What happened previously in this AU series: If you haven't read the two previous instalments, you only need to know that Joan Thursday decided to stay in Oxford after the Wessex Bank heist, that she presently lives as a guest at Dorothea Frazil's and that she (finally) accepted Morse's proposal.

All the standard disclaimers apply: Endeavour doesn't belong to me, and I'm just borrowing it for a while. Some dialogues are Russell Lewis', and additional lines were ruthlessly pinched from Inspector Morse episodes.

All my gratitude to my awesome Beta AstridContraMundum, for her interest in this endeavour, her generous assistance, and her numerous comments which improved this fic a thousand times even when I was writing the first draft.

Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine

Grant him eternal rest, O Lord.

(Introit, Requiem Mass / Mass for the Dead)

'Whiiish' goes the roller as it slides smoothly over the scraped and plastered wall of Morse's den.

'Screech' answers the needle on the opera record, as it ends its journey across the groves.

Perched on the top step of the stepladder, Joan Thursday sighs, then swipes her sweating brow with her forearm. Unbeknownst to her, her gesture imprints a pale green streak on her skin, but the colour misses her hair, protectively covered with a scarf.

She finishes the corner of the room with painstaking care, before stepping down on the canvas-covered parquet to admire her handiwork from afar. 'Not bad, not bad at all,' Joan congratulates herself. At this distance, the faint tracing of the roller cannot be seen at all. It's as seamless as it can be.

The colour isn't that important, really, nor are the last brushstrokes, Joan knows, because every wall in the room will end up covered with shelves—and books and records stacked on them, sooner or later, hiding her handiwork. But at present, there is only this glorious spring-like greenness, mirroring the deeper green of the cherry tree standing in the back garden, whose low branches brush the windowpanes with muslin-like fingers.

Apart from the stepladder and the can of paint hanging from its top, the only piece of furniture in the room is a battered old stool. On it, Endeavour's new record player sits in this barren paint-smelling splendour, the only permanent fixture of his den to be.

Static noise intrudes on Joan's ears, and she hastens to stop the endlessly spinning record. Her deft fingers flip the LP to its other side, and put it back on, even if she has listened to this opera in a continuous loop all afternoon.

'A few more days, and I'll be able to sing along with them,' she considers with some irony, when the first Finale of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) begins again, its bubbling energy invigorating and hope-inducing. There were few choices of records and Mozart was as good as any other, but this opera thing is slowly growing on her. 'Not a bad thing, considering that—'

Joan turns the sound level up, opens the window wider to let in fresh air, then goes into the kitchen to make herself a cuppa. She's earned it, and more than one. She's been at it, painting like crazy since early afternoon, since she left Viv Wall's office and went to Endeavour's new place to speed up the renovation work. Now her shoulders twinge, and she feels that if she has to inhale some more 'N°5 Paint (Chigton Green),' she'll go quietly out of her mind, sneezing.

As she reaches the kitchen, Joan looks without thinking out of the window, and there it is, in its conspicuous bright red splendour, her brand-new car, parked along the kerb.

Well, 'brand new' for her, that is, because she bought it cheap from Linda. The Mini has seen better days, and the hazard of its previous owner's driving are still exhibited in the various bumps hidden by flower-shaped stickers, but it's hers now. And quite welcome it is, because Joan doesn't know how she'll manage to commute between Oxford and Chigton Green without a car, once she's settled there as Mrs. Morse. The buses are reliable, but there are too few of them daily, and she'd hate to be tied to the place anyway, or too dependent on Morse.

Still, what his opinion will be regarding her Mini doesn't bear thinking about.

Joan fills the kettle and places it on the gas cooker, shaking her head in disbelief. What possessed her to buy this wreck? 'Its price, primarily,' says the practical part of her mind. But she already knows that Morse would prefer to walk back and forth to Oxford rather than be seen taking a ride in Joan's car… Maybe they could manage to find another cheap one for his use?

Presently, he keeps the black Jag from the nick overnight so he can pick up her dad at home, as is his wont, but this state of affairs cannot last for long. Till now, Morse has managed to achieve his own ends because he sticks with his beloved Jag, that older model that some coppers don't find very dashing to use… Still, it's bound to be awkward in the end, his near appropriation of a police car.

