Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

Julia handed back the letter.

‘I think she hates him even more than you do.’

Brenda nodded miserably. ‘I must have loved him once, though, mustn’t I? I suppose he was — well, after Sid died — he was just there really. I suppose I needed something — somebody — and Ted was there, and he made a bit of a fuss of me — and I was lonely. After that… but it doesn’t matter any more.’

For a while there was a silence between the two women.

‘Mrs Stevens?’

‘Yes?’

‘What about this other thing? What am I going to do about it? Please help me! Please!’

It was with anger that Julia had listened to Brenda’s earlier confidences; with anger, too, that she had read the letter. The man was an animal — she might have known it; had known it. But the possibility that he was a murderer ? Could Brenda have got it all wrong? Ridiculously wrong?

Julia had never really got to know Ted Brooks. In the early days of Brenda working for her, she’d met him a few times — three or four, no more. And once, only once, had she gone round to the Brooks’s house, when Brenda had been stricken with some stomach bug; and when, as she had left, Ted Brooks’s hand had moved, non-accidentally, against her breasts as he was supposedly helping her on with her mackintosh.

Take your horny hands off me, you lecherous sod, she’d thought then; and she had never seen him since that day. Never would, if she could help it. Yet he was not an ill-looking fellow, she conceded that.

The contents of the letter, therefore, had come as something less of a shock than may have been expected, since she had long known that Brenda had fairly regularly been on the receiving end of her husband’s tongue and temper, and had suspected other things, perhaps…

But Brooks a murderer ?

She looked across with a sort of loving distress at the busy, faithful little lady who had been such a godsend to her; a little lady dressed now in a navy-blue, two-piece suit; an oldish suit certainly, yet beautifully clean, with the pleats in the skirt most meticulously pressed for this special occasion. She felt an overwhelming surge of compassion for her, and she was going to do everything she could to help. Of course she was.

What about ‘this other thing’, though? My god, what could she do about that?

‘Brenda? Brenda? You know what you said about… about the blood? Are you sure? Are you sure ?’

‘Mrs Stevens?’ Brenda whispered. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you — I wasn’t even going to tell you . But yes, I am sure. And shall I tell you why I’m sure?’

It was twenty-past two when Julia’s taxi dropped Brenda — not immediately outside her house, but very close, just beside the Pakistani grocer’s shop on the corner.

‘Don’t forget, Brenda! Make sure you run out of milk again tonight. Just before nine. And don’t say or do anything before then. Agreed? Bye.’

On her way home, Julia spotted the Oxford Mail placard outside a newsagent’s in the Cowley Road:

and she asked the taxi-driver to stop.

Just before 3 p.m., Ted Brooks was lining up the shot, his eyes coolly assessing the angle between the white cue-ball and the last colour. Smoothly his cue drove through the line of his aim, and the black swiftly disappeared into the bottom right-hand pocket.

His opponent, an older man, slapped a pound coin down on the side of the table.

‘Not done your snooker much harm, Ted.’

‘No. Back at work in a fortnight, so the doc says. With a bit o’ luck.’

As Morse had expected, Lewis was already sitting waiting for him outside the museum.

‘How did things go, sir?’

‘All right.’

‘Learn anything new?’

‘Wouldn’t go quite so far as that. What about you?’

‘Interesting. That woman, well — she’s a sort of majordomo — Amazonian type, sir. I wouldn’t like her as Chief Constable.’

‘Give it five years, Lewis.’

‘Anyway, it’s about Matthew Rodway. In the autumn term—’

‘We call it the Michaelmas Term here, Lewis.’

‘In the Michaelmas Term, in his third year, when he was back in college again—’

‘In the House.’

‘In the House again, he was sharing rooms with another fellow—’

‘Another undergraduate.’

‘Another undergraduate called Ashley Davies. But not for long, it seems. Davies got himself temporarily booted out of college—’

‘Rusticated.’

‘Rusticated that term. Some sort of personal trouble, she said, but didn’t want to go into it. Said we should see Davies for ourselves, really.’

‘Like me, then, you didn’t learn very much.’

‘Ah! Just a minute, sir,’ smiled Lewis. ‘Mr Ashley Davies, our undergraduate, in the Michaelmas Term 1993, was rusticated from the House on the say-so of one Dr Felix McClure, former Student — capital “S”, sir — of Wolsey College.’

‘The plot thickens.’

‘Bad blood, perhaps, sir? Ruined his chances, certainly — Davies was expected to get a First, she’d heard. And he didn’t return this year, either. Murky circumstances… Drugs, do you think?’

‘Or booze.’

‘Or love.’

‘Well?’

‘I’ve got his address. Living with his parents in Bedford.’

‘Did any good thing ever come out of Bedford?’

‘John Bunyan, sir?’

‘You go and see him, then. I can’t do everything myself.’

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Lewis quietly.

‘I dunno. My chest’s sore. My legs ache. My head’s throbbing. I feel sick. I feel sweaty. It’s the wrong question, isn’t it? You mean, what’s right ?’

‘Have you had your pills?’

‘Course I have. Somebody’s got to keep fit.’

‘When were you last fit, sir?’

Morse pulled the safety-belt across him and fumbled for a few seconds to fix the tongue into the buckle.

‘I don’t ever remember feeling really fit.’

‘I’m sure you’ll blast my head off, sir, but—’

‘I ought not to drink so much.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d just washed your pills down with a pint.’

‘Would you be surprised if you were quite wrong about that?’

‘Washed ’em down with two pints, you mean?’

Morse smiled and wiped his forehead with a once-white handkerchief.

‘You know the difference between us, sir — between you and me?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I got married, and so I’ve got a missus who’s always tried to look after me.’

‘You’re lucky, though. Most people your age are divorced by now.’

‘You never — never met a woman — you know, the right woman?’

Morse’s eyes seemed focused far away. ‘Nearly. Nearly, once.’

‘Plenty of time.’

‘Nonsense! You don’t start things at my age. You pack ’em up. Like the job, Lewis.’ Morse hesitated. ‘Look, I’ve not told anybody yet — well, only Strange. I’m packing in the job next autumn.’

Lewis smiled sadly. ‘Next Michaelmas, isn’t it?’

‘I could stay on another couple of years after that but…’

‘Won’t you miss things?’

‘Course I bloody won’t. I’ve been very lucky — at least in that respect. But I don’t want to push the luck too far. I mean, we might get put on to a case we can’t crack.’

‘Not this one, I hope?’

‘Oh no, Lewis, not this one.’

‘What’s the programme—?’