Inspector Morse 12 Death is Now My Neighbour

If one judged by die longevity of almost all die Masters appointed during die twentiedi century, physical well-being had seldom posed much of a problem; yet mental stability had never been a particularly prominent feature of his immediate predecessor, nor (by all accounts) of his predecessor's predecessor. And occasionally Sir Clixby wondered what die College would say of himself once he was gone ... With regard to die exclusion of die clergy, he assumed that die Founders (like Edward Gibbon diree centuries later) had managed to trace die source of all human wickedness back to die Popes and die Prelates, and had rallied to die cause of anticlerical-ism ... But it was die possibility of die candidate's criminality which was die most amusing. Presumably any convictions for murder, rape, sodomy, treason, or similar misdemeanours, were to be discounted if shown to have taken place outside die jurisdiction of His (or Her) Most Glorious Majesty. Very strange.

Strangest of all, however, was die absence of any mention in die original Statute of academic pedigree;

COLIN DEXTER

and, at least theoretically, there could be no bar to a candidate presenting himself with only a Grade E in GCSE Media Studies. Nor was there any stipulation that the successful candidate should be a senior (or, for that matter, a junior) member of the College, and on several occasions 'outsiders' had been appointed. Indeed, he himself, Sir Clixby, had been imported into Oxford from 'the other place', and then (chiefly) in recognition of his reputation as a resourceful fund-raiser.

On this occasion, however, outsiders seemed out of favour. The College itself could offer at least two candidates, each of whom would be an admirable choice; or so it was thought. In the Senior Common Room the consensus was most decidedly in favour of such 'internal' preferment, and the betting had hardened accordingly.

By some curious omission no entry had hitherto been granted to either of these ante-post favourites in the pages of Who's Who. From which one may be forgiven for concluding that the aforesaid work is rather more concerned with the third cousins of secondary aristocrats than with eminent academics. Happily, however, both of these personages had been considered worthy of mention in Debrett's People of Today 1995:

STORRS, Julian Charles; b 9 July 1935; Educ Christ's Hosp, Services S Dartmouth, Emmanuel Coll Cambridge (BA, MA); m Angela Miriam Martin 31 March 1974; Career Capt RA (Indian Army Secondment); Pitt Rivers Reader in Social Anthropology and Senior Fellow Lonsdale Coll Oxford; Recreations taking taxis, playing bridge.

20

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR

CORNFORD, Denis Jack; b 23 April 1942; EtfweWygges-ton GS Leicester, Magdalen Coll Oxford (MA, DPhil); m Shelly Ann Benson 28 May 1994; Career University Reader in Mediaeval History and Fellow Lonsdale Coll Oxford; Recreations kite-flying, cultivation of orchids.

Each of these entries may appear comparatively unin-formative. Yet perhaps in the more perceptive reader they may provoke one or two interesting considerations.

Was, for example, the Senior Fellow of Lonsdale so affluent that he could afford to take a taxi everywhere? Did he never travel by car, coach, or train? Well, quite certainly on special occasions he would travel by train.

Oh, yes.

As we shall see.

And why was Dr Comford, soon to be fifty-four years old, so recently converted to the advantages of latter-day matrimony? Had he met some worthy woman of comparable age?

Oh, no.

As we shall see.

CHAPTER THREE

How right

I should have been to keep away, and let You have your innocent-guilty-innocent night Of switching partners in your own sad set: How useless to invite

The sickening breathlessness of being young Into my life again

(Philip Larkin, UK Dante)

DENIS CORNFORD, omnium consensu, was a fine his- · torian. Allied with a mind both sharp and rigorously honest was a capacity for the assemblage and interpretation of evidence that was the envy of the History Faculty at Oxford. Yet in spite of such qualities, he'was best known for a brief monograph on the Battle of Hastings, in which he maintained that the momentous conflict between Harold of England and William of Normandy had taken place one year earlier than universally acknowledged. In 1065.

In the Trinity Term of 1994, Cornford - a slimty-built, smallish, pleasantly featured man - had taken sabbatical leave at Harvard; and there - somehow and somewhere,

DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR