Inspector Morse 11 - The Daughters of Cain

by Colin Dexter

  Morse looked down at the stanza again; then slowly recited his own parody of the lines:

  'There are several cumbersome ways of losing a bike—like pushing it in the canal.

  Neater and simpler, though, is to take it somewhere like Cornmarket in Oxford—and just leave it there.'

  'You ought to have a been a poet, sir.'

  'I am a poet, Lewis.'

  Morse now coughed violently, expectorating into a tissue a disgusting gobbet of yellowish-green phlegm streaked with bright blood.

  Lewis, although he saw it, said nothing.

  And Morse continued:

  'First thing is to get Brooks in, and go through Susan Ewers' statement with him. She's a good witness, that one—and he'll have to come up with something better than he gave us this afternoon.'

  'When shall we bring him in, though? He's got a point, hasn't he? We don't want to give him another heart attack.'

  'Don't we?'

  'Day or two?'

  'Day or three.'

  Morse finished his beer. It had taken that swift drinker an inordinately long time to do so; and if Morse had experienced a premonition earlier, Lewis himself now sensed that his chief was seriously ill.

  'What about the photograph, sir? Mrs. Brooks's daughter?'

  'Interesting question. I wonder. I wonder where that young lady fits into the picture.'

  'Pretty well everywhere, wouldn't you say?'

  'Ye-es. "Kay"—"K"—"Eleanor"—"Ellie"—we've got to assume she's the same girl, I suppose: Mrs. B's daughter—Mr. B's step-daughter—staircase-tart for Messrs Rodway and Davies—mistress for Dr. McClure . . .'

  'She must be quite a girl.'

  'But what about that other photograph, Lewis? The school-mistress? D'you know, I've got a feeling she might be able to shed a little light—'

  But Morse was coughing uncontrollably now, finally disappearing into the bathroom, whence was heard a series of revolting retches.

  Lewis walked out into the entrance hall, where he flicked open Morse's black plastic telephone-index to the lette 'S.' He was lucky. Under 'Summertown Health Centre' he found an 'Appointments' number; and an 'Emergency' number.

  He rang the latter.

  That same afternoon, just after four o'clock, Dr. Richard Rayson, Chaucerian scholar, and fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, strolled round his garden in Daventry Avenue. For almost three weeks he had been away with his family in the Dolomites. Gardening, in truth, had never been the greatest passion of his life; and as he stood surveying the state of his neglected front lawn, the epithet which sprang most readily to his literate mind was 'agrestal': somewhat overgrown; run to seed; wild, as the Shorter Oxford might define it.

  Yet strangely, for such an unobservant man, he'd spotted the knife almost immediately—a couple of feet or so inside the property, between an untrimmed laurel bush and the vertical slats of a front fence sorely in need of some re-creosoting. There it was, lying next to a semi-squashed tin of Coca-Cola.

  Nina Rayson, a compensatingly practical sort of partner, had welcomed her husband's discovery, promptly washing it in Sainsbury's 'Economy' washing-up liquid, and forthwith adding it to her own canteen of cutlery. A good knife, it was: a fairly new, sturdy, unusually broad-bladed instmment, in no immediate need of any further sharpening.

  That same evening, at nine-thirty, Brenda Brooks was aware that her jangled nerves could stand very little more that day. Paradoxically, though, she felt almost competent about coping with the loathsome man she'd just seen to bed, with a cup of tea, two digestive biscuits, and one sleeping tablet. At least she knew him: knew the worst about him—for there was nothing but the worst to know. It was now the unknown that was worrying her the more deeply: that strange technical jargon of the doctors and nurses at the hospital; the brusque yet not wholly unsympathetic questions of the two policemen who had earlier called there.

  She found herself neurotically dreading any phone-call; any ringing of the door-bell. Anything.

  What was that?

  What was that?

  Was she imagining things—imagining noises?

  There it was again: a muffled, insistent, insidious, tapping . . .

  Fearfully, she edged towards the front door.

  And there, behind the frosted glass, she saw a vaguely human silhouette; and she turned the Yale lock, and opened the door, her heart fluttering nervously.

