Death Is Now My Neighbor - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Colin Dexter (Envoi Monday, March 18) #9

Envoi Monday, March 18

This list is not for every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It’s been compiled by Everett Williams, director of the Florida Bureau of Vital Statistics, and on it are the 150 most unusual names he’s encountered in 34 years with the bureau. Examples are: Tootsie Roll, Curlee Bush, Emancipation Proclamation Cogshell, Candy Box, Starlight Cauliflower Shaw, and Determination Davenport. But he never encountered a fourth quadruplet called Mo! Williams figures that some parents have a sense of humor — or else a grudge against their offspring.

—Gainesville Gazette, February 16, 1971

On the following Monday evening, Mrs. Lewis handed the card to her husband:

“This is for you — from Inspector Morse.”

“You mean, you’ve read it?”

“Course I ’ave, boy!”

Smelling the chips, Lewis made no protestation as he looked at the front of the card: an aerial view of Bath, showing the Royal Crescent and the Circus. Then, turning over the card, he read Morse’s small, neat handwriting on the back. What he read moved him deeply; and when Mrs. Lewis shouted through from the kitchen that the eggs were ready, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and pretended he was wiping his nose.

The card read as follows:

For philistines like you, Lewis, as well as for classical scholars like me, this city with its bath and temples must rank as one of the finest in Europe. You ought to bring the missus here some time.

Did I ever get the chance to thank you for the few(!) contributions you made to our last case together? If I didn’t, let me thank you now — let me thank you for everything, my dear old friend.

Yours aye,

Endeavor Morse