‘Mm.’ For a few seconds Morse was silent. ‘Send me the full report over, please, Max.’

‘It won’t help much.’

‘I’ll decide that, thank you very much.’

‘What do I do with the corpse?’

‘Put it in the bloody deep-freeze!’

A few minutes later, after slamming down the phone, Morse rang Lonsdale and asked for the college secretary.

‘Can I help you?’ She had a nice voice, but for once it didn’t register with Morse.

‘Yes! I want to know whether the college had kippers for breakfast on Friday llth July.’

‘I don’t know. I could try to find out, I suppose.’

‘Well, find out!’ snapped Morse.

‘Can I ring you back, sir?’ She was obviously distressed, but Morse was crudely adamant.

‘No! Do it now!’

Morse heard a hectic, whispered conversation at the other end of the line, and eventually a male voice, defensive but quite firm, took over.

‘Andrews, here. Perhaps I could help you. Inspector.’

And, indeed, he could; for he happened to live with his family in Kidlington, and professed himself only too glad to call in at police HQ later that same afternoon.

Lewis, who had come in during this latter call, realized immediately that someone had seriously upset the chief, and he was not at all hopeful about how his own two items of information would be received-especially the second. But Morse appeared surprisingly amiable and listened attentively as Lewis recounted what he had learned at the Examination Schools.

‘So you see, sir,’ he concluded, ‘no one, not even the chairman, could be absolutely certain of all the results until just before the final list goes up.’

Morse just nodded, and sat back almost happily.

But Lewis had barely begun his report on his second visit when Morse sat forward and exploded.

‘You couldn’t have looked carefully enough, Lewis! Of course he’s bloody there!’

‘But he’s not, sir. I checked and re-checked everything-so did the girl.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you they’d probably put him under “Smith” or something?’

Lewis replied quietly: ‘If you really want to know, I looked under “Brown”, and “Browne” with an “e”; and “Smith”, and “Smithe” with an “e”; and I looked through all the rest of the “B”s and the “S”s just in case his card was out of order. But you’d better face it, sir. Unless they’ve lost his records, Dr Browne-Smith isn’t a blood donor at all.’

‘Oh!’ For some time Morse just sat there, and then he smiled. “Why didn’t you try under the “W”s?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Forget it! For the minute anyway. Now let me tell you a few interesting facts.’

So Morse, in turn, recounted his own morning’s work, and finished up by handing over to Lewis the sheet of paper on which he had typed his two sentences.

‘See that second one, Lewis?’

Lewis nodded as he looked down at the version beginning ‘The laxy brown fox 13aped…’

‘Well, that’s the same typewriter as the one used for the letter we found on the body!’

Lewis whistled in genuine amazement. ‘You’re sure you’re not mistaken, sir?’

‘Lew-is!’ (The eyes were almost frighteningly unblinking once more.) ‘And there’s something else.’ He pushed across the desk the note that the Master of Lonsdale had given him earlier-the note supposedly left in the Porters’ Lodge by Browne-Smith.

‘That was done on the same typewriter, too!’

‘Whew!’

‘So your next job-’

‘Just a minute, sir. You’re quite certain, are you, which typewriter it was?’

‘Oh yes, Lev/is. It was Westerby’s.’

He was very happy now, and looked across at Lewis with the satisfaction of a man leaning over the parapet of infallibility.

So it was that Lewis was forthwith dispatched to impound the two typewriters, whilst Morse took two more penicillin tablets and waited for the arrival of Mr Andrews, Ancient History Tutor of Lonsdale.

From two sources, Morse gains valuable insight into the workings of the human mind, and specifically into the mind of Dr Browne-Smith of Lonsdale.

Andrews (‘a good young man’, as Browne-Smith had earlier described him) turned out to be about Morse’s age-a slim, bespectacled, shrewd-looking man of medium height who gave the immediate impression of not suffering fools at all gladly. For the time being he was (as he told Morse) the senior resident fellow at Lonsdale, in which capacity he was far from happy about the way the college secretary had been telephonically assaulted. But, yes: on Friday, 11th July, the college had breakfasted on kippers. That had been the question-and that was the answer.

So Morse began to like the man, and was soon telling him about the Master’s mild anxiety over Browne-Smith, as well as about his own involvement in the matter.

‘Let me come clean, Inspector. I know more about this than you think. Before he left, the Master told me he was worried about Browne-Smith.’

‘If he’s got any sense, he’s still worried.’

‘But we had a note from him.’

‘Which he didn’t write.’

‘Can you prove that?’ Andrews asked, as if proddingsome semi-informed student into producing a piece oftextual evidence.

‘Browne-Smith’s dead, I’m afraid, sir.’

For a few moments Andrews sat silently, his eyes betraying no sense of shock or surprise.

‘Was he a blood donor?’ asked Morse suddenly.

‘I don’t know. Not the sort of thing one broadcasts, would you say?’

‘Some people have those “Give Blood” suckers on the car windows.’

‘I don’t remember seeing-’

‘Did he have a car?’

‘Big, black, thirsty Daimler.’

‘Where’s that now?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘What was his favourite tipple in the Common Room?’

‘He liked a drop of Scotch, as most of us do, but he wasn’t a big drinker. He was an Aristotelian, Inspector; with him it was always the half-way house between the too much and the too little -if you- er- follow what I’m saying.”

‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘You remember the Cambridge story that Trinity once saw Wordsworth drunk and once saw Person sober? Well, I can tell you one thing: Lonsdale never once saw Browne-Smith drunk.’

‘He was a bore, you mean?’

‘I mean nothing of the sort. It’s just that he couldn’t abide woolly-mindedness, shoddiness, carelessness-’

‘He wouldn’t have made too many mistakes in English grammar?’

‘Over his dead body!”

‘Which is precisely where we stand, sir,’ said Morse sombrely.

Andrews waited a moment or two. ‘You really are quite sure of that?’

‘He’s dead,’ repeated Morse flatly. ‘His body was fished out of the canal up at Thrupp yesterday.’

Morse was conscious of the steady, scholarly eyes upon him as Andrews spoke: ‘But I only read about that in the Oxford Mail this lunch time. It said the body couldn’t be identified.’

‘Really?’ Morse appeared genuinely surprised. ‘Surely you don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, sir?’

‘No, but I believe most of it,’ replied Andrews simply and tellingly; and Morse abruptly switched his questioning.

‘Dr Browne-Smith, sir. Was he a fit man-considering his age, I mean?’

For the first time Andrews appeared less than completely at ease. ‘You know something about that?’

‘Well, not officially, but

Andrews stared down at the threadbare carpet. ‘Look, Inspector, the only reason the Master mentioned anything to me…’

‘Go on!’

‘… well, it’s because I shall be taking over his duties in the College, you see.’

‘After he retires?’

‘Or before, I’m afraid. You-er-you knew, didn’t you, that he’d only a few months to live?’

Morse nodded, quite convincingly.