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Endeavour Morse’s birthday came quietly. The detective constable avoided informing anyone at work of its existence, and, since he rarely socialized with people outside of his sphere of coworkers, victims, and suspects, the day passed without consequence. He found little evidence that the date had even occurred at all until he received a letter from home. He tore open his mail as he climbed the stairs to his flat. The card inside the neat white envelope wished him many happy returns in his sister’s hand and contained two tickets to see Otello in London. Morse was astonished. Although he and his sister had always been on good terms with each other, they were never particularly close. He suspected that their father’s recent passing had something to do with the correspondence.
After discarding his coat and brief case on the bed, he examined the card more carefully. Endeavour had ventured home one last time after his father’s funeral to make sure everything was alright, and he hadn’t heard a thing from his stepmother or sister since the brief visit. Ultimately, the plain blue card with its simple message held up to his scrutiny and Endeavour decided to give his sister a call.
“Hello?”
“Hello Joycie, it’s me. I received your card today.”
“Oh good, I was worried it wouldn’t arrive on time.”
“Thank you, it’s wonderful.”
Silence ensued as Endeavour considered how to broach the subject of expense. While the Morse family had never been poor, they weren’t exactly rich either. After all, his father was only a taxi driver who may or may not have drove the Aga Khan. The young Morse knew that, more often than not, opera tickets did not come cheap.
“But listen, you really shouldn’t have. I know tickets can be expensive,” he began gently.
“Oh no, it really wasn’t any trouble,” Joyce answered. “It turns out that dad had a small sum of money stashed away.”
Morse raised his eyebrows. He never knew his father to be the type to keep a savings account, no matter how paltry the savings. His unacknowledged birthday was delivering a number of surprises.
“I thought it was only fair to send you a bit of it, but mum…” Joyce continued, her voice wavering.
“Didn’t think it was a good idea,” Morse finished.
“Right. I hope you don’t mind that I used your bit to buy opera tickets.”
“I don’t mind at all, Joycie, they’re perfect. Would you like to, perhaps, accompany me to the show?” he asked, grinning over his sister’s thoughtfulness.
There was a pause in the conversation.
“Oh, unfortunately I already have plans for that evening, Endeavour. I thought that you might want to take a friend,” Joyce said finally.
“A friend,” he repeated. “Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to find someone who would like to go with me… Thanks again, Joycie.”
“Happy birthday, Endeavour. Mum sends her love.”
“I’m sure.”
Joyce vacated the line first, leaving Endeavour to wonder if any of his friends, friends meaning Detective Inspector Thursday, would want to travel into the city to see Otello. He got his answer the following morning at the office. Thursday had to regrettably decline his young bagman’s invitation due to the fact that he and his wife were leaving on a short holiday to the coast that very weekend. Even so, he recommended that Endeavour ask Joan if she was interested.
“I’m not sure if the young girls are into opera these days, Morse, but then again it’s been a few decades since I’ve been on a proper date,” he offered.
Endeavour went crimson. Amidst the commotion of the last case and his father’s death, he had forgotten that he and Joan were “dating”. He chose not to correct Thursday’s misconception though, lest he ask further questions concerning that night at the Moonlight Room night club. The Thursday patriarch’s misunderstanding aside, Endeavour resolved not to ask Joan. He wasn’t sure if she even wanted to date him, or if he wanted to date her for that matter. But most of all, he wasn’t sure if she was still seeing Sergeant Jakes. Ruling out the members of the Thursday clan, Morse went on to invite just about everyone else in the office. They all declined. Strange was washing his uniform that night, deBryn had a pathologists convention to attend, he didn’t dare ask Bright, and Ellis flat out didn’t want to go.
Endeavour sat at his desk, settled on the fact that he was not going to find a date to the theater. He was considering the probability of his bumping into an opera-enthusiast stranger when a form comprised of ash and alabaster skin approached and looked down at him condescendingly.
“I heard that you’ve been begging everyone in the office to go to the opera with you,” Jakes scoffed, taking a drag off his ever-present cigarette.
“I haven’t been begging, but yes,” Morse affirmed, annoyed with his antagonist’s arrival.
“Just in case you’ve forgotten, this is the police, not the choir.”
The ticket holder looked up at the smoking man with disdain and uttered the following, “You wouldn’t want to go with me, would you?”
“Might as well,” Jakes answered quickly.
“Excuse me!?”
“It seems like every case is related to your classical education these days. Who knows? I might learn something,” he explained. Morse wasn’t sure if Jakes was mocking him or if his face was stuck in that sarcastic expression. Even so, he decided to play along. “Might as well” was the most positive response he had received all morning.
“If you’re being serious it’s tomorrow night, seven.”
“We can meet outside the station at a quarter to six.”
The two men avoided each other for the rest of the day but arrived promptly at the agreed upon location on the next. Endeavour recognized Jakes’s clothes as those that he had worn on his date with Joan. Jakes recognized Morse’s outfit as the one he wore every single day to work. The drive into the city was pleasant enough, but both parties found themselves regretting going together once they were seated in the theater, and especially after the show started. Jakes, unsure of what was going on, why it was happening, and what he was supposed to be doing about it, fumbled with a pack of cigarettes during the first half. He took one out every now and again but stopped fidgeting after receiving a nasty look from an old woman sitting near him. He then took to glancing interchangeably at the stage, the audience, and more than once, at Morse.
Although thrilled with the performance on stage, Endeavour was getting annoyed with his companion who was looking all around the room and then staring at him for longer than was necessary. The sergeant was probably making fun of him. He had had it after the fourth lingering look and decided to confront the offender with a stern eye. Jakes appeared startled and transferred his gaze elsewhere. In that moment, Endeavour realized that the look in his companion’s eyes was not one of amusement but rather bemusement. The poor detective sergeant looked lost.
Morse’s opportunity to make a snide remark presented itself and he was tempted to lean over and whisper something into his snarky colleague’s ear. The constable shifted in his seat while Jakes stared unknowingly ahead. He had a nasty, yet clever insult perched on his tongue when he took note of Jakes’s pale yellow jumper again. The man had offered to give him the answers to his Sergeant’s Exam after the events that had taken place at the Moonlight Room when he wore that jumper. Endeavour’s anger flared when he recalled Peter’s unwanted advances towards Joan that night, but he softened when his thoughts revisited the bribe. Sure Jakes’s offer was delinquent and ultimately selfish, but it was also, in an alternate reality, kind of sweet. Besides, this other reality was probably one in which teenage boys did not use their record players to listen to opera.
Thinking fondly now of the yellow jumper, Endeavour shifted in his seat anew, but this time more reluctantly. He leaned in towards his companion and began to speak. Jakes did not stir when he felt Endeavour’s mouth close to his ear, but nodded at his whisper.
“Desdemona asks Otello to reinstate Cassio as captain, but he refuses her request and tells her to ask him again at a later time,” Morse explained in a hushed tone over the vibrato of D'un uom che geme. “He says that he has a headache and Desdemona offers her handkerchief to him…”
“The red handkerchief with a D on it?” Jakes questioned.
“Yes.”
A smile played at the inquirer’s lips. “I feel like a better detective already," he said.