by Colin Dexter
Ah, yes!
Two things only were required.
First, a knife, a different but wholly similar knife, would have to be planted—somewhere in, or near, Daventry Avenue. For when it was found—as surely sooner or later it would be—the police, with a little luck, would discover that it had been taken from one of the Brooks's kitchen drawers.
Second, the cabinet from which the actual murder weapon had been taken ('Cabinet 52' was clearly marked on the tag) would have to be broken into so that its contents would inevitably be checked. For then, and then only, would the pedigree of the missing knife become known.
Someone was therefore delegated to break open that cabinet, to ruffle around a few of the knives there—exactly the opposite of what Brooks had done earlier—and the deception was launched. The 'theft' was duly spotted, and reported; the missing knife was fairly quickly identified; and, above all, the crucial alibis were established.
How so?
Because of the wholly incontestable fact that any person found murdered by means of that stolen knife must have been murdered after that knife was stolen.
But the truth was that Brooks was murdered before the knife was stolen—probably murdered the day before, since the two women lied about seeing him alive on the afternoon when they set off with the school-party for Stratford.
The only thing now calling for some sort of explanation was the curious circumstance of Brooks's body being so elaborately wrapped in plastic, then wrapped up again in brown carpet, before being dumped into the Isis, just stream from Donnington Bridge, almost certainly driven there in the boot of a car. Mrs. Stevens' car? Most probably, since she was the only one of them to own such means of transport.
Well (as Morse saw it) the reason was fairly obvious: if and when (and when rather than if) the body was found, such wrapping would ensure one vital thing: that the knife would still be found with the body—still be found in the body, it could be hoped. There would be no danger of it being lost; and thereby no danger that the alibis so cunningly, so painstakingly, devised would be discounted or destroyed.
'So you see,' finished Detective Chief Inspector Morse, 'the two women we assumed could never have murdered Brooks have overnight moved up to the top of the list.' He looked up with a fairly self-satisfied smile to Chief Superintendent Strange. 'And with your permission, sir, we shall go ahead immediately, apply for a couple of search warrants—'
'Why only two warrants?' asked Detective Chief Inspector Phillotson.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven
(JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book 1)
THE FOLLOWING DAY, a call was put through to Morse ('Must be Morse') from Mr. Basil Shepstone, Senior Neurologist at Oxford's Churchill Hospital; and twenty minutes later the two men were seated together in Shepstone's consulting-room.
Mrs. Julia Stevens (Morse learned) had been admitted at midday, having earlier been discovered unconscious at the side of her bed by her cleaning-lady. Some speedy deteriration in her mental condition had been expected; but the dramatic (the literal) collapse in her physical condition had come as some surprise. A recent biopsy (Morse learned) had confirmed glioblastoma multiforma, a fast-growing tumour of the neuroglia in the brain: wholly malignant, sadly inoperable, rapidly fatal.
When Julia had been admitted, it was immediately apparrent that, somewhere on the brain, pressure had become intolerably severe: she had been painfully sick again in the ambulance; clearly she was experiencing some considerable difficulty with both sight and speech; showing signs, too, of spatial disorientation. Yet somehow she had managed to make it clear that she wished to speak to the policeman Morse.
Twice during the early afternoon (Shepstone reported), her behaviour had grown disturbingly aggressive, especially towards one of the young nurses trying to administer medication. But that sort of behaviour—often involving some fairly fundamental personality change—was almost inevitable with such a tumour.
'Had you noticed any "personality change" before?' asked Morse.
Shepstone hesitated. 'Yes, perhaps so. I think . . . let's put it this way. The commonest symptom would be general loss of inhibition, if you know what I mean.'
'I don't think I do.'
'Well, I mean one obvious thing is she probably wouldn't be over-worried about the reactions and opinions of other people—other professional colleagues, in her case. Let's say she'd be more willing than usual to speak her mind in a staff-meeting, perhaps. I don't think she was ever too shy a person; but like most of us she'd probably always felt a bit diffident—a bit insecure—about life and . . . and things.'
'She's an attractive woman, isn't she?'
Shepstone looked across at Morse keenly.
'I know what you're thinking. And the answer's probably "yes", I rather think that if over these past few months someone had asked . . . to go to bed with her . . .'
'When you say "someone"—you mean some man?'
'I think I do, yes.'
'And you say she's been a bit violent today.'
'Aggressive, certainly.'
Morse nodded.
'It's really,' continued Shepstone, 'the unexpectedness rather than the nature of behaviour that always sticks out these cases. I remember at the Radcliffe Infirmary, for example, a very strait-laced old dear with a similar tumour geeing out of her bed one night and dancing naked in fountain out the front there.'
'But she isn't a strait-laced old dear,' said Morse slowly
'Oh, no,' replied the sad-eyed Consultant. 'Oh, no.