  'You!' she whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It is an inexorable sort of festivity—in September 1914 they tried to cancel it, but the Home Secretary himself admitted that he was powerless to do so

  (JAN MORRIS, Oxford)

  OXFORD'S ST. GILES'S Fair is held annually on the first Monday and Tuesday after the first Sunday every September, with the whole area of St. Giles' brought into use, from the Martyrs' Memorial up to (and beyond) St. Giles's Church at the northern end, where the broad, tree-lined avenue bifurcates to form the Woodstock Road to the left and the Banbury Road to the right.

  In mid-aftemoon on Tuesday, September 6 (two days after Lewis had telephoned the Summertown Health Centre), Kevin Costyn was sauntering under the plane trees there, along the various rides and amusements and candy-floss stalls. Nothing could really kindle his imagination or interest, for the Naked Lady of earlier years, in her rat-infested cage, no longer figured in the fair's attractions. And as Kevin considered the jazzy, jolty, vertiginous cars and carriages, he felt no real wish to part with any of his limited money.

  That day the children in the state schools in Oxfordshire had returned to their classrooms; and for the first twelve years Costyn himself was not one of them. No more school. But no job yet, either. He'd signed on at the Job Centre. Even taken away some literature on Youth Employment Schemes and Opportunities. Not that he was going to read that bumf. He wasn't interested in jobs. Just money. Well, not just money, no.

  Smugly he grinned to himself as he stood outside the Bird and Baby and watched the gigantic, gyrating structure of the Big Wheel.

  The previous month he'd been part of a three-man ram-raid at a Summertown supermarket, but it hadn't proved the windfall they'd expected. Shop windows—replaced shop windows—were being made of tougher glass; and several regular, and formerly profitable, targets were now protected by concrete frontal pillars. That wasn't the real trouble, though. It was getting rid of the stuff that was getting trickier all the time. Cigarettes had usually been the best bet: lightweight, handy to stack, easy to sell. But booze was becoming one helluva job to sell; and the cases of whiskey, gin, and vodka they'd got away with then had changed hands for a miserly £850, though according to Costyn's (admittedly less than competent) calculation their street-value would have been four times that amount. It was the police—becoming far cannier at tracking down the whole-sale-market contacts—they were the real trouble.

  There must be easier ways of being able to afford the life of Riley, surely?

  Yes, occasionally there were . . .

  It had been Kevin Costyn himself who had answered the door the previous afternoon, to find Mrs. Stevens standing there—a subtly scented Mrs. Stevens, with a moist, red beauty at her lips.

  Could she come in? She'd come in.

  Would he listen to what she had to say? He'd listened.

  Would he be willing to do as she asked? He'd be willing.

  Would he be able to do what she wanted? He'd be able.

  Payment? What about payment? Did he understand she had very little money? He'd understood.

  How would he like her to pay him, then?

  Well . . .

  'What time's your mother back?' she'd asked.

  No one over the past few years had deemed it necessary, or deemed it wise, to challenge Costyn's minority; nor did the young barmaid now, as she pulled him a pint of Burton Ale in the Bird and Baby ('Open All Day').

  Ten minutes later he made his way to the Gents, where he spat a globule of phlegm on to the tiled floor, and where his left hand was directing his urin
ation whilst his right hand was seeking, wholly ineffectually, to spell out FUCK in red Biro on the corrugated surface of the wall in front of him.

  'Fuck' was a key word in Costyn's limited vocabulary. Had already been so for many years, ever since, night after night, his mum and dad (perhaps, his dad) had bawled their mutual 'fuck-off's at each other. Until the day when his dad had apparently interpreted the injunction rather too literally—and just, well, 'fucked off.' Indeed, so significant had the word become to the sole son of that hapless, unhappy union, that he regularly inserted it, in its present-participial form, into any lengthy-ish word which seemed to invite some internal profanation. Such a process is known, in the Homeric epics, as 'tmesis'—although, in truth, Costyn knew of 'Homer' only as a breed of pigeon; for his father had once kept such a pigeon, trained (once released) to find its way home from the most improbable distances. Which is more than its owner had done, once he had left his home, and his wife, and his son . . . and his pigeon.