Joan pours the water in the teapot, and a delightful scent of Earl Grey wafts in her nostrils. She inhales deeply, glad of the familiar, comforting fragrance. Anything to counteract the drifting whiffs of her afternoon feverish activity. With some luck, there might even be some biscuits left in the tin can she stored in the cupboard above the sink.

Deftly, she slips out of her overalls, unties the scarf around her head, and folds them on the back of the opposite kitchen chair, glad to be rid of this restriction. It's not as if she has much choice to sit in the half-furnished house. It's either here at the kitchen table or on the first floor, on Morse's bed—'Our bed soon, quite soon,' she thinks with a happy twinge in the middle of her stomach.

While they are refreshing the house, and scraping and painting, all of Morse's furniture is piled up in two of the smaller rooms upstairs and the living room downstairs, hidden behind protective sheets. They're toiling hard to make the place liveable—at least part of it, because it's bigger than her parent's house, and really, Joan would have to produce children at an alarming rate if Endeavour really wants to fill up all the rooms upstairs…

Thinking back on it, Joan smothers a giggle. How he looked at her, when she said it, wonder and no little guardedness warring on his face…

At present, there are merely a table and a few chairs, built-in cupboards and a gas cooker and stove available in the kitchen, and, in Morse's bedroom, the double bed they bought at Burridge's, mahogany night stands, a companion wardrobe in the same deep brown veneer, and even a chest of drawers in George III style.

All the rest of the furniture is 'Victorian Ugly'—as Joan privately dubbed it—, not even 'Gothic Revival,' as Morse had to admit with a hint of disappointment. Not really what they wished for, but they used to be Morse's great-aunt's and beggars can't pick and choose. 'Oh, for a chrome steel armchair instead of all that upholstery!' was Joan's inner reaction. However, Morse will be comfy in a Chesterfield armchair when listening to his records, after they drag them back into the den.

Now that the elderly woman has gone to a retirement home, she has bestowed the whole of her house's contents to Morse; and it's a godsend, as Joan wonders what they would have done with this huge house nearly empty, now that nearly all of Morse's money goes to monthly payments for it and a few necessary repairs. Fortunately, he set aside some tin while he shared Jim Strange's house for a few months. Not the best of cohabitation, even if all Endeavour ever said about it was 'it isn't the Yellow House,' so Joan was left wondering which one of them would be impersonating Van Gogh.

But it's Aunt Matilda's library that brought some enthusiasm to Morse's scrutiny, as he perused her shelves.

Joan closes her eyes, and against the backdrop of her lids, Endeavour's unguarded face expresses again his unabashed pleasure while he browses through a first edition of Sheridan's The Critic, one of the jewels of the collection. He seemed so pleased that Joan will never dare tell him she has never heard of it; she just went along with it. It seems that Matilda's forebears kept with the literary fads of their times, so there are some items that date back to her great-grandfather. Nothing of much value, only curios for bibliophiles and collectors of lesser writers, but interesting for Endeavour, nonetheless. At least, it makes up for the horridness of the sturdy furniture.

Morse's books and most records are currently enclosed in crates, waiting for the greenness of the den to dry and the bookshelves to be erected along the walls. And this is why Joan is painting like crazy during a sunny spring afternoon, instead of strolling along the Cherwell, or window shopping, or doing anything that doesn't include being enclosed sweating between four walls reeking of fresh paint.

In three days, they are supposed to put up the bloody shelves, and Jim Strange will even lend them a hand.

Within two months, Joan Thursday will sign 'Joan Morse' on a register, and she wonders what it will really feel like, tracing the unfamiliar name, even if she's practised it on the sly several times on various notebooks.

She takes a sip of her tea pensively, while in the deserted den, Mozart's music soars in syncopated outraged tones. Antonio the gardener is explaining to his master, Count Almaviva, that he saw Cherubino, an amorous little page much too interested in his Godmother's beauty and kindness, jumping out of the window of the Countess' bedroom.

'Ascoltate! (Listen to me!)

Dal balcone che guarda in giardino (From the balcony that looks out on the garden)

mille cose ogni dì gittar veggio, (I've seen a thousand things thrown down,)

e poc'anzi, può darsi di peggio, (but just now, what could be worse?)

vidi un uom, signor mio, gittar giù. (I saw a man, my lord, thrown out!)'

