The Wench Is Dead

Chapter Three

Detective Sergeant Lewis came into the ward just after seven o'clock that Sunday evening, clutching a Sainsbury carrier-bag with the air of a slightly guilty man walking through the Customs' shed; and at the sight of his old partner, Morse felt very glad, and just a little lachrymose.

'How come you knew I was here?'

'I'm a detective, sir – remember?'

'They phoned you, I suppose.'

'The Super. He said you sounded awful poorly when he rang yesterday morning. So he sent Dixon round, but you'd just been carried off in the ambulance. So he rang me and said I might like to see if the NHS is still up to scratch – see if you wanted anything.'

'Something like a bottle of Scotch, you mean?'

Lewis ignored the pleasantry: I'd've come in last night, but they said you weren't to have any visitors – only close relatives.'

‘I’ll have you know I'm not quite your "Orphan Annie", Lewis. I've got a great-aunt up in Alnwick somewhere.'

'Bit of a long way for her to come, sir.'

'Especially at ninety-seven’

'Not a bad fellow, Strange, is he?' suggested Lewis, after a slightly awkward little pause.

'Not when you get to know him, I suppose,' admitted Morse.

'Would you say you've got to know him?'

Morse shook his head.

'Well?' said Lewis briskly. 'How are things? What do they say's the trouble?'

‘Trouble? No trouble! It's just a case of mistaken identity.'

Lewis grinned. 'Seriously, though?'

'Seriously? Well they've put me on some great big round white pills that cost a couple of quid a time, so the – nurses say. Do you realize you can get a very decent little bottle of claret for that price?'

'What about the food – is that all right?'

'Food? What food? Except for the pills they haven't given me a thing.'

'No drink, either?'

'Are you trying to set back my medical progress, Lewis?'

'Is that what – what that means?' Lewis jerked his eyes upwards to the fateful warning above the bed.

'That's just precautionary,' said Morse, with unconvincing nonchalance.

Lewis's eyes jerked, downwards this time, towards the carrier-bag.

'Come on, Lewis! What have you got in there?'

Lewis reached inside the bag and brought out a bottle of lemon-and-barley water, and was most pleasantly surprised to witness the undisguised delight on Morse's lace.

'It was just that the missus thought – well, you know, you wouldn't be allowed to drink – to drink anything else much.'

'Very kind of her! You just tell her that the way things are I'd rather have a bottle of that stuff than a whole crate of whisky.'

'You don't mean that, do you, sir?'

'Doesn't stop you telling her, though, does it?'

'And here's a book,' added Lewis, withdrawing one further item from the bag – a book entitled Scales of Injustice: A Comparative Study of Crime and its Punishment as Recorded in the County of Shropshire, 1842-1852.

Morse took the thick volume and surveyed its inordinately lengthy title, though without any obvious enthusiasm. 'Mm! Looks a fairly interesting work.'

'You don't mean that, do you?'

'No,' said Morse.

'It's a sort of family heirloom and the missus just thought-'

'You tell that wonderful missus of yours that I'm very pleased with it.'

'Perhaps you'll do me a favour and leave it in the hospital library when you come out.'

Morse laughed quietly; and Lewis was strangely gratified by his chief's reactions, and smiled to himself.

He was still smiling when an extraordinarily pretty young nurse, with a freckled face and mahogany-highlighted hair, came to Morse's bedside, waved an admonitory finger at him, and showed her white and beautifully regular teeth in a dumbshow of disapproval as she pointed to the lemon-and-barley bottle which Morse had placed on his locker-top. Morse, in turn, nodded his full appreciation of the situation and showed his own reasonably regular, if rather off-white, teeth as he mouthed a silent 'OK'.

'Who's that?' whispered Lewis, when she had passed upon her way.

'That, Lewis, is the Fair Fiona. Lovely, don't you think? I sometimes wonder how the doctors manage to keep their dirty hands off her.'

'Perhaps they don't.'

‘I thought you'd come in here to cheer me up!'

But for the moment good cheer seemed in short supply. The ward sister (whom Lewis had not noticed when he'd entered – merely walking straight through, like everyone else, as he'd thought) had clearly been keeping dragon's eye on events in general, and in particular events around the bed where the dehydrated Chief Inspector lay. To which bed, with purposeful stride, she now took the few steps needed from the vantage point behind the main desk. Her left hand immediately grasped the offending bottle on the locker-top, while her eyes fixed unblinkingly upon the luckless Lewis.

