Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

What Morse had vaguely referred to as the "authorities" at Wolsey were immediately co-operative; and at 10 n.M. the following day he and Lewis were soon learning many things about the place: specifically, in due course, about Staircase G in Drinkwater Quad, on which Dr. Mc Clure had spent nine years of his university life, from 1984 until his retirement from academe at the end of the Trinity Term, 1993.

From his rooms overlooking the expansive quad ("Larg est in Oxford, gentlemen.--264 by 261 feet") the Deputy Bursar had explained, rather too slowly and too pedanti-cally for Morse's taste, the way things, er, worked in the, er, House, it clearly seeming to this former Air-Vice Mar-shal ("Often mis-spelt, you know--and more often mis-hyphenated") that these non-University people needed some elementary explanations.

Scouts?

Interested in scouts, were they?

Well, each scout ("Interesting word---origin obscure") looked after one staircase, and one staircase only--with that area guarded as jealously as any blackbird's territory in a garden, and considered almost as a sort of mediaeval fief-dom ("If you know what I mean?"). Several of the scouts had been with them, what, twenty, thirty years? Forty-nine years, one of them! What exactly did they do? Well, it would be sensible to go and hear things from the horse's mouth, as it were. What?

Escorted therefore through Great Quad, and away to the left of it into what seemed to Morse the unhappily named "Drinkwater Quad," the policemen thanked their cicerone, the Air-hyphen-Vice Marshal ("One 'L'

'3 and made their way to Staircase G.

Where a surprise was in store for them.

Not really a scout at all--more a girl-guide.

Susan Ewers, too, was friendly and helpful--a married woman (no children yet) who was very happy to have the opportunity of supplementing the family income; very happy, too, with the work itself. The majority of scouts were women now, she explained: only three or four men still doing the job at Wolsey. In fact, she'd taken over from a man---a man who'd left to work at the Pitt Rivers Museum. "Mr. Brooks, was that T' asked Morse. "Yes. Do you know him?"

"Heard of him, er... please go on."

Her duties? Well, everything really. This immediate area outside; the entrance; the porchway; the stairs; the eight sets of rooms, all of them occupied during term-time, of course; and some of them during the vacs, like now, by delegates and visitors to various do's and conferences. Her first job each morning was to empty all the rubbish-baskets into black bags; then to clean the three WCs, one on each floor (no en suite facilities as ye0; same with the wash-basins. Then, only twice a week, though, to Hoover all the floors, and generally to dust around, polish any brasswork, that sort of thing; and in general to see that the living quarters of her charges were kept as neat and tidy as could be pected with young men and young women who would (she felt) probably prefer to live in--well, to live in a bit of a mess, really. No bed-making, though. Thank goo4ness!

Willingly she showed the detectives the rooms at G4, on the second floor of her staircase, where until fourteen months previously the name "Dr. F. F. Mc Clure" had been printed in black Gothic capitals beside the Oxford-blue double doors.

But if Morse had expected to find anything of signifi-cance in these rooms, he was disappointed. All fixtures be-fitting the status of a respected scholar had been replaced by the furniture of standard undergraduate accommodation: a three-seater settee; two armchairs; two desks; two book-cases ... It reminded Morse of his own unhappy, unsuc-cessful days at Oxford; but made no other impact.

It might have been helpful to move quietly around the lounge and the spacious bedroom there, and seek to detect any vibrations, any reverberations, left behind by a cultured and (it seemed) a fairy kindly soul.

But clearly Morse could see little point in such divination.

"Is G8 free? he asked.

"There is a gentleman there. But he's not in at the min-ute. If you want just a quick look inside?"

"It's where Matthew Rodway, the man who..."

"I know," said Susan Ewers quietly.

But G8 proved to be equally disappointing: a three-seater settee, two (faded fabric) armchairs... cloned and cleaned of every reminder of the young man who had thrown him-self down on to the paved area below the window there the window at which Morse and Lewis now stood for a little while. Silently.

"You didn't know Mr. Rodway, either?" asked Morse. "No. As I say, I didn't come till September last year."

"Do people on the staircase still take drugs?

Mrs. Ewers was taken aback by the abruptness of Morse's question.

"Well, they still have parties, like, you know. Drink and... and so on."

"But you've never seen any evidence of drugs--any packets of drugs.'? Crack? Speed? Ecstasy? Anything? Any thing at all?"

Had she?

"No," she said. Almost truthfully.

"You've never smelt anything suspicious?

"I wouldn't know what they smell like, drugs," she said. Truthfully.