by Colin Dexter
(iv)
Although the autumn term had only begun the day before, clearly one or two of the local schools had been planning, well in advance, to despatch their pupils on some of the dreaded GCSE 'projects' at the earliest possible opportunity. Certainly, until about 4:05 p.m., twenty or so schoolchildren had still been studying a range of anthropological exhibits in the Upper Gallery of the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Which was rather worrying.
But by 4:15 p.m., the galleries were virtually—by 4:20 p.m., totally—deserted. And from where he stood, beside the collection made in the South Pacific by Captain Cook on his second visit there in 1772, the young man observed most carefully whilst a suntanned, balding attendant walked briskly round the Upper Gallery, doubtless checking that no bags or satchels or writing-pads had inadvertently been left behind; and in so doing, as was immediately apparent, giving a quick, upward 'lift' to each of the glass covers of the locked cabinets there, like a potential car-thief swiftly moving along a line of vehicles in a Park and Ride and testing the doors.
Two minutes later, the young man was following in the attendant's same pre-closure tracks; but stopping now, at a particular spot, where he looked down at a collection of knives—knives of all shapes and sizes, knives from many parts of the world—displayed in Cabinet Number 52.
Quickly, his heart pounding, he took a chisel from his summer sweatshirt and inserted its recently sharpened edge between the metal rim of the display-case top and the darkly stained wooden slat below it, into which the cabinet's lock was set.
Easy!
No great splintering of wood or moaning of metal. Just a single, quick 'click.' Yet it had been a bad moment; and the young man checked anxiously to his left, then to his right, before lifting the glass lid and putting a hand inside.
It was 4:29 p.m. when he walked through the museum shop. He might have bought a postcard of the forty-foot-high Haida Totem Pole (British Columbia), but an assistant was already totting up the takings, and he wished to cause no trouble. As the prominent notice had advised him as he'd entered, the Pitt Rivers Museum of Ethnology and Pre-History closed at 4:30 V.M. each day.
(v)
At the Proctor Memorial School, the take-up for the Twelfth Night trip to the Shakespeare Theatre had been encouraging. Before the end of the summer term, Julia Stevens had made her usual block-booking of thirty-one seats; and with twenty-three pupils (mostly fifth- and sixth-formers), two other members of staff, plus two parents, only three tickets had been going begging. Only two, in fact—and those soon to be snapped up with alacrity at the box office—because Julia Stevens had invited Brenda Brooks (as she had done the previous year) to join the school-party.
At the Stratford Coach Park, the three teachers had distributed the brown-paper-wrapped rations: two rolls, one with mayonnaised-curried-chicken, the other with a soft-cheese filling; one packet of crisps; and one banana—with a plastic cup of orangeade.
On the way back, though not on the way out, Mrs. Stevens and Mrs. Brooks sat side by side in the front seats: the former semi-listening (with some gratification) to her pupils' pronouncements on the performances of Sirs Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek; the latter, until Woodstock, trying to read the latest instalment of a romantic serial in Woman Weekly, before apparently falling into a deep slumber, and not awakening therefrom until, two minutes before midnight on Wednesday, September 7, the coach made its first stop at Carfax Tower, from where the streets of Oxford looked strangely beautiful; and slightly sinister.
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
In me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great
(ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine)
AFTER RINGING THE emergency number the previous Sunday, it had been a sad sight that confronted Lewis in the bathroom: Morse standing creased over the pedestal basin, his cheeks wholly drained of colour, his vomit streaked with blood forming a chrysanthemum pattern, scarlet on white, across the porcelain.
Dr. Paul Roblin had been adamant.
Ambulance!
Lewis had woken up to the truth an hour or so later: for a while at least, be was going to be left alone with a murder investigation.
