Inspector Morse 11 - The Daughters of Cain

by Colin Dexter

  Brenda Brooks folded her hands nervously in her lap, and for the first time Morse noticed that the right hand, beneath an elastic support, might be slightly deformed. Perhaps she held them to stop them shaking? But there was nothing she could do about her trembling upper-lip.

  'Well . . . Ted woke me about three o'clock that Sunday morning—'

  'More like 'alf-two.'

  '—with this awful pain in his chest, and I got up to find the indigestion tablets and I made a cup o' tea and you seemed better, didn't you, Ted? Well, a bit better anyway and I slept a bit and he did, just a bit, but it was a bad night.'

  'Terrible!'

  'I got up at six and made some more tea and asked Ted if he wanted any breakfast but he didn't and the pain was still there, and I said we ought to ring the doctor but Ted said not yet, well, yon know, it was Sunday and he'd have to come out special, like. Anyway he got up about ten because I remember we sat in the kitchen listening to The Archers at quarter-past while I got the meat ready—lamb and mint sauce—but Ted couldn't face it. Then about half-past one, quarter-to two, it got so bad, well, it was no good hanging on any longer and I rang the ambulance and they came in about . . . well, it was only about ten minutes—ever so quick. He was on a machine at half-past two—about then, weren't you, Ted?'

  'Intensive Care,' said the ex-scout, not without a touch of pride. 'The pain 'ad got—'rific—I knew it were summat serious. Told you so at the time, didn't I, Bren?'

  Brenda nodded dutifully.

  It had immediately become clear to Morse that there was now a very considerable obstacle between him and any decision to arrest Edward Brooks on suspicion of murder; a considerable objection even to leaving his name on the list of suspects—which indeed would be a dramatic set-back for the whole case, since Brooks's name was the only one appearing on Morse's list.

  He looked across now at the faithful little lady sitting there in her skirt and summer blouse next to her husband. If she persisted in her present lies (for Morse was convinced that such they were) it was going to be extremely difficult to discredit her testimony, appearing, as she did, to possess that formidable combination of nervousness and innocence. Any jury would strongly sympathise.

  Morse changed tack completely.

  'Do you know, I'm beginning to feel a bit thirsty, Mrs. Brooks. Does that offer of a cuppa still stand?'

  After Mrs. Brooks had put the kettle on and taken the china cups from the dresser, she stood close to the kitchen door. Her hearing was still good. It was the white-haired one who was speaking . . .

  'Have you got a car, sir?'

  'Not 'ad one for ten year or more.'

  'How do you get to work?'

  'Still go on the bus, mostly.'

  'You don't bike?'

  'Why d'you ask that?'

  'I saw your cycling helmet in the hall, that's all.'

  'So?'

  'Didn't mind me asking, did you?'

  'Why the 'ell should I?'

  'Well, Dr. McClure was knifed to death, as you know, and there was an awful lot of blood all over the place—and all over the murderer, like as not. So if he'd driven off in a car, well . . . these clever lads in the labs, they can trace the tiniest speck of blood '

  'As I said, though, I 'aven't got a car.'

  'I still think we'd quite like to have a look at your bike. What do you think, Sergeant Lewis?'

  'Not a question of "liking", sir. I'm afraid we shall have to take it away.'

  'Well, that's where you're wrong, 'cos I 'aven't got bike no longer, 'ave I? Bloody stolen, wasn't it? Sat'day lunchtime, that were—week yesterday. Just went to the Club for a pint and when I got out—there it was, gone! Lock 'n' all on the back wheel. Ten bloody quid, that fancy lock cost me.'

  'Did you report the theft, sir?'

  'Wha'? Report a stolen bike? In Oxford? You must jokin'.'

  Mrs. Brooks came in with a tray.

  'I must ask you to report the theft of your bike, sir,' said Lewis quietly. 'To St. Aldate's.'

  'Milk and sugar, Inspector?'

  For the first time her eyes looked unflinchingly straight into his, and suddenly Morse knew that behind the nervousness, behind the fear, there lay a look of good companionship. He smiled at her; and she, fleetingly, smiled back at him.

  And he felt touched.

