by Colin Dexter
Back in his flat, he looked with some care at the only watercolour he had. The clouds there had been painted exactly as Ellie Smith had said. And he nodded to himself, just a little sadly.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries his trouble begins
(Old nursery rhyme)
IN THE WAITING area of the Churchill Hospital, immediately Mrs. Stevens had been called in to see her specialist, at 10:35 a.m. on Tuesday, September 20, Brenda Brooks picked up a surprisingly recent issue of Good Housekeeping, and flicked through its glossy pages. But she found it difficult to concentrate on any particular article.
Brenda was a person who took much pleasure in the simple 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 casually hurl her black bags into the back of the yellow rubbish-cart—then seeing them no more. It seemed like Pilgrim finally ridding himself of his burden of sin.
For her own part, she had seldom made any mess at all in her life. But there was always an accumulation of things to be thrown away: bits of cabbage-leaves, and empty tins, and cigarette stubs from her husband's ashtrays . . . Yes. was always good to see the black bags, well, disappear really. You could put almost anything in them: bloodstained items like shirts, shoes, trousers—anything.
There were the green bags, too—the bags labelled 'Garden Waste,' issued by Oxford City Council, at 50p apiece. Householders were permitted to put out two such bags every week; but the Brooks's garden was small, and Brenda seldom made use of more than one a fortnight.
Then there were those strong, transparent bags which Ted had brought home a couple of years ago, a heavy stack of them piled in the garden shed, just to the left of the lawn-mower. Precisely what purpose her husband had envisaged for such receptacles had been unclear, but they had occasionally proved useful for twigs and small branches, because the material from which they were manufactured was 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 her hands had always worked confidently and easily with needles and crochet-hooks and bodkins and such things. Of late, too, she had begun to extend the area of her manual competence by joining a cake-icing class, although (as we have seen) it had been only with considerable and increasing pain that she had been able to continue the course, before 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 them when, wearing a leather glove instead of the uncomfortable Tubigrip, she had stitched the 'body-bag' (a word she heard on the radio) in which her late and unlamented husband was destined to be wrapped. Never could she have imagined, of course, that the disposal of a body would cause a problem in her gently undemanding life. But it had, and she had seen to it. Not that the task had been a labour of love. Far from it. It had been a labour of hate.
She had watched, a few months earlier, some men who 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 perhaps. 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 objection, 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 discovered all those cigarettes . . . No, they didn't ask you anything 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 28½ 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 envelope. 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 10½ 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.
With some difficulty the body had been manipulated into its container, and four lengths of stout cord were knotted—very neatly!—around the bundle. The outer tegument made the whole thing a bit heavier, of course—but neater, too. And neatness, as we have seen, was an important factor in life (and now in death) for Brenda Brooks. The parcel, now complete, was ready for carriage.
It might be expected perhaps—expected certainly?—that such an experience would permanently have traumatised the soul of such a delicate woman as Mrs. Brenda Brooks. But, strangely enough, such was not the case; and as she thought back on these things, and flicked through another few pages of Good Housekeeping, and waited for Mrs. Stevens to re-emerge, she found herself half smiling—if not with cruelty at least with a grim satisfaction . . .
There was an empty Walkers crisp-packet on the floor, just two seats away; and unostentatiously Brenda rose and picked it up, and placed it in the nearest wastepaper basket.
Mrs. Stevens did not come out of the consulting-room until 11:20 a.m. that morning; and when she finally did, Brenda saw that her dearest friend in life had been weeping . . .
It had been that last little bit really.
'You've got some friends coming over from California, you say?'
'Yes. Just after Christmas. I've not seen them for almost ten years. I went to school with her—with the wife.'
'Can I suggest something? Please—' He spoke quietly.
'Of course.' Julia had looked up into the brown eyes of Basil Shepstone, and seen a deep and helpless sadness there. And she'd known what he was going to say.
'If it's possible . . . if it's at all possible, can you get your friends to come over, shall we say, a month earlier? A month or two earlier?'
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I said this was fine utterance and sounded well though it could have been polished and made to mean less
(PETER CHAMPKIN, The Sleeping Life of Aspern Williams)
THE CASE WAS not progressing speedily.
That, in his own words, is what Lewis felt emboldened to assert the following morning—the morning of Wednesday, September 21—as he sat in Morse's office at HQ.
'Things are going a bit slow, sir.'
