‘Head of House!’ said Morse slowly. ‘Great honour, isn’t it?’(He was suddenly conscious that he had repeated verbatimthequestion he had asked of Andrews.)

‘Some people would give a lot for it, yes.’

‘Would you?

The Vice-Master smiled. ‘No! You can leave me out of the running, inspector. You see, I’m in holy orders, and so, as I said, I’m just not eligible.’

‘I see,’ said Morse. ‘Now just getting back to Dr Browne-Smith for a minute. I’d be grateful, sir, if you could tell me something about his, well, his personal Life.’

‘Such as?’ The Vice-Master’s eyes were upon him, and Morse found himself wondering how much, or how little, he could ever expect to know of the complex web of relationships within this tight community of Lonsdale.

‘What about his health, for example?’

Again the shrewd look, as if the question had been fully expected.’He was a very sick man, Inspector.But you knew that yesterday, didn’t you? By the way, Andrews said you looked just a little surprised when he told you.’

‘How long had,you known?’ countered Morse.

‘Three weeks, I suppose. The Master called Andrews and me up to his room one evening after Hall. Strictly confidential, he said, and all that-but we had to know, of course, because of Browne-Smith’s teaching commitments.’

‘When did the Master think…?’

‘Certainly no longer than the end of the Hilary Term.’

‘Mm.’

‘And you’re wondering whether his teaching days might not be over already. Am I right?’

‘How much did Andrews tell you?’ asked Morse.

‘Everything. You didn’t mind, I hope?’

Morse felt oddly uncomfortable with the man, and after asking a few more vague questions about Browne-Smith’s lifestyle, he got up to go. ‘You getting some holiday soon, sir?”

‘Once the Master gets back. We usually alternate so that one of us is here for most of the vac. I know that some people haven’t much time for all us lazy academic layabouts, but there’s a lot to do in a college apart from looking after students. But you’d know that, of course.’

Morse nodded, and knew that he could very soon learn to dislike this unclerically garbed parson intensely.

‘We shall co-operate as much as we can,’ continued the Vice-Master. ‘You know that. But it would be nice to be kept in the picture – just a little, perhaps?’

‘Nothing really to tell you, sir-not yet, anyway.’

‘You don’t even want to tell me why your sergeant took the key to Westerby’s room as well?’

‘Ah, that! Yes, I ought to have mentioned that, sir. You see, there’s just a possibility that the corpse we found up in the canal wasn’t Browne-Smith’s after all.’

‘Really?’

But Morse declined to elaborate further as he made his farewell and strode away across the quad, sensing those highly intelligent eyes upon him as he turned into the Porters’ Lodge. From there he progressed, only some hundred yards, into the bar of the Mitre, where he had agreed to meet Lewis. He would be half an hour early, he realized that; but a thirty-minute wait in a pub was no great trial of patience to Morse.

Once inside Browne-Smith’s room, Lewis had taken out of its plastic wrapper the dark-blue jacket found on the corpse and measured it carefully against the jackets in the bedroom wardrobe: it was the same length, the same measurement round the chest, of the same sartorial style, with a single slit at the back and slim lapels. There could be little doubt about it: the jacket bad belonged to Browne-Smith. After rehanging the suits, Lewis methodically looked through the rest of the clothes, but learned only that each of the five pairs of shoes was size nine, and that four brand-new pairs of socks were all of navy-blue cotton with two light blue rings round the tops.

Westerby’s rooms opposite were silent and empty now, only the faded brown fitted carpet remaining, with oblong patches of pristine colour marking the erstwhile positions of the heavier furniture. Nothing else at all, except a plastic spoon and an jar of Nescafe on the draining-board in the kitchen.

Lewis’s highly discreet inquiries in the college office produced (amongst other things) the information that Browne-Smith certainly wore a suit very similar to the one he now unwrapped once more; and the college secretary herself (whom even Lewis considered very beautiful) was firmest of all in such sad corroboration.

The young porter was still on duty when Lewis handed back the two keys, and was soon chatting freely enough when Lewis asked about “Gilbert Removals”. As far as the porter could remember, Mr Gilbert himself had been down to T Staircase about four or five times; but he’d finished now, for Mr Westerby had at last been ‘shifted’.

‘Funny you should ask about Mr Gilbert, sergeant. He’s like your chief- both of ‘em got the jaw-ache by the look of things.’

Lewis nodded and prepared to leave. ‘Nuisance, teeth are, yes. Nothing much worse than an abscess on one of your front teeth, you know.’

The porter looked strangely at Lewis for a few seconds, for the words he had just heard were almost exactly (he could swear it) the words he had heard from the afflicted furniture-remover.

He told Lewis so… and Lewis told Morse, in the Mitre. Yet neither of them realized, at least for the present, that this brief and seemingly insignificant little episode was to have a profound effect upon the later stages of the case.

Our two detectives have not yet quite finished with the implications of severe dismemberment.

The case was working out well enough, thought Lewis, as he drove Morse back through Summertown. The shops were in the same order as they’d been two hours earlier when he had driven past them: the RAG building, Budgens, Straw Hat Bakery, Allied Carpets, Chicken Barbecue… yes, just the same. It was only a question of seeing them in reverse order now, tracing them backwards, as it were. Just like this case. Morse had traced things backwards fairly well thus far, if somewhat haphazardly… And he wanted to ask Morse two questions, though he knew better than to interrupt the great man’s thoughts in transit.

In Morse’s mind, too, far more was surfacing from the murky waters of a local canal than a bloated, mutilated corpse that had been dragged in by a boat-hook as it threatened to drift down again and out of reach. Other things had been surfacing all the way along the towpath, as clue had followed clue. One thing at least was fairly firmly established: the murderer-whoever that might be-had either been quite extraordinarily subtle, or quite – inordinately stupid, in going to the lengths of dismembering a body, and then leaving it in its own clothes. If it was in its own suit… Lewis had done his job; and Lewis was sure that the *nt was Browne-Smith’s. But what about the body? Oh yes, •deed – but what about the body?

Back in Morse’s office, Lewis launched into his questions: ‘It’s pretty certainly Browne-Smith’s body, don’t you think, sir?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘But surely-’

‘I said I don’t bloody know!’

So, Lewis, after a decent interval, asked his other question: ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that you and this Gilbert fellow should have a bad tooth at the same time?’

Morse appeared to find this an infinitely more interesting question, and he made no immediate reply. Then he shook his head decisively. ‘No. Coincidences are far more commonplace than any of us are willing to accept. It’s this whole business of chance, Lewis. We don’t go in much for talking about chance and luck, and what a huge part they play in all our lives. But the Greeks did-and the Romans; they both used to worship the goddess of luck. And if you must go on about coincidences, you just go home tonight and find the forty-sixth word from the beginning of the forty-sixth psalm, and the forty-sixth word from the end of it- and see what you land up with! Authorized Version, by the way.’