  And he felt poorly again.

  And he felt convinced that he was sitting opposite the man who had murdered Felix McClure; felt it in his bones and in his brains; would have felt it in his soul, had he known what such a thing was and where it was located.

  When ten minutes later Mrs. Brooks was about to show them out, Morse asked about the two photographs hanging on the wall of the entrance-hall.

  'Well, that one'—she pointed to a dark, broody-looking girl in her mid-teens or so—'that's my daughter. That's Ellie. Her first name was Kay, really, but she likes to be called Ellie.'

  Phew!

  With an effort, Lewis managed not to exchange glances with Morse.

  'That one'—she pointed to a photograph of herself arm-in-arm, in front of a coach, with a younger, taller, strikingly attractive woman—'that's me and Mrs. Stevens, when we went on a school-party to Stratford last year. Lovely, it was. And with a bit of luck I'll be going with her again this next week. She teaches at the Proctor Memorial School. I clean for her . . . Well, as I say . . . I clean for her.'

  It seemed for a few seconds that she was going to add a gloss to that last repeated statement. But her husband had shouted from within, and Morse managed not to look down at that disfigured palm again as Brenda Brooks's hands indulged in a further spasm of floccillation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern

  (SAMUEL JOHNSON, Obiter Dictum,

  March 21, 1776)

  'WELL, WELL! WHAT do you make of all that?

  The Jaguar was gently negotiating half a dozen traffic-calming humps, before reaching the T-junction at the Cotley Road.

  'Not now, Lewis!'

  'How're you feeling, sir?'

  'Just change the first letter of my name from "M" to "W".'

  'You should be in bed.'

  Morse looked at his wristwatch. 'Nearest pub, Lewis. We need to think a little.'

  Morse was comparatively unfamiliar with the part of Oxford in which he now found himself. In his own undergrauate days, it had seemed a long way out, being dubbed a 'Bridge Too Far'—on the farther side, the eastern side, the wrong side, of Magdalen Bridge—beyond the pale, as it were. Yet even then, three decades earlier, it had been ( as it still was) a cosmopolitan, commercial area of fascinating contrasts: of the drab and the delightful; of boarded-premises and thriving small businesses; of decay and regeneration—a Private Sex Shop at the city-centre end, and a police station at the far Ring Road end, with almost everything between, including (and particularly) a string of highly starred Indian restaurants. Including too (as Morse now trusted), a local pub selling real ale.

  Lewis himself knew the area well; and after turning right at the T-junction, he almost immediately turned left into Marsh Road, pulling up there beside the Marsh Harrier.

  Ashley Davies, he thought, would almost certainly have approved.

  The Good Pubs of Oxford guide always reserved its highest praise for those hostelries where conversation was not impeded (let alone wholly precluded) by stentorian juke-boxes. And certainly Morse was gratified to find no music here. Yet he appeared to Lewis clearly ill-at-ease as he started—well, almost finished really—his first swift pint of Fuller's 'London Pride.'

  'What's worrying you, sir?'

  'I dunno. I've just got a sort of premonition—'

  'Didn't know you believed in them.'

  '—about this copy-cat-crime business. You know, you get a crime reported in the press—somebody pinching a baby from outside a supermarket, say—and before you can say 'Ann Robinson' somebody else's having a go at
the same thing.'

  Lewis followed the drift of Morse's thought. 'The article we placed in the Oxford Mail?'

  'Perhaps.'

  'You mean, we shouldn't perhaps . . .?'

  'Oh, no! It was our duty to print that. And for all we know it could still produce something. Though I doubt it.'

  Morse drained his beer before continuing: 'You know, that knife's somewhere, isn't it? The knife that someone stuck into McClure. The knife that Brooks stuck into McClure. That's the infuriating thing for me. Knowing that the bloody thing's somewhere, even if it's at the bottom of the canal.'

  'Or the Cherwell.'

  'Or the Isis.'

  'Or the gravel-pits . . .'

  But the conversation was briefly interrupted whilst Lewis, on the landlord's announcement of Last Orders, was now despatched to the bar for the second round.