  Before leaving the Gents, Costyn made a purchase. The condom machine looked, even to him, pretty theft-proof; and he decided for once to pay for his potential pleasures. For a few seconds he mentally debated the respective merits of 'lubrication', 'sensitivity', and 'silkiness'; finally plumping for the latter as he thought—yet again!—of the blouse that he'd slowly eased down over the suntanned shoulders of Mrs. Julia Stevens.

  At 4 p.m., standing waiting for a Cowley Road bus outside Marks and Spencer in Queen's Street, Costyn recognised an ex-pupil of the Proctor Memorial immediately in front of him; and he put a hand on her untanned shoulder.

  'Bin 'avin' a ride, darlin'?'

  She turned round. 'Wha' d'you want?'

  'What about a little ride with me, darlin'? I got the necessaries.'

  'Fuck off!'

  Few girls ever spoke to him in such a fashion. But Costyn felt little resentment as he fingered the two packets of Silken Dalliance in his pocket . . .

  Payment for his services?

  'Half now; half later,' that's what Mrs. Stevens had promised. And as he sat upstairs on the Cowley Road bus, Costyn savoured yet again that intoxicating cocktail of excitement and sensuality.

  Half later . . . when the job was done; when the jobs (plural, perhaps) were done.

  Was it terribly risky, what he'd so willingly agreed to do? Especially since she wasn't exactly sure of when she'd be calling on him. So what? Much riskier for her than for him. Not that she'd ever need to worry about him: he'd never breathe a word of it to any living soul.

  Never.

  And anyone who thought he would was suffering under a misapprefuckinhension.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day

  Is crept into the bosom of the sea

  (SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Part II)

  (i)

  ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1994, at 11:20 a.m., Ms. Ellie Smith sat in a taxi, every half-minute or so nervously consulting her wristwatch and cursing herself for not having taken up Ashley Davies's offer.

  Rightly or wrongly, before walking out on him the previous weekend, she'd informed him of her situation: she was twelve weeks pregnant; she was determined to have another abortion; she had an appointment at a South Birmingham clinic for preliminary consultation and advice. But when Davies had rung her the previous afternoon, she'd turned down his offer of a lift—once again. He'd been quite insistent really, saying that he'd got to be in Oxford later the next day, anyway; and it was so quick to Brum now—M40, M42 and in his car, well, they'd do it in an hour almost; save her no end of time and trouble— and the rail fare into the bargain.

  But she'd refused.

  She was going by train, catching the 9:11 a.m. from Oxford, due to arrive at Birmingham New Street at 10:30 a.m., which would give her a whole hour to get to the clinic, only five miles distant from the railway station.

  That was the plan.

  But with the combination of a 'signalling failure' just before Leamington Spa and a security scare at Coventry, the train had finally rumbled into New Street forty-eight minutes late—and she'd had no option but to take a taxi. Not that she need have bothered too much, for it was 11:55 a.m. before she was called into the consulting-room.

  Looking back on things, Ms. Smith knew that she had been strangely impressed by the small, white-coated Pakistani doctor—a kindly, compassionate man, with Spaniel eyes—who had gently encouraged her at least to consider the alternative: that of keeping the child she had conceived.

  She felt glad that she had tried to present herself in rather more conventional guise, putting on bra and pants (both!) beneath her only presentable summer dress—and removing the rings from her nostrils. Admittedly that left her hair, still streaked with crimson like the horizon in an angry sunset; but she felt (dare she admit it to herself?) somehow . . . expiated!

  She couldn't really think why.

  No, she could think why.

  It was something to do with being with her mum once more . . .

  The 3:09 train from New Street, timetabled to arrive in Oxford at 4:31 p.m. arrived virtually on time. And half an hour later Ellie Smith was back at her flat, reading the brief note contained in the white envelope ('By Hand') which she'd found propped up at the foot of her white-painted door on the third floor:

  Hope things went OK. Any chance of you thinking again? If there's even a remote chance of its being mine, I'll marry you and make an honest woman of you yet. Don't be cross with me for badgering you.

