Inspector Morse 11 - The Daughters of Cain

by Colin Dexter

  As she waited for the lift down to the ground floor, she smiled sadly to herself as she recalled the nurse's words 'But we're a little bit worried about his brain' . . . just like almost all the staff at the Proctor Memorial School had been, for five years . . . for fifteen terms.

  And then, as she tried to remember exactly where she'd parked the Volvo, she found herself, for some reason, thinking of Chief Inspector Morse.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  I sometimes wonder which would be nicer—an opera without an interval, or an interval without an opera

  (ERNEST NEWMAN, Berlioz, Romantic and Classic)

  OF THE FOUR separate operas which comprise Der Ring der Nibelungen (an achievement which in his view ranked as one of the seven great wonders of the modern world), Siegfried had always been Morse's least favourite. And on the evening of Saturday, September 17, he decided he would seek again to discover whether the fault lay with himself or with Wagner. But the evening was destined not to pass without its interruptions.

  At 7:35 p.m. Lewis had rang through with the dramatic news that the handle-bars and the saddle on the bicycle recovered from the railings outside the parish church of St. Mary Magdalene still bore traces of blood, and that preliminary tests pointed strongly to its being McClure's blood. Such findings, if confirmed, would provide the police with their first physical link between Felix McClure and Edward Brooks, since the latter's wife, Brenda, had now identified the bike as her husband's; as had one of the assistants at Halford Cycles on the Cowley Road, where Brooks had purchased the bike four months previously. A warrant, therefore, should be made out asap for the arrest of Mr. Edward Brooks—with Morse's say-so.

  And Morse now said so.

  The fact that the person against whom the warrant would be issued was nowhere to be found had clearly taken some of the cream from Lewis's éclair. But Morse seemed oddly content: he maintained that Lewis was doing a wonderful job, but forbade him to disturb him again that evening, barring some quite prodigious event—such as the birth of another Richard Wagner.

  So Morse sat back again, poured himself another Scotch, lit another cigarette, and turned Siegfried back on.

  Paradise enow.

  Very few people knew Morse's personal (ex-directory) telephone number, and in fact he had changed it yet again a few months earlier. When, therefore, forty minutes further into Siegfried, the telephone rang once more, Morse knew that it must be Lewis again; and thumping down his libretto with an ill grace, he answered tetchily.

  'What do you want this time?'

  'Hullo? Chief Inspector Morse?' It was a woman's voice, and Morse knew whose. Why had he been such a numbskull as to give his private number to the pink-haired punk-wonder?

  'Yes?'

  'Hi! You told me if ever I wanted any help, all I'd got to do was pick up the phone, remember?'

  'How can I help?' asked Morse wearily, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

  'You don't sound overjoyed to hear from me.'

  'Just a bit tired, that's all.'

  'Too tired for me to treat you to a pint?'

  Morse wasn't quite sure at that moment whether his spirits were rising or falling. 'Sometime next week, perhaps?' he suggested.

  'No. I want to see you tonight. Now. Right now.'

  'I'm sorry, I can't see you tonight—'

  'Why not?'

  'Well, to tell you the truth, I'm in the bath.'

  'Wiggle the water a bit so I can hear.'

  'I can't do that—I'd get the phone wet.'

  'So you didn't really mean what you said at all.'

  'Yes, I did. I'll be only too glad to help. What's the trouble?'

  'It's no good—not over the phone.'

  'Why on earth not?'

  'You'll see.'

  'I don't follow you.'

  'I'm just going out to catch a bus to the City Centre. With a bit of luck I'll be there in twenty minutes—outside Marks and Sparks—that's where it stops, and then I'm going to walk up St. Giles's, and I'm goin' in the Old Parsonage for a drink. I'll stay there half an hour. And if you've not turned up by then, I'll just take a taxi up to your place—OK with you?'

  'No, it's not. You don't know where I live anyway—'

  'Nice fellah, Sergeant Lewis. I could fall for 'im.'

  'He's never told you my address!'

