Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Davies sighed miserably, stood up, and reached inside his trouser-pocket for his car-keys.

"Come on, then."

"I'm not going with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'11 hitch a lift."

"You can't do that."

"Course I bloody can. That's all they're lookin' for, most of these lecherous sods. All I gotta do--"

,, Ellie. t,, "First car, like as not. You'll see."

In fact, Ellie Smith's prediction was unduly optimistic, since the first car drove past her with little observable sign of interest, no detectable sign of deceleration. The second car did exactly the same. But not the third.

Chapter Twenty-nine

My predestinated lot in life, alas, has amounted to this: a mens not particularly sana in a corpore not particularly sano (VISCOUN MUMBLES; Reflections on My Life)

On the following day, Sunday, September 4, Ted Brooks was sitting up in bed, two pillows behind his back, reading the more salacious offerings in the News of the Wor M. It was exactly 1t:30 ^.m., he knew that, since he had been looking at his wristwatch every minute or so since 11:15.

Now, for some reason, he began to feel slightly less ag-itated as the minute-hand moved slowly up in the climb to-ward the twelve--the "prick of noon," as Shakespeare has it. His mind, similarly, was moving slowly; perhaps it had never moved all that quickly anyway, Whatever happened, though, he was going to make the most of his heart attack--his "mild" heart attack, as they'd assured him in the Coronary Care Unit. Well, he hoped it was mild. He didn't want to die. Course he bloody didn't.

Paradoxically, however, he found himself wishing it wasn't all that mild. A heart attack--whatever its measurement on the Richter Scale--was still a heart attack; and the maxi-mum sympathy and attention should be extracted from such an affliction, so Brenda'd better bloody understand that.

He shouted downstairs for a cup of Bovril. But before the beverage could arrive, he heard the double-burred ring of the telephone: an unusual occurrence in the Brookses' household at any time; and virtually unprecedented on a Sunday.

He got out of bed, and stood listening beside the bed-room door as Brenda answered the call in the narrow entrance-hall at the bottom of the stairs.

"Oh, I see.... "

"I do understand, yes.... "

"Look, let me try to put him on.... '

She found him sitting on the side of the bed, pulling on his socks.

"Thames Valley Police, Ted. They want to come and talk to you."

"Christ!" he hissed. "Don't they know I've only just got out of 'ospital?"

Brenda's upper lip was trembling slightly, but her voice sounded strangely calm. "Would you like to speak to him yourself?. Or tell me what to say? I don't care--but don't let's keep him waiting."

"What's 'is name, this feller?"

"Lewis. Detective Sergeant Lewis."

Lewis put down the phone.

Like Brooks a few minutes earlier, he was sitting on the side of the bed--Morse's bed.

"That's fixed that up, then, sir. I still feel you'd be better off staying in bed, though."

"Nonsense!"

Lewis looked with some concern across at his chief, lying back against three pillows, in pyjamas striped in ma-roon, pale blue, and white, with an array of bottles and medicaments on the bedside table: aspirin, Alka Seltzer, indigestion tablets, penicillin, paracetamol--and a bottle of The Macallan, almost empty. He looked blotchy. He looked ghastly.

"No rush, is there, sir?" he asked in a kindly manner. "Not much danger of me rushing today." He put down the book he'd been reading, and Lewis saw its rifle: The Anatomy of Melancholy.

'Trying to cheer yourseff up, sir?"

"Oddly enough, I am. Listen to this: 'There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness; no better cure than busyness'--that's what old Burton says. So tell me all about Bedford."

So Lewis told him, trying so very hard to miss nothing out; and conscious, as always, that Morse would probably consider of vital importance those things he himself had as sumed to be obviously trivial.

And vice versa, of course.

Morse listened, with only the occasional interruption.

"So you can see, sir, he's not got much of an alibi, has he?"

"Lew-is! We won't want another suspect. We know who killed Mc Clure: the fellow we're off to see this afternoon.

All we're looking for is a bit more background, a slightly different angle on things. We can't take Brooks in yet--well, we can; but he's not going to run away. We ought to wait for a bit more evidence to accumulate."

"We certainly haven't got much, to be truthful, have we.9'

"You've still got people looking for the knife?"

Lewis nodded. "Eight men on that, sir. Doing the houses Phillotson's lads didn't--along most of the road, both sides."

Morse grunted. "I don't like this fellow Brooks."

"You've not even seen him yet."

"I just don't like this drugs business."

"I doubt if Davies had any part in that. Didn't seem the type at all."

"Just in on the sex."

"He fell for that woman in a pretty big way, no doubt about that."

"Mm. And you say there may have been somebody in the house while you were there?"