In answer, the conspirators jump into the fray. The Countess, Susanna, her maidservant, and Figaro, the Count's valet and Susanna's betrothed, wanted to excite the Count's jealousy on a red herring, then use his embarrassment regarding his mistake to get him to agree to Figaro's and Susanna's marriage. For this purpose, they hid the little page Cherubino, disguised as a woman, in the Countess' chambers, intending him to lure the Count to a rendezvous.

Antonio: 'A me parve il ragazzo...' (To me it looked like the boy.)

Count Almaviva: 'Cherubino!'

Susanna and the Countess: 'Maledetto! Maledetto!' (Damn you!)

Figaro: 'Esso appunto, / da Siviglia a cavallo qui giunto / da Siviglia ci forse sarà.' (Of course, / from Seville where he went on horseback, / from Seville where he's arrived presently.)

Antonio: 'Questo no; che il cavallo / io non vidi saltare di là.' (No, that's not so; / I saw no horse jumping out of the window.)

Count Almaviva: 'Che pazienza! Finiam questo ballo!' (Patience! Let's wind up this nonsense!)

Susanna and the Countess: 'Come mai, giusto ciel, finirà?' (How, in the name of Heaven, will it end?)

Joan already knows how it will end. In a whirlwind of mistaken identities and ruses, with the lovers reunited and married, and the Count begging his wife's forgiveness for his roving eyes… All very satisfactory and theatre-like. Not that it is surprising: Morse explained to her that the libretto came from a famous French play.

Her mind wanders off to her own happy future. Half-formed images of married bliss unroll, snapshots of everyday occurrences turned sparkly because he features in them, but they don't linger for long. For all his dependability, her fiancé is in some ways unpredictable, so nothing is quite certain, and that's fine. Joan would hate routine. Endeavour is out of the ordinary, and that's also what drew her to him.

Alone in the soon-to-be-hers kitchen, she smiles suddenly with that private little smile that always made Sam think that she was planning some delightful mischief.

Remembering Endeavour's eagerness as he drove her to visit the empty house brings back her own thrill when she first saw it. Brick walls, smoky blue slate slanted roofs and a small timber porch. The perfect English cottage, complete with back garden, boxwood hedges in the front, fruit trees and a few bunch of flowers gone wild at the back.

And former drugged squatters who so trashed and gutted the inside of the house that Endeavour was able to buy it for a mere £3,140. There's nothing better than bad reputation and past purported murder to lower the price of real estate. It will take them years to pay for it, but at least, it will be theirs.

Joan drinks the last drops of her tea, and gets up. A half-painted wall is waiting for her.

As she raises her arms to tie the scarf round her head, preparing to battle to the end against her roller, the doorbell echoes with a tremolo in the mostly empty house.

Hastily raking her hand through her hair just in case, Joan flings back the scarf on the kitchen table.

Hoping that it's the long-awaited plumber, she opens the front door briskly, but the man standing on the threshold doesn't look the part.

He's a young man entirely unknown to Joan, about her age, she supposes. Red hair, fair skin, freckles, dark green jumper, and black-rimmed glasses, he looks like a half-asleep dumbfounded plump owl. And nothing in his hands resembles even remotely a toolkit. As a matter of fact, his hands are folded rather defensively in his pockets.

'Hello,' Joan says brightly. 'I gather you're not Mr. Crouch?'

Her welcoming smile isn't mirrored in the stranger's face. He refutes his presumed identity with a slight shake of the head, fidgets uncomfortably, and looks insistently above her shoulder.

Automatically, Joan sneaks a glance in the same direction, but she doesn't see at thing apart from the brand-new cream-coloured paint in the entrance corridor walls, and the telephone set lying on the bare tiled floor, its extension cord coiled up near it for lack of a table to put it on.

'And you are…?' Joan probes hopefully.

At her inquiry, the man seems to gather himself together. 'Is Mr. Morse at home?' Again, he darts a look behind Joan, as if doing so would prompt Endeavour to materialise on the spot. 'Err…this is Sergeant Morse's house, isn't it?'

'It is,' confirms Joan, 'but he's not home yet. What can I do for you?'

She must raise her voice to make it heard above the Almavivas household's melodious disputes as they reach their climax. Joan winces internally. With the front door opened, the entire neighbourhood can partake of Mozart's opera. Not a good way to endear the newlywed Morses to the inhabitants of Chigton Green.

The man's attention changes its aim and focuses on Joan's face, frowning. Her left hand goes nervously to her nose, and she asks, half-joking, 'What is it? Dirt on my nose?'