For a while, when Julia had regained some measure of her senses in the hospital, she knew that she was still at home in her own bed, really. It was just that someone was trying to confuse her, because the walls of her bedroom were no longer that soothing shade of green, but this harsher, crueller white.
Everything was white.
Everyone was wearing white . . .
But Julia felt more relaxed now.
The worry at the beginning had been her complete disorientation: about the time of day, the day, the month—the year, even. And then, just as the white-coated girl was trying to talk to her, she'd felt a terrible sense of panic as realised that she was unaware of who she was.
Things were better now, though; one by one, things were clicking into place; and some knowledge of herself, of her life, was slowly surfacing, with the wonderful bonus that the dull, debilitating headache she'd lived with for so months was gone. Completely gone.
She knew the words she wanted to say—about seeing Morse; or at least her mind knew. Yet she was aware that those words had homodyned little, if at all, with the words she'd actually used:
'One thousand and one, one thousand and two . . .'
But she could write.
How could that be?
If she couldn't speak?
No matter.
She could write.
As he looked down at her, Morse realised that even in terminal illness Julia Stevens would ever be an attractive woman; and he placed a hand lightly on her right arm as she lay in her short-sleeved nightdress, and smiled at her. And she smiled back, but tightly, for she was willing herself to make him understand what so desperately she wished to tell him.
At the scene of the terrible murder that had taken place in Brenda's front room, when she, Julia, had stood there, helpless at first, a spectator of a deed already done, she had vowed, if ever need arose, to take all guilt upon herself. And the words were in her mind: words that were all untrue, but words that were ready to be spoken. She had only to repeat repeat repeat them to herself: 'I murdered him I murdered him I murdered him . . .' And now she looked up at Morse and forced her mouth to speak those self-same words:
'One thousand and three, one thousand and four, one thousand and five . . .'
Aware, it seemed, even as she spoke, of her calamitous shortcomings, she looked around her with frenzied exasperation as she sought t
o find the pencil with which earlier she'd managed to write down 'MORSE.' Her right arm flailed about her wildly, knocking over a glass of orange juice on the bedside table, and tears of frustration sprang in her eyes.
Suddenly three nurses, all in white, were at her side, two of them seeking to hold her still as the third administered a further sedative. And Morse, who had intended to plant a tender kiss upon the Titian hair, was hurriedly ushered away.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
We can prove whatever we want to; the only real difficulty is to know what we want to prove
(EMILE CHARTIER, Système des beaux arts)
EVENTS WERE NOW moving quickly towards their close. The was much that was wanting to be found—was found—although Lewis was not alone in wondering exactly what Morse himself wanted to be found. Certainly one or two minor surprises were still in store; but in essence it was only the corroborative, substantiating detail that remained be gleaned—was gleaned—by the enquiry team from the painstaking forensic investigations, and from one or two further painful encounters.
Morse was reading a story when just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, October 4, Lewis returned from the JR2 where he had interviewed a rapidly improving Costyn—to whom, as it happened, he had taken an instant dislike, just as earlier in the case Morse had felt an instinctive antipathy towards Ms. Smith.
Lewis had learned nothing of any substance. About the ram-raid, Costyn had been perkily co-operative, partly no doubt because he had little option in the matter. But about any (surely most probable?) visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum; about his relations (relationship?) with Mrs. Stevens; about any (possible?) knowledge of, implication in, co-operation with, the murder of Edward Brooks, Costyn had been cockily dismissive.
He had nothing to say.
How could he have anything to say?
He knew nothing.
If Lewis was ninety-five percent convinced that Costyn was lying, he had been one hundred percent convinced that Ashley Davies, whom he'd interviewed the day before, could never have been responsible for the prising open of Cabinet 52. In fact Davies had been in Oxford that afternoon; and for some considerable while, since between 3:45 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. he had been sitting in the chair of Mr. J. Balaguer-Morris, a distinguished and unimpeachable dental-surgeon practising in Summertown.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Lewis sensed therefore (as he knew Morse did) that the two young men had probably always been peripheral to the crime in any case. But someone had gone along to the Pitt Rivers; someone's services could well have been needed for the disposal of the body in the Isis. For although Brooks had not been a heavy man, it would have been quite extraordinarily difficult for one woman to have coped alone; rather easier for two, certainly; and perhaps not all that difficult for three of them. Yet the help of a strong young man would have been a godsend, surely?
With the Magistrates finding no objections, the three search warrants had been immediately authorised, and the spotlight was now refocusing, ever more closely, on the three women in the case:
Brenda Brooks
Julia Stevens
Eleanor Smith . . .
The previous afternoon, great activity at the Brooks's residence had proved dramatically productive. At the back of the house, one of the small keys from Lewis's bunch had provided immediate, unforced access to the garden shed. No transparent plastic bags were found there; nor any damning snippet of dark green garden-twine like that which had secured the bundle of the corpse. Yet something had been found there: fibres of a brown material which looked most suspiciously similar—which later proved to be identical—to the carpeting that had covered the body of Edward Brooks.