'That,' said Morse, 'is a figure of speech the literati call "hyperbole", a rhetorical term for "exaggeration". What I think you're trying to tell me is that we're grinding to a dead halt. Right?'
Lewis nodded.
And Morse nodded.
They were both right . . .
Considerable activity had centred on the Brooks's household following the finding of the bicycle, with Brenda Brooks herself gladly co-operating. Yet there seemed little about which she was able to co-operate, apart from
the retraction of her earlier statement that her husband had been at home throughout the morning of Sunday, August 28. In a nervous, gentle recantation, she was now willing (she'd said) to tell the police the whole truth. He had gone out on his bike, earlyish that morning; he had returned in a taxi, latish that morning—with a good deal of blood on his clothing. Her first thought, naturally enough, was that he'd been involved in a road accident. Somehow she'd got him into his pyjamas, into bed—and then, fairly soon afterwards, she'd called the ambulance, for she had suddenly realized that he was very ill. The bloodstained clothing she had put into a black bag and taken to the Redbridge Waste Reception Area the following morning, walking across the Iffley Road, then via Donnington Bridge Road to the Abingdon Road.
Not a very heavy load, she said.
Not so heavy as Pilgrim's, she thought.
That was almost all, though. The police could look round the house—of course, they could. There was nothing to hide, and they could take away whatever they liked. She fully understood: murder, after all, was a serious business. But no letters, no receipts, no addresses, had been found; few photographs, few mementos, few books; no drugs—certainly no drugs; nothing much at all apart from the pedestrian possessions of an undistinguished, unattractive man, whose only memorable achievement in life had been the murder of an Oxford don.
There had been just that one discovery, though, which had raised a few eyebrows, including (and particularly) the eyebrows of Brenda Brooks. Although only £217 was in Brooks's current account at Lloyds Bank (Carfax branch), a building society book, found in a box beside Brooks's bed, showed a very healthy balance stashed away in the Halifax—a balance of £19,500. The box had been locked, but Brenda Brooks had not demurred when Lewis had asked her permission to force the lid a task which he had accomplished with far more permanent damage than had been effected by the (still unidentified) thief at the Pitt Rivers Museum . . .
'You think he's dead?' asked Lewis.
'Every day that goes by makes it more likely.'
'We need a body, though.'
'We do, At least—with McClure—we had a body.'
'And a weapon.'
'And a weapon.'
'But with Brooks we've still not got a body.'
'And still not got a weapon,' added Morse rather miserably.
Ten minutes later, without knocking, Strange lumbered into the office. He had been on a week's furlough to the west coast of Scotland and had returned three days earlier. But this was his first day back at HQ, having attended a two-day Superintendents' Conference at Eastboume.
He looked less than happy with life.
'How're things going, Morse?'
'Progressing, sir,' said Morse uneasily.
Strange looked at him sourly. 'You mean they're not progressing, is that it?'
'We're hoping for some developments—'
'Augh, don't give me that bullshit! Just tell me where we are—and don't take all bloody day over it.'
So Morse told him.
He knew (he said)—well, was ninety-nine percent certain—that Brooks had murdered McClure: they'd got the knife from Brooks's kitchen, without any blood on it, agreed—but now they'd got his bike, with blood on it—McClure's blood on it. The only thing missing was Brooks himself. No news of him. No trace of him. Not yet. He'd last been seen by his wife, Brenda Brooks, and by Mrs. Stevens—by the two of them together—on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 7, the afternoon that the knife was stolen from the Pitt Rivers.
'Where does that leave us then?' asked Strange. 'Sounds as if you might just as well have taken a week's holiday yourself.'
'For what it's worth, sir, I think the two women are lying to us. I don't think they did see him that Wednesday afternoon. I think that one of them—or both of them—murdered Brooks. But not on that Wednesday—and not on the Thursday, either. I think that Brooks was murdered the day before, on the Tuesday; and I think that all this Pitt Rivers thingummy is a blind, arranged so that we should think there was a link-up between the two things. I think that they got somebody, some accomplice, to pinch the African knife—well, any knife from one of the cabinets there—'
'All fight. You think—and you seem to be doing one helluva lot of "thinking", Morse—that the knife was stolen the day after Brooks was murdered.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Go on.'
Morse was very conscious that he had scarcely thought through his conclusions with any definitive clarity, but he ploughed on:
'It's all to do with their alibis. They couldn't have stolen the knife themselves—they were on a school bus going to Stratford. And so if we all make the obvious link, which we do, between the murder of Brooks and the theft, then they're in the clear, pretty well. You see, if Brooks's body is ever found, which I very strongly doubt—'
'What makes you say that?'