'No, green on your forehead, actually,' the man smiles, all of a sudden. The mundane question seems to have restored his composure, as he asks with a voice betraying much less nervousness, 'Who are you?'

'Morse's fiancé. He's due here in a few hours. May I help you?'

The man shifts nervously from foot to foot, and takes his time before answering. 'I—I don't…'

He focuses on his shoes, his feet stirring faster with indecision until he glances up suddenly on Joan's left hand, where her engagement ring twinkles red and white in the afternoon sun.

'Fiancé?' he asks.

'Yeah, why?'

'Well, I—'

In haste, as if the gesture preceded his thought, the man whips something out of his pocket and puts it forcefully in Joan's hand. It's so unexpected that whatever it is slips from her grasp as her hand closes upon it by reflex, and Joan has to flex her knees to recover it before it reaches the ground. She's lowering her eyes towards the small square of paper slipped in her hand when a dull sound bursts out near her and the man standing a few feet in front of her.

And another.

And a third one.

Her head snaps up in surprise, in time to see the young man sway sluggishly and crumble in a heap at her feet—well, rather where Joan's feet would be if she hadn't stepped back reflectively.

On the man's upper back, there's a tiny, dirty red stain which spreads rapidly, darkening his jumper.

Joan's right hand searches a purchase, and in so doing, the bit of paper she's still holding brushes against the wall. Absently, she slips it in the back pocket of her jeans. With erratic breathing and shaking legs, she backs away as fast as she can, her eyes focused on the prostrate body keeping the opened front door stuck against the wall.

She doesn't go far back. Her heels bump into the telephone set and she halts, as if this frail obstacle was a barrage of unyielding proportions.

Sprawled in the entrance, the man doesn't move at all, his left arm extended towards Joan as if asking for something, thus finishing the sentence she'll never hear the end of, stubby fingers grotesquely fanned out on the black and white tiles.

Away in the street, on the outside world, a car engine starts abruptly and, lost in her trance, Joan dimly hears it speeding along the street then fading away into silence.

She releases a breath she's not aware she's holding, and as if they were waiting for just that, her legs give out unexpectedly. Therefore, it's on all fours that she crawls towards the unmoving form and clutches the unresponsive drawn-out hand. It lays limp in hers, and she lets go of it as if it scorched her.

It takes a few tries before Joan manages to dial the number, her back carefully turned against the ghastly sight.

'Breathe,' she admonishes herself. 'Breathe deeply.' But she forgets her self-possession as soon as a male voice intones into the receiver, 'Cowley Police Station. How may—'

Words come pouring out pell-mell, unlinked with verbs or prepositions. From far away, she hears them gush out in waves, and checks herself, ashamed. It's not a police car they're about to send, but an ambulance and a straightjacket her size, if she's not careful.

She takes a shuddering breath and tries again. This time, some snippets of sense drift among the flotsam of her sentences. 'Joan Thursday,' 'Sergeant Morse,' 'quick as possible,' 'emergency,' 'not moving,' 'where is my father?' and 'he's dead.'

The man on the other side doesn't hesitate. A few seconds later, Joan hears a click heralding the switching of the line, then Jim Strange's comforting voice over the phone. 'Strange here! What's the matter, Joanie?'

Again, words fall upon each other when they speed out of her mouth. If Joan were to stop the outpouring to check them, she'd never be able to speak again. 'He's dead, Jim—someone shot him—in the entrance, and—I don't even know who he is!'

Her tone of voice escalades higher in a panic-stricken coloratura, and Joan almost shrieks the last sentence, a tiny voice in her head tsk-tsking with stern disapproval in the face of her mounting frenzy.

Fortunately, Jim has seen and heard too much to be ruffled by her disjointed sentences, and he asks purposely, 'Are you alright?'

'Do I sound alright?' Joan almost screams. She heaves a deep, calming breath and asks, 'Where's Morse?' Again, her question totters on the edge of hysteria.

'Where are you?' insists Strange, paying no heed to her last question.

'Morse's house, Woodstock Road.'

'On our way. Fifteen minutes,' he announces before hanging up.

Strange is faithful to his word. A quarter of an hour later, Joan hears the screeches of cars stopping in front of the house. Jim must have broken every traffic regulation.

Still in a daze, she peers through the window of the kitchen, opens it and hurls to the approaching coppers walking through the front garden, 'Over here!'

Still, her brisk closing of the window doesn't entirely mute the incessant screeching echoing through her head.

