Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

She leaned towards him, put her hand on his ann, and gently kissed his left cheek.

"You silly noodle!"

"Perhaps everybody feels a bit jealous sometimes."

"Yeah."

"You mean you do?"

Ellie nodded. "Awful thing--sort of corrosive. Yuk!" There was a silence between them.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

Ellie stubbed out her cigarette, and pushed her chair back from the table. "Do you really want to know?"

"Please tell me."

"! was just wondering what she's like that's all."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Morse."

The sun had drifted behind the clouds, and Ashley got up and paid the bill.

A few minutes later, her arm through his, they walked along Cornmarket, over Carfax, and then through St. Al-date's to Folly Bridge, where they stood and looked down at the waters of the Thames.

"Would you like to go on a boat trip?" he asked. "What, this afternoon T'

"Why not? Up to Iffley Lock and back? Won't take. long."

"No. Not for me."

"What would you like to do T'

She felt a sudden tenderness towards him, and wished t, make him happy.

"Would you like to come along to my place.'?"

The sun had slipped out from behind the clouds, and wax shining brightly once more.

Chapter Fifty-four

Cambridge has espoused the river, has opened its arms to the river, has built some of its finest Houses alongside the fiver. Oxford has turned its back on the river, for only at some points downstream from Folly Bridge does the Isis glitter so gloriously as does the Cam (J. J. SMTHFm LD-W^T pounds STONE, Oxford and Cambridge: A Comparison)

The two rivers, the Thames (or Isis) and the Cherwell, making their confluence just to the south of the city centre, have long provided enjoyable amenities for Oxford folk, both Town and Gown: punting, rowing, sculling, ca-noeing, and pleasure-boating. For the less athletic, and for the more arthritic, the river-cruise down from Folly Bridge via the Iffiey and Sandford locks to Abingdon, has always been a favourite.

For such a trip, Mr. Anthony Hughes, a prosperous ac-countant now living out on Boar's Hill, had booked two tickets on a fifty-passenger streamer, the lffiey Princess, timetabled to sail from Folly Bridge at 9:15 A.M. on Sun-day, September 25.

The previous evening he had slowly traced the course of the river on the Ordnance Survey Map, pointing out to his son such landmarks as the Green Bank, the Gut, the con-crete bridge at Donnington, Haystack Corner, and the rest, which they would pass before arriving at Iffiey Lock.

For young James, the morrow's prospects were magical.

He was in several ways an attractive little chap--earnest, bespectacled, bright--with his name down for the Dragon School in North Oxford, a preparatory school geared (in-deed, fifth-geared) to high academic and athletic excellence.

The lad was already exhibiting an intelligent and apparently insatiable interest both in his own locality and in the Uni-verse in general. Such Aristotelian curiosity was quite nat-urally a great delight to his parents; and the four-and-a-half year old young James was picking up, and mentally hoarding, bits of knowledge with much the same sort of regular-ity that young Jason was picking up, and physically hurling, bits of brick and stone around the Cutteslowe Estate.

Spanning the fifty-yard-wide Isis, and thus linking the Iffiey Road with the Abingdon Road, Donnington Bridge was a flatfish arc of concrete, surmounted by railings painted, slightly incongruously, a light Cambridge-blue. And as the lffiey Princess rounded the Gut, young James pointed to the large-lettered SOMERVILLE, followed by two crossed oars, painted in black on a red background, across the upper part of the bridge, just below the parapet railings. "What's that, Dad?"

But before the proud father could respond, this question was followed by another: "What's that, Dad?"

Young James pointed to an in-cut, on the left, where concrete slipway had been constructed to allow owners cars to back the boats they were towing directly down into the river. There, trapped at the side of the slipway, was what appeared to be an elongated bundle, a foot or so be-low the surface of the nacre-green water. And several of the passengers on the port side now spotted the same thing: something potentially sinister; something wrapped up; but something no longer wholly concealed.

Fred Andrews, skipper of the lffiey Princess, pulled ove into Salters' Boat Yard, only some twenty yards below the bridge. He was an experienced waterman, and decided t dial 999 immediately. It was only after he had briefly plained his purpose to his passengers that an extraordinarily ancient man, seated in the bow of the boat, and dressed a faded striped blazer, off-white flannels, and a stray THE DAUGHTEF OF CAIN 23 boater, produced a mobile telephone from somewhere abo his person, and volunteered to dial the three nines himsel Chapter Fifty-five It's a strong stomach that has no turning (OLIVER HERFORD)