When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.
(RABELAIS)
‘GIN AND CAMPARI for me, Morse, and buy yourself one as well. My GP keeps on telling me it’s sensible to keep off the spirits.’
Soon the two old friends were seated facing each other in the lounge bar, the surgeon resting his heavy-looking dolichocephalic skull upon his left hand.
‘Time of death!’ said Morse. ‘Come on!’
‘Nice drink this, Morse.’
‘The science of thanatology hasn’t advanced a millimetre in your time, has it?’
‘Ah! Now you’re taking advantage of my classical education.’
‘But nowadays, Max, you can look down from one of those space-satellite things and see a house fly rubbing its hands over a slice of black pudding in a Harlem delicatessen – you know that? And yet you can’t—’
‘The room was as cold as a church, Morse. How do you expect—’
‘You don’t know anything about churches!’
‘True enough.’
They sat silently for a while, Morse looking at the open fire where a log suddenly shifted on its foundations and sent a shower of red-glowing sparks against the back of the old grate, beside which was a stack of wood, chopped into quartered segments.
‘Did you notice they’d chopped down a couple of trees at the back of the annexe, Max?’
‘No.’
Morse sipped his gin. ‘I could develop quite a taste for this.’
‘You think it might have been the branch of a tree or something . . .? Could have been, I suppose. About two feet long, nice easy grip, couple of inches in diameter.’
‘You didn’t see any wood splinters?’
‘No.’
‘What about a bottle?’
‘No broken glass on his face, either, as far as I could see.’
‘Tough things, though. Some of these people who launch battleships have a hell of a job breaking champagne bottles.’
‘We may find something, Morse.’
‘When can you let me have a report?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Much blood, would there have been?’
‘Enough. No spurting though.’
‘No good asking the guests if they saw a fellow walking around with blood all over his best shirt?’
‘What about a woman, Morse? With blood all over her liberty bodice?’
‘Perhaps, I suppose.’
The surgeon nodded non-committally and looked into the fire: ‘Poor sod . . . Do you ever think of death? Mors, mortis, feminine – remember that?’
‘Not likely to forget a word like that, am I? Just add on “e” to the end and . . .’
The surgeon smiled a sour acknowledgement of the point and drained his glass. ‘We’ll just have the other half. Then we’ll get back, and show you round the scene of the crime again.’
‘When the body’s out of the way?’
‘You don’t like the sight of blood much, do you?’
‘No. I should never have been a policeman.’
‘Always turned me on, blood did – even as a boy.’
‘Unnatural!’
‘Same again?’
‘Why not?’
‘What turns you on?’ asked the surgeon as he picked up the two glasses.
‘Somebody from the Oxford Times asked me that last week, Max. Difficult, you know – just being asked out of the blue like that.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I was always turned on by the word “unbuttoning”.’
‘Clever!’
‘Not really. It comes in one of Larkin’s poems somewhere. It’s just that you know nothing about the finer things in life . . .’
But the surgeon, apparently unhearing, was already standing at the bar and rattling an empty glass imperiously on the counter.