A man (as she now realized) had been standing patiently at the desk.

'Can I help you?'

Sergeant Lewis nodded and looked down at her. 'Special instructions. I've got to report to the boss whenever I bring the Chief Inspector a bag of plastic explosive. You're the boss tonight, aren't you?'

'Don't be too hard on Sister Maclean!'

Lewis bent forward and spoke softly. 'It's not me – it's him! He says she's an argumentative, bitchy old… old something.'

Eileen smiled. 'She's not very tactful, sometimes.'

'He's, er – looks like he's got a visitor for the moment.'

'Yes.'

'Perhaps I'd better not interrupt, had I? He gets very cross sometimes.'

'Does he?'

'Especially if… '

Eileen nodded, and looked up into Lewis's kindly face, feeling that menfolk weren't quite so bad as she'd begun to think. 'What's he like – Inspector Morse?' she asked.

Christine Greenaway stood up to go, and Morse was suddenly conscious, as she stood so closely beside the bed, how small she was – in spite of the high-heeled shoes she habitually wore. Words came back to his mind, the words he'd read again so recently: '… petite and attractive figure, wearing an Oxford-blue dress… '

'How tall are you?' asked Morse, as she smoothed her dress down over her thighs.

'How small am I, don't you mean?' Her eyes flashed and seemed to mock him. 'In stockinged feet, I'm five feet, half an inch. And don't forget that half-inch: it may not be very important to you, but it is to me. I wear heels all the time – so I come up to about normal, usually. About five three.'

'What size shoes do you take?'

‘Threes. You wouldn't be able to get your feet in them.'

'I've got very nice feet,' said Morse seriously,

'I think I ought to be more worried about my father than about your feet,' she whispered quietly, as she touched his arm once more, and as Morse in turn placed his own left hand so briefly, so lightly upon hers. It was a little moment of magic, for both of them.

'And you'll look up that-?'

'I won't forget.'

Then she was gone, and only the smell of some expensive perfume lingered around the bed.

'I just wonder,' said Morse, almost absently, as Lewis took Christine's place in the plastic chair, 'I just wonder what size shoes Joanna Franks took. I'm assuming, of course, they had shoe-sizes in those days. Not a modern invention, like women's tights, are they? – shoe-sizes? What do you think, Lewis?'

'Would you like me to show you exactly what size she did take, sir?'

Chapter Twenty-five

Morse was invariably credited, by his police colleagues, with an alpha-plus intelligence, of a kind which surfaced rarely on the tides of human affairs, and which almost always gave him about six furlongs' start in any criminal investigation. Whatever the truth of this matter, Morse himself knew that one gift had never been bestowed on him – that of reading quickly. It was to be observed, therefore, that he seemed to spend a disproportionately long time that evening – Christine gone, Lewis gone, Horlicks drunk, pills swallowed, injection injected – in reading through the photocopied columns from Jackson's Oxford Journal. Christine had not mentioned to him that, dissatisfied with her hand-written notes, she had returned to the Central Library in the early afternoon and prevailed upon one of her vague acquaintances there to let her jump the queue and photocopy the original material directly from their bulky originals. Not that Morse, even had he known, would have exhibited any excessive gratitude. One of his weaknesses was his disposition to accept loyalty without ever really understanding, certainly not appreciating, the sacrifices that might be involved.

When, as a boy, he had been shepherded around various archaeological sites, Morse had been unable to share the passion of some fanatic drooling over a few (disintegrating) Roman bricks. Even then, it had been the written word, rather than the tangible artefact, which had pricked his curiosity, and promoted his subsequent delight in the ancient world. It was to be expected, therefore, that although Lewis's quite extraordinary discovery was to prove the single most dramatic break-through in the supposed 'case', the sight of a sad-looking pair of shrivelled shoes and an even sadder-looking pair of crumpled knickers was, for Morse, a little anti-climactic. At least, for the present. As for Christine's offerings, though, how wonderfully attractive and suggestive they were!

From the newspaper records, it was soon clear that the Colonel had omitted no details of any obvious importance. Yet, as in most criminal cases, it was the apparently innocuous, incidental, almost irrelevant, details that could change, in a flash, the interpretation of accepted facts. And there were quite a few details here (to Morse, hitherto unknown) which caused him more than a millimetric rise of the eyebrows.

First, reading between the somewhat smudged lines of the photocopied material, it seemed fairly clear that the charge of theft had probably been dropped at the first trial for the reason that the evidence (such as it was) had pointed predominantly to the youth, Wootton, therefore necessitating an individual prosecution – and that against a minor. If any of the other crewmen were involved, it was Towns (the man deported to Australia) who figured as the safest bet; and quite certainly no obvious evidence could be levelled against the two men eventually hanged for murder. What was it then that the young man's covetous eyes may have sought to steal from Joanna Franks's baggage? No answer emerged clearly from the evidence. But there was surely one thing, above all, that thieves went for, whether in 1859 or 1989: money.

Mmm.

Second, there was sufficient contemporary evidence to suggest that it was Joanna who was probably the sustaining partner in her second marriage. Whatever it was that had caused her to 'fall deeply in love with Charles Franks, an ostler from Liverpool', it was Joanna who had besought her new husband to keep up his spirits during the ill fortune which had beset the early months of their marriage. An extract from a letter to Charles Franks had indeed been read out in court, presumably (as Morse saw things) to substantiate the point that, quite contrary to the boatmen's claim of Joanna being demented, it was Charles who seemed the nearer to a mental breakdown: 'Sorry I am to read, my dear husband, your sadly wandering letter – do, my dear, strive against what I fear will await you should you not rest your tortured mind. The loss of reason is a terrible thing and will blight our hopes. Be strong and know we shall soon be together and well provided for.' A poignant and eloquent letter.

Were both of them a bit unbalanced?

Mmm.

Third, various depositions from both trials made it clear that although 'fly' boats worked best with a strict enforcement of a 'two on – two off arrangement, it was quite usual, in practice, for the four members of such a crew to permutate their different duties in order to accommodate individual likings or requirements. Or desires, perhaps? For Morse now read, with considerable interest, the evidence adduced in court (Where were you, Colonel Deniston?) that Oldfield, captain of the Barbara Bray, had paid Walter Towns 6d to take over from him the arduous business of 'legging' the boat through the Barton tunnel. Morse nodded to himself: for his imagination had already travelled there.