  Perhaps it was Morse's bronchial affliction which was affecting his short-term memory, since he appeared to be suffering under the misapprehension that it was he who had purchased the first.

  Whatever the case, however, Morse quite certain looked happier as he picked up his second pint, and pick up the earlier conversation.

  'Brooks wouldn't have been too near any water, would he?'

  'Not that far off, surely. And he'd have to go over Magdalen Bridge on his way home, anyway.'

  'On his blood-saddled bike . . .'

  'All he'd need to do was drop his knife over the bridge there—probably be safe till Kingdom Come.'

  Morse shook his head. 'He'd have been worried about being seen.'

  Lewis shrugged. 'He could have waited till it was dark.'

  'It was bloody morning, Lewis!'

  'He could've ditched it earlier. In a garden or somewhere.'

  'No! We'd have found it by now, surely.'

  'We're still trying,' said Lewis, quietly.

  'You know'—Morse sounded weary—'it's not quite easy as you think—getting rid of things. You get a guilt-complex about being seen. I remember a few weeks ago trying to get rid of an old soldier in a rubbish-bin in Banbury Road. And just after I'd dropped it in, somebody I knew drove past in a car, and waved . . .'

  'He'd seen you?'

  'What makes you think it was a "he"?'

  'You felt a bit guilty?'

  Morse nodded. 'So it's vitally important that we find the knife. I just can't see how we're going to make a case against Brooks unless we can find the murder weapon.'

  'Have you thought of the other possibility, sir?'

  'What's that?' Morse looked up with the air of a Professor of Mathematics being challenged by an innumerate pupil.

  'He took the knife home with him.'

  'No chance. We're talking about instinctive behaviour here. You don't stab somebody—and then just go back home and wash your knife up in Co-op detergent with the rest of the cutlery—and put it back in the kitchen drawer.'

  'There'd be a knife missing, though—from a set, perhaps.'

  'So what? Knives get lost, broken . . .'

  'So Mrs. Brooks would probably know?'

  'But she's not going to tell us, is she?'

  Morse seemed to relax as he leaned back against the wall-seat, and looked around him.

  'You sure it was Brooks?' asked Lewis quietly.

  'Too many coincidences, Lewis. All right, they play a far bigger part in life than most of us are prepared to admit. But not in this case. Just think! Brooks left Wolsey, for good, on exactly the same day as the man who was murdered—McClure. Not only that, the pair of them had been on the same staircase together—exactly the same staircase for several years. Then, a year later, Brooks has a heart attack on exactly the same day as McClure gets murdered. Just add all that up—go on, Lewis!'

  'Like I say, though, you've always believed in coincidences.'

  'Look! I could stomach two, perhaps—but not three.'

  Lewis, who'd believed that Morse could easily stomach at least four, was not particularly impressed; and now, looking around him, he saw that he and Morse were the only clients left in the Marsh Harrier.

  It was 3:10 p.m.

  'We'd better be off, sir.'

  'Nonsense! My turn, isn't it?'

  'It's way past closing time.'

  'Nonsense!'

  But the landlord, after explaining that serving further drinks after 3 p.m. on Sundays was wholly against the law, was distinctly unimpressed by Morse's assertion that he, the latter, was the law. And a minute or so later it was a slightly embarrassed Lewis who was unlocking the passenger door of the Jaguar—before making his way back to North Oxford.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man. Simpler, direct and much more neat is to see he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave him there

  (EDWIN BROCK, Five Ways to Kill a Man)

  PERPETUALLY, ON THE drive back to North Oxford, Morse had been wiping the perspiration from his forehead; and Lewis was growing increasingly worried, especially when, once back home, Morse immediately poured himself a can of beer.

  'Just to replace the moisture,' Morse had averred.

  'You ought to get the doc in, you know that. And you ought not to be drinking any more, with all those pills.'

  'Lewis!' Morse's voice was vicious. 'I appreciate your concern for my health. But never again—never!—lecture me about what I drink. Or if I drink. Or when I drink. Is—that—clear?'

  In a flush of anger, Lewis rose to his feet. 'I'll be getting back—'

  'Siddown!'