Brenda Brooks, therefore, had been taken in for questioning the previous evening, on two separate occasions being politely reminded that anything she said might be taken down in writing and used as evidence. But there seemed hardly any valid reason for even one such caution, since from the very start she had appeared too shocked to say anything at all. Later in the evening she had been released on police bail, having been formally charged with conspiracy to murder. As Morse saw things the decision to grant bail had been wholly correct. There was surely little merit in pressing for custody, since it was difficult to envisage that gentle little lady, once freed, indulging in any orgy of murder in the area of the Thames Valley Police Authority.
In any case, Morse liked Mrs. Brooks.
Just as he liked Mrs. Stevens—in whose garage earlier that same day a forensic team had made an equally dramatic finding, when they had examined the ancient Volvo, in situ, and discovered, in the boot, fibres of a brown material which looked most suspiciously similar—which later proved to be identical to the carpeting that had covered the body of Edward Brooks . . .
Morse had nodded to himself with satisfaction on receiving each of these reports. So careful, so clever, they'd been—the two women! Yet even the cleverest of criminals couldn't think of everything: they all made that one little mistake, sooner or later; and he should be glad of that.
He was glad.
He himself had taken temporary possession of the long-overdue library book found in the Brooks's bedroom, noticing with some self-congratulation that the tops of two pages in the story entitled 'The Broken Sword' had been dog-eared. By Brooks? Were the pages worth testing for fingerprints? No. Far too fanciful a notion. But Morse told himself that he would re-read the story once he got the chance; and indeed his eye had already caught some of the lines he remembered so vividly from his youth:
Where does a man kick a pebble? On the beach.
Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest . . .
Yes. Things were progressing well—and quickly.
There was that third search warrant, of course: one that had been granted, though not yet served.
The one to be served on Ms. Smith . . .
Of whom, as it happened, Morse had dreamed the previous night—most disturbingly. He had watched her closely (how on earth?) as semi-dressed in a plunging Versace creation she had exhibited herself erotically to some lecherous Yuppie in the back of a BMW. And when Morse had awoken, he had felt bitterly angry with her; and sick; and heartachingly jealous.
He had known better nights; known better dreams.
Yet life is a strange affair; and only ten minutes after Lewis had returned that Tuesday afternoon Morse received a call from Reception which quickened his heart-beat considerably.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours
(T S. ELIOT, La Figlia Che Piange)
SHE CLOSED THE passenger-seat door, asking the man to wait there, in the slip-road, for ten minutes—no longer; then drive in and pick her up.
She walked quite briskly past the blue sign, with white lettering, 'Thames Valley Police HQ'; then up the longish gradient to the brick-and-concrete building.
At Reception she quickly made her errand clear.
'Is he expecting you, Miss?' asked the man seated there.
'No.'
'Can I ask what it's in connection with?'
'A murder.'
The grey-haired man looked up at her with some curiosity. He thought he might have seen her before; then decided that he hadn't. And rang Morse.
'Let her in, Bill. I'll be down to collect her in a couple of minutes.'
After entering her name neatly in the Visitors' Log, Bill pressed the mechanism that opened the door to the main building. She was carrying a small package, some 5 inches by 3 inches, and he decided to keep a precautionary eye on her. Normally he would not have let her through without some sort of check. But he'd always been encouraged to use his discretion, and in truth she looked more like a potential traveller than a potential terrorist. And Chief Inspector Morse had sounded happy enough.
He pointed the way. 'If you just go and sit and wait there, Miss . . .?'
So Ellie Smith walked over the d
arkly marbled floor to a small, square waiting-area, carpeted in blue, with matching chairs set against the walls. She sat down and looked around her. Many notices were displayed there, of the 'Watch Out,' 'Burglars Beware' variety; and photographs of a police car splashing through floods, and a friendly bobby talking to a farmer's wife in a local village; and just opposite her a large map . . .
But her observations ceased there.
To her left was a flight of white-marbled stairs, down which the white-haired Morse was coming towards her.
'Good to see you. Come along up.'
'No, I can't stay. I've got a car waiting.'
'But we can take you home. I can take you home.'
'No. I'm . . . I'm sorry.'
'Why have you come?' asked Morse quietly, seating himself beside her.
'You've had Mum in. She told me all about it. She's on bail, isn't she? And I just wondered where it all leaves her—and me, for that matter?'
Morse spoke gently. 'Your mother has been charged in connection with the murder of your step-father. Please understand that for the present—'
'She told me you might be bringing me in—is that right?'
'Look! We can't really talk here. Please come up—'
She shook her head. 'Not unless you're arresting me. Anyway, I don't trust myself in that office of yours. Remember?'
'Look, about your mother. You'll have to face the fact—just like we have to—that . . . that it seems very likely at the minute that your mother was involved in some way in the murder of your step-father.' Morse had chosen his hesitant words carefully.