Born of sideration, a part of her analyses dispassionately. But the noise goes on and on and on like a surreal imposition, putting a shifting screen of haze between reality and her senses, before Joan realises that the nerve-wracking sound is produced by the needle making its usual endless rounds at the end of the LP—bad pressing.

She should switch off the record player, Joan thinks with detachment.

Like an automaton, she opens the door of the kitchen and comes nose to nose with Jim Strange, as he stretches out his hand to grasp the handle.

He starts and says, 'Joanie? Where are you going?'

'Record player—in the den…' she begins, but he takes her gently by the shoulder and turns her back into the kitchen.

'We'll take care of that,' Strange says, then he raises his voice, 'Shirl! Switch off the record player, will you?'

'At once, sir,' answers a female voice.

The sudden, deafening silence is a relief, but Joan realises that the static wasn't so bad, after all. It drowned her thoughts in a comfortable quiver. Nearby, on the front doorway, people are talking in low tones, voices studiously avoiding a word louder than the other, so she cannot overhear what they're saying.

Detachedly, she feels Strange's hand on the crook of her back, then on her arm, pressing her into a chair. He's talking to someone but she can't really make their words out, until a sentence impresses her ears.

'Tea, with a lot of sugar,' Dr. DeBryn's voice suggests.

'Sugar?' The word gets Joan's attention, and she raises her head from the shield of her hands, noting his frown directed at her.

'I'm not sure we—Morse has any left. I didn't do any grocery shopping before coming,' Joan says, then she asks hopefully, 'Would scotch do instead of sugar? Getting mashed looks frightfully appealing for once.'

DeBryn huffs a small laugh while Jim simply seems scandalised. 'That's the spirit, young lady,' the good Doctor approves, before withdrawing back into the corridor.

Joan hears him speak in low tones with the woman she overheard before, before a familiar-looking WPC enters the kitchen.

'Miss Thursday,' Shirley Trewlove says. 'Do you want some tea?'

'It doesn't look as if I have a choice,' Joan protests, but she accepts another cuppa laced with a drop of scotch when it's ready. She keeps staring at it as if the china held all the answers to life, death, the universe, and the rest in between.

As she loses herself in that rigid contemplation, the WPC leans on the wall near the closed door, as if guarding it from Joan's curiosity, tension emanating from her falsely relaxed silhouette.

But her vigil is uncalled for, Joan wants to tell her. She feels no urge to witness what her fevered mind imagines from too many whodunit readings. The pathologist moving the body around. Jim crouched near it probing for details in soft tones. The other coppers waiting a few feet behind, stretcher on the ready, leaving behind tiles relieved of this uncouth weight. A spatter of red adding a new irregular pattern to the repeated tracery of palmettes and fake Roman friezes, once the man—the body—is removed. 'Will the blood ever come out?' Joan wonders. 'Will I ever stop to see his slack chin and glazed over, staring eyes as he fell?'

'We've met before, haven't we?' Joan begins wearily, when the silence between the women threatens to crack at the seams and morph into a more threatening shape.

'Twice,' the WPC answers curtly, her eyes staring at the cupboard directly in front of her. She seems awfully self-conscious, avoiding Joan's eyes with obdurate care.

'Yeah, I remember,' Joan says, at a loss to continue the constrained conversation.

But she hasn't time to rake her mind for long, as the voices she was straining to hear all along resonate in the entrance. The door to the kitchen bangs precipitously open, and a harried-looking Morse appears through the doorframe.

Joan jumps to her feet and meets him halfway. His arms are the shelter she sought all along; his warmth the comfort she needed against the horror of the last hour. She clings to him, her forehead seeking the crook of his shoulder, as if blindfolding her eyes against him would wean them from the sight she doesn't want to see anymore. As she does so, he forgets his usual aloofness, and his instinctive response is to hold her closer still. Then his cheek brushes against her hair, as he looks down at his obstinate fiancée who doesn't want to meet his gaze as she nestles into the deliberate caressing pressure of his body.

'Are you hurt?' Morse asks her.

'Scotch's really disgusting with Earl Grey,' Joan mumbles against his chest.

She feels against her cheek the rumbling of his relieved huff of a laugh, and tightens the circle of her arms around his waist even more.

'No sugar left,' she adds by way of explanation.