  Ashley, with lots and lots of kisses.

  As she put her key into the lock, Ellie Smith wondered whether she'd sadly misjudged Mr. Ashley Davies.

  (ii)

  'Thanks for coming,' said a sombre Phillotson.

  In vain Lewis sought to find some suitable rejoinder. 'Morse on the mend?'

  'Out tomorrow, so they say.'

  'Will he be fit enough to carry on—with the case?'

  'Dunno, sir. I suppose he'll please himself whatever happens.'

  'I suppose he will, yes.'

  Lewis moved away, and briefly surveyed the wreaths laid out there, including a splendid display of white lilies from the Thames Valley Police HQ.

  Phillotson's wife had lived a gently unspectacular life, and died at the age of forty-six. Not much of an innings, really; and not too much of a memorial either, although her husband, her next of kin, and all of her friends, would hope that the little rose-bush (Rosa rubrifolia), already happily stuck into a wodge of blackly-rich compost in the Garden of Remembrance, would thrive and prosper—and, metempsychotically, as it were, take over.

  If Chief Inspector Morse had been present at the short service, he would have been impatient with what he saw as the pretentious prayers; and yet, almost certainly, he would have welcomed the hymn that was played there—'O Love that wilt not let me go'—and his quiet unmusical baritone would probably have mingled with the singing.

  But Morse was not one of the thirty-seven mourners Lewis counted at the Oxford Crematorium that Wednesday lunchtime.

  (iii)

  'What exactly's wrong with you, Morse?'

  'I'm only here for observation.'

  'Yes, I know that. But what exactly is it they're observing?'

  Morse drew a deep breath. 'I'm suffering from bronchi-something beginning with "e"; my liver and kidneys are disintegrating; my blood pressure isn't quite off the top of the scale—not yet; I'm nursing another stomach ulcer; and as if that wasn't enough I'm on the verge of diabetes, because my pancreas, they tell me, isn't producing sufficient insulin to counteract my occasional intake of alcohol. Oh yes, and my cholesterol's dangerously high.'

  'I see. Perhaps I should have asked what exactly's right with you, Morse.'

  Strange shifted his great bulk awkwardly on the small wooden chair beside Morse's bed in Ward 7 of the John Radcliffe Two Hospital out at Headington, whither, in spite of his every protestation of being in excellent health, Morse had been conveyed by ambulance, half an hour after the doctor
had been summoned the previous Sunday afternoon.

  'I had an endoscopy yesterday,' continued Morse.

  'Sounds painful. Where do they stick that?'

  'In the mouth, sir.'

  'Ah. No more dramatic finds?'

  'No more corpses under the floorboards.'

  'Well, the wife'll be very pleased if you can last out till—fairly soon, isn't it?—when you've got a speaking engagement, I understand.'

  'I have?'

  'You know—the WI group-meeting in Kidlington. Likely to be a good crowd there, she says. So try to make it, old man. She's, er . . . you know, she's the President this year. Means a lot to her.'

  'Tell her I'll be there, even if they have to wheel me in.'

  'Good. Good. "The Grislier Aspects of Murder." Nice little title, that.'

  With which Morse's mind reverted to the investigation. 'If you see Lewis, sir, tell him to call in tonight, will you? I'd like to know how things are going.'

  'He was going to Mrs. Phillotson's funeral this lunch-time.'

  'What? Nobody told me about that.'

  'No, well . . . we didn't want to, er . . . Not a nice subject, death, is it.'

  The clock showed 2:45 p.m. when Strange made his way out of Ward 7; and for several minutes Morse lay back on his pillows and pondered. Perhaps a hospital was an appropriate place to meditate on death, for there was plenty of it going on all around. But most men or women preferred not to think or talk about it. Morse had known only one person who positively relished discussing the topic—Max the police pathologist, who in a macabre kind of way had almost made a friend of Death. But Death had made no reciprocal arrangement; and Max was police pathologist no longer.