Colin Dexter: The Daughters of Cain

‘And the Super… didn’t think he could cope with the case?’

‘Well, he couldn’t, could he? He’s not exactly perched on the topmost twig of the Thames Valley intelligentsia, now is he?’

Lewis had glanced across at the man seated beside him in the passenger seat, noting the supercilious, almost arrogant, cast of the harsh blue eyes, and the complacent-looking smile about the lips. It was the sort of conceit which Lewis found the least endearing quality of his chief: worse even than his meanness with money and his almost total lack of gratitude. And suddenly he felt a shudder of distaste.

Yet only briefly. For Morse’s face had become serious again as he’d pointed to the right; pointed to Daventry Avenue; and amplified his answer as the car braked to a halt outside a block of flats:

‘You see, we take a bit of beating, don’t we, Lewis? Don’t you reckon? Me and you? Morse and Lewis? Not too many twigs up there above us, are there?’

But as Morse unfastened his safety-belt, there now appeared a hint of diffidence upon his face.

‘ Nous vieillissons, n’est-ce pas? ’

‘Pardon, sir?’

‘We’re all getting older — that’s what I said. And that’s the only thing that’s worrying me about this case, old friend.’

But then the smile again.

And Lewis saw the smile, and smiled himself; for at that moment he felt quite preternaturally content with life.

The constable designated to oversee the murder-premises volunteered to lead the way upstairs; but Morse shook his head, his response needlessly brusque:

‘Just give me the key, lad.’

Only two short flights, of eight steps each, led up to the first floor; yet Morse was a little out of breath as Lewis opened the main door of the maisonette.

‘Yes’ — Morse’s mind was still on Phillotson — ‘I reckon he’d’ve been about as competent in this case as a dyslexic proofreader.’

‘I like that, sir. That’s good. Original, is it?’

Morse grunted. In fact it had been Strange’s own appraisal of Phillotson’s potential; but, as ever, Morse was perfectly happy to take full credit for the bons mots of others. Anyway, Strange himself had probably read it somewhere, hadn’t he? Shrewd enough, was Strange: but hardly perched up there on the roof of Canary Wharf.

Smoothly the door swung open… The door swung open on another case.

And as Lewis stepped through the small entrance-hall, and thence into the murder room, he found himself wondering how things would turn out here.

Certainly it hadn’t sounded all that extraordinary a case when, two hours earlier, Detective Chief Inspector Phillotson had given them an hour-long briefing on the murder of Dr Felix McClure, former Student — late Student — of Wolsey College, Oxford…

Bizarre and bewildering — that’s what so many cases in the past had proved to be; and despite Phillotson’s briefing the present case would probably be no different.

In this respect, at least, Lewis was correct in his thinking. What he could not have known — what, in fact, he never really came to know — was what unprecedented anguish the present case would cause to Morse’s soul.

Daventry court (Phillotson had begun), comprising eight ‘luxurious apartments’ built in Daventry Avenue in 1989, had been difficult to sell. House prices had tumbled during the ever-deepening recession of the early nineties, and McClure had bought in the spring of 1993 when he’d convinced himself (rightly) that even in the continuing buyers’ market Flat 6 was a bit of a snip at £99,500.

McClure himself was almost sixty-seven years old at the time of his murder, knifed (as Morse would be able to see for himself) in quite horrendous fashion. The knife, according to pathological findings, was unusually broad-bladed, and at least five inches in length. Of such a weapon, however, no trace whatsoever had been found. Blood, though? Oh, yes. Blood almost everywhere. Blood on almost everything. Blood on the murderer too? Surely so.

Blood certainly on his shoes (trainers?), with footprints — especially of the right foot — clearly traceable from the murder scene to the staircase, to the main entrance; but thence virtually lost, soon completely lost, on the gravelled forecourt outside. Successive scufflings by other residents had obviously obliterated all further traces of blood. Or had the murderer left by a car parked close to the main door? Or left on a bicycle chained to the nearest drainpipe? (Or taken his shoes off, Lewis thought.) But intensive search of the forecourt area had revealed nothing. No clues from the sides of the block either. No clues from the rear. No clues at all outside. (Or perhaps just the one clue, Morse had thought: the clue that there were no clues at all?)

Inside? Well, again, Morse would be able to see for himself. Evidence of extraneous fingerprints? Virtually none. Hopeless. And certainly no indication that the assailant — murderer — had entered the premises through any first-floor window.

‘Very rare means of ingress, Morse, as you know. Pretty certainly came in the same way as he went out.’

‘Reminds me a bit of Omar Khayyam,’ Morse had muttered.

But Phillotson had merely looked puzzled, his own words clearly not reminding himself of anyone. Or anything.

No. Entry from the main door, surely, via the Entry-phone system, with McClure himself admitting whomsoever (not Phillotson’s word) — be it man or woman. Someone known to McClure then? Most likely.

Time? Well, certainly after 8.30 a.m. on the Sunday he was murdered, since McClure had purchased two newspapers at about 8 a.m. that morning from the newsagent’s in Summertown, where he was at least a well-known face if not a well-known name; and where he (like Morse, as it happened) usually catered for both the coarse and the cultured sides of his nature with the News of the World and The Sunday Times . No doubts here. No hypothesis required. Each of the two news-sheets was found, unbloodied, on the work-top in the ‘all-mod-con kitchen’.

After 8.30 a.m. then. But before when? Preliminary findings — well, not so preliminary — from the pathologist firmly suggested that McClure had been dead for about twenty hours or so before being found, at 7.45 a.m. the following morning, by his cleaning-lady.

Hypothesis here, then, for the time of the murder? Between 10 a.m., say, and noon the previous day. Roughly. But then everything was ‘roughly’ with these wretched pathologists, wasn’t it? (And Morse had smiled sadly, and thought of Max; and nodded slowly, for Phillotson was preaching to the converted.)

One other circumstance most probably corroborating a pre-noon time for the murder was the readily observable, and duly observed, fact that there was no apparent sign, such as the preparation of meat and vegetables, for any potential Sunday lunch in Flat 6. Not that that was conclusive in itself, since it had already become clear, from sensibly orientated enquiries, that it had not been unusual for McClure to walk down the Banbury Road and order a Sunday lunch — 8oz Steak, French Fries, Salad — only £3.99 — at the King’s Arms, washed down with a couple of pints of Best Bitter; no sweet; no coffee. But there had been no sign of steak or chips or lettuce or anything much else when the pathologist had split open the white-skinned belly of Dr Felix McClure. No sign of any lunchtime sustenance at all.