The Wench Is Dead by Colin Dexter

deaths were for some reason or other not specifically 'accounted for' at all, albeit being registered in the national statistics. Perhaps a lot of them were just not important enough to get their own particular malady spelled out on any death certificate; perhaps many of the physicians, midwives, nurses, poor-law-attendants, or whatever, just didn't know, or didn't want to know, or didn't care.
    As he lay back in the pillows and thought of the circumstances besetting the luckless Joanna Franks, who had died neither of consumption nor pneumonia… nor… he suddenly fell into a sleep so deep that he missed his 10 p.m. Horlicks and his treasured digestive biscuit; and then he woke up again, somewhat less than refreshed, at 11.45 p.m., with a dry throat and a clear head. The lights hi the ward were turned down to half power, and the other patients around him seemed contentedly asleep – apart from the man who'd been admitted late that afternoon and around whom the medical staff had been fussing with a rather ominous concern; the man who now lay staring at the ceiling, doubtless contemplating the imminent collapse of his earthly fortunes.
    Nessie was nowhere to be seen: the desk was empty.
    He'd just had a nasty little dream. He'd been playing cricket in his early days at Grammar School; and when it came to his turn to bat, he couldn't find his boots… and then when he did find them the laces kept snapping; and he was verging on a tearful despair – when he'd awoken. It might have been Mrs Green talking about her chiropody? Or was it Lewis, perhaps, who'd brought the card from the cobblers? Or neither of them? Was it not more likely to have been a young woman in 1859 who'd shouted, with her particular brand of terrified despair, 'What have you done with my shoes?'
    He looked around again: the desk was still empty.
    Surely he wasn't likely to imperil the well-being of the ward if he turned on his angle-lamp? Especially if focused directly into a small pool of light on his own pillows? No! Reading a book wasn't going to hurt anyone and the sick man had had his light on all the time.
    Pushing in the button switch, he turned on his own light, with no reaction from anyone; and still no sign of Nessie.
    Part Three of Murder on the Oxford Canal was close to hand; but Morse was reluctant to finish that too quickly. He remembered when he'd first read Bleak House (still to his mind the greatest novel in the English language) he'd deliberately decelerated his reading as the final pages grew thinner beneath his fingers. Never had he wanted to hang on to a story so much! Not that the Colonel's work was anything to wax all that lyrical about; and yet Morse did want to eke it out – or so he told himself. Which left the not displeasing possibility of a few further chapters of The Blue Ticket – with Mr Greenaway now fast asleep. The pattern of crime in nineteenth-century Shropshire had already joined the local legion of lost causes.
    Morse was soon well into the exploits of a blonde who would have had arrows on her black stockings pointing northward and reading 'This way for the knickers' – that is, if she'd worn any stockings; or worn any knickers, for that matter. And it was amid much parading of bodies, pawing of bosoms, and patting of buttocks, that Morse now spent in enjoyable little interval of erotic pleasure; indeed, was he engrossed that he did not mark her approach.
    'What do you think you're doing?'
    'I was just-'
    'Lights go out at ten o'clock. You're disturbing everyone on the ward.'
    'They're all asleep.'
    'Not for much longer, with you around!'
    'I'm sorry-'
    'What's this you're reading?'
    Before he could do anything about it, Nessie had removed the book from his hands, and he had no option but to watch her helplessly. She made no comment, passed no moral judgement, and for a brief second Morse wondered if he had not seen a glint of some semi-amusement in those-sharp eyes as they had skimmed a couple of paragraphs.
    'Time