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 . . . And 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 and Dr Denis Cornford for the coveted position of Master is hotting up.

But then Morse faces a greater, far more personal crisis . . .