Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘Disappointed, naturally.’

‘Have you told them why I’m here today?’

‘They’re on a cruise in the Aegean.’

‘I see.’ Lewis stood up and closed his notebook and walked over to the window, enviously admiring the white Porsche that stood in the drive. ‘They’ve left you the car, I see?’

‘No, that’s mine.’

Lewis turned. ‘I thought you — well, you gave me the impression, sir, that fifty pounds might be a bit on the expensive side…’

‘I came into some money. That’s perhaps another reason I didn’t go back to Oxford. Rich aunt, bless her! She left me… well, more than enough, let’s say.’

Lewis asked a final question as the two men stood in the front porch: ‘Where were you last Sunday, sir?’

‘Last Sunday ?’

‘Yes. The day Dr McClure was murdered.’

‘Oh dear! You’re not going to tell me…? What possible reason could I have—’

‘I suppose you could say it was because of Dr McClure that…’

‘That they kicked me out? Yes.’

‘You must have hated him for that.’

‘No. You couldn’t really hate him. He was just an officious bloody bore, that’s all.’

‘Did you know that he fell in love with Ellie Smith too?’

Davies sighed deeply. ‘Yes.’

‘Last Sunday, then?’ repeated Lewis.

‘I went bird-watching.’

‘On your own?’

‘Yes. I went out — must’ve been about nine, half-nine? Got back about three.’

‘Whereabouts did you go?’

Davies mentioned a few names — woods or lakes, as Lewis assumed.

‘Meet anyone you knew?’

‘No.’

‘Pub? Did you call at a pub? Hotel? Snackbar? Shop? Garage?’

‘No, don’t think so.’

‘Must have been quite a lot of other bird-watchers around?’

‘No. It’s not the best time of year for bird-watching. Too many leaves still on the trees in late summer. Unless you know a bit about flight, song, habitat — well, you’re not going to spot much, are you? Do you know anything about bird-watching, Sergeant?’

‘No.’

As Lewis left, he noticed the RSPB sticker on the rear window of a car he would have given quite a lot to drive. Perhaps not so much as fifty pounds, though.

Standing quite still behind the curtained window of the first-floor front bedroom, she looked down across the drive at the departing policeman. She had a very good idea of what the interview had been about. Of course she had.

She was completely naked except for the dressing-gown (his) draped around a figure which was beginning to wobble dangerously between the voluptuous and the overblown — the beginnings of a pot-belly quite certainly calling for some fairly regular visits to the Temple Cowley pool in East Oxford, to plough through some thirty or forty lengths a time (for she was an excellent swimmer).

The smell of her was seductive though, she knew that. How else, with that posh eau-de-toilette just squirted everywhere about her person? ‘Mimosa Pour Moi’ — the last thing Felix had bought her.

Felix…

Always (above all perhaps?) he’d adored the sight and the smell of her when she’d just finished drying herself after one of her frequent baths. And how she treasured that letter — well, sort of letter — he’d written that morning in a posh London hotel as he’d sat waiting (and waiting and waiting) to go down to breakfast whilst she reclined luxuriously, reluctant to make any decisive move from the bath-tub.

How she loved a long, hot bath.

Yummy!

And how she loved what he’d written — one of the very few things she carried around in that scuffed shoulder-bag of hers:

I ask my darling if she is ready for breakfast; and she stands in front of me; and with a synchronized circular swish of her deodorant-can, she sprays first her left armpit, then her right.

But she gives no answer.

I ask my darling if she has been thinking of me during our night together; and she forms her lips into a moue and rocks her right hand to and fro, as if she was stretching it forward to steady a rickety table on the stone-flagged floor at The Trout.

But she gives no answer.

I ask my darling why she can’t occasionally be more punctual for any rendezvous with me; and I would be so glad if she could speak and dip into a pool of unconvincing excuses.

But she gives no answer.

I ask my darling what she loves most of all in her life; and she smiles (at last, a smile!) and she points behind her to the deep, scented water in which she has just been soaking and poaching, her full breasts seemingly floating on the surface.

It is, I must suppose, the nearest I shall ever come to an answer.

She’d read it many, many times. Above all she enjoyed reading about herself in the third person. It was as if she were a key character in some roman-à-clef (Felix had told her about that sort of book — told her how to pronounce it): a character far more important on the page than in reality. Oh, yes. Because in real life she wasn’t important at all; nor ever would be. After all, she wouldn’t exactly be riding up to the abortion clinic that Wednesday in a Roller, now would she? God, no. Just standing on that perishing Platform Number 2, waiting for the early bloody train up to bloody Birmingham.

Ashley Davies opened the bedroom door and walked up behind her, unloosening the belt of her (his) dressing-gown.

‘God, am I ready—’

But she slipped away from him — and slipped out of the dressing-gown, fixing first her black suspender-belt, then her black bra; then pulling a thin dark blue dress over her ridiculously colourful head before hooking a pair of laddered black stockings up her legs.

Davies had watched her, silently. He felt almost as sexually aroused by watching her dress as watching her undress.

At last he spoke:

‘What’s the matter? What have I done wrong?’

She made no reply, but stood tip-tilting her chin towards the dressing-table mirror as she applied some transparent substance to her pouting lips.

‘Ellie!’

‘I’m off.’

‘What d’you mean, you’re off? I’m taking you out to lunch, remember?’

‘I’m off.’

‘You can’t do this to me!’

‘Just watch me!’

‘Is it the police?’

‘Could be.’

‘But he’s gone — it’s over — it’s all right.’

She picked up a small, overnight grip of faded pink canvas, inscribed with the names of pop groups and punk stars.

‘I’m off.’

‘When do I see you again?’

‘You don’t.’

‘Ellie!’

‘I don’t want to see you any more.’ (It seemed a long sentence.)

Davies sat down miserably on the side of the double bed in which he and Ellie had slept — half slept — the previous night.

‘You don’t love me at all, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever loved me?’

‘No.’

‘Did you love Matthew?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t tell me you loved McClure? Don’t tell me you loved that prick?’

‘About the only thing about him I did love.’

‘Christ! You shouldn’t say things like that.’

‘Why ask, then?’

‘Have you ever loved anybody?’

‘Me mum, yeah.’

‘Nobody else?’

‘Me dad — me real dad, I suppose. Can’t remember.’

With a series of upward brushes she applied some black colouration to her eyelashes.

‘Where d’you think you’re going now?’