Such a prospect would normally have daunted him; yet the present case was unusual in that it had already established itself into a pattern. In the past, the more spectacular cases on which he and Morse had worked together had often involved some bizarre, occasionally some almost incredible, twists of fate. But the murder of Dr. Felix McClure appeared—surely was—a comparatively straight-forward affair. There could be little doubt none in Morse's mind—about the identity of the murderer. It was just a question of timing now, and patience: of the accumulation, the aggregation of evidence, against a man who'd had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to murder McClure. Only concerning the actual commission of the crime was there lack of positive evidence. Lack of any evidence. And what a feather in his cap it would be if he, Lewis, could come up with something on that, during Morse's reluctant, yet enforced, immobility.
For the present, then, it was he who was sole arbiter of the course of further enquiries; of the most productive deployment of police resources. He had not been born great, Lewis was aware of that; nor did the rank of Detective Sergeant mark him out as a man who had achieved any significant greatness. Yet for a few days now, some measure of vicarious greatness was being thrust upon him; and he would have been encouraged by the Latin proverb (had he known it) that 'Greatness is but many small littles,' since it was upon a series of 'small littles' that he embarked over the following three days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, September 5, 6, 7.
Over these few days many statements were taken from people, both Town and Gown, some fairly closely, some only peripherally, connected with the murdered man and with his putative murderer. And it was Lewis himself who had visited the JR2 on Tuesday afternoon for it to be confirmed, quite unequivocally, that Mr. Edward Brooks had been admitted, via Casualty, to the Coronary Care Unit at 2:32 p.m. on Sunday, August 28; that Brooks had spent twenty-four hours in Intensive Care before being transferred to Level 7, whence he had been discharged three days later.
Whilst in the hospital, Lewis had called in to see Morse (his second visit), but had refused to be drawn into any discussion of new developments in the enquiry. This for two reasons: first, that there were no new developments; and, second, that Superintendent Strange had strongly urged against such a course of action—'Start talking about it, and he'll start thinking about it. And once he starts thinking, he'll start thinking about drinking, whatever the state of his innards . . .' So Lewis stayed only a few minutes that afternoon, taking a 'Get Well' card from Mrs. Lewis, and a small bunch of seedless white grapes from himself, the latter immediately confiscated by the hawk-eyed ward-sister.
From the JR2, Lewis had gone on to interview the Brooks family GP, Dr. Philip Gregson, at the Cowley Road Health Centre.
The brief medical report on Edward Brooks which Lewis read there was quite optimistic: 'Mild heart attack—condition now stable—surprisingly swift recovery. GP appt. 1 wk; JR2 out/p appt 2 wk.'
About Brenda Brooks, however, Gregson was more circumspect. She had, yes, suffered a very nasty little injury to her right hand; and, yes, he had referred her to a specialist. But he couldn't comment in any way upon his colleague's findings. If further information were considered necessary . . .
In such fashion was it that Lewis's queries were concluded late that Tuesday afternoon—with the telephone number of an orthopaedic surgeon, and with the knowledge that he was getting nowhere fairly slowly.
Yet only twenty-four hours were to elapse before the first major breakthrough in the case was destined to occur.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle towards my hand?
(SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth)
IT TOOK A LONG TIME, an inordinatel
y long time, for the penny to drop.
Dr. Richard Rayson had been wholly unaware of the great excitement which had been witnessed by the residents of Daventry Avenue over the previous week. Yet his inability to establish any connection between the discovery of a knife and the death of a neighbour is readily explicable. In the first place, the physical police presence around Daventry Court had been withdrawn on the day prior to his return from abroad. Then, too, Rayson had not as yet re-instated his standing-order with the Summertown news-agent for the daily delivery of the Oxford Mail; he had therefore missed the brief item tucked away at the bottom of page 3 on Monday (would probably have missed it anyway). And finally, and most significantly, his communications with his neighbours, on either side, had been almost completely severed of late this breakdown occasioned by a series of increasingly bitter differences of view over the maintenance of boundary fences, the planting of inter-property trees, an application for planning permission, and (most recently) the dangerous precedent of a teenage party.