  'Why don't you ring and ask 'im?'

  Morse looked at his wristwatch: almost half-past eight.

  'Give me half an hour.'

  'Won't you need a bit longer?'

  'Why's that?'

  'Well, you've got to get yourself dried and then get dressed and then make sure you can find your wallet and then catch a bus—'

  'Make it three-quarters of an hour, then,' said Morse, wondering, in fact, where his wallet was, for he seldom used it when Lewis was around.

  Lewis himself rang again that evening, about ten minutes after Morse had left. The path lab had confirmed that the blood found on the recovered bicycle was McClure's; and on his way home (a little disappointed) he pushed a note to that effect through the front door of Morse's bachelor flat—together with the newspaper cutting from the previous week's Oxford Times received from one of his St. Aldate colleagues:

  * * *

  THIEVES PUT SPOKE

  IN THINGS

  An optimistic scheme to provide free bicycles was scrapped yesterday by the Billingdon Rural District Council.

  The cycles, painted green, and repaired by young offenders on community service, were put into specially constructed stands outside the church for villagers to use and then return.

  However within thirty-six hours of the scheme being launched, all twelve cycles, purchased at a cost of £1100, had disappeared.

  The chair of the Council, Mrs. Jean Ashton, strongly defended the initiative. 'The bikes are still somewhere on the road,' she maintained.

  DC Watson of the Thames Valley Police agreed: 'Most of them probably in Oxford or Banbury, resprayed a bright red.'

  * * *

  Ashley Davies also had repeatedly rung an Oxford number that Saturday evening, but with similar lack of success; and he (like Sergeant Lewis) felt some disappointment. Ellie had told him that she would be out all day, but suggested that he gave her a ring in the evening. His news could walt—well, it wasn't really 'news,' at all. He just wanted her to know how efficient he'd been.

  He'd visited the plush, recendy opened Register Office in New Road, where he'd been treated with courtesy and competence. In the circumstances 'Notice by Certificate' (he'd been informed) would be the best procedure—with Saturday, October 15 a possible, probable, marriage date, giving ample time for the requisite notices to be posted both at Bedford and at Oxford. He'd agreed to ring the Registrar the following Monday with final confirmation.

  A few 'family' to witness the ceremony would have been nice. But, as Ashley was sadly aware, his own mother and father had long since distanced themselves from 'that tart'; and although Ellie's mum could definitely be counted upon, no invitation would ever be sent to her step-father— and that not just because he had left no forwarding address, but because Ellie would never allow even the mention of his name.

  Only one wedding guest so far then. But it would be easy to find a few others; and anyway the legal requirement (Ellie, oddly enough, had known all about this) was only for two.

  Ashley rang her number again at 10 p.m. Still no answer. And for more than a few minutes he felt a surge of jealousy as he wondered where she was, and with whom she was spending the evening.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress: within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees

  (JOSEPH ADDISON, The Spectator)

  SHE WAS NOWHERE to be seen in the area known as the Parsonage Bar, which (as we know) served as a combined bar and restaurant. There were, however, two temporarily unescorted young women there, one blonde, the other brunette. The former, immaculately coiffured, and dres
sed in a white suit, would attract interest wherever she went; the latter, her hair cut stylishly short, and dressed in a fold-over Oxford-blue creation, would perhaps attract her own fair share of attention, too, but her face was turned away from Morse, and it was difficult for him to be certain.

  With no real ale on offer, he ordered a glass of claret, and stood at the bar for a couple of minutes watching the main door; then sat on one of the green bar-stools for a further few minutes, still watching the main door.

  But Miss Smith made no entrance.

  'Are you on your own?'

  The exaggeratedly seductive voice had come from directly behind him, and Morse swivelled to find one of the two women, the brunette, climbing somewhat inelegantly on to the adjoining stool.

  'For the moment I am, yes. Er, can I buy—?

  He had been looking at her hair, a rich dark brown, with bottled-auburn highlights. But it was not her hair that had caused the mid-sentence hiatus, for now he was looking into her eyes—eyes that were sludgy-green, like the waters of the Oxford Canal.

