Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

As he looked across at the school-mistress, Morse found himself wondering whether her pale complexion was due not so much to that inherited colouration so common with the auburn type, as to some illness, possibly; for he had ob~ served, in a face almost completely devoid of any other cosmetic device, some skin-tinted application to the dark-ened tings beneath her eyes.

"Did Mrs. Brooks go out last night, after you'd got back?"

Julia smiled tolerantly. "You mean, did she just nip out for a few minutes and bump him off?."

"Could she have gone out? That's all I'm asking."

"Technically, I suppose--yes. She'd have a key to get back in here with.! just wonder what you think she did with the body, that's all."

"She didn't go out--is that what you're telling me?"

"Look! The only thing I know for certain is that she was fast asleep when I took her a cup of tea just before seven this morning."

"So she'd been with you the whole time since yesterday afternoon?"

"Since about a quarter-to four, yes. I would have picked her up in the car, but the wretched thing wanted to stay at home in the garage. Suffering from electrical trouble."

Morse, who didn't know the difference between brake fluid and anti-freeze, nodded wisely. "You should get a car like mine. I've got a pre-electrics model."

Julia smiled politely. "We took a bus up to school and, well, that's about it, really."

"Did you actually go into the Brookses' house.'?"

"Well, I suppose I did, yes---only into the hallway, though."

"Was Mr. Brooks there T'

"Only just. He was getting ready to go out, but he was still there when we left."

"Did you speak to him?"

"You mean.., ask him politely if he was feeling better? You must be joking."

"Did his wife speak to him?"

"Yes. She said 'goodbye.'"

"She didn't say 'cheerio' or 'see you soon'?"

"No. She said 'goodbye.'"

"What about you? Did you go out last night?"

"Do you suspect me as well?"

"Suspect you of what, Mrs. Stevens?"

Julia's clear, grey eyes sparkled almost gleefully. "Well, if somebody's bumped off old Brooks--"

"You look as if you hope someone has."

"Didn't I make that clear from the start, Inspector?"

"Have you actually seen Mrs. Brooks since you left home this morning?"

"No. I've been in school all day. Bad day, Thursday! No free periods. Then we had a staff-meeting after school to try to decide whether we're all satisfying the criteria for the National Curriculum."

"Oh."

It was a dampener; and for a little while each was silent, with Morse looking around the neatly cluttered room. He saw, on the settee beside Julia, a copy of Ernest Dowson's Poems. He pointed to it: "You enjoy Dowson?"

"You've heard of him?"

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate..."

"I'm impressed. Can you go on?"

"Oh, yes," said Morse quietly.

For some reason, and for the first time that evening, Julia Stevens betrayed some sign of discomfiture, and Morse saw, or perhaps he saw, a film of tears across her eyes. "Anything else I can do for you, Inspector?"

Yes, you can take me to bed with you. I may feel no love for you, perhaps, but I perceive the beauty and the readi-ness of this moment, and soon there will be no beauty and no readiness.

"No, I think that's all," he said.

The phone rang as they walked into the narrow hallway, and Julia quickly picked up the receiver.

"Hullo? Oh, hullo! Look, I'll ring you back in five min-utes, all right? Just give me the number, will you?" She wrote down five digits on a small yellow pad beside the phone, and said "Bye"--as did a male voice at the other end of the line (if Morse had heard aright).

As they took leave of each other at the doorway, it seemed for a moment that they might have embraced, how-ever perfunctorily.

But they did not do so.

It might have been possible, too, for Morse to have spot-ted the true importance of what Julia Stevens had told him.

But he did not do so.

Chapter Forty-two

You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think (ATTRIBUTED TO DOROTHY PARKER)

"Haven't you got any decent music in this car?" she asked, as Lewis drove down the Iffiey Road towards Magdalen Bridge.

"Don't you like it? That's your Mozart, that is. That's your slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto. I keep get ting told I ought to educate my musical tastes a bit."

"Bit miserable, innit?"

"Don't you go and say that to my boss."

"Who's he when he's at home?"

"Chief Inspector Morse. Chap you're going to see. You're getting the VIP treatment this morning."

"Don't you think I'm used to that, Sergeant?"

Lewis glanced across briefly at the young woman beside him in the front seat; but he made no reply.

"Don't believe me, do you?" she asked, a curious smile on her lips.

"Shall I... T' Lewis's left hand hovered over the cas sette "on-off" switch.

"Nab! Leave it."

She leaned back languorously; and even to the staid Lewis, as he made his way up to Kidlington, she seemed to exude a powerful sexuality.