Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘You’ll soon know those things off by heart,’ ventured a well-pleased Lewis as he stopped in a leafy lane on the eastern side of the London Road and briefly consulted his street-map, before setting off again.

‘It’s not that. It’s just that I’m a slow reader.’

‘What if you’d been a quick reader, sir? Where would you be now?’

‘Probably been a proofreader in a newspaper office. They could certainly do with one,’ mumbled Morse as he considered ‘Maclure’ and ‘McLure’ and ‘MacClure’ in the last cutting, with still no sign of the genuine article, ‘former Senior Lecturer…’

Interesting, that extra little piece of the jigsaw — that ‘former’…

Lewis braked gently outside Number 14 Evington Road South; then decided to continue into the drive, where the low-profile tyres of the Jaguar crunched into the deep gravel.

Mrs Mary Rodway, a smartly dressed, slim-figured, pleasantly featured woman in her late forties, seemed quite willing to talk about herself — at least for a start.

Four years previously (she told the detectives) her husband, a highly-salaried constructional engineer, had run off with his Personal Assistant. The only contact between herself and her former marriage-partner was now effected via the agency of solicitors and banks. She lived on her own happily enough, she supposed — if anyone could ever live happily again after the death of an only child, especially a child who had died in such dubious circumstances.

She had seen McClure’s murder reported in The Independent ; and Morse wasted no time in telling her of the specific reason for his visit: the cuttings discovered among the murdered man’s papers which appeared firmly to underline his keen interest in her son, Matthew, and perhaps in the reasons for his suicide.

‘He was quite wrong — the Coroner. You do realize that?’ Mary Rodway lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply.

‘You don’t believe it was suicide?’

‘I didn’t say that. What I do say is that the Coroner was wrong in making such a big thing about those hard drugs. That’s what they call them: “hard” as opposed to “soft”. It’s just the same with pornography, I believe, Inspector.’

Whilst Morse nodded his head innocently, Mrs Rodway shook her own in vague exasperation. ‘Life’s a far more complicated thing than that — Matthew’s was — and that Coroner, he made it all sound so… un complicated.’

‘Don’t be too, er, hard on him, Mrs Rodway. A Coroner’s main job isn’t dealing with right and wrong, and making moral judgements, and all that sort of thing. He’s just there to put the bits and pieces into some sort of pattern, and then to stick some verdict, as best he can, in one of the few slots he’s got available to him.’

If Mrs Rodway was at all impressed by this amalgam of metaphors, she gave no indication of it. Perhaps she hadn’t even been listening, for she continued in her former vein: ‘There were two things — two quite separate things — and they ought to have been considered separately. It’s difficult to put it into words, Inspector, but you see there are causes of things, and symptoms of things. And in Matthew’s case this drugs business was a symptom of something — it wasn’t a cause. I knew Matthew — I knew him better than anyone.’

‘So you think…?’

‘I’ve stopped thinking. What on earth’s the good of churning things over and over again in your mind for the umpteenth time?’

She stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette savagely, and immediately lit another.

‘You don’t mind me smoking?’

‘No, no.’

‘Can I offer you gentlemen one?’ She held out a packet of King-Size Dunhill International, first to Lewis who shook his head with a smile; then to Morse who shook his head with stoical resolve, since only that same morning, when he’d woken up just before six with parched mouth and pounding head, he had decided to forgo — for evermore — the spurious gratification not only of alcohol but of nicotine also.

Perhaps his decision could wait until tomorrow for its full implementation, though; and he relented. ‘Most kind, Mrs Rodway. Thank you… And it’s very valuable, what you’re saying. Please do go on.’

‘There’s nothing more to say.’

‘But if you felt — feel — so strongly, why didn’t you agree to give evidence at the Inquest?’

‘How could I? I couldn’t even bear to switch on the TV or the radio in case there might be something about it. You couldn’t bear that, could you, Inspector? If it had been your child?’

‘I–I take your point,’ admitted Morse awkwardly.

‘You know usually, when things like that happen, you get all the rumour and all the gossip as well. But we didn’t have any of that — at the Inquest.’

Three times now Mary Rodway inhaled on her cigarette with such ferocity that she seemed to Lewis hell-bent on inflicting some irreparable damage to her respiratory tract.

But Morse’s mind for a few seconds was far away, a glimmer of light at last appearing at the far end of a long, black tunnel.

‘So…’ he picked his slow words carefully, ‘you’d hoped that there might be some other evidence given at the Inquest, but you didn’t want to provide any of it yourself?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t all that important anyway.’

‘Please tell me.’

‘No.’

Morse looked around the large lounge. The day was warm already, yet he suspected (rightly) that the two long radiators were turned up to full capacity. Much space on the walls was devoted to pictures: prints of still-life paintings by Braque, Matisse, Picasso; photographs and watercolours of great buildings and palaces, including Versailles and Blenheim — and Wolsey College, Oxford. But virtually no people were photographed or represented there. It was as if those ‘things’ so frequently resorted to by Mrs Rodway in her conversation were now figuring more prominently than people.

‘You knew Dr McClure, I think,’ said Morse.

‘I met him first when Matthew went up to Oxford. He was Matthew’s tutor.’

‘Didn’t he have rooms on the same staircase as Matthew?’ (Lewis had spent most of the previous evening doing his homework; and Morse’s homework.)

‘The first year, and the third year, yes. He was out of college his second year.’

‘Where was that, do you remember?’

Did Lewis observe a flicker of unease in Mary Rodway’s eyes? Did Morse?

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Sergeant Lewis here can check up on that easily enough.’

But she had her answer now. ‘It was in East Oxford somewhere. Cowley Road, was it?’

Morse continued his questioning, poker-faced, as if he had failed to hear the tintinnabulation of a bell: ‘What did you think of Dr McClure?’

‘Very nice man. Kindly — genuine sort of person. And, as you say, he took a real interest in Matthew.’

Morse produced a letter, and passed it across to Mrs Rodway: a single handwritten sheet, on the pre-printed stationery of 14 Evington Road South, Leicester, dated 2 June, the day after the Coroner’s verdict on Matthew Rodway’s death.

Dear Felix

I was glad to talk to you on the phone however briefly. I was so choked I could hardly speak to you. Please do as we agreed. If you find anything else among M’s things which would be upsetting please get rid of them. This includes any of my letters he may have kept. He had two family photos in his room, one a framed one of the two of us. I’d like both of them back. But all clothes and personal effects and papers — get rid of them all for me.