Death Is Now My Neighbor

Prolegomenon January 1996

“What time do you call this, Lewis?”

“The missus’s fault. Not like her to be late with the breakfast.”

Morse made no answer as he stared down at the one remaining unsolved clue:

“Stand for soldiers — 5–4?”

Lewis took the chair opposite his chief and sat waiting for some considerable while, leafing through a magazine.

“Stuck, sir?” he asked finally.

“If I was — if I were — I doubt I’d get much help from you.”

“You never know,” suggested Lewis good-naturedly. “Perhaps—”

“Ah!” burst out Morse triumphantly, as he wrote in TOASTRACK. He folded The Times away and beamed across at his sergeant.

“You — are — a — genius, Lewis.”

“So you’ve often told me, sir.”

“And I bet you had a boiled egg for breakfast — with soldiers. Am I right?”

“What’s that got—?”

“What are you reading there?”

Lewis held up the title page of his magazine.

“Lew-is! There are more important things in life than the Thames Valley Police Gazette.”

“Just thought you might be interested in one of the articles here...”

Morse rose to the bait. “Such as?”

“There’s a sort of test — you know, see how many points you can score: ARE YOU REALLY WISE AND CULTURED?”

“Very doubtful in your case, I should think.”

“You reckon you could do better than I did?”

“Quite certain of it.”

Lewis grinned. “Quite certain, sir?”

“Absolutely.”

“Want to have a go, then?” Lewis’s mouth betrayed gentle amusement as Morse shrugged his indifference.

“Multiple-choice questions — you know all about—?”

“Get on with it!”

“All you’ve got to do is imagine the world’s going to end in exactly one week’s time, okay? Then you’ve got to answer five questions, as honestly as you can.”

“And you’ve already answered these questions yourself?”

Lewis nodded.

“Well, if you can answer them... Fire away!”

Lewis read aloud from the article:

With a swift flourish, Morse wrote down a letter.

A second swift flourish from Morse.

A third swift flourish.

Question Four

Flourish number four, and the candidate (confident of imminent success, it appeared) sat back in the black-leather armchair.

This time Morse hesitated some while before writing on the pad in front of him. “You did the test yourself, you say?”

Lewis nodded. “Victor Borge; the football; Princess Diana; the champagne; and Private Eye. Just hope Princess Di likes Champers, that’s all.”

“There must be worse ways of spending your last week on earth,” admitted Morse.

“I didn’t do so well, though — not on the marking. I’m not up there among the cultured and the wise, I’m afraid.”

“Did you expect to be?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s hear what you picked, then.”

“My preferences, Lewis,” Morse articulated his words with precision, “were as follows: (b); (c); (b); (c); none of them.”

Turning to the back page, Lewis reminded himself of the answers putatively adjudged to be correct.

“I don’t believe it,” he whispered to himself. Then, to Morse: “You scored the maximum!”

“Are you surprised?”

Lewis shook his head in mild bewilderment.

“You chose, what, the Requiem?”

“Well?”

“But you’ve never believed in all that religious stuff.”

“It’s important if it’s true, though, isn’t it? Let’s just say it’s a bit like an insurance policy. A beautiful work, anyway.”

“Says here: ‘Score four marks for (b). Sufficient recommendation that it was chosen by three of the last four Popes for their funerals.’ ”

Morse lifted his eyebrows. “You didn’t know that?”

Lewis ignored the question and continued:

“Then you chose the sex video!”

“Well, it was either that or the kingfisher. I’ve already seen Casablanca a couple of times — and no one’s ever going to make me watch a football match again.”

“But I mean, a sex video...”

Morse, however, was clearly unimpressed by such obvious disapprobation. “It’d be the choice of those three Popes as well, like as not.”

“But it all gets — well, it gets so plain boring after a while.”

“So you keep telling me, Lewis. And all I’m asking is the chance to get as bored as everybody else. I’ve only got a week, remember.”

“I like your next choice, though. Beautiful girl, Kim Basinger. Beautiful.”

“Something of a toss-up, that — between her and Mother Teresa. But I’d already played the God card.”

“Then,” Lewis considered the next answer, “Arrghh, come off it, sir! You didn’t even go for the beer! You’re supposed to answer these questions honestly.”

“I’ve already got plenty of booze in,” said Morse. “Certainly enough to see me through to Judgment Day. And I don’t fancy facing the Great Beyond with a blinding hangover. It’ll be a new experience for me — tranquilizers...”

Lewis looked down again, and proceeded to read out the reasons for Morse’s greatest triumph. “It says here, on Question Five, ‘Those choosing any of the suggested titles are clearly unfit for high honors. If any choice whatsoever is made, four marks will therefore be deducted from the final score. If the answer is a timid dash — or similar — no marks will be awarded, but no marks will be deducted. A more positively negative answer — e.g. “Come off it!” — will be rewarded with a bonus of four marks.’ ” Again Lewis shook his head. “Nonsense, isn’t it? ‘Positively negative,’ I mean.”

“Rather nicely put, I’d’ve thought,” said Morse.

“Anyway,” conceded Lewis, “you score twenty out of twenty according to this fellow who seems to have all the answers.” Lewis looked again at the name printed below the article. “ ‘Rhadamanthus’ — whoever he is.”

“Lord Chief Justice of Appeal in the Underworld.”

Lewis frowned, then grinned. “You’ve been cheating! You’ve got a copy—”

“No!” Morse’s blue eyes gazed fiercely across at his sergeant. “The first I saw of that Gazette was when you brought it in just now.”

“If you say so.” But Lewis sounded less than convinced.

“Not surprised, are you, to find me perched up there on the topmost twig amongst the intelligentsia?”

“ ‘The wise and the cultured,’ actually.”

“And that’s another thing. I think I shall go crackers if I hear three things in my life much more: ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; and that wretched bloody word ‘actually.’ ”

“Sorry, sir.”

Suddenly Morse grinned. “No need to be, old friend. And at least you’re right about one thing. I did cheat — in a way.”

“You don’t mean you...?”

Morse nodded.

It had been a playful, pleasant interlude. Yet it would have warranted no inclusion in this chronicle had it not been that one or two of the details recorded herein were to linger significantly in the memory of Chief Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police HQ.