We have our regulations in this hospital – a copy of them is posted just outside the ward. So I shall be glad if you follow those regulations and report to me or whoever's in charge if you intend to visit again. It's absolutely vital that we follow a routine here – try to understand that! Your friend here is quite poorly, and we're all trying our very best to see that he gets well again quickly. Now we canna do that if you are going to bring in any thing you think might do him good, because you'd bring in all the wrong things, OK? I'm sure you appreciate what I'm saying.'

She had spoken in a soft Scots accent, this grimly visaged, tight-lipped sister, a silver buckle clasped around her dark-blue uniform; and Lewis, the colour tidally risen under his pale cheeks, looked wretchedly uncomfortable as she turned away – and was gone. Even Morse, for a few moments, appeared strangely cowed and silent.

'Who's that?' asked Lewis (for the second time that evening).

'You have just had an encounter with the embittered soul of our ward sister – devoted to an ideal of humourless efficiency: a sort of Calvinistic Thatcherite.'

'And what she says…?'

Morse nodded. 'She is, Lewis, in charge, as I think you probably gathered.'

'Doesn't have to be so sharp, does she?'

'Forget it, Lewis! She's probably disappointed in her love-life or something. Not surprising with a face-'

'What's her name?'

'They call her "Nessie".'

'Was she born near the Loch?'

'In it, Lewis.'

The two men laughed just a little; yet the incident had been unpleasant and Lewis in particular found it difficult to put it behind him. For a further five minutes he quizzed Morse quietly about the other patients; and Morse told him of the dawn departure of the ex-Indian-Army man. For still another five minutes, the two men exchanged words about Police HQ at Kidlington; about the Lewis family; about the less-than-sanguine prospects of Oxford United in the current soccer campaign. But nothing could quite efface the fact that 'that bloody sister' (as Morse referred to her) had cast a darkling shadow over the evening visit; had certainly cast a shadow over Lewis. And Morse himself was suddenly feeling hot and sweaty, and (yes, if he were honest) just a fraction wearied of the conversation.

'I'd better be off then, sir.'

'What else have you got in that bag?'

'Nothing-'

'Lewis! My stomach may be out of order for the minute but there's nothing wrong with my bloody ears!'

Slowly the dark clouds began to lift for Lewis, and when, after prolonged circumspection, he decided that the Customs Officer was momentarily off her guard, he withdrew a small, flattish bottle, wrapped in soft, dark-blue tissue-paper – much the colour of Nessie's uniform.

'But not until it's official like!' hissed Lewis, palming the gift surreptitiously into Morse's hand beneath the bedclothes.

'Bell's?' asked Morse.

Lewis nodded.

It was a happy moment.

For the present, however, the attention of all was diverted by another bell that sounded from somewhere, and visitors began to stand and prepare for their departure: a few, perhaps, with symptoms of reluctance; but the majority with signs of only partially concealed relief. As Lewis himself rose to take his leave, he dipped his hand once more into the carrier-bag and produced his final offering: a paperback entitled The Blue Ticket, with a provocative picture of an economically clad nymphet on the cover.

'I thought – I thought you might enjoy something: little bit lighter, sir. The missus doesn't know-'

'I hope she's never found you reading this sort of rubbish, Lewis!'

'Haven't read it yet, sir.'

'Well, the, er, title's a bit shorter than the other thing…"

Lewis nodded, and the two friends shared a happy grin.

‘Time to go, I'm afraid!' The Fair Fiona was smiling down at them, especially (it seemed) smiling down at Lewis, for whom every cloud was suddenly lifted from the weather-chart. As for Morse, he was glad to be alone again; and when the ward finally cleared of its last visitor, the hospital system smoothly, inexorably, reoriented itself once more to the care and treatment of the sick.

It was only after further testings of pulse and blood pressure, after the administration of further medicaments, that Morse had the opportunity (unobserved) of reading the blurb of the second work of literature (well, literature of a sort) which was now in his possession:

Diving into the water, young Steve Mingella had managed to pull the little girl's body on to the hired yacht and to apply to her his clumsy version of die kiss-of-life. Miraculously, the six-year-old had survived, and for a few days Steve was the toast of the boat clubs along die Florida Keys. After his return to New York he received a letter – and inside the letter a ticket – from the young girl's father, the playboy proprietor of the city's most exclusive, expensive, and exotic night-spot, a club specialising in the wildest sexual fantasies. The book opens as Steve treads diffidently across the thick carpeted entrance of dial erotic wonderland, and shows to the topless blonde seated at Reception the ticket he has received – a ticket coloured deepest blue…