Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

As they took leave of each other at the doorway, it seemed for a moment that they might have embraced, however perfunctorily.

But they did not do so.

It might have been possible, too, for Morse to have spotted the true importance of what Julia Stevens had told him.

But he did not do so.

‘Haven’t you got any decent music in this car?’ she asked, as Lewis drove down the Iffley Road towards Magdalen Bridge.

‘Don’t you like it? That’s your Mozart, that is. That’s your slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto. I keep getting told I ought to educate my musical tastes a bit.’

‘Bit miserable, innit?’

‘Don’t you go and say that to my boss.’

‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’

‘Chief Inspector Morse. Chap you’re going to see. You’re getting the VIP treatment this morning.’

‘Don’t you think I’m used to that, Sergeant?’

Lewis glanced across briefly at the young woman beside him in the front seat; but he made no reply.

‘Don’t believe me, do you?’ she asked, a curious smile on her lips.

‘Shall I…?’ Lewis’s left hand hovered over the cassette ‘on-off’ switch.

‘Nah! Leave it.’

She leaned back languorously; and even to the staid Lewis, as he made his way up to Kidlington, she seemed to exude a powerful sexuality.

When he had rung her late the previous afternoon, Lewis had been unable to get an answer; also been unable to get an answer in the early evening, when he had called at the house in Princess Street, off the Iffley Road, where she had her bed-sitter-cum-bathroom, and where he had left a note for her to call him back as soon as possible. Which was not very soon at all, in fact, since it had been only at 9.45 that morning when she’d rung, expressing the preference to be interviewed at Kidlington, and when Morse (sounding, from his home, in adequate fettle) had stated his intention to be present at the interview.

After Lewis had parked outside the HQ building, his passenger eased herself out of the car; and then, standing on the tarmac in full view of a good many interested eyes, stretched out her arms horizontally, slowly pressing them back behind her as far as the trapezius muscles would allow, her breasts straining forward against her thin blouse. Lewis, too, observed the brazen gesture with a gentle smile — and wondered what Morse would make of Ms Eleanor Smith.

In fact the answer would appear to be not very much, for the interview was strangely low-key, with Morse himself clearly deciding to leave everything to Lewis. First, Ms Smith gave what (as both detectives knew) was a heavily censored account of her lifestyle, appearing in no way surprised that for a variety of reasons she should be worthy of police attention — even police suspicion, perhaps. She’d had nothing to do with the murder of poor Dr McClure, of course; and she was confident that she could produce, if it proved necessary, some corroborative witnesses to account for most of her activities on that Sunday, 28 August: thirty-five of them, in fact, including the coach-driver. Yes, she’d known Matthew Rodway — and liked him. Yes, she’d known, still knew, Ashley Davies — and liked him as well; in fact it was with Davies she had been out the previous evening when the police had tried to contact her.

‘You must have been with him a long time?’ suggested Lewis.

Ms Smith made no reply, merely fingering her right (re-ringed) nostril with her right forefinger.

She was dismissive with the series of questions Lewis proceeded to put about drugs, and her knowledge of drugs. Surely the police didn’t need her to tell them about what was going on? The easy availability of drugs. Their widespread use? What century were the police living in, for God’s sake? And Morse found himself quietly amused as Lewis, just a little disconcerted now, persisted with this line of enquiry like some sheltered middle-aged father learning all about sex-parties and the like from some cruelly knowing little daughter of ten.

Last Wednesday? Where had she been then? Well, if they must know, she’d been in Birmingham for most of that day, on… well, on a personal matter. She’d got back to Oxford, back to Oxford station, at about half-past four. The train — surprise, surprise! — had been on time. And then? (Lewis had persisted.) Then she’d invited one of her friends — one of her girlfriends — up to her flat — her bed-sit! — where they’d drunk a bottle of far-from-vintage champers; and this muted celebration (the occasion for which Eleanor failed to specify) was followed by a somewhat louder merrymaking at the local pub; whence she had gone home, whence she’d been escorted home, at closing-time. And if they wanted to know whether she’d woken up with a bad head, the answer was ‘yes’ — a bloody dreadful head.

Why all this interest in Wednesday, though? Why Wednesday afternoon? Why Wednesday evening? That’s what she wanted to know.

Morse and Lewis had exchanged glances then. If she were telling the truth, it was not this woman, not McClure’s former mistress, not Brooks’s step-daughter, who had stolen the knife from Cabinet 52 — or done anything with it afterwards. Not, at least, on the Wednesday evening, for Lewis had been making a careful note of times and places and names; and if Eleanor Smith had been fabricating so much detail, she was doing it at some considerable peril. And after another glance from Morse, and a nod, Lewis told her of the theft from the Pitt Rivers, which had now pretty certainly been pin-pointed to between 4.20 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday, the seventh; told her, too, of the disappearance of her step-father.

Ah, her step-father! Well, she could tell them something about him, all right. He was a pig. She’d buggered off from home because of him; and the miracle was that her mother hadn’t buggered off from home because of him, too. She’d no idea (she claimed) that he was missing. But that wasn’t going to cause her too much grief, was it? She just hoped that he’d remain missing, that’s all; hoped they’d find him lying in a gutter somewhere with a knife — that knife — stuck firmly in his bloody guts.

The Chief Inspector had not spoken a single word to the woman he’d so recently heralded as his key-witness in the case; and the truth was that, like some maverick magnet, he had felt half repelled, half attracted by the strange creature seated there, with her off-hand ( deliberately common, perhaps?) manner of speech; with her lack of any respect for the dignity of police procedure; with her contempt concerning the well-being of her step-father, Mr Edward Brooks.

A note had been brought into the room a few minutes earlier and handed to Morse. And now, with the interview apparently nearing its end, Morse jerked his head towards the door and led the way into the corridor. The press, he told Lewis, had got wind of the Pitt Rivers business, and questions were being asked about a possible linkage with the murder enquiry. Clearly some of the brighter news editors were putting two and two together and coming up with an aggregate considerably higher than the sum of the component parts. Lewis had better go and mollify the media, and not worry too much about concealing any confidential information — which shouldn’t be terribly difficult since there was no confidential information. He himself, Morse, would see that Ms Smith was escorted safely home.