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Chapter Text

Thursday looked on as Sergeant Jakes tried to take a step back, but it was too late; the young girl had already seized his face in both of her hands and then swooped in to kiss him once soundly on each cheek.

“Come in peace and friendship,” she said. “Enter freely and with a loving heart, and leave behind some of the happiness you bring.”

She started off in Thursday’s direction, then, her hands already extended as if to embrace him, but he managed to deflect her at the last moment, dipping his head down to reach into his pocket for his warrant card.

“You’re all right, Miss,” Thursday said, his voice a low but gentle rumble, brooking no argument.

He nodded, then, and said tersely, “DI Thursday, DS Jakes . . . Miss . . .?” 

“Ayesha.”

Thursday grimaced. He’d bet a week’s pay her name was something else entirely. Ann or Margaret or Betty.

“We’re looking for Gideon Finn,” Thursday said. 

“I’m Gideon,” a young man replied in answer, making his way over to them in a manner as indolent as the heavy summer air.

He looked clean-cut enough, save for a few strings of whimsical wooden beads that he wore around his neck—not what Thursday was expecting, exactly, from the head of some sort of hippie farm, but he gave off an air of wiftiness all the same. It was something in the eyes, light blue and transparent with an odd sort of zealousness, that led Thursday to know that the man before him saw all of the wide and nuanced world in simple black and white. 

“Welcome to the House Beautiful,” he said. 

Thursday frowned in disapproval, appraising the place.

House Beautiful, indeed.

The rambling country manor house, with its dreamlike facade of soft gray stone, fairy tale windows and elegant Gothic arches, as well as the grounds—ripe and green and warm with the droning of bees and the bright warble of birdsong—were all beautiful enough, he supposed.

But as for what went on inside the place, Thursday rather had his doubts. 

They were here on a murder investigation, for one, looking into the death of Simon Hallward. An artist of sorts, if you could call the splattered canvases that they had found in his burnt-out ruin of a flat “art.”

Thursday never saw much in such things himself. 

And for another . . . how old was this Ayesha, exactly? She looked far younger than his Joan. Little more than a round-faced kid, playing dress-up in her mother’s scarf box, all draped as she was with gauzy this and that. In what capacity was she staying here? Where were her parents? Did they have any idea, where it was that their daughter had gone?

Thursday narrowed his eyes, leveling them on Finn.

“We’re here to ask about Simon Hallward,” he said. 

Which was true enough, in its essentials.

But what he meant, in part, was: We’re here to ask about you.

***

“Poor Simon. That’s awful.” Ayesha said, as Finn led them into the Great Hall. 

“When did you last see him?” Thursday asked. 

Ayesha was just about to answer when Finn reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder—whether out of possessiveness, or out of habit, or to silence her, Thursday couldn’t say.

But the way the girl flinched ... the meaning of that was all too clear.

“It must be six months,” Finn said. “He left us last autumn, after the harvest.” 

And again Thursday had to repress a snort. “Just after the harvest.” What a pretentious arse the man was. Mightn’t he have simply said October?

“How was it you knew him?” Jakes asked.

“We met in Life Drawing Class. That was his thing, really. Art. Painting.” 

Gideon Finn gestured, then, to a mural over the door, one that encompassed the entirety of the upper wall, all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. It was a bit simple for Thursday’s tastes— great, round, polished pieces of indiscriminate fruit, painted orange-peach, and abstract figures of nude women, flat and disassembled against smears of blue, after the style of Picasso.

It wasn't all that much, but at least it resembled something, unlike the paintings they found at the flat, which looked like nothing more than a housepainter’s old drop cloths.

“That’s Simon’s,” Finn said. “Oxford was his parent’s idea. But after he threw his degree, we stayed in touch.” 

“Why did he leave? A falling out?”

“No, nothing like that. He just moved on.”  

Moved on.

That was one way to put it.

He certainly had moved on.

Finn must have seen the mistrust there in Thursday’s eyes—like all charlatans, he was attuned to his audience—because then he said, as if by way of an explanation, “I don't think he got what we’re about.”

“What are you about?” Thursday asked. 

“A simpler way. We have questions about ourselves and the world. What we’re here for, what it means.”

“And you're the leader of this . . . er, whatever you call it.”

“It’s a commune. We have no leaders, but I found the place, started the work.”

“Big place.” Thursday observed. “Who owns it?”  

“Nobody.”

“It must belong to someone,” Thursday protested.

Finn put his hands together in supplication, then, as if in a plea for understanding.

“We’re not harming anyone. We eat what we grow. We drink what we draw from the well. It’s hard work. But at least we aren’t hurting each other.”

Like many single-minded people, Finn couldn’t seem to see when he was damaging, rather than making, his case.

If the place was such a Utopia, why would anyone leave?

“Simon Hallward wasn’t happy with that,” Thursday prompted.

“He wasn’t ready,” Finn countered.

“For what?” Jakes asked. 

“To let go.” 

To let go of what, exactly, was the broader question, but it wasn’t the one that Thursday was much interested in at the present moment. They loved to say that sort of thing, these types to whom it all came so easy, not understanding that there were some things worth holding onto.

Finn raised a didactic finger. “Consider the lilies of the field,” he began, but Thursday had heard enough of the man’s swill and cut across him.

“If you aren’t the leader here, then I take it we are free to speak to some of the others,” he said. “See if any of them might remember Hallward?”  

The question, of course, was purely rhetorical.

Of course, he would speak to whomever he damn well pleased. The little ponce standing before him couldn’t stop him from doing so even if he dared. 

But Thursday wanted to gauge his reaction, to see just how deep the stranglehold the man had—or had meant to have—on his ragtag band of followers.

And, just as Thursday thought, it was there: a subtle waver of the man’s eyes, as if he was not at all keen on the idea. 

Thursday sharpened his gaze, and Finn changed course, relented. 

“Of course,” he said. 

Thursday nodded, then, and turned away on his heel, heading off towards the rows of runner beans. Jakes trailed in his wake, his deep-set eyes, dark with wariness, taking in the place.

So.

Jakes hadn’t missed it either, the way the girl had stepped out of Finn’s reach.

In the garden, they spoke first to a heavyset man with a full and unkempt beard who they had found hoeing amongst the cabbages, but he had only come “to join them in their life,”—as he phrased it—three weeks previously, had never known Hallward.

Not far off from him, working in the same patch of earth, were a young man and young woman, dressed in precisely the sorts of get ups—all loose tunics and strings of beads—that you might expect to find in such a place.

They gave their names as “Thyme and Tarragon Robertson,” if you could believe it, and answered their questions with as few words as possible, so that Thursday wasn’t sure if they had had some trouble with the law in the past, and were keen to keep a low profile, or if they simply were suspicious of the police in general, as was the fashion these days. But, be that as it may, they also claimed to have come to the commune some months after Hallward’s departure.

Thursday scanned the surrounding fields—verdant and lush and bordered by a billow of trees, each swaying and moving to its own time with each gentle kick of summer wind—and his eyes fell upon a young man, off at the edge of the gardens, standing alone, pruning the branches of an overhanging apple tree.

He was wearing a crisp, white Oxford shirt and a tie of all things, tucked primly in between the buttons of his shirt, so as not to interfere with his work. He worked with an ascetic grace, a figure solitary and silent, his auburn hair gleaming like old bronze in the sun.

He certainly looked out of keeping with the place—like an antiquity amongst bright new things.

Long experience had taught Thursday that the outsider was often the one with the clearest view of his surroundings—was far more likely to provide real information than those caught up in the fray. And so he started over to him, while Jakes, understanding his intent, drew along beside him.

As they approached, the man looked up at them, pausing in his work, and Thursday felt a distinct chill.

No, he was not another one of these hippie types, that was certain.

The young man looked at him with a bright and cold intelligence. With austere cheekbones and ice blue eyes—the irises of which seemed larger than other people’s, so that the blue of them was apparent even at fifty paces’ distance—his face was as the very face of January, set amidst the windblown and warbling golden summer light. 

“DI Thursday, DS Jakes,” Thursday said, with a flash of his warrant card, coming to stand alongside of him. “And you are....?”

The young man turned to face them, and Thursday could see it: see that he was contemplating a lie. But then something in his eyes seemed to settle, to land, like a bird on a twig. Something akin to trust.

“Morse,” the young man replied simply.

“Morse what?” Jakes asked, with a little more antagonism than Thursday would have liked. There was something about the place needling at his sergeant, but what it was exactly, beyond the obvious, Thursday couldn’t say.  

“Just Morse.” 

Jakes considered the young man with a deadpan glare.

“We’re here on a murder investigation. We’ll be needing your full name.”

The young man’s reserved and unreadable face glimmered with a trace of uncertainty for a moment, and then something inside him seemed partially to melt.

“Endeavour,” he said, at last, letting the syllables fall as soft as the summer wind through the leaves above. Then, more clearly, “It’s . . . Endeavour. Morse.”

Thursday grimaced. Another one of these ridiculous made-up names, then.

But the young man’s eyes met his with a force that was almost like something solid, as if he could read his very thoughts.

“My mother was a Quaker,” he said, as if to say, “I’m not lying.” “It’s a virtue name.”

“Quaker?” Jakes said, pulling out a cigarette. “Long way from the meeting house, aren’t you?”

Morse shrugged, as if refusing to take the bait.

“We’re here to ask about a man called Simon Hallward. Did you know him?” Thursday asked

“I knew of him,” Morse said. “We were up together. At Lonsdale. I only knew him by name, though. Not to speak to. I was reading Greats. Hallward was . . . reading philosophy, I believe.”

“You were at Oxford,” Jakes said.  

“Yes.” 

“How did you end up here?” Jakes asked.

Once more, the young man shrugged one bony shoulder. 

“You have to be somewhere, I suppose. And,” he added, his voice once more softening, as if the realization was only now dawning on him. “And I don’t have anywhere else to go. Do I?”

He looked up then, his face once more pale, resolute.

“There must be something that brought me here.”  

And Thursday felt his heart twist. Even this clear-eyed young man was being slowly and inexplicably brainwashed by Finn’s balderdash. No one here was immune.

Morse seemed to register something of this, because he looked slightly annoyed then, and he drew himself up to his full height.

“Why are you asking me all of these questions? Do you want facts? Or do you want the truth?”

“Aren’t they one in the same thing?” Jakes asked.

“Sometimes,” the young man said. Then he tilted his head, considering them.

“It’s no use asking around here. You’re wasting your time. No one knew him all that well, Hallward, other than Finn.”

“That so?” Jakes asked.

“It is,” Morse replied. “You’ll find the truth in the darkness.”

And then his expression fell further, as he seemed to draw within himself.

"If you can trust to the truth, that is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, then?” Jakes asked, letting out a steady stream of smoke just over the man’s head.  

“Only that the truth isn’t always what it seems to be. Just as dead men might speak even after they’re long gone.”  

Thursday sighed deeply.

No.

Despite outward appearances, the lad was just as cracked as the rest of them.

Perhaps even more so.

“I’m sorry,” Morse said, “That’s all I can tell you, really,” as if he felt it somehow, the weight of Thursday’s disappointment.

“But you never knew Hallward while he was here?” Thursday clarified. 

“No,” Morse said. “Only as the man who painted that monstrosity in the Great Hall,” he added, his face twitching in contempt. 

And Thursday had to repress the quirk of a smile. 

Not completely gone over, then.

“Right,” Thursday said. “Right. Well. Thank you for your time.” 

Morse nodded and turned back to his work, his movements slower, heavier than before, as if the birdsong above had taken on a tinge of melancholy. 

As if he would rather be anywhere other than here.

Anywhere rather than where he was.

 *****

“Consider the lilies of the field,” Thursday said, kicking up the gravel from the drive with the sheer force of his step as he strode back to the black Jag, left parked in front of the house. “Come that old madam with me, and he’ll be considering my boot up his arse.” 

“You won’t be signing up then?” Jakes asked, wryly.

“There’s nothing wrong with Finn that two weeks in the glass house and a scrub down with carbolic acid wouldn’t put right. Did you see the girl flinch when he put his hands on her?”

“Yes,” Jakes said, darkly. “I saw.”

Thursday turned to consider Jakes. There was something new there, in his voice.  

But then Jakes bent his head, went to start up the engine. 

“Pot and free love, I suppose,” Thursday said. “In my experience, that’s the most expensive kind there is.”

They were silent then, until Jakes turned onto the main road.

“What do you make of that one bloke? Morse, was it?” he asked, at last. 

“I don’t know, sergeant,” he sighed.

Who could explain it? And, what was worse, if a man like Morse had been pulled under Finn’s spell, what chances did a girl who looked by rights as if she ought to be still in school have, in the scheme of things?

“It’s like the man said,” Thursday replied. “You got to be somewhere.”

****

Thursday had known, all along, deep in his bones, that it would all end here. Felt it in his water.

He and Jakes stormed into the sunlit house, into to a large, formal dining room where the group of squatters had gathered for a meal. The girl, “Ayesha,’ or Thelma Anne to be more accurate, was standing before the windows, drinking from an earthenware mug, while the other culprit, Verity Richardson, watched her, her face pale in the streaming sun.

“Thelma Anne Davis. Verity Richardson . . . ” Thursday began.

Thelma Anne tore the cup away from her lips at their approach and cast it across the room, and then she turned to Finn, her expression as fierce as a benediction.

“You think this is heaven?” she shouted, with all of the force of her small frame. “This is hell!”

And then, right before their eyes, the young girl’s whole body seemed to spasm in a manner beyond her control, and her knees gave way beneath her. Gideon Finn remained frozen, just as he was, standing before her, while the young man with the uncanny winter-blue eyes, Morse, it was, leapt up from a nearby chair so that it clattered to the floor behind him, catching her as she fell and lowering her gently to the floor.

Thelma Anne raised her hand and took hold of Morse’s arm, looking up into his face as if imploring him to stay with her, so that she would not be alone in the end.

“What’s she taken?” Morse cried, the low and mournful voice cracking like ice breaking up in the spring. Then, louder, “What’s she taken?”

Verity Richardson had backed herself into a corner and was sobbing quietly, one hand pressed to her chest as if to ease a pain somewhere within, as if she couldn’t quite believe what was happening there, a mere three feet in front of her.

“About 50 Librium. The arsenic was meant for me,” she managed, before breaking into tears.

“Fetch an ambulance,” Thursday said 

Even though he could clearly see that they were already too late. The young girl lay gasping for breath as Morse held her there in the window’s light, her face white, his hair red-gold in the stream of the sun, his January face softening to compassionate summer.

Had she changed her mind? It was impossible to know, to ever know, because then her eyes widened, boring steadily into Morse’s with a final plea, before she shuddered once more and went still. Morse raised a trembling hand to her throat, gently, as if to feel for a pulse, and then he bowed his head, still holding her up from the floor, in a tableau that was so damn pitiful that even Thursday had to look away. 

****

“There was nothing they could do,” Strange said, confirming what, in their hearts, they already knew, and Thursday nodded, grimly.

Gideon Finn stared off into the distance. “This was meant to be a place of refuge. Of kindness,” he said.

Morse, beside him, looked at him through incredulous eyes, as if he had never seen the like of him before.

And then Finn dared to look at them with a face full of sorrow, as if this was all about him.  

“It was a dream. My dream.”

Was this what had moved him to tears? Not the loss of an innocent life, but the loss of his own demented vision?

Why, Thursday ought to ....

“The less out of you, the better. Your dream? You exploited an innocent young girl. If I had my way, you’d answer for it,” Thursday said, and then he started over for him, hell-bent on making his threat a reality. 

“Sir,” Morse said, putting up his hands as if to placate him, but the blood in Thursday’s brain was hammering, and he kept moving forward, towards his quarry, so that Morse’s hands flew up to take his arms, holding him off, inserting his lanky frame between them.  

 “Sir!” Morse cried again, higher now and slightly breathless, equal parts fear and reprimand. The force of Thursday’s bulk nearly bent the lad back like a sapling, but Morse’s hands retained their grip, and his feet kept him soundly planted as he was. Finally, Thursday stepped away, coming back to himself, his vision clearing.

“She was ill-used,” Thursday protested, straightening his jacket.

And then he went still, held his peace, as the medics rolled the girl’s body, covered in a white sheet, before him and into the ambulance.

Verity Richardson stood off to one side, watching its progress sadly, sobbing softly.

“We were going to use the money to found an orphanage in Africa,” she said, as if she herself, the mastermind behind all, didn’t quite know how it had all come to this. 

Well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

All of this “letting go,” business. There was a good reason the law was the law.

Veritas numquam perit, as his first governor used to say.

Truth never expires.

And Thursday ground to a halt.

Veritas.

Truth.

He looked at the dark-haired girl, her arms wrapped around herself as if to give herself some small comfort.

Verity.

“You’ll find the truth in the darkness.”

And hadn’t they found Verity Richardon in the darkness of the chalk mines?

“If you can trust to the truth, that is.”

And hadn’t she been behind all? The instigator behind the extortion plot to get back at her parents?

“What’s that supposed to mean, then?” Jakes asked, letting out a steady jet of smoke in one harsh stream.  

“Only that the truth isn’t all that it seems to be. And dead men might speak even after they’re long gone.”  

Dead men. Simon Hallward’s voice, on the tape.

He had known.

Morse had known.

And he hadn’t.

The despair on his face as he had held Thelma Anne Davis, as he saw her through her final breaths, was not just the sorrow for a girl who lay dying in his arms. But the despair of one who had seen the depths of his own riddles too late.

The despair of one beholding the face of one he could not save.

Thursday turned to look at him, to see if he might read the truth of his realization on Morse’s face, but . . .

But the man was gone. There wasn't a trace of him amongst the trees, in the fields, down the road, not in any direction.

He had disappeared in all the tumult without a single word.

****

Thursday sat at his desk, taking a steady draw on his pipe, thinking about the events of the past week. Of Thelma Anne Davis and Verity Richardson and The House Beautiful. 

And mostly of the man who had called himself Endeavour Morse.

Later, when Thursday had asked about him, he found that it seemed that no one knew quite what he was called. Thomas Smith, according to one. Janus Arcadian, said another. He seemed to have nearly a different name for everyone who knew him. It was just as Thursday thought, as he had spoken with “Thyme and Tarragon Robertson,” then. The House Beautiful had been the sort of place where the inhabitants didn’t inquire too deeply into one another’s pasts. 

But although Morse might lie to protect himself, he wasn't a liar.

Thursday could see that in the way the young girl had clung to him at the end. In the way she had implored him with her eyes not to leave her, as if he were one of the few people in the world she could still stomach, as if he were one of the few who she felt would not betray her.

No.

He couldn't be a bad 'un.

Not for the girl to look to him like that.

Somehow, Thursday could not escape the feeling that there was some connection there, forged between them, he and Morse. It was there in the moment that Morse had first glanced up at him as he stood under the fruit trees, and Thursday had felt a definite chill. In the moment that Morse had stepped between him and Gideon Finn, as if he knew of all of his demons better than he himself did, as if he knew he was all too capable of doing the man grave bodily harm.

And most of all, he felt it in that moment that the lad had looked at him, and hesitated, and then decided to give him his true name. 

For Thursday felt certain that, if he looked into it, he’d find that all Morse had told him was true. 

No.

The lad wouldn’t lie to him. 

Never to him.

He had a gift, that young man.

A gift he hardly understood.

A gift that he wished would either leave him in peace, or that he might master. 

“There must be something that brought me here,” Morse had said.   

Thursday had dismissed the words as just so much more balderdash, but now, he knew all too well what the lad had meant. 

There was a reason he had been placed where he was, when he was. He had all that he needed to know, but it was as if he was looking at it from across a winedark sea, through a glass, darkly. 

If they had heeded his words, mulled them over together, might they have unraveled the case sooner? 

And Thursday rose from his chair, placed his pipe on the ceramic tray at the far corner of his desk, picked up his hat, and slowly made his way out the door. 

****

Thursday approached the gleaming maple desk in the bursar’s office at Lonsdale and flashed his warrant card.

“DI Thursday, Oxford City Police," he said. "I’m looking for information on a former student. Would have been here, late ’50s, early ’60s perhaps? Endeavour Morse.”

The man at the desk bowed his shiny, balding pate and stepped away. And within a few minutes, he returned, just as Thursday knew that he would, with a file. 

Endeavour Morse.

Thursday flipped the file open.

Reading Greats, just as he had said. Was slated for a first before, inexplicably, he was sent down after Michaelmas term of '59.  

Date of birth, twenty-fourth of September, 1938. Last permanent address somewhere up in Lincolnshire. Thursday nodded. That fit with that low and rounded hint of a northern accent, the mournful and deliberate voice that sounded like wind across the sea. It all fit. It was him all right. 

Morse had told him the truth. 

Just as he had known all along. 

Just as he knew that, somehow, their paths would cross again one day. 

And when they did, Thursday was determined to help him, if he could. 

Chapter Text

Thursday and Jakes turned down the long and winding drive, and there it was, at last: The Blythe Mount School for Girls.

They looked up through the bleary and bug-spattered windscreen, and the rows upon rows of windows, set deep into the brick of the colossal old house, seemed to look back at them—to look down on them—with empty eyes.

It was a lonely sort of house, despite its imposing white-columned grandeur. Standing taller than anything else on the horizon, it was as if it was trying its damnedest to fill in the vast spaces around it; trying, and failing miserably, as it sat in its solitude and decay amidst blowing fields, fields which rolled on and on in monotone shades of green and gray, for as far as the eye could see, here, on the edge of nowhere. 

Jakes put the black Jag into park, and they got out of the car, the slam of the heavy doors reverberating in the eerie silence.

Not too surprising, that.

The school must be largely emptied out for the summer. Only seven students left to rattle about the big place.

But seven students, along with their teacher, made for eight potential witnesses—and, as such, were quite enough for one of them to have noticed something telling, something that might give them at least the raw beginnings of a lead.  

Adrian Weiss, a sixty-nine-year-old genealogist, had been found dead earlier that day, lying on the floor of a museum in a pool of his own blood, his throat cut with a katar of all things, a ceremonial Indian dagger. 

The man’s wallet had been cleaned out, but that might well have been done as an afterthought, as a cover.

After all, why kill someone is such a violent and stylized way, right in a museum, right as patrons milled about on the ground floor, for only a mere fistful of pounds?

Weiss’ niece, who they had visited to deliver the sad news, had told them that Weiss had been a junior officer at the College of Arms, that he had recently retired, but was still keeping his hand in.

Professional rivalry, maybe?

They had questioned Terrence Black, a postgrad working at the museum, and now they were left to make the rounds of the visitors who had signed in at the museum’s register.

Which was what had brought them here, to this dreamy and half-forgotten village, known, appropriately enough, as Slepe.

****

As they were ushered inside by Miss Danby, Thursday noticed at once a dampness, a chill in the air of the draughty old house, one that matched the reception they received from the headmistress. 

“These are impressionable young girls,” Miss Symes protested.  “I’d rather their minds were not filled with bloodshed.”

“Actually, Miss Symes," Thursday replied, “I’m afraid I must insist. One or more of the girls might have seen something pertinent to our inquires.”

Miss Symes sighed, then, and relented, half-resentful of the intrusion into the isolation that she seemed to have picked up as a shield, protecting herself from god-only-knew-what.

Loneliness? Disappointment? Bitter memories she was determined, all the same, to soldier through?

Thursday and Jakes soon found that the other inhabitants of the school seemed as if they, too, had been too much alone, and had gone a bit funny with it. One of the younger girls, Edwina her name was, was far too timid to say much, and who could blame her? The older girls seemed as if they spent their days at the youngers’ throats, as if, in their boredom and ennui, they had begun to turn on one another, to bully those who they perceived as weaker—not out of any real sense of malice, but out of the worst sort of aimlessness. 

“It was boring. We certainly didn't see anything interesting,” reported another girl, one with a dark fringe. “It broke the day, I suppose.”

Christ.

Surely, the child was still too young to feel the day was something one simply got through?

Thursday had been about to give the whole long and tedious trip up as a bad job, when a final girl filed in, pushing a strand of blonde hair back behind her ear as she came to sit in the chair before them.

Bunty Glossop’s voice was scarcely louder than a whisper, but she was, alone out of all of the lot of them, the only one who had something real to say. 

“There was an old couple. A woman in a wheel chair and a man in glasses with one lens blacked out. And a man with a gold watch in a hurry.”

“You notice things,” Thursday observed. 

“I try not too,” the girl replied, as if apologizing for being the only one awake, the only one who hadn’t been sleepwalking through the summer.

Thursday grimaced.

Bright girl, she was. The poor thing must get picked on something awful for it. 

Miss Danby didn’t have much to add, it transpired.

“The girls held all my attention throughout,” she said, begging off further comment, as Bunty Glossop came into the hallway, bringing them their coats. 

“Macintoshes in July,” Miss Danby noted, then, changing the subject to that safest of all topics, the weather.

“The joys of an English summer,” Jakes said.

“As well to be prepared, I suppose. It looks as if it might rain again.”

“It may if it chooses, with no objections,” the girl piped in, then. “Contrariwise.”

“Bunty’s rather taken with Through the Looking Glass at the moment,” Miss Danby explained.

“Ah,” Thursday said.

He tried to smile encouragingly at the girl; there was a hint of mischievousness there that reminded him of his Joan. She caught his look and smiled back shyly, as Miss Danby began to walk them to the door, leading them out to the foyer, where high windows looked out onto the grounds.

Jakes stopped to look out of one of the windows as they passed, and then he narrowed his eyes.

“Well,” he said. “Look who it is.” 

“Sorry?” Miss Danby said. 

Thursday paused and looked out too, following his sergeant’s gaze.

Outside, beneath a tree, evening out a patch of turf, was a familiar figure: a slender young man in a white dress shirt, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a narrow blue tie tucked between his buttons as if to keep it out of his way as he worked.

It was the same young man they had met out at the House Beautiful, his January blue eyes now hidden, cast down, as he smoothed over the uneven earth with a steel hoe.

“Nevermind, Miss,” Thursday said.

But Miss Danby had already joined them at the window.

“Oh. That’s our groundskeeper. Morse.”

 She smiled then, showing two dimples in her perfect, fondant-soft face. “He has an enlivening effect on some of the older girls.”

“We’d like to speak to him, before we go,” Thursday said.

“Of course,” Miss Danby replied. “He wasn’t at the museum, of course, but I wouldn’t imagine he’d have any objections.”

Thursday raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t for him to have any objections, was it?

“He can . . . be a bit prickly,” Miss Danby explained, no doubt reading his expression. “But Bunty’s fond of him, all the same. Both bookish sorts.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said.

They would have a bond, of sorts, wouldn’t they? They both noticed things.

Well. If Bunty Glossop could find a friend in this place, Thursday was glad of it.

And, who knew? Perhaps Morse needed a friend just as much so.

Thursday tipped his hat and nodded, and was just turning to go out the door, when Miss Danby placed a hand on his arm, as if to halt him for a moment. 

“This is a very happy school,” she said.

“I’m sure it is,” he replied, even though Thursday wasn’t so sure, truth be told, and was even less sure now that she had insisted upon it. 

Truth was, he felt a bit sorry for them sometimes, posh people. He couldn’t imagine sending Joanie out here, to live out her childhood away from him and Sam and Win, couldn’t imagine the last twenty-odd years without hearing her tear about the house. All of his memories of Joan’s girlhood, now that he thought of it, were filled with noise and action: Joanie squabbling with Sam, or throwing her books down as she came in from school, or slamming the front door during the summer holidays, as she went out to skip rope with friends down the block.

These girls, by contrast, moved with a weariness that was almost ghost-like, as if they had grown old and careful long before their time.

Whether it had anything to do with the case or not was another matter—but there was something troubling here all the same....

Question was: Is that what had brought Morse out here, to Blythe Mount, as well?

*****

Thursday and Jakes strode across the lawns, lush and green and sweetly pungent after countless spates of summer rain.

Morse straightened at their approach, and the winter eyes widened and then turned wary, brittle, like ice about to shatter. 

It was clear he had not been expecting them.

Well, Thursday thought, with a chuckle to himself.

The lad didn’t know everything, then.  

Thursday sauntered over to him, his hands deep in his pockets.

“Hello,” he said. Then, he added pointedly, “Morse.” 

The lad nodded.

“Hello.” 

“Gave your real name, this time, I see.”

Morse twisted his mouth in displeasure at Thursday’s tone, but then he shrugged, taking the observation with good grace all the same.

“I had, too,” he said. “It’s a school. Miss Symes checks the backgrounds of all of the employees, not only of the staff.”

Thursday took this in, pleasantly surprised to find the lad so forthcoming. In explaining the reason why he had given his real name this time round, Morse had all but admitted that it was a habit of his to occasionally give a false one.

“We missed you, last month, out at the House Beautiful. Took one look around and you had gone,” Thursday said. “Would have liked to have gotten a statement from you, all things considering.”

Jakes folded his arms, standing to attention, as if he was extremely curious to hear Morse’s answer; it could not be more clear that he was pleased as Punch that Thursday was not letting that point go.  

“Why is that?” Thursday asked.

For a moment, Morse’s eyes fell further into retreat, and Thursday steeled himself for the possibility that the lad might grow frostier at the needling, might freeze him out, but, instead, something within Morse seem to crumple—or rather to melt— and he leaned all the more heavily on his handle of his hoe. 

“Why should I stay? There was nothing I could do,” he said, his voice a bit plaintive, like a lonely wind. “That poor girl . . .” 

“That why you’re here now?” Thursday asked.

Morse blinked.

“What do you mean?”

“Odd job, for an Oxford man.”

“I’m not an Oxford man,” Morse said, with a scorn that was palpable. “I was reading Greats and was sent down. It’s hardly left me prepared for any practical sort of career. I take what job I can.”

“I dunno about that. You failed to get your degree, but you’re still well-spoken, well-educated. Seems you could get something—clerical, administrative—something better than this.”

Morse said nothing, only made yet another sour face.

Apparently, the lad had an entire repertoire of them.

Morse took a deep breath, then, and exhaled sharply through his nose. In the next instant, he pulled himself out of his slouch, raising himself to his full height, looking at them as if turnabout was fair play.

“What brings you out, all this way? Long way from Oxford, aren’t you?” he asked.

“We’re here to ask Miss Danby and the students if they might have seen anything untoward during an outing to the museum earlier today,” Thursday replied.  “A man, Adrian Weiss, was found dead, murdered, precisely during the time of the girls’ visit.”

“Oh?” Morse asked.

He let the syllable fall as soft as a sigh, and, although the lad tried to look as if the matter was of little concern to him, Thursday could tell that he was hanging on his every word.

“Have you ever heard of him? Weiss?”

“No,” Morse said.

“What about Terrence Black?”

It was a stretcher; but seeing as Black was a postgrad at Wolsey, it was possible that their time at Oxford might have overlapped.

“No. Who is he?”

But Thursday ignored the question; the way he saw it, if Morse didn’t know, he didn’t need to know.

“You see anything around here unusual?” he asked, instead.

And then Morse did something that Thursday would not have thought possible.

Not to him, anyway.

He looked down to the ground and swallowed. 

And then he said, “No.”

Thursday scowled.

Christ, but the lad was a terrible liar.

“You sure about that?”

Morse nodded, still looking down at some fascinating point near his shoe.

Well. Enough of playing silly buggars. They were dancing all around it—weren’t they?—the elephant in the room?

“You sure you’re not here so that it doesn’t happen again?” Thursday asked.

Morse regarded him warily, then, as if he thought Thursday a bit mad.

“So . . .  what doesn’t happen again?”  

“These girls,” Thursday observed. “There’s something not right about this place. Felt it in my water, soon as I stepped out of the car. You sure you’re not here because you want to stop it from happening again? Save this Bunty, say, when you couldn’t save Ayesha?”

Morse’s eyes clouded over at once at that.

“I  . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No.” 

“How about this, then? ‘You’ll find the truth in the darkness.”

Morse cast his gaze down, as if he was once more extremely interested in a point on the ground near the toe of his shoe.

“You knew. That Verity Richardson was behind it all. The product tampering at Richardson’s. The death of Simon Hallward. Truth. Verity. We found her in an old chalk mine, you know, faking her own abduction. You had the answer all along.” 

Jakes frowned, as if the connection had just occurred to him, while Morse’s gaze snapped up, the ice in his eyes looking more like gas-blue flame.

“No! No . . . I . . . I didn’t.”

Thursday folded his arms and stood back, as if he didn't believe a word of it, but was resigned, nonetheless, to hear him out.

Morse seemed to falter under the gaze.

“It . . . it doesn't work like that.”

He was admitting then, that there was an it. They were getting somewhere, at least.

“No?” Thursday asked.

And now that he had gotten through the codswallop—now that Morse was no longer pleading ignorance, wasting his time—Thursday let his voice soften, fall into a low rumble, patient, without judgement, but determined all the same to get at the truth.

It was as if Morse was wearing two faces, as if he was at once looking towards it and away from it, his strange gift—by turns denying it and obsessing over it, attempting to puzzle it out. Perhaps it was no accident he had been drawn to Blythe Mount; like the other inhabitants of the place, it was clear he’d been too much alone, dealing with—whatever the hell it was he’d been dealing with—on his own for far too long.

And slowly sinking under the weight of it.

“So,” Thursday asked, as gently as he could.  “How does it work, then?”  

“I . . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know . . . ”

“Lad like you? You've got a few guesses, at least, I'd hazard.”

Morse shook his head helplessly, and then it all came rushing out, in a great torrent of words.

“I can't live like that. I can’t. Analyzing everything I say? ‘Please past the salt.' Is that an allusion to the sea? To tears? I . . . It’s . . .”

And then his expression changed again, his austere features set back into the very face of January.

“Besides,” he said. “It’s all nonsense. It’s . . . it was just a coincidence."  

“You don't believe that, Morse. Else you wouldn’t be here.”

Morse looked away, scrubbed the hair up at the back of his nape.

“Wasn’t your fault, you know,” Thursday said.

Morse flinched at the words, but they were, all the same, words he felt Morse needed to hear.

And it was right, his old instinct. In the next moment something in Morse seemed to soften, and he took another deep breath and exhaled in a drawn-out sigh. Then looked up at him, ruefully.

“I kept thinking . . . Gideon Finn,” he said.

And Thursday, for once, knew just what the lad meant. He huffed a laugh, even though there was not one damn thing funny about the whole sad affair.

“He did seem the likely devil, didn’t he?”

“Yes. . . ,” Morse breathed. “I just . . . I wasn’t . . . I just kept poring over it. I kept, I dunno, waiting for myself to quote the Book of Judges or some such thing ... so that I would know what it was that was there, what it was that felt so badly wrong. It got to where I didn’t want to speak to anyone at all. It got to where I . . .  I . . . I was . . . But Verity,” he said the last word with an edge of disbelief, as if he wanting to be excused for looking in the wrong place.

Jakes lit up a cigarette, handling it carefully in his long fingers. He took a draw then, his heavy brows knit together as if he was cottoning on—for all of his lack of imagination on some points, he was a sharp one, Jakes.

Jakes exhaled in a steady stream of smoke, and said, “So. You started with your likely conclusion and worked backwards. Common mistake.”

Like all pedantic people, Morse took exception to the criticism.

“I . . I have to start somewhere. Otherwise it’s . . . Otherwise you can drive yourself mad with it.”  

And all at once, Thursday understood.

Morse didn’t trust himself.

No.

Not just that.

He had been taught not to trust himself.

Thursday couldn’t help but wonder what Morse’s childhood must have been like. There could be only two sorts of parents of such a child: those who would see Morse’s insights as a gift, much as the child himself. And those that might see it as an oddity, as something uncanny, something to be squelched.

Morse’s family, Thursday thought, could only be the latter. Or else he’d be with his people in Lincolnshire—wouldn’t he?— instead of here, with the all of the other forgotten parcels.

“You might want to trust your intuition,” Thursday suggested.

It was the wrong thing to say, but proved the truth of his theory just the same, for Morse looked at him with open suspicion then, as if Thursday was a purveyor of dangerous ideas.

Well. In for a penny, in for a pound. Surely, the lad must have known he would have checked up on him, after he pulled a runner at the scene of a crime. Thursday considered for a moment, and then he took the plunge. 

“At the bursar’s, at Lonsdale, your old file says you’ve got family in Lincolnshire,” Thursday observed. 

Morse said nothing for a long time. And then he shrugged. 

“My father likes to play the horses,” he said.

For a moment, Thursday was so startled that Morse should offer any information at all on that score that he failed to put two and two together.

And then.

Ah.

“But it doesn’t work that way, does it?” Thursday asked.

“No,” Morse said.

“No,” Thursday agreed.

Morse regarded him for a long while, his winter sky eyes on him as clear as his purpose; Thursday was being scrutinized and measured, no bones about it, and he could do nothing but to remain where he was, to stand his ground and await Morse’s verdict.

He must have passed muster, because, at last, Morse opened his mouth as if to speak, a new light in his pale face, when suddenly the girls came along from the gardens, drifting down to the edge of the lake like a flock of lost ducklings, a faint curiosity stirring in their faces upon seeing the groundskeeper in deep conversation with two detectives.  

Morse’s mouth snapped shut at the sight of them. Obviously, he did not want the girls to overhear anything, anything they might find alarming, and Thursday could hardly blame him. Seemed the dreamy, lost little things had enough trouble simply getting through the day as it was.

Morse must have been thinking much the same thing, because as the girls gathered at the edge of the lake, he murmured,  “In Wonderland they lie, dreaming as the days go by, dreaming as the summers die.”

“What’s that mean? What’s that supposed to mean, then?” Jakes asked, sharply.

“What does what mean?” Morse asked.

And then the confusion on his face lifted like clouds heavy with snow.

“It means nothing,” Morse said. “I’m only quoting Through the Looking Glass. One of the girls has been reading it. She asked me what I thought of it the other day, when I was pruning the shrubbery, and it just came to mind.”

Jakes looked unconvinced.

“It means nothing,” Morse insisted. “You see, you’ve only been talking to me for ten minutes and already you’re all turned about. I . . . I . . . I don’t have anything else to say.”

Thursday sighed heavily. “You sure?”

Morse said nothing, only nodded, his austere gaze set.

It was clear he wasn’t budging.

“All right, then,” Thursday said. “Fair enough.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card.

“If you think of anything you do want to say, you can ring me at this number. All right?”

Morse hesitated for a moment. And then reached out and took the card.

“Any time, day or night, that number will find me,” Thursday said.

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

“I mean it now. It’s no trouble. So don’t go thinking it is.”  

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

Well.

He was done talking alright.

Thursday tipped his hat to him and stepped back.

“Mind how you go,” he said, and then he set off, back to the Jag, with Jakes following in his wake.

****

“Of course, he’s lying,” Jakes said, as soon as they got into the car.

“I don’t know about that. He might be a bit cagey about himself, but I don’t think he’s not telling us the truth, either.”

“Isn’t that one in the same thing?” Jakes snapped. 

Thursday said nothing, considering this, and Jakes went on, pressing his point. 

“Dead men might speak, even after they’re long gone? Remember Hallward’s voice, on the tape?” 

“I remember,” Thursday replied. How could he forget? Some corner of his mind had been stewing on it ever since. 

“Well. There you go, Sir. That’s the point, isn’t it? The more you think about it, the more you realize just how wrong it all is.”

“You don’t like him? Morse?” Thursday asked.

It was a statement as well as a question. He had learned to value Jakes’ judgement over the years, even when it clashed with his own.

Jakes shuddered. “I don’t like . . . They way he looks at you. Like he can see right through you. All of your secrets.” 

Thursday had to repress a snort at that. Was that all? Of all the things he had expected his practical-minded, sardonic sergeant to say, the last thing would have been something so fanciful.

What great secret could Jakes possibly have? 

What? Thursday was quite tempted to ask. Worried that he might know you cheated at darts last fortnight?

Instead, Thursday simply hummed, noncommittally.

“This old couple, the one the girl spoke of,” Thursday said. “They must be the Gardeners. Might as well look them up next, see what they have to say.”

Jakes nodded, took one last look at the Blythe Mount School, and then cranked the ignition, as if he were relieved they were leaving the place.

*******

“Sir,” Strange said, standing in the door of his office. “Someone on the blower for you.”

It was getting late, the yellow lamp beginning to lose its battle against the falling shadows; Thursday was surprised that Strange should still be here at all, really.

”Who is it?” Thursday asked.

“Dunno, sir. Won’t give his name. Just asked to speak to you.”

Thursday nodded and picked up the receiver of the phone on his desk.

“Hello, Morse,” he said. ““How are you?” 

For a moment, there a long silence.

Then, Morse’s uncertain voice came onto the line.

“How . . . how did you know?”

Thursday snorted softly.

“Just as I said, lad, isn’t it? Intuition.”  

He could almost feel it, the surprised but rueful smile on the other end of the line. And then he sat back, almost holding his breath, waiting to hear whatever Morse might have to say.

Chapter Text

Thursday opened the door to the Lamb and Flag, and a rush of warmth swept out to meet him, flooding out into the cool of the summer night. Inside the crowded pub, the blaze of orange firelight sent the dark wood paneling glowing, and the dull rumble of conversation glimmered with the occasional clinking of glass.

He took off his great coat, which was far too heavy for closeness of the room, and scanned the faces at each table, looking for Morse.

And then, he spotted him, sitting alone at a table by the hearth with his head bent down, his hair burnt to the color of old bronze in the firelight.

Thursday made his way through the maze of scarred oak tables crammed round with patrons and called out to him.

“Morse!”

Morse looked up, clearly startled, as if perhaps he hadn’t expected him to show.

“Inspector Thursday,” he said.

Thursday tossed his hat onto the table, slung his coat over the back of an empty chair, and eased himself down, even as he glanced about the pub, searching for the source of the draught that had sent a sudden shiver down the back of his collar.

It was odd, that sudden drop in temperature, considering how closely they were seated to the fire, but yet there were no gaps around the ancient window panes to account for it.

“So,” Thursday said, at last. “What’s this about, then? Didn’t seem to have much to say on the phone.”

For a long moment, Morse regarded him cautiously, his pale face impassive, the only movement there caused by the illusion of the flicker of firelight.

And then, silently, he reached into the pocket of his cheap gray car coat and pulled out a folded slip of paper, pushing it towards him across the table.

Thursday took it and unfolded it.

It contained six letters, written in a young girl’s decorative script.

Save Me.

“You kept that quiet,” Thursday said.

“I didn’t find it until after you had left,” Morse said. “It was in the pocket of my coat. I had left it hanging over the fence while I was working. One of the girls must have put it there.”

He bowed his head, then, and scrubbed up the waves at the back of his nape.

“I just . . . It’s a bit like Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it? Just like the notes Alice finds? Drink Me? Eat Me?”

“And now you’re thinking of what you said to Sergeant Jakes,” Thursday concluded.

Morse pursed his mouth and nodded.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Why did I choose that particular quote? Maybe it does mean something.”

Morse furrowed his brow and mused, “In Wonderland they lie, dreaming as the days go by, dreaming as the summers die.”

Thursday leaned back in his chair, drumming his thick fingers against the table, meditatively.

Blythe Mount did seem to be a singularly eerie old place. It had a feel more apropos to the set of one of those Gothic horror films you might see down at the Roxy than it did to any school for young girls—although, he supposed, the old house must seem quite different in term-time, when it was full of kids, full of life, full of voices to keep that wistful sense of isolation, of summertime melancholy, at bay.

But, all in all, Thursday had very much come to doubt that the school had any bearing on the case. It was simply a coincidence that Miss Danby and her students had stopped into the museum on the day of the murder.

It made far more sense to look to Weiss’s work in the search for some possible motive or for a clue that might shed light on the identity of the culprit.

Still, there was something there, wasn’t there? Something that might bear looking into?

Because Morse looked haunted almost, drawn, emanating with an uncertainty far different from the imposing chill that he had greeted them with when he and Jakes had first met him out at the so-called House Beautiful.  

Thursday tried his best to phrase his next question carefully, for he was sure that—whatever the hell the answer was—it was just what was at the root of Morse’s apparent distress.

“If you didn’t find that note until after we’d left, what was it that you were avoiding telling me this morning?”

“Sir?” Morse asked.

But Thursday kept his dark gaze steady and firm, as if to brook no argument, as if to say, “Don’t give me any of that, now.”

Morse looked down, and, for a long while, he said nothing—only seemed to make a study of his hands as they lay on the table, clasped tightly before him.

“I . . . I’ve been . . . I’ve been seeing things,” he said.

He spoke each word as if it had been wrenched from him against his will, his voice but a low murmur.

“And that’s not … typical for you?” Thursday asked.

Morse’s eyes flashed up at that, blazing fiery ice-blue in the dim room.

“No! Of course, not.”  

He turned away then, staring off into the fire, shaking his head disparagingly, as if he thought Thursday off his rocker for even suggesting such a thing.

Wasn’t as if Morse could blame him for asking. It all of it sounded odder than a pair of false dice trimmed to come up sevens on every throw.

“So,” Thursday said, beginning again, trying to smooth over the turbulence that had sprung up between them, “what sorts of things have you been seeing, exactly?”

Morse’s eyes wavered a bit, even as he kept his gaze turned away, as if locked onto the fire.

“It’s a girl. Dressed in Victorian clothes. She wears a white lace cap. I . . . I can never see her face. I’ll see her standing, just out of the corner of my vision. But when I turn and look, she’s gone. Like . . . like an apparition.”

As soon as he heard the words, Thursday laughed, a warm and low laugh that sounded richly against the surrounding rumble of voices in the pub.

“That’s obvious enough,” he said. “One of the girls has gotten into a dressing-up box, somewhere, found a trunk of clothes up in one of the attics, and is up to playing pranks. Most likely having a good laugh at your expense.”

But Morse shook his head.

“No. She’s too small. She’s far too small, smaller than any of the summer girls. A smaller girl could make herself look larger in such a costume, but the other way round? No. And ... sometimes I’ve seen her in a window, in a part of the house that’s closed. The girls can’t get in there. It’s all locked up!”

His voice was spiraling higher and higher as he spoke, and then, as if he realized that fact, he broke off, looked down at his hands again— and the tightness with which he clasped them—as if he needed something solid to hold on to—did not escape Thursday’s notice.

It was clear that, whatever it was the lad had seen, or thought that he had seen, had been eating away at him.  

“Why didn’t you tell me about this this morning?” Thursday asked.

“I . . . I was afraid. I know how it sounds.”

 “I’m not discounting you, lad,” Thursday said. “You think I wasn’t hit with it, what you had said, when we found Verity Richardson in that cave? And then when we realized she had plotted all? It was all I could think of for a week, to be honest. Went back out to that house to talk to you about it, but you’d packed up, they’d said.”

Morse said nothing.

“That what you do, every time, is it? Pack up and take off?” Thursday asked. He paused for a moment, and added, “Hope it doesn’t follow you?”

His final words, at last, prompted a response.

“I just wanted it … I just want it to go away, I suppose,” Morse said. “It’s hard enough as it is. But then, when you find yourself in a place that’s quiet, when you’re alone, with no hope that it might ever be otherwise, it’s easy, isn’t it? To open a window and let in the black, to let in that dark cloud hovering over you? Because even a dark night of the soul is better than that unending emptiness, better than that hollowness in the face of the vast awfulness of it all.”

“And now,” he said, rolling on in another burst, “and now that I keep seeing this vision—or, or whatever it is—I can’t help but worry: what if it’s all getting worse? I just don’t know what to make of it. I feel like I’m just ... like I’m just stumbling around.”

Thursday frowned at the speed with which the words seemed to be spilling out from his mouth. Perhaps there might be something there, after all, something telling, as had been the case with Verity Richardson.

“When did this start, anyway?” Thursday asked.

Morse looked surprised at that, his tongue darting out nervously over his bottom lip.

“I don’t know. Since I was a child, I suppose. As long as I can remember.”

“No. Not you. I meant up at the house,” Thursday said.

“Oh,” Morse said.

Morse looked relieved, but also slightly crestfallen, too.

It was then Thursday realized that, perhaps in his zeal to ascertain if there was indeed any link between Blythe Mount and the Adrian Weiss case—a case that thus far had yielded only one frustrating dead end after another—he had somewhat missed the mark.

Perhaps Morse needed to speak of it.

Had he ever spoken of it to anyone?

There had been a glimmer there, a chink in that wall of ice, and Thursday, having not taken his chance to shine a light onto it, realized too late that such a chance might never come again.

“Oh, I dunno,” Morse said, with a shrug, looking again off into the fire. “Could as well be a hundred years, for all I know. From the moment I stepped into that house . . . I felt it.”

“Felt what?”

Morse hesitated before turning to look back up to him, his face somber.

“An overwhelming sense of  . . . dread.”

A ringing silence, as clear as a peal of bells in the midst of the burbling brook of conversation around them, fell between them, then.

“Hmmmm,” Thursday rumbled, at last. “And so, of course, you accepted a job there.”

“Well,” Morse said. “I just suppose I thought…”

Morse shrugged once more, letting the sentence fall away. But Thursday could hear the answer all too well, in the lad’s silence.

Morse could sense it, some sort of approaching disaster.

As he always did, perhaps, didn’t he?

This time, he thought, I’ll figure it out.

This time, it will be a blessing, and not a curse.  

The lad was running himself in circles with it, wearing himself thin—so much so that it seemed he had to keep his hands soldered together to stop them from shaking.

“Wait there. I’ll be just a second,” Thursday said.

A flicker of mistrust flared up in Morse’s eyes, as if he thought Thursday might abandon him there at the corner table, might give up on him as a nutter and a bad job, but then, the spark died down again, dwindling to an air of snow-swept calm.

“All right, sir.”

Thursday pushed his chair back and went over to the bar, then, ordering two pints.

If Thursday had ever seen anyone who could do with a good beer, it was Morse.

As soon as the barkeep slid the glasses over to him across the counter, he picked them up and began to make his way back through the labyrinth of side-angled chairs, jutting feet, and elbows akimbo, careful to keep the glasses aloft, careful not to spill the tankards filled brim-high and rolling with foam. Finally, he reached their table, where he set the drinks down smartly before them.

Morse began to beg off right away, raising an outstretched hand.

“I don’t drink,” he said.

“Very commendable,” Thursday replied. “Now get that down you.”

Morse eyed his pint for a moment, warily, but then he raised the glass and took a tentative sip. In a few moments, his shoulders relaxed, and he pulled the glass away, looking at it with a dawning air of appreciation, even as he wiped a spot of foam away that had adhered itself to his upper lip.

A companionable silence fell over the fire-lit table, then, as they quietly emptied their glasses.

After a while, Morse smiled ruefully.

“You know,” he said. “It seems ridiculous now to admit. But I’ve spent all afternoon rereading Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Wondering if there was something to it. ‘Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?’”

Thursday frowned. That settled it. The lad had been far, far too much alone. With nothing but his own thoughts for company, how could he help but let it all in, those doubts and second doubts and regrets? He was combing over it, always, relentlessly combing over it, wasn’t he? Scrutinizing every casually tossed-out word.

It was what must have been responsible for the odd sort of disconnect with which he spoke. It was as if he had two faces, and he had only one to spare for other people, for the outside world, while the other was turned inwards, analyzing and reanalyzing, playing everything back to himself for just one more look-over.

“Sergeant Jakes and I will come out to the school tomorrow. We’ll talk to the girls. See if we can make a match for the handwriting. See if we can make anything of it.”  

“Will you?” Morse asked.

“Hmmmmm. We’ve got an appointment at the College of Arms in the morning. Autopsy at one. But we can be there  . . . around three o’clock, say?”

“Thank you,” Morse said. The words came out a bit breathlessly, like small bursts of wind over snow, scattering up crystals of flakes, but his hand was steadier as he lifted his glass and finished off his pint, and a bit of color seemed to be returning to his face.

It wasn’t much that Thursday had offered, but just the idea that he would not be alone with it, whatever it was that was brewing out there at the school, seemed enough to be of comfort.

“Do you need a ride? Back out to Slepe?” Thursday asked.

“It’s too far out of your way. I can get the bus.”

“There can’t be too many running at this hour. Why don’t you let me run you back? It’s really no trouble. Wouldn’t have offered if it was.”

Morse smiled faintly at that bit of blunt honesty.

“All right, sir. Thank you.”

****

Morse ran one hand over the hood of the black Jag, his face filled with a light that bordered on longing.

“Nice, isn’t she?” Thursday said. “Don’t make them like this anymore.”

“Sir.”

“I’d offer to let you drive it,” he said, with a hint of a laugh,“but it’s Oxford City property.”

“Oh, I understand sir. But can I . . .”

“What?”

“Can I turn on the radio?”

“Don’t see why not.”

Morse got into the car, then, as Thursday settled himself behind the wheel, steeling himself to hear some of the rattling pop music of which Joan was so fond. But instead, once he cranked the key in the ignition, sending the engine humming, Morse turned the dial straight to a station playing classical, filling the car with a shine of violins as crisp and clear as a January morning.

Morse leaned back in his seat, then, seemingly content to watch the world pass by the window as Thursday started off down the street. The music seemed to soften his frosty façade, and Thursday began to think he might get one more crack at getting the lad talking a bit more about himself, after all.

“What brought you out here, anyway?” Thursday asked, once he made the turn onto the road leading out towards Slepe.

“Needed a job, like I said.”

“Ever think of settling somewhere? You’re bright enough. Still seems like you could get something better.”  

“Oh, I dunno,” Morse said. “Haven’t found anywhere to settle, I suppose.”

He frowned then, narrowing his eyes as he looked out the window.

“The trees look like ghosts in the headlamps, don’t they?” he mused.

“Mmmmm,” Thursday said, noncommittally.

Morse sat up straighter in his seat, then, suddenly alarmed. “I was just saying that for something to say. I didn't mean anything by it. Not anything to do with that. Ghosts and things.” 

“I know you didn’t.”

“I really don't believe in any of that rubbish, you know. Not... not really.”

“Mmmmm,” Thursday said. 

And then Morse relaxed, as if reassured Thursday didn’t think poorly of him, slumping back into his usual slouch.

“So when did all this start, anyway?” Thursday asked.

“I told you. I don’t know, really. I don’t know much about Blythe Mount. I haven’t been there long.”

“No. I mean. With you.”

“Oh,” Morse said. He turned and looked back out the window. “I don’t know,” he said, vaguely. “I don’t remember.”

“That is,” he amended, “I suppose it was happening before I realized it was happening, and . . . I don’t know.”

Thursday frowned. There was some story there, he was sure of it.

It didn’t seem right that the lad should be so on the outs with his family. It was clear he wasn’t a bad sort. Thursday couldn’t imagine leaving Joan or Sam to drift about in the world, if they had felt plagued by such a thing.

