Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

But at least she was relieved to he home before him; to have time for a cup of tea; to try to stop shaking. The an-guish, the sheer misery of it ail, were as strong as ever; with only her growing fear a new element in the trag After the fkst inevitable bewilderment---after the uncom-prehending questions and the incomprehensible ansvers--her immediate reaction had been to wash the bloodstained clothing--shirt, trousers, cardigan; but instead, she had fol-lowed the fierce instructions given from the invalid's bed that the clothes be carted off to the rubbish dump, ad that the affair never be referred to again.

Yet there the event stood--whatever had happened, what-ever it all meant--forming that terrible and terrifying secret between them, between husband and wife. No loger a proper secret, though, for she had shared that secret... those secrets; or would it not be more honest to say that she had betrayed them? Particularly, therefore, did her fear cen-tre on his return now: the fear that when he came in he would only have to look at her--to know. And as she squeezed the tea-bag with the tongs, she could do nothing to stop the constant trembling in her hands.

Automatically almost, between sips of tea, she wiped the tongs clean of any tannin stain and replaced them in the drawer to the right of the sink, in the compamnent ext to the set of beautifully crafted knives which her sister Beryl had given her for her first wedding--knives of many shapes and sizes, some small and slim, some with much longer and broader blades, which lay there before her in shining and sharpened array.

The phone rang at 2:45 P.M.: the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The phone rang again just before 3 P.M.: 1Vlrs. Stevens. "Is he home yet?"

"No."

"Good. Now listen!"

The front door slammed at 3:20 P.M., when, miraculously as it seemed to Brenda, the shaking in her hands had ceased.

Almost invariably, whenever he came in, she would use those same three words: '°Ilaat you, Ted?" That afternoon, however, there was a change, subconscious perhaps, yet still significant.

"That you?" she asked in a firm voice. Just the two words now--as if the query had become depersonalised, as if she could be asking the information of anyone; dehuman-ized, as if she could be speaking to a dog.

As yet, still holding out on the battle-field, was a small fortress. It was likely to collapse very soon, of course; but there was the possibility that it might hold out for some lit-tle time, since it had been recently reinforced. And when the door had slammed shut she had been suddenly conscious--yes!--of. just a little power. "That you?" she repeated. "Who do you think it is?"

"Cup o' tea?"

"You can get me a can o' beer."

"The museum just rang. The lady wanted to know how you were. Kind of her, wasn't it T'

"Kind? Was it fuck! Only wanted to know when I'd be back, that's all. Must be short-staffed--that's the only rea-son she rang."

"You'd have thought people would be glad of a job like that, with all this unemployment--"

"Would be, wouldn't they, if they paid you decent bloody rates?"

"They pay you reasonably well, surely?"

He glared at her viciously. "How do you know that? You bin lookin' at my things when I was in 'ospital? Christ, you better not 'a bin, woman!"

"I don't know what they pay you. You've never told me."

"Exactly! So you know fuck-all about it, right? Look at you! You go out for that bloody teacher and what's 'er rates, eh? Bloody slave-labour, that's what you are. Four quid an hour? Less? Christ, if you add up what she gets an hour--all those 'olidays and everything."

Brenda made no answer, but the flag was still flying on the small fortress. And, oddly enough, he was right. Mrs. Stevens did pay her less than an hour: 10 pounds for three hours--two mornings a week. But Brenda knew why that was, for unlike her husband her employer had told her ex-actly where she stood on the financial ladder: one rung from the bottom. In fact, Mrs. Stevens had even been talking that lunchtime of having to get rid of her B-registration Volvo, which stood in one of the run-down garages at the end of her road, rented at 15 pounds per calendar month.

As Brenda knew, the protection which that rusting, corru-gated shack could afford to any vehicle was minimal; but it did mean that the car had a space--which was more than could be said for the length of the road immediately outside Julia,'s own front door, where so often some other car or van was parked, with just as much fight to do so as she had (so the Council had informed her). It wasn't that the sale of the old Volvo ("340, pounds madam--no, let's make it 350 pounds) would materially boost her current account at Lloyds; but it would mean a huge saving on all those other wretched ex-penses: insurance, road tax, servicing, repairs, MOT, garaging... what, about 800 pounds a year?