Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

‘… she couldn’t have done it. And Mrs Brooks couldn’t have done it either, could she? She’s got the best motive of any of them, and she’d probably have the nerve as well. But she couldn’t have planned it all, surely, even if somehow she had the opportunity — that night, say, after she got back from Stratford. I just don’t see it.’

‘Nor do I,’ repeated Morse, grimacing as he sipped another mouthful of weak, luke-warm coffee.

‘So unless we’re looking in completely the wrong direction, sir, that only leaves…’

But Morse was only half listening. ‘Unless’, Lewis had just said… the same word the Warden had used the previous day when he’d been talking of the red-and-white striped barrier. In Morse’s mind there’d earlier been a logical barrier to his hypothesis that Brooks’s body must have been taken to the Thames in some sort of vehicle — as well as that literal barrier. But the Warden had merely lifted that second barrier, hadn’t he? Just physically lifted it out of the way.

So what if he, Morse, were now to lift that earlier barrier too?

‘Lewis! Get the car, and nip along and have a word with the headmaster of the Proctor Memorial. Tell him we’d like to see Mrs Stevens again. We can either go round to her house or, if she prefers, she can come here.’

‘Important, is it, sir?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Morse. ‘And while you’re at it, you can drop me off at the path lab. I want another quick word with the lovely Laura.’

Coming out of her lab to greet Morse, Dr Laura Hobson appeared incongruously contented with her work. She pointed to the door behind her.

‘You’d better not go in there, Chief Inspector. Not for the minute. We’ve nearly finished, though — the main bits, anyway.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Do you call stomach contents interesting?’

‘No.’

‘Looks as if they’ve got some vague prints all right, though — on the knife. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. We’re all hoping, you know that.’

‘Thank you.’ Morse hesitated. ‘It may sound a bit far-fetched I know, but…’

‘Yes?’

‘The knife — I’m doing a little bit of hoping myself — the knife used to murder McClure was very similar to’ — Morse nodded towards the main lab — ‘to the knife that was stolen from the Pitt Rivers.’

‘Yes, I knew that.’

‘What I was wondering is this. Is there any possibility — any possibility at all — that Brooks was murdered with another knife — one of the same type, one with the same sort of blade — then for the knife you’ve got in there — the one with the possible prints on it — to be stuck in him… afterwards ?’

Laura Hobson looked at him curiously.

‘Have two knives, you mean? Stick one in him, take it out, then stick the other in?’

Morse looked uneasy, yet there was still some flicker of hope in his face. ‘When I said “afterwards”, I meant, well, a few hours later — a day even?’

With a sad smile, she shook her head. ‘No chance. Unless your murderer’s got the luck of the devil and the skill of a brain-surgeon—’

‘Or a boy with a model-aeroplane kit?’

‘—you’d have some clear external evidence of the two incisions — and don’t forget he was stabbed through his clothes.’

‘And there aren’t…?’

‘No. No signs at all. Besides that, though, you’d have all the internal evidence: the two separate termini of the knife-points; two distinct sets of lacerations on either side of—’

‘I see, yes,’ mumbled Morse.

‘I don’t know whether you do, though. Look! Let me explain. Whenever you have a knife-wound—’

‘Please, not!’ said Morse. ‘I believe all you say. It’s just that I’ve never been able to follow all these physiological labellings. They didn’t teach us any of that stuff at school.’

‘I know,’ said Laura quietly. ‘You did Greek instead. You told me once, remember, in our… in our earlier days, Chief Inspector?’

Feeling more than a little embarrassed, Morse avoided her eyes.

‘How would it have helped, anyway?’ continued Laura, in a more business-like tone.

‘Well, I’ve been assuming all along that the theft of the knife from the Pitt Rivers was a blind: a blind to establish an alibi, or alibis; to try to establish the fact that Brooks wasn’t murdered until after the knife was stolen.’

She nodded, appreciating the point immediately. ‘You mean, if he’d been murdered on a particular day with one knife, and then, the day after, a second knife was stolen; and if the first knife was subsequently removed from the body, and the second knife inserted into the wound — people like the police, like you, could well have been misled about the time of death.’

‘That’s a splendidly constructed sentence,’ said Morse.

‘Waste of breath, though, really. I wouldn’t have been misled.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Ninety-nine per cent sure.’

‘Could you just rule out the other one per cent — for me? Please?’

‘Waste of time. But I will, yes, if that’s what you want.’

‘I’m very grateful.’

‘Don’t you want to see the contents of his pockets? His clothes?’

‘I suppose I ought to, yes.’

Again she looked at him curiously. ‘It’s as if you’ve been putting your… well, your faith in something, isn’t it? And I feel I’ve let you down.’

‘I lost all my faith a long time ago, I’m afraid.’

‘Much better to have evidence , in our job.’

Morse nodded; and followed Laura Hobson’s shapely legs into a side-room, where she gestured to a table by the window.

‘I’ll leave you to it, Chief Inspector.’

Morse sat down and first looked through the official ‘In Possession Property’ form, listing the items found on Brooks’s person.

The wallet which had been removed at the river-side to establish identity (and which Morse had already looked through, anyway) was among the items, and he quickly examined its few (now dry) contents once more: one £10 note; one £5 note; a Lloyds Bank plastic card; an ID card for the Pitt Rivers Museum; a card showing official membership of the East Oxford Conservative Club. Nothing else. No photographs; no letters.

Nor were the other items listed and laid out there in small transparent bags of any obvious interest: a black comb; a white handkerchief; £2.74 in assorted coinage; what had once been a half-packet of now melted indigestion tablets; and a bunch of seven keys. It was this latter item only which appeared to Morse worthy of some brief consideration.

The biggest key, some 3 inches in length, was grimy dark-brown in colour, and looked like a door-key; as perhaps did the two Yale keys, one a khaki colour, the other shinily metallic. The other four keys were (possibly?) for things like a garden shed or a bicycle-lock or a briefcase or a box or… But Morse’s brain was suddenly engaged now: the fourth small key, a sturdy, silvery key, had the number ‘X10’ stamped upon it; and Morse gazed through the window, and wondered. Was it one of a set of keys? A key to what? A key to where? Would it help to spend a few hours sorting out these seven keys and matching them to their locks? Probably not. Probably a waste of time. But he ought to do it, he knew that. So he would do it. Or rather he’d get Lewis to do it.

From the dead man’s clothing Morse quickly decided that nothing could be gleaned which could further the investigation one whit; and he was standing up now, preparing to leave, when Laura came back into the small room.