Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘I think I know why you’re lookin’ at me like that,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

In answer, she placed an index finger on each nostril. On each ringless nostril.

And Morse nodded. ‘Yes, I prefer you as you are now.’

‘So you said.’

‘You know that your step-father’s still missing?’

‘So what? You want me to break out into goose-pimples or something?’

‘Why do you hate him so much?’

‘Next question.’

‘All right. You said you were going to get married. Does all this — the loss of your baby — does it make any difference?’

‘Gettin’ deep, ain’t we? Cigarette?’

Ellie held out the packet; and stupidly, inevitably, Morse capitulated.

‘You’re still going ahead with getting married?’

‘Why not? It’s about time I settled down, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What else can I tell you?’

Well, if she was inviting questions (Morse decided) it was a good opportunity to probe a little more deeply into the heart of the mystery, since he was convinced that the key to the case — the key to both cases — lay somewhere in those late afternoon hours of Wednesday, 7 September, when someone had stolen the knife from the Pitt Rivers Museum.

‘After your trip to Birmingham, you could have caught an earlier train back?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. I didn’t, though.’

‘Do you remember exactly what time you asked your friend up here — when you got back that afternoon?’

‘Exactly? Course, I can’t. She might. Doubt it, though. We were both tight as ticks later that night.’

Was she lying? And if so, why?

‘On that Wednesday—’

But she let him get no further. ‘Christ! Give it a rest about Wednesday, will you? What’s wrong with Tuesday? Or Monday? I ’aven’t a bleedin’ clue what I was doin’ them days. So why Wednesday ? Like I say, I know where I was all the bloody time that day.’

‘It’s just that there may be a connection between Dr McClure’s murder and the theft of the knife.’

She seemed unimpressed, but mollified again. ‘Drop more?’

‘No, I must be off.’

‘Please yourself.’ She poured herself another Scotch, and lit another cigarette. ‘Beginnin’ to taste better. I hadn’t smoked a fag for three days — three days! — before that one in your car. Tasted terrible, that first one.’

Morse rose to his feet and put his empty glass down on the cluttered mantelpiece, above which, on the white chimney-breast, four six-inch squares in different shades of yellow had been painted — with the name of each shade written in thick pencil inside each square: Wild Primrose, Sunbeam, Buttermilk, Daffodil White.

‘Which d’you like best?’ she asked. ‘I’m considering some redecoration.’

There it was again, in that last sentence — the gearshift from casual slang to elegance of speech. Interesting…

‘But won’t you be leaving here — after you’re married?’

‘Christ! You can’t leave it alone, can you? All these bloody questions!’

Morse turned towards her now, looking down at her as she sat on the side of the bed.

‘Why did you invite me here? I only ask because you’re making me feel I’m unwelcome — an intruder — a Nosey Parker. Do you realize that?’

She looked down into her glass. ‘I felt lonely, that’s all. I wanted a bit of company.’

‘Haven’t you told Mr Davies — about your miscarriage?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you think—’

‘Augh, shut up! You wouldn’t know what it feels like, would you? To be on your own in life…’

‘I’m on my own all the time,’ said Morse.

‘That’s what they all say, did you know that? All them middle-aged fellows like you.’

Morse nodded and half-smiled; and as he walked to the door he looked at the chimney-breast again.

‘Yellow’s a difficult colour to live with; but I’d go for the Daffodil White, if I were you.’

Leaving her still seated on the bed, he trod down the narrow, squeaking stairs to the Jaguar, where for a few minutes he sat motionless, with the old familiar sensation tingling across his shoulders.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

Lewis was eager to pass on his news. Appeals on Radio Oxford and Fox FM, an article in the Oxford Mail , local enquiries into the purchase, description, and condition of Brooks’s comparatively new bicycle, had proved, it appeared, successful. An anonymous phone-call (woman’s voice) had hurriedly informed St Aldate’s City Police that if they were interested there was a ‘green bike’ chained to the railings outside St Mary Mags in Cornmarket. No other details.

‘Phone plonked down pronto,’ the duty sergeant had said.

‘Sure it wasn’t a “Green dyke” chained to the railings?’ Lewis had asked, in a rare excursion into humour.

Quite sure, since the City Police were now in possession of one bicycle, bright green — awaiting instructions.

The call had come through just after midday, and Lewis felt excitement, and gratification. Somebody — some mother or wife or girlfriend — had clearly decided to push the hot property back into public circulation. Once in a while procedure and patience paid dividends. Like now.

If it was Brooks’s bike, of course.

Morse, however, on his rather late return from lunch, was to give Lewis no immediate opportunity of reporting his potentially glad tidings.

‘Get on all right at the hospital, sir?’

‘Fine. No problem.’

‘I’ve got some news—’

‘Just a minute. I saw Miss Smith this morning. She’d been in the JR1 overnight.’

‘All right, is she?’

‘Don’t know about that. But she’s a mixed-up young girl, is our Eleanor,’ confided Morse.

‘Not really a girl , sir.’

‘Yes, she is. Half my age, Lewis. Makes me feel old.’

‘Well, perhaps…’

‘She gave me an idea, though. A beautiful idea.’ Morse stripped the cellophane from a packet of cigarettes, took one out, and lit it from a box of matches, on which his eyes lingered as he inhaled deeply. ‘You know the problem we’re faced with in this case? We’ve got to square the first case — the murder of McClure.’

‘No argument there.’

‘Then we’ve got to square the second case — the theft of a Northern Rhodesian knife. And the connection between these two—’

‘But you said perhaps there wasn’t any connection.’

‘Well, there is and now I know what it is .’

‘I see,’ said Lewis, unseeing.

‘As I say, if we square the first case, and then we square the second case… all we’ve got to do is to work out the sum of the two squares.’

Lewis looked puzzled. ‘I’m not quite following you, sir.’

‘Have you heard of “Pythagorean Triplets”?’

‘We did Pythagoras Theorem at school.’

‘Exactly. The most famous of all the triplets, that is — “3, 4, 5”: 3 2 +4 2 =5 2. Agreed?’

‘Agreed. ’

‘But there are more spectacular examples than that. The Egyptians, for example, knew all about “5961, 6480, 8161”.’

‘That’s good news, sir. I didn’t realize you were up in things like that.’

Morse looked down at the desk. ‘I’m not. I was just reading from the back of this matchbox here.’

Lewis grinned as Morse continued.

‘There was this fellow called Fermat, it seems — I called in at home and looked him up. He knew all about “things like that”, as you put it: square-roots, and cube-roots, and all that sort of stuff.’