Thus, after spending the whole of the Monday and Tuesday with his wife in regrooming their garden, it was only at lunchtime on Wednesday, September 7, that Rayson was re-introduced into the mainstream of Oxford life and gossip—at a cocktail reception in Trinity College to meet a group of librarians from Oklahoma.
'Fine drop of claret, what, Richard?' one of his colleagues had affirmed.
'Beautifully balanced little wine, George.'
'By the way, you must have known old McClure, I suppose? Lives only a few doors from you, what? Lived, rather.'
Rayson had frowned. 'McClure?'
'You know, the poor sod who got himself knifed?'
McClure. Felix McClure. Knifed.
The knife.
Just after five o'clock that afternoon, Detective Sergeant Lewis stood looking down at the prime exhibit, laid out on the Formica-topped surface of the kitchen in Rayson's elegant detached house in Daventry Avenue—seven properties distant, on the Woodstock Road side, from the scene of McClure's murder. As Rayson had explained over the phone, the knife had been found just inside the front fence, had been picked up, washed, dried, put away, picked up again, used to cut a roll of boiled ham, re-washed, re-dried, put away again—and picked up yet again when Rayson had returned from Trinity in the late afternoon, and examined it with a sort of ghoulish fascination.
With no prospects, therefore, of the exhibit retaining any incriminating fingerprints or blood-stains, Lewis in turn now picked up the black-handled knife, its blade unusually broad at the base, but tapering to a sharp-looking point at the end. And concurrently several thoughts coursed through his mind—exciting thoughts. There was the description, for a start, of the murder weapon—so very similar to this knife—which had appeared in the Oxford Mail, the description which was perhaps worrying Morse somewhat when he'd mentioned his premonition about the possibility of a copy-cat killing. Then there was the firm likelihood that the second of Morse's necessary prerequisites had now been met—not only a body, but also a weapon; and this one surely seemed to fit the bill so very nicely. And then by far the most exciting thought of all—the strong possibility that the knife had come from a set of such knives, one of which Lewis had seen so very recently: that slim, elegant, black-handled little knife with which Mrs. Brenda Brooks had sliced the Madeira cake the previous Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I enjoy convalescence; it is the part that makes the illness worthwhile
(GEORGE BERNARD SHAW)
ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, as on the previous day, so many things were happening in close sequence that it is difficult for the chronicler to decide upon the most comprehensible way in which to record events, events which were to some degree contemporaneous but which also overlapped and which in their full implications stretched both before and beyond their strict temporal occurrence.
Let the account begin at Morse's flat in North Oxford.
Morse was due to be discharged at ten o'clock that morning. Lewis had rung through to the ward-sister half an hour earlier to save Morse any wait for an ambulance and to chauffeur him home in style—only to discover that his chief had already discharged himself, getting a lift from one of the consultants there who was on his way out to Bicester.
Lewis rang the door-bell at 9:45 a.m., experiencing a customary qualm of semi-apprehension as he waited outside that lonely flat—until a fully dressed Morse, his cheeks rosy-red, suddenly appeared on the threshold, panting like a breathless bulldog.
'I'm just starting a new regimen, Lewis. No more nicotine, limited—very limited—alcohol, plenty of fresh fruit and salad, and regular exercise. What about that? I've'—he paused awhile to get his breath—'I've just done a dozen press-ups. You'd never have thought that possible a week ago, now, would you?'
'You must be feeling quite, er, elated, sir.'
' ''Knackered" is the word I think you're looking for, Lewis. But come in! Good to see you. Have a drink.'
Almost as if he were trespassing, Lewis entered the lounge and sat down.
'Nothing for me, thanks.'
'I'll just . . .' Morse quickly drained a tumbler of some pale amber liquid that stood on one of the shelves of the book-lined room beside the Deutsche Grammophon cassettes of Tristan und Isolde. 'A small, celebratory libation, that, Lewis—in gratitude to whatever gods there be that temporarily I have survived the perils and dangers of this mortal life.'
