Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Morse now coughed violently, expectorating into a tissue a disgusting gobbet of yellowish-green phlegm streaked with bright blood.

Lewis, although he saw it, said nothing.

And Morse continued: "First thing is to get Brooks in, and go through Susan Ewers's statement with him. She's a good witness, that one--and he'll have to come up with something better than he gave us this afternoon."

"When shall we bring him in, though? He's got a point, hasn't he? We don't want to give him another heart attack."

"Don't we T' "Day or two?"

"Day or three."

Morse finished his beer. It had taken that swift drinker an inordinately long time to do so; and if Morse had experi-enced a premonition earlier, Lewis himself now sensed that his chief was seriously ill.

"What about the photograph, sir? Mrs. Brooks's daugh ter?"

"Interesting question. I wonder. I wonder where tha yo, U, npeg ydy fits into the picture." well everywhere, wouldn't you say?"

"Yees. 'Kay'--'K'--'Eleanor'--'Ellie'--we've got t( assume she's the same girl, I suppose: Mrs. B's daugh ter Mr. B's Stelydanghter--staircase-tart for Messrs Rod. way and Davies--mistress for Dr. Mc Clure..."

"She must be quite a girl."

"But what about that other photograph, Lewis7 Thc schoolmistress? D'you know, I've got a feeling she migh be able to shed a little light"

But Morse was coughing uncontrollably now, finally dis appearing into the bathroom, whence was heard a series c revolting retches. - Lewis walked out into the entrance hall, where he flicke open Morse's black plastic telephone index to the lette "S." He was lucky. Under "Summertown Health Centre" h found an "Appointments" number; and an "Emergency number.

He rang the latter.

That same afternoon, just after four o'clock, Dr. Rich Rayson, Chaucerian scholar, and fellow of Trinity Colleg{ Oxford, strolled round his garden in Daventry Avenue. Fc almost three weeks he had been away with his family in th Dolomites. Gardening, in troth, had never been the greater, passion of his life; and as he stood surveying the state c his neglected front lawn, the epithet which sprang mo readily to his literate mind was "agrestal": somewhat ove grown; mn to seed; wild, as the Shorter Oxford might d fine it.

Yet strangely, for such an unobservant man, he'd spotte the knife almost immediately--a couple of feet or so insk the property, between an untrimmed laurel bush and t vertical slats of a front fence sorely in need of some n creosoting. There it was, lying next to a semi-squashed ti of Coca-Cola.

Nina Rayson, a compensatingly practical sort of partne had welcomed her husband's discovery, promptly washing it in Sainsbury's "Economy" washing-up liquid, and forth-with adding it to her own canteen of cutlery. A good knife, it was: a fairly new, sturdy, unusually broad-bladed instmment, in no immediate need of any further sharpening.

That same evening, at nine-thirty, Brenda Brooks was aware that her jangled nerves could stand very little more that day. Paradoxically, though, she felt almost competent about coping with the loathsome man she'd just seen to bed, with a cup of tea, two digestive biscuits, and one sleeping tablet. At least she knew him: knew the worst about him--for there was nothing but the worst to know. It was now the unknown that was worrying her the more deeply: that strange technical jargon of the doctors and nurses at the hospital; the brusque yet not wholly unsympa-thetic questions of the two policemen who had earlier called there.

She found herself neurotically dreading any phone-call; any ringing of the door-bell. Anything. What was that? What was that?

Was she imagining things--imagining noises?

There it was again: a muffled, insistent, insidious, tap-ping Fearfully, she edged towards the front door.

And there, behind the frosted glass, she saw a vaguely human silhouette; and she turned the Yale lock, and opened the door, her heart fluttering nervously.

"You!" she whispered.

Chapter Thirty-three

It is an inexorable sort of festivity--in September 1914 they tried to cancel it, but the Home Secretary himself ad-mitted that he was powerless to do so (J^N MORRIS, Oxford)

Oxford's St. Giles's Fair is held annually on the fkst Mon-day and Tuesday after the first Sunday every September, with the whole area of St. Giles's brought into use, from the Martyrs' Memorial up to (and beyond) St. Giles's Church at the northern end, where the broad, tree-lined av-enue bifurcates to form the Woodstock Road to the left and the Banbury Road to the right.