The Riddle Of The Third Mile by Colin Dexter Read Free Book Online Page A

said, didn’t you, that I might be right?’
    ‘You are right. At least, you’re almost certainly right in suggesting that he didn’t type it. He could have dictated it, of course.’
    ‘Why are you so sure?’
    ‘Well,’ said Morse, as the Master locked the door behind them, ‘he was a literary pedant for a good many years before you met him. He was one of my “Mods” tutors, you see; and even then he’d bark away at the most trivial sort of spelling mistake as if it were the sin against the Holy Ghost. At the time, of course, it didn't seem to matter two farts in the universe; but in an odd sort of way I came to respect his views- and I still do. I'd never let a spelling mistake go through my secretary-not if I could help it.'
    ‘Never?’
    ‘Never!’ said Morse, his grey-blue eyes sober and serious as the two men lingered on the landing outside the Master's rooms. ‘And you can be absolutely sure of one thing, Master. Browne-Smith would have died sooner than misspelt “irresistible”.'
    ‘You don't think-you don't think he is dead?’
    ‘Course he's not!’ said Morse, as the two old friends walked down the stairs.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Week beginning Wednesday, 16th July
     
    In which those readers impatiently waiting to encounter the first corpse will not be disappointed, and in which interesting light is thrown on the character of the detective, Morse.
     
    It had been 2.30 p.m. when Morse finally left Lonsdale; and after stocking himself up from a tobacconist's shop just along the High, he was back in his Kidlington office just before three o'clock, where nothing much appeared to have happened during his absence.
    On leaving Lonsdale, he had promised the Master to ‘keep an eye on things’ (a quite meaningless phrase, as Morse saw it) should any aspect of Browne-Smith's sudden departure take on a slightly more sinister connotation.
    To an observer, Morse's eyes would have appeared slightly ‘set’, as Shakespeare has it, and his mood was mellowly maudlin. And as he sat there, his freely-winged imagination glided easily back to the fateful days of his time at Oxford…
    After eighteen months as a National Serviceman in the Royal Signals Regiment, Morse had come up to St John's College, where his first two years were the happiest and most purposeful of his life. He had worked hard at his texts, attended lectures regularly, been prompt with unseens and compositions; and it had been no surprise to his tutors when such an informed and intelligent young man had duly gained a first in Classical Moderations. With two years ahead of him- two years in which to study for Greats-the future seemed to loom as sure as the sun-bright day that would follow the rosy-fingered dawn -particularly so, since the slant of Morse’s mind was ideally suited to the work ahead of him in History, Logic, and Philosophy. But in the middle of his third year he had met the girl who matched the joy of all his wildest dreams.
    She was already a graduate of Leicester University, whence a series of glowing testimonials had proved sufficiently impressive for her application to take a D.Phil. at Oxford to be accepted by St Hilda’s. For her first term, she had been alloted digs way out in the distances of Cowley Road. But amidst the horsehair sofas and the sombre, dark-brown furnishings, she had been unhappy and had jumped at the opportunity of a smaller flat in Number 22 St John Street (just off St Giles’) at the start of the Hilary Term. It was so much brighter, so much nearer the heart of things, and only a short walk from the Bodleian Library, where she spent so much of her time. She felt happy in her new room. Life was good.
    At this same time it was customary for the Dean of St John’s to farm out most of his third-year undergraduates to some of the nearby College property and, from the start of the Michaelmas term, Morse had moved into St John’s Road: Number 24.
    They first met one night in late February, during the interval of