  Morse took out a cigarette, and then looked up at the still-standing Lewis. 'You don't think I ought to smoke, either?'

  'It's your life, sir. If you're determined to dig yourself an early grave . . .'

  'I don't want to die, not just yet,' said Morse quietly.

  And suddenly, as if by some strange alchemy, Lewis felt his anger evaporating; and, as bidden, he sat down.

  Morse put the cigarette back in its packet. 'I'm sorry—sorry I got so cross. Forgive me. It's just that I've always valued my independence so much—too much, perhaps. I just don't like being told what to do, all right?'

  'All right.'

  'Well, talk to me. Tell me what you thought about Brooks.'

  'No, sir. You're the thinker—that's why you get a bigger pay-packet than me. You tell me.'

  'Well, I think exactly the same as I did before. After young Rodway's suicide, McClure found out about the availability of drugs on the staircase there—cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine, crack, ecstasy, LSD, heroin, whatever—and he also found out that it was Brooks who was supplying them, and making a pretty penny for himself in the process. Then, at some point, McClure told Brooks he'd got two options: either he packed up his job as a scout and left; or else he'd be reported to the University authorities—and probably the police—and faced with criminal proceedings. So Brooks had just about enough nous to read the writing on the wall: he resigned, and got another job, with a reluctant McClure providing a luke-warm testimonial to the Pitt Rivers Museum. But there were too many links with his former clients—and not just on the old staircase; and he kept up his lucrative little sideline after he'd left Wolsey—until McClure somehow got wind of the situation—and confronted him—and told him that this time it wasn't just an empty threat. I suspect Brooks must have had some sort of hold on McClure, I don't know. But Brooks said he was ready to step into line, and do whatever McClure wanted. And he arranged a meeting with McClure—at McClure's place in Daventry Court, a week ago today. That's the way I see it.'

  'So you don't believe a word of his alibi?'

  'No. And it isn't his alibi at all—it's hers. Mrs. Brooks's alibi for him.'

  'And you think he biked up to see McClure?'

  'He biked, yes. Whether he'd already decided to murder McClure then, I don't know. But he took a murder weapon with him, a knife from his wife's kitchen drawer; and I've not the slightest doubt he took as many precautions as he could to keep himself from
being recognised—probably wrapped a scarf round his face as if he'd got the toothache. And with his cycling helmet—'

  'You're making it all up, sir.'

  Morse wiped his brow once more. 'Of course I am! In a case like this you've got to put up some . . . some scaffolding. You've got to sort of take a few leaps in the dark, Lewis. You've got to hypothesize . . .'

  'Hypothesize about the knife then, sir.'

  'He threw it in the canal.'

  'So we're not going to find it?'

  'I'm sure we're not. We'd have found it by now.'

  'Unless, as I say, he took it home with him—and washed it up and wiped it dry and then put it back in the kitchen drawer.'

  'Ye-es.'

  'Probably he did mean to throw it in the canal, or somewhere. But something could have stopped him, couldn't it?'

  'Such as?'

  'Such as a heart attack,' suggested Lewis gently.

  Morse nodded. 'If he suddenly realised he hadn't got any time to . . . if he suddenly felt a terrible pain . . .'

  ' ''T'rific," that's what he said.'

  'Mm.'

  'What about the bike, though? He must have ridden it up to Daventry Court, mustn't he? So if he'd felt the pain starting, you'd have thought he'd get back home as fast as he could.'

  Morse shook his head. 'It doesn't add up, does it? He must have ditched his bike somewhere on the way back.'

  'Where, though?'

  Morse pondered the problem awhile. Then, remembering Brooks's contempt for anyone taking the trouble to report a bicycle-theft in Oxford, he suddenly saw that it had ceased to be a problem at all.

  'Do you know a poem called "Five Ways to Kill a Man"?'

  'No.'

  Wearily Morse rose to his feet, fetched an anthology of modern verse from his shelves, looked up Brock in the index, turned to the poem—and read the last stanza aloud.

  But Lewis, though not unaccustomed to hearing Morse make some apposite quotation from the poets between draughts of real ale, could see no possible connexion in logic here.

  'I'm not with you.'