Morse was quiet for the rest of the ride. Perhaps he sensed more questions in the offing. Or perhaps he was just tired. Whichever it was, by the time they got out past Carterton, he had closed his eyes, even though it was clear he was still awake—there was a tension there in his face, as if he was listening to the strains of music with every fiber of his being. 

Then, as soon as Thursday turned onto the road leading up to the big house, he opened them again, as if carefully scanning the grounds, looking for god-only-knew what. For that girl in the lace cap, most probably.

He must not have seen her, because he seemed pleased enough when Thursday rounded the bend, bringing the Jag to a stop before the groundskeeper’s cottage.

“Thanks for the lift,” he said.

“We’ll be round tomorrow,” Thursday replied. “Round three o’clock. Perhaps you can tell Miss Symes to expect us?”

“All right. Thank you.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, sir,” Morse said. 

And then he started off across the lawns towards the groundskeeper’s cottage, a lonely-looking little place, as worn and as solitary as the young man who lived there.

******

Dorothea Frazil walked into the offices of The Oxford Mail, her heels clicking crisply against the lino floor as she filed through a stack of letters in her hand, and nearly ran smack into Clarence Burke, the chief copy editor, who had bustled over from his desk to intercept her.

“You’ve some young man who’s come by to see you,” he said. “Was here first thing this morning, waiting at the door. We couldn’t get rid of him. So we told him he could wait in your office ‘til you came in.”

“Did you?” Miss Frazil asked. “What’s he want?”

“I dunno,” Burke said. “He just said he has to speak to you. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Dorothea raised her eyebrows, while Burke nodded sagely. 

They had seen it all before, of course. More often than not, these sorts proved to be simple cranks; it was a college town, after all, with no scarcity of eccentrics.

But every now and then, there was one such unexpected visitor who came along with some interesting tidbit or lead to share.

“Thanks for the fair warning,” she said wryly, before continuing on.

As she opened the glass-paneled door to her office, she found the young man in question sitting on the edge of the chair before her desk, poring over the morning edition of the Mail. At the sound of her approach, he turned and rose at once to his feet.

“Hello,” she said.

“Miss Frazil?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, cautiously, sizing him up. “And you are?”

He seemed harmless enough—slender and trim underneath his ill-fitting car coat, with wavy auburn hair and bright blue eyes. Most likely some sort of postgrad.

He hesitated for a fraction of an instant before giving his name, a lapse that Dorothea duly noted.

“Morse,” he said.

“Well, Morse. What can I do for you?”

She circled around the room to take her place at her desk, gesturing for Morse to take a seat in the chair he had previously occupied.

“I was looking for information about a story,” he said. “About a place called Blythe Mount. It’s a story from July . . .”

“If it’s a back issue you want,” she began, “you could have simply asked the . . .”

“ . . . 1866.”

She paused.

“I’ve been at the Mail for quite a while, Morse, but that’s even before my time.”

“This pre-dates the Mail. We’ll need to look in Jackson’s Oxford Journal.”

“Will we?”

“Mmmmmm.”

Dorothea lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, leaning back in her chair as she considered him. 

It would be easy to dismiss the man as just another misfit living too long within the halls of academia, but there was something about his face, his eyes: a certain chilled clarity, as if there lay a winter’s worth of austerity in the otherwise youthful face. 

The man had some story, that much was certain. Whether or not it was worth her time remained to be seen....

“You come in here off the street and ask me to look into a one-hundred-year story, with nothing other than the name of an estate to go on?” she asked.

He shrugged, as if in acknowledgment of the strangeness of his request, and then leaned forward, conspiratorially, holding up the paper he had been reading, which had been folded open to a story on the Adrian Weiss murder.

“There may be a connection with yesterday’s murder at the museum,” he said, his mournful voice low, almost at a whisper.

Dorothea stilled at that. 

Could he be a witness, reluctant to come forward directly? Or the actual culprit, playing some sort of game with the police?

“What would you know about that?” she asked. “If you know something about the murder, you would do better to talk to the police.”

“No. I don’t know anything,” he said, as if realizing what she might have inferred. “Not yet. But if you can help me, we might find a connection . . . And besides. I am working with the police.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes.” 

“Who?”

“Detective Inspector Thursday.”

Dorothea mulled that over. She knew Fred Thursday of old. He was a copper of the old school, hardly likely to get himself involved in a young man’s obvious flight of fancy . . .

“So if I called him, he’d know all about you being here?”

“No,” Morse admitted. “Not exactly. But he’d vouch for me.”

. . . unless, of course, DI Thursday thought there was something in it, in what the man had to say.

“Or at least I think he would.”

Dorothea couldn't help but quirk a bemused smile at the qualification. 

“So,” she asked. “Who are you, exactly? Some private investigator, hired by Weiss’s family?”

“No. I’m a groundskeeper. At Blythe Mount School.”

Well. He was honest, at least.

Dorothea stubbed her cigarette out, thoughtfully. It had been a slow news week, after all. A crack in the Weiss case would be a godsend.

“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll take you to the archives.”

Morse paled as if shocked at his good fortune, and shot up from his chair at once, as if afraid she might change her mind.

*****

Groundskeeper or not, Morse seemed to be right at home amidst the stacks. What was more, his hands were definitely softer than the hands of a man who had long used them to make a living.

He may be a groundskeeper out at Slepe now, but Dorothea would bet money it was by way of Oxford. A failed student, perhaps? Or perhaps one who had simply run out of funds? His clothes were cheap enough, even though he was young enough to get away with it, she supposed.

As he flipped through pages, his fingers almost trembling with excitement even as he was careful to respect the fragility of the old paper, it was clear that he had the soul of an academic.

And it was even more clear that—whatever he was looking for—it something highly specific.

“What’s so important?” she asked.

He continued to scan a page of fine newsprint.

“Morse?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it. I just. I just have a feeling that’s all.” He shook his head, slightly. “Instinct, I suppose.”

He pulled out another binder of newspaper, then, and, suddenly, he went oddly silent, freezing up, so much so that she could almost feel the chill of it emanating in the windowless basement room.

“There it is,” he breathed.

He held up a newspaper article, one that featured a black-and-white photograph of an old county estate.

“This is it,” Morse said.

“What is it?” Dorothea asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Morse said. “But something.”

Dorothea could scarcely refrain from rolling her eyes.

Perhaps, indeed, she had had a wasted morning.

***

Thursday and Jakes pulled up in front of Blythe Mount to find a squad car from county already parked there.

They exchanged pointed glances and then got out of the car, slowly, warily.

“DI Church,” said a wiry man in a fedora, standing in front of the house, as soon as they approached. “And my bagman. DS Bruce.”

“DI Thursday,” Thursday replied. “Fred. And this is DS Jakes.”

“Bit off your beat for a pair of city boys, aren’t you? We were told you might be coming out here. About some sort of note the groundskeeper gave you? Miss Symes mentioned.”

“That’s right,” Thursday said, keen to give the county yobs as little information as possible, until he could ascertain what they were about.

“Well, DI Thursday,” Church said, then, scornfully. “We’ve got a young girl missing. Bunty Glossop. And guess who else has done a runner? That boy you’ve been talking to. The groundskeeper. Some sort of drifter, is he? Morse? ’Bout five-ten? Reddish hair? Ring any bells?”

The blood in Thursday’s veins ran cold.

The implication was all too clear, but he didn’t believe a word of it.

Jakes caught his eye and raised his heavy brows, but Thursday only frowned in answer.

No.

He was not even going to entertain such a thought. His instincts had never served him so poorly in the past, and he highly doubted they had failed him now, in the case of Morse.

That girl in particular, Bunty, had seemed a lonely little duck. Most likely she had simply run away, perhaps had struck out for a friend’s, perhaps wasn’t too far off.

It was all an awful coincidence. The lad had gotten something in his head, had been poring over their conversation from last night, perhaps, and nothing would do until he checked up on it. The idea that perhaps he ought to wait a few hours and tell him about it never would have crossed his mind. He was used to operating alone.

Although Thursday had told him they would be here at three. Surely, he would have wanted to be here, if only out of a sense of curiosity. Surely, he not imagined that they had forged some sort of connection, that he had made an unspoken agreement with the lad that he’d take his concerns seriously, that he’d follow through.

“Well, well, well,” Church said, looking up then, over his shoulder. “Would you look at that? That’s got to be him, then. Right back to the scene of the crime.”

Thursday turned on the spot, and the tension building in his frame drained away at once. It was Morse, striding along the rolling green lawns as fast as his lanky legs could carry him, making a beeline for him, his face full of color and excitement as he approached, clearly pleased to see him.

“Sir,” he said, when he was within hailing distance.

And then he held up a yellowed newspaper, as if holding a torch of victory.

So. He had gone off on a little investigation of his own, had he?

Wherever he had gone, Thursday hoped to God that the newfound happiness in his face was an indication that he had held himself a little less aloof than he usually did, when he had been out on his adventure, that he had spoken to a few people at least.

That he had someone to account for his whereabouts that morning.

Morse walked right up to him, ignoring the presence of Church and his bagman. And why should he be alarmed? He, Thursday, had told him the police would be out around three, and here they were. He didn’t know county police from city. He clearly no idea that anything else had happened. 

“Look,” he said, unfurling the paper. “It’s Blythe Mount. Only it used to be called Shrive Hill. Do you remember, what I said? That it might as well have all started a hundred years ago? I got to thinking, and, look here.”

He held the paper up for him, then, and, incredibly, he began to read the entire article.

“Listen, listen to this. ‘On Friday the twenty-seventh of July, a gruesome discovery of the dreadful murder at Shrive Hill House, at Slepe in the county of Oxon, was made. Detective Inspector Langley, famed for his part in the investigation of the Bermondsey Horror, arrived from Scotland Yard to guide the inquiry.”

“Morse,” Thursday said.

But Morse continued on, as if he had not spoken. “The five victims—three children, the youngest but a babe in arms, together with their nursemaid and governess, were discovered on the twenty-seventh at about six in the evening by Samuel Blasie-Hamilton. The Blasie-Hamilton’s eldest daughter, Charlotte, aged 11, survived the bloodletting, though thus far she’s been unable to shed any light on the identity of the person or persons who visited such terrible violence on her siblings, and the two faithful family servants.”

He flashed the newspaper away, but, still, kept right on talking. It was just the way he had spoken last night at the pub—as if he made a habit of storing up his words, and so, when he finally did speak, they all came bursting out in a whirlwind.

“According to the article, when the police first arrived, they found that the house was empty—and that a nocturne was playing on a music box. Their inquiries soon let to a Joseph O’Connell, originally of County Winslow and a well-known poacher. It was given under oath at the inquest by the family gamekeeper, Benjamin Pickstock and his son Robert . . .”

“Morse,” Thursday said.

“Don’t you see, sir? They were tea planters, it says. With plantations in India. Weiss was killed with a katar, an Indian ceremonial dagger.”

“How do you know about that?” Church asked, sharply. 

“I read about it in the Mail, this morning,” Morse replied.

“Well. The Mail’s got it wrong,” Thursday said. “There was a katar at the crime scene. But it wasn’t the murder weapon. Autopsy report says otherwise.”

“But that’s even more telling,” Morse protested. “That means it was left symbolically, then. That means there’s design behind it.”

“Morse. We’ll need to ask you to step inside for questioning.”

“Ask me anything you like,” Morse said, as if Thursday had missed the whole point. “I'm trying to tell you there's a connection here, and....”

“No, Morse. Not about this. About another matter.”

"Sir?” Morse asked, as if he was finally cottoning on to the fact that something was amiss.

“A student’s gone missing. Bunty Glossop.”

Morse’s eyes went wide with the shock of it.

As much as he might seem to have some sort of talent for prophecy, this was one turn of events, it was clear, that he never saw coming.

Chapter Text

Morse pulled back a chair and took his place across from them at a round wooden table polished to such a high gloss that it seemed almost to glow in the light cast through the tall windows—all of which had been thrown open to catch the summer breeze, sending the white curtains billowing, fluttering, like the wings of snowy butterflies.

The lad cast a quick glance around the room, then, taking it all in—the delicately-carved white marble mantle over the white marble fireplace, the white wallpaper with stripes made of cascading ivy leaves, the high plastered ceilings, lending a deeper shade of coolness to the room—as if he had never seen it before.

Which, perhaps, as groundskeeper, he hadn’t.

“So. Morse, is it?” DI Church asked.

Morse nodded.

“Morse what?”

Thursday gritted his teeth and willed for Morse to tell the truth, hoped that the lad would give a sensible answer in light of the straights he was in, and—much to Thursday’s relief—he said it.

“Endeavour,” he said. “Endeavour Morse.”

Church looked at him skeptically from behind his heavy-framed glasses.

“My mother was a Quaker,” Morse explained. “It’s a virtue name.”

Thursday repressed a sigh. Morse had repeated the words in the exact manner in which he had once said them to him, when they had first met out at the House Beautiful, in a joyless little mantra just as lifeless as a handful of stones.

He felt for the lad, there, he really did. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was part of the reason why Morse seemed to have fallen into the habit of giving false names.

He was never anywhere he was planning to stay, was he? Why go through the work of it, why put himself through the ordeal of that explanation, of resurrecting the memory of his dead mother over and over, all for the benefit of people he most likely would never see again, anyhow?

DS Bruce wrote the name in his notebook, and Morse winced as he did so, as if it pained him to see the secret he wished to keep as impenetrable as thick drifts of snow set down, made as clear as crystal.

“Morse, then,” Church said. “So. Where were you last night?”

Morse’s expressive eyes trailed at once to him . . . wondering, perhaps, if it was alright to tell?

Wondering if he might be getting him into trouble?   

“Don’t look to Inspector Thursday for an answer,” Church said, sharply. “Just answer the question.”

“I wasn’t,” Morse protested. “It’s just . . .”

“He was with me,” Thursday said.

Church turned and leaned back in his chair, looking at him with an affectation of surprise.

“That so?” Church asked.

“Yes,” Morse said, cutting in. “I found a note in my pocket, after Inspector Thursday left yesterday, and I thought it would be of interest. So I met him, in Oxford.”

“And this is the note that you told Miss Symes about? ‘Save Me?’”

“Yes,” Morse said.  

“Hmmmm. And what time did you get back?”

“I didn’t look at the time. Half ten, I suppose? Or just past?”

Morse chanced a glance to him, then, as if seeking confirmation, and Thursday nodded.

“Sounds about right,” he rumbled.

“That’s when you told Miss Symes that Inspector Thursday was intending to come out this afternoon?” Church asked.

“Yes,” Morse said. “I was walking back to the cottage, when I saw the light was on in the staff room. So I went in to tell her.”

“Bit late, wasn’t it?”

“No, not really. It was only a brief conversation. And I had only just realized ... well. I realized I had places to be in the morning.”

“Ah. Places to be, eh?” Church asked, as if at last they were getting down to the matter at hand. “According to Miss Symes, you seemed to have disappeared for a few hours this morning.”

“I hardly “disappeared,” Morse protested. “I went to Oxford.”

“How did you get there, then?”

“I took the seven o’clock bus out of Slepe.”

“How did you get to the bus station?”

“I walked.”

“Would the bus driver remember you?”

“Probably not. No, I wouldn’t think so.”

Church and Bruce exchanged knowing glances, and then Bruce hunched over his notebook, continuing on with the task of recording Morse’s words.

“But the lady I sat next to would,” Morse said.

DS Bruce paused, his pen mid-stroke on the paper.

“Oh. Would she now?” DI Church asked. “And do you know her name?”

“No,” Morse replied, simply. And Thursday, despite himself, felt his heart sink.

His job was to serve, without fear or favor. But his instincts, in this case, couldn’t help but to favor Morse—they were wasting valuable time, raking the lad over the coals, he felt it in his water.

But could Morse not account for what he’d been doing all the morning?

“Well. Not much help, there, is it?” Church asked, putting Thursday’s thoughts into words, and seeming well-satisfied with them.

“But the bus driver would know her name,” Morse countered. “He could tell you, and then I know she’d verify I was there. She’s a regular. She told me she takes that bus every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning to go to look after her grandchildren in North Oxford. She has a daughter there named Lydia, who has a part-time job teaching art at a day school. And I know she would remember me, because she helped me to do the crossword, to pass the time. She was impressed that I got seven across.”

“That all?” Church asked dryly, as DS Bruce’s pen struggled to keep up with the sudden burst of Morse’s words.

“She was wearing a green cardigan. She mentioned that it’s her favorite, that her sister knitted it for her, so the driver might know her by that. And she lives right off the Haymarket Road. She got on at the stop just after . . .”

“Alright,” Church said. “I guess we got it.”

Thursday looked down to repress his smile, and, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that even Sergeant Jakes, who had been no great fan of Morse’s, seemed to be enjoying the exchange.

The lad noticed things, that much was clear. Had a memory sharp as a tack.

“When you got into town, where did you go then?” Church asked. “Any one to vouch for you?”

“I went to the offices of the Oxford Mail, to speak to Miss Frazil, the editor there. And then she took me to the archives.”

Thursday’s quirk of a smile faded at once.

This seemed unlikely to say the least.

She wasn’t one to waste her time, Miss Frazil, and, even though Morse had been quick enough off the mark in coming up with such a story, it didn’t quite fit.

Thursday leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on the table.

“Miss Frazil spent all morning shepherding you around the archives?” he asked, incredulously.

“Well,” Morse said, shifting a bit in his seat. “She may have gotten the impression that. . . .”

“That what?” Thursday asked.  

“That I was working with you.”

Thursday shook his head, barely able to refrain from rolling his eyes.

“But I was,” he insisted. “I am.”

And then he unfurled that goddamned yellowed newspaper across the table, and then he was right back onto that ruddy article.

“Now, according to this accounting, when the police arrived, they found that only the eldest daughter, Charlotte, had survived. And that a Nocturne by Chopin was playing on a music box.... Why? What is it?”

Morse’s change in manner was so abrupt—running straight from what promised to be a rather long-winded and painfully-detailed recounting of the case to two rather quick-punch questions—that, for a moment, Thursday didn’t realize that the lad’s inquiries were directed at Church rather than towards himself.

“Nothing,” Church said. “Let’s get back to the matter at hand.”

“No,” Morse said. “No. That struck a chord.”

Church gritted his teeth, his eyes steely.

“Never you mind. We’re the ones asking the questions here, not you.”

Morse blinked for a moment, as though affronted, and then continued on, turning back to him.

“Don’t you see, sir? Don’t you think it an odd coincidence? That I said, ‘could as well be a hundred years’ since all this started at the house? And then it transpires that Blythe Mount was the scene of a terrible tragedy, nearly one hundred years ago to the very day?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it: Church and Bruce exchanging quizzical glances. This was a train of thought that Thursday needed to derail right now, before it carried Morse clear over a cliff.

“One off-hand comment,” Morse,” Thursday countered.

Not only were the dismissive words for Morse’s own good, but they were also true.

Those particular words that Morse had murmured, as they had sat before the fire at the Lamb and Flag, had been nothing more than a simple bit of hyperbole, tossed aside with all the carelessness of a flick of cigarette ash.

His Sam might well have said the same thing. “It’s been a hundred years since I’ve had a day off,” or some such nonsense.

They were nothing like the words Morse had spoken out at the House Beautiful—words that, in retrospect, had rung with an oddly prophetic air. Nothing, really, for that matter, like some of the other things he had said last night down at the pub, things that perhaps did bear some looking into: take that odd little soliloquy about soldiering on through a dark night of the soul, for example, and all the rest of those pronouncements that had seemed to spill from him, almost against his will, rushing out into the darkened pub like a January wind.

Morse, meanwhile, was regarding him blankly, his face utterly impassive, as if he could read his very thoughts on his face.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said.

“What doesn’t work like that?” Church asked, a hint real anger beginning to rise in his voice.

“Morse . . .” Thursday said, trying once more to warn him off.

“Just think about it, sir. That apparition was wearing Victorian . . .”

“Morse. That’s enough, now,” Thursday snapped, cutting across him, even as Jakes, beside him, hissed under his breath in impatience.

Thursday shook his head then, slightly, subtly, in an attempt to send him the message that this was neither the time nor place. That Church and Bruce were possibly the last men on earth before whom he should air his unconventional theories. Morse was skating on thin ice, speeding on and on towards the edge of a hole in a frozen pond like one possessed, with no thought to the consequences.

He, Thursday, had meant to be of help to the lad, but now he saw he had been wrong to encourage him, wrong to embolden him.

Because look here: Just last night Morse had been afraid even to mention it, that so-called apparition, and now here he was, allowing himself to get so carried away that he didn’t even have the sense to keep a lid on it in front of people whose bad opinion of him he should fear.

“That’s enough of that now,” Thursday said, in what he hoped was a slightly more conciliatory tone. “The answers to these cases are to be found in the here and now. You had best just look sharp and answer DI Church’s questions straight and then be on your way.”

Morse considered him for a long moment, and then he turned away, turned back ’round in his chair squarely to face Church, and Thursday could almost feel it, the dismissal, like a bitter wind of disappointment.  

“So,” Church said. “No one to account for you between ten last night and six this morning, though. That right?”

And now, Morse’s expression had completely closed off, his previous excitement and enthusiasm gone like the sun behind a cloud, so that his entire form seemed almost to emanate with a forbidding chill.

“No,” Morse said.

DS Bruce raised his eyebrows as he circled something in his notes.

“It would be odd if I did, wouldn’t it?” Morse added, then. “Since I live alone?”

“Of course,” Morse went on, “I don’t know if it would make particular sense to abduct a child mere hours after a detective inspector drops you at your cottage, where it’s known you live alone. You might have thought I would have come up with some better plan rather than to make it so painfully clear I hadn’t any possible alibi.”

Thursday grimaced at the bluntness with which Morse came out with the thing, even as a part of him was relieved that the words provided some indication, at least, that the lad knew where he stood.

“Could be the best alibi of all, though, couldn’t it?” Church countered. “Just like you said. Who would ever suspect it? Right under our noses. Hiding in plain slight.”

Morse snorted. “Well. You do give me credit for cunning.”

Morse crossed his arms then, seeming to appraise them all as if he were a teacher grading his pupils’ papers and finding them all sadly lacking.

“I wonder how you feel any of this is helpful,” he said.

“How’s that?” Church asked.

“Young girls don’t just disappear, Inspector Church. Bunty is gone because somebody took her. Or because she chose not to be.”

He paused for a second, as if allowing the last four words sink in.

“All you’ve done thus far is to go over my itinerary. I would have thought you might think to ask me something about Bunty.”

Morse seemed to believe that he had delivered them a blow, but, just then, a smirk of satisfaction came to play at the corner of Church’s mouth, as if just the opposite were true—as if Morse had just tied his own rope.

“Yes, let’s talk about her, then,” Church said. “Miss Danby said the girl has been seen in your company, that she’s noticed her talking to you quite a bit, since you’ve started here.”

“I don’t know about ‘quite a bit,’” Morse said. “But we’ve spoken now and then. About books in the main. She’s an avid reader. I suppose it’s a bit of an escape for her.”

Church leapt on that.

“And did you think that’s what she needed? An escape?”

The words were there, unspoken:

For someone to take her away from here?

But Morse appeared not to register them.

“I know she was unhappy. There’s been . . . . there’s been some bullying, I believe.”

“How would you know about that? I wouldn’t think you’d have much to do with them, the girls, in your role as groundskeeper,” Church asked, pointedly.

And again, Morse went on, undaunted. “I hear them. The girls. Calling to one another. “Fie, fie, foe, fum, here comes Edwina and the beanstalk.’ They’re particularly horrible to Miss Thengardi, the older girls.  “Fish-nor,” “Go back to Calcutta.”

Morse made another sour face, one of many in that endless repertoire of his, but Church only shrugged.

“Well. That’s just kids, isn’t it?” he asked.

Morse's expression went cold.

“I suppose so,” he said, clearly unconvinced. 

“Well, then, Mr. Morse,” Church said. “Thank you for your observation. But Miss Danby has assured us that this is a very happy school.”

Jakes raised his eyebrows at that, and Thursday felt himself falling into silent agreement with his sergeant. If Church would just spend fifteen minutes about the place with open eyes, he’d see that Morse’s take on the climate of the school was likely to be far closer to the truth of things, far more accurate, than Miss Danby’s.

Church drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully, then, like a roll of approaching thunder. Thursday could sense the storm on the horizon all too well. If he and Jakes were not there, he felt certain Church might take Morse in anyway, but—despite the gaping hole during which he had been unaccounted for —and despite the poor showing he’d made for himself—the County Inspector had nothing solid to go on, really.

Just yet, anyway.

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t look for something.

“All right,” Church said. “You’re free to go for now. Take yourself for a little walk or somewhat. Just give your cottage a wide berth for a while.”

“Why?” Morse asked, at once, as soon as he had risen to his feet.

“It’s being searched, just at the moment,” Church said.

Morse drew himself up to his full height, and again, Thursday could almost feel it, a sudden chill flooding into the room, despite the warm summer breeze that sent the white curtains fluttering, translucent with sunlight.

“You have a problem with that?” Church asked.

“I just would have thought it might be standard procedure for you to inform me first,” Morse said. “But that’s fine. Pull the place to pieces, if you like. Didn’t expect much less, from your methods.”

And then Morse turned to go, turning his back on the lot of them.

“What’s that supposed to mean, then?” Church called after him.

Morse spun around. “The questions you chose to ask. You’re more worried about pinning charges on someone, anyone, your own statistics, even, than about bringing Bunty home safely, seems to me.”

“It does, does it?” Church snarled.  

“Yes. Yes. It does.”

Morse turned, then, his blue gaze sweeping across the room until it landed solely on him.  

“You can’t approve of this, sir.”

“Morse....” Thursday began, heavily.

“I thought you might have wondered about what friends she might have,” Morse continued, “if she’s told me if she thinks of running away... if she...”

“So?” Jakes asked, sharply, pouncing on that. “Has she?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “She’s been missing her best friend. Maud Asherden. Bunty told me it’s been difficult getting through the days without her. She might have struck off for her place. And if she has, it would be best to find her before something does happen to her.”

“That so, eh?” Church asked.

“Yes.”

Church looked at Morse again, his eyes narrowed.

“Just don’t leave town.”

“I won’t,” Morse hurled out at them, in a tone that sounded more like a threat than a promise, and then he went out the door, all but slamming it behind him.

For a long moment, Church considered the charged space where Morse had stood.

“Your boy’s not backward in coming forwards, is he?” he asked, at last.

Thursday scowled, not so certain about the appellation, considering he had met Morse only four times.

But god only knew, after that performance, Morse needed someone to vouch for him, someone to be in his corner.

He certainly didn’t seem to know how to do himself any favors.

Thursday understood all too well that Church’s words were meant as a dig.

Just look at the snouts you’ve been consorting with.

But still, he wasn’t at all inclined to disavow Morse, either.

“Keen as mustard,” Thursday said. “And smart, too.”

And, after all, it was the truth, wasn’t it? He’d certainly make for a better DI than Church, any road.

Church looked at him as if he were half daft, but that was fine.

Thursday didn’t give a shit’s tuppance about him, either.

Thursday looked to Jakes, then, expecting to see some look of reprimand reflected there. But instead, Jakes’ normally sharp and sardonic face was blank, utterly unreadable, as if he was mulling something over so intently that Thursday felt he had infringed upon the man’s privacy just by glancing his way.

“Sergeant?” he prompted.

Jakes snapped out of his reverie, then, and pushed himself back from the table, just as Thursday was gathering up his hat. And then they went out the door, turning their backs on County just as Morse had done not two minutes before them. 

*****

Thursday stood before the blackboard, shuffling though six pieces of paper, each filled with the words “Save Me” written twenty times.

Not one of the handwriting samples they had gathered from the girls was a match to the note left in Morse’s pocket.

“And you’re sure it isn’t Bunty’s writing?” Thursday asked.

Bunty would have been Thursday’s first guess, regardless of what the papers revealed, considering it seemed she and Morse had struck up some sort of fragile friendship, a sort of conference of two bookish outsiders surrounded by those who didn’t understand them.

If any of the girls were to choose Morse to reach out to if she felt troubled by something, it would have been Bunty, Thursday was sure of it.

“I’m sure,” Miss Danby said. “Sorry.”

Thursday nodded, considering.

“Just one other question, Miss Danby. I believe DI Church mentioned something about a Nocturne?”

Technically, he hadn’t, but, Morse was right: that detail in the article seemed to have elicited a response from both the County boys. And if conducting the handwriting analysis of the note that had been delivered into their hands was to be City’s last tango with the case of the missing girl, they might as well head off the ballroom floor with all the information that they could garner.

“Yes,” Miss Danby said. “I was in my rooms at the end of the hall, when Petra came to tell me Bunty was gone again. When we went downstairs to look for her, we could hear the piano playing in the conservatory, but…”

And here her words began to falter

“But … ?” Thursday prompted.

“But, as I came to the door, it slammed shut, and the music stopped.”

“What do you mean,” Jakes asked, “gone again?”

Miss Danby smiled ruefully.  

“She’s a bit of a nighttime wanderer, I’m afraid. You know how girls can be at that age, ghost stories and such.”

“What sorts of ghost stories?” Thursday asked.

“Well, Bloody Charlotte for one.”

“Bloody Charlotte?” Jakes asked, his interest piqued, no doubt, at hearing the name that Morse had mentioned from his treasured newspaper article. 

Miss Danby swallowed.

“All houses have their stories, I suppose. Blythe Mount was the scene of five grisly murders … years and years ago now. Sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. Three children and two household servants, all killed with a croquet mallet. The sole survivor of the bloodletting was the eldest daughter of the family. Charlotte.”

“Bloody Charlotte,” Thursday said.

“Yes. There’s a rather torrid book about the incident, in which it’s conjectured that the girl was the murderess. I suppose the tale has been making the rounds almost from the founding of the school, handed down from generation to generation, stirring up imaginations.”

Thursday frowned, sensing something not quite right in Miss Danby's story. Although she tried to be off-hand in the retelling of it, she seemed a bit more distraught by the idea than he might have thought, than he might have expected an adult to be in recounting a children’s game.

It was almost as if she wasn’t quite convinced that there wasn’t actually something to it.

Could it be that she had seen what Morse had thought he’d seen? The ghost of a girl? 

“And you haven’t seen anything else unusual, these past few weeks?”

“No,” Miss Danby said, but her voice trembled on the single word, like the warble of a dove.

Well. It was time to bring the conversation back to ground, back to the one solid lead they had going.

“Morse said that he thought it was possible that Bunty might have struck out for a friend’s. A Maud Asherden’s?”

“Yes,” Miss Danby said, her two dimples reappearing in her fondant soft face, seemingly relieved at this change of subject. “Maudie’s her bosom companion. But I’m afraid the Peloponnese would test even Bunty’s abilities. The family’s on a sailing holiday, I believe.”

Thursday nodded.

“Well. Thank you for your time, Miss.”

“Of course,” she said, and then she turned away to lead them to the door.

He and Jakes were just going out, when Thursday drew to a halt on the threshold and asked one final question. 

“What piece was it, that was playing on the piano, did you know?”

Jakes’ heavy brows knit together even as Miss Danby blinked in surprise.

“Chopin. Number one, I think,” she said. “In B flat minor.”

Thursday nodded grimly once more, even as he realized that none of that meant a thing to him.

Even as he realized that, funnily enough, he hadn’t been asking so much for himself, as he was for Morse.

****

As Thursday walked out of the wide front doors, striding alongside of Jakes back to the Jag parked in the gravel drive, he couldn’t help but scan the rolling expanse of summer green grounds, looking for Morse.

The lad must have cleared out, gone off for a stroll, like Church had said, taken himself off somewhere, because not only was the figure of Morse nowhere to be seen lopping along somewhere through the grass between the brick house and the tree-lined horizon, but— incredibly enough—a uniformed officer was still standing sentinel outside of the groundskeeper’s cottage.

The County yobs were still at it, then.

Jakes and Thursday exchanged glances, and, in silent agreement, they veered away from the Jag and struck out across the lawns, interested to see just what County was on about.

Side by side, with their hands tucked casually into their coat pockets, they ambled down the worn path that led up to the small cottage, nodded to the man standing guard, and then ducked in through the low door, one by one, to find two DCs mucking about in a flurry of books and papers, going none too methodically though Morse’s things.

Either Morse was the untidiest groundskeeper alive, or County was really having a field day with the place. The cottage—with its whitewashed walls and low ceilings lined with rough wooden beams—looked as if it might be a cozy enough, if somewhat Spartan, little burrow. The three tall windows along the back wall faced north, letting in a light that was more winter white than golden summer, but it was a clear light, a cheerful light, all the same.

But, as for now, the cottage was an absolute tip, with books and papers and records and jumpers littered across the bare oak floor.

In one corner, a single, low bed stood under a tangle of disheveled and mismatched blankets—far more than you’d think one would need in the summer—and all so strewn about that Thursday couldn’t tell if Morse had left it that way, in a jumbled little nest, or if County had thoroughly ransacked that as well.

Jakes looked about the one large room, his lips pursed so as to emit a silent whistle of disbelief. 

“Find anything yet?” he asked.

But his sergeant’s sarcasm was lost on the County men.

“Not really,” one sullen DC replied, flipping through the pages of a cloth-bound book and then letting it drop onto the floor.

“Lot of books,” he added, with a trace of mistrust in his voice, as if owning a lot of books was somehow suspect in and of in itself. 

Meanwhile, the second constable likewise stood before one of the sun-filled windows, taking book after book off of a nearby shelf and flipping through each one before setting it onto a small desk, stacking them all so haphazardly that they looked like they might soon spill onto the ground in an avalanche of old paper.

Thursday was just about to tell the constables to leave the books as they found them, when the DC by the window picked up yet another and rustled through its pages, sending a photograph that had been tucked inside fluttering like a dried leaf to the ground.

The man leapt upon it as if it were a leaf of solid gold, grabbed it up his fingers and turned it over.

“Look here,” he said. “He’s got a photograph of some kiddie.”

He flashed the photo up towards them as if in triumph, but even from his place by the door Thursday could tell right away—both by the antiquated shape of the black-and-white photograph and by the composition of its subject—that this was no recent snap taken by a lurker in the hedgerows, but rather a mere memento, taken in the late ’40s perhaps—an old, square black-and-white photograph of a child, bundled up so heavily that only its round face was visible, standing alongside of its mother in the snow.

Thursday began to cross the room to reach for the photograph, but Jakes was quicker, snatching it up with a feline grace and flicking it over in his long fingers in the same deft way that he would handle a cigarette.

“It’s him,” Jakes said.

“I knew it!” the constable exclaimed. “I knew he was a wrong’un.”

“No, constable,” Jakes said, contemptuously. “It’s him in the photo. Morse. It’s a picture of Morse and his mother.”

Thursday stepped up to look over Jakes’ shoulder, and, at one glance, he could tell that the sergeant was right. The child was dressed in a snug jacket and hood, revealing only a round and pale face, but the eyes that looked out form the photograph were the same unmistakable large eyes that had swept across the small drawing room not forty minutes earlier, their cool blue gaze searing across the four police officers who sat there as if it might turn them into ice, freezing them into place right in their chairs.

Jakes flipped the snapshot over, and the inscription on the back confirmed it.

Constance and Endeavour

January 1945

“Oh,” the constable said.

Jakes shook his head in disgust and handed the man back the photograph. And then he turned on his heel and went out the door with an abruptness that Thursday found surprising.

He went to follow, ducking his head once more through the low doorway, and then he made his way over to where his sergeant stood alone in the well-manicured grass.

Jakes lit up a cigarette with a flash of his lighter and took a thoughtful draw, and, even as his governor came to stand right beside him, he kept his eyes trained on the surrounding line of chestnut and fir trees, as if contemplating some unknowable point on the distant horizon.

“Well, you know, sir,” he said, at last. “Morse is right.”

He blew a steady stream of smoke into the air, with a bitterness that was palpable.

“They’re so worked up about finding something to link Morse to all this… it’s almost as if they’ve forgotten all about the girl.”

****

Thursday walked up the creaking stairs of the old brownstone building, up to the second-floor offices of Select Genealogical Services, Ltd, and knocked on the white-painted door.

An elderly man answered, bent and stooped, with a halo of white hair like spun candyfloss.

“May I help you?” he asked.

Thursday held up his warrant card.

“DI Thursday, Oxford City Police,” he said. “I’m here to look through Adrian Weiss’ effects.”

The man’s face clouded in confusion; he seemed half dotty, to be honest.

“And you are?” Thursday prompted, pointedly.

The man extended his hand. “Horace Thompson,” he said. “And old friend of Adrian’s. One of his oldest friends, literally and figuratively. We were up at Christ Church together. His niece, poor girl, asked me to come and put some order to his things, spare her having to shift though it all.”

Mr. Thompson opened the door wider, revealing a room filled with a desk and three work tables, all of which were covered in mountains of books and white paper. It looked a bit like Morse’s cottage, after County had ransacked it.

Weiss, it seemed, was one of those magpie-like old men who saved every scrap that came his way, no doubt in case it might hold some interest later.

Thursday felt quite daunted by the sight of it. 

“I might need your assistance in going through this,” Thursday said. 

“Of course. But you see … I’m afraid…”

The man looked troubled, putting Thursday’s instincts on high alert.

“I’m afraid there’s been some sort of mistake,” he said. “Your lad’s already been by.”

"What?" Thursday asked. 

Jakes, he was sure, had put stock in none of this ‘hundred years ago’ business, and was now, as far as Thursday knew, down at the nick, working his way through a mountain of paperwork of his own, pertaining to a string of car thefts in Jericho.

“Sergeant Jakes was here?” Thursday asked.  

“No. A Mr. . .” the man began, blinking like a small rabbit, perplexed. “A Mr. Janus, I believe he said his name was. That was it. He said he was working for you.”

“Oh, did he, now? You’re sure of that?”

“Yes, definitely, definitely,” he said. “He mentioned you specifically. Inspector Thursday. That I remember. I have to admit, I can’t think of a herald, off hand. Both names have got me foxed, I can tell you.”

“What did this Mr. Janus look like?” Thursday asked, feeling certain he already knew the answer.

“Oh, reddish hair, blue eyes, about an inch or two taller than I am, nearly your height,” he said.

“Did he show you a warrant card?” Thursday asked.

The man suddenly looked stricken, as if cottoning on to the direction of Thursday’s inquiries. 

“No. I don’t believe …. good heavens … I do hope I haven’t done the wrong thing.”

Inwardly, Thursday felt a sweeping sense of relief. Bamboozling his way into an office with a torrent of likely-sounding talk was one thing, impersonating a police officer was another thing all together.

“Not your fault, sir. You aren’t the first to have his head turned by a lot of fine-sounding speeches. Just point out to me, perhaps, what uh… what Mr. Janus was having a look at.”

“Well. He took quite a of the few papers with him.”

“What?” Thursday bellowed.

The old man took a step back, clutching his hands together.

“I’m dreadfully sorry. He was ever so polite, so well-spoken. It was actually a joy to speak to someone so well-versed and interested in the subject, that I’m afraid … perhaps…”

Thursday relaxed his stance.

“When was he here?” he asked.

“Oh, he left an hour or so ago I’d say.”

So. Morse, it seemed, had a tremendous head start on him. As soon as Church had dismissed him, he had not waited one hot minute. As soon as he left the sitting room in which he’d been questioned, he had struck of straight across the lawns to the bus stop.

At least he hadn’t commandeered one of the squad cars.

Thursday snorted.

Small mercy.

“I won’t leave town,” Morse had said.

And then he went right into town.

Well, that was them outwitted, wasn’t it?

Goddamn it.

*****

Thursday thundered back to the nick, his feet pounding against the pavement with the red-hot rush of anger that surged though him.

What did that clever clogs think he was getting into? He had half a mind to set a warrant out on him for interfering with evidence, if he didn’t fear getting the lad into even greater trouble.

He opened the doors to the CID and found Jakes at his desk, pecking away at an ancient typewriter, while a fan perched on top of a nearby filing cabinet churned, circulating the air in a desultory fashion around the cluttered and wood-paneled and deep green room.

“Much in?” Thursday asked.

“No,” Jakes said, “but there’s something that went out, thank Christ.” 

“How’s that?” Thursday asked.

“Morse was here waiting around for you for an hour or so. I finally sent him packing. Stubborn sod.”

“What? What’s this? I wanted to speak with him.”

But Jakes shook his head, dismissively. “He had all sorts of rubbish, sir. All a complete waste of time. Heralds and copies of an 1860 census and ledger books. He was as weighted down as a mobile library. I told him, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You were told not to leave town.’ And do you know what he said? Do you know what he actually said to me?”

Thursday said nothing, even though he was fairly certain he knew the answer.

“He said, ‘I’m in town.’”  

Jakes rolled his eyes and reached for a lit cigarette sitting on the edge of a glass ashtray on his desk. 

“Do you know where he’s gone?” Thursday asked.

“I know where he better have gone,” Jakes said. “I told him to take his arse back to Slepe so he can be found if he’s wanted. How’s it going to look for him if County wants to have another talk with him, and he’s off roaming around?”  

“And you think he listened?”  

“He better have. I told him, all he’s doing, pulling such a stunt, is diverting attention, wasting everyone’s time. If County’s running in circles, chasing down some harmless misfit who’s off his nut, the real culprit could be getting halfway across the country with the girl in tow. There’s a child missing for god’s sakes.”

Thursday nodded, sure, for once, that Morse had listened to one of them at least.

Morse and Jakes did not see eye to eye on most things, Thursday knew, but they were in agreement on one: that what should take priority in all of this mess was the safe return of Bunty Glossop.

****

Although, it didn’t hurt to call, just to make certain.

Thursday stood in his office, the Venetian blinds turned so that narrow slits of fading light fell across his desk like interruptions, as he held the telephone receiver to his ear, listening to the ring on the other end of the line.

“Blythe Mount School,” a voice said, at last. “Miss Symes speaking.”

“Good evening, Miss Symes,” Thursday said, realizing with a glance at the round clock on the wall that it was evening.

Win would have his guts if he didn’t give her a quick ring to let her know all was well. He’d been late every night this week.

“Inspector Thursday, Oxford City Police. I was wondering if Morse was there?”  

“Yes, he is. Would you like to speak to him again?” she asked, a trace of weariness in her voice.

“Quite all right, Miss. I just wanted to be sure he was there, in case he’s wanted. You’re sure he’s there, then?”

“I would say so, since I can see him just out the window. He’s out at the back garden shed, packing everything away for the night. And I really must say—Far be it for me to tell you how to run your inquiry—but I do hope the police have other leads in mind besides persecuting our groundskeeper. I’d hate for such a thing to get out into the press. The board of governors is gravely concerned. We do have standards….”

“I understand, Miss,” Thursday said.

“.... here At Blythe Mount. We have checked his references thoroughly. He’s simply a former student, not some unsavory drifter, as Inspector Church seemed to insinuate. Before we hired Mr. Morse, we spoke to his former tutor, a Professor Lorimer, up at Lonsdale, to his sister Joyce in Lincolnshire, and to Mr. Green, the choir director at TOSCA, where’s he’s been a member for some years, and they all reported that .... ”

Thursday wrote the names down as Miss Symes spoke—they all rang true, in light of what Thursday knew of Morse’s life. They had no bearing on the case, but they might well come in handy, should Morse disappear again.

“I understand, Miss,” Thursday reassured her. “We’re exploring every avenue, rest assured.”

Or, at least, City was.

He had thought she might say goodbye, then, hang up the phone in her typical perfunctory manner.

But, instead, she seemed to hesitate.

“Inspector Thursday,” she said. “I was just thinking  ....  I had an automobile accident not too long ago, and … well. A lot of reporters called.”

“And?” Thursday prompted.

“And one of them was a Mr. Weiss. I’ve just recalled this afternoon. Only then, I took it as Mr. White, you see. Only…”

“Yes?”

“Well. I thought it was odd at the time, because he wanted to come up to the house, when none of the others did. But….”

And here she paused, her crisp and efficient manner dying from her voice, leaving only a sense of wonder, undercut by the slightest trace of fear.

“But what would he want with me?”

Thursday wrote her words down on the next page over from the details concerning Morse’s references.

Why indeed?

If he had Mr. Weiss’ papers, if only Morse hadn’t carted the whole lot of it off to the Styx, hoarding it all in his little lair, perhaps he might know the answer to that. As it was, it would be one more question to pose to Morse when he drove out to Slepe, first thing in the morning.

Morse might have the makings of a great inspector, Thursday thought.

But he seemed like he’d make for a pretty poor policeman.

****

“Fred,” Win called, breezing in through the doorway and into the dining room, where Thursday sat with the evening edition of the paper and a cup of hot tea.

“It’s for you. Work, I think. Someone called Morse?”

Thursday tossed the paper down in a rustle like autumn leaves and pushed his chair back, striding into the den, where Win had left the telephone receiver on the table.

Perhaps he would get the chance to hear what was in Adrian Weiss’ office a tad early, after all.

Thursday raised the receiver to his face.

“Thursday,” he said.

“Sir,” Morse said. “It’s Black. He’s the killer.”  

Thursday wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, exactly, but whatever it was, it was not such an abrupt opening statement. Morse had blurted the declaration out all in one long rush, almost as if he was out of breath, as if he had literally been running towards his conclusion.

“Black? Terrence Black? The postgrad working at the museum?” he asked.

“Yes,” Morse said. “It all started in India, around 1850, with Samuel Blaise-Hamilton, sole heir to this tea plantation, worth …  I don’t know… millions in today’s money, Hundreds of thousands at least. He already had a wife in England, but it seems he took up with this young Indian woman.”

Thursday scowled, trying to keep up with the torrent of Morse’s words, words that had seemed to have come out of nowhere, like the roll of a storm across empty fields. He wasn’t sure if the lad had truly come upon the answer, or if he might have finally, simply snapped, fallen through the ice, driven over the edge by the strain of it all.

“They had a son. Robert,” Morse said, continuing on. “After the mutiny in ’57, Samuel came back to England with the boy. People out there might turn a blind eye to that sort of thing, but here? No. So he passed his own son off as the child of a colleague, killed in Cawnpore, and made an agreement with Benjamin Pickstock, the gamekeeper, that he and his wife should raise him.”  

How the hell could the lad possibly think to know the secrets of a family who lived one hundred years ago? Where was he going with this? 

“Who’s to say this Robert wasn’t simply the Pickstocks’ own son?” Thursday asked. 

“The 1861 census. Mrs. Pickstock was too old to have a child Robert’s age,” Morse countered. 

Morse paused for a moment then, and Thursday could tell by the sudden intake of breath sounding though the receiver that it wasn’t because he had finished speaking, but because he was gathering strength for a second cloudburst.

“Imagine how it must have been for him,” Morse said, “watching, as the years passed, his true father’s family grow and thrive, knowing that for a piece of paper and a sense of hypocrisy, all could have been his. Should have been his. And so his resentment grew until it could be contained no more.”

“And so this Robert killed his half-siblings,” Thursday conjectured, “and the staff who witnessed the murders.”  

A hundred years ago, Thursday had been tempted to add, but instead, he found himself asking a different question.

“What’s this to do with Terrence Black?”

“With all the children murdered, save one, it seems the Blaise-Hamilton family went into terminal decline. In accordance with a will, drawn up a few years earlier, the family fortune went to the surviving legitimate child.”

“Bloody Charlotte,” Thursday said.

“What’s that?” Morse asked. “Bloody Charlotte?” 

“Evidently, the girl has become a sort of ghost story up at the school,” Thursday said.

“Oh,” Morse said.

Another silence on the line followed, then, one longer than before, during which Thursday could practically hear Morse mulling that over—his mind no doubt dwelling on that apparition, a specter of a child in white lace Victorian clothes.

“And so you were saying…” Thursday prompted.

“What?” Morse asked.

Thursday exhaled sharply through his nose. He could tell at once by the sudden drifting of Morse’s voice that the winds of the lad’s thoughts had whipped the other way, much like a souvenir snowglobe turned upside down, sending bits of white swirling over imaginary landscapes.

“Your point?” Thursday said.

“Oh,” Morse said. “Yes. The point is, Charlotte Blaise-Hamilton died unmarried and without issue. And any issue from Robert Pickstock would be illegitimate. They’d have no claim on any money.”

“But?” Thursday prompted, sensing the word in the offing.

“But if Parliament follows the Russel Committee’s report on illegitimacy and inheritance, that could change. In any event, I think the news of the committee being convened gave hope to Terrence Black.”

And now they were getting to it. 

Whatever it was.

“How so?” Thursday asked.

“Adrian Weiss, employed by Black, discovered a direct bloodline going back five generations and several changes of name to Samuel Blaise-Hamilton. At the time of his death, Adrian Weiss was drawing up a coat of arms. It was unnamed—but it included various clues in the form of rebuses, heraldic jokes which would suggest it was meant for Terrence Black. The escutcheon is sable, for example, the heraldic term for black.”

“Hmmmm,” Thursday said.

He couldn’t say he was sure what that meant, exactly, but at this point, he was willing to hear Morse out.

In for a penny, as they say.

“And on the upper quadrant, is a pick-axe or pick,” Morse was saying, “while the lower dexter quadrant contains the flower of the genus Matthiola longipetela, also known as stocks. So you have pick, stocks, or Pickstock.”

“But if he was Blaise-Hamilton’s son, shouldn’t that be on there?” Thursday asked.

“It is. Entwined around the bar sinister is a leafed stem of the Cameilla sinensis, the tea plant. It’s meaning is used to denote bastardry. Thus, Pickstock’s bastard, or the bastard laid upon Pickstock.”

Thursday shook his head.

“But why? Why would Black kill Weiss? What’s your motive? Seems like he ought to thank him.”

“It seems that Weiss’ genealogical examination turned up a second claimant to the fortune. A third cousin once removed. Miss Symes. And so he knew that she would have to go. … but first he had to silence Weiss, the only man who knew the connection between them. And…. Sir….” Morse said.

And here the snowstorm faltered, the words fading to a tremor of wind.

“Yes?”

“I think he’s already been looking for his opportunity. I said it. I said it right at the pub, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t remember that name.”

“Said what?” Thursday asked.

“The first time you were up here, at Blythe Mount, you mentioned the name to me, Terrence Black, but it meant nothing. But then, at the pub, I said… I said how easy it was ... when you’re alone, with nothing but your thoughts for company ... how easy it is to let in the black.”

Thursday paused, remembering once more that odd little speech that Morse had flown out with as he had sat meditatively before the fire.

“Miss Danby,” Morse continued. “From something one of the girls told me… I think she’s been having an affair with him. With Black. That’s she’s been letting Black in right through ….”

“Morse!”

A child’s voice, broke into the background, then, echoing with an eerily familiar note.

“Bunty?” Morse called, surprise evident in his voice.

“He’s here,” the girl said.  

And then Morse slammed down the phone.

“Morse!” Thursday shouted.

But it was too late.

Already the buzz of a dead line was humming forlornly, like a question gone unanswered, through a receiver that suddenly felt all the heavier in his hand.

*****

Thursday sprinted up the drive to the old brick house, moving silently through shadows cast by turrets and gables in the light of the waxing moon, with a sense of growing panic, an urgency that was visceral, one that held his guts tight and twisting in its fist.

By the time he reached the front portico, Jakes, with his more agile stride, had overtaken the gap between them, and together they burst through the front doors to find the two women, Miss Danby and Miss Symes, huddled together with the group of summer girls, all dressed in pajamas and nightgowns—along with one, smaller girl who Thursday had never seen before, dressed in a white Victorian dress and lace cap.

His eyes lingered on her for a moment, trying to make sense of the sight of her, before he turned to Miss Symes, seeking information.

“He has Bunty,” Miss Symes said, struggling to keep up her usual brisk manner, no doubt to keep calm for the sake of the girls.

“He had a blade to her throat,” she added, as Miss Danby, beside her, emitted a strangled sob. “He took her through the hall, up the main staircase.”

“And Morse?” Thursday asked.

If Miss Symes was surprised that he knew that Morse had been in the house, too, using her office perhaps, to make that phone call, she didn’t show it.

“He ran off in the other direction, once they had left, up the back stairs, to circumvent them. It’s a labyrinth up there. A honeycomb. I can’t imagine where they might be.”

Her face crumpled then, as she finally gave into her fear, her grief.  

“That poor, poor child,” she said.

Jakes and Thursday exchanged glances, and then each bolted off in the other direction—Thursday after Black, and Jakes after Morse.

With any luck, one of them might be able to head them off somewhere, find some way to meet them in the middle, as Morse tracked his quarry, running in circles after Black through the abandoned rooms above.

Thursday took the steps of the main stairway two at a time, his heart thumping heavily in his chest with each pounding footfall as he bolted to the top of the landing and then flew down corridor after corridor, until he came at last to a door. He threw it open to find that it lead only to yet another flight of steps, forlorn and forgotten, winding up and down to other floors of the house.

He paused, listening for any trace of Morse or Black or Bunty, and, hearing nothing, he tossed the dice and ran up upwards, his thundering steps pounding so hard against the old wood that he wondered if he each one might send his foot right through the floor.

He burst through a door and then through another series of empty, darkened rooms. Miss Symes was right. The place was like a maze, like a fun house at a fair, each room distorted by odd shadows cast through the curtainless windows, by the play of moonlight on cracked and discolored mirrors.

He opened another door, and found a room that was fully furnished, as if its occupants had left not knowing they were never to return, the upholstered chairs falling into musty decay as they sat facing the cold and black grate of the fireplace. On the wall, half hidden in darkness, was a large portrait of a rather dour-looking man, remarkable only for his unpleasant leer and a large, ruby ring.

Thursday rushed out from the room and over yet another threshold. The house seemed to be blossoming like some sort of poisonous plant, like some unholy thing, even as he ran through room after endless room, all of them seeming to shimmer and shift around him with the inconstant movement of clouds over the moon, and Thursday cursed in frustration under his breath.

It was true, what Thursday had told Church: Morse was keen as mustard—clever enough to keep up a merry game of cat and mouse against Black for as long as it took for him and Jakes to arrive—and Thursday was sure of it, that Morse would know that he’d come out straightaway at the sound of that dead line . . .

But even someone as sharp as Morse couldn’t hold out forever.

If it came to a tangle, Thursday would say they were evenly matched; Black might boast a slightly heavier frame, but Morse was quicker in using what he had—and Thursday suspected from the way he had seen him about his work that he was one of those wiry people possessed of a hidden, sinewy strength.

