Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Gently Herbert Godwin patted the not-unattractive Janis on her ample bottom: "We'd better go and inform our su-periors, my love."

Paradoxically Jane Cotterell, Administrator of the Mu-seum, was attending a meeting that morning at the Ashmolean on "Museum Security." But straightaway she was summoned to the telephone and was soon issuing her orders: the University Marshal was to be informed immediately, as were the police; the lower steps to the Upper Gal-lery were to be roped across, with the "Temporarily Closed" sign positioned there; Dr. Cooper, the Assistant Curator (Documentation)--and only Dr. Cooper--should go along and, without touching anything, seek to ascertain, from his inventory lists, which object(s) had been stolen. She herself would be back in the Pitt Rivers as soon as she could possibly manage it.

Which was three-quarters of an hour later, her return co-inciding with the arrival of the police from St. Aldate's; and with the production of a sheet of paper on which she found the following sketch: os. I Given In 1919 to Bishop May I by Zero t, Pt I "That's it!" exclaimed a jubilant-looking Dr. Cooper, as if the museum had suddenly acquired a valuable new ex-hibit, instead of losing one. "Forty-seven knives--forty-seven!--ere were in that cabinet. And you know how many there are now, Jane?"

"Forty-s/x, perhaps?" suggested the Administrator inno-cently. Chapter Thirty-nine Yes You have come upon the fabled lands where myths Go when they die (J^MS FESXON, "The Pitt Rivers Museum")

At five minutes to two, parked in front of the Radcliffe Sci-ence Library, Morse switched off The Archers (repeat).

"Well, we'd better go and have a look at things, I sup-pose."

In retrospect, the linkage (if there were one) appeared so very obvious. Yet someone had to make it fin'st, that some-one being Jane Cotterell: the linkage between the earlier visit of the police; the museum's employment of Edward Brooks; the murder by knifing of Dr. Mc Clure; and now the theft of another knife, from one of the museum's cabinets.

Thus, it was Jane Cotterell herself who had argued that the City Police should link their enquiry into the theft with the Kidlington HQ enquiry into the murder of Mc Clure; and Jane Cotterell herself who greeted Morse and Lewis, in the Pitt Rivers' Upper Gallery, at 2 e.M.

"It's what I was afraid of, though God knows why," mumbled Morse to himself as he looked down at Cabinet 52, now dusted liberally with fine aluminium fingerprint-powder.

Ten minutes later, whilst Lewis was taking statements from Janis Lawrence and Herbert Godwin, Morse was seated opposite the Administrator, quickly realising that he was unlikely to learn (at least from her) more than two fairly simple facts: first, that almost certainly the cabinet had been forced between 4:15 and 4:30 p.a. the previous afternoon; second, since the contents of the cabinet had been fully documented only six months earlier--when ex-hibits had been re-arranged and cabinets re-lined--it could be stated quite authoritatively that one artefact, and one only, the Northern Rhodesian Knife, had been abstracted.

Yet Morse seemed uneasy.

"Could one of your own staff have pinched it?"

"Good Lord, no. Why should any of them want to do that? Most of them have access to the key-cupboard any-way."

"I see." Morse nodded vaguely; and stood up. "By the way, what do you line your cabinets with? What material?

"It's some sort of new-style hessian--supposed to keep its colour for yonks, so the advert said."

Morse smiled, suddenly feeling close to her. "Can I say something? I'd never have expected you to say 'yonks.'" She smiled back at him, shyly. "You wouldn't?"

It seemed a good moment for one of them to say some-thing more, to elaborate on this intimate mm of the conver-sation. But neither did so. And Morse reverted to his earlier line of enquiry.

"You don't think anyone could have hidden himself, after closing time, and spent the night here in the museum?

"Or herself?. No. No, I don't. Unless they stood pretty motionless all through the night. You see, the place is pos-itively bristling with burglar alarms. And anyway, it would be far too spooky, surely? I couldn't do it. Could you?"

"No. I've always been frightened of the dark myself," admitted Morse. "It's a bit eerie, this place, even in broad daylight."

"Yes," she said soffiy. "When you come in here you en ter a place where all the lovely myths go when they die."

Suddenly Morse felt very moved.

After he had left her office, Jane felt guilty about not telling Morse that the "myths" bit was far from original. And indeed she'd looked around to try to find him, to tell him so.

But he had left.

Chapter Forty