Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Still thinking and still waiting, Lewis looked again at the brief supplementary report from the police pathologist, which had been left on Morse's desk that morning.

Attn. De C C. I. Morse.

No more re time of Mc Clure's death--but confn'mafion re probable "within which": 8 ^.M.-12 ^.a. Aug 28. Little more on knife/knife-thrust: blade unusually (?) broad, 4-5 cms and about 14-15 cms in length/penetration. Straight through everything with massive internal and external bleeding (as reported). Blade not really sharp, judging by ugly lacerations round immediate entry-area. Forceful thrust. Man rather than woman? Perhaps woman with good wrist/arm (or angry heart?). Certainly one or two of our weaker (!) sex I met a year ago on a martial arts course.

Full details available if required.

All very technical--but possibly helpful?

Laura Hobson

"At least she understands the full~stop," Morse had said. Never having really mastered the full-stop himself, Lewis had refrained from any comment.

Yet they both realised the importance of finding the knife. Few murder prosecutions were likely to get off on the right foot without the finding of a weapon. But they hadn't found a weapon. A fairly perfunctory search had earlier been made by Phillotson and his team; and Lewis himself had instigated a very detailed search of the area surrounding Daventry Court and the gardens of the adjacent properties. But still without success.

Anyway, Morse was never the man to hunt through a haystack for a needle. Much rather he'd always seek to in-tensify (as he saw it) the magnetic field of his mind and trust that the missing needle would suddenly appear under his nose. Not much intensification as yet, though; the only thing under Morse's nose lately--and that under a towel--had been a bowl of steaming Friar's Balsam.

But here came Morse at last (10:40 A.M.), cum prescription.

And Lewis could predict the imminent conversation: "Chemist just around the comer, Lewis. If you'd just nip along and... I'd be grateful. Only problem"--searching pockets--"I seem..."

Lewis was half fight anyway.

"There's a chemist's just round the comer. If you'd be so good? I don't know how much these wretched Tories charge these days but"--searching pockets "here's a ten-ner."

Lewis left him there on the reserved parking lot, just starting The Times crossword; and walked happily up to Boots in Lower Summertown.

What was happening to Morse?

The third item appearing on Julia Stevens's agenda the pre-vious day had been postponed. On her arrival at the Old Parsonage Hotel, a telephone message was handed to her: Mrs. Brooks would not be able to make the lunch; she was sorry; she would ring later if she could, and explain; please not to ring her.

Understandably, perhaps, Julia had not felt unduly disap-pointed, for her mind was full of other thoughts, especially of herself. And she enjoyed the solitude of her glass of Bruno Paillard Brat Premier Cm (dating!) seated on a high stool at the Parsonage Bar, before walking down to the taxi-rank by the Martyrs' Memorial and thence being driven home in style and in a taxi gaudily advertising the Old Or-leans Restaurant and Cocktail Bar.

It was not until later that evening that her brain began to weave its curious fancies about what exactly could have caused the problem....

Brenda Brooks rang (in a hurry, she'd said) just before the Nine O'Clock News on BBC1. Could they make it the next day, Saturday? A bit earlier? Twelvetwelve noon, say?

After she had put down the phone, Julia sat siiently for a while, stating at nothing. A little bit odd, that--Brenda ringing (almost certainly) from a telephone-box when she had a phone of her own in the house. It would be something--everything--to do with that utterly despicable husband of hers. For from the very earliest days of their marriage, Ted Brooks had been a repulsive fly in the nup-tial ointment; an ointment which had, over the thirteen in-creasingly unhappy and sometimes desperate years (as Julia had learned), regularly sent forth its stinldng savour.

Chapter Nineteen

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife (Cyme. Coto..¥)

As Brenda Brooks waited at the bus-stop that Saturday morning, then again as she made her bus-journey down to Carfax, a series of videos, as it were, flashed in a nightmare of repeats across her mind; and her mood was an amalgam of anticipation and anxiety.

It had been three days earlier, Wednesday, August 31, that she'd been seen at the Orthopaedic Clinic....

"At least it's not made your fracture."

"Pardon, Doctor?" So nervous had she been that so many of his words made little or no sense to her.

"I said, it's not a major fracture, Mrs. Brooks. But it is a fracture."

"Oh deary me."

Coll. n Dexter