Still, he could only put Morse’s chances at fifty-fifty, seeing as how the lad seemed to fly off on a tangent without considering the consequences, seeing as he seemed to have no real sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

It was then that Thursday realized, even as he tore through another corridor, that not only was it imperative that he arrive on the scene in time to save Bunty Glossop from Black .... but also in time to save Morse from himself.

Thursday reached another creaking stair, and finally he heard it—a shower of quick footfalls. He looked up, tracing the sound, and saw a billow of a crisp white shirt and a gleam of reddish hair in the pearl light of a window on the landing above—somehow, he had gotten so twisted around, that he had come up behind Morse, rather than Black.

He resisted the urge to call out his name, to let him know that the cavalry had arrived. To alert Morse might put Black on the alert, too, thwarting Morse’s goal of keeping Black on the run… too busy eluding his pursuit to harm the child.

He ran up the stairs, following him, and right as he reached the landing, he heard a shout.

“I’m warning you! Stand back! If you come after me, her blood will be on your hands!”

Christ.

Thursday flew into a ghostly sitting room, stung thick with cobwebs, his chest heaving, to find Morse face to face with Terrence Black, who stood with one arm holding little Bunty Glossop, and the other holding a blade to her throat.

“Stand off! You’ll know that I’ll do it!” Black cried.

“Bunty,” Morse replied, his voice surprisingly soft despite the tension radiating through his frame. “Bunty, look at me. He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Are you sure of that?” Black taunted.

But Morse ignored him. “Beware the Jabberwock,” he said.“What comes next?”

A dawning light of realization seemed to flood Bunty’s frightened face, and, in one deft movement, she pulled back and bit the man hard on the wrist, so hard that he cried out in pain, shoving the girl from him just as Morse darted forward, grabbing hold of the wrist in which Black held the knife, trying to subdue him.

The two of them twisted and turned, spiraling in circles as each struggled for dominance, revolving like two horses on a carousel, Black and Morse and then Black and Morse.

Thursday began to rush forward to tackle Black, when, suddenly, there was a tremendous shudder, deep down to the bones of the house, and then the both of them, Morse and Black, in one roaring rush, disappeared as if under a dark spell, vanishing into a cloud of dust as the floor opened up beneath them, leaving, as they fell, only Bunty, looking at him in horror from across a gaping and empty pit.

Chapter Text

“Bunty!” Thursday bellowed. “Don’t move.”

The girl had just started to fly forward to the edge of the splintered pit that had opened in the floor at her feet, as if to look to see where Morse and Black had fallen, but at his shout, thank Christ, she froze into place.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, in a voice strained thick with tears. “I’m sorry. It was just a game.”

At that moment, Jakes—who must have heard the roar and the crash as the floor beneath Morse and Black buckled and collapsed, leaving them to disappear in a cloud of dust—bolted in through the open door behind her.

The girl jumped at the sudden movement, and Jakes, surprised to find himself face to face with Bunty Glossop rather than Terrence Black, ground to a halt and held up both of his hands, as if he were approaching a skittish deer in the woods.

Jakes’ deep-set eyes strayed over to the hole in the floor then, a tale that told itself simply and well, and Bunty followed his gaze, her eyes welling anew at the sight of it.

“It’s alright,” Thursday said. “This is Sergeant Jakes. He’s a friend of Morse’s.”

Bunty turned to look searchingly into Jakes’ sharp face, as if waiting for him to confirm Thursday’s words, and it was a testament to the gravity of the situation that the sergeant didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the unlikely designation.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’ll take you downstairs to Miss Symes. Alright now?”

“But what about Morse?” she asked.

“He’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Thursday assured her. “I’ll go down and check on him, and you go downstairs with Sergeant Jakes, alright? You can call an ambulance, in case he needs a doctor. Can you do that for me?”

“Alright,” Bunty said, softly.

Jakes turned away, then, to lead the child out from the once-more achingly still and silver moonlit room, but, because it was so quiet—too quiet—down on the floor below, Thursday called after him, even as he was halfway through the door.

“And Sergeant?”

Jakes stopped and turned to face him, his angular face a study in contrasts, cast in shadow.

“Sir?” he asked.

“Call DeBryn as well.”

A muscle in Jakes’ jaw jumped, but then he nodded, looking resolute, before turning away once more, heading off to guide Bunty out of the desolate and slowly decaying room.

As soon as their footsteps faded, Thursday pivoted on the spot with the agility of one far younger than his years and thundered down the stairs—the place was a labyrinth to be sure, but not any more difficult to navigate than the back streets of London. Years of working in the Smoke had given him, if nothing else, a keen sense of direction.

He came out at last into a long-abandoned bedroom, furnished with a tall dresser and wardrobe and a bed with a white canopy lit by the moon in the window like a ghostly sail. From the ceiling and from the edges of nearly every surface, cobwebs trailed like deathly, pale fingers worn to nothing but shimmers of bone.

In the middle of room, lying utterly still in the odd light, Morse was sprawled face down on top of Black, his auburn hair thick with white plaster dust.

As Morse and Black had hit the floor, it seemed as if their arms and legs had flown out from them, all akimbo, so that, tangled together, they looked like some horrific multi-limbed figure, like the piled corpses Thursday had seen in the war, and which lived on still in his memory.

Thursday walked over and knelt down beside them, listening hard for any stir or wisp of breath, even as he pressed two fingers along the side of Morse’s throat.

His skin was cool to the touch, but his pulse was there, beating steadily under his fingertips.

Thursday crouched back, then, and his heart—which he had not even realized had been beating hard in his chest—unclenched itself in a flood of warm relief, like a loosening fist, as he considered the task before him.

Although the impact must have knocked the breath from Morse’s body, nothing looked to be twisted at any particularly odd angle. And as loath as Thursday was to move the lad— for fear of doing him some greater injury—he was even more loath to leave him as he was —to risk Morse awakening to find himself lying face-down on top of what Thursday had come to suspect—from the still sheen of blood pooled by Black’s head—was most likely a corpse.

In the end, it wasn’t a hard decision, really.

Thursday moved forward once more, bracketing one hand around Morse’s shoulder and slipping the other under his side, right at the belt around his waist, gently rolling him over. As he began to turn him, he moved the hand guiding Morse’s shoulder up so that it cupped the back of his skull, settling his head down softly as he came to rest, face-up on the floor.

It was almost like opening the cover of a book and revealing the story inside—there was Morse, his eyes softly closed, but his chest rising and falling with each breath, and Black, with blank eyes wide open as if in shock, staring up through the hole in the ceiling above, up to the end he never saw coming.

Thursday tapped the side of Morse’s face, trying to wake him.

“Morse?” he queried.

“Morse?”

Morse’s big eyes slid open, then, silver-blue in the moonlit room, and for a moment, he simply lay there, still and dazed. Then he furrowed his brow in confusion, as if he were trying to remember what had happened, as if he was faintly surprised to find himself lying on the floor.

“Inspector Thursday,” he said, at last, his low voice unexpectedly soft, like a whisper.

“That’s right, Morse.”

“You came. I didn’t …. I didn’t know.”

And then his frown deepened, and he bolted upright, as if the past few minutes were only now catching up to him.

“Bunty.”

“She’s alright,” Thursday assured him. “Sergeant Jakes is taking her downstairs to the others.”

Morse seemed to go limp at the words, closing his eyes and turning his head, allowing it to loll heavily, as if he could no longer support its weight. He sat there for a moment, letting out a long and audible breath, as if to quell his flash of panic, like an exhausted runner who had half-collapsed after crossing the finish line at a race.

“You’re alright, Morse,” Thursday said.

Morse took a final deep and shuddering breath and then his eyes slid open once more ... and then were growing wide in horror as they fell upon the form of Terrence Black, who lay lifeless on the floor beside him.

In a flurry of sudden movement, Morse dug his feet in against the dusty floor boards and tried to scramble away from the body, flailing backwards on his hands, so much so that he nearly bowled Thursday over, despite his more substantial weight.

Thursday grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to steady him, to calm him.

“You’re alright, Morse,” he said.

“Oh god,” he gasped, putting a hand wearily to his forehead, covering his face.

“Does your head hurt?” Thursday asked sharply, noticing the gesture.

Morse kept one hand over his face and shook his head.

“No. Yes. I mean . . . no.”

“It’s alright,” Thursday said again, as if the chant might make the words true. “It’s over.”

Morse lowered his hand and grimaced at that, his eyes swimming with unshed tears for a few brief moments before he blinked them away, his face once again full of its usual austerity, like a marble statue fallen into the sea, matching the coldness of the forgotten and unloved room.

And little wonder.

Stupid thing to say, really.

Over till when?

Only, most likely, until the next time Morse was drawn in, like some ancient oracle, to preside over the unfolding of some other seemingly unstoppable tragedy.

Although, this time he had stopped it.

Hadn’t he?

That, surely, was something to think about.

 ****

Once he had gotten Morse downstairs, Thursday sat him down with Jakes on a cream-colored couch in the drawing room—a large and high-ceilinged room right at the front of the house, lit by twin Edwardian lamps, complete with tassled crimson shades that bathed the room in a deep and restful rose glow.

Morse didn’t seem much up to talking, but that was all right: it was best he not exert himself, best he keep quiet until the medics arrived.

Not to mention the fact that a subdued Morse was a Morse who was far less likely to wear on Sergeant Jakes’ nerves.

Because from the way Jakes seemed to compulsively smooth the fabric of his trousers as he sat, to the nervousness there in his hands, twitching like anxious sparrows on a fence, it was clear to Thursday that there was something about the case that seemed to have gotten under his sergeant’s skin.

Of course, it was always difficult when kiddies were involved. But Thursday was a family man—it was hard for him to see a child without seeing the shadow there of his Joan or Sam.

That his flip and careless and often hard-edged sergeant might possess some degree of so softer a sentiment was a realization that was altogether new.

Of course, that unexpected spring of empathy did not seem to extend to Morse, so it was best all-around if the two called a truce, waited for the ambulance quietly, while Thursday, in the meanwhile, went into the parlor across the hall where the women and girls were assembled, to begin the process of sorting out the mess.

***

Maud Asherden, it transpired, had not been on a sailing holiday at all; rather, she had told her parents that she wanted to spend the summer at school, to stay with a friend whose father was away in Kenya.

She had hidden by day in abandoned parts of the house, aided by her friends Bunty and Edwina Parrish, who had smuggled her meals, and together, the three girls had engaged in a game of ghosts, hoping to prank a few of the older girls who had bullied them all during term-time.

In their nighttime wanderings, they had noticed now and then, as they looked out through the empty windows of the closed-up wings of the house, a dark-haired man, crossing the shadowed lawns.

“It was the same man I saw with Miss Danby at the museum, when I went to use the loo,” Edwina said. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. And I ... I didn’t want to say how it was we saw. And then tonight, Maudie.....”

Edwina looked to Maudie, then, who continued.

“Tonight, when I was walking down the hall,” Maudie said, “I saw him again, right outside Miss Symes’ door. And he had a ….” 

She let the words die away, as if she couldn’t bring herself to say them, before hurrying on.

“And I screamed and ran away, back down around the hall and through one of the secret doors. And I found Bunty, and....”

“And we snuck down the back stairs to see if we could get to a telephone to call the police,” Bunty said. “That’s when I found Morse …. But when we all came into the drawing room, everyone was there. Maudie’s scream must have woken everyone. And then …”

And then it was Bunty’s turn to let the words fall away, and Thursday completed them for her in his head.

And then Terrence Black was there, too.

“He told everyone that if they followed us, he’d ... but it was just a game. We didn’t mean for all this to happen.”

“You listen to me, now the lot of you,” Thursday said, keeping his voice to a low rumble, gentle, but quietly authoritative, so as to brook no argument.

“This is none of your fault, all right? What happened tonight was a grown-up’s fault, and no one else’s. Understand?”

They nodded solemnly then, and trundled out the door, and Thursday could only hope that they believed him, lest their make-believe ghosts morph into real ones, somewhere at the back of their minds.

Miss Danby came in next, her eyes brimming with tears of both heart-break and remorse.

She could see it, too, how it all could have ended.

How easy would have been, for one of the three girls to have fallen victim to the killer’s blade?

How easy would it have been—if Morse had been at his cottage, with an opera record turned up sky high, rather than hidden in Miss Symes’ office, putting in that telephone call—for Black to have killed one of the children who crossed his path?

He sighed heavily.

Wasn’t like she’d be the first to have her head turned by a winning smile and a handsome face.

When Morse had spoken at the pub about loneliness and loss and desperation, Thursday had assumed he had been speaking of himself .... but now, it seemed, he might well have been speaking of Miss Danby.

After she told her tale—one which Thursday had heard all too often before—she dabbed her eyes and rose from her seat, unfolding herself as she stood much like a flower, drooping under a heavy rain.

Thursday, too, stood up from his chair, then, feeling wearier than when he had when sat down in it. The thought that they might well have had to call DeBryn out here for one of the children, if things had gone otherwise, was a sobering one.

He picked up his notes, and, as Miss Danby went out through one door, back upstairs, he went through the other, heading back across the hallway to the drawing room, which was now filled with five new arrivals.

Jakes and Morse were still sitting on the cream-colored sofa under the rose glow of the lamps, but two medics were there now, too, one of whom was standing over Morse, running his fingers along his wrist as if to check for any breakage there.

Dr. DeBryn had also arrived, and was watching the scene as he stood by the doorway, field kit in hand, crisp and neat and pressed despite the lateness of the hour, while two coroner’s men stood quietly in a corner, smoking cigarettes under a large, gilt-framed mirror.

Morse was looking decidedly strained at finding himself the center of attention, and he looked up at him mournfully as he came in.

“Morse alright, then?” Thursday rumbled. 

The medic, who had moved on to checking Morse’s other arm, straightened as he addressed him.

“He’s had a bit of a shock, is all. Nothing broken,” he said.

“The other fellow must have cushioned the blow,” the second medic added, and Morse flinched.

“I don’t think he should be on his own overnight, just in the odd case something develops,” the first man continued. “It’s possible, in cases like this, that he could have a hairline fracture to a rib, after a fall like that, or some internal injury that’s passed unnoticed, that might become evident as he becomes more mobile.”

“Thank you,” Thursday said.

The two men nodded and gathered their things to go, while Thursday wandered across the room to Morse, slowly, as if he just happened to be ambling that way.

“Alright then?” he asked.

“Sir,” Morse said.

“I’m going to go up with Dr. DeBryn. You stay here with Jakes, and he’ll take your statement. Alright?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “Alright. I’ve lost those papers though. No. Wait. They must still be in Miss Symes’ office.”

“You don’t need those ruddy papers,” Jakes sighed.

“But …” Morse began.

Thursday might not have put it quite so bluntly, what with the state Morse was in, but it was true: they were past all that for now. Black had taken a girl hostage before a houseful of witnesses, made his motives clear. The case was about as open and shut as it got.

“Don’t worry about that, just now. Just tell him what happened once you hung up the phone,” Thursday said.

Morse looked bewildered for a fraction of a moment, and Thursday found he couldn’t blame him.

That phone call felt a lifetime away to him, too, and he had spent the bulk of the interim in the black Jag with Jakes, speeding on towards Slepe, not—as Morse had been—giving chase to a madman through a funhouse maze of a decaying mansion, a seemingly endless tangle of unexpected staircases and secret passages and hidden doorways lit only by the dissembling movement of moonlight through the curtainless windows. 

“Oh,” Morse said, at last. “Yes. Alright.”

Before Thursday started over towards DeBryn, he cast Jakes a pointed look, and from the sergeant’s grim nod, he could tell all once that Jakes understood the unspoken request.

Keep Morse put till I get back.

 *****

There wasn’t much to be done for Terrence Black, lying, as he was, on the floor, a puddle of blood by his head shining like an oil slick in the darkness.

“Cause?” Thursday asked.

“Something of a salmagundi,” Dr. DeBryn said, from where he knelt, crouched beside the prone body. “Multiple catastrophic injuries to be going on with. Most notably, evidence of a heavy blow to the back of the skull. Bit more once I’ve had a rummage …  But for now, in my expert medical opinion, I’d say that he appears to have fallen through a floor.”

Thursday grimaced at DeBryn’s familiar gallows humor. It punched a bit harder in the gut this time ‘round, since he had seen the man fall with his own eyes, watched as he was swallowed up with a splinter of rotted wood and taken up into a cloud of dust.

The coroner’s men gathered up the body, and, as they did, Thursday noticed a sudden glint of something in the man’s hand that caught and reflected the watery light.

He had thought at first that it might be the blade—they would need to recover that to go into evidence—but, oddly enough, the stray refraction had seemed to spark with an unexpected glint of red, rather than with a gleam of silver.

As Thursday stepped closer, he realized it was not the blade, but a ruby ring that had shone in the shadows—the same ruby ring he had seen in the portrait hanging in the musty sitting room.

Handed down, no doubt, from father to son to great-great-great grandson.

Further proof, then, that Morse had gotten it right.

The coroner’s men lay the body on a stretcher and covered it with a white sheet. It would be a bugger of a job, getting the corpse down all of the narrow staircases that lay ahead of them, maneuvering it around the tight landings, but the young men looked dexterous enough, and grim enough, certainly, to undertake the task of hand.

But then, Thursday supposed theirs was the sort of job that made young men old before their time.

***

By the time their macabre little parade made it back down the stairs to the drawing room, Thursday was quite certain that, despite Jakes’ best efforts, Morse would be gone.

So he was surprised— and more than a little relieved—to find them still sitting in that same spot, waiting quietly in the circle of soft light cast upon the couch.

They looked up as the four of them came into the room, Morse paling visibly, looking faintly ill, even, as the corpse was carried out before him.

DeBryn noticed the look—as the man always seemed to notice everything—and he stopped, mid-step, and scowled owlishly.

“Are you quite well?” he asked.

Morse nodded. 

“You’re not going to faint, are you?”

Morse shook his head, then, in reply.

“Just a touch of necrophobia, then,” DeBryn said.

Morse looked at him blankly.

DeBryn’s frown deepened, most likely in concern at the lad’s stubborn silence.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked, not unkindly.

Morse’s face drained even further at that—not with nausea, this time, but with anger.

“Of course, I know what it means,” he said, haughtily.

“So,” Thursday said, “has he given his statement, then?” 

But what he wanted to ask was: Had Morse been speaking at all?

“Oh, yeah,” Jakes said, his typical smirk back in place as he stubbed out his cigarette in a glass ashtray on a table before him. “We’ve been having a fascinating talk. All about graveyards and the treachery of images and wreaths of smoke, and .....”

Morse turned even more white, if possible, at the words.

“I didn’t say anything,” he snapped. “I didn’t!”

DeBryn blinked from behind his horn-rimmed glasses before his usually impassive face settled once more into a thoughtful frown.

“It’s all right, doctor,” Jakes said, with half a laugh. “He was this way even before he fell on his nut.”

Thursday grimaced. Because that wasn’t quite true, either. This new degree of coltishness, of vehemence, even, was just the mood that had seemed to have overtaken Morse that afternoon, when he was being questioned by Church.

It was all over, but somehow Morse was still churning with it. Couldn't seem to let the night go. 

And then, as if to prove that Thursday was spot on in his assessment, Morse jumped up from the couch and started making for the door.

“And where are you going?” DeBryn asked.

“I’m going back to my cottage,” he said. “I’ve given my statement.”

“I’m sure that I heard the medic say it wasn’t wise for you to be on your own for the night,” the doctor countered. “And I must say I rather agree.”

“I’m fine,” Morse said. “And anyway I....”

Morse stopped short, but Thursday found himself completing the sentence for him in his head.

Because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, really, did he?

“You can come back to mine,” Thursday said.

Morse seemed almost to startle at that.

“Oh. No. I couldn’t possibly,” he said. 

“Course you can,” Thursday replied.

Morse was about to protest—Thursday could see it in his face—but then he seemed to falter under the doctor’s steady gaze.

“If you’re so adverse to Inspector Thursday’s suggestion,” DeBryn said, “I can drop you at the hospital for overnight observation. I don’t live far from the Radcliffe.”

Morse bristled—seeming none too keen either with the idea of staying at hospital or with the idea of riding anywhere with any pathologist of the sort.

Let alone one who didn’t think he knew what the word necrophobia meant.

“Are you sure?” Morse asked, then, looking back to him.

“Course, I’m sure. Wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

Morse stood there for a moment on the threshold of the drawing room, his weight almost seeming to shift from foot to foot as he wavered at the edge of where the worn red and ivory Persian carpet met the polished wood floor.

It was clear he was torn—torn between his fear of feeling like a burden and his desire to get away from the place, from the memory of the past few hours.

The women and girls would have the solace of one another’s company to get them through till morning, when the dewy freshness of a new day would begin to dissipate the ghosts of the night, but as for Morse—he would be spending the remaining hours until sunrise back in his cottage, back in his lonely exile.

“Come on, then. Let’s get going,” Thursday said, taking out his pipe. “I’m a bit anxious to get home, to be honest. I didn’t even get the chance to check the results of the football match, before you rang.”

Morse quirked a hint of a rueful smile at that, as if he saw right through him, as if he could hardly believe that, after a night like tonight, football scores were anything that might weigh all that heavily on his mind.

“Alright,” Morse said, faintly.

“Not entirely a fool, then,” DeBryn quipped.

Morse, for once, didn’t rise; instead, he merely looked resigned, and Thursday was struck by the thought that Morse was not half as surprised at Thursday’s offer as he was by his own acceptance of it.

It was almost as if he knew it was there, in the offing, almost as if he knew that’s where they were headed, all along.

***

Jakes steered the Jag along a winding road that rolled on through the night as smooth and as billowing as a black silk ribbon, leading them through the somber silhouettes of fir and chestnut trees, back towards Oxford. The wheels turned silently, so that the large Jag seemed almost to float through the darkness, small and insignificant against the vast landscape, carrying them on towards home.

A companionable silence seemed to have settled over them in the closeness of the heavily-upholstered car. The three of them might have shared the comparatively small space of the Jag’s interior, but they were each alone with his own thoughts.

Jakes spun the wheel around the curves of the road with ease, his eyes sharp as he scanned the route ahead, the nerviness that had seemed to course through him right after the chase gone. The more miles they put between themselves and the old country house, in fact, the more he looked like his old self.

Morse, collapsed down into the back seat, had fallen quiet again, but, just as they were coming through a particularly dark wood, he began to speak in a low murmur, as if he were half-asleep, just mulling things over to himself.

“The trees look odd in the white of the headlamps, don’t they?” he asked.

Thursday scowled.

Hadn’t he said something similar when he had driven him home from the pub?

“Not like ghosts,” he said. “More like teeth. As wan as tombstones.”

Jakes made an incredulous face and looked up at Morse in the rear-view mirror.

“I guess that’s my cue to drive carefully, then,” he said.

“What?” Morse asked.

Jakes huffed a laugh, but Thursday turned ‘round in his seat, to find that Morse was looking decidedly dazed.

Perhaps he was still a bit in shock from the impact of the fall, or exhausted by the strain of giving chase to a madman for what must have been nearly half an hour, because it seemed as if something inside of Morse had decidedly slipped—As if he was straining under the pressure of some internal weight, struggling to keep all the light within him smothered so that it didn’t hurt anyone.

Least of all himself.

“What was that, lad?” Thursday asked.

Morse looked at him for a long moment, and Thursday felt it: a chill at the back of his collar as if a window of the air-tight Jag had been left cracked-open, letting in a cold draught as they flew along.

“Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just … I’m just tired,” he said, and then he leaned his head heavily against the window, resting his temple against the cool of the glass and as he closed his eyes.

“If you shut your eyes and you are a lucky one,” he mused, “you may see a pool of lovely pale colors, suspended in the darkness.”

Thursday chuckled.

Well, the lad was punch-drunk to be sure—he had reached that point where exhaustion had blurred into its own form of intoxication.

But Jakes, in the seat beside him, whipped around at Morse’s words with a sudden and unexpected ferocity.

“Would you stop it?” he shouted. “Just stop it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Morse protested.

“Alright, then,” Thursday intoned. “Pipe down the pair of you.”

Jakes turned back ‘round again, his knuckles white in their death-grip on the wheel.

It didn’t make sense—It had certainly been odd, Morse’s little pronouncement, but it certainly seemed to be nothing so sinister, nothing to warrant such a fierce reaction. And Morse. Did he truly not realize just what he’d been saying, or was he simply keen to deny it, worn out as he was?

“Just put a sock in it, alright?” Jakes said. “I’m trying to drive.”

“I’m sorry,” Morse replied. He hung his head then, as if it was too heavy for him to hold up, rubbing his eyes with the thumb and finger of one hand, blearily.

“I didn’t... I’m just… ” Morse began. He let the sentence fall away and shook his head. “She could have died.”

“Who?” Jakes asked.

Now it was Morse’s turn to make an incredulous face, widening his eyes at the back of Jakes’ head as if he thought him daft.

“Bunty!” he cried.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Jakes said, once more as cool and smooth as glass. “Looks like you had it under control.”

Morse snorted. “I didn’t have anything under control.”

Christ.

It was worse than being in the car with Joan and Sam, back when they were kids, and he and Win had taken them up north to see his gran.

“Look. Morse, Thursday said. “My advice is, try not to think about it overmuch.”

Morse’s gaze fell on him then, disbelievingly, as if he felt he, too, was a wheel short of a cart.

This, precisely, was why he had the hall stand.

A man needed someplace to go to get away from the doubts and recriminations and regrets that pecked like vultures at the brain, rendering him slow, ineffectual, a danger to himself and others.

Jakes, for his part, managed by never letting those thoughts in in the first place, by simply never going down that road, cultivating instead a demeanor of cool confidence, bordering at times on flippancy. 

It might well have been a mask, in part—but at least it was something.

What did Morse have, really? He had neither anyone in his life to keep those thoughts at bay, nor did he have any sense of that self-assurance that was in and of itself a form of self-preservation.

He had neither faith in anyone nor faith in himself.

Well. That was no way.

Thursday’s eyes fell on the radio, then. It hadn’t been turned on since Thursday had dropped Morse at his cottage the night before; it would still be set, then, to the same station.

He leaned forward in his seat and snapped it on, filling the Jag with the strains of an orchestra, with the soar of the violins as warm as rich summer, with all the clarity of winter light.

Morse quieted again, and, after a while, Thursday chanced a glance into the back seat.

Morse was once more leaning against the glass of the window, but his face had relaxed considerably. It was clear from his expression that he was taken up in it, following the complicated flights of each cascade of notes, softening with their rise and fall until they quelled whatever fires and misfires had been sounding off in his head.

As they approached the outskirts of Oxford, Thursday heard, at last, a rustle from the back: Morse stirring, sitting up straighter in his seat.

“Was that your wife? Whom I spoke with on the phone?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Thursday said. “My Win.”

“Do you,” Morse said, then, “... do you have any children?”

“Two,” Thursday replied. “Joan and Sam. They’re just a few years younger than you, I’d wager.”

A somewhat dour silence followed, before Morse said, “Won’t they think it’s odd?”

“What's odd?”

Morse snorted. “You bringing a stranger home, especially at this hour?”

“Probably,” Thursday said.

No point in lying to the lad.

“I’m sure you’ll get on,” Thursday said.

Morse said nothing, but only sat back and looked once more out the window.

Jakes raised his eyebrows, relieved, it seemed, that the conversation in the car had turned more prosaic.

Whereas Morse, on the other hand, did not seem greatly heartened.

Then Jakes took the turn onto Botley Road, and the Jag continued on, the headlamps two bright points in the darkness, leading them on towards home.

Chapter Text

Thursday opened the front door, shepherding Morse in before him, and then crossed the threshold, stepping into the warmth of the house.

“Fred?” Win called from the kitchen.

In a moment, she was there in the doorway, drying her hands on a tea towel. She took a few brisk steps down the pale green, brightly-lit hall and drew to a halt just before the hall stand, looking over Morse with frank curiosity.

“Hello. Who’s this?”

“This is Morse,” Thursday said. And beyond that sparse introduction, words failed him—because what was he, exactly? A witness? A colleague, of sorts? A friend?

But luckily, Win’s natural graciousness saved him the discomfiture of further explanation.  

“Oh, hello,” she said. “We spoke on the phone, earlier, I believe.”

“Yes,” Morse said. “We did. I was sorry to have bothered you.”

“It was no bother. I’m just glad you’re both home safe.”

Her gaze shifted from Morse to him then, and he could see at once the question in her eyes. The suddenness of his departure, at such an unusually late hour, could not have escaped her notice. She knew that whatever situation had called him out in such a hurry must have been a dire one.

He gave a subtle nod, to let her know that all was well, and Win smiled, taking it all in stride, just as she had always done. She knew, after all these years, not to ask, understood well the delicacy of the job.

If she was surprised, now, that he was breaking the hall stand rule in this rather drastic manner, she didn’t say. 

“Well, let’s get you settled, then. The pair of you look like you good do with a good, hot cuppa,” she said.

“He’s been through the wars,” Thursday said. “You have a bit of stew you can warm through?”

Win smiled, and this time it was a smile that reached her eyes. She didn’t know a thing about the case—let alone have and inkling as to the turmoil that had transpired that night at Blythe Mount—but this problem, the one set before her now, of feeding up a stray cat of a young man, was one she knew how to handle, and handle well.

It didn’t hurt, either, that the lad was suddenly looking the part.

It was odd: Morse had seemed austere and forbidding when Thursday had first encountered him, working out in the fields at the House Beautiful, all quick movement and sharp cheekbones, had seemed prickly and haughty as he had sat in the white parlor of the gothic mansion of Blythe Mount, giving Church a firm telling-off—but now, installed in their cozy little semi-detached in Headington, he looked uncharacteristically subdued, wide-eyed and out-of-place, as if he wasn’t sure quite what to do with himself.

“Alright, Fred,” Win said.

She nodded encouragingly, then, to Morse.

“Why don’t you come through to the dining room, alright, love? Make yourself at home.”

Morse looked to him as if Win had been speaking a foreign language and he needed Thursday to translate —it was hard to know what was the more difficult for him to comprehend: the fact that she had called him “love,” or that she had bade him to make himself at home—something Thursday was sure Morse had not done in a good long while.

Win went on into the kitchen, then, while Thursday ushered Morse into the dining room—a feat he mainly accomplished by walking that way himself so that Morse was forced to move forward to clear out of his broader path.

Once they made it down the hall, Thursday found—much to his dismay—that Joan and Sam were still up, curious, no doubt, as to where he had rushed off to.

He might have thought they’d be used to it, after all these years.

It seemed Morse would not be spared the grand reception, then.

“Hello, Stranger,” Joan called out, brightly, surprised by an unexpected guest in their dining room at this hour. “Who are you, then?”

Thursday found himself almost leaping in to answer the question, as if the lad couldn’t speak for himself.

Morse had already been through the wringer that night as it was; it didn’t seem right, on top of everything else, to put him through that joyless little exchange—that dull mantra about his mother that he had to pull out of his pocket every time someone questioned him about his name.

My mother was a Quaker. It’s a virtue name.

But before Thursday could explain, Morse had already taken it upon himself to answer.

“Morse,” he said, simply.

“Morse?” Joan asked, with an impish laugh. “Morse what?”

Morse’s eyes trailed to him, then—in much the same way as they had when Win had spoken to him in the hall, or as when Church had asked him where he had been the night before, as if asking whether or not he need answer—when Sam broke in, with one of his many typical inanities.

“Morse code,” he supplied, and then went on to provide the accompanying sound effect. 

“Dee-dee-dee-deedee.”

Morse smiled faintly, not, he suspected, at the jest, but at the fact that he was spared from further comment.

“That lump is my brother Sam,” Joan said. “I’m Joan.”

You would have thought she would give the man a chance to catch his breath, but instead, Joan was already raking her eyes over his disheveled figure.

 “So,” she asked. “What happened to you?”  

“I …. well, I fell through a floor,” Morse said, simply.

Joan grimaced at that, while Sam emitted a low whistle in sympathy.

Thursday pulled back a chair to sit, nodding pointedly to an extra chair in the corner of the room, encouraging Morse to follow suit.

The lad hesitated for a moment and then shuffled over, lowering himself cautiously, as if at any moment he expected the chair to spontaneously combust.

Well.

It was a start, anyway.

Thursday contemplated him for a moment, marveling once more how young and gawky he looked, tucked away in their homey dining room.

Out of doors, he had given off an air of crisp austerity, seemed almost to blend into the landscape, as old as one of the surrounding poplars or white birches; in the pub, had looked as opaque as the amber glass windows, as ancient as firelight, as worn as the scarred oak table.

But here, with his pale face set amongst the warm gold floral wallpaper of Win’s choosing, sitting amidst her plain white crockery in a room smelling of fresh bread and pungent tea, he looked awkward and uncertain, as if the simple act of sitting down at a table full of people was somehow alien—as if he were some visitor from a foreign land taking notes, making a field study on the habits and interactions of the typical English family.

“Where do you come from?” Joan asked.

Thursday could barely refrain from rolling his eyes. Joan, it seemed, was gearing up to put him through the paces.

Joan always asked so many questions, Thursday thought she might well consider putting in her resume to go to work for The Oxford Mail.

“Give it a rest, Joanie,” Thursday said, mildly. “The man just went through a floor.”

“So I’ve heard,” Joan said smartly. “I was only asking because of his accent. It’s not as if I’m interrogating him.”

She narrowed her gaze at him then, and in her critical eyes, he read her thoughts all too clear. She didn’t know Morse, didn’t understand his natural reserve. To her mind, it was a kindness, showing an interest in their guest—far better manners than the curmudgeonly reticence that he had thus far exhibited.

To Thursday’s surprise, Morse answered easily enough.

“It’s all right, sir,” he said.

And, sure enough, it seemed as if it was.

Uncertain the lad might be, but, at the same time, the homey setting seemed to tame Morse somehow, so that he gave off none of that foreboding sense of chill; the shifting expressions that usually passed over his face like clouds had stilled, something within his eyes had been quelled, so that they carried the feel of a quiet autumn morning when the sky is an endless blue. 

“I grew up in Lincolnshire,” he said.

“Oh,” Joan said. “Our great-gran was from up North.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, laughing. “She had some colorful sayings, too. Like, ‘his sort’s not worth a pound and  ….”

“All right, Sam,” Thursday said. “You know how your mother feels about language at the table. Why don’t you clear off and let the man eat in peace, now?”

“All right, Dad,” Sam said. “It’s just that it’s not often you bring home someone from work.”

“No, not ever,” Joan said, crisply. “What happened to the hall stand?”

“Hall stand?” Morse asked.

Joan looked at him wryly. “You’ll be hearing all about that if you are planning to come again to this house.”  

“What’s this? Not bickering in front of our guest, I hope?” Win asked.

Just then, thank Christ, Win came through with a plate of steaming stew and dumplings, smelling so savory that they made Thursday’s insides rumble with hunger, even though he had finished a meal right before Morse had rung him on the telephone.  

“’Course not,” Joan replied.

Then she turned to her brother. “Come on, Sam. Dad wants to talk to Morse about work.”

Morse seemed to startle at that.

It was clear to Thursday, then, that there was a question there, in that look, even some new anxiety, but what it was all about, Thursday wasn’t sure.

“Night, all,” Joan called.  

“Night, dears,” Win said, as she went to place the plate and spoon before Morse.

Thursday thought Morse might balk at the rich meal, what with the night he had had, but instead, whatever question had been forming there in his mind seemed to dissipate like smoke, so much so that the lad almost seemed to follow the bowl with his nose in an invisible arc, not unlike a stray cat twitching its whiskers a bowl of cream.

“There you are,” Win said.

Morse picked up the spoon, as Win pulled back her chair, taking her place at the table. She sat with them for as long as it took her to be satisfied that Morse was making headway with the stew, casting him a furtive glance now and again, as if she thought that he needed feeding up, and then she gathered up her cup of tea and saucer.

“Well, I’ll say goodnight. See you in the morning,” she said.

Her words sent a fresh flicker of alarm across Morse’s face, and this time Thursday read the meaning there clear enough.

Would he have to do all of this again?

Well.

Early days yet.

“Goodnight,” Morse said.

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to Win’s soft but tripping step on the front stairs. And then the room was utterly quiet, as Morse sat toying with his stew, the only sound falling between them emanating from the brass sunburst clock on the wall that ticked on, filling the room like a heartbeat, giving Thursday again the feeling that there was a tension there, of something unspoken.

“All right,” Thursday said. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?” Morse asked.

“There’s something on your mind. It’s as clear as day.”

Morse looked sullen then, and pushed his spoon around thoughtfully.

“At the pub …  you said… I thought that you believed me … about…..”

“I do,” Thursday said.

Morse looked up at that, at once.

“Then why didn’t you listen, when I showed you the article? Why did you let that man question me like that?”

“Wasn’t a case of ‘letting him,’ was it? He was in charge. It was his investigation.”

“But you came out to Blythe Mount first.”

“That was for the Weiss case. City jurisdiction. Bunty Glossop gone missing was County’s show.”  

“Oh,” Morse said.

“It wasn’t anything personal, Morse.”

“Oh.”

He looked slightly heartened by that, turning once more to his stew, this time spooning it up in earnest.

“I might ask you quite the same question,” Thursday asked.

“What do you mean?” Morse asked. 

 “When we were at the pub, you seemed so hesitant to talk about that apparition ….”  

Morse’s face went cold with disdain at once.

“It wasn’t any apparition,” he protested. “It was Maudie. It was just a game.”

The lad gave him a castigating look, then, as if he didn’t want even to begin to acknowledge his former fears, as if he thought Thursday even mentioning such a thing was somehow in bad taste.

“None of that, now,” Thursday said. “We didn’t know that at the time.”

And it was true—he might scoff, now, Morse. In his pride, he might want to save face. But there had been real fear there, in Morse’s voice, when they had sat in the pub. He had believed in it, at the time, believed he was cracking, that his gift was hurtling its way towards metamorphosing into a curse, one that might shatter him to pieces.

“I . . . I’ve been . . . I’ve been seeing things,” Morse had said.

He spoke each word as if it had been wrenched from him against his will, his voice but a low murmur.

“And that’s not … typical for you?” Thursday asked.

Morse’s eyes flashed up at that, blazing fiery ice-blue in the dim room.

“No! Of course, not.”  

“You seemed you were worrying yourself sick with it at the pub,” Thursday said, “and there’s no point in denying it.”

Morse shrugged, as if conceding him the point, if under protest.

“But then,” Thursday continued, “When Church was questioning you, you were bursting out with it. It was all I could do to get you to keep a lid on it.”

Morse shrugged once more, as if the matter were of little importance.

“That’s because I knew… because I knew I was on to something. I thought. I thought you might believe me.”

“You do know there are people in front of whom you shouldn’t bring up any of that, don’t you?” Thursday asked.

When you are being questioned by two of the most unimaginative plonks from County, for example, Thursday added, to himself, in his mind, though he stopped himself from saying the words out loud.  

“I know,” Morse said. “I just … It just didn’t seem to matter, at the time, what they thought of me. And I was right, wasn’t I?  I was right. Those little girls were running all about the place, playing at haunted house, with a killer waiting right around the corner, waiting for Miss Symes. I just knew I was right this time. I just didn’t want to see it happen …”

Morse shook his head then, as if he lacked any words for further explanation.

Or perhaps he was afraid to say anything at all, lest it lead him off again, down another path.

“So where will you go now?” Thursday asked, astutely, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t know,” Morse murmured. “Not there.”

“Mmmmmm.”

It was just as he thought.

But what was he going to do then? Drift off again? To where? Into what? How long could he live like that, before his spotty record would render him utterly unemployable?

“You ever think of joining the police?”  Thursday asked.

There was a ringing silence, then, leaving the clock once more the only sound in the dining room, like a marker measuring the depths of it.

“What?” Morse asked.  

“You’d have to spend two years in uniform before you could be considered for detective constable, but it seems like it would be something you’d be good at. Even excel at. Every case is a puzzle of sorts. You’re tenacious enough, at getting to the answers. Proved that tonight, I’d say.”

“I’m not who you think I am,” Morse said.  

“What’s that supposed to mean, then?” Thursday asked, annoyed. “I know you’ve been a Greats scholar, I know you’ve been ‘up,’ but it beats the odd jobs you’ve been doing, doesn’t it? Honest work, anyway. Just thought it might be something you would enjoy. Give you the opportunity to settle down somewhere.”

“It’s not that,” Morse said. “It’s….”

He shook his head, as if waiting for the words to come to him. “Are you saying I …. I’d have to deal with this every day? Are you mad?”

He put his hand to his head, looking slightly faint.

“What is it?” Thursday asked, at once, wondering if this was just the sort of thing the medics had said to look out for. “You have a headache coming on?”

“It’s nothing,” Morse said. “I’m just remembering …  all those awful things I said in the car.”

“Slight concussion, maybe. That’s all. That was a hell of a drop.”

Morse looked at him as if he were delusional, as if he wished he could believe that was the case.

“Why was Sergeant Jakes so upset?” he asked. “That was just a bit of nonsense. I was just tired. I just wasn’t thinking straight.”

“You see. This is just my point. You’re raking it over, already. If you were with the police, you wouldn’t have to ‘deal’ with it. You could work with it. If you really had been working at the nick—in the way you seemed to insinuate all over town,” Thursday added, wryly. “We could have helped each other.”

Morse flinched at his words, as if remembering something.

“There’s something else I should tell you,” he said.

“I can only imagine,” Thursday replied. “Let’s hear it.”

“I…” Morse began. “I … called Scotland Yard.”

“You what?”

“I called Scotland Yard and asked to have the old Shrive Hill files sent to you, in the post. I had hoped you might believe me when you saw.”

“And how did you do that?”

“I …. I told them I was Sergeant Jakes.”

“Morse!” Thursday chided.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But it was those children’s lives at stake.”

“You might have told Jakes, so he wouldn’t get blindsided later.”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you now. In case it comes up. So he won’t look like… ”

“A daft idiot who can’t remember a call he put into the Yard?” Thursday supplied.

Morse said nothing, only began to toy again with the last of his stew, looking once more as worn as old paper.

Perhaps it had not been the best time to make that suggestion, about the force.

And perhaps Morse was right.

He would make for a good detective. But it was clear from his utter disregard for anything but the puzzle before him, even for his own safety and well-being, that Thursday’s earlier thought was also correct.

He’d make for a pretty poor policeman.

Thursday sighed and pushed back from the table.

“Come on. You look dead on your feet. Let’s get you settled.”

****

Thursday stood in the silent kitchen, dark save for the one yellow light affixed over the sink, and washed Morse’s plate off under the tap. Then he placed it in the rack, dried off his hands, and got a glass out of the cupboard. He was just beginning to reach for a tall bottle of brandy, when he changed his mind, opting instead for a thick, brown bottle at the back of the cupboard.

Stout. That would be Win’s suggestion. Something with a bit of iron to it.

By the time he went back through across the hall and into the living room, which had fallen similarly in shadow, the closely-knit lace curtains allowing in only a suggestion of moonlight, Thursday found Morse slouched back on the sofa, dead asleep, his legs sprawled out before him and his head tipped back at a rather uncomfortable-looking angle, revealing the long line of his throat punctuated by a prominent Adam’s apple, looking somehow even more gawky and coltish in sleep.

Thursday set the glass down beside him in case he woke up in the night and wanted a nip.

At the sound of the glass clunking softly down onto the table, however, Morse seemed to shudder, as if a winter draught had passed over him, and Thursday found himself remembering that jumbled nest of blankets tangled up on the bed, back at Morse’s little burrow.

Well.

Win was right.

The lad needed feeding up.

Little wonder he should be prone to a chill.

Thursday padded back out into the hallway and pulled his coat down off of the hook—not the summer Macintosh he had been wearing earlier that night, but his heavier, lined greatcoat, the one that stood up even to stake-outs in the dead of January.  And then he returned to the den, standing before Morse for a moment before draping the coat over his sleeping form like a blanket, tucking it, nearly, under his chin, in the way that he had once done with the kids, back when they were small.

Morse’s face seemed to relax as he sank under the warmth and heaviness of the coat, and then he turned his face to the side, sighing deeper into the folds of the couch and into the pile of Win’s gold and blue medallion throw pillows.  

Thursday nodded, satisfied.

Then he stepped back and went out of the room, softly closing the door behind him.

****

In the morning, Morse was gone, had cleared out, evidently before the first light of dawn. Thursday couldn’t say he was surprised, considering the alarmed look on his face when he had contemplated making small talk again with them all in the morning, but buggar it if he didn’t think that Morse might have left a note at the very least.

It was only a few days later that he thought of it: to look in the pocket of the heavy coat he had covered Morse in as he had slept on the sofa. And sure enough, when he did, he found a folded scrap of paper written in a spare, bold hand.

Inspector Thursday—

Thank you for your help last night. All my best to your family.

Yours,

Morse

Well.

The note was succinct enough, to be sure.

But, even though it seemed so standoffishly worded, it felt somehow to Thursday that the note was really saying something else, that there was some other message there, hidden in the handful of words.

Somehow, the note couldn’t help but remind Thursday of an even shorter message—one that had been left, in a similar fashion, in Morse’s coat pocket just the week before: a note that simply read, Save Me.

****

Thursday tossed the folder that had been posted from Scotland Yard onto his desk and eased himself into his chair, lighting up his pipe before flipping the cover open. It was all there: the yellowing, frail paperwork, the transcripts of police interviews, the old-black-and-white photos documenting the crime.

He picked the photographs up and shifted through them one by one: a maid lying on the steps, a child in a sailor suit lying lifeless on the ground, like a discarded doll.  

Thursday’s stomach rolled over, and he flipped to the next: a croquet mallet, stained with blood, sheening, in the antiquated photograph, deep black rather than red with blood, lying on the same lawn that, one hundred years later, had fallen for a summer under Morse’s care.

And then, a family portrait: a stern husband and dour wife holding a baby, and three children, one of whom—a little girl in a lace dress with a lace cap—had had her face violently scratched out, as with the edge of a penknife.

Thursday frowned and set his pipe in its rest, leaning back in his chair, considering it.

This could only be her.

Bloody Charlotte.  

Even then, it seemed, she had been painted as the scapegoat.

But, who, honestly, would scratch out the face of a child with such vehemence?

Thursday set the photograph down, and picked up a set of official-looking papers.

Charlotte Blaise-Hamilton’s commitment papers, signed by her father, Samuel.

So. Was it the girl’s own parents, who gave up on her, then? Who obliterated the face of their eleven-year-old daughter?

It seemed they had solved the case one hundred years too late.

Thursday threw the papers away from him then, as if they carried with them some taint, and, as he did, another photograph spilled out from between them.

He reached for it, and held it in the dying light of the window. It was a photograph of a little girl with Down Syndrome, dressed in the same lacy dress and bonnet.

Thursday felt himself swallowing hard against the realization of it.

This, was most certainly Charlotte.

Thursday sat for a long time, contemplating the image of the little girl, taking in her bright smile, the light of mischief in her eyes.

He wondered how long that look lasted, in an institution.

And then, somehow, he found himself thinking inexplicably of another old photograph, taken some eighty years later, of Endeavour Morse in the snow, looking forthrightly into the camera. He hadn’t been smiling, as Charlotte was, but his face had had an openness to it, a look that he must have lost somewhere along the way.

As saddened as he felt for the pair of them, he felt sorrier for their fathers, for not knowing just what they had missed.

He tucked the photograph of the little girl away, with a prayer to a God he didn’t always have much use for, that, Charlotte, although she had been abandoned by her father, had found some kindness along the way.

And he hoped, too, that, Morse, wherever the hell he was, might yet find a scrap or two of such as well.

***five months later***

Thursday’s heavy shoes crunched with each step as he walked along the gray pavement, frosted with the barest crackle of ice.

All around him, the gray, oddly sunlit skies and the gray and dull gold stone of the Neo-gothic buildings and heavy Palladian domes were stirring to life, made magic by circulating flurries of snow, small flecks of white gliding and revolving aimlessly in the wind, much like those of a child’s souvenir snow globe. Under their spell, the dreaming spires and the bridges and the elegant arched windows of the city were transformed into something out of a fairy tale, infused with a sense of lightness and of joy …

…   that Thursday was not much feeling at the moment.

This sense of peace, of winter’s serenity, of air as pristine and as clear as the strain of falling violins …  this was just what he had wanted for Joan and Sam when he had left the Smoke.

He’d be damned if he would let it all go to hell on his watch.

He turned at the corner, hands deep in his pockets, his back as straight as if he was marching off to battle, and then he stopped before the velveteen blue double doors of the Moonlight Rooms.

He pushed the doors open and stepped inside, taking his time as he crossed the main lobby of the empty club, as if he had just so happened to be passing by.

Off in the main banquet room, all was similarly deserted; most of chairs had been turned upside-down and placed up on the tables so that the staff could sweep the floors.

But, at one table, just in front of a long, low stage, hung with red curtains and red paper lanterns and a tawdry plasterboard crescent of a moon, he spotted Maurie, his squashed and scarred face looking just as pugnacious as ever, working his way through a cheap cigarette, the stench of which rankled in Thursday’s nostrils.

How apropos.

‘Course, the whole place stunk to high heaven.

Thursday meandered over to him with a deliberately easy gait.

“Maurie. How’s show business?”

Maurie looked up from the books he was keeping.

Shaving a penny for himself, no doubt, off every line.

“No business like it, Mr. Thursday,” he replied, with the air of the groveling little sycophant that he was. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I’m not stopping. Thanks all the same. Just dropped by to ask you what you know about this lorry-load of snout knocked off last night?”

“I don’t know nothing about that.”

Thursday gave him a dead-pan stare, letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that the pretense of niceties was over.

“Don’t kid a kidder, Maurie. You’re a front man. Near beer, blue jokes and totting up the night’s take. That’s your forte. So who’s in the big chair now, eh?”

Maurie looked as if he might suffer a bloody paroxysm in his efforts to contort his face into one as innocent as a choir boy’s. He sputtered for a moment, was just opening his mouth to speak—when a far different voice sounded in Thursday’s ears, one silky and knowing, a voice from the past, reaching up to tap him on the shoulder.

“Hello, Fred.”

Thursday felt a muscle in his jaw jump, a new tautness in the tendons in his neck, a tension in his face that he quickly, forcibly put under control— and then he turned, determined not to let his concrete façade slip, determined not to betray the fact that he had been caught off guard.

How was it the man had followed him, even here? Of all the cities, of all the towns, of all of England, why this one? Was it a coincidence?

Or was there design behind it?

Did they think they’d find in him an easy mark, after ….

 “Vic,” Thursday said, relieved to hear the steel and grit in his own voice as he uttered the syllable.

“Long time,” Vic said.

“Ain’t it just? What’s this? Things got a bit too lively for you at Mile End?”

“Nah,” Vic said, rocking back and forth on his heels with a satisfied little bounce. “Retired, ain’t I? All got it coming, Fred. Even you.”

He looked about all about him, then—at the maroon and gilt walls, the ocean of round tables, the paper lanterns, the tawdry crescent moon, all kept in shadows, so that bright lights couldn’t reveal how cheap it all really was—as if he had arrived at the best of all possible worlds, and then he nodded, in satisfaction.

“This place will see me out,” he said.  

The hell it would.

The hell if Vic Kasper would be here that long.

“Well, well,” another voice called out, then, “Look what the dog brought in.”

Thursday’s temple throbbed at the sound of it.

Vince.

It was like old times, then.

A regular reunion.

He was surrounded on all sides by the filth of it, nowhere to step without mucking his shoes.

Forewarned this time, Thursday looked up at the man with jaded eyes, resolved to keep his gaze steady, but then—despite the iron set of his teeth and the muscles of his hands aching to form into fists—he faltered, his heart skipping a beat as it pounded steadily under his gray suit.

Just beyond Vince, off by the far wall, was another face from his past—that of a young man in a black server’s apron, who hurriedly turned away as soon as Thursday met his all-encompassing, winter blue eyes.

Thursday felt a sudden chill down his collar, as if someone had suddenly opened a door, letting in a draught of snow-filled air.

Morse.

Then a muscle in his jaw did jump—not with fear, not with foreboding, but with annoyance, as he watched Morse, continuing about his business, sweeping cigarette butts and bottle caps out from under the table, as if he thought that Thursday hadn’t noticed a thing.

Did Morse think that by turning his face, Thursday wouldn’t know him? He had spent a night at his house, with his family, for Chrissakes.

Even if the lad hadn’t turned away, Thursday would have recognized him if only from his lanky slouch, from the way his hair feathered down to his nape, even from the awkward manner in which he handled the broom—making it as clear as the bells of All Saints Church that he wasn’t so much sweeping as he was listening hard to every word, straining, even, after every detail.   

Who was he kidding?

And, more to the point, what was he doing here, amongst such company?

“Fred Thursday,” Vince was saying. “Blimey, you’re still at it? I thought they’d put you out to grass after Carter.”

Thursday took two steps closer, menacingly, the blood beating red in his ears, all thoughts of Morse momentarily obliterated.

That they would dare to say his name, to sully it further by speaking it here, in this den of thieves. Right to his face, bold as brass. They had gotten too cocky by half, filled with a sense of their own swagger.

He’d teach them to mind their place, that was all.

And that place wasn’t Oxford.

Not by a long shot.

Not after all these years.

Then, at the edge of his peripheral vision, he could almost feel them—the icy blue eyes, drinking in the scene.

That Morse should be here, in the middle of this, made it all far more difficult than Thursday would have ever imagined.

By god, he was tempted to give them a go, to bust their heads together, father and son both, to stir up a nest of hornets and then stride out the door, shaking the dust from his feet.

But he’d be leaving Morse in the thick of it, in the midst of all-out war.

Reason demanded that he play it on the cool side.

And now Morse’s presence required it.

How was it that a man who didn’t know how to look out for himself when dealing with some yob like Church, should come to consider taking a job in the Moonlight Rooms?

Didn’t take a man of Morse’s abilities to know where this might end.

Didn’t take a goddamned Oracle of Delphi to know where this was heading.

“That’s the word in town, anyway,” Vince was saying, with a rolling edge of satisfaction. “Fred Thursday went milky and run off crying to the Styx.”

And then, his hands did curl into fists.

He was stupid, Vince.

And, therefore, far more dangerous than his father.

“Kids, Fred,” Vic said.

His old man knew it, too. He knew the boy had gone too far in the dance, knew he didn’t know how to play by the rules of the old game.

“All piss and vinegar. What are you going to do? Same ourselves, once.”

A game that Thursday was through playing.

Had been through playing when it was no longer a game, when the measured dance between them went unchecked, when a routine bit of roughing up, meant to send a message, had turned deadly.

When the game had gone beyond the point of no return.

None for Mickey Carter.

