The Wench Is Dead

Mmm.

Fourth, the evidence, taken as a whole, suggested strongly that for the first half of the journey Joa

Mmm.

Morse proceeded to underline in blue Biro the various, most curious, altercations which the law-writer of Jackson's Oxford Journal had deemed it worthy to record: 'Will you have anything of this?' (Oldfield) 'No, I have no inclination.' (Bloxham) '-'s already had his with concerns her tonight; and I will, or else I shall – her.' (Oldfield) 'D-n and blast the woman! If she has drowned herself, I (ca

Mmm.

Randomly quoted, incoherent, unchronological as they (were, these extracts from the trials served most strongly to reinforce Morse's earlier conviction that they were not the sort of comments one would expect from murderers. One might expect some measure of shame, remorse, fear – yes! – even, in a few cases, triumph and jubilation in the actual performance of the deed. But not – no! – not the fierce anger and loathing perpetuated by the boat through the hours and the days after Joa

Finally, there was a further (significant?) passage of evidence which the Colonel had not cited. It was, apparently, Oldfield's claim that, at about 4 a.m. on the fateful morning, the boatmen had, in fact, caught up with Joa

'You comfy?' asked Eileen, automatically pulling folds of his sheets tidy.

'I thought you'd gone off duty.'

'Just going.'

'You're spoiling me.'

'You enjoy reading, don't you?'

Morse nodded: 'Sometimes.'

'You like reading best of all?'

'Well, music – music, I suppose, sometimes more.'

'So, if you're reading a book with the record-player going-'

'I can't enjoy them both together.'

'But they're the best'?'

'Apart from a candle-lit evening-meal with someone like you.'

Eileen coloured, her pale cheeks suddenly as bright as those of the dying Colonel.

Before going to sleep that night, Morse's hand glided into the bedside cabinet and poured out a small measure; and as he sipped the Scotch, at his own pace, the world of a sudden was none too bad a place…

When he awoke (was awoken, rather) the following morning (Sunday) he marvelled that the blindingly obvious notion that now occurred to him had taken such an age to materialize. Usually, his cerebral analysis was as swift as the proverbial snap of a lizard's eyelid.

Or so he told himself.

Chapter Twenty-six

Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time

(G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Netting Hill)

Just the same with crossword puzzles, wasn't it? Sit and ponder more and more deeply over some abstruse clue – and get nowhere. Stand away, though – further back! – further back still! – and the answer will shout at you with a sort of mocking triumph. It was those shoes, of course… shoes at which he'd been staring so hard he hadn't really seen them.

Morse waited with keen anticipation until his morning ablutions were complete before re-re-reading the Colonel's work, lingering over things – as he'd always done as a boy when he'd carved his way meticulously around the egg-white until he was left only with the golden circle of the yolk, into which, finally, to dip the calculated balance of his chips.

What were the actual words of the trial report? Yes, Morse nodded to himself: when Charles Franks had looked at the body, he had recognized it, dreadfully disfigured as it was, by 'a small mark behind his wife's left ear, a mark of which only a parent or an intimate lover could have known'. Or a scoundrel. By all the gods, was ever identification so tenuously asserted and attested in the English Courts? Not only some tiny disfigurement in a place where no one else would have been aware of it, but a tiny disfigurement which existed on the head of Joa

Morse brought his mind back to the central point he was seeking to establish before his own imagined jury (little 'j'). No court would have accepted such unilateral identification without something to support it -and there had been something (again Morse looked back to the actual words): corroboration was afforded 'by the shoes, later found in the fore-cabin of the Barbara Bray, which matched in the minutest degrees the contours of the dead woman's feet'. So, the matter was clear: one, the shoes in the cabin belonged to Joa