  'Ye gods!' he exclaimed.

  'Didn't recognise me, did you? I've been sittin' waitin'. Good job I've got a bit of initiative.'

  'What will you have to drink?'

  'Champagne. I fancy some champagne.'

  'Oh.' Morse looked down at the selection of 'Wines available by the Glass.'

  'Can't we stretch to a bottle?' she asked.

  Morse turned over the price-list and surveyed 'A Selection of Vintage Champagnes,' noting with at least partial relief that most of them were available in half-bottles. He pointed to the cheapest (cheapest!) of these, a Brut Premier Cru: £18.80.

  'That should be all right, perhaps?'

  She smiled at him slyly. 'You look a little shell-shocked, Inspector.'

  In fact Morse was beginning to feel annoyed at the way she was mocking him, manipulating him. He'd show her!

  'Bottle of Number 19, waiter.'

  Her eyebrows lifted and the green eyes glowed as if the sun were shining on the waters. She had crossed her legs as she sat on the bar-stool, and Morse now contemplated a long expanse of thigh.

  ' ''Barely Black" they're called—the stockings. Sort of sexy name, isn't it?'

  Morse drained his wine, only newly aware of why Eleanor Smith could so easily have captivated (inter alios) Dr. Felix McClure.

  They sat opposite each other at one of the small circular-topped tables.

  'Cheers, Inspector.'

  'Cheers.'

  He noticed how she held the champagne glass by the stem, and mentally awarded her plus-one for so doing; at the same time cancelling it with minus-one for the finger nails chewed down to the quicks.

  'It's OK—I'm workin' on it.'

  'Pardon?'

  'Me fingernails—you were lookin' at 'em, weren't you? Felix used to tell me off about 'em.' She speared first a green, then a black olive.

  'You can't blame me for not recognising you. You look completely different—your hair . . .'

  'Yeah. Got one o' me friends to cut it and then I washed it out four times!—then I put some other stuff on, as near me own colour as I could get. Like it?'

  She pushed her hair back from her temples and Morse noticed the amethyst earrings in the small, neat ears.

  'Is your birthday in February—'

  'I say! What a clever old stick you are.'

  'Why this . . . this change of heart, though?'

  She shook her head. 'Just change of appearance. You can't change your heart. Didn't you know that?'

  'You know what I mean,' said Morse defensively.

  'Well, like I told you, I'm gettin' spliced—got to be a respectable girl now—all that sort o' thing.'

  Morse watched her as she spoke and recalled from the first time he'd seen her the glossy-lipsticked mouth in the powder-pale face. But everything had changed now. The rings had gone, too, at least temporarily, from her nose; and from fingers, too, for previously she had worn a whole panoply of silverish tings. Now she wore just one, a slender, elegant-looking thing, with a single diamond, on the third finger of her left hand.

  'How can I help you?' asked Morse.

  'Well, I thought you might like to see me for starters—that wouldn't 'ave bin no good over the blower, would it?'

  'Why do you have to keep talking in that sort of way? You've got a pleasant voice and you can speak very nicely. But sometimes you deliberately seem to try to sound like a . . .'

  'A trollop?'

  'Yes.'

  Neither of them spoke for a while. Then it was Ellie:

  'I wanted to ask you two things really.'

  'I'm all ears.'

  'Actually you've got quite nice ears, for a man. Has any one ever told you that?'

  'Not recently, no.'

  'Look. You think my step-father's dead, don't you?'

  'I'm not sure what I think.'

  'If he is dead, though, when do you think . . .?'

  'As I say—I just don't know.'

  'Can't you guess?'

  'Not to you, Miss Smith, no.'

  'Can't you call me "Ellie"?'

  'All right.'

  'What do I call you?'

  'They just call me Morse.'

  'Yes—but your Christian name?'

  'Begins with "E", like yours.'

  'No more information?'

  'No more information.'