And none for himself.

“Here’s how it is.” Fred said, his voice low enough that he could feel the vibration of it deep in his jugular. “You round up your boys and get off my patch, and we’ll leave it at that.”

Vic smiled.

“Might put the fear of God into the locals, but this is me.”

“First and final.”

“Workhouse rules, Fred. Last man standing.”

“So be it.”

Thursday looked them each in the eye, one last time, even as, in his peripheral vision, he checked for Morse.

Who had slipped off, of course.

The lad was foolish, but he wasn’t stupid—of course he knew what Thursday would say about him taking up a job at a place like this.

Go back to Lonsdale, pick up your degree. Get a job at a book shop along the Broad. Get a job running caravans to Timbuktu.

Anything but here.

Thursday turned on his heel, his back straight, doing his damnedest to send the message.

His leaving wasn’t flight, but rather a call to arms.

He stormed out into the front lobby, but, then, instead of banging out the front doors, he turned abruptly, cutting across the way, walking along the breadth of the place.

The Moonlight Rooms, it was, alright, all shadow, and watery dim light, where nothing was as it appeared. The red carpet beneath his feet looked rich and fine, but if the overheads were snapped on, it would soon show its wear.  

You think you’ve found somewhere decent, some place the rot hasn’t got to yet ...  but it creeps in. It always creeps in.

Well, he wouldn’t see Morse mixed up with this lot.

Wouldn’t see Morse go the same way as Mickey Carter.

And then, the flash of a memory, of a far different place, of Morse sitting at his own dining room table, amidst the backdrop of familiar gold floral wallpaper.

“I’m not who you think I am.”

And oh, no.

No, no, no, no.

Because hadn’t he thought just that?

That Morse might make for a good bagman one day?

Thursday came to a stop at the threshold of a room taken up by a long, dark wooden bar, with rows of glasses hung upside down along the edge of it, gleaming in the dirty light. Behind it, a man with heavy forearms was disconsolately wiping at the counter with a rag.

Thursday strode into the room, sizing up the heavy man, who seemed to radiate with some degree of authority. Even amongst this lot, Thursday knew how to pick out the man in charge.

“I have a question for you about one of your staff,” Thursday said. “I need his address.”

The man looked up at him mulishly, continuing to muck about at the counter with a none-too-clean looking rag, giving him no encouragement one way or the other.

“Mid to late twenties. Reddish hair,” Thursday continued.

“Look,” the man said. “Cyn’s in charge of the staff. You want to know something? Talk to her. I can’t keep track of them all. We have a lot of people in here, come and go.”

“He’s not in any sort of trouble,” Thursday clarified. “His father was a friend of mine, in the war. He was right on shift earlier today. I just spotted him leaving. About five ten? Blue eyes?”

Thursday reached into his pocket, then, into the same one in which Morse had left that note last summer, and tossed a ten-bob note onto the bar.

The barkeep eyed it, and suddenly, a light of revelation seemed to dawn across his badly-shaven face; suddenly, it seemed he knew just who Thursday was talking about.

“Oh,” he said. “You must mean Mr. College Boy.”

 “Yeah, that’s him,” Thursday said.

His next move was a bit of a leap. With any luck, Morse had had the sense not to give them his real name. Not here, of all places.

What had been the name he had given to the man at Genealogical Services, Limited? At Adrian Weiss’ old firm?

“Janus,” Thursday said.

The man frowned in concentration, shook his head.

“No. No, that isn’t it. He calls himself something else.”

He appeared to think for a moment, his face screwed up in concentration, and then, again, a light of revelation flickered across his face. 

“Talenti. That’s it,” he said.  “Yeah. Ludo Talenti.”

Thursday felt a vein throb at his temple at the sound of it.

What did Morse think he was playing at, christening himself with such a ridiculous appellation?

Because, whatever this was, it was certainly no game.

Chapter Text

Thursday walked up a final flight of steps and then rounded the corner, heading into the hallway of the top floor.

It wasn’t a bad little place Morse had himself set up in, considering his past employment record.

Or lack thereof.

The walls of the long corridor were covered in a deep red, satin-finish paper and affixed with glass-globed light sconces, brightening the way. At the end of the hallway, before a large window draped in toile curtains, a small table stood topped with a softly-lit lamp, giving the modest little line of flats a warm and homey glow.

He had just started off down the hall—glancing at each identical white door as he passed, looking for the one that sported the brass number six—when a young woman in a black cape and white nurse’s cap emerged from a flat at the very end of the corridor.

Carefully, she closed the door behind her and walked over to a flat across the way, swooping down in one graceful movement to deposit a brown paper bag at the threshold.

Of flat number six.

Thursday drew to a halt, considering this unexpected turn of events.

The young nurse was pretty, to be certain, but, what was more, she had a bright and open face—that rare sort whose brisk and genuine kindness radiates with a warmth that’s rare, that’s nearly contagious.

And then, inwardly, Thursday groaned.  

He hoped to hell that Morse hadn’t played her false, hadn’t given her that ridiculous pseudonym.

Ludo Talenti.

Thursday gritted his teeth at the very thought of it.

Then, he drew his shoulders back and continued on.

One way to find out, he supposed.

“Begging your pardon, Miss,” he said, tipping his hat as he approached her, right as she was turning away from the door. “Fred Thursday, Oxford City Police. I’m looking for an Endeavour Morse.”

He was just beginning to assure her that Morse was in no trouble, that he was merely an old friend—seeing as how most people with whom he dealt on a daily basis were hardly overjoyed by a surprise visit from a copper…

But before he could continue, the young woman smiled, so that dimples appeared on her either side of her face.

“Oh. Is he serious about it, then?” she asked.

“Serious about what?” Thursday asked.

“About joining the police?”

Thursday raised his eyebrows at this surprising revelation.

Could it be that he actually had  managed to get his point through that stubborn head of his? Could it be that the lad really had been considering the advice that he had given him last summer, after all?

And then, in the next moment, the young woman’s smile deepened into a smile that reached her eyes, so that the twin lamps of the wall scones across the way shone in them like small suns in their dark velvet depths, her focus falling somewhere over his shoulder, further down the hall.  

Thursday turned to follow her gaze, and found that Morse was there, just coming round from the top of the steps, his big eyes as round as saucers, wearing an expression appropriate to one who had been clubbed over the head.

“Morse,” Thursday said.

He hesitated for a fraction of a moment, clearly caught off his guard.

“Sir,” he said.

Morse looked to the young woman, then, as if to ask for some explanation as to why Thursday should be there, in their building, but she seemed to have misunderstood.

“I was just leaving you half a loaf and some and cheese,” she said, gesturing towards the bag at his door.

“Oh,” he said, finally starting forward. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m not going to be here, so….”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Waste not, want not.”

“Hmmm.”

“So. Yeah.”

“Well. Thank you,” Morse said.

Thursday could barely refrain from rolling his eyes.

At least he had gotten there in the end.  

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend? To Inspector Thursday?” the young woman asked.  

“Oh,” Morse said.

Christ, but he was an awkward sod.

“This… ” Morse began, turning towards him.  “This is my …. my neighbor. Miss Hicks.”

The two dimples in her cheeks appeared once more, then, as if she were half-enjoying Morse’s discomfiture, his plodding search for what word to term her, before finally landing on “neighbor,” that safest of all choices.

Well. No accounting for tastes.

Who knew? Maybe Miss Hicks had had enough of the flashy sort.

Some girls liked their project, he supposed. 

“Monica,” the young woman corrected, with a quick nod. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Miss,” he said, tipping his hat once more.

“Well,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. On the night shift tonight.”

“Hmmmmm,” Morse said.

And, this time, Thursday did roll his eyes.

Morse went to retrieve the bag at his doorstep and then pivoted, looking after her, his mouth dropping open slightly as if there was something more he might say, but already she was sailing down the hall, her cap bouncing jauntily with each light step.

Finally, once she disappeared around the landing, Morse seemed to come back to himself, a flicker of annoyance passing over his dreamy face.

“How did you find me?” he asked, at once.

“A copper’s only as good as the intelligence he gets,” Thursday replied. “And ten bob will bring in quite a bit of that, amongst the company you’re keeping.”

“You bribed someone,” Morse said, and it was a statement, rather than a question.

Thursday snorted. “Hardly a bribe, Morse. Just plonked down a note to jog the barkeep’s memory, is all.”

“I don’t recall anything in the Judge’s Rules about paying for information,” he said loftily.   

“Studying up, are you? I doubt that was on your reading list up at Lonsdale.”

Morse scrubbed up the hair at the back of his nape in a fretful gesture, as if realizing he had been caught out, and Thursday tilted his head towards the door.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Morse made a sour face, then, and, sulkily, pulled the keys from out of his pocket and opened the door, struggling with the ancient and wobbling knob a bit too dramatically, in Thursday’s opinion, as if to make it clear that he was acting entirely against his will by allowing him into his flat.

And little wonder he had hesitated. The place was a bit of a tip, to be honest. 

It was a bedsit like so many Thursday had seen before, the main difference being that most people went through some sort of effort to spruce up their place … adding potted plants on the sill or hanging white sheers at the windows, to allow in a bit of sun.

Morse’s flat, on the other hand, was as bareboned as they came: dismal gold wallpaper, a few stray upholstered chairs he had picked up somewhere or another, half of which were covered in piles of old newspapers. A clattering of utensils in the galley kitchen, hung on shelves beside the tiny and antique gas range.

There were red curtains at the windows and an oval gilt-frame mirror hanging over a table that caught the light, cheering the place up a bit, but Thursday could only imagine that those had been left by some previous occupant. The only things in the room that gave the place some real hint of personality—some clue about the person who dwelt there—were the bookshelves, which were crammed with all the volumes that County had gone though so meticulously at the groundskeeper’s cottage last summer, and a record player, which was given a place of honor on a small mahogany table, the only truly nice piece of furniture in the place.

And that told him another thing, too.

Somehow, Morse had managed to haul all of the accoutrements of his little magpie’s nest with him, the books and the records, from his cottage on the grounds of Blythe Mount.  He must have a friend, somewhere, who had the use of a car, to help him move all of his treasures.

Would be quite a job taking all of this on the bus.

Thursday wondered if Morse might shift some of the newspapers aside, offer him a seat in one of the earth-toned chairs that looked as if they’d been rescued from off the kerb, or if he might even offer him something to drink.

But who was he kidding?

Not only was Morse not a man particularly brimming with all of the social graces, but, it seemed, from the way he was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, that he was anxious for Thursday to say what he had come to say and be done with it, that he’d be quite happy to see the back of him.

Well.

Fair enough.

Best to get straight to it, then.

“What were you doing, down there at the Moonlight Rooms?” Thursday asked.  

“Working,” Morse replied.

“Are you? For the likes of Vic Kasper? You do know what he is, don’t you?”

Morse shrugged, as if the matter were of little importance to him. “I know what he was. They say that he’s retired from all that.”

“That sort never retires,” Thursday said, sagely. “And what do you mean by giving out an alias like that? Ludo Talenti? Where did you get that from, eh?”

Morse frowned, doubtless displeased by the fact that Thursday had uncovered all of his little secrets, even down to the outlandish pseudonym.

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “First thing that popped into my head, I suppose.”

Thursday snorted.

“Well. See that you unpop it. Asking for trouble with a name like that. Ludo? You think you’re up for it? Playing their games?”

Morse’s face contorted at that, and Thursday felt a draught from the front window, despite the heavy red drapes. Little wonder the place should be so cold, really.  Most likely, the lad could barely afford to keep the gas on.

“I don’t need protecting,” Morse said.  

“Don’t you?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was icy with it.

Thursday’s hands tightened at his sides, curling into fists of frustration. He hadn’t expected this meeting to be a walk in the park, but he had expected a better reception than this.

He had taken him in behind the hall stand, for Chrissakes. The man had had tea with his family, had taken a kip on their couch; and now it seemed that all of that had meant nothing.

“First thing tomorrow, you just start looking for another place, then. I don’t care where. Just stay away from the Moonlight Rooms,” Thursday snapped.

“What else do you imagine I might find?” Morse asked, protesting, spreading his hands wide. “I know it’s not … ideal. But no one is hiring this time of year. The Christmas rush is over.”

“She know where you work?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door, towards where the neighboring flat stood across the hall. “Miss Hicks?”

“Yes.”

“A girl like that’s not going to want to hitch her cart to some fellow sweeping up cigarette butts from under sticky nightclub tables. You’ll be wanting a career at some point.”

“The police,” Morse said. And once more it was a statement, rather than a question, as if he knew where Thursday was heading, all along.

“Honest work,” Thursday said. “She’s a nurse, you’d be a police officer. You’d both be public servants, helping the city in your own way. Make a well-suited couple.”

His face flooded pink at the words.

“She’s only my neighbor,” he said.

Thursday looked at him appraisingly, setting his jaw.

Obviously, he knew better than that.

Just a neighbor. A neighbor who was checking in on him. A girl who looked as if she had suns in her eyes the moment Morse, as dour-looking a thing as he was, rounded the corner into the hall. She might just take him on, if he would give her some reason to…

“A girl like that…..” Thursday said, “only crosses a man’s path maybe once or twice in a lifetime. Just hate to see you make a hash of things, is all.”

Morse seemed to soften at that, and a quirk of an indulgent smile played around his mouth, at the idea of Thursday, of all people, grim and hard-faced, playing the match maker—he was a DI, after all, hardly an Agony Aunt with a column in The Oxford Mail.

“I ….” Morse began. “I appreciate the concern, but ….”

“You happy there?” Thursday asked. “That what you really want?”

Morse looked surprised at that, as if it wasn’t a question he had given a great deal of thought.

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Who amongst us can say that? People are always pining for something else that they think might be there, right on the horizon, aren’t they? Isn’t that what they always tell themselves? What it all comes down to? Tomorrow starts today?”

“Mmmmmm,” Thursday said.

“Besides,” Morse said, straightening a bit from his usual slouch. “I’m only waitstaff. I don’t have anything to do with …. that. I won’t be there forever.”

And then he paled, his face going white against the dismal dark gold wallpaper, so that his eyes seemed all the bluer, the only two points of color in the drab room. 

“There’s always bound to be something else, right around the corner. Right?” Morse amended.

“Right,” Thursday said.

And maybe it was pointless. It was always riddles with him. Layer upon layer so that maybe the lad couldn’t see his way out of it.

If he couldn’t convince him to consider joining the force, at least the lad did seem aware of the unsavory company he had fallen in with.

At least it seemed as if he was planning on moving on at the first chance.

It would have to do.

For now.

You couldn’t save everyone.

Not someone who didn’t want to be saved, any road.

And all that aside, it seemed clear enough that Morse was the sort that, the more he was pushed, the more he backed all the further away.

Thursday grimaced, changing his tactics at once.

“Well. If you change your mind. You know where to find me, yeah?”

“Of course,” Morse said.

It was the right decision. Because as Thursday turned to go, Morse seemed to startle, as if he might say something more, as if he didn’t expect that he would actually be leaving so soon.

“Mind how you go,” Thursday said, and then he let himself out, slowly filing out the door.

****

Music was always safe.

It kept the words in.

Walking along the icy pavement, his shadow crossing the faces of the brownstone rowhouses, gliding over the curves of their rounded front windows as he went along under the glare of the street lamps, Endeavour Morse kept his head down against the cold, letting the strains of Fauré’s Requiem drift through his head.

He barely took notice of the low stone walls or of the remnants of snow, just melting to slosh, bundled in piles along the glistening kerb like abandoned things at his feet; instead, he strode onwards, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his thin car coat, one that offered little protection against the January chill.

Didn’t matter, really.

He was always cold.

But music .... 

Holding a strain of music in his mind, letting the softly falling notes of In Paradisium sound along his synapses like a chorus of a hundred angels, he was protected from it all—at least, for the moment—sheltered in its enveloping folds, that, like feathered wings, muffled the words and the snatches of half-forgotten rhymes that clattered about in his head, stilling them to a hush.

The song that he had heard so many times before rose and drifted and then soared with the warm resonance of violins and with voices that were not his, with voices that signified sweet oblivion, insubstantial as clouds, but as real as the beat of his heart.

He closed his eyes and let the music guide him along the pavement, step after step, note after note…

And then a tremendous screech, like a scream, ripped the score in two, ripped the night in half, as if it had all been made of only paper. 

A screech and a slam and then a gunning of an engine that sounded with a roar, like death.

Morse froze into place, taking a sharp intake of breath that burned in his lungs with the cold.

And then he broke into a run, his feet pounding against the pavement, the piercing chill of the night air aching in his chest.

He flew around the corner, and ….  there …

On the ground, near the kerb, a man in an overcoat lay face-down, sprawled out on the cement, as if he had been thrown into the air like a paper cup.

Morse ran to the man’s side and crouched down beside him, laying his numb fingers to the side of the man’s throat. It was odd; the man’s pulse was there, barely discernable, but his skin was already cool beneath Morse’s colder fingers, as if he’d been some time dying.

Although, it was true, it was an icy night.

Suddenly, a bright light was cast upon him, and Morse turned to see that an old woman in the house behind him had opened her door, letting out a trapezoid of a yellow beam from her front hall as she looked curiously out into the night.

And then, her eyes grew wide with the horror of it, of what lay at the end of her walk.

“Call for an ambulance!” Morse shouted, and, quickly, she nodded and ducked back inside.

Meanwhile, the man’s pulse was growing fainter beneath his fingertips, and then another man was there… the woman’s son, perhaps? another neighbor?... kneeling beside him on the pavement, pressing a towel to the man’s head at the place where the blood pooled out onto the cement, deep and glossy rather than bright red in the darkness, just as Terrence Black’s had been.

And why hadn’t Morse thought to do that?

But the smell of blood was sharp, like copper, so sharp that he could almost taste it in his mouth, and he turned away, letting his head fill first with static and then with music….

And with the music, came the words, then, too, drifting in his mind, like a shimmer of light on a table full of fruit in summer, like rays that caught the dust motes as they floated, at once so menial, so celestial.

In Paradisium deducant Anglei in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres

But the words were not his, and he kept them tucked safe in his mind as he stood in the falling snow that circled about him, watching as the airy flakes flickered in the lamplight. There were shouts and hails and distant sirens, but there was also the quiet strain of music. There was the white of the snow, the black of the sky, the gray of the pavement and of the brownstone houses, muted in the darkness, and the blood, glossy in the starlight, pooling onto the frozen street.

Morse felt his stomach turn over, and he rose to his feet, as the young man across from him pressed the blood-soaked towel even more firmly against the dying man’s shattered head.

Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Morse wasn’t sure how long he stood there in the snow, his lungs burning with the cold, his face slowly growing numb as the last traces of life leeched from the man’s body, leaving him only a contorted puppet, limp by the side of the road.

“Anglelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeteranam habaes requiem,” Morse said.

There may the chorus of angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once a beggar, may thou have eternal rest.

But it didn’t matter, this time, that he had said the words out loud.

Because if there was such a place as Paradise—which Morse highly doubted—the man lying at his feet had flown there, before the final word had dropped from his lips.

Dimly, Morse became aware of other voices, then, authoritative ones belonging to those who seemed to know what to do, to medics, checking over the body, and—even though Morse knew it was too late for the man—he was glad of their presence, glad to be absolved from the responsibility of it all.

“Anglelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeteranam habaes requiem,” he murmured once more, considering.

And then a police officer in a dark blue uniform and helmet, a tall and large man with a kind face and clear blue eyes, was considering him.

“What was that, sir?”

“What?” Morse blinked.

“The lady here said you witnessed the accident.”

“No,” Morse said. “I … I was on the next street, and I heard the squeal of brakes. And an engine gun. But by the time I got here, the car….”

Morse let the words drift off then, to wherever the strains of In Paradisium had gone… and he shouldn’t say anything at a time like this, at a time when life met death…. this tragedy was not his tragedy, he had known nothing of this, had he?

He pursed his lips, exhaled sharply through his nose, steadying himself.

He needed to keep in those wrong words, to say only what he saw, what he heard ….

Which was, blessedly, next to nothing.

The police officer nodded, as if sympathetic, as if he thought Morse was shocked only by the sight of the corpse and needed a moment or two to recover before giving further comment.

And Morse had been right, there; there was a real kindness, there, in the large man’s face.  

The officer stooped down, then, checking the dead man’s pockets.

“No wallet. No identification. We have to wait on next of kin coming forward,” he said.

“Head’s a terrible mess,” he added, musing matter-of-factly, and Morse’s stomach roiled again with the thought of it, so that he had to look away.

And, as he did, he noticed the street around him was clear, save for the melting mounds of dirty snow….

“What about debris?” Morse asked.  

“Eh?” the officer replied.

“Something like this, you’d expect there to be glass, from the windscreen or headlamps.”

“Not always,” the officer said, companionably. “Depends where it caught him. And how fast they were going. When it comes to traffic accidents, rhyme and reason are out the window, matey.”

Rhyme and reason are out the window… 

And Endeavour had looked out the window of his new bedroom, looking at how the moon had fallen over the snow.

There’s a moment when we learn that those who we hope will love us…

... simply don’t.

“Got to be some rhyme or reason to it.”

“I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

Morse’s mother had never believed in making a fuss at Christmas. “Every day is a holy day,” she had said. And the way she lived, and in the way she had loved him, it was true. The Tottenham cake with pink icing that she made on Christmas Eve for them to share after meeting on Christmas morning had always seemed enough of a Yuletide celebration.

It had felt like a betrayal, that first Christmas after ……, to think that the tree at his father’s house was actually sort of nice. And, as he sat with his father and Gwen and little Joycie, he thought he might actually find a way to belong to them. He had opened his first present with exited fingers, with a flurry of a rustle of paper, like a rustle of dead leaves, and flipped open the lid of the box beneath to find a cold metal gun, lying in its depths. 

“We’ll go out on the common,” his father said. “Fine rabbit hunting out that way.”

And Endeavour had smiled, wanly, while all the while his heart was breaking.

It was the first time he had learned to set his face in a way which was the opposite of what he felt.

Something he was never much good at, really.

He looked at the gun and tried to smile, but all the while the words were settling upon him, as heavy as drifts of snow on brittle branches.

If this is the gift you would give to the sort of son you could love.

You’ll never love me.

But, even then, he knew not to say the words out loud.

“Ah,” said a voice. “It’s you.”

Morse looked up, snapping out if his reverie, to see that Inspector Thursday was standing before him in his great coat, the brim of his hat shadowing his dark eyes.

And, of course, it would be Inspector Thursday.

Somehow or another their paths kept crossing … and crossing …

Or was it that the fates were drawing them in, to the same places, to the same people?

Morse was torn: Whenever he saw Inspector Thursday, he felt a deeper chill, a tension in his shoulders, coiled like that of a bullet in a gun.

Whenever he saw him, it all felt wrong, but, when the man left, it felt wronger still.

When the Inspector had turned away to the white door of his bedsit, just the night before, the words had nearly sprung from his lips.

“Stay with me, sir!”

But, of course, he had bitten them back.

It was a ridiculous thing for one grown man to say to another, as if he were a child.

And he certainly wasn’t a child.

He didn’t need protecting.

Didn’t need anyone.

He had told himself that long ago.

And, after all.... it was .....

It was safer that way.

How hopeless underground, falls the remorseful day.

Morse twisted his mouth into a frown, holding the words back, that innocent enough line from Houseman, and shook his head.

It hadn’t stopped, and it wouldn’t stop, and he had always, always to think of the ramifications of them, of all the words he wished he could unsay. . . . ever since that long ago morning when he had sat in the meeting house, fretfully kicking his legs, and he had said . . . .

Morse swallowed, as if to swallow down the memory, cold as a stone lodged in his throat.  Better to press it down and down…

But what if. . . . .

But what if Inspector Thursday was right?

Maybe he could make up for all those who he ... 

“You know each other?” the large, friendly officer asked.

Morse said nothing, but Thursday replied, “Oh, we’ve run into one another a few times.”

The younger officer raised his eyebrows; and of course, it was a statement that could be taken any number of ways, to suggest that he, Morse, had had countless run-ins with a copper.

“What’s your name by the way?” the officer asked, holding up a notebook, his pencil poised to write.  

“Morse. Endeavour Morse.”

“Like the word?” he asked.

“Yes, like the word. My mother was a Quaker. It’s a virtue name.”

A muscle jumped in Thursday’s jaw, but whether out of sympathy or impatience, Morse was not sure.

“Tell him what you saw, did you?” Inspector Thursday asked.

“Yes,” Morse said. “It wasn’t much.”

It was best not to say much, either.

In Paradisium deducant Anglei in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres ….

How hopeless underground falls the remorseful day.

Their paths kept crossing, as if there was something in their meeting that the Fates demanded, but what good could come of it?  It was a set up.

“Sir. It’s a set up.”

Thursday was watching him appraisingly, his narrowed eyes scanning his face.

“All right, Morse. Mind how you go.”

The dismissal, Morse knew, was meant to be a kindness, as if Thursday knew he couldn’t bear to stand there one moment more.

And yet, the man had suggested that he join the police, had suggested that he look upon them every day, all of those whom he could not save.

****

Jakes flipped through a file on his desk and frowned at the sound of unfamiliar footsteps coming into the nick.

It wasn’t his police training that had taught him to be so attuned. He had been, since childhood, uncannily perceptive to such sounds—to the point where, he could tell, almost instinctively, the intensions of the person making them.

These footsteps were hesitant and slow—definitely not those of anyone who belonged here.

He pulled his cigarette from his lips and looked up, and ….

Oh, hell.

Him again.

“How did you get in here?” he snapped.

Endeavour Morse drew to a halt, drawing a briefcase he was holding in closer to his chest, and blinked—surprised, no doubt, at the unexpected aggression in Jakes’ tone.

“The officer downstairs, the one from last night, Constable Strange, said I should speak to you.”

“’Bout what?”

Morse held up the briefcase, then, as if to better display it.

“I was walking into work this morning, and I found this,” he said. “I was wondering if it might not belong to the victim of the hit-and-run last night.”

Jakes considered him for a long moment—considered the sharp face, pale against the dark green walls and darker wood paneling of the nick, and those overlarge eyes, so blue that the whites of them were scarcely visible.

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see a shapeless pool of lovely pale colors suspended in the darkness,” Morse had murmured from the backseat of the Jag, as they had driven back to Oxford from the tiny village of Slepe.

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see a shapeless pool of lovely pale colors suspended in the darkness,” Angela had said, as they had sat under the spreading horse chestnut tree in the back garden.

And Peter had closed his eyes tight, and he could see them: red and blue and green against the black, and he squeezed them tighter, and he could see them all the brighter.

“I can see them!” Peter said.

“That’s because you really are Peter,” Angela said. “And one day you’ll fly away from here. All the way to Neverland.”

And he had smiled, and of course he would. One day, he’d learn the trick of it, how to fly.

And then he’d take her, and all of them, far, far away from there.

Jakes swallowed.

Much as he hated to own up to it, he had to admit: he didn’t like being on his own with this man, Morse, ridiculous as that was, despite the fact that he had told himself long ago that he would live without fear.

How often did he have to pass one of them in the street? Coming in and out of the pub?

Wintergreen, Landesman.

Deare.

Why should he fear the lanky figure before him, all bony wrists and bobbing Adam’s apple, all thin chest beneath the unironed white shirt and oversized car coat? There was nothing intimidating at all about the man …. but for the eyes… the eyes that seemed to look right through him… all the way to Blenheim ….

Jakes stood up from his chair at once, hitting his knee on the desktop in his rush so that the cup of pens resting there faltered, and then hated himself for looking like a ponce in front of an audience.

If Morse had something to deliver, let him deliver it and get the hell out of there.

“Why don’t you come and talk to the old man?” Jakes said.

And before Morse had a chance to answer, Jakes turned and strode over to Inspector Thursday’s partially-opened door.

He rapped loudly against the wood.

“Sir?” he asked, pushing the door open. “Someone to see you.”

Inside his dim office, Thursday was sitting at his desk before two large windows shuttered by Venetian blinds, smoking his pipe, and perusing through the report Strange had delivered earlier that morning. 

He glanced up right away, curiosity clear in the lines of his heavy face.

“Ah,” he said. “Morse. What brings you out this way?”

“I found this, sir,” Morse said, sidling along beside him. “A briefcase. Just a block away from the hit and run, last night.”

It would be he who had found it. Circling around like a vulture, like a harbinger of death. Looking for some excuse to stick his nose in. 

“Found it?” Jakes asked, darkly. “Or went looking for it?”

“I … ”   Morse said, clearly flustered. “I just found it.”  

“Well,” Thursday said. “Come in, why don’t you? Have a seat.”

Hesitantly, Morse ventured inside the office and eased himself down into the large chair before the desk, while Jakes waited, leaning in the doorframe, pulling out a cigarette to ease his nerves.

“Anything to say it’s the victim’s?” Thursday asked.

“Just essays, unmarked. On The Trachiniae,” Morse said.

The old man raised his eyebrows.

“It’s a tragedy. By Sophocles,” Morse supplied.

The old man grimaced then, as if to say fair enough.

And who could blame him, really?

Sure, every groundskeeper reels off the names of Greek playwrights like they’re listing their favorite skippers.

Morse, however, entirely missed the look; instead, he seemed to be focusing intently before him, with that half-daft gaze of his.

“He made the white brain to ooze from the hair, as the skull was dashed to splinters, and blood scattered therewith,” Morse said.

Jakes was just preparing to light his cigarette, but he stopped mid-motion at Morse’s words, straightening from where he had been lounging against the door frame, ready to show the man to the door that instant.

Even the old man—for all that he seemed to dance attendance upon the drifter as if he were determined to pat a stray and hissing cat—had the good sense to look troubled.

“What’s that?” Thursday asked.

“Oh. It’s from the play,” Morse said. “I was just thinking. Constable Strange had said that  …. ”

He shook his head then, as if to cast the thought away.

“I took it the owner of the case must be a Greats don…. so I rang around the colleges,” Morse continued.  

And that was another thing.

“You took it upon yourself to do that?” Jakes asked, sharply. “You sure you haven’t called Scotland Yard while you were at it?”

It was clear that Morse recognized the jab, but he said nothing.

Well.

Too right.

Jakes had worked hard to build a reputation. Didn’t need someone like Morse of all people, assuming his identity, calling round the Yard or the Met or even up at the colleges using his name.

“Names on the essays match undergrads at Baidley College being tutored by a Professor Coke Norris,” Morse concluded.

“Doesn’t mean to say he’s the victim,” Thursday said.

“There’s no answer on his home number,” Morse retorted, “and he hasn’t turned in for work this morning.” 

Morse drummed his fingers, then, thoughtfully, on top of the briefcase, when he ought to be handing the thing over and skedaddling out of there.

“You know, there’s a prophecy about Heracles, the man who dies in The Trachiniae  …..” Morse began.

“What? You mean Hercules? The strong bloke?” Jakes asked.

“The Greeks called him Heracles,” Morse corrected, continuing on without a beat.  “That he would be killed by someone who was already dead. Do you think that could have happened to him? To Professor Coke Norris?” Morse asked.

“If we know it’s Coke Norris,” Jakes said.

But the old man frowned thoughtfully, as if he were actually considering humoring him.

“How did Heracles die?” Thursday asked.

Jakes snorted and took a drag from his cigarette.

As if it might mean anything.

Disquieting as Morse was, the alleged meaning there in his words was all a coincidence, of course. Nothing more than what a fortune teller might pass off at a booth at a summer fair.

“You’ll find truth in the darkness.”

Had Morse truly meant that they would find Verity Richardson in the caves of the chalk mines? Or had they read their own meaning into that? Wherever she had been hidden, it was likely to be dark, wasn’t it? Not as if she’d been hidden on the front steps of the Radcliffe Camera.

And, as for the lines of Peter Pan, Morse was the sort who would have read a lot as a kid, wasn’t he? Might just have remembered a strain of some old bedtime story as he was falling asleep in the back of the Jag.

It had nothing to do with him.

There was no reason why Jakes should allow himself be rattled by one harmless misfit.

None whatsoever.

“It was his wife,” Morse replied. “Deianeira. When she was young, she was nearly carried away by a centaur, Nessus. But Heracles rescued her. As the centaur lay dying, Nessus told her that his blood, mixed with the poison from Heracles’ arrow, would form a potion strong enough to keep Heracles from falling in love with any other woman. And so, she had a robe, dyed in the blood, and kept it in secret.”

Jakes let out a scathing noise.

What the hell?

But Thursday, of course, nodded for Morse to continue on.

“When, eventually, after years of marriage,” Morse said, “Deianeira had come to fear that her husband had, indeed, fallen in love with a younger woman, she had the robe sent to him, thinking the charm would bring him back to her.  But when he put it on, it poisoned him. He cried out as if he were burning, and then he died. And thus, Nessus was revenged, years after his death. And the prophecy fulfilled.”

Christ.

What a story.  

More to the point—there was no evidence whatsoever that the unknown man’s death was anything but an accident. 

“Well,” Jakes said. “Last I looked, weren’t any centaurs in Oxford. So, I suppose we can cross that off the list, at least.”

Morse, who had appeared to be lost in thought, turned to him, looking annoyed, as if Jakes had somehow interrupted him, a pall of disapproval clouding over his haughty face.

“I don’t suppose you care to hear more about Sophocles, then,” he said.  

“No,” Jakes said. “I really don’t.”

Morse regarded him for a moment and then turned his attention back to Thursday. 

“But what about the driver?” Morse ventured. “The car that hit him must have been damaged.”

“Uniform are asking around the local garages, but without the description of the vehicle…” the old man replied.

Jakes was about to say it— that it would have been far more helpful if Morse had run a little faster, got a good look at the car, rather than coming into the nick with tales of centaurs and cursed robes—when Thursday, appearing to see something in Morse’s expression, leaned forward across the desk.

“What is it?” he asked. “There’s something else, is there?”

“It’s …,”  Morse began. “It’s just a girl. From work. She hasn’t turned up for three days now, and …”

He paused and shrugged one bony shoulder.

“That unusual at a place like that?” Thursday asked.

“I dunno,” Morse said, “It’s just….”

“Just what?”

“On my first day, when I met her, when she told me her name, I said, ‘a rose by any other.’”

Jakes snorted a laugh at that. It was difficult to imagine now why he should have felt so uneasy around the man. He was a mess, Morse.

“Well. I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jakes said. “Can’t all be as smooth as we’d like, with the birds.”

“It’s not that,” Morse said. “It’s… I think she might have given a false name.”

“Not too surprising that, is it?” Thursday asked. “No different than what you’ve done.”

“Girl’s over twenty-one, isn’t she?” Jakes agreed. “She’s probably run off with the milkman.”

“I suppose,” Morse said, rising slowly from the chair and setting the briefcase on Thursday’s desk.  

 At last.

Thursday, however, was appraising Morse darkly.

“Give me her name, then. I’ll look into it.”

“Judy Vallens,” Morse said. “But I don’t think that’s her …”

“You’re hardly any ‘Ludo Talenti,’ are you?” Thursday said, cutting him off.  “But I found you just the same.”

“Ludo Talenti?” Jakes laughed.

And once more Morse said nothing, only turned a delicate shade of pink.

“Now,” Thursday said, as if the matter were settled. “Where are you off to? Looking for a new job, I hope.”

Morse shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“You suppose so?” Thursday asked. “Don’t you mean you know so? I thought we’d agreed you’d look to make a fresh start somewhere else. The Moonlight Rooms is the last place that someone like … that you need to be sticking your beak in.”  

Couldn’t blame the old man, there. It was as clear as day Morse wasn’t the sort to be able to resist poking around where he wasn’t wanted, calling around about the briefcase, as he was, poking around in some girl’s business, a girl who most likely wanted to leave her past clean behind her.

Morse shrugged once more, but his manner was icy, as if the temperature in the dim and cluttered office had dropped ten degrees.

“It’s like I said. Tomorrow starts today.”

This seemed to incense the old man, and he sat up even straighter in his chair. “Tomorrow starts right now,” he barked. “I told you to stay away from that place, and I meant it.”

“What am I supposed to do for money? Rent won’t pay itself, you know.”

“I thought I had you seeing sense.”

“I am,” Morse said, seemingly perplexed by Thursday’s vehemence. “But in the meanwhile….”

“No. No meanwhile. You just…”

Morse pulled himself to his full height then, looking as if he were nearly bursting with some question.

“Who’s Carter?” he blurted.
 

On the fall of those two words, the old man bypassed red and went straight to puce, bolting up from his desk so that all the contents rattled with his fury.

And then, Strange was there, coming up along Jakes’ side to stand in the doorway, his face solemn.

“There’s a woman here, come in to report her husband missing,” he said. “A Mrs. Coke Norris.”

A silence fell over the room, then, as the three of them looked at one another.

But it wasn’t as if Morse had predicted the name of the victim.  

Anyone could stumble on a briefcase, make a few calls.

Morse cast a glance back out into the main offices, where Mrs. Coke Norris was waiting. “I’ll just be going,” he said.

“Right,” Thursday said. “Just remember what I said,” he continued, but already, Morse was slinking out the door in a rustle of his cheap car coat, and Jakes, truth be told, was glad to see the back of him.

“I’ll take it,” Thursday said, and Jakes nodded soberly, stubbing his cigarette out in a round, glass tray at the corner of the Inspector’s desk, as if to pay his respects in the face of the pall of death that had fallen over them.

Thursday strode out of the office, his step determined, and Jakes followed him out, returning to his desk, where the telephone was ringing incessantly.

He picked the heavy black receiver up with one, easy motion.

“Jakes,” he answered.

“Hello,”  a voice on the other end replied. It was a pleasant voice, that of a young woman with a slightly northern accent. “I was calling to report a missing person. Well… he’s not missing. I know he’s in Oxford. It’s just, I haven’t heard from him in a while… and it’s not like him to not call in, or write.”

Jakes began to roll his eyes.

Sorry, sweetheart.

He’s done a runner.

“What?” Jakes asked. “This your boyfriend, then?”

“No,” the young woman said, slightly affronted. “He’s my brother.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I know he’s somewhere in Oxford…. but he’s been a bit … down on his luck… and he moves house quite a bit, but now I haven’t heard from him in months, and, I’ve been worried. That maybe something’s happened to him. And now... well.... He and our father have never seen eye to eye. And. Well. Our father... he’s not doing well. And .....”

The girl on the other end was clearly nervous, speaking more and more quickly as she went on, as if she thought that he might hang up on her if she didn’t get the whole story out, as if she thought she might get into trouble for calling the police for someone who sounded to be more “misplaced” rather than “missing.”

Still.

Sounded like a sweet little thing.

“It’s all right, Miss,” Jakes said, suavely, his voice deepening, and then he cradled the receiver in the crook of his shoulder, so that he could retrieve a form from a drawer in his desk.  

“What’s your name, Miss?” he asked.

“Joyce,” she said. “Joyce Morse.”

“And your brother’s name?” Jakes asked, dully, already knowing the answer.

“Endeavour,” she said. “His mother was a Quaker.”

“It’s a virtue name,” Jakes supplied.

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Yes. That’s right.”

Jakes frowned.

If he were anything less than the perfect professional, anything less than the stickler for protocol that he was, he might be half-tempted to toss the damn form in the bin.

The last thing he needed, or wanted, was more of Endeavour Morse in his life.

But, in the end, he hadn’t the heart to do it, to deny Morse the chance to perhaps make it up with his father.

Wasn’t as if Jakes could even remember his. 

Chapter Text

It was already the second time that day that Jakes had felt like an absolute ponce, and it had only just gone ten.

Perfect.

Judy Vallens stood in the doorway of her building, her arms folded, regarding them warily from beneath her frosty blonde fringe. She seemed to have not the slightest idea as to what they were on about—as if, even, she was thinking of calling the police about them, to verify that they were who they said they were, and not a couple of creeps flashing fake warrant cards about, questioning her about her comings and goings.

Jakes couldn’t say he blamed her.

He’d be mistrustful, too.

No, she didn’t work at the Moonlight Rooms, she’d never worked at the Moonlight Rooms, never even once stepped foot inside the place. She was a student at Lady Mathilda’s—and, from the way she spoke, from the way she looked at them haughtily from behind her heavy glasses—even from the way she dressed, in a tweed skirt and fine-knit jumper, Jakes could well believe it.

No, she’d never heard of any Morse, nor of any Ludo Talenti, either.

Why were they asking?

Her eyes darted between them, glinting with a flicker of alarm, as if she’d like nothing better than to slam the door on the pair of them.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Miss, you seem a bit nervous,” Thursday said. “Anything troubling you?”

“You mean besides my flatmate clearing out, and leaving me with all the rent, and then you two showing up on my doorstep just twenty minutes later, with a torrent of utterly indecipherable questions?”

“When did you last see her?” Thursday asked, at once. “Your flatmate? What’s her name?”

Miss Vallens hesitated. Then she frowned faintly, as if she reckoned that, the more quickly she answered their questions, the more quickly she might get rid of them.

“Georgina Bannard,” she said. “And just this morning. I went to a tutorial and came home to find all her stuff’s gone.”

“Thank you, Miss,” Thursday said.

He tipped his hat and gave her a fatherly little nod, as if to reassure her that they were trustworthy, that they were on the up and up.

“Thank you for your time.”

She nodded and then closed the door in a rush, so much so that Jakes felt a swoosh of air brush heavily across his face. 

“Well that was certainly interesting,” Jakes said, sullenly, as soon as they were off, heading back down the frost-covered pavement towards the black Jag.

As if to say that it wasn’t interesting.

Unless you could say that it was interesting that Thursday seemed to be so set on looking further into Morse’s daft words.

Whether it was her real name or not, Judy Vallens was present and accounted for.

“Could be more than one Judy Vallens, maybe,” Thursday muttered.

“No other ones in the book,” Jakes replied.  

“Morse said Judy Vallens wasn’t her real name, though. Maybe Morse’s missing is someone else, someone using this undergrad’s name.”  

“Or Maybe Morse is just sticking his beak in where it’s not wanted. Why is he so interested in this girl?” Jakes asked. “Are we sure he’s got her best interests at heart? You sure he doesn’t have his own reasons for wanting to track her down?”

Morse looked harmless enough, to be certain. College Boy. All soft hands and sensitive face and big, mournful eyes.

But you never could tell with people.

Appearances could be deceiving.

“It’s nothing like that,” Thursday said, the barest trace of an indulgent chuckle in his voice.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just am,” Thursday said. “Morse isn’t that sort. Besides. He’s has already got a girl.”

Jakes cupped his hand against the wind to light up a cigarette and gave a soft and bitter laugh before taking a drag.

Amazing, it was, to think Thursday had been in the game for so long. He was so bloody decent himself, when it came the birds and the kiddies, he could be awfully naïve sometimes.

It didn’t matter that Morse might speak like a right posh little gent, didn’t matter that he might look like a Victorian waif, the sleeves of his thin coat riding high on his bony wrists. Didn’t matter in the slightest if he had a girl, a point that Jakes highly doubted anyway.

A man could be a pillar of the community, married to the same woman for twenty-five years, so applauded, so upstanding …. and still be the worst sort of….

He blew a sharp jet of smoke through his nostrils, flicked the ash away from the end of his cigarette and into the gutter.

It was a hell of a time of year.

There was such an icy sharpness in the air as if to cast the whole world into a frost-filled light, as if to make the white limestone bridges and buildings of Oxford look as if they had been carved right out of the cold.

It was the sort of chill that burned in your lungs, that cut all the way down to the marrow of your bones—the kind that, once it dug in, you couldn’t get rid of.  

If it was going to snow, let it snow and do the thing properly, not all of this lackluster, half-hearted stuff, these dry flurries that were more a warning of snow then any sort of real snow itself.

As soon as they got back inside the plush interior of the Jag, Jakes cranked the heat up, high as it would go.   

He had always hated the goddamned cold.

****

Over at the Moonlight Rooms—big surprise.

Morse wasn’t there.

“I thought he said he was on his way to work,” Jakes said, once he had slipped back into the driver’s seat and slammed shut the car door.

Thursday, however, looked thoroughly unperturbed, as if he had suspected that they might not find Morse there, all along. 

“Bit early, in the day, isn’t it?” he asked, knowingly. “For a man working at a nightclub?”

Jakes scowled.

So.

Morse had lied to them, had he?

He hadn’t “just so happened” to have stumbled upon Professor Coke Norris’ briefcase on his way in to work. He had been out at the crack of dawn having a poke around, rummaging about in the shrubbery perhaps, even.

And why had Thursday insisted they come all the way out here, then, if he had suspected that Morse wouldn’t be here anyway? Seemed like he was looking for any excuse to drop by the Moonlight Rooms these days. Jakes couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the place had the old man decidedly and uncharacteristically rattled. 

“How are we supposed to tell Morse that his sister is looking for him? That his father’s not well?” Jakes protested.

“He’ll turn up. Come looking for us, most likely,” Thursday said. “If not, I’ll come back ‘round in a few hours.”

Well. 

Of course, he would.

Jakes sighed heavily and threw the car into drive with a little more force than what was strictly necessary.

He supposed that Thursday was right; Morse might be right back at the station, even now, sitting in one of the cheaply-upholstered black chairs along the far wall, just waiting for them to come in through the doors so that he could riddle them with even more balderdash.

He supposed he should count himself lucky that his guv’nor wasn’t insisting that they run over to the colleges, ask a few dons about what’s-his-name, that bloke Morse was going on about, Socrates.

No.

Sophocles.

That was it.

Jesus.

What a bloodthirsty story.

Hercules poisoned, burning alive inside some dead centaur’s skin?

And yet Morse had popped out with little gem just as if he were asking for milk for his tea.

Very nice.

And to think that those college boys had the audacity to condescend to him, when this was the sort of stuff they were filling their heads with?

Still, the trip out to the Moonlight Rooms wasn’t a total waste of time.

Just a few blocks away from the nightclub, they happened upon that obsequious little Maurie, walking along the pavement in a high-quality gray wool coat, his hands in his pockets, his bare head bent against the cold.

Thursday turned and gave him the nod, and Jakes understood at once.

He knew that Thursday reckoned old Maurie knew far more about that lorry-load of smokes than he was letting on.

Jakes eased his foot off the gas and slowed the Jag to a crawl, while Thursday rolled down the window, letting in a sudden burst of freezing, dry air.

“Maurie,” Thursday called. “How’s about you come for a little ride? I think we’re overdue for another chat, don’t you?” 

The big man’s eyes went wide, and then, in the next moment, his heavy face fell, crestfallen, so that he looked like an overgrown kid, caught sneaking a biscuit from the jar. He looked left and then right, as if he was thinking of making a break for it, as if he were looking for some nearby alleyway he might dart down.

Thursday narrowed his dark eyes cast into shadow by the brim of his hat, the menace barely perceptible under the show of chumminess, but there all the same.

Then old Maurie shrugged, as if conceding defeat, and got the hell into the back of the car.

He knew it was no use, knew he’d gotten too comfortable, too lazy, too slow, to dream of outfoxing them.

As soon as the big man shut the car door, Jakes smirked and stepped lightly on the gas.

Sometimes, just when he had begun to despair for the old man, just when he thought he was losing his touch, Thursday showed what he was once made of, showed that he still had it in him.

***

“I can’t, Mr. Thursday. You know that. It’s more than my life.”

Jakes lit up a cigarette, watching through the windscreen as the snow circled amidst the fir trees. Out here, out in the middle of nowhere, the snow looked quite different, drifting gracefully against the evergreen in a pristine world of white, in a world untouched by the grubbiness of humanity.

Pretty, really.

In the seat beside him, Thursday sighed melodramatically, like an actor in a play.

“Fair enough, Maurie.”

He turned in his seat and nodded to him, then, with a face full of both feigned somberness and of merriment.

“Better get him back, Sergeant Jakes.”

“It won’t look too good if Kasper sees us dropping him off right outside the Moonlight Rooms,” Jakes replied.

He took a drag on his cigarette, barely able to repress his smile.  

“Someone might take him for a grass and think he’s been running his mouth off?” Thursday asked, knowingly.

“But I ain’t!” Maurie cried.

It was beautiful.

He and Thursday belonged on the goddamned boards.

“Look,” Maurie said, relenting at last. “Vic came in as a sleeping partner with Charlie about two years ago. That’s all I know.”

“Charlie was happy with that?” Thursday asked.

“You don’t say no to Vic Kasper.”

For a moment, Thursday remained silent, mulling that over, fitting in this new piece of information, no doubt, with whatever he knew of this lot from his days back in the Smoke.

“Go on, then,” Thursday said. “You can get the bus back.”

Maurie let out a cry of protest, but neither he nor Thursday said another word. Wasn’t too long before he could see there was no point in arguing.

The big man heaved himself out of the car with as much effort as possible, really laying it on thick, as if to show how put-upon he was.

And what do you know?

He belonged on the boards, too. What a performance.

As they drove away, Jakes glanced up at him in the rearview mirror, saw him throw his hands up in the air in frustration.

Jakes snorted a huff of a laugh.

Finally, some real police work. It felt damn good, being able to demand some small kernel of truth out of one of these people, to glean some small piece of information, something solid, something real.

A far cry from unsettling eyes and weird premonitions about white tombstones followed up by cheery little quotes from Peter Pan, that was certain.

What the hell was all that, anyway?

Hardly mattered. They’d find Morse, tell him his sister was looking for him, put him on a train to Lincolnshire.

And, with any luck, he’d stay up there.

“Stop the car!” Thursday roared.

His shout rang out with such a deep and gravelly authority that Jakes hit the brakes at once, causing the back tires to squeal on the frozen road.

Jakes turned round, his hands tight on the wheel, wondering what cause there was for alarm, but Thursday was only staring, as if dumbfounded, out the window.

 “Morse said that,” he said.

 “Morse said what?” Jakes asked.

 “That. What’s on the sign.”

Jakes’ gaze swept from his guv’nor to the enormous billboard that stood oddly out-of-place in the middle of a frost-dusted field, against deep green trees, soft gray skies and gently falling snow.

The sign depicted a sketch of a community of modern, boxy flats with a nice little family walking out front—father, mother, three kiddies—all well-dressed and holding hands, smiles seeming to beam on their blank and featureless faces.

Along the bottom, ran the words:

Tomorrow starts today.

Booth Hill-Phase 1: Winter 1966.

Landesman Construction.

Jakes looked upon it with deadened eyes.

He didn’t know what the old man was on about.

He would have remembered it, if Morse had said that name.

“Tomorrow starts today,” Thursday said. “He said it at the station. And at his flat the night before. When I told him to start looking for some other job, other than the Moonlight Rooms.”

For a moment, the old man said nothing, only sat there, considering.

“That project couldn’t have something to do with Coke Norris’ death, could it?” he mused.

When Jakes gave no answer, Thursday said, “Maybe we should pay a little visit over to the housing department. Look into this development a bit.”

“On what cause, sir?” Jakes asked, heavily.

Thursday shrugged his big shoulders. “No harm in simply asking around, sergeant.”

Jakes shook his head, eased his foot back off the brake and onto the gas, resigning himself to feeling like an absolute ponce for the third time that day. 

Thursday must be losing it, after all.

Besides.

There was no sign that Coke Norris’ death was anything but an automobile accident.

 ***

Walking into Professor Coke Norris’ rooms was almost like stepping back into time. It was like so many offices Morse had been in before—Lorimer’s, Richmond’s—just as he remembered them. The silver-gray damask wallpaper, the rich, dark wood beams, the pure white light glowing in high windows framed by heavy, russet drapes, the clutter of books, blue and burgundy and arsenic green, embellished in gilt and stacked haphazardly on every available surface as if they might topple at any moment, was all just as familiar to him as the fine bones at the back of his hand.

Morse circled around, idly, looking for he knew not what. On top of a filing cabinet near a window stood a sepia-colored globe, and he reached up with cautious fingers and gave it a tentative spin, watching as islands and continents glided by in dusty rotation.

A nearly-empty, cut-glass decanter stood on a nearby tray, its facets deep and sharp, sparkling before the window, and Morse picked it up and swirled it so that the dregs of the amber liquor gleamed in the weak winter’s light.

The glasses on the tray, Morse noted, were all turned upside down, except for one glass that waited, set right-side-up, off to the side.

Had Professor Coke Norris felt that he had cause, in the days before his death, to have polished off all of that scotch? To have sat here, in the hush of his office, drinking alone?

Morse set the decanter down and then moved over to the desk. On another filing cabinet, just beside it, amidst stacks of more books, sat the simplest of wooden picture frames—a memento of leaner times, perhaps—containing a black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman in uniform.

It could only be Professor Coke Norris and his wife; they must have been ambulance drivers, during the war.

The young Coke Norris was smiling, looking forthrightly into the camera, and his wife—or, more likely, future wife—was sitting in the driver’s seat of an ambulance, her hand raised in a wave, and they radiated with it—even though they were in the midst of suffering, they had fallen in love, and the love shone on their faces… as well as something… else….

Gratitude,  perhaps? To have found someone? To have found something?

People were always looking for one thing or another.

Morse reached out to pick up the photograph, to hold it in the light of the window for a better look, but as soon as he closed his fingers around the edge of the frame, his hand faltered— so much so that he feared he might drop the thing in a loud and echoing clatter, one that would surely alert someone to his presence— as a cold wash ran through his veins and a sharp pain burned somewhere low and deep on his side.

He set the photograph down, hands shaking, and turned away, determined to be more respectful of the space as he went on—and, as he did so, his eyes fell upon an oil painting in a gilt frame, a painting of a tall ship on a lonely seascape. He took a step back at once; the painting had also left him with a quiver of cold—the slate of the water, the ship alone on turbulent seas, the sun a mere brush of orange on a distant horizon.

And why was there always such a chill in rooms such as these? For all the of the opulence of oil paintings, for all of the velvet hush of heavy curtains, for all of the glimmer of the enormous glass-bead chandelier hanging above, it always seemed that something so basic, so fundamental, as the central heating never worked properly, was always on the fritz, …. or else it was that those in charge of such places were too cheap to turn it up.  

How different the Thursdays’ house had been. The gold and white floral wallpaper that clashed tremendously with the blue floral carpet, beaten low by Mrs. Thursday’s relentless carpet sweeper, the homey clutter of spider plants and cook books and porcelain figurines, the faux-wood, bullet-shaped salt and pepper shakers that sat in the middle of the table, might very well leave many a don at Baidley aghast.

 And yet… when he had woken that morning half-burrowed in throw pillows on the sofa of the Thursdays’ living room, the first stirrings of the sun reaching through the rough lace curtains bought at Woolworth’s, he had felt—for the first time in as long as he could remember—as if he was almost tingling with it, a warmth that radiated down to the tips of his fingers, down to his core, through and through.

