Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Thursday is a bad day. Wednesday is quite a good day. Fri-day is an even better one. But Thursday, whatever the rea-son, is a day on which my spirit and my resolution, are at their lowest ebb. Yet even worse is any day of the week upon which, after a period of blessed idleness, I come face to face with the prospect of a premature return to my la-bours (DIOGENES SM^LL, Autobiography)

An hour later, Morse was seated in the black leather chair in his office, still considering the sketch of the knife--when Lewis came back from the canteen carrying two polysty-rene cups of steaming coffee.

"Northern Rhodesia, Lewis. Know where that is? Trou ble is they keep changing all these place-names in Africa."

"Zimbabwe, sir. You know that."

Morse looked up with genuine pain in his eyes. "I never did any Geography at school."

"You get a newspaper every day, though."

"Yes, but! never look at the international news. Just the Crossword and the Letters."

"That's not true. I've often seen you reading the Obitu "Only to look at the years when they were bom."

Morse unwrapped the cellophane from his cigarettes, took one from the packet, and lit it, inhaling deeply.

"You'll be in the obituary columns if you don't soon pack up smoking. Anyway, you said you had packed it up."

"I have, Lewis. It's just that I need to make a sort of gesture--some sort of sacrifice. That's it! A sacrifice. All right? You see, I'm only going to smoke this one cigarette. Only one. And the rest of them?"

Morse appeared to have reached a fateful decision. He picked up the packet and flicked it, with surprising accu racy, into the metal waste-bin.

"Satisfied?"

Lewis reached for the phone and rang the JR2 Outpa-tients department: no news. Then he rang Brenda Brooks: no news.

Edward Brooks was still missing.

"You don't think somebody's murdered him, sir?"

But Morse, as he studied yet again the details of the sto-len knife, appeared not to hear. "Would you rather be a bishop--or a paramount chief?."

"I don't want to be either, really."

"Mm. I wouldn't have minded if they'd made me a par-amount chief."

"I thought they had, sir."

"Where would a paramount chief go from here, Lewis?"

"I just asked you, sir, whether "

"I heard you. The answer's 'no.' Brooks is alive and well. No. He may not be well, of course--but he's alive.

You can bet your Granny Bonds on that."

"Where do we go from here, then?"

"Well, I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed. I want to feel fresh for this evening. I've got a date with a beau6ful lady."

"Who's she?"

"Mrs. Stevens--Julia Stevens."

"When did you fix that up?"

"While you were getting the coffee."

"You want me to come along?'

"Lew-is! I just told you. It's a date."

"Didn't you believe Mrs. Brooks? About where she spent last night?"

"I believed that all fight. It's just that I reckon she knows where her husband ks, that's all. And it's on the cards that if she does know, she probably told her friend, Mrs. Stew el'IS."

%Vhat would you like me to do, sir T'

'Td like you to go and see Mrs. Brooks's daughter--Ellie Smith, or whatever she calls herself. She's a key character in this case, don't you reckon? Mc Clure's mistress--and Brooks's step-daughter."

"Shouldn't you he seeing her then?"

"All in good time. I'm only just out of hospital, remem-ber T'

"You mean she's not so attractive as Mrs. Stevens."

"Purely incidental, that is."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. You'd better get back to the museum for a while.

I don't think we're going to get very far on the fingerprint front--but you never know."

Lewis was frowning. "I just don't see the link myself--between the Mc Clure murder, and now this Pitt Rivers business."

"She saw a link, though, didn't she? Jane Cotterell? Clever lass, that one."

"But she said whoever else it was, it couldn't have been Brooks who took the knife."

"Exactly."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So where's the link?"

Morse's eyes remained unblinking for several seconds, staring at nothing it seemed, and yet perhaps staring at every-thing. "I'm not at all sure now that there is a link," he said quietly. 'Fo find some connection between one event and an other ensuing event is often difficult; and especially difficult perhaps when they appear to have a connection.... "

Morse was aware of feeling worded at the prospect--the actuality, really--of his return to work. For, in truth, he had little real idea of the correct answers to the questions Lewis had just asked. He needed some assistance from some-where; and as he drove down to North Oxford he patted his jacket-pocket where he felt the reassurance of the square packet he had retrieved from the waste-bin immediately af-ter Lewis had left for the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Chapter Forty-one

His failing powers disconcerted him, for what he would do with women he was unsure to perform, and he could rarely accept the appearance of females who thought of topics other than coitus (PETER CHAMPKIN, The Sleeping Life of Aspern Williams)