- 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...