'None,' he agrees, then shifts their position a little. Joan raises her eyes at last, and sees that Dr. DeBryn is standing silently in the doorway, flanked by a grim-looking Fred Thursday. She loosens her embrace and takes a tiny step backward as Morse's face smooths into a more dispassionate expression.

'Tomorrow, eight o'clock,' DeBryn announces to no one in particular, but Strange nods as if that cryptic remark was crystal clear, his silhouette half-concealed behind her father's. Morse merely seems peeved and his arm tenses for a second against her shoulder.

'Alright, are you, Joan?' her father merely asks, scrutinizing her from head to feet.

'Yeah, yeah… Just—stunned,' she owns and lets herself be hugged again. A brief hug which doesn't threaten a DCI's composure.

Joan's answer is the one they anticipated, as it breaks the spell. They all squeeze around the kitchen table, even the WPC, who takes a notepad out of her pocket and waits, pen on the ready, for the next necessary step.

Jim Strange asks her the questions Joan expects, and she ponders her answers slowly, not from a wish to withhold anything but from the fear of forgetting a detail. She's resolute and patient as 'Shirl' scribbles down all that she says. Beside her, Joan feels her father's presence, like a protective and silent shadow, and she's glad of his restraint. She can do it on her own.

Unless she's a suspect? The thought comes unbidden and disappears in a flash. No, it's ridiculous.

No, she never saw the man before. No, the bloke didn't say what he wanted Morse for—if he wanted something from Morse, that is. He didn't say much—and she repeats as faithfully as she can what he said to her. No, she didn't see anything suspicious. No, she didn't touch the body—actually, she merely seized his hand to be sure—

Joan clams up and lowers her head, and Strange tactfully desists when he sees a tell-tale shimmer in her eyes. Her head swims and abruptly, all she wants is to crawl into her bed and sleep for a fortnight.

Seated beside her, Morse doesn't release her hand, and Joan feels Strange's quick glances at their intertwined fingers, as he questions Endeavour in his turn.

He answers in clipped, quiet tones, and his litany is nearly the same as Joan's. Doesn't know the bloke, didn't have any appointment with him. Has no idea what it means, and does not take lightly his getting shot at while in his house. Has a perfect alibi, as he spent his day with Thursday interviewing suspects.

That last precision is flung voluntarily with a belligerent tone, one that draws Joan's ears, acutely tuned to his every inflection. Endeavour's furious and he's also wary.

'Alright, matey,' says Strange wryly, pocketing the notebook. 'Don't disturb anything. Front door's off limits. So's the entrance. Use the back door, will you?'

Thursday butts in. 'Morse knows the music,' he states in a tone that suffers no contradiction.

'Right,' agrees Strange. 'Come by tomorrow to the nick to sign your statements.'

Morse nods briskly. 'Won't have to go far.'

Strange smiles apologetically at Joan, and with a last sweeping turn of the head, bids them good-bye. The WPC has already tactfully departed, as have all the coppers.

Jim's footsteps recede audibly into the house, and a last click from the backdoor heralds his departure. As if to make sure that that's all for today, Morse goes silently to the window and watches the coppers as they cross the tiny gravel-covered front path, tugging at his ear pensively.

It's just the three of them now. Family, or nearly so.

But it's not before hearing the police cars' engines break the silence for the last time that Joan pushes back from the table and slumps onto the back of her chair. His lips tightening, Thursday ventures, 'Off to bed, young lady! We'll drive you back to Miss Frazil's.'

'Thank you, no, I can drive myself now. I have my own car,' Joan announces.

Morse raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and she explains, 'Mini. Parked in front of the house.'

For a second, Morse's mouth curls down deprecatingly, but he grits his teeth and says nothing, probably indulging the 'poor little woman' with another of his chivalrous notions. A quick flash of annoyance goes through Joan, but she's too drained to really linger on it. Anyway, it's her car, so he can bloody well like it or lump it.

Fred Thursday will take the Jag home. He will pick up Morse tomorrow morning, he explains, while sending a stern message to Morse with his eyes. From the look of it, Morse gets it, but at this point, Joan doesn't care to decipher it: slumber is all that she desires.

Dutifully, Joan raises her face and kisses her father good night as he bends over her. She's got to get up. She's got to go to her car, and she's got to… But weariness pushes her back where she's sitting, and she merely raises red-rimmed eyes towards him.