An echo of footsteps in the corridor resounded in the stillness, and Morse froze, holding his breath.

It wasn’t until they passed, grew ever fainter and fainter, that he exhaled in one long release of air.

He was wasting time.

He crossed back to the desk and began shifting through papers: unmarked essays, lecture notes, drafts for academic papers, and then—amidst all of the pages filled with dense, cramped script, he found a glossy flyer, an advertisement for Landesman construction and a new development called Booth Hill.

The slogan the firm had devised for the promotion of its new project marched across the page in a blue, crisp, clean modern font, seeming to leap out at him from the shiny surface of the paper.

“Tomorrow starts today.”

Tomorrow starts today….

Morse had said those words.

He had said them twice, to Thursday, but he hadn’t meant anything by them.

It was only an old cliché, the sort Morse had believed someone like Thursday—someone of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-and-get-on-with-things school—would like to hear.

Morse plopped himself down in the desk chair as if his legs would no longer support him, engrossed by the paper, as other words popped and tumbled and circled through his mind.

Tomorrow starts today…

Tomorrow and …

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death

Out, out, brief candle

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more:

it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Morse shuddered at the words, words full of the cold memory of when he had first read MacBeth, back when he was still at Stamford, and of the ice of recognition that had coursed through him as he had read Act I, as if he had stolen a glance into some sort of inverted mirror.

He was a boy in a school uniform, kicking legs far too long for him idly under his desk, not an eerie and soothsaying witch, and yet it was those sisters, and not any sort of honest advisor or troubled protagonist, who laid the greater claim to his empathy.

Did they truly prophecy? Did the things they said needs must come true?

Did their words make them come true?

Or did they simply perceive something there, in the air? Pick up on some inclination, or unseen ambition, that lay already with MacBeth?

But yet, if MacBeth had never heard their words, if the witches had kept it to themselves, their prophecy, might that seed of violence have lain forever dormant?

Did the fact that they prophesied guarantee that matters would unfold in that way … or could the future have diverted, changed course, despite what they had said? Proving them wrong?

Were their words a cause or a mere corollary?

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

But, at the end of the day, did it matter?

At the end of the day, the bloodbath still happened.

Morse tossed the flyer down and picked up a newspaper beside it, folded open to a story on Booth Hill written by Miss Frazil, the editor of the Oxford Mail who had helped him to find the article on the Blaise-Hamiltons the summer before.

“Who are you?”

Morse looked up, startled.

Before him stood a man with a smooth face and dark hair, a man perhaps only a few years older than he himself was, dressed in the black robes of a don.

It was a disembodying feeling: if things had gone differently, it might have been he who was standing there, looking at himself.

 “I … ummm…” Morse said, tucking the newspaper into his coat even as he slid out of the chair to stand.

“Trying to slip a late essay into the pile, are you?” the man asked, knowingly.

“Ummm. No.”

And why, why, hadn’t he simply said yes? The man had all but handed him an excuse.

“I mean,” Morse said. “My essay. I woke up at three in the morning, and I realized….”

“Making a few last-minute corrections?”

“Yes.”  

The man sighed, his stance relaxing.

“I’m afraid that won’t matter, for the time being. Haven’t you heard? Professor Coke Norris was found dead last night. A hit-and-run, they say.”

“Oh?”  Morse asked.

It was him then, he had been right about that briefcase.

He had been right in what he had told Inspector Thursday and Sergeant Jakes.

“That’s awful,” Morse breathed.

The man sighed again, more heavily this time, a prolonged note that struck at a different timber, and he ran a hand through his thick, chestnut hair.  

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I shall miss him.”

“Any news of the driver?” Morse asked.

The driver.

The driver … and in the photo, the woman in the driver’s seat sat waving, and the man was looking out at him as if he was trying to tell him something, and it was pointless to follow such a train of thought…

And the clamor of metal wheels on train tracks, the roar of voices in the station, the slam of a metal locker door… and …

“No. Not that I’ve heard,” the man said. “No.”

Morse had thought that the don would smile paternally, bid him to go with a jerk of his head, but, instead, he seemed preoccupied, and ….

And, of course, he must have had some aim when he had come into Coke Norris’ rooms … some aim that Morse’s presence had temporarily interrupted, because, in the next moment, he began shuffling through the professor’s books and papers, just as he, Morse, had done.

He had that airy and ineffable manner about him, that veneer that all the dons had and some of the undergrads affected, that air that Morse never quite learned to copy—that way of carrying themselves as if everything that happened, happened at a safe distance.

So calm the man was now, for example, even though it was clear he was searching for something.

And so Morse stood, uncertain as to what to do next, watching the man rummage through the fragile, gilt-edged books. There was something there, a memory… something that carried the light, sweet scent of lemons in summer, a soft turquoise memory, of the warmth of the sun…

Morse must have had an odd look on his face, must have been staring far too intently, lost in thoughts that were not his, because, incredibly, the don stopped and smiled at him, a sheepish and apologetic sort of smile, even though he, Morse, certainly had far less right to be there than he did.

“I lent him an old Baedeker’s,” he said. “Southern Italy. Sentimental value. I didn’t want it getting…”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Morse said.

The man, absurdly, looked almost grateful.

And then, with twitching fingers, he began once more to shuffle through the books.  Why was he so keen that it not be found by any other? Was there some inscription … some message there, meant only for him?

And Morse found his fingers twitching, too, as if in sympathy. As if there might be a message there for him, as well, even though Professor Coke Norris had never known him.

Even though, as the professor’s younger self looked out at him from within the photograph frame, it seemed that he did. The young man was smiling, and Morse wanted to look away, but something kept drawing his eye back to the photograph, and again the young Coke Norris was watching him, and his wife was lifting a hand as if to wave from years away, as if she had been waiting to meet him and…

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

Slowly, Morse’s head began to clear. He had been dizzy with it for a moment, the jolt of that sharp pain in his side, down near his hip.

“How is Mrs. Coke Norris?” he asked, faintly, once he had recovered himself. 

“How indeed?” the don replied. “Had little enough to fill the space as it was, didn’t she?”

Morse said nothing.

“Still, I should think she’ll find something. Some new project,” the man continued. “So long as it isn’t me,” and there was an odd coldness there, amidst the sun and the distant, azure sea ….

The man paused in his work and frowned, as if realizing too late how his last words had sounded.  

“Forgive me,” he said, and his voice—so clear, so uncaring, so replete with the impassive polish of a don, of a man of the world far above the fray—sounded weary, suddenly. Strained.

“When he didn’t get in for the meeting last night, I f…”

His frown deepened, and he looked at Morse as if, for the first time, he was actually seeing him.

“Do you ever… do you ever just get a feeling, somewhere in your gut, when you know that something’s wrong?”

“No,” Morse said.

The word seemed almost to erupt from him.

 Because he did feel it, he felt just that way, almost all of the time, and standing there in that room, he was choking with it.

“No. No, I don’t.”

The don raised his eyebrows and turned away, as if deciding that Morse must have been affected by the news, that his overly vehement response should not be judged too harshly in light of the shock he’d just received, and, in the next moment, the man seemed once more to have forgotten all about him, as his heart eased, and the chill air was filled with the scent of lemon blossoms.

The don reached out and laid a hand on a stack of books as if to hold it steady, and then, from somewhere in the middle of the pile, he pulled out a small, red, leather-bound travel guide. 

“Ah,” he said, with a dramatic little flourish. “Eureka.”
 

The gesture was an affectation, but the relief he felt was real.

Coke Norris had left a message for this man, and he had left a message for him, for Morse, too; Morse could feel it the crackle, in the static, a clamoring in his head like the din of railroad tracks, like the cacophony of voices in a train station, the metallic slam of a locker ... and ... 

The young don looked down at him commandingly, then; he had slipped the mask off for a moment, and now it was back, stuffy and imperious, but not unironically so, authority with a hint of an indulgent smile.

“Do you not have somewhere to be? Aren’t you late for a tutorial, perhaps?”

“I’ll just…” Morse began. “Yes. I’ll just… go…”

And Morse turned to leave, plagued with the feeling that—even though he kept the newspaper tucked snug under his coat— there was something else there, hidden and unseen, something he was leaving further and further behind.

****

Morse climbed the white wooden steps up to the offices of the Oxford Mail. Right at the moment he passed through the door and into the large newsroom bustling with activity—with copy editors hunched over large proofs and beat reporters clattering on typewriters or moving about the room, checking this file or conferring with that colleague—the music in his mind switched, just as abruptly as if someone had lifted a needle and dropped it down in the middle of another track, from Fauré’s Requiem—drifting and falling and dreaming with each circle of snow he had passed as he had walked along outside—to something much livelier, to Mozart’s Sonata No 11 in A Major, tripping along with the clack of keys and the call of voices, and the tick of the large clock that loomed over all, warning the beehive of each approaching deadline.

He wandered through the bay of desks, and, to his surprise, no one bothered to give him a second look—he supposed they must have seen it all, this lot. Or perhaps, busy as they all were, they each had hoped he would prove to be someone else’s problem.  

“Can I help you?” a man who sat typing at one of the desks asked, at last.

“I was looking for Miss Frazil,” Morse said.

The man looked him up and down, as if wondering what story he might hold.

“In a jiff. Just let me just finish this before I lose my train of thought.”

Morse blinked at the man’s use of the term, but the reporter had already turned away, his face scrunched up in concentration as he focused on the page.

“You know how it is,” he muttered. “Tomorrow is always today.”

Morse felt his heart leap, somewhere under his ribs.

“Sorry?” he asked.

The man looked back up at him, narrowed his eyes. 

“You’re not here about the copy editor job, are you?” he asked. 

“Sorry,” Morse said. “No.”

“Oh. Well, then. What I mean is, we’re always working on tomorrow’s edition. So … anything that happens today? We’ve got to say ‘yesterday.’ Anything going on tomorrow? It’s today. Because as far as the paper goes, today is already yesterday. And as far as we are concerned, today is tomorrow. Get me?”

“Mmmmm,” Morse said. “I suppose so.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written the next day’s date on a cheque. It’s enough to send you in circles sometimes, when you get the hell out of this little bubble, and find out it’s still yesterday.”

“Stop your griping, Eddie,” another man called from across the room. “It’s not all that difficult a concept to wrap your head around.”

The man at the typewriter—who was called Eddie, evidently—snorted.

“Mr. Editorial Writer,” he scoffed. “Mr. Timeless Issues.”

He narrowed his eyes at Morse as if determined to convey some important message to him. “You get onto the editorial department, you forget all about the news. And journalism is news, believe me. I’ll end my days on the police beat, that’s all.”

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

They were an interesting set, anyway.

Suddenly, amidst the clacking of keys, Morse heard the familiar clacking of low heels, and he looked up to see Miss Frazil, in a tawny cardigan and thick red belt, stepping out of her office and crossing the room over to a copy editor’s desk, delivering some proofs.  

“There’s the chief, now,” Eddie said.

He turned in his chair to call out to her, but there was no need; Miss Frazil had already noticed him.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

Morse hesitated for a moment, taken aback by this slightly less-than-enthusiastic greeting.

“Yes. I was wondering…if I might talk to you for a moment.”

Miss Frazil appraised him through guarded eyes, and Morse felt unmistakably wrong-footed—as if he had committed some faux-pas he hadn’t realized.

Finally, she seemed to have come to her decision, and she gestured toward her office with a jerk of her head.

As soon as she had closed the door behind them, she lit up a cigarette with a flash of a small silver lighter and considered him as she blew a steady stream of smoke into the air.

“I must say… that wasn’t very sporting of you, the way you handled the Blythe Mount case.”

Once again, Morse blinked, taken off-guard.

He wasn’t aware that he had handled anything.  

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“I took you over to the archives. Showed you where to look. That warrants a phone call, at least, doesn’t it? We were probably the last ones out there that night.”

Morse stood for a moment, processing this.

“In return for information…” he ventured,  “you wanted the scoop?”

She widened her eyes and nodded her head, as if to say that anyone might have figured that out.

The condescending expression was one Morse had seen all too often before; it stuck a sour note in the middle of Mozart’s Sonata.

“Sorry,” he said, bitterly. “I was rather busy that night, giving chase to a madman through a half-abandoned Victorian mansion and then falling through a floor.”

Immediately the condescending look changed to one of wonder, and then quickly, to shrewdness.

“You’re not joking, are you?” she asked.

Morse said nothing, only continued to look at her.

What did she mean? It was what he had said, wasn’t it? 

She smiled, then—it was a complicated smile, a bit of a smirk, really, but not without fondness, too, and Morse at once felt far more at ease.

“No,” she murmured, archly, more to herself than to him. “Of course, you’re not.”

She took a long drag on her cigarette, then, and leaned against her desk, as if prepared to hear him out.

“So,” she said. “How can I help you, then?”

“I wanted to ask you … if you knew anything about Booth Hill.”

“Booth Hill?” she replied. “Well, I should say so. We’ve been reporting on it for about the last eighteen months. With the Oxpens being cleared, the council needs new housing stock. The housing department’s been in negotiations with Baidley College to acquire the land at Booth Hill.”

“Baidley College?”

“They own the land,” Miss Frazil said, with an off-hand shrug. “Not been very popular with the Rural England brigade, but most objections have been dealt with, one way or another. A couple of tenant farmers have been ‘encouraged’ to move on.”

“Strong arm stuff?” Morse asked.

“Nothing anyone will talk about.”

“Any idea where a Professor Coke Norris might fit into this?”

She took another drag on her cigarette, turned to flick the ash into a glass tray at the corner of her desk. 

“Professor Coke Norris?” she asked.

“Mmmmm.”

“Well. His family owned the land, originally. He was a conchie, back in the war. Gifted it to the college to avoid death duties.”

Morse raised his eyebrows, surprised, and bounced back on his heels.

Could there be that clear of a connection?

“How do you know that?” Morse asked.

“Public record, Morse,” she said, airily. “Not to mention the first rule of journalism.”  

“That’s …  telling the truth, I would have thought,” Morse ventured.

He gave a mirthless little laugh, then, because he had a feeling she was about to tell him otherwise.

And, sure enough, he was not disappointed.

“When something smells a bit off,” she said, “follow the trail of the money.”

She smiled, then, as if interpreting for a traveler from another land.

“Anytime there’s a controversy where land is involved, you look to see who owns it—who used to own it, who lost it or sold it, who stands to profit, and who doesn’t.”

“You think … Professor Coke Norris was unhappy about the sale?”  Morse asked, confused. “As a senior fellow, he would have made a windfall.”

“Ah, you would think so. But he was a conchie, like I said. An idealist.”

“Oh,” Morse said.

“He opposed the sale. Thought it went against the spirit in which the gift was given.”

“And he told you that?”

“Mmmm,” she said.  “He was one of the few up at Baildley who would talk to me, actually.”

“The others couldn’t have been too happy about that.”

Miss Frazil nodded, then, both in agreement and in encouragement, as if she were proud of him for finally cottoning on.

“I put the master of Baidley rather on the spot yesterday. He marked my dance card in no uncertain terms.”

“He threatened you?” Morse asked, outraged. 

“Let it be known he wasn’t pleased by our coverage, yes. Feeling a bit nervy, I expect, as they were finally getting so close. The sale was formally approved last night, you see. At a meeting up at the college.”

“At a meeting … that Professor Coke Norris ... never got to…” Morse said.

Miss Frazil tilted her head, a soft scowl falling across her face. 

“Sorry?”

“Professor Coke Norris was found dead in the road last night. A victim of a hit-and-run.”

Miss Frazil straightened, then, from where she had been half-leaning against her desk.

“Coke Norris is last night’s unknown? How do you know this?” she asked.

“Because…” Morse began… “Because I was the one who found him.”

Miss Frazil said nothing, and Morse could tell, that, for once, she had been caught by surprise.

He pulled the newspaper out from his coat.  

“He was reading your article,” he said, offering her the paper. “Right before he died.”

She took the paper and looked at it, and, suddenly, her voice grew sharp.

“Where did you get this?”

“From off his desk, in his rooms at Baidley.”

For a moment, she said nothing, gazing thoughtfully at the paper in her hand, and Morse felt, in the space of the silence, almost as if he were right back there, picking the newspaper up from the desk, while on a nearby cabinet, Professor Coke Norris looked out at him, from within a black-and-white photograph....

“Morse,” she said, at last. “You should know. Taking this from his rooms could very well be construed as interfering with police investigations.”

“But they weren’t investigating.”

“You aren’t a detective.”

“I know that.”

“Then why are you …”

“Because … when I found him… I felt his pulse… and he was still alive… he died right there. Right there in front of me.”

In Paradisium deducant Anglei in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres.

Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Anglelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeteranam habaes requiem.

“Are you still in touch with Inspector Thursday?” she asked, her stance seeming to soften. 

“Yes. I saw him this morning.”

“You should tell him about this, all right? Leave it to the police.”

“Hmmmm.”

She was right, of course. But what could he tell Thursday? … Professor Coke Norris’ message had been there, right at the ends of his fingers, whether he had wanted to admit it to himself or no, and he’d been too wary, too fearful, too slow to reach out and take it.

It was there, right there, and now that he was away from the chill of those rooms, he knew just where it was, even though he didn’t know how he knew.

He turned on the spot, heading out of Miss Frazil’s office.   

“Where are you going?” she asked, following him out to the newsroom. “Morse?”

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Anglelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeteranam habaes requiem.

“Well, alright, then,” she called, as if washing her hands of him. “But I hope you’ll remember it’s a two-way street this time!”

But Morse was already throwing the door of the newsroom open, letting in a blast of the cold.

****

Morse strode through the quiet halls of Baidley College, his footsteps echoing in the chilled space.

He burst through the doors of Professor Coke Norris’ rooms and went straight to the photograph on the cabinet. He picked it up, and felt it again, that sharp pain burning red-hot in his side, but, this time, he barely registered it beneath the greater sensation of his wildly beating heart.

With deft fingers, he undid the latches on the backing of the frame and pulled it off. There, hidden between the piece of cardboard and the worn photograph, was a ticket, the sort a clerk gives out to assign a locker in a train station, small and square and violet-red, printed with a black number.

385

“Tomorrow starts today,” he murmured.

Morse shoved the ticket into his pocket and then put the frame back together, setting the photograph onto the cabinet before turning towards the door.

He was just bolting out towards the corridor, when he all but ran smack into him—not the young don with the dark hair, back again looking for mementos, but an older one, with an almost skeletal face.  

“I’m sorry,” the don said, not sounding sorry at all. “Who are you?”

It was there: there in that tone, that arrogant, drawling tone, as if he wasn’t worth speaking to properly, as if the man could only bother to speak to him through his thin, aristocratic nose.

Morse knew who he was. What he was. Just the sort who would bully Miss Frazil as if it was second nature. Just the sort who would mow anyone down who stood in his way.

Morse stood there, fighting back a rising tide of disgust. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but he was almost shaking with it, from head to foot, with an anger that was not his. 

Sergeant Jakes was right about the world. All of those things he, Morse, had said, about The Trachiniae, it all seemed laughable now.

Jakes was right. Miss Frazil was right.

It all came down to money. Always the money. People were never satisfied, never, always wanting and wanting something else, something more, as if that might fill the space full of the cold.

“Professor Frobisher?” Morse asked.  

“Who wants to know?” the man asked, with a snide little air that was as good as a confirmation.

“I understand the sale of Professor Coke Norris’ family’s land was approved last night.”

“I beg your pardon,” he replied. “You seem to be sadly misinformed. The land had been in college ownership for nearly 50 years. It was ours to dispose of as we saw fit.”

“Why?” Morse asked, hotly, gesturing to the grandeur of the room.  “Is the college short of funds? So much so that you need to drive a host of tenant farmers off their land?”

“Their land? What are you, some sort of socialist?”

“Odd that the sale should be approved the night Professor Coke Norris was killed. If he had attended the meeting, would the sale still have gone through?”

The man went oddly still—he wasn’t that bright, really, but he was bright enough to look after his own interests; his sense of self-preservation was strong, if nothing else.

“What do you think you’re getting at?”

“I think you know exactly what I’m getting at.”

 “Who are you?” Froshiber asked, properly angry now, so that a thin vein stood out at his temple. “Who’s your tutor?” What do you think you’re doing, coming in here with these accusations? Students have been sent down for far less, you know.”

“Factum fieri infectum non potest.”

“What?”

“It means it’s impossible for a deed to be undone.”

“I know what it means.”

“It means I’ve already been sent down. Years and years ago,” Morse said. “It means you’re a little late for that now.”

“You know…,” Frobisher said, eyeing him critically. “I have half a mind to call the police.”

And Morse didn’t blame him; his voice sounded half-wild even to himself, but damn if it didn’t feel good to let it loose, to demand some small kernel of truth from one of these people.

Morse pulled a card from the pocket of his coat, the card Thursday had given him months ago, written out with his name and number.

“Yes,” Morse said, “You call them. Call the police. Tell them I was here, causing a ruckus.”

“But who are you?” the man asked again, wonderingly.

Morse spun around.

And for once he gave his real name, because for once, he wanted to be found.

“Morse,” he said. “Tell them Morse was here.”

And then pushed out the door and tore off running, down the deserted and gleaming and beautiful and chilled hall.

Chapter Text

They stood in the middle of a frozen field, where a dead girl had been left face down in the dull grass dusted with snow.

There was a heaviness about her, as if she were already fading back into the earth, even though, as Dr. DeBryn gently turned her face, Jakes could tell she must have been the sort who had to live by her wits, who must have been light and quick enough on her feet, in life.

The only color in the muted scene of frozen ground and gray skies was the bright flame of her hair and the brighter flame of her smudged lipstick. But, even in the repose of death, there was a hardness to her brow and chin that Jakes recognized all too well.

Whoever she was, the world had not been kind to her.

Dr. DeBryn searched the pockets of her thin coat, withdrawing two small items which he deposited into Thursday’s outstretched hand.

The first was a velvet black matchbook bearing the silver motif of the Moonlight Rooms.

The second was a folded pay slip from the nightclub made out to Judy Vallens.

“Morse had said it wasn’t her real name,” Thursday said, heavily, considering the yellow slip of paper he held between his calloused fingers.

“She was, what, using her flatmate’s name, then?” Jakes asked. “Rather than coming up with a new alias altogether?”

“People do,” Thursday shrugged.  “Morse used your name once. When he called the Yard.”

Jakes scowled.

As if he needed reminding.

Thursday refolded the piece of paper and cast his gaze down to the body on the ground before them.

“People are always pining after something else, something that they think might be right there, right on the horizon,” he murmured, seemingly apropos of nothing.  

“It’s what Morse said,” he supplied, then, in answer to the questioning look on Jakes’ face.

Jakes nodded and dug his numb hands deeper into his silk-lined pockets.

It was true enough, most likely, of the girl before them. True enough for all of them, he supposed, really.

But, even so, whatever it was she had been hoping for, it looked as if the girl with the fiery hair and no name had never found it.

“Back of the head,” Dr. DeBryn said, leaning his weight back on his heels as if letting the entirety of his compact body relax into a sigh. “Point blank. Couple of days ago, by the look of things.”

“Couple of days?” Thursday asked.

“Mmmmmm,” DeBryn confirmed.

“Miss Vallens had said her flatmate had cleared out just this morning,” Jakes said. “If this is her, she must have been lying for one reason or another, then.”

Thursday narrowed his eyes, looking about the dreary landscape, his lined face suddenly weary.

“This isn’t Kasper,” he said.

Jakes raised his eyebrows. It had seemed that, up until that point, the old man had been ready to blame anything and everything—even down to a malfunctioning stapler—on his onetime foe.

“No?” Jakes asked.

“A young girl,” he mused. “Back of the head? Just to leave her here, exposed, right in the middle of the grass?”

“You think Kasper has any such compunctions on that score?” Jakes asked.

Thursday looked troubled.

“And leave a pay slip from his own establishment right in her pocket? No. This isn’t a professional job. This is something spur of the moment. Someone who acted out of some sort ... some sort of blind fury.” 

Jakes nodded, thoughtfully.

Nothing added up, really.

But whatever the story was, Jakes had the definite sense that Judy Vallens, the real Judy Vallens, knew a hell of a lot more than what she was letting on.

****

“Georgina used different names, depending how the mood took her.”

Jakes felt his heart sinking. He could already see where this was going.

“The mood?” he asked, dully.

“She got in with people when she was younger,” Miss Vallens said. “People who … took advantage.”

She bowed her head, then, her frosty fringe obscuring her face, in what looked to be a moment of real mourning.

Then she took a breath, as if gathering strength from it.

“She had been sent out, to meet a man in a mews in Bayswater, to collect a key from the cubbyhole at Baidley College.”

“Whose cubbyhole?” Thursday asked.

“Froshiber’s. The master at Baidley’s.”

And then, the whole sad story came spilling out. Georgina Bannard had gotten herself involved in god-only-knew what, somehow managing to drag her posh, college friend into it right along with her.

Who knew what Miss Vallens had made of it all?

Certainly must have been a course in life not likely to be offered up at Lady Mathilda’s, anyway.

“I went with her to London, I kept out of the way,” Miss Vallens continued. “And then a man arrived that had something to do with Town Hall. He had a lot to drink… started bragging about some deal the council had going.”

“Booth Hill?” Thursday asked.

“Yes. That’s it. He said he stood to make a packet. Only there was a don at Baidley trying to stop it going through.”

“Professor Coke Norris,” Thursday supplied.

The girl said nothing, only nodded, grimly.

“This man from Town Hall… did he have a name?” Jakes asked. 

Miss Vallens hesitated for just a moment, but then she lifted her chin and spoke her final word as if she knew it might be the only way she might get any sort of justice for Georgina—gave them the name of a man who normally would have been too far above her reach, as those sorts always were—far above the reach of an undergraduate from Lady Mathilda’s and certainly far above the reach of a cigarette girl who worked at the Moonlight Rooms.

But now, as she spoke the name to them, she seemed to realize that, with their help, he might be within the sights of her fire, after all.

“Carlisle,” she said.

***

“Anything in?” Thursday asked, as he pulled off his heavy coat and hung it on the stand by the door.  

“Sir,” Sergeant Strange replied. “Oddest thing. We’ve had two complaints in, just in the past few hours. Both about that bloke Morse, the one who found Professor Coke Norris’ body. One from Professor Froshiber, the master at Baidley College, and one from Town Hall.”

“Who from Town Hall?” Thursday asked, carefully.

Sergeant Strange looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.

“A Mr. Carlisle.”

Thursday’s dark gaze swept to him at once, and immediately, Jakes read the old man’s thoughts there—an easy enough feat as they were also his own.

If Morse had been harassing Froshiber and Carlisle, that meant he wasn’t randomly going about Oxford making a nuisance of himself, dropping quotes from Peter Pan and Greek poetry in the offices of Oxford’s movers and shakers.

He was on the case.

And, what was more, he was a step ahead of them.

Jakes grimaced. He could only hope that Morse hadn’t made matters all the worse for them, going off half-cocked, putting people on their guard who might have otherwise made a telling slip.

“And Mrs. Thursday rang, too,” Strange added. “Says it’s urgent.”

Thursday’s somber look grew all the graver at that, like storm clouds gathering out at sea. Mrs. Thursday was a copper’s wife through and through. She never rang down to the nick.

If Mrs. Thursday was ringing him up while the old man was on duty…

“Go see to home, sir,” Jakes said. “I’ll find Morse.”

Thursday hesitated, and then nodded with real gratitude, gathering up the coat he had placed onto the hook just a few moments before and sweeping out the door.

Once he had gone, Jakes went over to his desk and picked up the phone. He called Froshiber, he called Carlisle, both trying to smooth ruffled feathers and endeavoring to get some sort of sense as to where Morse might have gone.

He was just hanging up the phone with a rather snippy little Carlisle—a man for whom Jakes was developing an even greater sense of distaste by the minute— when he found himself doing a double take: Morse was there, standing right at the door of the nick, looking over the cluttered and mismatched bay of desks, not his typical stroppy self, but rather oddly subdued, his face pale with the cold, clutching a leather folder in his gloveless hands.

Morse’s big eyes locked on his, lighting up with a blue spark of recognition. Then, he was making a beeline straight for him.

“I need to speak to Inspector Thursday,” he announced without preamble.

“Inspector Thursday is out for the day,” Jakes replied, laconically, not a little annoyed at being spoken to so curtly, like some sort of clerk. “Looks like I’ll have to do.”

Morse’s eyes widened, wavered doubtfully over his face. And then, he actually turned his back on him, turned to look over his shoulder, as if hoping that Thursday might be coming in through the door at any moment.

“Morse?” Jakes prompted. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Morse swung back around to him.

“No.”

“No?” Jakes asked. “That’s funny. We’ve had two calls in about you says otherwise.”

Jakes picked up a spare chair left half-hanging into the passageway and set it squarely down before his desk.

“Sit down,” he commanded. “You might as well start from the beginning.”

Morse regarded him for a moment, and then, much to Jakes’ surprise, he actually did what he was told for once. He said nothing, simply lowered himself into the chair without looking.

It was lucky, really, he landed on the thing, and didn’t topple off onto the floor.

“Start from the beginning?” he asked, faintly.

Then he looked back over his shoulder, a thoughtful frown on his face.

“Thursday’s just left,” Jakes said, shortly. “Not fifteen minutes ago.”

“What?”

“I said, Thursday’s just left. He’s not coming in.”

“Oh.”

“So,” Jakes said. “Do you want to begin with what you were doing out at Baidley College?”

Morse’s dull gaze grew sharper, and Jakes could see it, the mistrust, the doubt in his expression. Then he looked down at the folder he clutched in his hands and swallowed, and Jakes could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he had made his decision, that he was about to spill it.

“I… I know I shouldn’t have done it,” he said.

Oh, Jesus.

“I don’t have a warrant card…. and … I don’t know. Perhaps you can’t use it in court, now.”

Jakes rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb, feeling a terrific headache coming on.  

“Use what in court?” he asked dully. 

Morse didn’t answer. Instead, he simply regarded him for a moment, and Jakes felt certain he was under scrutiny once more. Then, he placed the leather folder he had been carrying on the desk before him.

“What’s this?” Jakes asked.

“Papers. After a fashion. These are the articles of association for Landersman Construction. Cheques to the sum of 6000 pounds have been drawn against their accounts and cashed over the past twelve months. By Mark Carlisle. Senior planning officer in the Housing Department.” 

Jakes flipped the file open and began turning through the pages, running a sure finger down the lines in the ledger.

And… what the hell …?

“Where did you get all this?” he asked, sharply.

“I found it,” Morse said.

Jakes looked at him with deadened eyes.

“You were walking and you just so happened to find this lying around on the pavement.”

“No,” Morse said. “I found it in a train locker.”

“You found it in a train locker,” Jakes said.

“I found out from Miss Frazil that Professor Coke Norris was opposed to the sale of Booth Hill. So I went to his rooms as Baidley,” Morse explained. “And I found a locker ticket there, hidden in the back of a photo frame. And when I went to the train station, I found this.”

“And then you went to confront Carlisle about it?” Jakes asked. “Why? What were you hoping to accomplish?”

“I’m sorry,” Morse said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I just… I just had …”

And then, it was unsettling—his whole tone seemed to change, his low, soft and mournful voice, with its slightly rounded trace of the North, turning slightly sharper, somehow…

Somehow more like his own.

“It just … I dunno… It just felt good. It just felt good to demand a modicum of truth out of one of these people.”

Jakes paused, regarding him warily.

That was just what he had been thinking earlier that day, hadn’t it? As he had sat in the car while Thursday raked over old Maurie?

Nor for the first time, Jakes found himself feeling definitely conflicted about the man sitting before him. On the one hand, there wasn’t a lot to Morse, really—just a wiry thing, he was, with the soft hands of a college boy. But on the other hand, there was something about him that, every now and then, left Jakes with a chill at the back of his nape, with a feeling reminiscent of shadows, of dark, twisting staircases, of curtains billowing in an empty room.

“I wanted him to tell the truth,” Morse was saying.

And then Morse cast his gaze down, to where his hands lay clutched tightly in his lap.

“But he threw me out,” he murmured disconsolately. “Like I was some sort of crank.”

At Morse’s forlorn, even almost unconsciously comic conclusion, Jakes felt at once that sense of foreboding abate, as a cold mist does before the beams of the sun.

He was being ridiculous, really. Letting his fancy get the best of him.

Jakes huffed a sharp laugh. 

“Imagine that,” he said.

“Maybe,” Morse said, a light of hope gathering in his face. “Maybe, you can say that you found it. The folder.”

“No,” Jakes said. “I can’t.”

Morse opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut again.

“I know,” he said.

Christ, what a thing. Somehow, Morse seemed to have solved the case and to have made a huge mess of it all at once. 

“I had to,” Morse protested, as if reading his thoughts. “I had to. It’s not as if you were making inquiries in the right places.”

“That’s because we were busy looking for your Judy Vallens.”

Morse’s eyes widened at that.

“Did you find her?”  

“She’s dead.”

Jakes regretted his bluntness as soon as he had said the words. As big of a pain in his arse as Morse was, it gave Jakes no joy to see the man go still with the shock of it, bury his face in his long, thin hands.

For a moment, Jakes feared he might actually start crying, but instead, it was far worse; he simply sat there, as if paralyzed, as if frozen into place.

It got so awkward, Jakes almost wished he would cry, or shout, or do something, rather than to sit like a statue, his face hidden in his hands. 

“Morse.”

But Morse remained silent.

“You were right, anyway,” Jakes murmured. “Judy Vallens wasn’t her real name. It was Georgina Bannard.”

Morse made a sharp sound behind his narrow hands, like an intake of breath, leaving Jakes to think that perhaps he had made him feel worse about it, not better, being proved right.

Morse had been hovering around the truth of it, had sensed that something was off, he had been getting there.

Just not quickly enough to warn Miss Bannard of what was to come.

“It’s not your fault,” Jakes said.  

“Isn’t it?” Morse asked.

“No. It’s the fault of whoever put a bullet in the back of her head.”

There was another sharp intake of breath, then, and Jakes realized too late he needn’t have put it quite so graphically.

“Morse….”

“I know,” Morse said, his face still obscured. “It’s not by fault. It’s never my fault, is it?”

Jakes made no reply, simply folded his arms and leaned on the desk before him.

So.

That’s how it was, was it?

Morse rattled around, somehow stumbling upon one disaster after another, sensing something was wrong, that some catastrophe was brewing out there on some unknown horizon, never quite able to puzzle it out, to stop the chain of events before someone or another ended up dead. And it had gone on and on, leaving him to accrue layer after layer of regret and remorse until he had filled up his head with it—a head that seemed crammed full of enough rubbish as it was, honestly, to be going on with.

“It could have been much worse at Blythe Mount, you know that, don’t you?” Jakes asked. “One of those little girls could easily have ended up dead.”

But Morse remained just as he was, as if carved out of ice.

“You can’t put it all on yourself,” Jakes continued. “It’s not on you, what one person will do to another. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.”

And his angrier tone seemed to do the trick, seemed to move Morse out his weird fug of inertia, because he lowered his hands and asked, tentatively, “Where is Inspector Thursday?”

Jakes sighed. He was trying his best here.

“He went home. Like I said.”  

“Why?”

“Why? Because Y’s not Z. It’s personal. Like I said.”  

“What do you mean… personal?”

“Morse.”

“Doesn’t sound like Inspector Thursday, to go home in the middle of the day,” Morse observed.

“Would you bloody stop playing the detective? You’ve done enough damage, for today, I’d say.”

“No,” Morse said.  “It’s important.”

“What’s important?”

“When I ran into Thursday again, a few days ago,” Morse said, “After….”

He let the sentence fall away, and Jakes nodded to show that he understood that he meant after the incident at Blythe Mount.

“I was sweeping in the main dining room of the Moonlight Rooms. And he was having a row, Thursday. With Vic Kasper. They mentioned. Well. All sorts of things, really. But the level of animosity between them. It seemed … personal. As if they knew each other, from London. As if they still have some sort of unfinished business. As if Thursday has … I don’t know … some sort of vendetta.”

Jakes said nothing, mulling that over.  

“You should call her. Mrs. Thursday.”

Jakes looked up sharply.

“If Kasper’s done something to bring their row to Thursday’s home, involved his family in this….”  

Morse didn’t need to say anything more. Jakes knew all too well it had been personal with the old man, that he’d had some ties to that lot from his days in the Smoke.

And a man hardly had to have any sense of clairvoyance to know what Thursday might do, if Kasper had done anything to cross that line, anything that touched on his home.

Morse rose at once from the chair, scooping up the leather folder.

“We need to go to the Moonlight Rooms. We need to take this and go.”

“Oh, we’re going,” Jakes said, as he took the folder back from Morse’s hands. “But not you. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“What?” Morse protested.

“You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”

Jakes picked up the telephone and placed it squarely before him.

“Here,” he said. “Call your sister.”

“How do you know I have a sister?” he asked.

“Just had a feeling,” Jakes said.

Morse widened his eyes, looking alarmed.

“I’m joking,” he said. “She called at the nick. She’s looking for you, wanted to put in a missing persons report about you. You sit here and call her. And stay put. We’ll have to talk to you, when it’s all over, you’ll have to give a statement. Then we’ll get you on a train to Lincolnshire.”

“I’m not going to Lincolnshire.”

“Call your sister,” Jakes said.  

Morse looked at the phone almost fearfully, then, as if he thought that, if he picked it up, something might pounce at him from out of the receiver, but at least he remained where he was.  

“And stay put until we get back,” Jakes said.

And then he crossed the room, in a handful of strides, calling to Sergeant Strange.

****

Jakes barreled into the Moonlight Rooms, arriving onto a scene entirely apropos of the theatrical backdrop of the tawdry burgundy velvet drapes and the hung silver moon. It was like something out of a play, coming upon Thursday— a pulse beating in his temple visible from half-way across the room—with a gun trained on Vic Kasper, while his son, in turn, had a gun trained on him.

“That’s none of mine!” Vic Kasper said. 

“Bad luck for you, then,” Thursday replied, gritting out the words as if they were bits of sand in his teeth.

And then… Christ… He was actually going to pull the trigger.

“Sir! Don’t! He’s telling the truth!” Jakes shouted, as behind him, Strange and Mr. Bright, and a small troop of officers in uniform raised their collective guns.

Vince Kasper lowered his gun, his hard face falling into wariness, while Thursday, betraying just the slightest flicker of surprise and relief beneath the granite-hard exterior, followed suit. 

“What’s this?” Vic asked.

Jakes stepped up to the center of the room, then, with just a trace of swagger, just enough to put the lot of them on notice.

“These are the articles of association for Landesman Construction. Four shareholders, equal partners. Sid and Gerald Fletcher, your son Vince, and Cynthia Riley.”

“What?” cried a blonde in a beaded-collared dress. She turned at once to old Vic, shaking her head in denial.

“I don’t know nothing about this, Vic,” she protested. “Vince! Tell him.”

“She don’t, Dad,” Vince Kasper said, laconically. “Cyn’s been loyal. I put it in her name as a surprise for you.”

“Yeah,” Jakes said. “Well, you would have been surprised. Your son’s put together a firm with the Fletchers’ to build houses on Booth Hill.” 

“No law against it,” Vince said.

“No. But there certainly is a one against bribing public officials. Cheques to the sum of 6000 pounds drawn against the account of Landesman Construction have been cashed over the past twelve months. By Mark Carlisle, senior planning officer in the Housing Department.”

There was a dead silence, then, as the Moonlight Rooms crowd seemed to process it all. 

Took them a bit of time, this lot. 

At last, Vic Kasper smiled, in an attempt to look conciliatory.

“It’s between me and the boy, Fred. You let me straighten him out.”

“Can’t do it, Vic,” Thursday said.

Then the guv'nor turned to him and nodded grimly, and Jakes took one more step forward.

“Vince Kasper, I’m arresting you for conspiring to bribe a public official. You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say may be written down and can be used in evidence against you.”

Strange came forward with a set of handcuffs, then, and it should have been satisfying, seeing the little bastard get what was coming to him.

But somehow, it felt like a hollow victory.

Because if it wasn’t Vic Kasper or one of his heavies who had left Professor Coke Norris dead by a kerb and Georgina Bannard face down in the sparse, gray grass …. then who did?

***

Jakes and Thursday stood out on the frozen pavement, watching as Strange and a couple of PCs bunded Vince Kasper into the back of the wagon.

“Where’d you find that, then?” Thursday asked, with a nod to the folder in his hand.

“I didn’t,” Jakes said. “Morse did.”

Thursday huffed a laugh.

“Turned up, did he?”

“I left him at the nick,” Jakes explained. “Told him to call home.”

Thursday nodded, satisfied. Then, a shadow crossed his face.

“So if it wasn’t Vince or Vic who did for Coke Norris and the girl,” he said, “We’re back where we started.”

Jakes scowled softly, looking down at the folder in his hands, remembering how Morse had clutched it as he had come into the nick, how he had turned to look over his shoulder, a thoughtful expression on his face. 

And, suddenly, the answer came to him.

Morse had seemed oddly preoccupied when he had told him that, contrary to his apparent hope, Thursday wouldn’t be waltzing in the door at any moment.

And that was because Morse wasn't looking for Thursday.

Morse being Morse, he had doubtless combed all through these papers; he already knew that Coke Norris’ death was unrelated to the graft of Vince Kasper and Carlisle, he was already working on it, thinking on who else might stand to make a packet off of the sale of Booth Hill—once again, one step ahead of them. 

Morse hadn’t been looking for Thursday.

He had been looking to where Mrs. Coke Norris had sat, on that first morning that he had come into the nick. 

Maybe Coke Norris was trying to block the sale, but did his wife feel the same way? 

“It was his wife, Deianeira,” Morse said.

“Start from the beginning?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jakes said. “Exactly where we started.”

Suddenly, it all fit together.

And suddenly, Jakes came to doubt that Morse was still waiting for them, sitting in the chair before his desk.

****

“Mrs. Coke Norris?” Thursday called.

The door was had been left partially open—in Jakes’ experience, never a good sign. He and Thursday exchanged swift glances, and, as if in silent agreement, charged ahead inside.

The wide hallway was empty and quiet, furnished only with a small, spindle-legged table holding an enormous display of dried flowers reflected before an oval mirror. At the end of the hall, they came onto a large and comfortable living room, painted a muted olive green and set with plush, plum-colored sofas and chairs, where they found Morse, his back turned to them, his thin shoulders hunched beneath the fabric of his cheap white shirt as he stood over a table in the corner, the heavy, black receiver of a telephone pressed hard against his ear...

And, on the other side of the room, Mrs. Coke Norris, dressed in a tweed suit and a blouse with an enormous bow, looking every inch the don’s wife, save for the expression of utter vitriol on her face and the gun in her hand.

Morse spun around at the sound of their footfalls, catching sight of Mrs. Coke Norris and her well-aimed gun, and then, it all seemed to happen as in slow motion: Morse’s enormous eyes widened as he dropped the receiver, his mouth falling open in surprise.

Thursday pulled his gun, and two sharp cracks sounded through the room, almost simultaneously.

It was like some twisted parody of a child’s game of laying out dominoes: almost at once, Morse went down, falling in an oddly vertical manner before crumpling into an ungainly heap by the bay windows, while Mrs. Coke Norris flew back from the force of the impact of a bullet straight to the chest, collapsing sideways into an armchair, where she landed, her eyes blank, staring out at them.

For a moment, Thursday said nothing, only stood there, regarding her.

Even when it was an act of defense, it was no small thing, Jakes knew, to kill.

Then, slowly, the old man seemed to rouse, to come back to himself, as if remembering why it was he had done such a thing.

“Morse?” he called.

Thursday crossed the room in a few brisk strides and crouched down to where Morse lay face-up on the floor, a pool of blood spreading out from his side onto the dark polished oak floor. His face was white, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow with the shock of it.

Quickly, Thursday shrugged off his jacket and pressed it up against Morse’s side, low down on his hip. Not life-threatening, then, it would seem, and Thursday must have realized it too, because he exhaled a loud sigh of relief and then patted Morse lightly on the face.

“Morse?”

Morse’s face was so white and still that he looked almost like a frozen thing, and Jakes was reminded inexplicably of the way in which he had sat across from him at his desk, just a few hours before, overcome with emotion, how he had held himself in that same cast, as though he had been carved out of ice.

Carefully, Jakes stepped over the pair of them and retrieved the telephone receiver, which still hung dangling from its cord. Then he put in two phone calls. One for an ambulance, and one to Dr. DeBryn. 

When he hung up the phone, he turned back around to find that Morse seemed to be stirring at the sound of their voices.

“Morse?” Thursday prompted. “Wake up now, lad.”

Morse’s eyes slid open, revealing two slivers of brilliant blue. Then, his bleary gaze roved between the two of them, as if he was trying to make out who they were and how it was that he had come to be lying on the floor between them.

When the answer seemed to come to him, he let out a wordless groan.

“You’re alright, Morse,” Thursday intoned.

Morse’s frozen face collapsed at the words, so that he looked not at all his usual stoic self, but rather utterly miserable, as he let out another soft groan. He murmured something unintelligible, then, so that Thursday tilted his head, as if to better hear him.

“What’s that, lad?”  

“I don’t want to die,” he said.

At the words, Jakes felt a tension which he hadn’t even realized had been building in his chest soften, subside.

If Morse was capable of managing such a statement, it was as good as a confirmation that he was in no danger of doing any such thing.

Some residual stiffness in Thursday’s broad shoulders seemed to sag at the words as well, as if he had come to the same conclusion, but soon, Morse’s newfound energy and presence of mind began to backfire on them, as he began to try to roll away, trying to free himself from the pain of the pressure that the old man was applying with his bunched-up jacket in an effort to slow the bleeding.

“Keep, still, Morse,” Thursday said. 

“Don’t,” Morse protested. “I don’t want to die. I still have to ..... ”

“He’s trying to help you, Morse,” Jakes said, cutting across him.

“You’re going to be fine, lad,” Thursday said. “You’re going to be fine. All right? The ambulance is on its way.”

Morse shook his head, obviously unconvinced. No doubt the extra pressure hurt like hell, seemed counterintuitive to him at the time, but Morse was going to have to trust him, for once, on this one.

“You’re not dying, Morse,” Jakes said.  “Besides. If you were dying, wouldn’t you be the first to know?”

Morse’s eyes wandered over to him, then, in a glaze of confusion, as if trying to work that out, before a look of utter disdain flickered across his face.

Thursday cast him an odd glance, as if he felt it was rather unsporting of him to have a go at Morse while he was down, but, hey…

Kept his mind off it for a moment, didn’t it?

“So, who are were you trying to ring, anyway?” Jakes asked.

“Mmmmm?”

“Who were you ringing up, on the telephone?”

“Oh,” Morse breathed. “You.”  

For a moment, Jakes wasn’t sure what to say, taken thoroughly off-guard by the transparency on Morse’s face. He would have thought that Morse would have looked to Thursday when he had said the word, but instead, he had turned his head so that he was looking straight to him.

“Yeah. Well,” Jakes said. “Just look. Here I am. Good thing I sensed it, then. Maybe it’s contagious.”

Thursday cast him another dark look, but the corner of Morse’s mouth hitched up in a twitch of an annoyed smile. Then he scrunched up his face as if in concentration, and you could tell he was thinking real hard to come up with some apt comeback.

But Jakes wasn’t holding his breath. Morse might be clever, have a head full of Greek poetry and obscure facts, but Jakes doubted he was the sort to be all that snappy with his retorts.

No matter.

He’d stew over it, and doubtless come back to him with something really soul-cutting, in three days or so.

Thursday cast him another look, an apologetic one this time, as if he had realized that Jakes wasn’t being a complete prick, that there was design behind it.

For a few long minutes—ones the seemed to stretch on in the silence that fell between them—they simply crouched there in the corner, settling into an odd sort of tableau: Morse staring up at the ceiling, as if willing himself to think of something else, as he and Thursday strained their ears after the wail of sirens.

As long as Morse remained preoccupied, managed to keep still, Thursday seemed to be able to staunch the bleeding well enough, but, then, it was all taking too long—then, the blood began slowly seeping through the dark fabric of Thursday’s jacket, leading Thursday to press down more firmly against the wound and Morse’s face to go even whiter against the stained wood floors, his big eyes to go slightly unfocused as they trailed from him back up to the ceiling. 

And then, his eyes flew wide. For a moment, Jakes thought perhaps the wound was more serious than it looked, that perhaps the path of the bullet had ricocheted, leaving a trail of more damage than what was apparent from first glance.

“Morse?” Thursday asked.

“I forgot,” Morse managed. “I need to tell you. There’s another body.”

“What?” Jakes asked.

“In the study. A junior fellow. I met him this morning. He said…”

Morse seemed to run out of steam, then; it was as if he’d been running and had fallen short of breath.

But Jakes heard had enough. He and Thursday exchanged cursory glances, and then Jakes sprang up at once and went through the house until he found a room lined with dark maple bookshelves filled with row after row of stately green and vermillion and brown and blue volumes— and a man in a white shirt and braces shot through the back, lying face down on the black and gold patterned Persian carpet.

Jakes knelt down and checked the man’s pulse.

There was nothing.

Bloody hell.

What had happened here, in this house full of books and dried floral displays and tasteful furnishings?

It was as he had always known, he supposed.

Appearances could be deceiving.

Jakes stood up, then, considering the man before him.

Like Morse said, people were always pining after something or another.

Or, in Mrs. Coke Norris’ case, it seemed, someone.

The sound of sirens blaring in the distance came to Jakes, then, and he crossed back to the living room, where Morse was once again staring stoically at the ceiling, his thin chest rising and falling with shallow breaths as he fought the tide of pain, Thursday murmuring words of comfort.  

“See. Hear that? We’ll get you to hospital now. They’ll stitch you up, good as new.”

You’d think Morse would have been relieved to hear the ambulance sirens, but instead, he seemed to drain further at that, mumbling something unintelligible.

“What’s that, lad?”

“No,” he breathed. “I can’t go to hospital. I have to go to my father. I …. What if it’s …..What if he…”

“Hush, now. Don’t worry about that.”

Morse turned his face back up to the ceiling, gazing dully, his face an utter blank, as if he wasn’t fully there. Whether it was because the pain had finally gotten the better of him, or because he was simply lost in whatever thoughts he had been trying to express, Jakes couldn’t say.

But it hardly mattered, now. In the next moment, there was a sound of footfalls in the hall, as the young ambulance driver and the even younger attendant burst through the sedate old house in a whirlwind of urgency.

And suddenly, Morse found his voice, scrambling to escape from under Thursday’s broad hands, as the two men bounded towards him.  

“No,” he gasped. “I can’t go. I can’t. I have to go…. ”

The pair of them halted in their tracks at Morse’s outburst, while Thursday redoubled his attempts to get Morse to hold ruddy-well still.

“He really should go to hospital,” the driver said to Thursday, eyeing the pool of blood beside Morse on the floor. It was as if he sensed that the old man was the one in charge, someone who might have some sway over Morse.

“No,” Morse said. “I have to …”

“What’s this?” asked a steady voice—modest and unassuming but redolent with enough quiet authority that all five of them turned to look to where Dr. DeBryn, his bag in hand, was watching the scene, his face impassive, but his eyes behind the rimmed glasses mildly curious.

“His father’s bad off,” Jakes supplied, in answer to the questioning expression on his face. “He’s up in Lincolnshire.”

Morse’s eyes lit, then, on DeBryn.

“You’re a sort of doctor, aren’t you?” Morse asked.

“My medical degree would seem to suggest as much,” DeBryn remarked dryly.

“Can’t you… just… Can’t you just fix it? I don’t have time. I don’t ….”

Thursday cast a glance towards Jakes, and Jakes thought he knew all too well what Thursday was thinking.

If Morse had the sense he was running out of time…

Then perhaps he really was.

“Can you patch him up, doctor?” Thursday asked. “I’ll drive him up, look that he’s seen to.”

The ambulance men scowled, annoyed, as if beginning to think they’d been perhaps called out for nothing.

DeBryn sighed and walked over to Morse, Thursday clearing out of the way so that he could kneel down beside him, while all the while Morse’s big eyes remained trained on the doctor’s round face in a silent appeal.

“Looks like you’ve lost quite a bit of blood,” the doctor began, “but … ”

Gently, he pulled some of the frayed fabric of Morse’s black trousers aside so as to better assess the damage. Then he frowned, as if thinking it over, before appearing to make his decision.

“I’ll make a running repair for now,” he said, at last. “But you’ll have to get it seen to by someone back home, alright?”
  

“Yes,” Morse said. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” DeBryn said. “I’m not at all sure that I’m doing you any favors. Just see you get that looked at by someone back home. Hmmmm? Don’t wait too many days. And sign of fever, or if the pain worsens or changes at all, call for an ambulance. All right?”

“Mmmmm.”

“All right?” DeBryn asked, looking him hard in the eyes, as if to make sure he was understood.

“Yes,” Morse said.  

Morse went oddly quiet after that. It was as if all of his energy was spent, or as if he realized that he would need to save what he had left for what lay ahead. He let out a small sound of protest when Thursday partially lifted him up from off the floor, so that DeBryn could roll his trousers down, exposing the wound that lay on his hip. But other than that, he said nothing, the eyes that had previously so unnerved Jakes staring up at the ceiling, empty, his mouth a tight line as Dr. DeBryn stitched him up.

Towards the end, a single tear rolled sideways off of Morse’s face, but, even then, Jakes couldn’t tell if he was crying or if his eyes were simply watering because he had been staring so long without blinking.

“Alright?” DeByrn asked, once he had finished.

Thursday put his arm behind Morse’s shoulder, helping to roll him up, and Morse took a deep and shuddering breath, some hint of color returning to his face.

“You’re all right,” Thursday said. “Just had the wind knocked out, that’s all.”

“Yes,” Morse said.

“Come on, lad, up you get.”

He helped Morse to stand, then, stringing one lanky arm over his shoulder. Then, he bundled him down the hall and off to the car.

Jakes followed them out the door and into the white and frozen January afternoon. As he began the work of settling Morse into the passenger’s seat, Thursday turned and looked back at him, and he could read the question there on his face—if he didn’t mind him taking the Jag.

“It’s all right, sir,” Jakes called. “I’ll find my own way back.”

“I can give you a lift, sergeant,” DeBryn said.

Jakes gave him a cursory nod of thanks. He hadn’t spent much time one-on-one with the pathologist before, but…

Should be interesting, anyway.

Jakes dug his hands into his pockets as he stood on the top step, watching until the Jag was slowly pulling away from the kerb.

He hoped Morse found whatever the hell it was he was looking for.

