Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

This was not a case of vandalism; but of murder. As such, she'd had little option but to make a full (if guarded) statement; yet she feared she would now be open to some sort of retaliation--to threats of physical violence, perhaps, from a man who, by an almost unanimous verdict, was seen as a very nasty piece of work indeed.

Back in bed, Susan tried a cure she'd once been told: to close one's eyes gently (yes, gently) and then to look (yes, /ook) at a point about four or five inches in front of one's nose. Such a strategy, it was claimed, would ensure that the eyeballs remained fairly still, being focused as they were upon some specific point, however notional that point might be; and since it had been demonstrated that the rapid revolving of the eyeballs in their sockets was a major cause of sleeplessness, insomniacs most certainly should-experiment along such lines.

That night, therefore, Mrs. Susan Ewers had so experimented, though with only limited success. As it happened, however, her apprehension was wholly groundless, since Edward Brooks was never destined to become a threat to Susan or to any other living person. One of those twins from Morse's schooldays, the one whose name was Death, had already claimed him for his own; and together with his brother, Sleep, had borne him off, though not perhaps to the broad and pleasant land of Lycia, wherein Sarpedon lies.

Chapter Forty-five

Keep careful watch too on the moral faults of your patients, which may cause them to tell untruths about things prescribed--and things proscribed (Corpus Hippocraticum)

A week in a murder enquiry, especially one in which there is virtually no development, can be a wearisome time. And so it was for Sergeant Lewis in the days between Friday, September 9 and Friday, September 16.

The whereabouts and movements of key characters in the Pitt Rivers enquiry, most particularly on the evening and night of Wednesday the seventh, immediately after the knife had been stolen, had been checked and in every case confirmed, with appropriate statements made and (with the more obvious misspellings corrected) duly signed and filed. Nothing else, though.

Nothing else, either, on the murder scene. House-to-house enquiries in Daventry Avenue had come to an end; and come to nothing. Three former undergraduates from Staircase G on Drinkwater Quad had been traced with no difficulty; but with no real consequence either, since apart from confirming the general availability of drugs during their years in Oxford they had each denied any specific knowledge of drug-trafficking on their own staircase.

What worried Lewis slightly was that Morse appeared just as interested in the disappearance of a knife as in the death of a don, as though the connection between the two events (Morse had yet again reversed his views) was both logically necessary and self-evidently true.

But was it?

And on the morning of Thursday, September 15, he had voiced his growing doubt.

"Brooks, sir Brooks is the only real connection, isn't he? Brooks who's top of your murder-suspects; and Brooks who's got a job at the Pitt Rivers."

"Have you ever thought, Lewis, that it could have been Brooks who stole the knife T'

"You can't be serious?"

"No. Brooks didn't steal the knife. Sorry. Go on!"

"Well, you said so yourself early on: we often get people who do copy-cat things, don't we? And whoever stole the knife---well, it might not have anything to do with the mur-der at all. Somebody just read that bit in the Oxford Mail "Yees. To tell you the truth, I've been thinking the same."

"It could just be a coincidence."

"Yes, it could. Perhaps it was."

"I mean, you've often said coincidences happen all the time; just that some of us don't spot 'em."

"Yes, I've often thought that."

"So them may be no causal connection after all--?"

"Stop sounding like a philosopher, Lewis, and go and get us some coffee."

Morse, too, was finding this period of inactivity frustrating.

And a time of considerable stress, since for three whole days now he had not smoked a single cigarette, and had ar-rived at that crucial point where his self-mastery had al-ready been demonstrated, his victory over nicotine finally won. So? So it was no longer a question of relapsing, of m-indulging.

If he wished to re-start, though.., for, in truth, the fourth day was proving even harder than the third.

The earlier wave of euphoria was ebbing still further on the fifth day, when it was his own turn to have a medical check-up, and when ten minutes before his appointment time he checked in at the Outpatients reception at the JR2 and sat down in the appropriate area to await his call, scheduled for 9:20 ^.m. By some minor coincidence (yes!) this was the same time that Mr. Edward Brooks had been expected for his own designated brand of Outpatient care--an appointment which had not been kept eight days earlier... and which was unkept still.