Colin Dexter: The Daughters of Cain

PS Give St Giles a big hug for me.

As Julia walked through her front door that afternoon, her house smelt clean and fragrant; smelt of pine and polish and Windolene. Bless her — bless Brenda Brooks!

Then, on the kitchen table, there was a note — the sort of note that she, Julia, had ever come to expect:

Dear Mrs S,

I got your card thankyou & I’m glad you had a good time. St Giles has been fine, there are two more tins of Whiskas in the fridge. See you Monday. There’s something I want to tell you about & perhaps you can help — I hope so. Welcome home!!

Julia smiled to herself. Brenda invariably appended her (bracketed) surname as though the household boasted a whole bevy of charladies. And always that deferential ‘Mrs S’. Brenda had worked for her for four years now, and at fifty-two was nearly seven years her senior. Again Julia smiled to herself. Then, as she reread the penultimate sentence, for a moment she found herself frowning slightly.

It was a pleasant sunny day, with September heralding a golden finale to what had been a hot and humid summer. Indeed, the temperature was well above the average for an autumn day. Yet Julia felt herself shivering slightly as she unlocked and unbolted the rear door. And if a few moments earlier she may have looked a little sad, a little strained — behold now a metamorphosis! A ginger cat parted the ground-cover greenery at the bottom of the small garden and peered up at his mistress; and suddenly Julia Stevens looked very happy once again.

And very beautiful.

Morse decided to interview Laura Wynne-Wilson, should that good lady allow it, in her own ground-floor apartment. And the good lady did so allow.

She was, she admitted, very doubtful about whether that previous policeman had attended to her evidence with sufficient seriousness. Indeed, she had formed the distinct impression that he had listened, albeit politely, in a wholly perfunctory way to what she had to say. Which was? Which was to do with Dr McClure — a nice gentleman; and a very good neighbour, who had acted as Secretary of the Residents’ Action Committee and written such a splendid letter to that cowboy outfit supposedly responsible for the upkeep of the exterior of the properties.

She spoke primly and quietly, a thin smile upon thin lips.

‘And what exactly have you got to tell us?’ bawled Morse.

‘Please don’t shout at me, Inspector! Deaf people do not require excessive volume — they require only clarity of speech and appropriate lip-movement.’

Lewis smiled sweetly to himself as the small, white-haired octogenarian continued:

‘What I have to tell you is this. Dr McClure had a fairly regular visitor here. A… a lady-friend.’

‘Not all that unusual, is it?’ suggested Morse, with what he hoped was adequate clarity and appropriate lip-movement.

‘Oh, no. After all, it might well have been some female relative.’

Morse nodded. Already he knew that McClure had no living relatives apart from a niece in New Zealand; but still he nodded.

‘And then again, Inspector, it might not . You see, he had no living relatives in the United Kingdom.’

‘Oh.’ Morse decided that, unlike Phillotson, he at least would treat the old girl with a modicum of respect.

‘No. It was his “fancy woman”, as we used to call it. By the way, I quite like that term myself, don’t you?’

‘Plenty of worse words, madam,’ interposed Lewis, though apparently with less than adequate clarity.

‘Pardon?’ Laura W-W turned herself in the approximate direction of the man taking notes, as if he were merely some supernumerary presence.

And now it was Morse’s turn to smile sweetly to himself.

‘As I was saying, this… this woman came to see him several times — certainly three or four times during the last month.’

‘What time of day was that?’

‘Always at about half-past seven.’

‘And you, er, you actually saw her?’

‘“Actually” is a ridiculous word, isn’t it? It’s a weasel word, Inspector. It means nothing whatsoever. It’s a space-filler. Whether I actually saw her, I don’t know. What I do know is that I saw her. All right?’

Touché.

Morse’s eyes wandered over to the wooden-frame casement, where the thin white lace curtains were pulled back in tight arcs at each side, with potted geraniums at either end of the window ledge, and three tasteful pieces of dark-blue and white porcelain positioned between them. But nothing there to clutter the clear view, from where Morse was sitting, over the whole front area of the apartments, especially of the two square, yellow-brick pillars which stood at either side of the entrance drive; and through which, perforce, everyone coming into Daventry Court must surely pass. Everyone except a burglar, perhaps. Or a murderer… And this nosey old woman would delight in observing the visitors who called upon her fellow residents, Morse felt confident of that.

‘This could be very helpful to our enquiries, you realize that, don’t you? If you saw her clearly…?’

‘My eyesight is not what it was, Inspector. But I had a good view of her, yes.’ She glanced keenly at Morse. ‘You see, I’m a nosey old woman with very little else to do — that’s what you’re thinking, anyway.’

‘Well, I — we all like to know what’s going on. It’s only human nature.’

‘Oh, no. I know several people who aren’t in the slightest bit interested in “what’s going on”, as you put it. But I’m glad you’re nosey, like me. That’s good.’

Lewis was enjoying the interview immensely.

‘Can you tell us something about this woman? Anything?’

‘Let’s say I found her interesting.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Well, for a start, I envied her. She was less than half his age, you see — good deal less, I shouldn’t doubt.’

‘And he,’ mused Morse, ‘was sixty-six…’

‘Sixty-seven, Inspector, if he’d lived to the end of the month.’

‘How—?’

‘I looked him up in Distinguished People of Today . He’s a Libra.’

Like me, thought Morse. And I wonder how old you are, you old biddy.

‘And I’m eighty-three in December,’ she continued, ‘just in case you’re wondering.’

‘I was, yes,’ said Morse, smiling at her, and himself now beginning to enjoy the interview.

‘The other thing that struck me was that she wasn’t at all nice-looking. Quite the opposite, in fact. Very shabbily dressed — darkish sort of clothes. Sloppy loose blouse, mini-skirt right up to…’

‘The top of her tibia,’ supplied Morse, enunciating the ‘t’ of the last word with exaggerated exactitude.

‘Absolutely! And she had a big old shoulder-bag, too.’

I wonder what was in that, thought Morse.

‘Anything else you can remember?’

‘Long — longish — dark hair. Earrings — great brassy-looking things about the size of hula-hoops. And she had a ring in her nose. I could see that. For all I know, she could have had two rings in her nose.’

God helps us all, thought Morse.

‘But I’m not sure about that. As I say, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.’

I wonder what it used to be like, thought Lewis.

‘Did she come by car?’ asked Morse.

‘No. If she did, she left it somewhere else.’

‘Did she come in from…?’ Morse gestured vaguely to his left, towards the Banbury Road.

‘Yes. She came from the Banbury Road — not the Woodstock Road.’