'Because if he's found, he won't have the Pitt Rivers knife stuck in him at all. It'll be another knife—like as not another kitchen knife. But they're certainly never going to let us find the body. That would mean the alibis they've fixed up for themselves have gone for a Burton.'
'What's the origin of that phrase?'
Morse shook his head. 'Something to do with beer, is it?'
Strange looked at his watch: just after midday. 'You know I was a bit surprised to find you here, Morse. I thought you'd probably gone for a Burton yourself.'
Morse smiled dutifully, and Lewis grinned hugely, as Strange continued: 'It's all too fanciful, mate. Stop thinking so much—and do something. Let's have a bit of action.'
'There's one other thing, sir. Lewis here got on to it . . .'
Morse gestured to his sergeant, the latter now taking up the narrative.
'Fellow called Davies, Ashley Davies. He's got quite a few connections with things, sir. He was on Staircase G in Drinkwater Quad when Matthew Rodway was there—had a fight with him, in fact, and got himself kicked out'—he looked at Morse—'rusticated. The fight was about a girl, a girl called Eleanor Smith; and she was the girl who was Dr. McClure's mistress. And now, Davies has got himself engaged to be married to her—and she's Brooks's step-daughter.'
'That's good, Lewis. That's just the sort of cumulative evidence I like to hear. Did he murder Brooks?'
'It's not that so much, sir. It's just that the Chief Inspector here . . .'
Lewis tailed off, and Morse took over.
'It's just that I'd been wondering why Miss Smith had agreed to marry him, that's all. And I thought that perhaps he might have done some favour for her. Lewis here found that he was in Oxford that Wednesday afternoon, and if it was Davies who went to the Pitt Rivers—'
'What! You're bringing her into it now? The daughter?'
'Step-daughter, sir.'
Strange shook his head. 'That's bad, Morse. You're in Disneyland again.'
Morse sighed, and sat back in the old black leather chair. He knew that his brief résumé of the case had been less than well presented; and, worse than that, realised that even if he'd polished it all up a bit, it still wouldn't have amounted to much. Might even have amounted to less.
Strange straggled to his feet.
'Hope you had a good holiday, sir,' remarked Lewis.
'No, I didn't. If you really want to know it was a bloody awful holiday. I got pissed off with it—rained all the bloody time.'
Strange waddled over to the door and stood there, offering a final piece of advice to his senior Chief Inspector: 'Just let's get cracking, mate. Find that body—or get Lewis here to find it for you. And when you do—you mark my words, Morse!—you'll find that thingummy knife o' yours stuck right up his rectum.'
After he was gone, Lewis looked across at a subdued and silent Morse.
'You know that "all the bloody time", sir? That's what they call—what the literati call—"hyperbole".'
Morse nodded, grinning weakly.
'And he wasn't just pissed off on his holiday, was he?'
'He wasn't?'
'No, sir. H
e was pissed on as well!'
Morse nodded again, grinning happily now, and looked at his watch.
'What about going for a Burton, Lewis?'
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
'Jo, my poor fellow!'
'I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin—a-gropin—let me catch hold of your hand.'
'Jo, can you say what I say?'
'I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good.'
'OUR FATHER.'
'Our Father!—yes, that's wery good, sir.'
(CHARLES DICKENS, Bleak House)
WE MUST NOW briefly record several apparently disparate events which occurred between September 21 and 24.
On Wednesday, September 21, Julia Stevens was one four people who rang the JR2 to ask for the latest bulletin on Kevin Costyn, who the previous day had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. His doctors had become increasingly concerned about a blood-clot in the brain, and a decision would very shortly be taken about possible surgery. For each of the four (including Kevin's mother) the message, couched in its conventionally cautious terms, was the same: 'Critical but stable.'
Not very promising, Julia realised that. Considerably better, though, than the prognosis on her own condition.
As she lay in bed that night, she would gladly have prayed for herself, as well as for Kevin, had she managed to retain any residual faith in a personal deity. But she had not so managed. And as she lay staring up at the ceiling, knowing that she could never again look forward to any good nights, quite certainly not to any cheerful awakenings, she pondered how very much more easy such things must he for people with some comfortable belief in a future life. And for just a little while her resolution wavered sufficiently for her to find herself kneeling on the Golden Floor and quietly reciting the opening lines of the Lord's Prayer.