As he drove his chief down to Kidlington Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun ' You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens
- the dead woman's next-door neighbour' ' Death is always the next-door neighbour' said Morse sombrely The murder of a young woman A cryptic 'seventeenth-century' love poem & a photograph of a mystery grey-haired man More than enough to set Chief Inspector E Morse on the trail of a killer And it's a trail that leads him to Lonsdale College where the contest between Julian Storrs & Dr Denis Cornford for the coveted position of Master is hotting up But then Morse faces a greater far more personal crisis