Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

Such a prospect would normally have daunted him; yet the present case was unusual in that it had already established itself into a pattern. In the past, the more spectacular cases on which he and Morse had worked together had often involved some bizarre, occasionally some almost incredible, twists of fate. But the murder of Dr Felix McClure appeared — surely was — a comparatively straightforward affair. There could be little doubt — none in Morse’s mind — about the identity of the murderer. It was just a question of timing now, and patience: of the accumulation, the aggregation of evidence, against a man who’d had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, to murder McClure. Only concerning the actual commission of the crime was there lack of positive evidence. Lack of any evidence. And what a feather in his cap it would be if he, Lewis, could come up with something on that , during Morse’s reluctant, yet enforced, immobility.

For the present, then, it was he who was sole arbiter of the course of further enquiries; of the most productive deployment of police resources. He had not been born great, Lewis was aware of that; nor did the rank of Detective Sergeant mark him out as a man who had achieved any significant greatness. Yet for a few days now, some measure of vicarious greatness was being thrust upon him; and he would have been encouraged by the Latin proverb (had he known it) that ‘Greatness is but many small littles’, since it was upon a series of ‘small littles’ that he embarked over the following three days — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 5, 6, 7 September.

Over these few days many statements were taken from people, both Town and Gown, some fairly closely, some only peripherally, connected with the murdered man and with his putative murderer. And it was Lewis himself who had visited the JR2 on Tuesday afternoon for it to be confirmed, quite unequivocally, that Mr Edward Brooks had been admitted, via Casualty, to the Coronary Care Unit at 2.32 p.m. on Sunday, 28 August; that Brooks had spent twenty-four hours in Intensive Care before being transferred to Level 7, whence he had been discharged three days later.

Whilst in the hospital, Lewis had called in to see Morse (his second visit), but had refused to be drawn into any discussion of new developments in the enquiry. This for two reasons: first, that there were no new developments; and, second, that Superintendent Strange had strongly urged against such a course of action — ‘Start talking about it, and he’ll start thinking about it. And once he starts thinking, he’ll start thinking about drinking, whatever the state of his innards…’ So Lewis stayed only a few minutes that afternoon, taking a ‘Get Well’ card from Mrs Lewis, and a small bunch of seedless white grapes from himself, the latter immediately confiscated by the hawk-eyed ward-sister.

From the JR2, Lewis had gone on to interview the Brooks’s family GP, Dr Philip Gregson, at the Cowley Road Health Centre.

The brief medical report on Edward Brooks which Lewis read there was quite optimistic: ‘Mild heart attack — condition now stable — surprisingly swift recovery. GP appt 1 wk; JR2 out/p appt 2 wk.’

About Brenda Brooks, however, Gregson was more circumspect. She had, yes, suffered a very nasty little injury to her right hand; and, yes, he had referred her to a specialist. But he couldn’t comment in any way upon his colleague’s findings. If further information were considered necessary…

In such fashion was it that Lewis’s queries were concluded late that Tuesday afternoon — with the telephone number of an orthopaedic surgeon, and with the knowledge that he was getting nowhere fairly slowly.

Yet only twenty-four hours were to elapse before the first major breakthrough in the case was destined to occur.

It took a long time, an inordinately long time, for the penny to drop.

Dr Richard Rayson had been wholly unaware of the great excitement which had been witnessed by the residents of Daventry Avenue over the previous week. Yet his inability to establish any connection between the discovery of a knife and the death of a neighbour is readily explicable. In the first place, the physical police presence around Daventry Court had been withdrawn on the day prior to his return from abroad. Then, too, Rayson had not as yet re-instated his standing-order with the Summertown newsagent for the daily delivery of the Oxford Mail ; he had therefore missed the brief item tucked away at the bottom of page 3 on Monday (would probably have missed it anyway). And finally, and most significantly, his communications with his neighbours, on either side, had been almost completely severed of late — this breakdown occasioned by a series of increasingly bitter differences of view over the maintenance of boundary fences, the planting of inter-property trees, an application for planning permission, and (most recently) the dangerous precedent of a teenage party.

Thus, after spending the whole of the Monday and Tuesday with his wife in regrooming their garden, it was only at lunchtime on Wednesday, 7 September, that Rayson was re-introduced into the mainstream of Oxford life and gossip — at a cocktail reception in Trinity College to meet a group of librarians from Oklahoma.

‘Fine drop of claret, what, Richard?’ one of his colleagues had affirmed.

‘Beautifully balanced little wine, George.’

‘By the way, you must have known old McClure, I suppose? Lives only a few doors from you, what? Lived , rather.’

Rayson had frowned. ‘McClure?’

‘You know, the poor sod who got himself knifed?’

McClure. Felix McClure. Knifed.

The knife .

Just after five o’clock that afternoon, Detective Sergeant Lewis stood looking down at the prime exhibit, laid out on the Formica-topped surface of the kitchen in Ray-son’s elegant detached house in Daventry Avenue — seven properties distant, on the Woodstock Road side, from the scene of McClure’s murder. As Rayson had explained over the phone, the knife had been found just inside the front fence, had been picked up, washed, dried, put away, picked up again, used to cut a roll of boiled ham, re-washed, re-dried, put away again — and picked up yet again when Rayson had returned from Trinity in the late afternoon, and examined it with a sort of ghoulish fascination.

With no prospects, therefore, of the exhibit retaining any incriminating fingerprints or blood-stains, Lewis in turn now picked up the black-handled knife, its blade unusually broad at the base, but tapering to a sharp-looking point at the end. And concurrently several thoughts coursed through his mind — exciting thoughts. There was the description, for a start, of the murder weapon — so very similar to this knife — which had appeared in the Oxford Mail , the description which was perhaps worrying Morse somewhat when he’d mentioned his premonition about the possibility of a copycat killing. Then there was the firm likelihood that the second of Morse’s necessary prerequisites had now been met — not only a body, but also a weapon; and this one surely seemed to fit the bill so very nicely. And then — by far the most exciting thought of all — the strong possibility that the knife had come from a set of such knives, one of which Lewis had seen so very recently : that slim, elegant, black-handled little knife with which Mrs Brenda Brooks had sliced the Madeira cake the previous Sunday afternoon.