Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘That’s it!’ exclaimed a jubilant-looking Dr Cooper, as if the museum had suddenly acquired a valuable new exhibit, instead of losing one. ‘Forty-seven knives — forty-seven! — there were in that cabinet. And you know how many there are now, Jane?’

‘Forty- six , perhaps?’ suggested the Administrator innocently.

At five minutes to two, parked in front of the Radcliffe Science Library, Morse switched off The Archers (repeat).

‘Well, we’d better go and have a look at things, I suppose.’

In retrospect, the linkage (if there were one) appeared so very obvious. Yet someone had to make it first, that someone being Jane Cotterell: the linkage between the earlier visit of the police; the museum’s employment of Edward Brooks; the murder by knifing of Dr McClure; and now the theft of another knife, from one of the museum’s cabinets.

Thus, it was Jane Cotterell herself who had argued that the City Police should link their enquiry into the theft with the Kidlington HQ enquiry into the murder of McClure; and Jane Cotterell herself who greeted Morse and Lewis, in the Pitt Rivers’ Upper Gallery, at 2 p.m.

‘It’s what I was afraid of, though God knows why,’ mumbled Morse to himself as he looked down at Cabinet 52, now dusted liberally with fine aluminium fingerprint-powder.

Ten minutes later, whilst Lewis was taking statements from Janis Lawrence and Herbert Godwin, Morse was seated opposite the Administrator, quickly realizing that he was unlikely to learn (at least from her) more than two fairly simple facts: first, that almost certainly the cabinet had been forced between 4.15 and 4.30 p.m. the previous afternoon; second, since the contents of the cabinet had been fully documented only six months earlier — when exhibits had been re-arranged and cabinets re-lined — it could be stated quite authoritatively that one artefact, and one only , the Northern Rhodesian Knife, had been abstracted.

Yet Morse seemed uneasy.

‘Could one of your own staff have pinched it?’

‘Good Lord, no. Why should any of them want to do that? Most of them have access to the key-cupboard anyway.’

‘I see.’ Morse nodded vaguely; and stood up. ‘By the way, what do you line your cabinets with? What material?’

‘It’s some sort of new-style hessian — supposed to keep its colour for yonks, so the advert said.’

Morse smiled, suddenly feeling close to her. ‘Can I say something? I’d never have expected you to say “yonks”.’

She smiled back at him, shyly. ‘You wouldn’t?’

It seemed a good moment for one of them to say something more, to elaborate on this intimate turn of the conversation. But neither did so. And Morse reverted to his earlier line of enquiry.

‘You don’t think anyone could have hidden himself, after closing time, and spent the night here in the museum?’

‘Or herself? No. No, I don’t. Unless they stood pretty motionless all through the night. You see, the place is positively bristling with burglar alarms. And anyway, it would be far too spooky, surely? I couldn’t do it. Could you ?’

‘No. I’ve always been frightened of the dark myself,’ admitted Morse. ‘It’s a bit eerie, this place, even in broad daylight.’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘When you come in here you enter a place where all the lovely myths go when they die.’

Suddenly Morse felt very moved.

After he had left her office, Jane felt guilty about not telling Morse that the ‘myths’ bit was far from original. And indeed she’d looked around to try to find him, to tell him so.

But he had left.

An hour later, Morse was seated in the black leather chair in his office, still considering the sketch of the knife — when Lewis came back from the canteen carrying two polystyrene cups of steaming coffee.

‘Northern Rhodesia, Lewis. Know where that is? Trouble is they keep changing all these place-names in Africa.’

‘Zambia, sir. You know that.’

Morse looked up with genuine pain in his eyes. ‘I never did any Geography at school.’

‘You get a newspaper every day, though.’

‘Yes, but I never look at the international news. Just the Crossword — and the Letters.’

‘That’s not true. I’ve often seen you reading the Obituaries.’

‘Only to look at the years when they were born.’

Morse unwrapped the cellophane from his cigarettes, took one from the packet, and lit it, inhaling deeply.

‘ You ’ll be in the obituary columns if you don’t soon pack up smoking. Anyway, you said you had packed it up.’

‘I have, Lewis. It’s just that I need to make a sort of gesture — some sort of sacrifice. That’s it! A sacrifice. All right? You see, I’m only going to smoke this one cigarette. Only one. And the rest of them?’

Morse appeared to have reached a fateful decision. He picked up the packet and flicked it, with surprising accuracy, into the metal waste-bin.

‘Satisfied?’

Lewis reached for the phone and rang the JR2 Outpatients department: no news. Then he rang Brenda Brooks: no news.

Edward Brooks was still missing.

‘You don’t think somebody’s murdered him , sir?’

But Morse, as he studied yet again the details of the stolen knife, appeared not to hear. ‘Would you rather be a bishop — or a paramount chief?’

‘I don’t want to be either, really.’

‘Mm. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d made me a paramount chief.’

‘I thought they had, sir.’

‘Where would a paramount chief go from here, Lewis?’

‘I just asked you, sir, whether—’

‘I heard you. The answer’s “no”. Brooks is alive and well. No. He may not be well, of course — but he’s alive. You can bet your Granny Bonds on that.’

‘Where do we go from here, then?’

‘Well, I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed. I want to feel fresh for this evening. I’ve got a date with a beautiful lady.’

‘Who’s she?’

‘Mrs Stevens — Julia Stevens.’

‘When did you fix that up?’

‘While you were getting the coffee.’

‘You want me to come along?’

‘Lew-is! I just told you. It’s a date .’

‘Didn’t you believe Mrs Brooks? About where she spent last night?’

‘I believed that all right. It’s just that I reckon she knows where her husband is, that’s all. And it’s on the cards that if she does know, she probably told her friend, Mrs Stevens.’

‘What would you like me to do, sir?’

‘I’d like you to go and see Mrs Brooks’s daughter — Ellie Smith, or whatever she calls herself. She’s a key character in this case, don’t you reckon? McClure’s mistress — and Brooks’s step-daughter.’

‘Shouldn’t you be seeing her then?’

‘All in good time. I’m only just out of hospital, remember?’

‘You mean she’s not so attractive as Mrs Stevens.’