Lewis managed a grin, half sad, half happy—and immediately told Morse about the knife.
'I don't believe it! We'd had those gardens searched.'
'Only up to six either side, sir. If only we'd gone a couple further.'
'But why didn't this fellow Rayson find it earlier? Is he blind or something?'
'He was in Italy.'
'Oh.'
'You don't sound all that pleased about it.'
'What? Course I am. Well done!'
'I know you were a bit worried about that Oxford Mail article . . .'
'I was?'
'You know, the premonition you had—'
'Nonsense! I don't even know what a premonition is.'
'Well, if that description's anywhere near accurate, sir, I think we've got the knife that was used to kill McClure. And I think I know where it came from. And I think you do, too.'
The small round-faced clock on the mantelpiece showed two minutes after ten, and for a while Morse sat in silence. Then, of a sudden, he jumped to his feet and, against all the medical advice he'd so meekly accepted over the previous few days, insisted on being driven immediately to police HQ, stopping (as it happened) only briefly along the journey, in a slip-road on the left, just opposite the Sainsbury supermarket in Kidlington, to buy a packet of Dunhill King-Size cigarettes.
Brenda Brooks had spent the previous night not in her own house in Addison Road but in the spare bedroom, the only other bedroom, of Julia Stevens's house in Baldwin Road. After Mrs. Stevens had left for school at 8:15 a.m., Brenda had eaten a bowl of Corn Flakes and a round of toast and marmalade. Her appointment at the hairdresser's was for 9:15 a.m.; and fairly soon after her breakfast she was closing the Oxford-blue front door behind her, testing (as always) that the lock was firmly engaged, and walking down towards the Cowley Road for her Special Offer Wash-and-Perm.
On her way home, well over an hour and a half later, she bought two salmon fillets, a pack of butter, and a carton of ecologically friendly washing-up liquid.
The sun was shining.
As she turned into Addison Road she immediately spotted the marked police car, parked on the double-yellow lines across the road from her house; spotted a second car, too, the elegant-looking lovingly polished maroon-coloured Jaguar she'd seen the previous Sunday afternoon.
Even as she put her key into the Yale lock, she felt the hand on her shoulder, heard the man's voice, and heard, too, the ringing of the telephone just inside the hall.
'Get a move on,' said Morse quickly. 'You may just catch it.'
Bu
t the tinging stopped just before she could reach the phone; and taking off her lightweight summer coat, and gently patting the back of her blue-rinsed curls, she turned to the two men who stood just outside, the two men she'd seen the previous Sunday afternoon.
'If it's Ted you want, you'll have to come back later, I'm afraid. He's up at the JR2—he's got an Outpatient appointment.'
'When do you expect him back?' asked Lewis.
'I don't know really. He'll be back for lunch, I should think, unless he calls in at the Club for a game of snooker.'
'How did he get to the hospital?'
Mrs. Brooks hesitated. 'I . . . I don't know.' The fingers of her left hand were plucking their way along the invisible rosary she held in her right. 'You'd better come in, hadn't you?'
Haltingly, nervously, as they sat again in the lounge, in the same sedentary formation as before, Mrs. Brooks sought to explain the situation. She had been to Stratford the previous evening with a friend and hadn't returned until late—about midnight—as she'd known she would, anyway. And she'd stayed with this person, this friend, at her house—overnight. Ted knew all about the arrangement. He was due at Outpatients the next morning, and she hadn't wanted to disturb his night's sleep—hadn't disturbed his night's sleep. He was getting along quite nicely and the doctors said how important it was to rest—to have regular rest and sleep. He hadn't shown her the little blue appointments card from the Oxfordshire Health Authority, but she thought he was due at the hospital somewhere between nine and ten.
'You haven't been here, in this house, since—since when?' asked Morse, rather brusquely,