Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

On her way home, well over an hour and a half later, she bought two salmon fillets, a pack of butter, and a carton of ecologically friendly washing-up liquid.

The sun was shining.

As she turned into Addison Road she immediately spot-ted the marked police car, parked on the double-yellow lines across the road from her house; spotted a second car, too, the elegant-looking lovingly polished maroon-coloured Jaguar she'd seen the previous Sunday afternoon.

Even as she put her key into the Yale lock, she felt the hand on her shoulder, heard the man's voice, and heard, too, the ringing of the telephone just inside the hall.

"Get a move on," said Morse quickly. "You may just catch it."

But the tinging stopped just before she could reach the phone; and taking off her lightweight summer coat, and gently patting the back of her blue-rinsed cuds, she turned to the two men who stood just outside, the two men she'd seen the previous Sunday afternoon.

"If it's Ted you want, you'll have to come back later, I'm afraid. He's up at the JR2--he's got an Outpatient appointment.'

"When do you expect him back?" asked Lewis.

"I don't know really. He'll be back for lunch, I should think, unless he calls in at the Club for a game of snooker."

"How did he get to the hospital T"

Mrs. Brooks hesitated. "I... I don't know." The fingers of her left hand were plucking their way along the invisible rosary she held in her right. "You'd better come in, hadn't you?"

Haltingly, nervously, as they sat again in the lounge, in the same sedentary formation as before, Mrs. Brooks sought to explain the situation. She had been to Stratford the previous evening with a friend and hadn't returned until late--about midnight--as she'd known she would, anyway.

And she'd stayed with this person, this friend, at her house--overnight. Ted knew all about the arrangement. He was due at Outpatients the next morning, and she hadn't wanted to disturb his night's sleep--hadn't disturbed his night's sleep. He was getting along quite nicely and the doctors said how important it was to rest--to have regular rest and sleep. He hadn't shown her the little blue appointments card from the Oxfordshire Health Authority, but she thought he was due at the hospital somewhere between nine and ten.

"You haven't been here, in this house, since--since when?" asked Morse, rather brusquely, "Four o'clock, yesterday afternoon. Or just before. The coach left at five."

"You don't seem to have been too worded about Mr. Brooks coping... with meals, that sort of thing?"

"Don't you think so, Inspector?' Her eyes, rather sad and weary now, looked into Morse's; and it was Morse who was the fwst to look away.

Lewis sounded a kindlier note. "You've just come back from the hairdresser's?"

She nodded the tightly permed hair. "The Golden Scis-sors, in Cowley Road."

"Er... what was the play, by the way?"

"Twelfth Night."

"Did you enjoy it T'

She half smiled. "Well, I couldn't quite follow all the-- you know, what they were saying. But I loved it, yes, and I'd love to see it again."

"And you went with... with a friend, you say?"

"Yes, with a school-party."

"And this friend...?"

Lewis was noting her name and address when the tele-phone rang once more; and this time Mrs. Brooks reached the hall swiftly. As she did so, Morse immediately pointed in the opposite direction, and Lewis, equally swiftly, stepped quietly into the kitchen where he opened a drawer by the side of the sink.

Morse meanwhile listened keenly to one side of a tele phone conversation.

"Yes?"

"Is he all right?"

"I don't understand."

"What's happened, do you think?"

"No. I wasn't here, you see."

"Of course I will."

"Can you just give me the number again?"

"All right."

Brenda Brooks put down the phone slowly, her face anxious as she walked back into the lounge--only a few seconds after Lewis, with a silent thumbs-up sign, had re appeared from the kitchen and quickly resumed his seat.

"Anything important?" asked Morse.

"It was the hospital. Ted's not been there. Not yet. So the lady at Appointments says. He was due there at twenty-past nine, it seems."

"What do you think's happened to him?" asked Morse quietly.

"That's what she asked me. I don't know."

"I'm sure everything's fine," continued Morse. "He's probably just got the time wrong."

"That's exactly what she said," whispered Brenda Brooks.

"She'll ring you back when he gets there." '`That's... that's exactly..." But the tears had started now.

She opened her handbag and took out a handkerchief, and said, "Sorry"; said "Sorry" five times. And then, "Oh dear! Where's my wallet? I must have..." She got up and went to the hall where she patted the pockets of her sum-mer coat, and came back and looked rather fecklessly around. "I must have..."

"You did some shopping, didn't you? You may have left it...?" suggested Lewis.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Brooks was seated in the back of the police car, impatient and worried; but so glad to be away from the two detectives--who now stood in her kitchen.

"What do you reckon, sir?"