As she shifts wearily, Joan feels a soft crunching sound coming from one of the back pockets of her jeans, and she cries out, her eyes widening in dismay, 'Oh no! I totally forgot…'

Morse whirls around, and his agile brows jump up. 'Forgot?'

Joan's fingers slip into her pocket and come out proffering a small envelope, the kind used for enclosing visiting cards. 'I forgot—He gave me that for you, just before—just before…'

Even the more observant censor would see that her face holds nothing more than contrition and a touch of anxiety.

'Dad, I really did forget,' she pleads. 'H-he pressed it into my hand, and I merely glanced at it, but he—he fell at that moment, and I forgot.'

Morse takes a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket and takes the envelope from her hand. Under Thursday's intent gaze, he turns it around, disclosing his name written in block letters on the front. With as much care, he slips the flap free, frowns, bows above the table and carefully frees a scrap of paper.

It floats onto the table, and glides on the middle of the Formica board, stopping in an equidistant distance between the three witnesses, but the scribbling on its sheet ends up directed at Morse, as if confirming that it was indeed addressed to him.

Morse lets go of a gasp and blanches as he looks more closely upon the piece of paper.

'It can't be,' he says in a low tone, and he sits down rather precipitously in the nearest chair as if his legs could not hold him upright anymore.

Joan and her father exchange baffled glances.

The slip of paper that elicited such a reaction from Morse isn't impressive, far from it.

No more than an inch square, from what Joan can guess, the partially rotund sheet has that dirty beige tint that comes from being centuries old. On it, she discerns some scribbled words and, at the far left, the faintest suggestion of several horizontal strokes.

She knows a little about old manuscripts now, for Endeavour dragged her along to an exhibition at the Bodleian. If not for him, Joan wouldn't have begun to fathom the fascination an original letter or an autograph score can hold. But Morse's explanations and his enthusiasm changed her perception. She began to feel some awe over the relics of great minds of the past, as the usually imperturbable Morse looked with warm and admiring longing upon the display cases. As Endeavour bent over an Egyptian letter of a boy complaining that his father left him behind, she thought then that human feelings stay just the same, be they thousands of years old or from yesterday. And Joan admits that Jane Austen's manuscript of The Watsons was of primary interest to her, since she's been reading Austen's novels as part of her Free School program.

So, Endeavour's awe and reverence isn't new to her, as he carefully places the manuscript squarely onto the slightly bigger envelope lying on the kitchen table, with suddenly shaking fingers.

'It can't be,' he repeats, as if to convince himself that whatever this thing is, it can't be genuine.

'What?' asks Fred Thursday cautiously, looking alternatively from his flabbergasted bagman to his astonished daughter.

'It disappeared…' Morse utters in a strangled voice, his face flaming and paling in seconds. 'Someone tore it away in 1958.' There is a tremor in his voice that Joan can't brand properly. Is it astonishment or distress?

'It was placed on display at the World's Fair in Brussels,' Morse pursues, too intent on his explanation to take care of the scrutiny with which her father is observing him. 'And, at some point, a… a—vandal (and at this point, his voice goes arctic with fury and damning heat) tore off the bottom right-hand corner of the folio, and took off with it… Probably an inside job.'

He raises his eyes from the scrap of paper, and Joan sees that outrage slowly recedes, leaving wonder in them. As if he couldn't tear his eyes from the manuscript for long, he focuses them back on it, something akin to worship sparkling in them.

Till then, she believed she was the only one who could provoke such a look in his eyes, she thinks with a wrench in her stomach.

'If they're right, it's one of the last things he ever wrote,' Morse adds, his finger hovering over the letters as he reads them aloud, '"Quam olim da Capo." Meaning that the "Quam olim" fugue of the "Domine Jesu Christe" has to be repeated "da capo," at the end of the "Hostias".'

Seeing Thursday's puzzled look, he closes his lids as if cradling a painful secret behind them and, raising his sightless eyes to the ceiling, suddenly sings, 'quam olim Abrahae promisisti… et semini ejus.'

Joan recognizes the tune immediately, and from her father's sharp intake of breath, so does he; but it's up to her to say it aloud.

'Mozart's Requiem.'

'Yes,' says Morse, and in his eyes lurks brittle triumph.

NOTES

Morse bought his house for £3.140. The average price for a house in the early 1970s was £4.975.

So, what do you think of the case? I would love to hear your thoughts! The second chapter will be posted tomorrow, and afterwards, once a week.