But somehow, he doubted he would.

You didn’t have to have Morse’s uncanny powers of perception to know that anything that hadn’t yet been said between Morse and his father at this point, would never be said, most likely.

Jakes wasn’t a big believer in death-bed confessions, in sudden bursts of contrition, in radical changes of the heart.

People simply were who they were, never much better, never much worse.

A disappointment, for the most part.

Chapter Text

Morse rested his head against window of the black Jag, grateful for the feel of it against his temple—not only for the soothing chill it provided against his fevered skin, but for the way in which the smooth surface created a small point of pressure right at the place where his skull met the glass, boring into it with a pain that countered the burn in his side, giving his slippery consciousness something to hold on to. 

“Stay with me, sir,” he murmured.

In the seat beside him, Inspector Thursday chuckled, a warm and low sound that seemed to roll out to him as if from over some distant divide, much like a voice might call out from over a field hung heavy with mist.

“Not going anywhere, am I? It’s me who’s driving.”

“What?” Morse asked, blinking.

He sat up, slowly, tried to get a firmer grasp on his surroundings, on himself.

It wasn’t until Inspector Thursday had spoken that Morse had realized that he had said the words out loud. 

And then, there they were, that simple refrain that had sounded and resounded in his head, threading its way through his thoughts ever since the Inspector had stopped by to see him in his flat, to warn him against working at the Moonlight Rooms.

“Stay with me, sir.”

The words he had uttered were identical to the ones he had heard in his mind, but they were all wrong, too—had fallen from his lips in a way he had not expected, as softly as the snow, a simple plea mumbled under his breath, as if in a half-dream.

Not at all in the way in which they had overpowered the strains of music that he kept in hidden in his head, ringing out with a desperate cry of urgency.

“Stay with me, sir.”

Morse took a shuddering breath as if to steady himself, and then immediately regretted it, as the expansion of his ribcage seemed to pull at the stitches at his side.

“All right, Morse?” Thursday asked, catching, no doubt, the way he in which he had flinched out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes,” he said.

Thursday grimaced, as if he believed no such thing.

But it was true, really. It wasn’t the burn in his hip or the shock of the aftermath that troubled him. It was the idea that he could have gotten it all so backwards, so terribly wrong.

On the one hand, he was almost weak with the relief of it— that the disaster that he had felt looming in those words was behind him, that he had weathered the storm and come out on the other side. But on the other hand ...

How could he ever hope to trust himself, knowing just how far off he could be, in trying to make sense of the words and the whispers that glimmered through his mind like falling snow?

He struggled to sit up more properly, then, from where he was slouched up against the window, and turned in his seat to look at Thursday, as if to reassure himself that it was all over, that the man was all right, that it was all behind them now.

And it was true. Thursday was whole and sound, his hands resting firm on the wheel, an anchor of stability as the frost-covered world rolled past the windows outside, flowing along as they drove as soft and as muted as a winterscape by Pissaro—all ramshackle wooden fences, lines of domed shrubbery dusted with snow, dark evergreens nestled together as if for warmth on the distant horizon, the occasional barren tree standing alone against fields and skies of white.

“We should be nearly there now,” Thursday said.  

“Yes,” he said.

Thursday stole a glance at him, then, looking him over before returning his eyes to the road.

“You’re sure you’re alright?” he asked. 

“I feel a little light-headed,” Morse admitted.

“Mmmmmm,” Thursday replied, as if that were to be expected.  

But Morse knew the uneasy feeling that left his voice with that faraway sound had nothing to do with the gunshot wound in his side, but rather with a niggling feeling that he was missing something.

The words… just … they hadn’t felt like this. They hadn’t at all felt like the warmth of the Jag, the plush comfort of the passenger’s seat, the smooth rolling of the tires as they traveled on, safely ensconced in their own small world, sheltered from the cold outside. They hadn’t felt like the benevolent and stolid presence of Inspector Thursday, the solicitousness that radiated from the man, a kindness that felt so dangerously close to care.

Just the opposite, really.

The words had sounded in his mind with an echo of abandoned rooms, dusty floors and dark windows, the edges of broken glass.

Even … as loathe as Morse was to admit it … almost like ... a glimmer of evil.

A hatred so blind and twisted that he could feel it, taste it in his mouth.

It tasted like…

“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Thursday said. “You’ve had a shock, is all. Lost a bit of blood.”

Morse turned away, looked back out the window, his stomach roiling with the very sound of the word.

It tasted like blood.

“Just be sure to get some sleep. Best thing for you. Nature’s remedy.”

“Mmmm,” Morse said.

And with sleep, came dreams. And with dreams…

Morse kept his face turned to the window as they drove on, the Jag coasting along the thin thread of the road through the frost-covered fields. Low clouds hovered over the landscape—at once filled with a strange white light, but also heavy and somber, even though it was still late afternoon—as if the night was waiting there, right at the edges of things, just waiting to settle over the subdued winter world.

“I’ll need your help, here,” Inspector Thursday said.  

Morse startled at the words, but then realized at once what was meant: Thursday had come to a fork in the road, a point marked by twin blue signs, the only swatch of manmade color against the muted landscape.

“Take this left,” Morse said.

The words seemed to hum over and over in his head, and in another corner of his mind, he started up the opening rise of Fauré’s Requiem, determined to block it out.

This left, this left.

What was left, really?

What was he doing here?

And then the he swallowed, his heart thudding with the barren hope of it.

Because maybe… just maybe ….

There might be.

***

Thursday turned the wheel in his broad hands, guiding the black Jag down the road to left, taking the fork in the road that Morse had indicated, and then the lad went quiet again, stilling with an altogether different sort of tension, one that had nothing to do with the bullet wound in his side, or even with the sorrow over what sounded as if was likely to be the imminent loss of his father.

There was a tightness in the stubborn jaw, a strain in the already pained and pale face, one that seemed to intensify—as if by a twist of a radio dial—the nearer he got to getting the lad home.

Or what should be home.

Thursday scowled softly, quelling a surge of quiet anger.

It was clear that Morse was not expecting the warmest of welcomes.

It seemed that his father had cast him out, but surely Morse didn’t think that, even now, the man might not show any feeling for him? Wouldn’t be willing to make it up with him, here, now, at the end?

Thursday knew all too well that the he himself could be gruff, unforgivably stubborn and set in his ways. A proper curmudgeon at times. Didn’t find it easy to let his feelings show.

When was the last time that he had told his Sam that he loved him? Remembered to tell him he was proud of him?

But he couldn’t imagine a time when Sam might come to his sickbed, coming to say his farewell as he, Thursday, lay dying, and not say the words, then. Couldn’t imagine a rift between them so great that he would refuse to leave him with a father’s blessing.

“Here,” Morse said, then, as they came to another place in which the winding road before them separated into two. Right at the sweeping curve of it, a brick and stone two-story house stood alone amidst a frozen garden of boxwoods, its rounded bump-out front window reflecting the late afternoon light with a shimmer of frozen glass.

Thursday pulled up into the drive, and as the tires of the Jag crunched over the gravel, Morse took an audible breath, as if summoning the strength for the next step.

Eh, bugger it.

“I’ll see you in,” Thursday said.

Damned if he was going to leave Morse out in the cold with a hole in his side, on the doorstep like a parcel.

Just as Thursday had expected, Morse turned to look at him, his big eyes wide, his mouth half-hanging open as if to protest.

Thursday had to suppress a huff of a laugh. There was nothing at all funny about the situation, not by a long shot, but it was comical, really, the faces that Morse could pull. Especially considering how the lad seemed to take such pride in holding himself aloof, in cultivating a certain stoic façade.

He seemed utterly unaware that his face betrayed him at every turn.

“Who are you ashamed of? Them or me?” Thursday asked, half in jest.

The question seemed to elude Morse’s grasp.

Well, of course it did.

He was so bloody used to keep everything so compartmentalized. Himself compartmentalized.

The idea that his two separate worlds, that of his past and of his present, might collide was anathema to him.

So Thursday put the car into park, opened the door of the Jag, and swung his long legs out to the ground, leaving Morse sitting there in the passenger’s seat, speechless and immobile, not giving the lad the time to formulate an argument.

He strode around the front of the car, his hands set deep in his pockets, but by the time he reached the passenger’s side, he found that Morse was already easing himself out of the Jag. 

If it were anyone else, Thursday would have stooped down to help the man out a little—and, in fact, he had almost started to, on reflex, to reach out to take Morse’s arm.

But somehow, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Morse was silently forbidding him to. As if he was already steeling himself for it, standing alone.

So, instead, he took a step back on the gravelly drive, allowing him his space, and then fell in a half-step behind him as Morse slowly, almost glacially, walked up to the front of the house. He cast a glance over his shoulder, a quizzical look on his face that Thursday did not quite understand, and then rang the bell.

In a moment, the door opened, revealing a tall woman in a green dress with a short string of pearls at her throat, her grim mouth a tight line.

She didn’t take the time to crack a smile, let alone to greet Morse. She simply cut straight to the chase.

“Joyce said she telephoned,” she said.

“Hello, Gwen,” Morse replied.

Thursday was not surprised to hear Morse call his father’s wife by her Christian name.

He had heard Morse say it often enough, after all, that little mantra he repeated, whenever he was forced to give his own name.

“My mother was a Quaker. It’s a virtue name.”

Even without having heard the lad refer to his mother so often in the past tense, Thursday would have known that the woman standing on the threshold, as stolid as a barricade, was not his mother. Just from the way she looked at him.

She turned her steely gaze towards him, then, and, God damn it, if even he—who’d faced many a man far more daunting than Gwen Morse, that was for bloody certain—didn’t feel the brunt of her displeasure, even in his corns.

“Who are you, then?” she asked.

He tipped his hat to her and smiled. Winningly, he hoped.

“Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, madam.”

She looked at him for a long moment, as if mulling that over, and then directed her gaze back to Morse.

“Now what’s happened? In some sort of trouble, are you? Never thought you’d be that selfish, bringing the police right to our door, even at a time like this.”

Morse seemed to have no reply to that, simply stood there on the threshold. And so Thursday rushed in, hastening to reassure her.

“He’s in no trouble, madam. He’s been lending me a hand on a case. Been a great help to me, as a matter of fact.”

She looked unconvinced at that, raising an eyebrow as if to say that she didn’t think much of him, either.

Nor of anyone who had found Morse to be a “help.” 

“I suppose you had better come in,” she said, resigned.  “Your old room is full of lumber.”

“I’ll be all right on the couch,” Morse said.

“I’ve aired the bed in the spare,” she said, rounding on him once more. “I won’t have it said we can’t put you up.”

“Morse?” came a voice, then, from the hall.

Just then, a young woman with dark brown hair threaded with a black silk scarf sidled around Morse’s stepmother. She had the same strength in her face as the older woman, but without all of the dourness, a warmth and a light in her brown eyes that were all her own.

Thursday couldn’t help but smile. There was something about her that reminded him a bit of his Joan.

“I’ll get Morse settled, mum,” she said.

The older woman simply nodded, as if to say ‘suit yourself,’ and then turned to disappear back into the house, clearly not at all sorry to have discharged her duty.

The young woman stepped back, then, ushering them into the hallway.

“Come in,” she said, bemusement in her voice, as if she didn’t understand why on earth they had been standing outside in the cold.

Which, perhaps, she didn’t.

“It must be freezing out today,” she said.

“Hello, Joycie,” Morse said, stepping inside, his voice, his shoulders relaxing with the words, and Thursday followed, darting a quick look around down the hall and into the adjacent rooms.

Morse was certainly much older than the typical runaway with which he dealt, but Thursday couldn’t help, as soon as he stepped into the house, to take an appraising look around. It was an old instinct, borne out of a hundred domestic cases, to scan the place for any of the telltale signs.

But in this house be found nothing. It was nice enough, really—pale yellow walls, a decorative lamp on a round table in the hall, an arrangement of dried flowers on the stairs— a very comfortable home, if a little joyless. Although given the circumstances, that was hardly surprising.

And from one look at Joyce Morse’s soft and smiling face, he could tell that she had been well-loved.

It was just Morse, then, who seemed to be the odd peg. The thing they didn’t quite seem to have the space for, either in their home—which looked twice the size of his own semidetached, really—nor in their hearts. They’d shut him out somewhere along the way. Perhaps, considering Morse’s vagabond look, even from the very beginning.

The young woman looked to Morse and smiled. It was a wan thing, revealing hidden days of care, but strong and heartfelt enough, too, that twin dimples appeared in her cheeks.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked.

“Oh. This is Inspector Thursday,” Morse said.

Thursday nodded towards her, tipping is hat.

“Miss,” he said.

“This is Joyce,” Morse said. “My sister. Well. Half-sister,” he added, as if to explain his place in the family.

She shook her head, patted him playfully at his shoulder.

“Don’t “half” me, Morse, if you please. You’re the only brother I’ve got.”

Morse smiled—or his lips twitched a bit, anyway. What counted as a smile for Morse, at least. And then he went to shrug off that ridiculously thin car coat, emitting an involuntary low hiss as he reached to hang it onto the high hook on the wall.

 Joyce’s smile faded into retreat.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Morse said.  

Thursday gritted his teeth.

He didn’t want to give her a shock, but there was no other way to say it, really.

“He’s been shot, Miss. That’s how I happened to run into your brother. Police business.”

Joyce Morse startled at that.

“Shouldn’t he… ?” she began.

There were any number of ways she might have completed that sentence, all of them with which Thursday would whole-heartedly agree.

Be sitting down? Be going to casualty? Getting that look-over Dr. DeBryn had advised….

“Doctor has made a running repair,” Thursday said, reassuringly.

She looked a little stunned, but resolute—that stubborn strength he had seen in her face rising at once to the surface.

“He should get it seen, too, though,” he added, pointedly.

She nodded, and Thursday felt a surge of understanding pass between them.  

She knew all too well that Morse, if left to his own devices, would never tend to it on his own.

“Well,” Thursday said, satisfied that the torch had been passed, that Morse would be fine in the house so long as his sister was, too. “I’ll leave you to get settled. I’ll be by in the morning.”

“Sir,” Morse said. “I can’t ask you to drive all this way.”

“I’ll stay here. Find some place in town.”

“But you haven’t brought anything,” Morse protested.

“I can pop into a chemist and buy a spare toothbrush, Morse. I’ve been in the Army, you know. I’m sure I can survive a night in an inn without a full wardrobe packed.”

Morse only stood there, pale in the dim yellow light of the hallway, so Thursday nodded encouragingly, tipped his hat to him.

“Mind how you go,” he said. 

***

Morse followed Inspector Thursday back to the door and stood on the threshold for a moment, watching him as he went, as he made his steady way back out to the black Jag that seemed to gleam blue-black in the low light. It was almost as if he were watching him through a camera lens, the angle pulling back and back, so that Thursday seemed to be receding, gliding further off and still further, his broad shoulders a growingly distant point on a suddenly darkening horizon.

Morse was here, he was home, he would see his father again.

But somehow it felt as if home, his real home, was steadily drifting away from him. 

“Come on, Stranger,” Joycie said.

And Morse turned to her, stupidly grateful. She was like a candle, Joycie, her smile a warm glow in a darkened, curtain-drawn corner, and, in that moment, Morse couldn’t help but cling to it, to that flicker of light in a house full cold.

***

His father looked smaller, somehow, than he remembered him, lying in his blue striped pajamas and slumped up against the snowy pillows piled high against the slatted headboard. His white hair, his bleary blue eyes, his face pale in the weak winter’s light from the single window, his hands resting lightly one either side, all seemed to speak of some terrible patience. As if he were simply waiting now.

Morse stood just feet from the doorway, neither within nor without, looking at his father as he lay before him, stretched in a long line beneath the white duvet, and taking in whole of the room: the pink-beige walls, the dark wood furniture, all the accoutrements of a sick bed on the nightstand. A softly glowing lamp. A short drinking glass printed with a ring or orange flowers. A collection of amber bottles of pills. A soft avalanche of tissues, huddled in a pile.

A lonely room.

A lonely room in which to die.

Or maybe it was the whole of the house that was lonely.

Even though there were people in it. 

“There was no need for you to come up,” his father said.

Morse said nothing, mulling that over.

No need.

No need.

Was there no need? Or was it he who was not needed?

There was a difference there.

“How are you?” Morse asked.

“Just had a turn,” his father shrugged.

And then his gaze turned sharper.

“Still working in that shop, are you?” he asked. 

Morse frowned, casting his gaze out the window, out to where flurries of snow circled past as if travelling in slow motion, trying to think of the last time he had seen his father, to remember which shop he had been asking about, even though he already knew the answer. 

“No,” Morse said, at last.  

“No. Of course, not,” his father said.

They were the first words that his father had uttered with any sort of strength, and they felt like a reprimand, like a prophecy of his own, as if he had known all along that Morse would never last anywhere more than a few months.

“I was thinking,” Morse began, then, suddenly a bit nervous, his mouth gone dry so that he darted his tongue along his lower lip. “I was thinking I might join the police.”  

And there it was.

A job with a future to it. A career. Something you could tell the neighbors that would be easy to digest.

My son the policeman.

No.

My son the detective.

Morse stood for a moment, holding his breath, feeling as if his words had been a flurry of soap bubbles and he was watching as they floated their way to his father, fragile and incandescent with hope.

“I never liked the police,” he said.

Morse flinched.

And then he slouched and nodded vigorously, as if he agreed with him, as if he had known it was a stupid idea, all along.

Even though he didn’t agree.

And when had he first begun to do that?

“Is there anything I can get for you?”  Morse asked.

His father looked into his face for a moment, seemed to consider the question.

“You could go down to the track and place a five bob on whoever you got a hunch. I know you can do it. You could do it, if you just put your mind to it. I’d wanted to phone something in. Only she won’t let me.”  

Morse felt his shoulders sag. He felt as if all of the light was going out of him.

The horses. Always the horses.

Outside, the wind whipped up, rattling at the frozen panes of the window, and with it, Morse felt it—that steady wave of words and phrases, blowing through his mind.

He tried to seize hold of one, but desperate like this, striving‚ he found that nothing came to him. That it was like trying to catch a snowflake in his hand. As soon as a fragile crystal landed into the warmth of his outstretched palm, it disappeared, melted away.

But, even as his mind was circling, spiraling, there was one small corner of it that seemed to pound at him with a steady and relentless beat.

Last chance, it seemed to say.

Last chance to make your father proud of you.

For a moment, he stood a little taller, and then he heard another strain, one that filled him with a shiver of cold, with a sense of snow, a realization that seemed to come to him in a voice that was not his own.

In a voice that sounded—strangely enough—a little like Sergeant Jakes.

If there was something that hadn’t been said at this point, it never would, most likely, it seemed to say. 

There were no such things as death bed confessions, as radical changes of the heart.

***

“They said that we should talk to you,” Morse said.

He cast his gaze all about the shadowed room, as if it might be so kind as to present him with something to say.

But the pale pink-beige walls made no answer. It as a lonely room, just as Morse had thought.

His father had taken a sudden turn around ten. The doctor had been sent for, and then had left, shaking his head.

It was just as he had told them, he said.

A few days at most.

Hours perhaps.

They began to take turns sitting at his bedside in a vigil, so that someone might be with him as he passed. Gwen had stayed first, and then Joyce, until Morse had come into the room at around half two in the morning, the pain hot in his side, and found Joycie asleep in a rocking chair beside the bed where their father lay.

He took up an extra blanket which sat folded on top of a trunk and draped it carefully over her sleeping form, tucking it behind her shoulders. Then, he hobbled over to the other side of the bed and eased  himself down into a lone wooden straight-backed chair that stood just beneath the window.

He leaned his forearms on his thighs, wearily, taking in the absolute silence around him.

Perhaps it wasn’t the fault of the room, that it had nothing to say to him.

He was a stranger to it, after all.

Even when he had lived here, under this roof, he had never come in here—into his father and Gwen’s domain.

If Joycie were awake, she might help him. She had wandered in here some nights, as a child, during thunderstorms. Or on Christmas mornings, to wake her parents.  Or simply to stand on a small stool to look into the mirror over her mother’s dresser, experimenting with a tube of red lipstick. Or to stumble about on the oval throw rug, trying on her mother’s shoes.

But Joycie was asleep, her face far more worn and tired than she had let on when she had greeted him at the door.

And so he sat for a long while, lost in his own empty mind, struggling to make sense of the quietness there. A quietness that was altogether alien.

He sat, and for once, felt nothing.

Not one thing.

It might seem like a state to yearn for.

But it felt like hell.

There were many things that he should do. Get an extra blanket for himself. Stand and close the shiny-looking pale green drapes—made from that sort of material that looked sticky to the touch—against the draught of the window, against the cold of the moon. Find something to say to his father, something to ask him. Tell him that he loved him.

Instead, he simply gazed before him, until, at last, his mind glimmered with some faint light, his attention caught by a small painting that hung on the wall just beside the door.

It was just a simple thing, such as one might buy in any department store. A country pastoral primarily in blues and greens. A red barn. A grouping of cows, white and brown, gathered by a cool pond.

But when had they bought it? He couldn’t imagine his father or Gwen buying such a thing. It served no purpose, really. There was nothing practical about it. “Waste of money,” he’d have thought.

He looked into the painting, and at once a new world unfolded before him, and he was falling into it, tumbling head over heels: a world green and ripe with the harvest, a world where he rolled up his sleeves to his forearms, the sun warm on his face. Where he strode up a hill, the pain in his side gone, and then cast himself down into the sweet-scented grass, resting on his elbows, blinking up into the honey-gold light. A world where he looked up into cloudless skies, where his heart began to race, because there it was, there it was, just what he had been looking for....

Morse jolted a bit in his chair. Ran his fingers through his hair. Shook his head. Looked at the painting anew.

And once more it was simply a painting hanging by the door. A painting with nothing to tell him, except maybe this: That perhaps there was a whole side to his father that he had not seen.

Or rather, that he had chosen not to show him.

“Dad? Where did you buy that painting?” Morse asked.

He looked over to his father, then, not expecting him to answer, exactly, but wondering if his voice might really, as the doctor seemed to think, elicit some response. Some quiver of recognition.

“Dad?”

But his father’s face remained perfectly still.

Abruptly, Morse half-leapt out of his chair, took his father’s arm in his, and, finding it cold, slid his hand down to feel for a pulse in his wrist.

But it was too late.

He was too late.

Stay with me, he wanted to say.

But he couldn’t, really.

It was as if he was underwater, unable to draw breath to speak.

He collapsed back into the small wooden chair, looked away, back out the window, pressed a hand to his mouth.

What did that say about him, he wondered … that such desperate words should have come to him concerning a man who he had met only a handful of times, and yet have none for his own father?

Perhaps the person had to reach out to him.

Perhaps he simply could get no reading of people who did not open themselves to be read.

For a fleeting moment, the thought was a consolation.

And then, it wasn’t.

***

Tears stood bright in the corners of Joycie’s eyes as she sat in the window seat in the living room, her face half-cast to the frozen garden outside.

They glistened like melted snow. They felt like a reprimand.

In the far corner, Gwen was on the telephone, speaking in dour tones, making her weary plans, one hand braced on the small of her back.

She had been right about him, all along.

He was useless. There wasn’t much he could do to be of help to them, really. He was a stranger here now. Always had been.

He felt as if the walls were closing in on him. As if he didn’t get out of the damned house for a moment, he might explode with it, not with words and phrases and feelings and scents and sounds, but with the utter deadness that he felt inside of him.

Still your mind, his mother had counseled him, not understanding that, as distracting as it might be, that burble of a cold brook, the silence of ice was far more terrifying. 

She had meant well. She just didn’t understand.

She was always so tender. So soft. As soft as her waves of auburn hair.

How could she know, the horrors that welled up inside him?

He turned once around the room and then found himself wandering out into the hall, and then to the front door. He opened it, and the air was fresh and scented with evergreen and with the damp of the pavement, and he shuddered a little in his shirtsleeves, but at least he could feel something.

It was as if something jagged inside of him and come loose, as if some component in the clockworks had broken, grinding everything to halt, so that it all could not help but build and build and build, with some steaming momentum behind it. He felt as if at any moment he might either break into sobs or laugh—and he wasn’t sure which.

He walked down the drive, out towards the street, and then headed down the narrow shoulder of the road, his head bent down against the flurries of the snow.

Despite the pain in his side, it felt good to be walking, to be moving. Moving towards something, even if he didn’t know what. And there were sounds, too, in the winter world, sounds to be gloried in—the crunch of his footfalls, the distant call of a crow, and then, the hum of an engine, the roll of tires over the frozen road.

He looked up to see the police Jag, gleaming black in the pristine January light.

It slowed as it approached him, and then Inspector Thursday was there, rolling the window down.

Morse tensed. He thought that his first question would be to ask him where he was going, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer.

But instead, the Inspector simply looked him up and down, pointedly.

“Where’s your coat?” he asked.

Morse scowled, faintly, trying to make sense of the unexpected words.  

“I forgot it,” Morse said.

Thursday’s impatient expression faded then, as something in the hard and lined face seemed to soften.

“Your father?” he asked.

“He… He died. Just last night. Well. This morning, really.”

“Mmmmm,” Thursday said. “I’m sorry.”

Morse shrugged.

“Where are you going?”

“I was…” Morse began, and then the words came out, even though he hadn’t known the answer to that question, because some part of him did know, had known, all along.  

“I was going to see my mother.”

Thursday said nothing, only nodded, grimly.  

“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you over.”

***

Thursday turned off the main road and pulled up to the gates of the churchyard. As soon as he opened the door, a sudden rush of cold flooded the car’s interior, and he rose at once to his feet, slamming the door behind him with a sound that echoed in the quiet of the January day. He started around to the passenger’s side, determined to help Morse out this time, seeing as he was looking rather the worse for wear, but by the time he got there, Morse was already pulling himself out of the depths of his seat, using the inner handle of the door to unfold his lanky frame, to stand.  

He looked a little lost for a moment, standing there in the snow, the blades of his shoulders visible under the cheap, thin, white shirt. A smaller presence than he had struck in the gardens of the House Beautiful, certainly, when he had been all haughtiness and disdain.

Thursday slipped his arms out of the sleeves of his greatcoat, shrugged it off and set it around Morse’s shoulders, and Morse flinched, turned to him, opening his mouth as if to say he ‘couldn’t possibly.’  But Thursday only shook his head, patted his heavy jacket and waistcoat with his gloved hands.

“I’m fine, Morse. You want to dress in layers this time of year.”

The lad seemed to have no answer to that. And indeed, the prosaicness of his words did ring a little oddly, he supposed, in the hush of the somber day.  

Morse opened his mouth to speak once more, this time as if to thank him, but then the strength seemed to leave him, and he simply nodded—one curt nod of recognition, of quiet gratitude. Then he pulled the coat a little tighter around himself and set off, Thursday following a few paces behind: near enough to be there if he needed him, far enough to spare the lad some privacy.

Morse went through the gate and then made his way over the snow, through a sea of worn stones, until he stopped before one, gazed at it for a moment, and then knelt down before it. It was almost painful to watch the way he drifted down—careful, it seemed, to Thursday’s experienced eye, of the wound in his side.

How long DeBryn had meant his running repair to last? 

But then Morse bowed his head, went still, and he seemed all right, really, just resting there as he was. Thursday looked away from him to spare a glance to the stone.

Constance Morse.

A virtue name like his, then.

After a long while, the snow-muffled silence was broken by a low and oddly strangled sound, one cut off nearly before it even began. A sound full of something beyond the sorrow of a boy who had lost his mother, who had found himself alone in the world at an all too tender age.

Thursday didn’t have any sort of second sight, but he was a detective. Knew all about remorse.

Well.

It could only be something tied up in all of that.

“When did it start?”  Thursday asked, quietly—quietly enough that Morse could have pretended not to have heard it, if he wanted.

There was another space of silence, then. A wind that blew up dry white flurries that circled and spiraled before gently settling to the barren ground, in the bent crown of auburn hair.

And then, in the stillness, Morse began to speak, his words low and mournful, seeming to be formed out of the snow. 

“I … I don’t know. It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s sort of the opposite, really. It’s not when it started… it’s when I realized that….That it wasn’t that way for everyone. That I was…”

“Different?” Thursday prompted.

“Alone.”

Morse took a shallow breath, one that Thursday was sure would have been deeper but for the pain along his side.

“It’s like someone who can see a different range of colors, I suppose. You don’t understand that you are the only one who sees them. You can’t see the world through another’s eyes.”

“When did you begin to realize, then?” 

“I didn’t, really,” he said. “She did. It was small things, at first. I knew how to find a thing, she’d misplaced. I’d say things that later had a way of coming true….”

“Once… One day…. we were at the meeting house. My mother and I. And, I dunno. It was just so dull. So quiet. So … quiet. There was nothing to stop it, all the words that were tumbling through my head.”

Morse swallowed.

“I was supposed to be stilling my mind. Still your mind, she always said. Still your mind. And… I know she meant to help. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I wish I could.”

Thursday said nothing, simply stood there amidst the flurries of the snow. He could sense something was coming, something that Morse had never perhaps told anyone before, and he was afraid almost to move, lest he disturb the ebb and flow of his words.

“And then … one day…  as we were leaving, I told her. I said… I said … “One day I’ll be all grown up. And you won’t be able to make me go anymore. And then … 

And then, a few months later, she couldn’t, really.”

His last words came out almost as a whisper, as if they had twisted their way out of him, leaving trails of damage in their wake.

“Morse,” Thursday said.

But Morse didn’t look up, only remained as he was, immobile as ice.

“Morse. Kids say things like parents all the time. It’s just part of growing up. Nothing you said could have … It wasn’t your fault, Morse.”

“No?”

The syllable came out strained, with a telltale tremble that was close to tears.

“No,” Thursday said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Something in Thursday’s matter-of-fact manner seemed to catch Morse off guard, and he erupted with an odd sort of sound, half-way between a rueful laugh and a sob, shocked, no doubt, at having his own refrain parroted back to him.

Then, the sound cut off abruptly, as if Morse had swallowed it all down, the only movement in his frame a telltale quiver in his shoulders from under the immense coat.

Thursday’s knees were hell these days, but he sank down anyway, crouched down beside him.

For a few long moments, he was afraid to touch him almost, he was such a brittle thing. But then, he put one arm around him, bracing his hand on his shoulder. Morse said nothing, only seemed to slouch further, to sink into himself a bit deeper, melting under the touch.

If he wanted to have a cry, Thursday would not have thought the less of him for it. Seemed as if it had been building up, probably since he was just a kid. Suddenly, Thursday could almost see him, as a wiry boy with too-big eyes, standing stone-faced at his mother’s grave—not because Thursday had any sort of second-sight, but simply because he knew that must have been just how it had been.

He sat there for a long while, his arm around Morse’s shoulder, half-fearing, half-hoping that Morse would finally let it all out, whatever it was inside of him. Flakes of snow were landing in the waves of his hair—because, of course he hadn’t thought to wear a hat—and Thursday was tempted to brush them away, but he stilled his hand, remained as he was, part of a stone effigy of two figures looking over a frost-covered grave.

But there had been something on Thursday’s mind for a while now, ever since he had first met Morse, if he was being honest.

And he wanted to ask him the question, but he waited still longer before he dared to speak. Waited until it was clear there would be no further quiver of movement from under his greatcoat. Until it was clear that Morse might go on sitting there, immobile, until he really did turn to stone, crouching there, as they were, in the cold. 

“Morse?”

For a moment, there was no reply, and then Morse turned to look at him, their faces inches apart in a way that he would have thought that the lad would not allow. Thursday thought he might rise, turn away, but, instead, he remained where he was, looking forthright into his gaze, his eyes taking on that old glimmer of curiosity, as if wondering what he might say.

“I was thinking,” Thursday said. “When we get back to Oxford, why don’t you let me call around? There must be someone at one of the colleges studying … well….”

“What? Offer myself as a lab rat?” he asked, with a weariness that was almost palpable.

“No. No. I just thought someone might be able to help you. To understand it all. There’s no shame in it, Morse.”

“Shame in what?” he asked dully.

“In admitting you need help. In admitting you’re over your head.”

Morse shook his head, murmured something under his breath that Thursday couldn’t quite catch, something full of the old acid, something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’m sure you never do that.”

“Hmmm,” Thursday replied, guessing his meaning. “That’s funny. I sort of thought that was what I was doing right now.”

Morse seemed to still at that, his eyes full of wonder.

“All right,” he said. “I suppose… I suppose I could try. If you think I should.”

He turned back to look at his mother’s headstone, then, and, again, he fell silent. Thursday hadn’t the slightest idea what he was thinking.

Asking forgiveness for a childhood bout of bad temper, maybe?

Whatever it was, he hoped the lad was making his peace.

Someday he’d tell him of the day that Joan had stomped down the stairs and loudly proclaimed that he wasn’t her real father. That her real father was a king, coming to whisk her away to a land where she was crown princess of all.

But not now.

For now, he was content to stay here until Morse seemed ready to rise to his feet, to go.

For as long as the lad wanted.

It was all right.

Thursday had no other place else to be, really.

Chapter Text

“You missed the turn,” Morse said.

“No, I didn’t,” Thursday said. “You’re staying over at mine the next few days, remember? I thought we had agreed on that, before we went out to the cemetery.”

A frown settled across Morse’s face, as if he were wondering how he had forgotten, as if he were wondering if perhaps he wasn’t far more worn out than he cared to admit, to have no memory any such conversation.

Thursday felt a pang of guilt at the subterfuge, but it soon passed.

Easiest way to get him home, without a fuss. It was clear to him that the lad had been on his own for long enough.

Nor did Thursday trust him to get that wound seen to. No, not in the slightest.

Outside the windows of the black Jag, the midnight blue sky rolled out before them, stilled to a January hush, its stars like bits of ice, moving as they moved, seeming to follow them all the way back to Oxford. It was a cold sky, a cold landscape—bleak fields, frozen, fallen in shadow—that seemed a world away from the artificial warmth of the Jag’s plush interior, even though it lay just beyond a thinness of glass.

Morse looked up through the windscreen.

“Cetus,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Cetus. The sea monster. It’s a constellation. Just there.”

Thursday huffed a laugh.

“Only thing I ever could find was Orion’s belt. Sky never was all that dark, growing up. What with the lights and the smoke.”

Morse turned to him, his face inquisitive.

“London,” Thursday supplied.

“Oh.”

Morse said nothing more, then, merely sat slumped sideways in his seat, so as to avoid putting pressure on his wounded hip. After a while, he seemed to relax a bit, softly closing his eyes, as if he were nodding off. Then, he jolted up again.

“Sorry,” Morse said. “I’m poor company.”

Thursday huffed a gentle laugh.

“I don’t mind. I like the quiet.”

“Hmmmm,” Morse said, unconvinced.

But it was true, really. Thursday didn’t mind the quiet. It was nice to have a bit of peace. Long empty road before them. Big sky with its scatter of stars.

When the fields gave way to houses, as they drew closer to the city, however, Morse stirred, sitting up in his seat. By the time Thursday pulled the Jag to a stop before the curving front window of the house, Morse seemed to stiffen, to lapse, like the sky, into a long winter’s silence.

Thursday looked over to him, taking in his face, pale in the light from the window, his big blue eyes looking over his perfectly ordinary semidetached as if he were preparing to enter a fortress’s gates.

Morse swallowed.

Or, rather, as if he was about to be drug off into a cold, damp dungeon.

“I ….” he began. “Sir. I really don’t need help. If you could to just drop me at…”

“No shame in it,” Thursday said, cutting across him. “You’ve been shot in the line of duty. You think I wouldn’t do the same for any of mine, down at the station?”

Morse said nothing, and Thursday wondered if he saw through it, the lie.

It was a given that he would check up on any of his officers wounded on the job.

But he couldn’t say that he’d ever had one to the house before, other than Morse.

Thursday got out of the car and went around to the passenger’s side to help Morse out, but, already, Morse was moving, gingerly—disentangling himself from his seat as if his thin, lanky form were a bit of knotted thread. Much as he tried to hide it, his limp was clearly visible as he fell in beside him, up the walk to the arched brick front entrance. He opened wide the door, and it was like a portal to another world, really. The warmth and light from the hallway. The hallstand draped with the family’s jumble of coats. The low rumble of the television. The warmer, louder patter of conversation. The lingering, savory smell of shepherd’s pie.

In a moment, Win was there, coming round from the kitchen.

“Fred?” she called out, and then she drew up short.

 “Oh,” she said. “Why, hello, Morse.”

It was clear as a bell that she had never expected to see him again, since he had disappeared from their living room sofa months earlier.

“Mrs. Thursday,” Morse said, softly.

Immediately, Win recovered herself.  

“We’ve just finished tea, not long ago. Have you eaten? Can I warm you through a bit of shepherd’s pie?”

Morse went a little green at the mention of food. Her eyes roved over his face. Right away, she picked up on it.

She was always canny as they come, his Win.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”  

Sam came bundling in, then, too, still eating a bit of bread, clearly curious. The lad was all energy, almost bouncing on his heels. Morse looked all the more subdued by contrast, seeming to retreat a little, as if, in his mind, two people constituted an entire welcoming party.

“Morse,” Sam said. “Fall through any floors lately?”  

Thursday winced. The boy was honest to a fault, but, Christ, he was tactless.

“He’s been shot.”

“What?” Win asked.

“Caught in the line of fire at a crime scene.”

“It’s nothing,” Morse said.

Thursday had become accustomed to it, that mantra. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. So much so that he was beginning to hear something else entirely.

I’m nothing.

What was wrong with those people of his, up in Lincolnshire? A father really cast his son out because he wasn’t better with picking the horses? It was unthinkable.

Win looked thoughtful for a moment as her bright eyes swept between them.

 “Sam, help me in the kitchen, would you?” she said. “Let’s let Dad get Morse settled.”

And then she put her hand on Sam’s shoulder, guiding him away, taking no further notice of Morse, giving him his distance, much as she would do with a stray cat that she was trying to lure in through her door.

***

Thursday led Morse into the living room and settled him on the couch, a feat easier said than done. Out-of-doors, on those first occasions that Thursday had seen him, there was something almost aristocratic about Morse’s bearing—all austere cheekbones and short, clipped answers.

But in their small sitting room, he was clumsy, awkward, like something thoroughly undomesticated. His blue eyes seemed larger than usual, as if he were in some state of perpetual horror, his face ephemeral—a winter presence thawing out uneasily among the warm gold tones of Win’s floral wall paper.

It was an effort to get the lad propped up, to get the pressure off of that wound. It was as if the he didn’t quite realize how long his arms and legs were. As if he didn’t really know how to sit properly.

“It’s fine,” he said, as Thursday tucked in a throw pillow beside him.

“I know what’s what,” Thursday replied, laconically. “I’ve been in the wars before.”

Morse leaned back, then, seeming to acquiesce.

Just then, there was a resounding crash from the kitchen, of a pan landing hard on the tile floor.

Morse sprang up, whirling around to look behind him. Then his face went white, strained with pain, despite himself.  

He had wrenched himself good and proper, most likely.

“It’s all right,” Thursday said. “That will be Sam, no doubt. Lad’s a menace in the kitchen.”

“I… ” Morse began, the irises of his eyes nervy, darting back and forth with breakneck speed. “I …. just didn’t expect it.”

“Gave me a turn,” Thursday said.

Morse mulled that over for a moment, but then he twisted his mouth in disbelief, as if he feared he caught a note of condescension there. But he said nothing more.

Thursday sat down on the other end of the couch, stretching his legs out long before him. Felt good, really, after the long drive.  

“Wonder if I might catch the results of the match,” he said, turning his attention to the telly.  

“Mmmmm,” Morse said, with a thin, feigned interest.

Thursday had to suppress a huff of a laugh. Morse was trying to be polite as best as he knew how, he supposed.

They sat for a little while, in companionable silence, and then Win brought in a tray set with a dish of the pie, and one of eggs on toast for Morse, along with two cups of tea.

 “Oh,” Morse said, surprised.  

“Maybe he could do with a bit of brandy,” Thursday said.  

“I don’t drink,” Morse replied.

“I’m sure he’s fine, love,” Win said.

Thursday helped himself to the dish. “Smashing,” he said, and Win smiled, turning to hand Morse the tray. Then, she took up a throw blanket that lay over the arm of the couch and spread it over Morse’s lap, tucking it in around him so that he was forced to lift the tray up with a clatter of china, allowing her space to work.

A bit of overkill, in Thursday’s opinion.

Thursday gave him a wry smile, as if begging his indulgence, and Morse returned it, faintly.

He took the rest of Win’s fussing with good grace, even if with a share of awkwardness.

“You look chilled through. Looks like you had a rough couple of days,” she said.

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

Sam was just beginning to settle into a chair, keen to catch the results, when the front door burst open, sending Morse to jump once more. A torrent of soft and laughing female voices, calling out goodnight, soon followed, and Morse let out an exhale with an audible whoosh.

Thursday grimaced. He had assumed that Joannie was upstairs, tying up the telephone line, as was her wont. What was she doing, gadding about all hours on a work night? She’d be late in the morning, she’d miss the bus, she’d ask him in for a ride, no doubt.

Not to mention, he wasn’t too keen on the way Sergeant Jakes had been coming around earlier and earlier of a morning, to come and collect him. Something told him his sergeant’s eagerness had little to do with any zeal to get on with his duties.

Had they been meeting up, Jakes and Joan, behind his back?

He heard her hang her coat in the hall, drop her shoes by the door. Then she came padding in in stockinged feet, in a blue mididress, her hair still up in its coif.

“Where have you been?” Thursday asked. “Isn’t this a work night?”

Joan scowled, surprised, it seemed, at this sudden salvo of negativity.

“I stopped after work, at the pub, with Maureen. I rang mum to let her know I wouldn’t be home for tea,” she said, shortly.

Immediately, he looked to Win.

“She did,” Win confirmed.

Joan shook her head, as if it were none of his business, anyhow, none of his nevermind. She was a grown woman, but still… it was a matter of consideration, wasn’t it? To let the family know?

“Hello, stranger,” she said, to Morse.   

“Hello,” Morse replied.

And then she promptly ignored him, as if she were not surprised at all to see him there. It was as if she understood, somehow, that was just what Morse needed, to have as little attention directed his way as possible.

She settled down on the sofa between them, just as simply as you please, no trace at all of any grudge towards her old man, for his surliness, on her serene face.

Perhaps Joanne had been right, to have been short with him. Perhaps the one who Thursday was really angry with was himself, angry that she should have grown up without his noticing.

Sitting here, in the living room, with them all assembled, he was poignantly aware that such nights—which he had once taken as a given, as just the way things were—were numbered. He wished now he had worked nights less, he wished he had treasured the evenings more, those late evenings when the kids had thought it was the height of fun to get out a game and play against him and Win, to stay up late with them, watching a film on the telly, passing around a box of Creswell’s Happy Families.

She was a good girl, Joannie, really. There was a maturity in her face, a woman’s easy grace, in the way she dealt so casually with Morse.

Leastways, she hadn’t come barreling in with talk of falling through floors.

“Mind if I watch the Almanac?” she asked. “My favorite band is on.”

“Joan,” her mother began, with a glance towards Morse, as if to say that, as the guest, he might be the one to choose.

“I don’t mind,” Morse said.  

“Sam?”

“Fine with me.”

She went over to the telly and changed the channel, arranging the antennae so the wavy lines turned clear, and plopped down between them on the couch once more.

As they all sat in the glow of the screen, the knotted thread that was Morse slowly seemed to unwind. He wasn’t called upon to say much, to keep up with conversation. He was free to simply sit and soak up the presence of others, with nothing else whatsoever required of him.

In the darkness, his face relaxed. As Thursday tucked into his warm dish, Morse began to work on his egg on toast. To sip his cup of tea.

“Oh,” Sam groaned. “Not them.”

“Be quiet, Sam,” Joan said. “You already agreed.”

“Yes, but that was before I …..”

“Shhhhh.”

The band of four gathered on the stage and began to play. They were the same as all these bands, really. Long hair, flamboyant clothes. The lead singer wore a flashy fedora, tilted rakishly over one eye. 

“I like them,” Win ventured, but most of the songs sounded a lot the same to Thursday. Sweet Lady Kate. Jennifer Sometimes.

After the third number, Joan turned to Morse.

“Do you like them?” she asked.

“No,” Morse said.

Thursday winced a bit at the lad’s bluntness, but, to his surprise, Sam only laughed.

“I told you. Blokes aren’t all that in to the Wildwood. You and mum only fancy them because Nick Wilding’s good looking.”

Win began to protest a little at that, embarrassed, no doubt, at being said to fancy a man young enough to be her son, … but Joan cut across her.

“Why not?” Joan asked. “They’re good.”

“It’s too showy,” Sam said. “The moves, the clothes. They’re more into their looks than their music.”

“That’s not true. Nick Wilding’s lyrics are good, I think. Do you know what I think?”

“What?” Sam asked.

“I think they’re underrated by the critics because they know that women enjoy them.”

“Huh?” Sam asked, while, on the sofa beside her, Morse seemed to mull that over.

“I don’t like them because  …. I just don’t really like that,” he said.

Thursday was tempted to huff a laugh. For once, the lad was far from illuminating.

Whatever he meant by ‘that’ might be anyone’s guess.

“Who do you like, then?” Joan asked promptly. “The Stones?”

“The who?” Morse asked.

“Oh. The Who?”

“What?”

Joan frowned. It was clear to Thursday that Morse hadn’t meant the band, The Who, but rather that he had not the slightest idea as to what she was talking about.

“What music do you like?” Joan asked.

“Oh,” Morse said. “Wagner.”

Joan laughed.

“Wagner? That’s far more dramatic than this.”

Morse shrugged, as if he had used up his quota of words for the day.

In the flickering light his eyes grew heavy, his face losing that forbidding chill. Soon, his eyes were growing heavier, as the band played, as the family chattered on.

It was almost as if, in thinking of it, he had begun to play a score of music, silently, in his head.

It wasn’t long before his head fell forward so that it was lying on his chest.

Joan turned to him and grinned, while Win slipped up from her chair and, quietly, took the tray from off of his lap, to save it from clattering, like Sam’s pan, to the floor.

***

Sergeant Jakes sprang up to the front door and rang the bell, and in a moment, just like clockwork, Joannie was there, throwing the door open, a bright smile on her face. She was wearing a pastel blue jumper, one that made it difficult for Jakes to keep his eyes focused on noting how it brought out the blue in her eyes.

“Morning, you.”

“Morning.”

“Dad’s on the telephone. I was just helping mum with the sandwiches. Go on into the dining room, and I’ll get you a cuppa.” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

He sauntered down the pale green hall to the dining room, and found that Morse was there, sitting at the table before the big, sun-filled windows. He was cradling a cup of tea before him, looking like the proverbial squashed cabbage. It was a bit of a surprise, finding him there, but not very much so, once Jakes thought about it.

The old man did seem to fuss over the odd bloke. He had that Victorian waif thing going for him, Jakes could give him that.

“Morse,” Jakes said.

A faint blush rose to Morse’s cheeks, as if he were embarrassed to be seen in what must have surely been a pair of Sam Thursday’s old pajamas. A bit large through the shoulders, but too short in the sleeves.

Jakes hesitated.

The old man seemed to be going a little too soft, really.

What? Was the man planning to squat here? Jakes had seen that before, knew how such loafers and spongers loved to take advantage.

“You staying here, then?”  Jakes asked pointedly.

A flash of confusion passed over Morse’s face.

It was as if he were thinking that, obviously he was staying there, since there he was.

As always, he had completely missed the point.

“Yes,” Morse said.

“You can’t stay here forever,” Jakes said. “You do know that.”

At last, a light of understanding showed on his face.  

“Oh. I know that. I’m going back to my flat….”

He let the words fall away, then, as if he were uncertain as to just when he might be allowed to do that.

“Will you still have it, your flat, what with you here, and not out working to pay the rent? Your gig at the Moonlight Rooms is over, I would have thought.”

“I’ll find a job.”

“Not looking like that, you won’t.”

“I was thinking of joining the police.”

Jakes drew up short, wondering if he had heard wrong.

“What?”

“I was thinking of joining the police,” Morse said.

Jakes rubbed at his mouth and turned away.

The truth of it was, Jakes didn’t much like that idea. What with the old man so fond, Morse might end right in his own nick.

He could imagine him now, sitting in some corner by the metal filing cabinets, or down at the canteen, saying those weird things.

Such talk had no place at a working nick. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t natural.

He didn’t like the thought at all, of Morse sitting at a desk behind him, studying the back of his head, as if he could see right through his skull.

Morse’s face fell into retreat, then, and, despite himself, Jakes felt a stab of guilt.

He didn’t mean to discourage the bloke.

Morse could make a fine detective someday, most likely, what with all of his eerie little insights.  

Just so long as it was someplace far, far away from him.

“You don’t think I can do it,” Morse said. Whether it was a statement or question, Jakes wasn’t quite sure.

“No. I didn’t say that.”

Just, then, thank Christ, Joannie appeared in the doorway, rescuing him from any further conversation with the man.  

“Peter? Would you like milk or sugar?”  

He hitched up his shoulders, stood a little taller.

“Neither, thanks.”

She nodded.

Nothing either soft or sweet, for him.

He turned back to see that Morse was looking at him in wonderment. Jakes glowered. It was as if he had caught the lower timber of his voice when he spoke to Joannie, as if he were already reading something into it.

But then, much to Jakes’ surprise, Morse seemed to be fixated on something else entirely.

“Peter,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Your name is Peter.”

“Yeah. So?” Jakes said, defensively. “Hell of a lot simpler than your name.”

Jakes felt a thrum of anger, one that seemed disproportionate to the situation, he knew, but he couldn’t quite help but feel that surge in his blood, all the same.

He knew it. He ruddy well knew it. Five minutes in the same room, and already he was at it. He was already dwelling on that quote he had mumbled on the way back from Blythe Mount, months ago. Trying to stir up his little cauldron of words, already, stirring up things, poking at things, things better left fast asleep, buried far, far down, things better left alone...

Jakes might not be seized by any sudden bursts of clairvoyance, of prophecy, but he could read Morse’s expression just as clear as the peal of a bell in frozen winter.

He was thinking of it, he was, of how he had murmured that bit of Peter Pan to himself, when he’d been concussed, after that fall.

“If you shut your eyes and you are a lucky one, you may see a pool of lovely pale colors, suspended in the darkness.”

Just shut your eyes....

“Why?” Jakes asked. “What of it?”

Morse lowered his eyes, under the pretext of looking into his tea.

“It’s nothing.”

“Yeah. That’s right,” Jakes said, with a vehemence, an aggression, that surprised him. “It’s nothing.”

A shadow moved in the doorway, then. The old man had come to stand on the threshold of the dining room, his eyes narrowed.

“Everything all right here?” he rumbled.

“Yes, Sir,” Jakes said.

“Mmmmm,” Morse said.

Well. At least Morse was no grass.  He could say that for him. If not much else. 

“Ready for the off?” Thursday asked.

Oh, was he ever.

“Sir,” Jakes said.

And then he swept out of the room, without looking back, but he could feel it still, Morse’s blue gaze, watching his back as he turned away.

“Your tea,” Joannie called, stepping out from the kitchen.

Jakes stopped short, just feet before the cluttered hall stand. He had been so flustered, that he had almost forgotten Joan.

Thursday’s dark eyes swept from the one of them to the other.

“Man’s got to get into work, Joan.”

Jakes grimaced, did daring to say any more, not in front of the old man. Instead, he simply allowed himself to be led to the door. 

Hardly a triumph. 

Bloody Morse.

Well. Let Morse try to join the police. If he was fit and able.

Jakes had his own contacts, his own mates down at the pub.

He’d still have two years in uniform to serve. Wasn’t as if he'd be right with him in the CID.

Jakes would get him assigned to Banbury, to Witney, to Carshall Newton, to the the furthest, most out-of-the-way place he could stick him.

Anyplace so long as it was miles and miles away from him.

Anyplace so that he never had to have those overlarge blue eyes boring into his, ever again.

Chapter Text

The glass was there, just before him.

And it wasn’t. 

It was one of the few shards of light to glimmer in the dimness of the pub—the glint of it, the glisten.

But, if he were to reach out, to try to grasp it by its solid-enough looking handle, Jakes was sure that he would miss.

Catch air.

There. And not there.

It wavered, mirage-like before him, that glimmer of glass, much like another light—the light reflected in Morse’s face from the lamp at the bar as he looked down on him. A pale moon in a dark sky.

“I need your help,” he said, simply. “Thursday’s out at Blenheim Vale. I’ve got the car outside. Come on.”

Jakes pulled away, the words running through his veins like cold water.

“Blenheim Vale?”

He shook his head, felt the pull of a twitch in his eye, a spasm at the base of his throat.

Two words he had uttered only, and already his voice was strained and thick.

There and not there.

“I can’t.”

Morse took one step closer, his blue eyes all the bluer amidst the darkness, against the deep blue of his uniform.

“Little Pete,” he said.

It was a statement rather than a question.

Of course, it was.

He had seen that, hadn’t he?

If nothing else.

Jakes risked a glace up at him, waiting for it. For some expression of derision or rebuke. For Morse to recoil in disgust. He had given Morse hell since the old man had brought him over from Carshall Newton. Here was his chance now.

Now that Jakes was raw.

Laid bare.

But no sign of such ever came.  Instead, Morse took one step closer. And then another. He was one of the few lights in the place—one of the few things that seemed real amidst the shadows of the pub, amidst the indistinct rumble of conversation, amidst the occasional ringing of glass.

“Myers couldn’t remember your last name,” he said.  

He lowered himself into the chair before him, so that he was at his level, so that they sat face to face.

“Were you there?” he asked.

Jakes took in a sharp breath, steeling his nerves.

“To some of us bastards, it’s more than just a name. You don’t think about something for long enough …  you think you’ve forgotten ….”

Jakes choked out the words so long unsaid, and Morse fell silent, watching him with wide blue eyes stilled to a hush, his face so close that Jakes could see the scatter of freckles there. His wide mouth was hanging open slightly, for once unmoving, and even amidst the horror of it, this struck Jakes as funny. At another time, he would have made some wry comment.

“Morse. Don’t let all the hot air out.”

It was as if Morse scarcely dared to breathe. As if he felt he had entered onto holy ground and was careful of disturbing something there.

When so much the opposite was the case.

“Then one day, somebody comes along…”

“Deare?” Morse prompted.

There was a twist in his gut. The blade, the knife. Sharp as a shatter of glass.

And time itself was made out of shards of glass, breaking. It seemed to Jakes as if he might be in all places at once.

