Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

On Thursday, 8 September, as on the previous day, so many things were happening in close sequence that it is difficult for the chronicler to decide upon the most comprehensible way in which to record events, events which were to some degree contemporaneous but which also overlapped and which in their full implications stretched both before and beyond their strict temporal occurrence.

Let the account begin at Morse’s flat in North Oxford.

Morse was due to be discharged at ten o’clock that morning. Lewis had rung through to the ward-sister half an hour earlier to save Morse any wait for an ambulance and to chauffeur him home in style — only to discover that his chief had already discharged himself, getting a lift from one of the consultants there who was on his way out to Bicester.

Lewis rang the door-bell at 9.45 a.m., experiencing a customary qualm of semi-apprehension as he waited outside that lonely flat — until a fully dressed Morse, his cheeks rosy-red, suddenly appeared on the threshold, panting like a breathless bulldog.

‘I’m just starting a new regimen, Lewis. No more nicotine, limited — very limited — alcohol, plenty of fresh fruit and salad, and regular exercise. What about that? I’ve’ — he paused awhile to get his breath — ‘I’ve just done a dozen press-ups. You’d never have thought that possible a week ago, now, would you?’

‘You must be feeling quite, er, elated, sir.’

‘“Knackered” is the word I think you’re looking for, Lewis. But come in! Good to see you. Have a drink.’

Almost as if he were trespassing, Lewis entered the lounge and sat down.

‘Nothing for me, thanks.’

‘I’ll just…’ Morse quickly drained a tumbler of some pale amber liquid that stood on one of the shelves of the book-lined room beside the Deutsche Grammophon cassettes of Tristan und Isolde . ‘A small, celebratory libation, that, Lewis — in gratitude to whatever gods there be that temporarily I have survived the perils and dangers of this mortal life.’

Lewis managed a grin, half sad, half happy — and immediately told Morse about the knife.

‘I don’t believe it! We’d had those gardens searched.’

‘Only up to six either side, sir. If only we’d gone a couple further.’

‘But why didn’t this fellow Rayson find it earlier? Is he blind or something?’

‘He was in Italy.’

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t sound all that pleased about it.’

‘What? Course I am. Well done!’

‘I know you were a bit worried about that Oxford Mail article…’

‘I was?’

‘You know, the premonition you had—’

‘Nonsense! I don’t even know what a premonition is.’

‘Well, if that description’s anywhere near accurate, sir, I think we’ve got the knife that was used to kill McClure. And I think I know where it came from. And I think you do, too.’

The small round-faced clock on the mantelpiece showed two minutes after ten, and for a while Morse sat in silence. Then, of a sudden, he jumped to his feet and, against all the medical advice he’d so meekly accepted over the previous few days, insisted on being driven immediately to police HQ, stopping (as it happened) only briefly along the journey, in a slip-road on the left, just opposite the Sainsbury supermarket in Kidlington, to buy a packet of Dunhill King-Size cigarettes.

Brenda Brooks had spent the previous night not in her own house in Addison Road but in the spare bedroom, the only other bedroom, of Julia Stevens’ house in Baldwin Road. After Mrs Stevens had left for school at 8.15 a.m., Brenda had eaten a bowl of Corn Flakes and a round of toast and marmalade. Her appointment at the hairdresser’s was for 9.15 a.m.; and fairly soon after her breakfast she was closing the Oxford-blue front door behind her, testing (as always) that the lock was firmly engaged, and walking down towards the Cowley Road for her Special Offer Wash-and-Perm.

On her way home, well over an hour and a half later, she bought two salmon fillets, a pack of butter, and a carton of ecologically friendly washing-up liquid.

The sun was shining.

As she turned into Addison Road she immediately spotted the marked police car, parked on the double-yellow lines across the road from her house; spotted a second car, too, the elegant-looking lovingly polished maroon-coloured Jaguar she’d seen the previous Sunday afternoon.

Even as she put her key into the Yale lock, she felt the hand on her shoulder, heard the man’s voice, and heard, too, the ringing of the telephone just inside the hall.

‘Get a move on,’ said Morse quickly. ‘You may just catch it.’

But the ringing stopped just before she could reach the phone; and taking off her lightweight summer coat, and gently patting the back of her blue-rinsed curls, she turned to the two men who stood just outside, the two men she’d seen the previous Sunday afternoon.

‘If it’s Ted you want, you’ll have to come back later, I’m afraid. He’s up at the JR2 — he’s got an Outpatient appointment.’

‘When do you expect him back?’ asked Lewis.

‘I don’t know really. He’ll be back for lunch, I should think, unless he calls in at the Club for a game of snooker.’

‘How did he get to the hospital?’

Mrs Brooks hesitated. ‘I… I don’t know.’ The fingers of her left hand were plucking their way along the invisible rosary she held in her right. ‘You’d better come in, hadn’t you?’

Haltingly, nervously, as they sat again in the lounge, in the same sedentary formation as before, Mrs Brooks sought to explain the situation. She had been to Stratford the previous evening with a friend and hadn’t returned until late — about midnight — as she’d known she would, anyway. And she’d stayed with this person, this friend, at her house — overnight. Ted knew all about the arrangement. He was due at Outpatients the next morning, and she hadn’t wanted to disturb his night’s sleep — hadn’t disturbed his night’s sleep. He was getting along quite nicely and the doctors said how important it was to rest — to have regular rest and sleep. He hadn’t shown her the little blue appointments card from the Oxfordshire Health Authority, but she thought he was due at the hospital somewhere between nine and ten.

‘You haven’t been here, in this house, since — since when?’ asked Morse, rather brusquely.

‘Four o’clock, yesterday afternoon. Or just before. The coach left at five.’

‘You don’t seem to have been too worried about Mr Brooks coping… with meals, that sort of thing?’

‘Don’t you think so, Inspector?’ Her eyes, rather sad and weary now, looked into Morse’s; and it was Morse who was the first to look away.

Lewis sounded a kindlier note. ‘You’ve just come back from the hairdresser’s?’

She nodded the tightly permed hair. ‘The Golden Scissors, in Cowley Road.’

‘Er… what was the play, by the way?’

‘ Twelfth Night .’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

She half-smiled. ‘Well, I couldn’t quite follow all the — you know, what they were saying. But I loved it, yes, and I’d love to see it again.’

‘And you went with… with a friend, you say?’

‘Yes, with a school-party.’

‘And this friend…?’

Lewis was noting her name and address when the telephone rang once more; and this time Mrs Brooks reached the hall swiftly. As she did so, Morse immediately pointed in the opposite direction, and Lewis, equally swiftly, stepped quietly into the kitchen where he opened a drawer by the side of the sink.

Morse meanwhile listened keenly to one side of a telephone conversation.

‘Yes?’

‘Is he all right?’