answering his description, one Donald Favant, had signed the register at the Nag's Head in Oxford for either the 20th or the 21st June – there was some doubt – but this man never came forward. The strong implication must therefore remain, as it did at the time, that the whole story was the clever concoction of desperate men.)

Jonas Bamsey, wharfinger in the employ of the Oxford Canal Authority at Oxford's Hayfield Wharf, gave evidence at the trial that the Barbara Bray had duly effected its partial unloading, but that Oldfield had not reported the loss of any passenger – which quite certainly should have been the duty of the boat's captain under the Authority's Regulations. Instead, according to the scant and inconsistent evidence at this point, the boatmen do appear to have confided in some of their acquaintances in Upper Fisher Row, claiming that their passenger had been out of her mind; that she had committed suicide; and that on at least one occasion they had been called upon to save her from an attempted drowning on the journey down from Preston Brook.

Later that dreadful day, when the crew of the Barbara Bray came to negotiate the lock on the Thames at Iffley, two miles downstream from Folly Bridge, Oldfield spoke to the keeper, Albert Lee, and reported to him and his wife (coincidentally also named Joa

When the infamous boat finally arrived at Reading (for some reason, over two hours behind schedule) Constable Harrison was on hand, with appropriate support, to take the entire crew into custody, and to testify that all of them, including the youth, were still observably drunk and excessively abusive as he put them in darbies and escorted them to temporary cell-accommodation in the gaol at Reading. One of them, as Harrison vividly recalled, was vile enough to repeat some of his earlier invective against Joa

Ha