Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

There was that one thing. Just over a year ago, late May (or was it early June?) when that undergraduate living on Felix’s staircase had jumped out of his third-floor window — and broken his neck.

‘That undergraduate’? Who was she fooling?

Poor Matthew!

Not that she’d had anything to do with that, either. Well, she’d fervently prayed that she hadn’t. After all, she’d only met him once, when Felix had become so furiously jealous.

Jealousy!

At his age — forty-one years older than she was. A grandfather, almost. A father, certainly. Yet one of the very few clients who meant anything to her in that continuum of carnality which passed for some sort of purpose in her present life.

Yes, a father-figure.

A foster-father, perhaps.

Not a bloody step -father, though! Christ, no.

She looked at herself in the mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-table. The pallor of her skin looked ghastly; and her dark hair, streaked with a reddish-orange henna dye, looked lustreless — and cheap. But she felt cheap all over. And as she rested her oval face on her palms, the index finger of each hand stroking the silver rings at either side of her nostrils, her sludgy-green eyes stared back at her with an expression of dullness and dishonesty.

Dishonesty?

Yes. The truth was that she probably hadn’t given a sod for McClure, not really. Come to think of it, he’d been getting something of a nuisance: wanting to monopolize her; pressurizing her; phoning at inconvenient moments — once at a very inconvenient moment. He’d become far too obsessive, far too possessive. And what was worse, he’d lost much of his former gaiety and humour in the process. Some men were like that.

Well, hard luck!

Yes, if she were honest with herself, she was glad it was all over. And as she continued to stare at herself, she was suddenly aware that the streaks of crimson in her hair were only perhaps a physical manifestation of the incipient streaks of cruelty in her heart.

Morse had finished the previous evening with four pints of Best Bitter (under an ever-tightening waist-belt) at the King’s Arms in Banbury Road; and had followed this with half a bottle of his dearly beloved Glenfiddich (in his pyjamas) at his bachelor flat in the same North Oxford.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, he had not exactly felt as fit as a Stradivarius when Lewis had called the following morning; and it was Lewis who now drove out to Leicester.

It was Lewis who had to drive out to Leicester.

As the Jaguar reached the outskirts of that city, Morse was looking again through the items (four of them now, not three) which Lewis had seen fit to salvage from McClure’s apartment, and which — glory be! — Morse had instantly agreed could well be of importance to the case. Certainly they threw light upon that murky drink-drugs-sex scene which had established itself in some few parts of Oxford University. First was a cutting from the Oxford Mail dated Tuesday, 8 June 1993 (fourteen months earlier):

At an inquest held yesterday, the Coroner, Mr Arnold Hoskins, recorded a verdict of suicide on the death of Mr Matthew Rodway, a third-year undergraduate reading English at Oxford.

Rodway’s body had been discovered by one of the college scouts in the early hours of Friday, 21 May, at the foot of his third-floor window in the Drinkwater Quad of Wolsey College.

There was some discrepancy in the statements read out at the inquest, with suggestions made that Mr Rodway may perhaps have fallen accidentally after a fairly heavy drinking-party in his rooms on Staircase G.

There was also clear evidence, however, that Mr Rodway had been deeply depressed during the previous weeks, apparently about his prospects in his forthcoming Finals examination.

What was not disputed was that Rodway had taken refuge amongst one or two groups where drugs were regularly taken in various forms.

Dr Felix McClure, one of Rodway’s former tutors, was questioned about an obviously genuine but unfinished letter found in Rodway’s rooms, containing the sentence ‘I’ve had enough of all this’.

Whilst he stoutly maintained that the words themselves were ambivalent in their implication, Dr McClure agreed with the Coroner that the most likely explanation of events was that Rodway had been driven to take his own life.

Pathological evidence substantiated the fact that Rodway had taken drugs, on a regular basis, yet there appeared no evidence to suggest that he was a suicidal type with some obsessive death-wish.

In his summing up, the Coroner stressed the evil nature of trafficking in drugs, and pointed to the ready availability of such drugs as a major contributory factor in Rodway’s death.

Taken in the first place to alleviate anxiety, they had in all probability merely served to aggravate it, with the tragic consequences of which the court had heard.

Matthew’s mother is reluctant to accept the Coroner’s verdict. Speaking from her home in Leicester, Mrs Mary Rodway wished only to recall a bright, caring son who had every prospect of success before him.

‘He was so talented in many ways. He was very good at hockey and tennis. He had a great love of music, and played the viola in the National Youth Orchestra.

‘I know I’m making him sound like a dream son. Well, that’s what he was.’ (See Leader, p.8)

Morse turned to the second cutting, taken from the same issue:

A recently commissioned study highlights the increasing percentage of Oxford graduates who fail to find suitable employment. Dr Clive Hornsby, Senior Reader in Social Sciences at Lonsdale College, has endorsed the implications of these findings, and suggests that many students, fully aware of employment prospects, strive for higher-class degrees than they are competent to achieve. Others, as yet mercifully few, adopt the alternative course of abandoning hope, of seeking consolation in drink and drugs, and sometimes of concluding that life is not worth the living of it. It may well be that Oxford University, through its various advisory agencies and helplines, is fully aware of these and related problems, although we are not wholly convinced of this. The latest suicide in an Oxford college (see p.1) prompts renewed concern about the pressures on our undergraduate community here, and the ways in which additional advice and help can be provided.

Morse now turned again to the third cutting, taken from the Oxford Times of Friday, 18 June 1993: a shorter article, flanked by a photograph of ‘Dr F. F. Maclure’, a clean-shaven, rather mournful-looking man, pictured in full academic dress.

Following the latest in a disturbing sequence of suicides, considerable criticism has been levelled against the University’s counselling arrangements. But Dr Felix McLure, former Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Wolsey College, has expressed his disappointment that so many have rushed into the arena with allegations of indifference and neglect. In fact, according to Dr Mac-Clure, the University has been instrumental over the past year in promoting several initiatives, including the formation of Oxford University Counselling and Help (OUCH) of which he was a founder-member. ‘More should be done,’ he told our reporter. ‘We all agree on that score. But there should also be some recognition of the University’s present concern and commitment.’