  'OK. Let me tell you what's worrying me. You think Mum's had something to do with all this, don't you?'

  'As I say—'

  'I agree with you. She may well have had, for all I know—and good luck to her if she did. But if she did, it must have been before that Wednesday. You know why? Because—she doesn't know this—but I've been keeping an eye on her since then, and there's no way—no way—she could have done it after . . .'

  'After what?' asked Morse quietly.

  'Look, I've read about the Pitt Rivers business—everybody has. It's just that . . . I just wonder if something has occurred to you, Inspector.'

  'Occasionally things occur to me,' said Morse.

  'Have you got any cigarettes, by the way?'

  'No, I've given up.'

  'Well, as I was saying, what if the knife was stolen on the Wednesday afternoon to give everybody the impression that the murder—if there is a murder—was committed after that Wednesday afternoon? Do you see what I mean? OK, the knife was stolen then—but what if it wasn't used? What if the murder was committed with a different knife?'

  'Go on.'

  'That's it really. Isn't that enough?'

  'You realise what you're saying, don't you? If your step-father has been murdered; if he was murdered before the theft of the knife, then your mother is under far more suspicion, not less. As you say, quite rightly, she's got a continuous alibi from the time she left for Stratford with Mrs. Stevens on that Wednesday, but she hasn't got much of one for the day before. In fact she probably hasn't got one at all.'

  Ellie looked down at the avocado-coloured carpet, and sipped the last of her champagne.

  'Would you like me to go and get a packet of cigarettes, Inspector?'

  Morse drained his own glass.

  'Yes.'

  Whilst she was gone (for he made no effort to carry out the errand himself) Morse sat back and wondered exactly what it was that Ellie Smith was trying to tell him . . . or what it was that she was trying not to tell him. The point she had just made was exactly the one which he himself (rather proudly) had made to Sergeant Lewis, except that she had made it rather better.

  'Now, second thing,' she said as each of them sat drinking again and (now) smoking. 'I want to ask you a favour. I said, didn't I, that me and Ashley—'

  'Ashley and I.'

  'Ashley and I are getting married, at the Registry Office——'

  'Register Office,' corrected the pedantic Inspector.

  '—and we wondered—I wondered if you'd be willing to come along and be a witness.'

  'Why me?'

  'Becaus
e . . . well, no reason really, perhaps, except I'd like you to be there, with me mum. It'd make me . . . I'd be pleased, that's all.'

  'When is it the wedding?

  ' ''Wedding"? Sounds a bit posh, doesn't it? We're just getting married: no bridesmaids, no bouquets—and not too much bloody confetti, I hope.'

  An avuncular Morse nodded, like an understanding senior citizen.

  'Not like all the razzmatazz you probably had at your wedding,' she said.

  Morse looked down at the carpet, as she had done earlier; then looked up again. For a second or two it was as though an electric current had shot across his forehead, and for some strange reason he found himself wanting to reach out across the table and just for a moment touch the hand of the young woman seated opposite.

  'How are you getting home, Ellie?'

  In the taxi ('Iffley Road then the top of the Banbury Road,' Morse had instructed), Ellie had interlaced her fingers into his; and Morse felt moved and confused and more than a little loving.

  'Did you see that watercolour?' she asked. 'The one just by our table? Our table?'

  'No.'

  'It was lovely—with fields and sheep and clouds. And the clouds . . .'

  'What about them?' asked Morse quietly.

  'Well, they were white at the top and then a sort of middling, muddy grey, and then a darker grey at the bottom. Clouds are like that, aren't they?'

  'Are they?' Morse, the non-Nephologist, had never consciously contemplated a cloud in his life, and he felt unable to comment further.

  'It's just that—well, all I'm tryin' to say is that I enjoyed bein' with you, that's all. For a little while I felt I was on the top o' one o' them clouds, OK?'

  After the taxi had dropped her off, and was making its way from East Oxford to North Oxford, Morse realised that he, too, had almost been on top of one of 'them clouds' that evening.