Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘Where is your home?’

‘Top of the Banbury Road… Anywhere near you?’

‘No. That’s quite a way from where I live.’ For a few seconds her eyes looked down at the carpet — that old carpet of hers, whose virtues had so suddenly, so unexpectedly expanded.

Only semi-reluctantly, a few minutes earlier, had Brenda Brooks been persuaded to hand over the last sheet of her daughter’s letter. Its content, as Julia saw things, was very much as before. But, yes, it was a bit self-incriminating; especially that rather fine passage just before the end:

He’s undermined everything for me mum, including sex! But the very worst thing he ever did was to make me feel it could all have been my fault. Mum! Mum! He’s bloody fucked up my life, and if he ever turns up murdered somewhere you’ll know it was me , alright?

Strangely, however, Julia had experienced little sense of shock. A hardening of heart, rather; and a growing conviction that if Brooks were to turn up murdered somewhere his step-daughter would not be figuring alone on any list of possible suspects.

Morse spent a while wandering vaguely around the galleries. On the ground floor he gave as much of his attention as he could muster to the tall, glass show-cases illustrating the evolution of fire-arms, Japanese Noh masks, the history of Looms and Weaving, old musical instruments, shields, pots, models of boats, bull-roarers, North American dress, and a myriad precious and semiprecious stones…

Then, feeling like a man who in some great picture gallery has had his fill of fourteenth-century crucifixions, he walked up a flight of stone steps to see what the Upper Gallery had to offer; and duly experienced a similar sense of satiety as he ambled aimlessly along a series of black-wood, glass-topped display-cases, severally containing scores of axes, adzes, tongs, scissors, keys, coins, animal-traps, specialized tools… Burmese, Siamese, Japanese, Indonesian…

In one display-case he counted sixty-four Early Medical Instruments, each item labelled in a neat manuscript, in black ink on a white card, with documentation of provenance and purpose (where known). Among these many items, all laid out flat on biscuit-coloured backing-material (clearly recently renovated), his attention was drawn to a pair of primitive tooth-extractors from Tonga; and not for the first time he thanked the gods that he had been born after the general availability of anaesthetics.

But he had seen quite enough, he thought, wholly unaware, at this point, that he had made one extraordinarily interesting observation. So he decided it was time to leave. Very soon Lewis would be at the front waiting for him. Lewis would be on time. Lewis was always on time.

For the moment, however, he was conscious that there was no one else around in the Upper Gallery. And suddenly the place had grown a little forbidding, a little uncanny; and he felt a quick shiver down his spine as he made his way back into the main University Museum.

But even here it was quieter now, more sombre, beneath the glass-roofed atrium, as if perhaps a cloud had passed across the sun outside. And Morse found himself wondering what it would be like to be in this place, be locked in this place, when everyone else had gone; when the schoolchildren were back on their coaches; when the rest of the public, when the attendants, when the Administrator had all left… Then perhaps, in the silent, eerie atmosphere, might not the spirits of the Dodo and the Dinosaur, never suspecting their curious extinction, be calling for their mates again on some primeval shore?

Jane Cotterell sat at her desk for several minutes after the door had closed behind Morse. She shouldn’t really have said that about the beer. Silly of her! Why, she could just do with a drink herself, and it would have been nice if he’d asked her out for a lunchtime gin. She felt herself wishing that he’d forgotten something: a folding umbrella or a notebook or something. But as she’d observed, the Inspector had taken no notes at all; and outside, the sun now seemed to be shining gloriously once more.

After reading the (now complete) letter, Julia Stevens re-arranged the pages and read them again; whilst beside her, in a semi-distraught state, sat the original addressee; for whom, strangely enough, one of the most disturbing aspects of the letter was the revelation that her sister Beryl had told her niece the events of that terrible night. Had she (Brenda) made too much of everything when Ted had handled her so roughly? Had it been as much an accident as an incident? But no. No, it hadn’t. And whether her account of it had been exaggerated or whether it had been understated — either to her sister over the phone or to her employer in person — certain it was that the recollection of that night in May would remain ever vivid in Brenda’s memory…

‘You’re ever so late, Ted. What time is it?’

‘Twelve, is it?’

‘It’s far later than that.’

‘If you know what the bloody time is, why the ’ell do you ask me in the first place?’

‘It’s just that I can’t get off to sleep when I know you’re still out. I feel worried—’

‘Christ! You want to worry when I start gettin’ in ’alf-past bloody three, woman.’

‘Come to bed now, anyway.’

‘I bloody shan’t — no!’

‘Well, go and sleep in the spare room, then — I’ve got to get some sleep.’

‘All the bloody same to me, innit — if I go in there, or if I stay in ’ere. Might just as well a’ bin in different rooms all the bloody time, you know that. Frigid as a fuckin’ ice-box! That’s what you are. Always ’ave bin.’

‘That’s just not fair — that’s not fair, what you just said!’

‘If the bloody cap fits—’

‘It can’t go on like this, Ted — it just can’t . I can’t stick it any more.’

‘Well, bloody don’t then! Sling your ’ook and go, if you can’t stick it! But just stop moanin’ at me, d’you hear? Stop fuckin’ moanin ’! All right?’

She was folding her candlewick dressing-gown round her small figure and edging past him at the foot of the double bed, when he stopped her, grabbing hold of her fiercely by the shoulders and glaring furiously into her face before pushing her back.

‘You stay where you are!’

Twice previously he had physically maltreated her in a similar way, but on neither occasion had she suffered physical hurt. That night, though, she had stumbled — had to stumble — against the iron fireplace in the bedroom; and as she’d put out her right hand to cushion the fall, something had happened; something had snapped. Not that it had been too painful. Not then.

As a young girl Brenda had been alongside when her mother had slipped in the snow one February morning and landed on her wrist; broken her wrist. And passers-by had been so concerned, so helpful, that as she’d sat in the Casualty Department at the old Radcliffe Infirmary, she’d told her daughter that it had almost been worthwhile, the accident — to discover such unsuspected kindness.

But that night Ted had just told her to get up; told her not to be such a bloody ninny. And she’d started to weep then — to weep not so much from pain or shock but from the humiliation of being treated in such a way by the man she had married…