Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘You think he’s dead?’ asked Lewis.

‘Every day that goes by makes it more likely.’

‘We need a body, though.’

‘We do. At least — with McClure — we had a body.’

‘And a weapon.’

‘And a weapon.’

‘But with Brooks we’ve still not got a body.’

‘And still not got a weapon,’ added Morse rather miserably.

Ten minutes later, without knocking, Strange lumbered into the office. He had been on a week’s furlough to the west coast of Scotland and had returned three days earlier. But this was his first day back at HQ, having attended a two-day Superintendents’ Conference at Eastbourne.

He looked less than happy with life.

‘How’re things going, Morse?’

‘Progressing, sir,’ said Morse uneasily.

Strange looked at him sourly. ‘You mean they’re not progressing, is that it?’

‘We’re hoping for some developments—’

‘Augh, don’t give me that bullshit! Just tell me where we are — and don’t take all bloody day over it.’

So Morse told him.

He knew (he said) — well, was ninety-nine per cent certain — that Brooks had murdered McClure: they’d got the knife from Brooks’s kitchen, without any blood on it, agreed — but now they’d got his bike, with blood on it — McClure’s blood on it. The only thing missing was Brooks himself. No news of him. No trace of him. Not yet. He’d last been seen by his wife, Brenda Brooks, and by Mrs Stevens — by the two of them together — on the afternoon of Wednesday, 7 September, the afternoon that the knife was stolen from the Pitt Rivers.

‘Where does that leave us then?’ asked Strange. ‘Sounds as if you might just as well have taken a week’s holiday yourself.’

‘For what it’s worth, sir, I think the two women are lying to us. I don’t think they did see him that Wednesday afternoon. I think that one of them — or both of them — murdered Brooks. But not on that Wednesday — and not on the Thursday, either. I think that Brooks was murdered the day before , on the Tuesday; and I think that all this Pitt Rivers thingummy is a blind, arranged so that we should think there was a link-up between the two things. I think that they got somebody, some accomplice, to pinch the African knife — well, any knife from one of the cabinets there—’

‘All right. You think — and you seem to be doing one helluva lot of “thinking”, Morse — that the knife was stolen the day after Brooks was murdered.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Go on.’

Morse was very conscious that he had scarcely thought through his conclusions with any definitive clarity, but he ploughed on:

‘It’s all to do with their alibis. They couldn’t have stolen the knife themselves — they were on a school bus going to Stratford. And so if we all make the obvious link, which we do , between the murder of Brooks and the theft, then they’re in the clear, pretty well. You see, if Brooks’s body is ever found, which I very strongly doubt—’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because if he’s found, he won’t have the Pitt Rivers knife stuck in him at all. It’ll be another knife — like as not another kitchen knife. But they’re certainly never going to let us find the body. That would mean the alibis they’ve fixed up for themselves have gone for a Burton.’

‘What’s the origin of that phrase?’

Morse shook his head. ‘Something to do with beer, is it?’

Strange looked at his watch: just after midday. ‘You know I was a bit surprised to find you here, Morse. I thought you’d probably gone for a Burton yourself.’

Morse smiled dutifully, and Lewis grinned hugely, as Strange continued: ‘It’s all too fanciful, mate. Stop thinking so much — and do something. Let’s have a bit of action.’

‘There’s one other thing, sir. Lewis here got on to it…’

Morse gestured to his sergeant, the latter now taking up the narrative.

‘Fellow called Davies, Ashley Davies. He’s got quite a few connections with things, sir. He was on Staircase G in Drinkwater Quad when Matthew Rodway was there — had a fight with him, in fact, and got himself kicked out’ — he looked at Morse — ‘rusticated. The fight was about a girl, a girl called Eleanor Smith; and she was the girl who was Dr McClure’s mistress. And now, Davies has got himself engaged to be married to her — and she’s Brooks’s step-daughter.’

‘That’s good, Lewis. That’s just the sort of cumulative evidence I like to hear. Did he murder Brooks?’

‘It’s not that so much, sir. It’s just that the Chief Inspector here…’

Lewis tailed off, and Morse took over.

‘It’s just that I’d been wondering why Miss Smith had agreed to marry him, that’s all. And I thought that perhaps he might have done some favour for her. Lewis here found that he was in Oxford that Wednesday afternoon, and if it was Davies who went to the Pitt Rivers—’

‘What! You’re bringing her into it now? The daughter?’

‘Step-daughter, sir.’

Strange shook his head. ‘That’s bad, Morse. You’re in Disneyland again.’

Morse sighed, and sat back in the old black leather chair. He knew that his brief résumé of the case had been less than well presented; and, worse than that, realized that even if he’d polished it all up a bit, it still wouldn’t have amounted to much. Might even have amounted to less.

Strange struggled to his feet.

‘Hope you had a good holiday, sir,’ remarked Lewis.

‘No, I didn’t. If you really want to know it was a bloody awful holiday. I got pissed off with it — rained all the bloody time.’

Strange waddled over to the door and stood there, offering a final piece of advice to his senior chief inspector: ‘Just let’s get cracking, mate. Find that body — or get Lewis here to find it for you. And when you do — you mark my words, Morse! — you’ll find that thingummy knife o’ yours stuck right up his rectum.’

After he was gone, Lewis looked across at a subdued and silent Morse.

‘You know that “all the bloody time”, sir? That’s what they call — what the literati call — “hyperbole”.’

Morse nodded, grinning weakly.

‘And he wasn’t just pissed off on his holiday, was he?’

‘He wasn’t?’

‘No, sir. He was pissed on as well!’

Morse nodded again, grinning happily now, and looking at his watch.

‘What about going for a Burton, Lewis?’

We must now briefly record several apparently disparate events which occurred between 21 and 24 September.

On Wednesday, 21, Julia Stevens was one of four people who rang the JR2 to ask for the latest bulletin on Kevin Costyn, who the previous day had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. His doctors had become increasingly concerned about a blood-clot in the brain, and a decision would very shortly be taken about possible surgery. For each of the four (including Kevin’s mother) the message, couched in its conventionally cautious terms, was the same: ‘Critical but stable’.

Not very promising, Julia realized that. Considerably better, though, than the prognosis on her own condition.