Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘Christ! Where the ’ell a’ you bin, woman?’

Brenda bit her lip. ‘There was an emergency — just before my turn. It held everything up.’

‘I thought you were the bloody emergency from all the fuss you’ve bin making.’

‘Baked beans all right for lunch?’

‘ Baked beans? ’

‘I’ve got something nice in for tea.’

A few minutes later she took a tin of baked beans from a pantry shelf; and holding it in her right hand beneath a tin-opener fixed beside the kitchen door, she slowly turned the handle with her left. Slowly — yes, very slowly, like the worm that was finally turning…

And why?

If ever Brenda Brooks could begin to contemplate the murder of her husband, she would surely acknowledge as her primary, her abiding motive, the ways in which mentally and verbally he had so cruelly abused her for so long.

But no!

Belittlement had been her regular lot in life; and on that score he was, in reality, robbing her at most of a dignity that she had never known.

Would the underlying motive then be found in the knowledge of her husband’s sexual abuse of an adolescent and increasingly attractive step-daughter?

Perhaps.

But it was all so much simpler than that. One thing there had been in her life — just the one thing — in which she could rejoice, in which until so very recently she had rejoiced: the skills she had acquired with her hands. And Edward Brooks had robbed her of them; had robbed her even of the little that she had, which was her all.

And for that she could never forgive him .

Brenda decided she needn’t replay all that last bit to Mrs Stevens; but she did need to explain what had gone wrong the day before. Not that there was much to say, really. What was it he ’d said when she’d told him she’d been invited out to lunch with Mrs S?

‘Well if you think you’re going to leave me this lunchtime, you bloody ain’t, see? Not while I’m feeling groggy like this.’

Why had she ever married the man?

She’d known it was a mistake even before that ghastly wedding — as she’d prayed for God to boom down some unanswerable objection from the hammer-beam roof when the vicar had invited any just cause or impediment. But the Voice had been silent; and the invited guests were seated quietly on each side of the nave; and the son of Brenda’s only sister (a sub-postmistress in Inverness), a spotty but mellifluous young soprano, was all rehearsed to render the ‘Pie Jesu’ from the Fauré Requiem .

Often in life it was difficult enough to gird up one’s loins and go through with one’s commitments. On this occasion, though, it had been far more difficult not to do so…

But at least Ted Brooks had relented somewhat, that previous evening — and she knew why . He’d decided he was feeling a whole lot better. He thought he might venture out — would venture out — into the big wide world again: the big wide world in this case being the East Oxford Conservative Club, well within gentle walking distance, where (he said) he’d be glad to meet the lads again, have a pint — even try a frame of snooker, perhaps. And he’d have a bite to eat in the club there; so she needn’t bother ’erself about any more bloody baked beans.

Brenda had almost been smiling to herself that evening, when on the pretext of getting another pint of milk from the corner-shop she’d given Mrs S a quick ring from the nearby BT kiosk, just before nine o’clock.

But what… what about those other two things?

She was a good ten minutes early; and in leisurely, but tremulous, fashion, she crossed the Broad and walked up St Giles’; past Balliol College; past St John’s College; past the Lamb and Flag; and then, waiting for the traffic lights just before Keble Road, she’d quickly checked (yet again) that the letter was there in her handbag.

For a few moments this letter almost assumed as much importance as that second thing — the event which had caught her up in such distress, such fear, since the previous Sunday, when her husband had returned home, the stains on the lower front of his shirt and the top of his grey flannel trousers almost adequately concealed by a beige summer cardigan (new from M&S); but only by the back of this cardigan, since the front of it was saturated with much blood. And it was only later that she’d noticed the soles of his trainers…

Opposite her, the Green Man flashed, and the bleeper bleeped; and Mrs Brenda Brooks walked quickly over to the Old Parsonage Hotel, at Number 1, Banbury Road.

The Old Parsonage Hotel, dating back to 1660, and situated between Keble College to the east and Somerville College to the west, stands just north of the point where the broad plane-tree’d avenue of St Giles’ forks into the Woodstock Road to the left and the Banbury Road to the right. Completely refurbished a few years since, and now incorporating such splendid twentieth-century features as en suite , centrally-heated bedrooms, the stone-built hotel has sought to preserve the intimacy and charm of former times.

With success, in Julia Stevens’ judgement.

In the judgement, too, of Brenda Brooks, as she seated herself in a wall-settee, in front of a small, highly polished mahogany table in the Parsonage Bar, lushly carpeted in avocado green with a tiny pink-and-peach motif.

‘Lordy me!’ Brenda managed to say in her soft Oxfordshire burr, gently shaking her tightly curled grey hair.

Whether, etymologically speaking, such an expression of obvious approval was a conflation of ‘Lord’ and ‘Lumme’, Julia could not know. But she was gratified with the reaction, and watched as Brenda’s eyes surveyed the walls around her, the lower half painted in gentle gardenia; the upper half in pale magnolia, almost totally covered with paintings, prints, cartoons.

‘Lordy me!’ repeated Brenda in a hushed voice, her vocabulary clearly inadequate to elaborate upon her earlier expression of delight.

‘What would you like to drink?’

‘Oh, coffee, please — that’ll be fine.’

‘No it won’t. I insist on something stronger than coffee. Please!’

Minutes later, as they sipped their gins and slimline tonics, they read through the menu: Julia with the conviction that this was an imaginative selection of goodies; Brenda with more than a little puzzlement, since many of the imported words therein — Bagel, Couscous, Hummus, Linguini, Mozzarella — had never figured in her own cuisine. Indeed, the sight of such exotic fare might well, a decade or so back, have prompted within her a stab of some sympathy with a husband constantly complaining about baked beans, about sardines, about spaghetti…

In the past, yes.

But no longer.

‘What’s it to be, then?’

Brenda shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t eat anything. I’m all — I’m all full up, Mrs Stevens, if you know what I mean.’

Julia was too sensible to argue; and in any case she understood only too well, for she’d experienced exactly the same the day before when she’d sat on a bar-stool there, alone, feeling… well, feeling ‘all full up’, as Brenda had so economically phrased it.

Half an hour later, as she was finishing her Poached Salmon with Lemon Butter, Salad, and New Potatoes, Julia Stevens had been put in the (latest) picture about Ted Brooks. She’d known all about the verbal abuse which had led to a broken heart; and now she learned of the physical abuse which had led to a broken hand.

‘I’m so wicked — did you know that? You know why? I wished’ (she whispered closely in Julia’s ear) ‘I wished him dead! Can you believe that?’