p 　　Morse is taken seriously ill at a museum reception and is hospitalized In the hospital, Supt Strange, visits Morse to push him to take early retirement, while Dr Millicent 三九 Millie 三九 Van Buren gives him her book on a 一四0 year-old court case known as the Oxford Canal Murders The case involved the murder and rape of a young woman, Mrs Joanna Franks, traveling by canal boat from Coventry to London The case resulted in three boatmen being sentenced to death and two of them hanged Morse starts to read Millie 三九 s book and dreams about it He soon has a number of problems with the case br 　　Why weren 三九 t the three men also charged with theft Why did Mrs Franks take a boat instead of a train that was much faster and comfortable and only slightly more expensive Why didn 三九 t she abandon the boat after she complained about lewd behavior of the crew at the shipping office in Banbury Why did she then drink and 三九 socialise 三九 with the crew What happened to her 三九 carpet bag 三九 with which she arrived on the boat but which was not mentioned in the court case, nor was it stored in the archives with her, almost empty, trunk The trunk was marked with initials of her first husband who had died How did it happen that her shoes were found on the boat but nobody saw her return to the boat from the forest br 　　PC Adrian Kershaw does some brilliant leg work for Morse He studied history and has invaluable background knowledge For instance, he mentions that the boatmen had bad reputation because they worked on Sundays and did not attend church Later a chapel was built for them in Oxford br 　　The dead woman 三九 s clothes and the shoes found on the boat are submitted to modern forensic investigation The result is that the shoes did not belong to the dead woman found in the water because she was much taller The shoes were never used in the forest br 　　Only Mrs Franks 三九 husband, Charles Franks, was called to identify the body of the dead woman He claimed that, while her face was darkened and disfigured, he found a birth mark behind her ear The prosecutor welcomed that information quot that only a husband or a lover would know quot The accused were not shown the body The defense attorney merely claimed that the guilt of the three men was not proved All three accused claimed to the end that they were innocent One of them was not executed because he embraced Christianity in prison br 　　Morse instructs Kershaw to investigate if Charles Franks benefited from his wife 三九 s death and, indeed, he pocketed 三00 pounds insurance money Case closed: Charles Franks murdered a tall women and dropped her in the canal after meeting Joanna in the forest If Joanna Franks jumped off the boat at the same time as the dead body hit the water, she swam to the bank and joined her husband The couple changed their names, in the case of 三九 Charles Franks 三九 a second time after he 三九 died 三九 as Joanna 三九 s first husband The fourth boatman, a youngster who was not charged, was probably paid by Joanna to give false testimony br 　　Morse travels to Ireland and has a grave of Joanna 三九 s first husband exhumed The coffin contains bags of sand and some stones p