He was here, in the pub, with Morse carefully watching his face, and he was in a barren room looking up at a white ceiling—such a beautiful old ceiling, with alabaster plaster work…

And then, as if to plunge that older memory under water, as if to break it like glass, he was back at the Cowley nick, swinging the door open, heading into Mr. Bright’s office.

Jakes shuddered.

It had been terrible, seeing Deare there, right in his own nick, right in the sanctuary he had found, working under a gov’nor like Thursday, so thoroughly decent, down to his core. When Jakes had stepped in, prepared to deliver the latest news on Tommy Cork, he felt as if he might vanish, evaporate, right on the spot.

There they were, all gathered around the desk, the blinds drawn against the light of day—Mr. Bright, Thursday, and Morse, all talking with ACC Deare, as if he were a perfectly normal human being.

It had made Jakes feel as if there must be something even more deeply wrong with him than he ever would have allowed himself to imagine.  Deare was a monster, he was not quite human, it wasn’t his fault, …

But if that was so, why couldn’t Morse see it?

Where were his premonitions, his little bursts of poetry now? How could he stand there, in his cheap rumpled suit, his arms folded, shining on him the light of those big eyes, as if nothing was amiss?

For a moment, Jakes had been seized with a desire to take Morse by the shoulders, to pull him from the room, to shake it out of him.

The truth.

But already, Mr. Bright was making his reedy introductions.

“Assistant Chief Constable Deare, DS Jakes,” he said. 

Deare turned to him, lazily, looked right up into his face. He knew exactly who he was, the bastard.

Jakes worked hard to keep the tremor from his hands, willed his heart to slow so that his pulse would not show in his throat.

“Peter, I believe?” he asked.

He smiled, then, quite enjoying his game, his sick little dance.

He knew damn well who he was.

Peter.

Or one of them, anyway.

The Peter who got to grow up.

The one they had not buried. Not yet.

For a moment, Jakes said nothing.

“You wanted something?” Bright prompted.

“It’s Tommy Cork, sir. We might have had a sighting. Hanging around the Empire Theatre.”

There was nothing Jakes could do to stop it: Mr. Bright turned right to the monster, and told him everything. Every pertinent detail. Spelt it all out in black-and-white.  

“A runaway, sir. Ten years old. He may have seen the murder of this abscondee from Farnleigh.”

Jakes might have toppled over, if he had not still held fast to the doorknob.

“Oh,” Deare said, thoughtfully. “I see.”

That was just it.

He did see.

“The sighting’s very sketchy,” Jakes said, hastily. “Patrol’s been dispatched. Probably nothing.”

And then he had backed away, like an animal in a blind panic, shutting fast the door, silently begging Tommy Cork’s forgiveness for what he had so inadvertently done. He strode through the bay of desks, hastening to send another dispatch to Sergeant Strange—one of Cowley’s own, one who he knew could be trusted with a kiddie—to tell him to get a move on, to get his finger out.

To find the boy before someone from County did.

“Deare,” Jakes confirmed, now, looking up to Morse, allowing the word to sink like a stone. “Deare. He was just a copper then. Josiah Landesman, the new governor, Wintergreen. and Doc Fairbridge.

And Peter was standing before three large windows full of light, looking up to that plaster ceiling, so beautiful, with circles and molded vines as white as snow—a brightness and a light that vanished, that was consumed by Wintergreen’s large, pugnacious face, cracked with shadows, looming down at him, erasing all else.  

“Dr. Fairbridge?” Morse asked, a ring of surprise, of question in his voice.

Jakes looked to him sharply.

Why should he be surprised, really, that Morse didn’t see it?

Morse’s words only ever skimmed along the surface of things. Tripped, like light over the water. Signifying nothing, just as he had once said.

A cheap parlor trick, really, for all that the old man favored him.

He could not see into the abyss.

Not like Peter.

Peter was the only one who saw.

“He knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it.” Jakes said. His words came stronger now, as he punctuated each one with the burning end of his cigarette. It felt good to say it, really, to get it out, to tell the truth of them, after all of these years. “He covered up for them when they went too far.”

But then, right as he felt on the cusp of it, of some unexpected victory—  Morse, and the glass before him, and the low rumble of conversation, and the gleam of the dark wood of the pub, all eclipsed from his vision, shattered like shards of glass.

The whole world shattered, and he was back again in that lonely room. The ceiling, so lovely, so high above him. His bare feet on the dusty floorboards.

How tall they all looked, like monsters, as he craned his neck to look up at them.

“One name.”

“Last chance.”

And then he was standing in a puddle of warm.

The glass was there and not there.

He was there and he was not there.

Jakes rubbed hard at his eyes and turned away.

Another memory grew up, then, blossoming like a ghostly thing, just beside the memory of those low and snarling voices. A memory almost as unbidden, almost as cruel.

How was it that, just days ago, he had come sailing into this very pub, his old slicked-back and confident self, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon?

On that day, Morse had not been here, sitting across from him, his face expressionless save for that growing clarity in his eyes. On that day, he had been just across the room, perched up against the high back of a dark oak booth, working out his crossword, sitting next to Thursday, who was just unfolding a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

Jakes had crossed the room in a few long strides to join them, and then—right as he went to pull out a chair—Morse had scowled in concentration, filling out a series of small squares with the tip of his pencil, murmuring, softly, as if to himself.

“At the Round Table, there was one seat kept always vacant. Reserved by Merlin, for the knight destined to claim the Grail and heal the Wounded Land,” he said.

Jakes and Thursday had exchanged glances. Jakes, bemused; the old man, wary, listening as if with every fiber of his body, as if taking it all in, all of Morse’s clap-trap.

“The seat was named ‘the Siege Perilous,’” Morse went on. “For should any other dare sit therein, it held only death.”

Jakes had snorted.

“I’ll take my chances,” he had said, pulling out his chair.  

Not so cocksure now, was he?

Jakes rubbed a hand over his face and found it damp with a sickly film of sweat. What had happened to him? How had he come to be here? Deteriorating, unraveling, shattering like glass?

And then the glass was there, and Morse was there, too, right before him one more, his eyes two circles of calmest blue, watching him, expectant. 

“What about Standish?” Morse asked. “Was he involved?”

“No. No,” Jakes said, forcing himself back to ground. “It was just the four of them.”

The four of them.

Jakes was the only one to see it.

He reached into his coat for that dry-cleaning ticket that had been found in George’s pocket. Morse needed to know the truth, he needed to know that it was he, Jakes, who was the only one who saw it…

 “I ran that dry-cleaning tag to ground,” Jakes said. He held the ticket up to the nonexistent light, as small and as blue as a scrap of the sky.

“The coat belonged to the doc.”

“George Aldridge went to him, and he betrayed George Aldridge to his death,” Morse said. 

Morse bowed his head, then, as if in mourning. He shook his head of tangled waves, dark and tawny in the low light.

There was something about it, there, in Morse’s acquiescence, in his acknowledgement of the truth, that seemed to give Jakes a new and gathering strength.

“He always was a two-faced bastard,” Jakes seethed. “The other lads couldn’t see it. Only me.”

And there.

Despite all.

It was still there.

That small note of pride.

Only me.

I was the only one who saw.

He was right, they were wrong, they weren’t even quite human.

Why had Morse not seen?

And yet he did have a sense of things, Morse. A perception that he lacked, he could admit that. 

Now, as they sat, face to face, there was a part of him that hated Morse, that hated him for being the one to see him in his weakness, for being the one to hear the confession that Jakes had never even dared to make to himself. 

But, on the day that Morse had found Tommy Cork at the old caravans and had brought him into the nick, Jakes had felt a wave of affection for the little bastard.

Jakes was always a little uncomfortable around the kiddies.

Afraid of what he once was? Afraid to get too close, lest he frighten them? Lest he appear as some monster looming down at them?

He kept a respectful distance from Tommy, but Morse had squatted right down before him, bringing his face right to Tommy’s level, as if on instinct, his eyes bright and cheery.

He might have been an elf that the kid had stumbled upon in a garden. Even his voice had changed, from his usual low and mournful coo to a light warble.  

“Go on. You’re in for a treat. It’s Monday. Cheese and pickle.”

He hadn’t even bothered to rise when Mr. Bright breezed in, all brass buttons and a bristle of wool, shaking his head.

“Good heavens! What’s this? Waifs and strays?”

Jakes had had to suppress a smile.  

That was always just what he had thought about allowing Morse into the nick.

But that was just it, he supposed.

Even tetchy, frosty old Morse had a weakness, didn’t he?

He was just the sort of prey that Deare would love to play about with, to twist all around.

Morse had been taken in, that was all. Jakes knew how it was. How it was all kindness and smiles, until it turned dark so fast that you could scarcely catch your breath.

He could hear Deare now, the old bastard, just imagine him.

“Clever lad,” he’d told him. Or else … waiting until Morse was barely out of earshot. “He’s a sharp young man, Reggie. We need more of his sort.”

And all of the things that Morse so longed to hear.

Even Morse had been drawn in, caught up in the sticky web.

Only, he, Jakes saw clear.

As clear as the glass before him.

“Fairbridge was one of them all right,” he said.

“Did Angela have any idea what was going on?” Morse asked.

“More than an idea, I think.  …. Some of them. It wasn’t just the lads. You just had to be young.”

Morse’s eyes fluttered and rolled back, as if he felt it, a fraction of the horror that Jakes had for so long kept locked up inside of him. Somehow, in that moment, it felt as if it were the first glimmer of understanding that Jakes had ever received.

It seemed important to him for Morse to see. To understand.

All of it.

Jakes opened his mouth to speak.

And he was there and he was not there.

Again, he was in the empty room, facing a white wall, and the world seemed larger—or was it he who was so small?

How was it he did not recognize his own hands, holding on to a chair before him? Soft and frail as a child’s, when there was nothing soft and frail about him?

“See,” he gritted out. “They wanted a name for whoever had burnt out Wintergreen’s car. They knew who it was, but they wanted a name.”

There was a whistle in the air and then the cane landed hard, lashing his bare skin, and a voice cried out— was it his?—and then cried out again.

He winced, sucking in a sting of air through his teeth. And then, the space around him crackled again, the warning, the threat. He felt split and raw. Another trickle of warm.

Instinctively, his hands flew to the back of his head, as if he were trying to hold himself together. 

“So I told ‘em. I tried not to…”  

He ran his hands over the back of his head, took in a deep gulp of air.

Why was it important to tell him? To exonerate himself?

Jakes righted himself, and, incredibly, Morse was still there, in his chair, his eyes two pools of clearest blue. There was nothing in his face. No judgment. No repulsion. No—thank Christ—pity.

Nothing.

And in that blankness, in the clear light in his face, there was an absolution.

Morse leaned forwards, a determined glint gathering in his eyes.

“Look,” he said. “We have a chance to bury them. All of them.”

He gave a small, encouraging jerk of his head.

“Come on.”

With a scuttle of his chair, Morse rose to his feet. And he was right, Morse. If he couldn’t do it for himself, he could do it for Tommy Cork, who was out there now, somewhere, anywhere, frightened and alone.

Even for Morse, who, without him, would doubtless stumble and fall.

“For George,” Morse said.

Jakes nodded, a vision of George’s face wavering up before him—not as he was in life, but as they had found him in death—floating face up in that dirty retention pond as if he were a piece of trash, a discarded paper cup. It had hurt to see it, how George had become younger somehow than he was, in death—to see how his eyes, still open to that gray, overcast sky, were bright with a trace of childishness, of innocence.

Of hope.

Another lost boy who never got the chance to grow up.

“I’m sorry,” he had wanted to tell him. “I’m sorry.” 

Jakes shuffled up to his feet. He did not need Morse to remind him of his duty. He was the sergeant here, it should be him leading his constable, not the other way around.

But then the blood seemed to drain fast from his head. His knees buckled beneath him, so that he collapsed onto the table with a broken shatter of glass.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He asked too much, Morse.

He was not the one to find the grail, to heal the wounded land.

He hated Morse for it, for coming to him. For demanding too damn much. 

And he loved Morse for it.

He wanted to take him by the shoulders, to shake him, to make him feel something of the darkness inside of him. And he wanted Morse to sail on, mumbling his bits of poetry and his nonsense about the Siege Perilous—and, if he was unloved, a frozen thing, at least he was untouched.

You have the right idea, Morse, he thought. Freeze it all out.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”

He shut tight his eyes, but, still, he felt Morse’s gaze wavering over him, torn between comfort and care. 

Even then, the irony did not escape him: how odd should it be, how extremely funny, that in Morse’s moment of hesitation, Jakes should find the closest thing to love that he had felt in a long time.

He knew what Morse was thinking. Could see it when he ventured to look up at him from where he sat, his hands braced at the back of his head.

Morse needed to go, to get to Thursday, but he couldn’t bear to leave him like that, either, with nothing.

Morse’s eyes widened, and he ducked in closer, carrying with him the scent of soap and new wool, and something undefinable, like autumn leaves.

“Hope is a thing with feathers,” he said.

The words were like a wound, a plunge of the knife deeper than the sting of the cane, deeper than the breaking of tender skin.

He could scarcely believe it. He could scarcely believe that Morse would dare to say such a thing to him, to hand him such a platitude.

Morse blinked, confused, as if unsure himself as to why he had said them, those words.

“That is to say,” Morse said, trying again. “There’s always hope.”  

Jakes collapsed back onto the table, working hard to stifle a sob. And, Christ, he wished the man would go. Just go. 

There was a faint rustle amidst the roaring of the blood in Jakes’ head, as Morse dithered about, uncertain, until, at last, Jakes heard the sound of Morse’s footsteps, hurrying away, hurtling himself head-first into the trap, the set-up, off to his place at Thursday’s side, leaving Jakes there alone, to shatter, to sink.

And even as the world turned to black around him, even as Peter buried his face against the table, against the coldness of the broken glass, there was a part of him that understood. A part of him that envied him, even.

It was nothing personal.

It was just that Morse had somewhere to get to. A place where he felt, at long last, he belonged. And had sailed coolly on.

Chapter Text

Thursday stood against the wall of an empty room that was thick with the musty scent of mold and of dust, hidden deep in the shadows, his gun raised at the ready.

Let them come for him, the bastards.

He’d be ready for them, come what may.

In a moment, he heard footsteps, light and quick. He had been half-expecting Deare, but these sounded like the footfalls of a younger man. Some two-bob crony, come out to do someone else’s dirty work, no doubt.

Hadn’t much experience, that much was clear. The man was moving quickly—too quickly—not seeming to care if he were heard. And then, he was reeling right around the corner, rushing right into his line of sight, straight into his line of fire.

Thursday lowered the gun, his finger poised on the trigger, just as he was met by a pair of blue eyes, wide and bright in the darkness, and a sharp intake of breath.

Thursday hissed, blowing the pent-up air within him out through his teeth, and raised his trigger hand up into the air as, before him, Morse faltered, stepped back.

Morse lowered his head, then, releasing a long exhale.

“That could have been nasty,” Thursday said.

“Sir,” Morse said. “It’s a set up.”  

“I figured as much. I don’t usually pack this for a friendly chat.”

“But you came anyway?”

“It’s always been about the boy,” Thursday said. “If there was any chance to get him back, however small. You’d have done the same.”

Morse said nothing.

“It will be twenty-eight years since I’ve joined the job,” Thursday went on. “Twenty-eight years to the day, excepting the war of course. All this with the merger put me out of sorts. Got me thinking. Less ahead than behind. I forgot it’s not about me. It’s about them that turn to us for help. Weak, defenseless. Old, young. Especially the young.”

Thursday considered his gun in the half-light. 

“I was born a copper,” he said. “And I’ll die one, I expect.”

“Hmmmmm,” Morse hummed, just as if he understood him, through and through.

But how could he, really? Hadn’t lived long enough to understand what it’s like, what it means, exactly, to realize that you’ve passed that halfway mark, that your time is growing short, that, if you’ve got something you need to do, you’d best get on with it now, or else die uneasy, with a heart full of regret.

But, strangely, Morse did seem to understand. He nodded, his face thoughtful, and then he looked away, off into the shadows. An oddly blank look overtook his face then, his eyes unfocused as he seemed to look at some indeterminate point, some point beyond the darkened corner into which he stared.

“Ensanguining the skies,” he said, his voice low and mournful. “How heavily it dies. Into the west away. Past touch. Past sight. And sound. Not further to be found. How hopeless underground .... falls the remorseful day.”

Morse looked to him, then, as if he were startled by what he had said—as if he himself was not quite sure why he had said it.

And, as their eyes met, Thursday felt it, almost like an electric charge: a definite understanding. An agreement that went beyond the things of this world.

“Yes, Morse,” he might have said. “I didn’t miss that, lad.”

Wasn’t exactly the cheeriest little verse, considering what they were up against.

A small laugh escaped Morse, little more than a huff of breath, rueful, apologetic. He could not call them back now, the words, despite the fact that they were not particularly auspicious. Remorseful day, indeed.

“You know there’s no cavalry coming?” Thursday prompted. “Still time. I won’t think the less.”

Morse looked a bit stricken at that, and, mutely—perhaps afraid to open his mouth, lest he say more—he shook his head.

“To the end, then.”

There was a plea in Morse’s eyes not to say such things. But then he swallowed. Nodded curtly. Resolute.

“To the end.”

It was almost as if their vow had sealed them, their now linked fates. For then, there was a rush of heavy footsteps, a creak of the old floors, of someone near— so near that Thursday could tell that, unlike headstrong Morse, this man did know what he was about.

Thursday turned to meet him, face on, and  the air cracked in two, just as if it were something solid. Suddenly, his chest was full of a white-hot pain, as searing as liquid metal… and the world was breathless …. his eyes both seeing and not seeing as he was plunged into darkness… he was gone and he was there… hanging onto the world by the sound of Morse’s voice.

“Sir? Sir?”

“You bastard! You bastard!”

And, from further away, Deare’s voice, “No bon mots? No apposite Augustan valedictory? I expected better from a ….”

The words dissolved as the world dissolved, as he was carried to a place past comprehension. But still, he clung on, a part of him pinned into place by the simple words that followed.

“Stay with me, Sir. Stay with me.”

Even as Thursday was drifting, floating, strangely detached from himself, there was a part of his mind that wandered back and back—all the way back to that snow-laden night he and Morse had driven up to Lincolnshire after his father’s death, when Morse had murmured the same words in the car.

“Stay with me, Sir."

Ah, Thursday thought. Well. That’s what that was about.

But, if that had been a sort of premonition, something that Morse had picked up in that strange wireless in his head—then perhaps this was, too: That he should comply with the plea in those words.

That he should remain here still, holding on to Morse’s voice. To the words that must surely prove true. 

Of course, he would.

No way was some shitehawk like Deare going to have the honor.

He wasn’t done yet. Oh, no.

Not by a long mile.

****

Jakes sat in the black Jag, parked on the kerb not far from the stone steps leading up to the doors of Farnleigh, steeling his resolve.

He knew that he would be sure to face some of them on the inside, some of Deare’s little cronies, the ones who had slipped off, scurried away like vermin when the kitchen light had snapped on. The guard who had cleaned out George’s cell, for one, the one who had scribbled a fake signature in the log book, trying to bamboozle Morse and the old man.

But Jakes was through with skirting along the edges, through with worrying over who might know what about him. Done with laughing sycophantically at all of Chard’s stupid jokes. Done with playing along.

Done with running.

It was with a definite swagger that he might almost believe was real that he went in through the wide front doors.

“I’m here to see PC Morse,” he said to the guard in attendance in the visitors’ area, a short but solid-looking man with a square-shaped head and a meanness, a certain dullness, in his eyes.

The man looked at him, laconically.

“Endeavour Morse isn’t allowed visitors, at the moment,” he said.

“That so?” Jakes asked.

He didn’t miss it, the shift—the guard’s refusal to refer to Morse as a standing police constable.

“I’ll tell you what,” Jakes said, with a flash of his warrant card. “I’m here to see my constable. So you either bring him out, and let me see him, or I might start thinking that not everything here is on the up and up. I’ve got my contacts, too. You know I do.”

Jakes widened his stance slightly, just enough to let the man know he meant business, just enough to carry the implicit hint of a threat.

The guard eyed him for a moment.

“In through the left,” he said. “Take a seat at a table.”

Jakes nodded—too right, that was bloody well more like it— and went in through a door that lead into a large and lifeless room, all white speckled lino floor and institutional gray walls, with tables set at sporadic intervals. There were no windows, nothing on the walls, not even a clock to give a sense of the time of day. That was no accident, of course. It was all design, all meant to be disorienting. A place that was no place. A limbo of the soul.

Jakes pulled out a chair, scraping it loudly across the lino tile floor, so that the guard by the opposite door scowled. Jakes smirked to himself. It was the same old game, nature red in tooth and claw. If he had been a wild cat, like a tiger, he would have growled to show his aggression.

Instead, here he was, scraping a goddamn chair. What bullshit it all was, really.

He took his seat and waited. After a few minutes, the door at the other end of the room opened: a burly guard just beginning to go soft with middle age, his hair a steely gray, ushered in Morse, dressed in a prison-issue dark gray wool jacket, his eyes, twin points of blue, the only color in the place.

Morse startled when he saw him and began to walk over, faltering at first, his steps growing quicker as he approached. Jakes looked him over. He looked drawn, subdued, but otherwise unharmed. No sign of a bloody lip or a blackened eye, at least.

It was like a parody of that awful night he had come to him in the pub. As soon as he got to him, Morse lowered himself into the chair, so that he was sitting across from him. It was only then that Jakes noticed it: a dangerous glitter, as if something overwrought, in Morse’s eyes.

He ran a tongue over his lower lip, as if gathering his resolve, the strength to speak.

“Thursday?” he asked.

Jakes frowned for a moment, confused.

“Hello to you, too, then,” he was tempted to say.

What? Wasn’t he good enough for a visit?

But then, there was something troubling there, in the intensity in Morse’s face, so that Jakes didn’t have the heart to have a go at him…

“He’s still in hospital,” Jakes replied… “He…”

Morse appeared to hear no more. He half collapsed, burying his face in his hands. In the next moment, his shoulders were shaking, as if with an utterly silent weeping.

It was awkward as hell.

“Hey, now, Morse ….”

“Morse?”

Jakes was not sure what to do. But then, Morse took his hands away, and looked up to the ceiling, as if —what? Blinking back tears? Raising his eyes to the heavens?

“He’s alive,” Morse said, his low voice oddly husky, half a sob, half a whisper. “He’s alive, then…”

All at once, Jakes thought he understood.

“Of course, he is… What? They didn’t tell you?

Mutely, Morse shook his head, his eyes looking as if they might well over.

He swallowed, steadying his breath.

“No,” he said. “No one’s told me anything. No one talks to me at all. I didn’t know. I didn’t know if…”

“Bastards,” Jakes snarled.

An odd noise escaped Morse, half a sob, half a laugh.

“The old man’s weak yet,” Jakes told him. “It’s his lungs, something to do with his lungs. He can’t talk too much. But he’s told them enough. Mr. Bright’s working on getting you out of here.”

He nodded, if not with much conviction.

“Did he tell you?” Morse asked, then, his voice still husky, oddly breathless. “Did he tell you what happened?”

“Yeah. That Deare came in and shot him, if that’s what you mean. After that, his memory seems a little hazy. Remembers you were there, though. He’s worried about you.”

Morse went still for a moment, mulling that over, his eyes cast down to the table. Then he nodded, once, in acknowledgment. 

“We haven’t told him …” Jakes began, his eyes giving a quick sweep around the room by way of a euphemism. “About this yet. Think it might be a bit much for him. But Bright’s running out of excuses as to why you haven’t been by. If we don’t spring you soon, and the old man finds out, there will be hell to pay.”

Again, Morse simply nodded. It was a strange thing, a Morse so wordless. Although perhaps the man was right to keep quiet, considering where he was. Jakes very much doubted his current compatriots would look too kindly upon a little burst of ancient Greek poetry down in the laundry.

“Did he tell you, though.... what I said before?” Morse ventured, at last.

“Before what?” Jakes asked.

“It’s all my fault,” he said, heavily. “I was too slow.”

“How’s that?”

“I recited a poem,” Morse said.  

“What poem?”

“Nothing.”

Jakes scowled. Laid a hand on the table as he leaned slightly forward.

“You went out there. More than what I did. More than what anybody did. We’ll get the inquiry dropped. Your name cleared. You’ll be right back before you know it. It will be like none of this ever happened. Right?” Jakes said staunchly.

“I’m not going back.”

“What do you mean, not going back?”

“Just what I said. Didn’t you hear me? I stood there and recited a poem.”

Jakes felt a surge of impatience, almost an anger at that. 

“Don’t say that. After all you went through, to join up? What? You going to go back to sweeping up cigarette butts? You shouldn’t go making decisions like that right now. Besides. The force needs more coppers like you.”

Morse huffed, softly, just under his breath.

“Failed classicists, do you mean?” he asked. “Sideshow freaks?”

“I mean…” Jakes said, correcting him—and, although it might once have cost him something to say it, the words came easily now—“Someone with integrity. You went out there. You stood up for the kiddie. That’s what it’s supposed to be about, being a copper. We can’t let those bastards win.”

“I only went because I knew that Thursday would do whatever he could to save Tommy Cork,” Morse said. “Just as he did for…”

He shook his head, saying nothing more; although Jakes could well imagine how he might have finished the sentence. 

"Just as he did for me.."

“For what it was worth, anyway,” Morse said. “Which was not much. How hopeless underground falls the remorseful day.” Again he huffed a thin, watery laugh, traced with a bitterness that didn’t suit.

“That what you said?” Jakes asked. “Well. You were right to feel that way, weren’t you? You’re right about most things.”

Morse eyed him warily, as if he thought he had cracked.  As if he were full of dangerous ideas.

“When have you ever thought I’ve been right about anything?” he asked. 

Jakes sighed heavily, his earlier impatience replaced by remorse.

He shouldn’t have wasted the favor, having Morse assigned out to Carshall Newton. It seemed too awful, thinking on the months that had been lost.

The old man was right, had been right, all along. It was something Morse could be taught to use, those elusive and eerie little spells that seemed sometimes to overtake him. Something they could all use, if only they helped him out a little. If they learned to work together. He was sure of that now.

If Jakes hadn’t spent so much time living in fear of it….

He felt a chill of regret at the thought, a hollowness that—still—could not quite squelch the new warmth in his chest, alive and moving, soaring, like a flock of birds in flight.

It seemed in poor taste to speak of his own happiness, what with Morse so miserable, but something bright, something new, had been rising up inside of him this past week, something that couldn’t help but spill out over his sharp edges, or rather to radiate from him, like the sun.

“Hope is a thing with feathers,” he said.

Morse stifled a groan and scrubbed a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That was unforgivable,” he said.

“No. No it wasn’t. It’s .. it’s true,” Jakes said.

But then, he remembered himself, remembered where he was.

Least he could do was to show some goddamned sensitivity.

“I … you wouldn’t want to hear about that now, I shouldn’t think.”

“I’d like to hear about anything, really,” Morse said. “Not much to talk about here.”

Jakes considered him for a moment.

Well. He could well believe that. And no one to speak to him, either. He was not just a cop but a cop killer, too, and a college boy to top all. He was the whole package. Something to alienate just about anyone on the inside.

Perhaps it would not be too terrible to share it, a small hint of normalcy, a reminder of the world outside. A reminder of his own words, that had been, that were, true all along. That could be true for him, too, if he’d trust them. If he’d let it.

“I met a girl,” he said.

Jakes winced a little, then, realizing how trite that must sound to poor old Morse. “Oh, good for you,” he might have said. He might have been annoyed, to have such trivialities trotted out before his face.

But, instead, there was a start of surprise in his eyes, a quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Morse might be a lot of things, but he was never petty. He was generous, all right. He almost looked happy for him, almost amused to see the sergeant who had once given him hell besotted as a schoolboy.

“She was just sitting there on a bench, feeding the pigeons. Seemed completely captivated by them, as if they were exotic, somehow. I could tell right away she wasn’t from around here.”

“No,” Morse agreed.

Jakes allowed himself a wry smile. He knew Morse wasn’t overly fond of the things, that he hated the sensation of the birds brushing past his ankles

“I don’t know. There was just something about her face. An openness. She just seemed so taken by everything. It sort of cheered a bloke up to see it, that was all. And then she looked right at me, and said, ‘If you’re going to keep looking at me, then at least you should tell me your name.’”  

Morse snorted. 

But it had just about knocked Jakes’ socks off.

“Jakes,” he had told her.

“I have a brother named Jake,” she had said.

“No. No. That’s my surname.”

“Oh,” she said, with an affected little lilt to her voice, as if she were having one on on him. “So do I “my lord” you, or what?”

“What?” Jakes asked.

“Well. We’re to be friends, aren’t we? I meant, what’s your first name?”  

Jakes had hesitated for just a moment, as she went on watching him with forthright brown eyes.

“Peter,” he had said.

“Peter,” she said. 

It was a name he hadn’t cared for since he was eight, but yet, it sounded different in her mouth. The flatness of her voice, the way she hit the r at the end, full stop, the shift in the stress of the syllables.

It was as if she took his name and handed it back to him as something new. Something as hard and as polished as a river rock she had pulled from the water, still shiny with the wet.

So that it felt like a new name. A new birth. A new start. 

Hope was a thing with wings.

She was from the States, from out West, from wide open country. It showed in her; she was used to space to move around. Her voice rang a little too loud, as if she was accustomed to calling over greater distances. Made her a little clumsy, to be honest, even when you could see she meant to be gentle.

When she tossed her next handful of seeds to the birds, she threw it further than she had meant, so that it showered the pigeons rather than landing at their feet. They flew up in protest, all in a scuttle around her.

“I .. I told her my name,” Jakes said. “And, just then, all the birds flew off around her. And then she told me her name. Hope. Her name is Hope. It’s just like you told me.”

He felt it was important for Morse to know this, that, in finding his path, perhaps Morse might have the faith to find his, too, but...

Christ.

When had he started sounding like such a swot?

“Don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Jakes said.

“I’m happy for you,” Morse said. “If any good can come out of this, then…”

“Morse,” the guard called. “Two minutes.”

At the sound of the voice, the new hint of faint light in Morse’s face faded, snapped out like a cold wind on a candle’s flame.

Bloody bastards.

“Oy!” Jakes called. “I’m not done here.”

“Please,” Morse said, and again, his face was subdued, carefully trained at some safe spot on the table. “Don’t. You’ll just make it worse.”

Meaning they would take it out on him, as soon as Jakes turned his back. 

He was right there. At least Morse was getting some sense, he supposed. But yet, the fact that he needed such a knowledge of the world filled Jakes with another hot surge of anger.

Why couldn’t one damn thing be left alone?

He looked over Morse, more carefully this time. The long sleeves pulled down. The defeated dullness in his face. Jakes felt sick with the thought of it.

For all of the guards’ stupidity, they were canny, too. There were ways they had about them that did not leave marks.

“Look,” he said. “Just keep your head down. Don’t talk to anyone. Mr. Bright has a meeting set in a few days. We’ll get you out of here, all right?

“Hmmmm.”

“When it happens, it will happen fast. So give me a ring, all right? I’ll pick you up.”

“Hmmmm,” Morse said.

“I mean it. It will be a good show of solidarity all around, if they see it. Let them see that we City men stick together.”

 “Morse!” the guard called. “Time’s up.”

Jakes leaned a bit further across the table. “County can go to hell,” he hissed.

Morse flinched and darted a look behind him as if worried that the man might have heard.

“All right?” Jakes said.

“Mmmm,” Morse said.

“You can say ‘yes,’ Constable, when speaking to your sergeant.”

“Mmmm,” Morse said.

Jakes scowled. For in that stubborn hum, he knew.

He was a terrible liar, Morse.

Ruddy hypocrite. He could dish it out by the bucketful, Morse, the empathy, the compassion, the quiet murmurs, his big eyes full understanding.

But he couldn’t take a morsel of it.

Proud little shit.

Least he could do was to allow him to return the favor.

It hurt a little more than Jakes would like to admit, that closed door in Morse’s eyes. He’d done him a good turn, Morse.

That’s how it was, he supposed, with people sometimes. Big Pete. George. Benny. And now Morse. The came into your life for just a little while, made things better, and then disappeared.

Sad really, how there are some people who hang around like a bad smell you cannot shake.

And then, the ones you wish might stick around a bit are the first to go, to drift off, to leave without a trace.

Jakes stopped and turned around, suddenly wishing he had said a better goodbye. But already the guard was escorting Morse back out the opposite door.

Chapter Text

Thursday watched the trees pass by outside the window, a steady blur of gentle brown and dark green, the needles of the firs appearing as soft as if they had been painted by the strokes of a watercolor brush, in that gray morning.

It was as if nothing had changed. As if no time had passed at all. Sergeant Jakes behind the wheel. The tires of the black Jag rolling on, over the smooth ribbon of the road, cutting through the woods.

Thursday took it all in, with weary eyes.  

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“Lake Silence. It’s about twelve miles out.”

And then neither of them said any more, as they sat, side by side, both together, alone with their thoughts.

All was quiet, save for the purr of the engine, the hum of the tires.

He should let it go. Can’t help someone who doesn’t want help.

But then, despite himself, he gave a jerk of his head, turning to Jakes.

“Have you seen him?”

There was no need to qualify that pronoun. He knew Jakes understood just who it was that he meant.

A muscle in Jakes’ jaw jumped even as he spun the wheel, hugging a turn, with his typical feline grace.  

It was a little thing, but it made one wonder. He’d never been too keen on Morse, Jakes. But something had happened between them, it seemed, while he had been out for the count. Jakes looked just as uncomfortable as he had whenever Deare had come into the room, on that last case.

As if Morse were a ghost. A bitter reminder of things best left forgot.

“Not since he got out,” Jakes said. “No one has.”

It was not with relief that he said it, as Thursday once might have expected. But rather … almost as if Morse’s disappearance had been a sort of betrayal.

Yes. Something had happened, all right. Something neither of them had thought of filling the old man in on.

And it did make him feel old. Toothless. Spent. He could make little accounting of those four weeks he had lost. He’d come back to himself to find that the world changed around him. To find Win looking tired, a shadow of the woman she’d be in ten years etched in the lines of her face. Joan so much more grown up, so effortlessly capable. Sam much more somber. Mr. Bright subdued, half-regretful, curiously introspective. Jakes seeming not quite himself without his old swagger. Morse gone.  

Himself, suddenly an old man.

It had not worked out the way that Thursday had wanted it. None of it had. Not from the very first.

Morse had been assigned to Carshall Newton, when Thursday had counted on him being assigned to Cowley, where he could take him under his wing, make things easier for him. Where he could ease his path, give him a soft landing till he could get himself sorted.

Thursday saw his talents, saw his potential, all too clear.

Doubted those dim bulbs out at Carshall Newton did.  

By the time he got Morse transferred to his own nick, he’d half lost Morse already, he could tell.

“You’ve lost weight,” Joan had chirped, the first time Morse came back ‘round to theirs. “What did they feed you at Carshall Newton?”

“Mockery and humiliation, mostly.”  

Thursday had grimaced.

He could well imagine.

Thursday had thought, too, that it might be easy to find some source of help for the lad. Oxford was a college town, after all. Filled with dons of all sorts studying one thing or another. Sumerian and Greek vases and nuclear physics.

Why not this?

Inquiries into the matter, however, drew alarm at best. At worst, derisive laughter.

Thursday had tried not to see the irony in it, that yellow piece of paper that he found waiting for him on his desk that morning, on his first day back in the nick. A message from the Department of Latent Potential, at Lovelace, saying they’d be interested in including Police Constable E. Morse in a new study.

Latent potential.

How apt.

Wasted potential, more like.

And it wasn’t only his failure to get Morse established on the force that pained Thursday. It was the idea that Morse had returned to it, that drifting and lonely existence.

Must seem all the lonelier to the lad now, now that he had come so close to finding a different sort of life. A steady job. A flat. That pretty little nurse. Them all to fall back on. Win’s extra sandwiches. Joan’s teasing.

His own friendship, that, he had hoped, Morse saw was his for the asking.

Still, not all was lost. Their paths had crossed three times now. Morse seemed almost drawn to it, despite himself.

Thursday knew, someplace deep within himself, someplace that dwelled deeper than that bullet, that he’d always be looking for Morse.  

That whenever a case took him to some little dive, he’d always give a look at the odd jobs man. That he’d always cast a glance into any darkened corner. That he’d feel for it, that chill at the back of his nape.

That one day, he’d turn to find Morse standing there in a blue apron, as blue as his January eyes, holding onto a broom as if it were the staff of prophecy.

***

And so Thursday began again. Reborn. Still going, against all odds, a jagged bit of metal in his chest like a ticking bomb.

But a little space on this earth, and all of that.

He was right back in the thick of it, right on his first day back. A young woman had been left for dead in the middle of nowhere, tossed about like a broken doll. Struck by a car again and again. Without mercy. Without remorse.

The sight of her white shoe, lying scuffed and broken in the dirt, so far away from the body, filled him with an untold heaviness.

Drug all that way. Christ, it was terrible.

He could hardly look at the girl, left there on the ground, like a pale and crumpled bit of paper cast out a window. She was about Joannie’s age.  That was all he could register. 

They stood in somber silence, a circle of unlikely mourners, contemplating the scene, as Dr. DeBryn completed his preliminaries.  

And then, Sergeant Jakes, standing beside him, looked up to the road ahead, to where a few uniformed officers had set up barricades blocking off the nearby road.

His lean face paled, turned ashen.

 “Sergeant?” Thursday prompted. 

“A car was just there. A blue Lagonda coupe. It just drove by, as if to turn this way, but then uniform waved it off.”

He paused.

“It had a headlight out,” he said.  

“Did it now?” Thursday asked, darkly.

“Yes, sir. It turned off, in the other direction.”

Thursday looked over his shoulder. Once they were finished securing the scene of crime, once they had scoured the ground for what they could find, it wouldn’t hurt to head out that way. Talk to some of the locals. Sometimes, a perpetrator returned to the scene.

The killer might not have thought she’d be found already, out in the middle of the woods like this, as she was. 

“I thought I saw….” Jakes began.

“Yes, sergeant?”

“I thought it was Morse, Sir. In the passenger’s seat.”

Thursday spun back around, looking down through the trees. There was no trace of the car. No rumble of an engine. No one there but the three uniformed officers, milling around, manning the road.

Thursday narrowed his eyes.

Lake Silence.

The name conjured up images of champagne and diamonds and parties and ennui.

Jakes must have been mistaken. It was the very last place he would expect Morse to be.

Although, when Thursday thought of the name of the place…

It might be, rather, the very place that someone determined never to speak again might choose to run.

To hide.

***

He and Jakes had walked along the quiet road, through the dense hush of the trees— their eyes keen for bits and bobs on the ground—for about fifteen minutes when they heard a burble of conversation through the woods, the chime of voices calling out, playful and light.

There was a roar of an engine, then, followed by a loud cry, loud enough to be deciphered.  

“For God’s sakes!  Is he going to do that all day?”

Jakes and Thursday exchanged pointed glances and began moving in the direction of the sound.

Wasn’t long before the shadowing trees thinned, letting in the light, until, at last, they came to a clearing.

Here, the primordial evergreen dampness gave way to a children’s play garden, cheery and sun-bright.

It was a beautiful little spot. At this point on the lake, the shore sloped gracefully, fresh and green and fragrant, all the way down to the reeds and the cooling water. A white iron-wrought gazebo—airy and fantastical as a giant bird cage—stood off to one side of where a group of men and women, dressed more for an elegant party than for a day of slogging around the shoreline, had arranged themselves, sitting on a blanket, or else standing to look over the water, flutes of champagne in their hands.

One man, powerfully-built, with thick dark hair, stood a little apart, holding a golf club, aggressively pointing it as he spoke. Clearly, he was annoyed about the red hydroplane, zipping around on the mirror of the lake.

Thursday felt a wave of cold that had nothing to do with the fresh breeze drifting out over the water. They all of them looked posh enough to own the car that Jakes had seen.

One of the men perhaps? The dark-haired man who seemed so short with the frosty blonde in white?

Could he have been having an affair with the young woman? It might be one way to silence her, he supposed.

The bullet-shaped hydroplane streaked by in a roar and the group paused to watch it. He and Jakes took the chance to start off, again, to approach them. 

Suddenly, one of the men, dressed in a summer gray suit and sitting crossed-legged on the blanket—not far from a striped parasol the color of a peppermint candy—looked behind him, over his shoulder, as if aware of their approach. 

Thursday stopped dead in his tracks.

He could scarcely believe it.

He almost might not have recognized him.

Morse’s hair had grown out, for one thing, as luxuriant as his new surroundings, and his face seemed sharp with a certain edge, a certain casual urbanity, that had not been there before.

Thursday had thought to look for Morse amongst the groundskeepers of estates and amongst the janitorial staff of theaters and of nightclubs. At street markets behind a booth.

Certainly not here.

The blue eyes widened, and, then, incredibly, he set down his flute of champagne and rose to his feet. He looked towards the pair of them, then, fidgeting, nervously running a finger along his collar and adjusting his narrow black tie.

Then, he nodded his goodbye to the others and began to walk away, as if to flee the scene.

Thursday narrowed his eyes.

Where in the hell did he think he was going?

He was still clearly visible—if not more clearly visible—crossing the grassy lawn as he was.

All he had done was to separate himself from the pack.

Never would have made it, in the war. Always shooting off, on his own.

Morse had made it about twenty feet when Jakes called out to him, cutting all pretense.

“Morse!”

Morse froze. The others cast glances in his direction. The larger man looked vaguely annoyed, the blonde woman steely, the others either mildly curious or mildly concerned.

With no real other choice, Morse turned on the spot and waited where he stood, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else than where he was. Thursday could almost see it: the bob of his knobby Adam’s apple, even from here.

Jakes quickened his pace, cutting over the perfect green, oddly determined.

Oh, yes. Something had passed between them alright.

Morse flicked Jakes a furtive look, and then he turned to him, Thursday, not quite meeting his gaze.  

“Sir,” he said.

“So, we meet again,” Jakes snapped, cutting across him. “What are you doing here?”

Morse pulled himself up to his full height, gazing at him coolly. There had always been something vaguely aristocratic in his bearing, Thursday had thought, even when they had first found him pruning trees in the garden of the “House Beautiful.”

Yet still, it was surprising how well he had managed it, chameleon-like, to blend right in with his surroundings.

You might have thought he was some great Lord, the way he looked at Jakes, imperious and haughty as hell.

“I came to stay with some friends.”

“These friends of yours, are they?”

“Yes. Where else should I be?” Morse asked.

“Thought you might be getting back to work,” Jakes said. “But I guess you don’t need a job, staying out here in one of these spreads. Staff waiting on you hand and foot. Elevenses and canapés and all the rest.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Morse’s face, a glimmer of that old pride.

When it came to Morse, Jakes always did know just where to poke the stick.

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘no?’”

“I’m not staying up at the house. I’m staying at a dacha on the lake. I ...”

Morse faltered.

Unsure of what to say? Regretful that he had told them where he was living?

“You what?” Jakes asked. 

“I wanted to be myself for a little while. That’s not against the law, is it?”

“Time enough alone in prison, I would have thought.”

Morse mumbled something, inaudible, just under his breath.

“What’s that, Constable?” Jakes demanded.

Morse looked up to him then, his frozen eyes blue-hot, the color of low flame.

“I was never alone,” he said.

Morse cast his gaze down. All of the while, he had addressed Jakes only. It was almost as if he were afraid to speak to him, Thursday, afraid of looking him in the eye.

“Morse,” Thursday said, quietly.

He darted him a glance.

“Why didn’t you come back to the station? I went by yours this morning. Your flat’s all cleared out.”

For a moment, Morse said nothing, his eyes cast back down to the ground.  

“You know why,” he said, and his voice was much different now. Lower, softer. Thick, as if struggling against tears. As if Thursday knew of some secret shame.

“Do I?” Thursday asked, gently.

Morse said nothing more.

Jakes snorted with impatience and Thursday held up a heavy hand to stay him.   

He wished that his sergeant would stand down a bit.

Why did he seem so invested? What on earth had transpired between them?

It was impossible to tell, really, which had wronged the other. For Jakes, a good defense always was a good offense. And Morse could be as prickly and proud as no one else. 

They were oil and water, at the best of times. 

“All right, sergeant,” Thursday said. “Why don’t you go collect the names of the others? We’ll need full statements from each. Ask if anyone’s seen anything. What sort of car they drive. See if we can’t match those tracks.”

Jakes cast Morse one last look, as if he considered himself well shot of him.  

“Sir,” he said.

Morse watched him uneasily as he went.

Once, Morse might have been pleased to see the back of Jakes. But today, he looked like a trapped animal, as if being alone with him, Thursday, was the very last thing he wanted.

Thursday remembered with a pang of sadness, of regret, that clear and unearned trust that Morse had placed in him at their first meeting, when he—who had lived for so long under one alias or another—had admitted to him his own, carefully-guarded name.

“Let’s you and me take a little walk, yeah?” Thursday asked, hopefully.  

Morse looked around at the surrounding trees, the clearing, the reeds rimming the lake—each place much the same as the next.

“Where?” he asked, baffled, spreading his hands wide.

Thursday scowled. Always so bloody literal-minded. It wasn’t a stretch of the legs he was after.

“Anywhere,” Thursday said. “Christ. Do I need to spell it out? I want to talk to you.”

Morse looked doubtful, but … what else could he do, really? He had run, but not far enough.

He nodded, once, without enthusiasm.

And then, quietly, cautiously, he fell in beside him.

***

They headed off into the coolness of the trees, through the towering firs, stride matching stride, at an easy pace.

Morse said nothing. Whether it was because he didn’t want to speak to him in particular, or because he had fallen into that old, solitary habit of not speaking at all lest he say something he did not want to say, Thursday was not sure.

“Why, Morse?” Thursday asked, at last.

“Why what, Sir?”

“You put so much in. You wanted this. You fought for this. Why didn’t you come back to the nick?”

“You know why,” Morse said, his face stubborn, a new obstinance there.

“We’ve got a woman, found not a quarter of a mile from here. A victim of a hit and run. Did you know that?”

Morse turned pale, and Thursday could see it in his face, the question he was asking himself.

Was death following him? Or was he following it?

“No,” he breathed. 

“I thought that you might be able to help. That you might consider coming back in to work. We were just starting to get on, I thought.”

“I can’t. I can't. How can you say that? Knowing what you know?”

“What is it that I know?” Thursday asked.

Morse shook his head. Then, he swallowed.

“That it was my fault. I ... I  don’t understand what came over me. I knew someone was coming, I suspected it would be Deare, and … and yet…. Suddenly. I was there and not there. And then, it was all just pouring out. And I was lost to it.”

He ran a fretful hand through his wayward hair.

“I was too slow. My stupidity almost made Mrs. Thursday a widow.”

His voice had gone thick again, constricted, as he were fighting it for all he was worth, as if he were on the verge of tears.

Ah.

Was that it, then? Blamed himself, did he? Should have seen that, he supposed. 

“I knew, walking in to Blenheim Vale that I might not walk out,” Thursday said, carefully.“Something bad like that? I can’t say I remember what you said, word for word, but…”

Morse let out a bitter laugh, but Thursday continued on.

“But nothing you said wasn’t something I didn’t already know, deep down, before I set out. I told you. I wasn’t expecting a friendly chat. I was prepared for it.”

Morse said nothing, but he was listening, at least.

It was enough.

“Sometimes, you’ve got to put all you are against all they’ve got. It was my decision. I’d do it again without a second thought. Don’t ever blame yourself.”

“If I had been quicker ….” Morse began.  

“You were there, in the end. Doesn’t matter what you said, or what you didn’t. Doesn’t matter if we made sense of it in time, or not. You were there. You stood your ground. A pinch like that? It’s not brains, or insights, or strands of poetry or prophecy that counts. It’s guts.”

Again, Morse made no reply, but Thursday took their slowed pace as a hopeful sign that he, at least, was considering his words, mulling them over.

Perhaps, with any luck, believing him, accepting it.

“I found a place for you, you know,” Thursday ventured, then. “Where you might find some help. It’s called the Department of Latent Potential.”

Morse came to a sudden halt.

“Department of Latent Potential? What does that even mean?”

“It’s a study at Lovelace College. On. Well ….”

Thursday let the sentence fall away, not sure how to term it in a way that would not get Morse’s back up. Even the pause, it seemed, was bad enough.  

“I should offer myself as a guinea pig, do you mean?” he cried. 

“No.” Thursday said. “No. Not at all. Course not. But what if you’re not alone, Morse? Ever consider that? What if there are others like you? Might be someone who knows how to …. well…”  

“Deal with it better,” he said, wryly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t need help,” Morse said, starting off again, along their way.

Thursday should have known better; it was the wrong tactic to take with Morse.

“Of course not. Doing all right for yourself, aren’t you? Lake Silence. No finer address in the county, is there?”

Thursday looked all about, as if admiring the firs, as if the trees at Lake Silence were so much finer, so much posher, than the trees of any other neighborhood.

“Smashing.”

That last was, perhaps, a bit of overkill. Morse was regarding him warily, although not without a trace of a quirk at the corner of his mouth. As if he saw right through him. 

Well, of course, he did. 

“But… did you ever consider. … that you might be of help to someone else?” Thursday asked.  

Morse stopped along the path again, then, at a place where the sun fell dappled through the soft evergreen branches.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Well. Someone else out there like you, might not be as lucky, is all. As able. Might have had a worse run of bad luck. Some poor young girl, say, without a family…”

He knew how Morse was when it came to a bird with a broken wing.

A deeper quirk of a smile was playing around Morse’s mouth, as if he knew just where Thursday was headed.

Still, Thursday saw a measure of hope in it, this small instance of softening.

“I’m sure I’d be of little use to her, whoever she might be,” Morse said.

“Be that as it may. Might be of some use to me. To us. To Cowley. To that girl who was found in the woods.”

And just like that, the light in his eyes was gone.

“I told you,” he said. “I won’t be any use to you. What use was it, then? What use of any of it? How hopeless under ground… and then not one minute later….”

Morse looked away and took a heaving breath, as if he’d been running, but not before Thursday caught a glimpse of a glimmer there, of real tears now, in his eyes.

"How hopeless under ground falls the remorseful day…" he said. 

Thursday remembered, then, the odd, blank look that had come over Morse’s face. Of how he had spoken those words of regret, of remorse, of loss.

And then there had been a crack of a shot, a searing red-hot pain in his chest, Morse’s voice, calling out to him, tethering him to this world.

“Stay with me, sir. Stay with me.”

Those same words Morse had murmured in the car, months ago, driving out to Lincolnshire.

“You knew something was brewing on the horizon, long before that, though, didn’t you?” Thursday asked.  

Morse flinched.

Thursday looked steadily on, willing him to tell him.

Or else to say nothing at all.

As long as Morse did not outright lie to him, Thursday felt, there still might be cause for hope.

“No,” Morse said, at last, a little too loudly, and Thursday’s heart sank.

And then....

“Yes. Well. No. It was just a feeling.”

“What feeling?”

Morse blinked. Heaved a deep sigh.

“That… something was coming. I thought…. when I was shot… that perhaps that was it. That that was all. That it was over.”  

Thursday grimaced; it was more telling than Morse knew, he thought. 

Morse seemed to have counted being shot as a cause for relief, as by far not the worst that could happen.

“But then… I felt ...  just an edge of it. Of something …. something evil.”

He darted a wary glance to him, then, hesitating, wondering what Thursday might think of him using so operatic a word.

Thursday kept his face carefully neutral.

Evil was not too strong a word for a man like Deare, not in his opinion, no.

“It…”  Morse began.

He twisted his hands, a little wildly, then, like two pale birds caught in a snare.

“Yes, Morse?”

“It … it tasted like blood.”

Morse looked at him then, full-on, his blue eyes haunted, as if he realized he sounded half-mad, but was powerless to say anything else.

Despite his resolve to keep his face calm, Thursday could not quite contain his sense of shock at the words.

Not just the terror of them, but...

It was just how he woke each morning. His mouth full of bitter-copper blood.

He had told no one, but the doctor.

How could Morse have known?

Morse’s eyes wavered over him, misinterpreting his stunned expression, he knew.

He could have kicked himself.

“Morse,” he said.

He reached out to set a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but Morse wheeled away.

“I don’t have a car,” he said. “You know I can’t afford one.”

“What?” Thursday asked, bewildered by the seeming change in topic.

“I don’t have a car, nor did I hear anything last night. I was with Tony ... Anthony Donn... up at the house until about ten o’clock, and then I was at home, at the lake house, listening to records. There was no one out there. I don’t have any alibi if Dr. DeBryn thinks … thinks it happened later.”

“Morse,” Thursday said.

“May I go?” he asked, the words seeming to burst out of him. “Sir?”

“Morse, I just….”

“Please, sir.”

Thursday regarded him, unable to escape the sense, once more, that he was confronting a trapped animal.

He didn’t have the heart to add to his distress.

“All right, Morse. We’ll….”

Before he could say more, Morse had spun around, heading off, walking through the trees at a crisp stride, his head held high, as if trying desperately to keep his dignity intact.

Once he had gotten far enough away that he thought he could no longer be seen, he broke out into a run, his legs colt-like, splaying out before him, graceless in this as he was in nothing else.

Thursday stood for a long while, alone in the quiet of the thick trees. 

It was all right.

The lad just needed some time to be alone, with his thoughts, to sort himself out. Just like he had said.

He’d been honest with him, in the end.

And besides.

Thursday knew just where to find him now.

Chapter Text

Jakes set his foot against the brake, slowing the progress of the gleaming black Jaguar to a steady crawl. He wasn’t quite certain, but it looked as if there was something just there, just through the bare birches: a small gray cabin down by the leaf-sodden shore. He hadn’t gone much further along the old road when he noticed there was a clearing, too—not a road, really, but a compacted dirt drive of sorts, made by other cars that had passed along that way, heading down to the lonely little clapboard cottage by the water’s edge.

Jakes took the turn, coasting down to the shore, the tires crunching over pebbles and wayward bits of twig as the car trundled along. And then, Morse was there, his bright white shirt a beacon amidst the silver birches, as he stood before his little hovel chopping wood in his dress shirt and tie.

Jakes snorted.

He was actually wearing a dress shirt and tie, his tie primly tucked in between his buttons, safely out of the way as he worked, out here, in the middle of effing nowhere.

The bloke was hopeless. Stiff and standoffish even amidst the trees, who didn’t give a damn about how gleaming white his shirt was, nor whether or not he had bothered with a tie.

