Colin Dexter: The Daughters of Cain

Mrs Julia Stevens (Morse learned) had been admitted at midday, having earlier been discovered unconscious at the side of her bed by her cleaning-lady. Some speedy deterioration in her mental condition had been expected; but the dramatic (the literal) collapse in her physical condition had come as some surprise. A recent biopsy (Morse learned) had confirmed glioblastoma multiforma , a fast-growing tumour of the neuroglia in the brain: wholly malignant, sadly inoperable, rapidly fatal.

When Julia had been admitted, it was immediately apparent that, somewhere on the brain, pressure had become intolerably severe: she had been painfully sick again in the ambulance; clearly she was experiencing some considerable difficulty with both sight and speech; showing signs too of spatial disorientation. Yet somehow she had managed to make it clear that she wished to speak to the policeman Morse.

Twice during the early afternoon (Shepstone reported), her behaviour had grown disturbingly aggressive, especially towards one of the young nurses trying to administer medication. But that sort of behaviour — often involving some fairly fundamental personality change — was almost inevitable with such a tumour.

‘Had you noticed any “personality change” before?’ asked Morse.

Shepstone hesitated. ‘Yes, perhaps so. I think… well, let’s put it this way. The commonest symptom would be a general loss of inhibition, if you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Well, I mean one obvious thing is she probably wouldn’t be over-worried about the reactions and opinions of other people — other professional colleagues, in her case. Let’s say she’d be more willing than usual to speak her mind in a staff-meeting, perhaps. I don’t think she was ever too shy a person; but like most of us she’d probably always felt a bit diffident — a bit insecure — about life and… and things.’

‘She’s an attractive woman, isn’t she?’

Shepstone looked across at Morse keenly.

‘I know what you’re thinking. And the answer’s probably “yes”. I rather think that if over these past few months someone had asked… to go to bed with her…’

‘When you say “someone” — you mean some man ?’

‘I think I do, yes.’

‘And you say she’s been a bit violent today.’

‘Aggressive, certainly.’

Morse nodded.

‘It’s really,’ continued Shepstone, ‘the unexpectedness rather than the nature of behaviour that always sticks out in these cases. I remember at the Radcliffe Infirmary, for example, a very strait-laced old dear with a similar tumour getting out of her bed one night and dancing naked in the fountain out the front there.’

‘But she isn’t a strait-laced old dear,’ said Morse slowly.

‘Oh, no,’ replied the sad-eyed Consultant. ‘Oh, no.’

For a while, when Julia had regained some measure of her senses in the hospital, she knew that she was still at home in her own bed, really. It was just that someone was trying to confuse her, because the walls of her bedroom were no longer that soothing shade of green, but this harsher, crueller white.

Everything was white.

Everyone was wearing white…

But Julia felt more relaxed now.

The worry at the beginning had been her complete disorientation: about the time of day, the day, the month — the year, even. And then, just as the white-coated girl was trying to talk to her, she’d felt a terrible sense of panic as she realized that she was unaware of who she was .

Things were better now, though; one by one, things were clicking into place; and some knowledge of herself, of her life, was slowly surfacing, with the wonderful bonus that the dull, debilitating headache she’d lived with for so many months was gone. Completely gone.

She knew the words she wanted to say — about seeing Morse; or at least her mind knew. Yet she was aware that those words had homodyned little, if at all, with the words she’d actually used:

‘One thousand and one, one thousand and two…’

But she could write.

How could that be?

If she couldn’t speak?

No matter.

She could write.

As he looked down at her, Morse realized that even in her terminal illness Julia Stevens would ever be an attractive woman; and he placed a hand lightly on her right arm as she lay in her short-sleeved nightdress, and smiled at her. And she smiled back, but tightly, for she was willing herself to make him understand what so desperately she wished to tell him.

At the scene of the terrible murder that had taken place in Brenda’s front room, when she, Julia, had stood there, helpless at first, a spectator of a deed already done, she had vowed, if ever need arose, to take all guilt upon herself. And the words were in her mind: words that were all untrue, but words that were ready to be spoken. She had only to repeat repeat repeat them to herself: ‘I murdered him I murdered him I murdered him…’ And now she looked up at Morse and forced her mouth to speak those self-same words:

‘One thousand and three, one thousand and four, one thousand and five…’

Aware, it seemed, even as she spoke, of her calamitous shortcomings, she looked around her with frenzied exasperation as she sought to find the pencil with which earlier she’d managed to write down ‘MORSE’. Her right arm flailed about her wildly, knocking over a glass of orange juice on the bedside table, and tears of frustration sprang in her eyes.

Suddenly three nurses, all in white, were at her side, two of them seeking to hold her still as the third administered a further sedative. And Morse, who had intended to plant a tender kiss upon the Titian hair, was hurriedly ushered away.

Events were now moving quickly towards their close. There was much that was wanting to be found — was found — although Lewis was not alone in wondering exactly what Morse himself wanted to be found. Certainly one or two minor surprises were still in store; but in essence it was only the corroborative, substantiating detail that remained to be gleaned — was gleaned — by the enquiry team from their painstaking forensic investigations, and from one or two further painful encounters.

Morse was reading a story when just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 4 October, Lewis returned from the JR2 where he had interviewed a rapidly improving Costyn — to whom, as it happened, he had taken an instant dislike, just as earlier in the case Morse had felt an instinctive antipathy towards Ms Smith.

Lewis had learned nothing of any substance. About the ram-raid, Costyn had been perkily co-operative, partly no doubt because he had little option in the matter. But about any (surely most probable?) visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum; about his relations (relationship?) with Mrs Stevens; about any (possible?) knowledge of, implication in, co-operation with, the murder of Edward Brooks, Costyn had been cockily dismissive.

He had nothing to say.

How could he have anything to say?

He knew nothing.

If Lewis was ninety-five per cent convinced that Costyn was lying, he had been one hundred per cent convinced that Ashley Davies, whom he’d interviewed the day before, could never have been responsible for the prising open of Cabinet 52. In fact Davies had been in Oxford that afternoon; and for some considerable while, since between 3.45 p.m. and 4.45 p.m. he had been sitting in the chair of Mr J. Balaguer-Morris, a distinguished and unimpeachable dental-surgeon practising in Summertown.