Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Brenda was a person who took much pleasure in the sim* pie things of life. Others, she knew, had their yearnings for power or wealth or knowledge, but two of her own greatest delights were cleanliness and tidiness. What a joy she felt each week, for example, when she watched the dustmen ca-sually hud her black bags into the back of the yellow rubbish-cart--then seeing them no more. It seemed like Pil-grim finally ridding himself of his burden of sin.

For her own part, she had seldom made any mess at in her life. But there was always an accumulation of thin to be thrown away: bits of cabbage-leaves, and empty and cigarette stubs from her husband's ashtrays.... Yes. was always good to see the black bags, well, disappear r ally. You could put almost anything in them: bloodstaim items like shirts, shoes, trousers--anything.

There were the green bags, ttx)---the bags labelled "Ga den Waste," issued by Oxford City Council, at 50p apiec Householders were permitted to put out two such hags e cry week; but the Brookses' garden was small, and Brem seldom made use of more than one a fortnight.

Then there were those strong, transparent bags which T had brought home a couple of years ago, a heavy stack them piled in the garden shed, just to the left of the law mower. Precisely what purpose her husband had envisag for such receptacles had been unclear, but they had occ sionally proved useful for twigs and small branches, b cause the material from which they were manufactured w. stout, heavy-duty stuff, not easily tom.

But the real joy of Brenda's life had ever centred on manual skills--knitting, needlework, embroidery for hands had always worked confidently and easily with ne dles and crochet-hooks and bodkins and such things. late, too, she had begun to extend the area of her manu. competence by joining a cake-icing class, although (as have seen) it had been only with considerable and increa ing pain that she had been able to continue the course, fore finally being compelled to pack it up altogether.

She was still able, however, to indulge in some of former skills; had, in fact, so very recently indulged in the] when, wearing a leather glove instead of the uncornfortab Tubigrip, she had stitched the "body-bag" (a word she heard on the radio) in which her late and unlamented hm band was destined to be wrapped. Never could she hay imagined, of course, that the disposal of a body woul cause a problem in her gently undemanding life. But it hat and she had seen to it. Not that the task had been a labo[ of love. Far from it It had been a labour of hate.

She had watched, a few months earlier, some men wh had come along and cut down a branch overarching the road there, about twelve feet long and about nine inches across. (Wasn't a human head about nine inches across?)

The men had got rid of that pretty easily: just put it in that quite extraordinary machine they had--from which, after a scream of whirring, the thick wood had come out the other end... sawdust.

Then there was the furnace up at the Proctor Memorial School that would have left even less physical trace per-haps.

But (as Mrs. Stevens had said) there was a pretty big problem of "logistics" associated with such waste-disposal.

And so, although Brenda had not quite understood the ob-jection, this method had been discounted.

The Redbridge Waste Reception Area had seemed to her a rather safer bet. It was close enough, and there was no one there to ask questions about what you'd brought in your bags--not like the time she and Ted had come through Customs and the man with the gold on his hat had discov-ered all those cigarettes... No, they didn't ask you any-thing at the rubbish dump. You just backed the car up to the skip, opened the boot, and threw the bags down on to the great heap already there, soon to be carted away, and dumped, and bulldozed into a pit, and buried there. But none of these methods had found favour. Dis aliter visum.

The stiffish transparent bags measured 28V2 inches by 36 inches, and Brenda had taken three. After slitting open the bottoms of two of them, she had stitched the three together cunningly, with a bodkin and some green garden string. She had then repeated the process, and prepared a second enve-lope. Then a third.

It was later to be recorded that at the time of his murder Mr. Edward Brooks was 5 feet 8 inches in height, and 10[/2 stones in weight. And although the insertion of the body into the first, the second, and the third of the winding-sheets had been a traumatic event, it had not involved too troublesome an effort physically. Not for her, anyway.

Edward Brooks had been almost ready for disposal. Almost.

By some happy chance, the roll of old brown carpet which had stood for over two years just to the right of the lawn-mower, measured 6 feet by 6 feet.

Ideal.