He looked just as he was when they had first met at the House Beautiful. As if he had stepped out from some far more reserved, some far cooler and more circumspect world.

At the sound of the approaching car, Morse paused in his work to watch him, a strain of wariness on his face.

Jakes pulled the car to a stop and got out, slamming the door behind him.  

“Oh,” Morse said, then, without enthusiasm. “I didn’t know who it was.”

“Yeah. I missed you, too.”

It would almost have been laughable, if it wasn’t so damn sad.  Morse looked as if he were already hoping he’d get right back in that car and drive away. He was like an old lady wondering how long she might be stuck with company.

Oh, dear. Will I have to ask him to tea?

Fair enough, Jakes supposed. He’d been short with him, when they’d found him, swilling around a glass of champagne in his hand, lolling about on a picnic blanket with that whole unsavory and dissipated set, when Jakes knew that the old man had been worrying over him like a little lost lamb.

He knew that he had been sharp with Morse, but.... didn’t he understand? Didn’t he understand his need for it to be all right? For him to be all right, after all that happened?

“It’s not for you,” he thought. “It’s for me.”

I don’t give a damn about you and your self-inflicted melancholy. I just need it to be over. For there to be no more damage done.

God only knew there had been enough and more than enough…

Jakes pulled a cigarette from out of his inner pocket. He took his time lighting it, too, as if to show Morse that he hadn’t the slightest intention of going anywhere. Not until he had his say.

He needed for it all to stop, that was all. He didn’t want Morse on his conscience, on top of everything else.

He was close to it. Closer than he ever would have dreamed.

“What is it that you want?” Morse asked.  

“To the point, as always,” Jakes said. He blew a steady stream of smoke into the air, as Morse regarded him, uncertain.

“I put my neck on the line for you,” he wanted to say. “I told things I thought I’d never tell a soul.”

But that, he knew, might tip the scales too far the other way.

It was true that he had been in Morse’s debt. Morse had risen up, had gone out to Blenheim Vale, to save Tommy Cork, to stand at Thursday’s side, even as he had crumbled, fallen like shattered glass, fallen with the shattered glass, to the table before him.

Morse had gotten sent to prison, framed for murder, had almost been sent up for life for his courage, for his recklessness.

And Jakes had worked like hell to get him out.

But Morse need not know everything, every terrible detail. He didn’t want Morse to feel as if he was in his debt, either.

He wanted to be even. That’s all. Even Stevens.  

He wanted to be free.

Once, it had seemed an impossibility. Now, it was so close. Tantalizingly close. Like the glitter of light on dark water.

So Jakes said nothing of all that. Swept it all away like the shards of the broken glass.

Instead, he took another long and thoughtful draw on his cigarette, this time, blowing the smoke right in the direction of Morse’s face.

“I thought I told you to give me a ring when you got out,” he said.

Morse, sullenly, said nothing.

“You don’t think they notice things like that?” Jakes pressed. “I told you. We need to present a united front. They already have County under their thumb. We have to show them City can’t be moved.”  

“It doesn’t matter,” Morse said. “I’m not City. I’m no longer a constable at all. I’m suspended, pended inquiry.”

“So that’s that, then? You went through all that training to— what? Quit after just a few months? But that is your modus operandi, isn’t it? To just up and disappear at a moment’s notice. Isn’t it?”

Jakes thought that such a low blow might get a rise out of Morse, and he was not disappointed.

Morse raised his chin, his face full of challenge, of his haughty, cat-like pride.

“Why would you go back?” he said. “After everything?”

“Maybe because I thought I could be of some use. Damn sight better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. We broke them. Have you heard the findings?”

Morse let out a bark of a mirthless laugh, then, one that seemed all the more terrible coming from him. Once, Morse had wandered into the nick spouting Greek poetry. Now, only a couple of months on the job, here he stood, already a bitter old copper, cynical and disillusioned.

“You mean the whitewash!” he cried.

“What did you expect?”

“Better!”

Jakes blew a short stream of smoke through his nose and shook his head.

“Well, you know what, then? Good for you. Because I bloody well didn’t.”

Morse, at least, did have the good grace to still a little at that.

Why should Morse expect any more justice than he did?  He wouldn’t deny that old Morse had been put through the wringer these past few weeks, but a month or so on the inside did not come near to it, no—not near to his own colder and sharper and deeper circle of hell. That long and seemingly unending hellscape that he had waded through, blindly, without hope, as a child.

“I never expected one thing to come back on them. Not so much as a goddamn parking ticket,” Jakes said. 

Morse said nothing.

“I thought that they’d sail on, all through their lives, utterly untouched. Just as they had been for years. Climbing their way to the top of their fields, no matter who they trampled over. Getting away with murder.”

He couldn’t hold it in. The anger was still there in his voice, he could hear it. It would never leave him.

But it needn’t be all of him, all of his story.

For the first time ever, he felt as if he might turn the page.

Morse cast his gaze down and smoothed a hand over the back of his disheveled hair. It was sinking in, all right. And although it pained Jakes even to allude to it, he said it anyway.

“I never thought anyone would ever believe me. My word against all of theirs? But we broke them.”  

Still, Morse kept his gaze averted, lowered down to the ground.

“I wouldn’t be of any use to you,” he said, at last, his voice thick, low.  

“You sure about that? What about all that we talked about? The old man’s been looking for help for you, did you know? Up at the colleges.”

“It doesn’t … it doesn’t work like that,” Morse said. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and shook his head.  “Deare… I felt …. but… I didn’t… I missed it. I missed everything. He …. He flattered me. He pretended to take me seriously. Told me I was a ‘sharp young man.’”

He faltered for a moment, choking on his next words as if they were dry husks caught deep in his throat. 

“I actually… I… told him things. I confided in him my suspicions. He made it sound as if we were in it together .... as if it .. it was our secret.”  

Jakes took a long draw on his cigarette. Far from making him feel better, the jolt of nicotine left him feeling slightly sick, brought a rush of bile rising up, welling up in the back of his mouth to be swallowed down again. Or maybe it was Morse’s words.

Our secret.

It was always meant to be our little secret.

He tossed the cigarette away. For a moment, he said nothing. Simply watched the burning ember, a spark of fiery orange, brightening for a moment before fading out, extinguished on the damp earth.

“That’s how they work, Morse,” Jakes said. “They put on a mask. They hold their galas, their balls to raise money for charity. Always there to write a big fat check to the Widows and Orphans. ‘Aren’t they fine people?’ everyone says. ‘Pillars of the community!’ And no one looks to what lies beneath. You weren’t the first to fall for it. But now you’ll be the last. With that lot anyway.” He huffed a rueful laugh. “Not like there won’t be more to take their place. Nature abhors a vacuum. You going to hide out here and let that happen?”

Morse maintained his gaze on the sodden, leaf-strewn ground.

“Come on, Morse. You were a constable, he was ACC for God’s sake. Why shouldn’t you have trusted him? Why should you be any different?”

Morse’s head snapped up at last; he looked up sharply at that.

“Because I am different.”

Jakes huffed. That was another thing. Morse had treasured that little idea of himself for too long, in his opinion.

“No, you’re not. Not really.”  

Morse looked a little stunned, utterly caught off-guard. Something in his face seemed to relax, then. It was as if the simple statement was the kindest thing anyone had said to him in years.

Jakes shook his head. It was a pathetic, honestly. Just when you thought Morse was the most difficult, the most insufferable little prick you ever came across, he’d give you a look so disarming, so full of gratitude, that you could see the struggling sod that lay hidden underneath.

“So, you going to invite me in or what?” Jakes asked.

Morse frowned and turned around to the cabin behind him, considering.

“This is me, Morse. Not your Auntie May.”

“All right,” he said.

He said this with an air of a man taking a plunge into the lake in the middle January.

It wasn’t the state of his little hidey-hole he was concerned about. He was deliberating over something else. He did know something about the case, about the girl left dead in the hit-and-run. Jakes was sure of it.

“There’s something I want to show you,” Morse said.

Jakes repressed another snort.

Yeah. He bet he did. Morse was predictable in sticking his nose in, if in nothing else.

Morse set the axe blade-down on top of the woodpile, and turned away, up the creaking steps of the old porch. Jakes followed, his footfalls feeling less than steady on the ramshackle boards as he crossed the threshold and headed through the narrow door.

It was dim inside the little cottage, the only light the gray daylight that passed through the small windows, falling dully on the wood beam walls, but it wasn’t a bad little place. There was a galley kitchen with an old-fashioned white porcelain sink on one wall, an overlarge armchair by the other. At the other end of the cabin, a narrow was piled high with plaid wool blankets, right beside a white shaving sink and small mirror.

Morse went at once to the kitchen counter, as Jakes moved out of the way, over to the upholstered chair, and looked about. The stacks of books, the records gathered in the cozy little corner, were all familiar; he had seen them all before at the groundskeeper’s cottage at Blythe Mount. 

But there was something new about Morse’s latest burrow, too. There were notes all over the side table, as if Morse had been studying up on something— white papers in danger of spilling over, like faded leaves, drifting to the floor.

Jakes looked up at the sound of a definitive pop to see that Morse had pulled the top off of an old sugar cannister. He pulled out a bit of cardboard stored within and handed it to him with an air of studied finality.

“Look,” his expression seemed to say. “We’re even.”

And that was all Jakes wanted, too.

Wasn’t it?

“I found something back up the road from the body,” Morse said. “It’s a scorecard from the North Oxford Golf Club. Yesterday’s date. The players’ names haven’t been entered, but their handicaps and the scores per hole should narrow it down. There’s a Cowley telephone number on the back. That’s the best I can do.”

He flicked his tongue over his bottom lip, then, watching him warily.

Jakes could almost hear Morse’s voice in his head.

"You’ve got what you wanted. Now go away and leave me alone."

“Good luck,” Morse said.

Jakes pulled his notebook out of his pocket and tucked the scorecard inside.

“Not bad, Morse,” he said.

And then, instead of leaving, he sauntered back over to the tattered upholstered chair, pointedly ignoring the disappointment on Morse’s face as he took another look ‘round, clearly without the slightest intention of going.  

There were plenty of empties about the place—Jakes had expected that. Opera records with the most sorrowful-looking birds you’d ever want to see featured prominently on the front.

Oh, yes. He was having himself a fine little wallow.

He picked up a book that was lying face down on the table amidst the papers to take a better look at the cover. It was familiar enough. Large staring eyes looking over a blue city.  

“What?” Jakes said. “You sure you’re all right, Morse? Reading a plain old novel, are you? In English and everything?”

He thought he might tease a wan smile from him. Instead, a cloud passed over Morse’s face.

Jakes would have known the look anywhere; he had seen it on one hundred faces.

Morse was thinking it over, whether or not to trust him.

Jakes scowled.

What other trouble could Morse possibly have stumbled onto out here, in the woods, living amongst the charmed set?

Morse looked away and tugged, a little disconsolately, at his ear.

“Something strange has been happening to me,” he said.  

Jakes could not help but huff a small laugh.

“Really? You don’t say.”

“I can’t explain. It sounds mad.” 

“What?” Jakes asked. “Are you intoning on about the green light? Are you like a ‘boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past?’ Is that why you’re so set on not coming back to work?”

Morse looked surprised.

“So …. you know it, then?” Morse asked. “Gatsby?”  

Jakes rolled his eyes. The thing was about a hundred pages long.

“You’re not the only one who can read a book, Morse,” he said. He tossed the old paperback onto the table. “Yeah, I’ve read it before. To tell you the truth, I sort of hated it.”

Morse’s look of surprise did not fade, but, to Jakes’s astonishment, he seemed interested, too, in what he had to say. As if he thought he might have some insights to share.

It was a first, really.

“Why?” Morse asked.

Jakes shrugged. “Just seems unfair to me. All the bloke wanted was to change his life. A fresh start. Everyone has the right to start over. Right?

“Mmmmm.”

“Instead, it all backfires. The girl he was so set on throws him under the bus. And then, that’s it. It’s over. All his dreams … just so much dust. All of those parties, everyone who loved him when he was up, all just so much smoke and mirrors. No one even bothers to attend his funeral. Only that one old guy with the big glasses and that other bloke, who just goes moping off. What’s his name?

“Nick Caraway.”  

“Yeah,” Jakes said. “What a lost cause that guy was.”

“Why do you say that?” Morse asked.

“He acts like he’s just some innocent bystander, a bystander in his own life. Always on the outside, looking in. But that Jordan had it right. He’s not so honest as he seems. What is it that she says, about him being a careless driver? I remember it was right at the end.”

He picked the book back up again, and thumbed through it starting from the back cover. Wasn’t all that hard to find the passage. As he said, wasn’t all that long a book, really.

“Oh, yeah. Here it is. She says, ‘You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met a bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”

Jakes threw the book back down again, in dismissal.

“She was right there. Not too honest with her, was he? Not too honest with himself, either. You get the feeling he was half in love with old Gatsby himself.”

A flicker of irritated disbelief passed over Morse’s face, and then he shook his head, half-laughing.

“What?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jakes said. “’I disapprove of him entirely,’ he says, ‘he’s a fake, he’s a fraud,’ but then he goes on to describe the way he smiled at him for about two and a half paragraphs.”

Morse tugged on that ear again and looked away.

Funny. Jim was always one to clutch at his pearls at any mention of the homosexuals that they all knew met up at the public convenience in Godstow.  Jakes never would have thought Morse would be so priggish about that sort of thing.

“You could take a page out of that book,” Jakes said.

“What?” Morse asked. “How do you mean?”  

“You might shoot your sights a little higher than this dump. What are you going to do when winter comes?”

“It’s not bad,” Morse said. “I like it here. It’s quiet.”

“And you’ve nothing worth going back to Oxford for? Nothing worth a fight? Thursday said you had a girl.”

“Oh,” he said, then, suddenly once more subdued. “You know. I suppose it seemed as if we might have been something once. But. …”  

He shrugged.

And that was that.

Jakes should have known.

Getting anything out of Morse was like pulling teeth.

Jakes sank down into the musty, tattered old chair. The fabric of the arm rests felt slightly mealy, damp, beneath his hands, but it was a comfortable chair all the same.

Morse seemed to sink a little at the sight of Jakes making himself at home, but, again, Jakes ignored that. He glanced instead to the decanter of Scotch that stood amidst the books and papers on the small walnut end table.  Pretty expensive-looking stuff from the color of it. A gift from one of his pals from when he was up, he supposed. Very la-de-dah.

“Look, Morse. I don’t know how to tell you this, but, when someone comes visiting, it’s polite to offer them a drink.”

“Mmmm?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me some of that?” He nodded to the glass decanter.

Morse looked at it. Jakes counted the seconds in his head, waiting for it to sink in.

“Oh,” Morse said. “All right.”

Morse stepped over and took it up in his hand, carting it back over to the little counter by the sink to pour out two glasses.

“But what?” Jakes asked, at last, amidst the sound of the burble of whiskey.

“Hmmm?”

“You were talking about the girl.”

“Oh,” Morse said. He clinked the glasses together and stepped closer, handing one off to him. Then, he rocked a step back again, to lean up against the counter. “I don’t know. Once ... once, we ran into one another on the street. In front of a mattress shop. The salesman assumed we were there to make a purchase. That we were a married couple.”

“Ooooo,” Jakes groaned. “Bad luck. What? Did the girl balk at the very idea?”

“No,” Morse said. “It was nice. For a moment, it felt like it was true. It was true. At least in the salesman’s mind. We tried out the mattresses. Laid out side by side. And then, I looked over to her and there she was, looking over to me, too. She smiled. It lit her eyes, completely, that smile. In that moment, I could scarcely breathe. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.”

Jakes didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or to shake his head in despair of him.

She had been giving him every signal, it seemed.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Surely even Morse couldn’t have blown that?

“And then what happened?”

“It was nice. But….”

“But what?”

“When I looked into her eyes... it was like seeing into a life that wasn’t mine. I’m just. I’m no good for her. I won’t make her happy.”

Jakes huffed.

What sort of rubbish way of thinking was that?

“Already see that, did you?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you wouldn’t make her happy,” he replied, “seeing as you don’t think she’s got too much going on in the upstairs department.”

Predictably, Morse looked affronted, downright tetchy, at that. Jakes knew all too well that it was unlikely that Morse would ever go so dewy-eyed over a girl who wasn’t pretty brainy, but it all served to prove his point.

“Of course, she does,” Morse said, hotly. “She’s cleverer than you or me. She’s a registered nurse.”

“Then don’t you think you should have allowed her to make that decision for herself? Instead of making up her mind for her?”

Morse looked a little uncertain at that. Then he looked down into his glass.

“It… it wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to her to drag her into all that.”

“Into all what? It’s over.”

It was over. Jakes needed it to be over. He could feel it in his hand, the turn of the page. It was like a thing with feathers, like hope, like Hope.

Morse ran a hand over the back of his head, smoothing his messy hair.

And it came to Jakes at once.

“Morse,” he said, sharply. “Is this some sort of noble sacrifice? Has somebody threatened you?”

“No,” he answered.

It was a beat too quick, that answer.

Someone had. Morse was lying.  

Lying to himself?

Or worse, lying for his, Jakes’, sake?

What other vermin had escaped the shine of the light? Creeped off into the darkness?

Jakes took a long draught of Scotch, trying to steady himself so that his next words would not break.

He had broken once. But never again.

Not for them.

They would not take one more thing from him, from Morse, from anyone decent.

From anyone he had … come to care about.

“Good. You shouldn’t let them get to you. They’re none of them worth it.”

“I know that.”

“All right, then. I’d just hate to see you make your life a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know bloody well what I mean,” Jakes said, darkly.

Morse had convinced himself already.

He was different. He was a magnet for disaster. He was not made for happiness.

Jakes took another sip of Scotch, allowing it to roll sweet and smooth over his tongue, as he sat back, looking to the drift of trees out the window. 

He could see how Morse might like it here. Simple. Quiet. Birds warbling in the undergrowth. The glide of clouds across the sky. There was a reason they called it Lake Silence, with all of those evergreens so deep and dark the needles seemed to absorb all sound.

What was there to foretell, all the way out here? What dire warning might fall from his lips?

That summer was ending? That soon the mist would rise on the water? That the leaves would turn to gold?

The change in the seasons came somehow, anyhow, with the turn of the earth on its imperfect axis. It cared not for what Morse did or did not say.

“I’ll only make a hash of things. I wouldn’t be any good for her. I’ll  … I’ll ruin her life,” Morse said. 

“And yet, you won’t listen to the old man, try to do one thing to make yours better. If we all thought that, then…..”

Then what?

What would have become of him, if he had had to go on and on like that, staggering on with all of those poorly-buried memories, with that worm eating at his gut?  What would have become of him, if he had been forced to spend all of his life, pushing it down and down and down…

There was something in it, saying the demon’s name out loud. To see it, to mark it, was the best way of exorcizing it from his soul. If he still had been forced to carry all that, then….

Then he never would have hope.

Have Hope.

Such a secret was impossible to keep between two people who loved one another.

Between a husband and a wife…

And now he was free. So close to being free.

If only Morse would snip it, snip that last tie that bound.

If only he’d be all right so that his conscience could be bloody well clear of him.

“You seem … different somehow,” Morse said.

“Do I?”

“Hmmmm.”

Not having a go at him, perhaps was what he meant.  

Jakes could afford to be generous now, he supposed. What bastard he was, really. What did Hope see in him? 

It was a sad thing wasn’t it? A sad state of human affairs? How easily we find we can be more generous when we ourselves are happy?

He could have been kinder to Morse all along, really. If he hadn’t been half-afraid of him. Of what he might see.

“How about you?” Morse asked. “Are you still seeing that girl?”

It must have shown on his face, his happiness. Morse always did manage to see the truth of things.

Because just last night, they had talked as they had never had, lying side by side in his narrow bed. Talked as he had never talked to any woman. He had hardly even noticed when the room began to grow lighter.

“I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she said. “It might be early to worry you, but…”

“But what?”

“I’m late.”

The room was rosy with the first light of dawn, so that it took Jakes a moment to comprehend this.

Late for what? For tutorial? It was far too early, surely. 

And then, it registered.

She was watching his face, carefully. Late. It was a word that spoke of the future, a word with a future hidden in it.

He took her hand in his and smiled, running his thumb across the back of her knuckles.

He should have been in his best suit, standing at her door with roses. He should have gone down on one knee. He’d do all of that later, so that they’d have a tale to tell her parents. And a nice story for the kiddie someday.

If she’d have him.

“Hope,” he said. “Would you do me the honor?”

She smiled then, no doubt, at his pronunciation of the word honor. She seemed to think his accent was posh, even though it wasn’t so much.

That was all right, that one misconception.

Considering she knew all of the truth of him now.

Suddenly, Jakes became aware of the fact that Morse was watching him, bemused. God only knew what stupid expression he must have had on his face.   

“Sorry,” Jakes said.

It was not the time to think on such things, however much they might flutter up inside of him, full of feathers, full of light. He was here to talk about Morse’s future, not his own.

It seemed to Jakes now as if he had been a drowning man, and Morse had found him in that pub, extended him his hand; but then, even as he had taken it, used it to climb out of the pit, he had pulled Morse in, left him behind to sink, to fall.

It had been a hell of a case for someone still so green. He didn’t need to rub Morse’s face in it, his happiness.

There had been enough damage.

Just for me. Just be all right for me, Jesus.

“You can tell me. I don’t mind,” Morse said. 

“Ah. Well,” Jakes replied. “You’ve got other things on your mind right now.”

But Morse… Morse it seemed was happy. Happy for him, even amidst his own little pity party.

“It’s all right,” Morse said. “I’m glad you told me. All who would win joy, must share it. Happiness was born a twin.”

For a moment, his smile faded. He seemed to gaze before him, at some indiscriminate spot, his eyes thoughtful, as if he were calculating something.

“Morse?”

“It’s ….” he began.

“Yeah?”

He shook his head as if to dismiss some thought, but Jakes had the definite impression that he had stumbled onto something, that he was filing something away in that cluttered and confounding brain of his.

“It’s nothing,” Morse said.

He smiled. And then took a sip of his Scotch.  

“Tell me about Hope,” he said, so wistfully, that you might have thought he was talking about the feeling, and not his fiancée.

Chapter Text

It was with a heavy sigh that Thursday tossed the case file back onto his desk. Not much to go on, really. They could not find even one witness who had seen the girl leave the funfair; there had not been one sighting.  

It was as if Jeanne Hearne had vanished from right off the pitch, as if that Ghost Train might really be cursed, possessed of some sort of hidden demonic powers.

A mad idea, of course.

But they were missing something. He could feel it in his corns.

He looked up, then, his attention caught by the sound of Sergeant Jakes rapping the back of his knuckles against his door, even as he was already ducking into his office.

“North Oxford Golf Club’s finally got their finger out, about that score card Morse found,” he said. “There’s two members played that day with a seven handicap. One of ‘em was Bruce Belborough. Only the game was booked in the name of his oppo, a Mr. Outis.”

Thursday took a moment to consider that. He’d given him a bad feeling from the beginning, Belborough, had set his alarm bells right off. The arrogance of the man, that petulant sulkiness of the onetime hero of the playing field gone soft, gone to seed, wafting off of him. That irritated twitch of his dark and bristling moustache.

And then there was his wife, with that frostiness, that sadness about her, as if she were a woman made of glass.

An affair maybe? Jeanne Hearne had threatened to tell his wife, and Belborough had wanted to shut her mouth for good?

Any man who would lay his hand to a woman…

“Hmmm,” Thursday rumbled, darkly, unconsciously balling one broad fist.  “Sounds like it’s about time to pay Lord Belborough another visit.”

“Sir,” Jakes said.

Thursday went to take his hat and coat from off the stand by the door, when, suddenly, the phone on his desk began to ring, sharp and shrill. He was about to let it go, to let the switchboard transfer the call to the duty sergeant downstairs, but then, somehow, he felt a prickling sensation along the back of his collar. A tingle, as if the harsh metallic call carried a charge to it, as if someone was concentrating solely on him, willing him to answer.

He turned back to the desk and picked up the receiver with one easy sweep of his hand.

“Thursday,” he said.

“Sir?” Morse said. “I need your help.”

Thursday stood up a little straighter at that, snapping to attention—not only at the distinct note of alarm in Morse’s voice, but at the words themselves.

Wasn’t like Morse to admit he needed anything. Not even a tanner for the gas.  

“Where are you?” Thursday said. “Belborough’s?”

Sergeant Jakes folded his arms and leaned in the doorframe, his heavy dark brows contracted, clearly straining to listen.  

“No,” Morse began. “No, I’m at ….” 

Abruptly, his words were cut off, followed by the thick buzz of a dial tone.

And then, silence.

“Morse?”

Thursday scowled. It seemed unlikely that Morse would bother to ring only to hang up on him, mid-sentence.

Had the line been cut? And if so, by whom?  

He slammed the telephone down on the carriage and picked it up again.

“Information room?” he said. “I need a trace on that last number to phone this line.”

***

It was the maddest denouement to a case that Jakes had ever witnessed, in all of his seven years on the job. It was like a trick of a pair of fun house mirrors, or else a trick of a twist in the plot, a case of life plagiarizing the end of a sensational pulp novel. Of truth stranger than fiction.  

Once they got over to Bixby’s overblown pile on Lake Silence, he and Thursday burst through the double front doors and then prowled through the darkened rooms, one by one, listening for any sounds of life, but hearing nothing. They made their way down a silent hall, and then, finally, they found them—arranged as if in a scene from some penny page-turner— standing in an oak-paneled study, illuminated by a circle of light cast by a single silver lamp.

Bixby was there, elegant as always in an evening suit, his dark hair combed back, the gold ring on his little finger catching the gleam of the lowlight as he leaned up against the desk.

And Bixby was also by the window, his suave face flushed with anger …

Looking straight into the barrel of a gun that Morse held steady, clasped in both hands.

Jakes cursed under his breath.

Morse had been in enough trouble these past weeks as it was. He hadn’t come back to the nick, but hadn’t put his papers in, either. He was in a gray zone, legally. He had no bloody business playing the policeman if he wasn’t going to reclaim his warrant card.

It certainly wouldn’t go well for him, if this proved to be some flight of fancy, some huge a mistake.

Or for them, either, when it came down to it, considering that Morse had been one of their own, a part of a Cowley that was only now emerging from the ashes, from the scandal of Blenheim Vale.

In an instant, Jakes crossed the room, and, in one unbroken motion, he took the gun from Morse’s hands, keeping it trained on the Bixby by the window all the same—taking command of the scene, but prepared to hear Morse out, to give him a moment, at least, to explain.

To his surprise—to his relief—Morse allowed this.

“He was in the shrubbery, right outside the window,” Morse said, tersely. “I was walking away, and I heard a noise. You’ll find his firearm there, where he dropped it. A twelve ball. Thirty-six-inch barrel.”

Jakes could not quite repress a snort of impatience. Those details were all well and good, as far as filling out the report went.

The question was, who was “he?”

Who, exactly, had Morse been threatening at gun point?

Jakes darted a glance between the two identical men in identical evening suits, careful to keep the man by the window in his peripheral vision.

“Who’s the real Joss Bixby?” he asked. 

“I am, old man,” said the man by the desk.

“No one is,” Morse said, at the same time.

“All right,” Thursday said, taking one step forward, holding his hands out, gesturing for a universal calm. “All right. So… what’s the story, here, then?”

“James Green and Co.,” Morse pronounced roundly—and rather grandly, too, enunciating each word with relish; it was as if he were taking to the boards. “It’s a rather lackluster name for a magician, don’t you think? Not a patch on Janus Greel and Conrad, the original name of your act.” 

The man by the window raised his chin, defiant. His dark eyes—riveted on Morse—flickered with a maniacal glitter that Jakes knew all too well. It was the unsettling disconnect of a man who was not quite sane.

His double, in the meanwhile, the man standing by the desk, put his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, as if overtaken by some sudden sadness, some bone-deep weariness.

It was surreal, standing there between the mirrored image of the two men, so alike, and yet so different.

And it also made sense in ways that Thursday could not know.

‘Happiness was born a twin,’ Morse had said, back at the lake house, that strange, unfocused look coming over his face.

There was nothing magic about it. No illusion.

They were twins.

It was as simple and as unlikely as that.

What bearing that might have on the case, Jakes did not yet know, but, surely, it must go part-way to explaining why they had had such a hell of a time pinning down a motive, a culprit.

Had they been playing some sort of shell game, all along? Overlooking something, or someone, hidden in plain sight?

 “It could just as easily have been Janus Greel and sons,” Morse said.  

Thursday narrowed his eyes, thoughtfully, as Morse went on.

“Charlie and Conrad Greel. Two boys. Born within an hour of each other. Identical in every way, except for one. But as soon as Conrad removed his spectacles, no one could tell them apart. One boy stood alone in a wardrobe as the door was closed—he vanished— and appeared in the other. Vanished and reappeared, like magic. The trick of it was, the illusion depended on everyone believing there was only one boy. An illusion maintained even amongst the other show folk.”

“So … what are you saying?” Jakes asked.

“One boy had to be kept hidden from the world,” Morse said. “He existed for only those few minutes he was on the stage. For the rest of the time, he lived in shadow. Their caravan was his world.”

Jakes kept the hand that held the gun steady, even though something in his heart, in his gut, quivered, faltered.

It sounded like hell.

What would he have done, what would have become of him, how would he have survived those long years, without those almost holy moments out in the woods, walking though the sweet-scented leaves, with Angela holding his small hand? How would he have found the strength to endure without those golden afternoons, kicking around the football with Big Pete and Benny and George, their cheeks red with the cold, just kids, for those magic few moments? Moments during which they were free, during which they might almost pretend they were just like other boys, playing in one of their back gardens, imagining that, at any moment, one of their mothers might emerge from a back kitchen door with cocoa and gingerbread?

Jakes had seen those caravans.

Ten feet wide, about twenty-five feet long.

How had the boy filled the hours? The months? The years?

“What that might do to a young soul, I don’t like to think,” Thursday said, grimly.

“No art comes without suffering, without cost,” Conrad Greel said, fiercely.

“Conrad,” Bixby sighed. “How can you say that? I know… you can’t see it. But … he’s a monster. Our father is a monster.”

“You. You don’t even have the guts to live up to the illusion of your own making. You don’t know the meaning of sacrifice. You don’t deserve any of this. None of it.”

Bixby, sorrowfully, shook his head.

“All right,” Thursday said, cutting them off. “All right.”

Jakes kept his hand steady, but he felt a wave of empathy for the other man, too, then—Bixby or Charlie, or whatever the hell his name was.

They had something unexpected in common, hadn’t they?  His brother, locked away, would not have seen it.

But Bixby would have.

Just as he had.

Charlie, too, must have looked once, through those small windows of peace and found hope. As he roamed the fair grounds, he, too, would have felt it, seen it, those glimpses of normality, even beauty. The lights on the pitch at night. The scatter of stars. A father giving his laughing son a ride on his shoulders as they made their way through the crowds, amidst the scent of roasted nuts and candy floss, their voices ringing out in the open air.

When had Charlie Greel began to realize it?

When had he begun to look at his life and say… ‘this is not normal?’

“As the years passed,” Morse said, “to maintain the secrecy of the original act, Janus Greel became the Great Zambezi, and Conrad became Swopes. And every other audience plant that the act could ever need.”

Jakes looked to Conrad Greel sharply.

He was Swopes? That burned and disfigured old man? How?

“What am I?” Conrad Greel snarled. “A man of a thousand faces?”

 “You were there when Jeannie Hearne got on the stage, and you were there at the wheel of Bruce’s car when she came to, afraid, wondering how the hell she got there from the ghost train. You left the scorecard. You knew it would lead us to Lord Belborough. That we’d find out about his affair with Jeannie Hearne and that it was his car used to kill her,” Morse said.

“It was polyurethane, that was found under Jeanne Hearne’s fingernails.  A part of your disguise that she’d scratched from your face while she fought for her life.”

Thursday’s face darkened, full of a brusque impatience, and Jakes knew precisely why.

The bloody autopsy report? What had Morse been up to, these past few hours? Had Morse given Dr. DeBryn a ring, too?

Jakes hoped to hell he had been honest with the doctor, at least, for all of their sakes.

It seemed as if Morse had only two switches on the dial. On and off.

“No, I won’t go back,” he had said.

Then, he had gotten some lead between his teeth or another, and from that point on, he had been a regular one-man whirlwind. Even though he might have gotten himself bloody well killed in the process. Left them with a bigger mess to clean up.

“Having framed Bruce, the only thing that stood in your way was Joss Bixby,” Morse said. “While Bixby drew breath, you would be forever Swopes. So you decided to take back the life that you’ve always been denied. A man who wasn’t there would kill a man who didn’t exist.”

“You take Bixby’s place,” Thursday said. “You get the money, the powder, the whole shebang. It’s a hell of a trick.”

“It’s the perfect crime,” Conrad Greel said.

“Not quite,” Morse said, crisply.

And a little snootily, too, in Jakes’ opinion.

“Jesus,” he wanted to tell him. “Show some compassion.”

The man was deranged, but who wouldn’t be, after years of years of such a life? Brainwashed into compliance, it seemed, by his own father?  The way Morse behaved, you would think Conrad Greel had offended him on some deeply personal level.

“Mr. Outis?” Morse asked. “If you’re going to choose an alias, don’t pick the same pseudonym that Odysseus used to fight Polyphemus. Not in a town filled with classicists.”

He let out a dismissive snort of a laugh, then, pleased with his own cleverness, and Conrad Greel took one step forward. At once, Jakes raised the gun higher, showing him he meant business, stopping him dead in his tracks.

Greel looked as if he would love nothing so much as to tear Morse to shreds with his bare hands for having dashed his well-laid plans to pieces, but what could he do? He was good and cornered.

Just as he always had been, Jakes supposed.

A silence fell over the shadowed room, as a fantastic mahogany carriage clock on the mantle ticked on, marking the seconds in which no one said a word.

The question was there, hanging heavy in the air, like the blue smoke of a forgotten cigarette, but Jakes was afraid to ask it.

“How does a father choose?” Thursday ventured, the old man, decent to his core, clearly at a loss.

 It was Charlie, rather than Conrad, who answered, a certain haunted quality in his eyes.

“How does a father choose which son gets a life and which is condemned to darkness?” he asked.

With a terrible casualness, he pulled a gold gambling chip from out of his pocket. He flipped it so that it spiraled in the air, gleaming warm as liquid gold in the light, before he caught it in one hand and slapped it on to the back of his wrist.

“One was damned, and one was saved,” he said.

Jakes felt as if he might well be sick.

He heaved a steadying breath.

 “Conrad Greel,”  he said. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Jeanne Hearne. You don’t have to say anything. But know if you do say anything, it can be held in evidence against you.”

And maybe Conrad Greel had been damned, maybe it was too late; there was no repentance in his eyes, no strain of feeling, at having left a girl dead in the woods—not much of anything in his face at all but that angry and fanatical light, a low erratic simmer set just high enough to be dangerous.

Jakes thought that the man might struggle or curse as he cuffed him, but instead, he behaved with an almost regal dignity, as if he were still on the stage, as if he were in the spotlight.

Perhaps that was just the way he wanted it. Perhaps it was just like being on the stage again, inhabiting one of those few moments in which he knew he did, in fact, exist.  

“We’ll need you to come down to the station,” Thursday said, then, to Bixby. “Make a statement.”

“Of course, Inspector.”

“And Morse. I’ll expect you at your desk at eight o’clock sharp.”

“Sir,” Morse said.   

Thursday seemed to relax a little, in relief, as Jakes hustled Conrad Greel to the door.

Justice had been done for Jeanne Hearne. But Jakes took no pleasure in it, this arrest.

"Happiness was born a twin,” Morse had said.

Hard to see what happiness there was in all this.

Although, perhaps there might be, after all. Whatever might lay ahead for Conrad Greel, it would have to be better, surely, than what lay behind him. It would be hospital, rather than prison for him, Jakes was fairly certain of that. A long, dark road, but at least he’d be freer than he was.

At least he might have a second chance.  

Perhaps it was there, after all, that silver lining he had always looked for, that Angela had always pointed out, after a storm.

There certainly was a new light there, in Morse’s face.

And Jakes thought he knew precisely why.

He had done it, hadn’t he?

He had unlocked his own prophecy; for once, he and he had known what it meant before it was too late.

Maybe these past weeks might yet bring a second chance for all of them—for all of this room full of lost boys. For him, for Conrad, for Morse, for Bixby. Each of them had carried a secret, of which they were now free. It was all out, all out in the open now, exposed to the freshness of the air, to the light.  

Happiness was born a twin.

Any why not? It wasn’t as if there was some limit as to the amount of happiness in the world. Why should it not be spread, be shared, be multiplied?

“Bixby,” Thursday said, a jerk of his head.

“Ah,” he said. “Coming, Inspector.”

And then again, perhaps Morse’s words might carry some other meaning, too, some secret nuance meant only for him.

Because, in the next moment, Jakes found that he had to do a double-take, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing.

As Bixby swept across the room, following in Thursday’s wake, he paused mid-step, and cast a backwards glance to Morse.

It was just like watching a page of Morse’s battered old paperback spring to life, before his very eyes.

Bixby smiled at Morse like the weather man, as if he understood Morse in precisely the way that he might wish to be understood. As if there had been some pleasant significance in Morse having been the one to have saved him, as if they had been in ecstatic cahoots all summer.

For a moment, Morse fought against it.

And then he turned away and pulled at his ear.

***

Thursday sat on a bench before the Radcliffe Camera, with Morse at his side. It was a beautiful day, really, what with the early afternoon light falling onto all of that rusticated golden limestone of the city, illuminating its facades so that they seemed to glow like candlelight against impossibly blue skies. A soft wind stirred the leaves of the trees and small saplings planted along the greenspace, and, every now and then, there was the chime of a passing bicycle bell.

The afternoon sun, warm on his face, the dreaming spires on the horizon, the flutter of pigeons overhead, drifting this way and that with the will of the wind, the clean scent of green in the air: it was his Oxford. It was the refuge to which he had once brought his young family from out of the Smoke.

Best decision he ever made.

He felt a surge of gratitude, of an almost boyish happiness, as he pulled his sandwich from his pocket, and—in his happiness—he wanted nothing more than for Morse to be happy and settled, too.

There would be much work ahead, but the tide had turned, Thursday could feel it. The question of Morse had been there for some time, niggling at some corner of his mind—the pale light of the lad’s wintery face seeming always to look out at him, from some forgotten and untidy spot, whenever he least expected it, his strange words, that so often came back to haunt him, ghosting along at the edges of his thoughts.

But now, as they sat side by side on the bench under the sun, Thursday was sure of it: they’d get him on the right track.

And they’d do it together.

It might have been his imagination, but it seemed as if there was some new golden light in Morse’s face, a new scatter of summer freckles across the bridge of his nose, an openness in his expression that had not been there before.

“It was something I said to Jakes,” Morse began. “‘Happiness was born a twin.’”

Thursday began to unwrap his sandwich with a loud rustle of wax paper.

“Cheese and pickle,” Morse said.   

Thursday, taken off-guard by the break in his tone, that quickly-tossed out prognostication, looked over to him. Then, he broke onto a grin.

Morse was perceptive, he was uncanny, but he was only human, after all. Wasn’t always right.

“Cheese and pickle? On a Tuesday?” he laughed. “Talk sense.”

“Hmmmm,” Morse said. “The bank holiday threw Mrs. Thursday off, I’m afraid.”

Carefully, Thursday pulled back the wrapper.

Damn, if it wasn’t cheese and pickle.

Thursday let out a cry of surprise, as Morse smiled benevolently on, looking pleased as Punch with himself.  

“So then what?” Thursday asked.

“Hmmmm?”

“Happiness was born a twin, you said? Where did that come from?”

“Oh. Jakes stopped by the lake house. He told me about this girl he’s been seeing.”

“That right?”

That was news to him, but not all that astounding. He was always on the make, Jakes. This one, though, must be something special. It certainly would explain that new bounce in Jakes’ step, despite everything that had happened these past weeks.

It was a far greater revelation, really, to learn that Morse and Jakes had had such an apparently friendly conversation.

“Mmmm,” Morse said. “I told him that I was glad that he felt he could tell me. That to have joy, one must share it. ‘Happiness is born a twin.’ It’s from a poem. By Byron. And then it came to me….”

He leaned forward slightly, the blueness of his eyes taking on a wintery gleam as a breeze kicked up and ruffled at his disheveled, waving hair.

“Bixby has everything in the world. Or, almost everything. The point, is, who wouldn’t want to swap places, to walk in his shoes? And how easy would it be, for a twin, to orchestrate some way to do just that? So I asked him.”

Thursday was just getting ready to take a bite out of his sandwich, when he paused, mid-motion.  

“You asked him? Simple as that?”

“Yes,” Morse said. “We were in his study, having a drink. And I asked him. He was surprised. No one knew, you see. It’s been a secret, all of his life. But one that’s troubled him. He’s under no illusions about his father.”

“I can well imagine.”

“But, once he started talking, it all made sense. It all fit together. Things that Kay had told me, and Dr. DeBryn.”  

Thursday pressed his lips together. He would have to have a talk with him about that.

But for now, he did not want to disturb it, this new and easy burble of words, pouring out between them.

It was like that first morning of spring, when the ice begins to thaw.

“I tried to ring you, to tell you all that I had pieced together,” Morse said, “but then the phone line went dead. Bixby and I searched the house, but all of the phones were the same—so we knew that the line had been cut and that it must have been done from the outside. We went out into the garden, and that’s when I heard a rustle in the shrubbery. Conrad. He’d taken to stalking the property, looking for his best chance. He leapt out, aimed his firearm at Bix, and so I pulled out my gun, disarmed him.”

This time, Thursday did allow himself a rumble of disapproval.

“I knew something wasn’t right,” Morse protested, catching his meaning right away.  “I …I’d taken to carrying it.”

“Where did you get it? Lucky for you it wasn’t police issue. Lucky for us all.” Thursday huffed. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“My father gave it to me,” Morse said. “When I was twelve. For rabbits.”

He shrugged then, and, at once, it was there, some shift in the air, a clear but pristine chill, like the first breath of autumn.  

“Make a man,” Morse murmured.

For a moment, Morse said nothing, simply gazed quietly at some spot on the pavement while Thursday leaned back against the bench, regarding him.

He had hurried Morse to Lincolnshire, a gunshot wound in his side, right from Mrs. Coke-Norris’ house, had gotten him there in time to say goodbye, but it hadn’t ended all that well with his father, Thursday knew.  

There had been no harsh words, no hatreds between them, nothing so dramatic as that. But perhaps that almost might have been preferable to what had transpired.

Because neither had there been any deathbed change of heart, any real reconciliation, any real sense of understanding forged between them, either.

No bitter fight to clear the air, nor no long-overdue conversation.

Just that same solid sense of disappointment, of an expanse of endless gray.

“Well. It saved my life. Didn’t it?” Morse said. “In the end?”  

Thursday gave him an encouraging smile.

Morse’s father might not have had all that much love to give to him, but he had, however inadvertently, done him a good turn.

He did not do much, Morse might tell himself. But once, he saved me.  

A man only gets one father. Morse needed to find some scrap of care, of love, to hold on to. Thursday understood that.

“Yes,” Thursday agreed staunchly. “It did that. To which end I’m grateful.”

Morse startled at the vehemence with which he said the words. A flush or warmth infused his eyes, then, rose up in his summer freckled face.

“And the polyurethane?” Thursday prompted.

He flushed all the further at that, turning pink almost to the tips of his ears, and for good reason.

“I … I rang Dr. DeBryn,” he admitted. “Asked about the autopsy results.. I …. it wasn’t a lie,” he was quick to add. “By then, I had already decided to go back.”

Thursday grumbled a bit, more in warning than in reprimand. There was a part of him that was glad of it, even.

It seemed that Morse, in his few months on the job, was beginning to form his own relationships, his own friendships—with Sergeant Jakes, with Dr. DeBryn.

The more threads Morse had to tie him to the real, workaday world, the less likely he might be to drift off again, to go back to that cold and solitary life, wafting about from place to place like an old bit of paper caught up in a wind, living hand to mouth, one odd job after the next.  

There was hope, and more than hope, Thursday thought—especially considering that, for once, Morse had used his gift to unlock the truth, to save a life before it was too late.

“Ah. Well,” Thursday said. “All’s well that ends well. You saved Bixby’s life, in the end. And who knows who many others. A man as damaged as that? It was clear that he wasn’t planning on letting anyone stand in his way.”

“I was just stumbling around, really,” Morse said.  

“It’s what you’re good at.”

“Mmmm,” Morse said, acceptingly, but not entirely convinced.

Thursday took a bite of his sandwich, as Morse gazed once more before him, his lips half-parted, as if he would say more. Thursday watched him from the corner of his eye.

He could feel him mulling it over, whether or not he would speak of it, those missing weeks.

So he took another bite of his sandwich, chewing it carefully, keeping his expression mild, the atmosphere light, as if it didn’t matter to him much, one way or the other.

It was a little like sitting still in a garden, avoiding all eye contact, so that a wild animal might approach one, or a bird might light on one’s finger.

“The first week, I hardly slept at all,” Morse said.

Thursday swallowed.  Slowly, he turned to look at him, still careful to do nothing that might disturb that slow trickle of words, like cold water moving slowly over copper-colored stones.

It’s all right, he wanted to tell him. Take as long as you need.

Morse grimaced in recognition.

“Kept thinking I’d be found hanging from the bars of the cell or take a dive from the top walk. I kept expecting to hear boots on the landing, a key in the door, but nobody came. A month. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Not until Jakes came by to tell me. That was the worst of it.”

He shuddered slightly, his eyes welling up—brimming, but not flowing over—like twin icy pools.

“Well. No, not quite,” he managed. “The worst was knowing it was my fault. I …”

Thursday’s heart sank. He knew he was thinking of it again, that poem. It was one in particular that seemed to affect him somehow. As if it held some other meaning for him, not yet realized.

What that was, Thursday couldn’t say. He doubted Morse could, either.

Thursday hesitated for just a moment, considering his next words. He wanted to say them clearly, without equivocation, in a way that might remove all doubt.

Because he meant them, each and every one.

“It’s like I told you,” he said, at last. “I knew walking in to Blenheim Vale, that I might not walk out. Sometimes, you’ve got to put all you are against all they’ve got. It was my decision.”

Morse shook his head.

“If I had been quicker off the mark…..”

“You were there in the end,” Thursday said, firm as granite. “Nobody else. You had the chance to run, to look to your own neck. You didn’t. You stood. A pinch like that? It’s not prophecy that counts, it’s guts. I won’t forget it. Ever.”

Morse’s eyes wavered over his face. It seemed as if he might look away, but Thursday wasn’t about to let it go that easily. He held his gaze, whether he willed it or no, willing him to accept the truth of it.

Finally, Morse heaved a sigh.   

For now, at least, it seemed he believed him.

Another fresh gust of wind kicked up, soft and warm and gentle, stirring at the tender leaves and at Morse’s tangled hair. Under the pretense of looking away from him, Morse raised his face to the billowing sky and closed his eyes. For a few minutes, he remained like that, like a cat warming himself in the sun. Thursday finished his sandwich.

It was a companionable silence, that fell between them, then, one that felt like a precursor of many to come, until, at last, Morse stirred beside him.

“You know,” he said. “Bixby didn’t belong in their world any more than I do.”

 Thursday nodded, once, in agreement.

“The further a man runs away from his nature, the sooner it’ll find him out.”

“So what does that make me?” Morse asked.

“A good detective.”

“And a poor policeman?”

Thursday huffed a laugh.

“That, too.”

Morse stilled for a moment. Then, he darted his tongue out over his lower lip.

 “I … I would be willing to give it a try. The Department of Latent Potential, was it? If ….” He swallowed. “If the offer still stands.”

“Of course,” Thursday said. “I walk over with you tomorrow, if you’d like. Introduce you to the man I spoke with. First thing.”

Morse nodded, a little absentmindedly, as if the soft wind had carried him on, as if already he was thinking of something else.

“Zambezi was right,” he said.  “There’s no real magic in this world.”

He turned the phrase over, considering it, like a fallen leaf in his hands.

“Only love. The rest is only smoke and mirrors,” he said, dreamily. “Only smoke and mirrors.”

Thursday huffed another small laugh.

For all of his solitary ways and forbidding, wintery face, he was awfully young, Morse. Still had a lot to learn.

He shook his head in fond despair of him and balled up the empty bit of wax paper in his fist, tucking it back into his pocket for safekeeping until he passed the nearest bin.

“Hang on,” he said, then. “I thought you’ve always said it doesn’t work that way.”

“Sir?”

“What made you so certain about that sandwich? Not like you, to hazard such a straightforward prediction.”

Morse leaned in towards him and smiled.

“Sir. Who doesn’t get a little confused, after a bank holiday?”

For a moment, Thursday looked to him in disbelief. Then, he chuckled and pulled out his pipe.  

He was a good detective, Morse.

Now if only he and Sergeant Jakes could teach him how to be a good policeman.

Chapter Text

The air was greasy and thick, heavy with the scent of chips and battered chicken, underlaid by the barest tang of something else, something more pungent.

Fried shrimp, perhaps?

That much, he knew.

But it was all that Morse knew, other than the feel of the smoothness of the wall against the palm of his hand where he rested it, trying to keep himself steady as he stood, suddenly overcome with a violent wave of nausea.  

There was the cry of a glossy-feathered crow in a cage. The hiss of a black cat, with fine teeth like needles, trapped in a shadowy room.

And the crow’s fear was his own fear, and the cat’s fear was his own fear. His heart was racing, beating far, far too fast, leaving him dizzy, as he steadied himself against the wall, closing his eyes tight against it, trying to fend it off.

“You all right, Jen?” a voice said.

“Yeah,” Morse answered in a voice not his. “It was just a turn.”

He opened his eyes, and he was in a café, he was not sure which; some little place, a greasy spoon, over-warm, with deep, cozy booths and wood-paneled walls.

Another wave of nausea, stronger than the first. He closed his eyes. And he was standing still, rooted to the spot, struggling to calm his breathing, and he was also moving, following along behind a girl on a darkened towpath. Her long yellow hair—the sides of which were pulled back in an elaborate twist—was the only color visible in the moonlight.

Low indigo clouds drifted, casting odd shadows across the grass, across the river, over the low stone wall. A chill breeze kicked up. A softly whistled tune, as ominous as it was menacingly charming, sounded like an echo around him.

The girl with the yellow hair stilled, casting a wary look over her shoulder.  

And her fear was his fear. A half-dozen rats with trembling whiskers were scrabbling in their cage. The black cat cried out, clawing at the bars that contained it. 

Morse closed his eyes, and again there was a burble of happy conversation around him, the scent of battered chicken and shrimp. He had moved and he had not moved; his hand was still resting on the wall, keeping his uncertain balance.

And then he nodded, unable to fight it off any longer, accepting the inevitable, even as he swallowed hard against a surge of bile that was rising at the back of his throat.

It would all be over soon.

There was no point in struggling.

No way to escape it.

A rush, like the beating of wings.  

His hand no longer rested against the smoothness of the wall. Instead, his palms were raw with it, cut and bleeding, fighting for a better grip on a ledge of stone. Then, he was falling, he was drug down.

A pair of heavy hands were reaching out, his hands and not his hands. There was a sting of pain as the girl’s necklace was ripped away. His hands were at her throat, they were at his throat, he was the killer and the killed, and the cat was screaming, pleading to be let free. The crow was thrashing in its cage, beating its wings, flightless, sightless, in the dark. And he could feel it, something evil, he could taste it in his mouth ….

It tasted like...

Morse bolted upright in the chair of his narrow little bedsit, his heart beating hard against the cage of his ribs.  His white cotton vest was sticking to his fevered skin. It was as soaked with sweat as if he had just been standing out in a hot summer rain.

He shuddered and then scrubbed a trembling hand over his face, trying to come back to himself, surprised to find only the softness of his skin, the fine stubble of his face, beneath his palm, rather than the roughness of the stone he had been grasping at, panicked, trying to get away.  

On the small table beside him, a record was humming silently on the turntable, the needle bobbing along the inner label.

Slowly, it all came to him. He had fallen asleep, listening to Wagner, here in the chair by his bedsit’s one window.

It had been a dream.

That was all.

And a dream within a dream.

One of those terrible ones that seem to spiral on and on.

For a long while, Morse simply sat there, allowing his breathing to quiet, his heart to calm. Then, pulling himself from out of the chair, he rose to his feet and stretched his arms up far over his head. He twisted in place to face the clock on the wall by the stove.  

And was disappointed to find that it had only just gone past midnight.

That he had so many hours to spend here, alone, until dawn.

***

“No need to fret,” Win said. “I’m sure he’s just hit some traffic.”

“Yeah,” Thursday agreed, hurriedly letting the lace curtain of the sitting room window fall back into place, a beat too late. Clearly, she had already seen him watching the street. “Yeah.”

That was it, most likely. Yet still, something didn’t sit right. He was always reliable, Morse. It wasn’t like him to be so late.

Although, perhaps it was an encouraging sign. It had been a rough couple of weeks. A lie-in might do him good.  

Thursday started back off for the dining room to continue his pretext of reading the paper while surreptitiously minding the clock on the fireplace mantle, when, finally, he heard a car pulling up into the drive.

He changed course, mid-step, padding over to the front door to open it, just in time to see the gleaming black Jag rolling to a stop before his door.

“Morse,” he called, once his bagman had stepped out of the car. “What time to you call this?”

Morse cast a furtive look around. He tugged at his coat.

“Sorry,” he said. “I overslept.”

Thursday narrowed his eyes, considering him.  

The truth of it was, the lad looked like hell. If he had had a good sleep, he didn’t seem all that refreshed by it. His hair was disheveled, sticking out all ends, and one long white tail of his shirt was hanging out from beneath his buttoned blue jacket, visible through his open, rumpled car coat.

“That shirt wants tucking in,” Thursday told him, as Morse came through the door.  

Morse said nothing, only passed one narrow hand over his waistline, making a half-hearted attempt to shove the shirt fabric back into place.

Thursday closed the door firmly against the gray damp of the morning.

“Much in?” he asked.

At last, it seemed, he had Morse’s full attention. He came to a dead stop before the hall stand and looked up to him, perplexed.

“Morse?” Thursday prompted.

“I …. I didn’t think to check in,” he said, seemingly stunned at this assertion. “I just got the car and came over.”

“Mmmm,” Thursday rumbled.

Following the sound of light footsteps, they both turned to look down the hallway, to where Win was breezing out from the kitchen, her hands bundled in a blue and white tea towel.