Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

And whatever happened she cou Mn't be a suspect. Felix had been murdered on Sunday August 28th, hadn't he? And on that same Sunday she'd left Oxford at 6:30 ^.M. (yes!) on a coach-trip to Boumemouth. Hadn't got back, either, until 9:45 P.M. So there! And thirty-four witnesses could testify to that. Thirty-five, if you included the driver. Nothing to worry about, then--nothing at all.

And yet she couldn't help worrying: WOTying about who, in his senses, would want to murder such an inoffen-sive fellow as Felix.

Or in her senses...

Was there some history, some incident, some background in Felix's life about which she knew nothing? Sure to be, really. Not that he'd ever hinted-- Then it struck her.

There was that one thing. Just over a year ago, late May (or was it early June?) when that undergraduate living on Felix's staircase had jumped outof his third-floor win-dow--and broken his neck.

"That undergraduate"? Who was she fooling?

Poor Matthew!

Not that she'd had anything to do with that, either. Well, she'd fervently prayed that she hadn't. After all, she'd only met him once, when Felix had become so furiously jealous. Jealousy!

At his age--forty-one years older than she was. A grand-father, almost. A father, certainly. Yet one of the very few clients who meant anything to her in that continuum of car-nality which passed for some sort of purpose in her present life.

Yes, a father-figure.

A foster-father, perhaps.

Not a bloody step-father, though! Christ, no.

She looked at herself in the mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-table. The pallor of her skin looked ghastly; and her dark hair, streaked with a reddish-orange henna dye, looked lustefiess--and cheap. But she felt cheap all over. And as she rested her oval face on her palms, the index fin ger of each hand stroking the silver rings at either side of her nostrils, her sludgy-green eyes stared back at her with an expression of dullness and dishonesty.

Dishonesty?

Yes. The truth was that she probably hadn't given a sod for Mc Clure, not really. Come to think of it, he'd been get-ting something of a nuisance: wanting to monopolise her; pressuring her; phoning at inconvenient moments--once at a very inconvenient moment. He'd become far too obses-sive, far too possessive. And what was worse, he'd lost much of his former gaiety and humour in the process. Some men were like that.

Well, hard luck!

Yes, if she were honest with herself, she was glad it was all over. And as she continued to stare at herself, she was suddenly aware that the streaks of crimson in her hair were only perhaps a physical manifestation of the incipient streaks of cruelty in her heart.

Chapter Twelve

To mn away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is tree that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill (Am STOTt, Nicomachean Ethics)

Morse had finished the previous evening with four pints of Best Bitter (under an ever-tightening waist-belt) at the King's Arms in Banbury Road; and had followed this with half a bottle of his dearly beloved Glenfiddich (in his pyja-mas) at his bachelor flat in the same North Oxford.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, he had not exactly felt as fil a Stradivarius when Lewis had called the following mc ing; and it was Lewis who now drove out to Leicester. It was Lewis who had to drive out to Leicester.

As the Jaguar reached the outskirts of that city, Mc was looking again through the items (four of them now, three) which Lewis had seen fit to salvage from Mc Clu apartment, and which---glory be!--Morse had instal agreed could well be of importance to the case. Certa they threw light upon that murky drink-drugs-sex sc which had established itself in some few parts of Ox University. First was a cutting from the Oxford Mail d: Tuesday, June 8, 1993 (fourteen months earlier): DRUG LINK WITH DREAM SON'S SUICIDE At an inquest held yesterday, the, Coroner, Mr. Art Hoskins, recorded a verdict of suicide on the deat Mr. Matthew Rodway, a third-year undergraduate teac English at Oxford.

Rodway's body had been discovered by one of the lege scouts in the early hours of Friday, May 21, al foot of his third-floor window in the Drinkwater Qua Wolsey College.

There was some discrepancy in the statements read at the inquest, with suggestions made that Mr. Rod may perhaps have fallen accidentally after a fairly drinking-party in his rooms on Staircase G.

There was also clear evidence, however, that Mr. way had been deeply depressed during the prev weeks, apparently about his prospects in his forthcor Finals examination.

What was not disputed was that Rodway had refuge among one or two groups where drugs were ularly taken in various forms.

Dr. Felix Mc Clure, one of Rodway's former was questioned about an obviously genuine but u ished letter found in Rodway's rooms, containing sentence "I've had enough of all this."