Colin Dexter - The Daughters of Cain

Quod erat demonstrandum .

Lewis sensed therefore (as he knew Morse did) that the two young men had probably always been peripheral to the crime in any case. But someone had gone along to the Pitt Rivers; someone’s services could well have been needed for the disposal of the body in the Isis. For although Brooks had not been a heavy man, it would have been quite extraordinarily difficult for one woman to have coped alone; rather easier for two, certainly; and perhaps not all that difficult for three of them. Yet the help of a strong young man would have been a godsend, surely?

With the Magistrates finding no objections, the three search warrants had been immediately authorized, and the spotlight was now refocusing, ever more closely, on the three women in the case:

Brenda Brooks

Julia Stevens

Eleanor Smith…

The previous afternoon, great activity at the Brooks’s residence had proved dramatically productive. At the back of the house, one of the small keys from Lewis’s bunch had provided immediate, unforced access to the garden shed. No transparent plastic bags were found there; nor any damning snippet of dark green garden-twine like that which had secured the bundle of the corpse. Yet something had been found there: fibres of a brown material which looked most suspiciously similar — which later proved to be identical — to the carpeting that had covered the body of Edward Brooks.

Brenda Brooks, therefore, had been taken in for questioning the previous evening, on two separate occasions being politely reminded that anything she said might be taken down in writing and used as evidence. But there seemed hardly any valid reason for even one such caution, since from the very start she had appeared too shocked to say anything at all. Later in the evening she had been released on police bail, having been formally charged with conspiracy to murder. As Morse saw things the decision to grant bail had been wholly correct. There was surely little merit in pressing for custody, since it was difficult to envisage that gentle little lady, once freed, indulging in any orgy of murder in the area of the Thames Valley Police Authority.

In any case, Morse liked Mrs Brooks.

Just as he liked Mrs Stevens — in whose garage earlier that same day a forensic team had made an equally dramatic finding, when they had examined the ancient Volvo, in situ , and discovered, in the boot, fibres of a brown material which looked most suspiciously similar — which later proved to be identical — to the carpeting that had covered the body of Edward Brooks…

Morse had nodded to himself with satisfaction on receiving each of these reports. So careful, so clever, they’d been — the two women! Yet even the cleverest of criminals couldn’t think of everything: they all made that one little mistake, sooner or later; and he should be glad of that.

He was glad.

He himself had taken temporary possession of the long-overdue library book found in the Brooks’s bedroom, noticing with some self-congratulation that the tops of two pages in the story entitled ‘The Broken Sword’ had been dog-eared. By Brooks? Were the pages worth testing for fingerprints? No. Far too fanciful a notion. But Morse told himself that he would re-read the story once he got the chance; and indeed his eye had already caught some of the lines he remembered so vividly from his youth:

Where does a man kick a pebble? On the beach.

Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest…

Yes. Things were progressing well — and quickly. There was that third search warrant, of course: one that had been granted, though not yet served. The one to be served on Ms Smith… Of whom, as it happened, Morse had dreamed the previous night — most disturbingly. He had watched her closely (how on earth?) as semi-dressed in a plunging Versace creation she had exhibited herself erotically to some lecherous Yuppie in the back of a BMW. And when Morse had awoken, he had felt bitterly angry with her; and sick; and heartachingly jealous.

He had known better nights; known better dreams.

Yet life is a strange affair; and only ten minutes after Lewis had returned that Tuesday afternoon Morse received a call from Reception which quickened his heart-beat considerably.

She closed the passenger-seat door, asking the man to wait there, in the slip-road, for ten minutes — no longer; then to drive in and pick her up.

She walked quite briskly past the blue sign, with its white lettering, ‘Thames Valley Police HQ’; then up the longish gradient to the brick-and-concrete building.

At Reception she quickly made her errand clear.

‘Is he expecting you, Miss?’ asked the man seated there.

‘No.’

‘Can I ask what it’s in connection with?’

‘A murder.’

The grey-haired man looked up at her with some curiosity. He thought he might have seen her before; then decided that he hadn’t. And rang Morse.

‘Let her in, Bill. I’ll be down to collect her in a couple of minutes.’

After entering her name neatly in the Visitors’ Log, Bill pressed the mechanism that opened the door to the main building. She was carrying a small package, some 5 inches by 3 inches, and he decided to keep a precautionary eye on her. Normally he would not have let her through without some sort of check. But he’d always been encouraged to use his discretion, and in truth she looked more like a potential traveller than a potential terrorist. And Chief Inspector Morse had sounded happy enough.

He pointed the way. ‘If you just go and sit and wait there, Miss…?’

So Ellie Smith walked over the darkly marbled floor to a small, square waiting-area, carpeted in blue, with matching chairs set against the walls. She sat down and looked around her. Many notices were displayed there, of the ‘Watch Out’, ‘Burglars Beware’ variety; and photographs of a police car splashing through floods, and a friendly bobby talking to a farmer’s wife in a local village; and just opposite her a large map…

But her observations ceased there.

To her left was a flight of white-marbled stairs, down which the white-haired Morse was coming towards her.

‘Good to see you. Come along up.’

‘No, I can’t stay. I’ve got a car waiting.’

‘But we can take you home. I can take you home.’

‘No. I’m… I’m sorry.’

‘Why have you come?’ asked Morse quietly, seating himself beside her.

‘You’ve had Mum in. She told me all about it. She’s on bail, isn’t she? And I just wondered where it all leaves her — and me, for that matter?’

Morse spoke gently. ‘Your mother has been charged in connection with the murder of your step-father. Please understand that for the present—’

‘She told me you might be bringing me in — is that right?’

‘Look! We can’t really talk here. Please come up—’

She shook her head. ‘Not unless you’re arresting me. Anyway, I don’t trust myself in that office of yours. Remember?’

‘Look, about your mother. You’ll have to face the fact — just like we have to — that… that it seems very likely at the minute that your mother was involved in some way in the murder of your step-father.’ Morse had chosen his hesitant words carefully.

‘All right. If you’re not going to tell me, never mind.’

She stood up; and Morse stood up beside her. She held out the small parcel she had been carrying in her right hand and offered it to him.

‘For you,’ she said simply.