Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

Tradition at the Proctor Memorial School was for pupils to rise to their feet whenever any teacher entered the class-room. And this tradition perpetuated itself still, albeit in a dishonoured, desultory sort of way. Yet when Mrs. Stevens walked into 5C, for the first period on the afternoon of her birthday, the whole class, following a cue from Kevin Costyn, rose to its feet in synchronised smarmess, the hum of conversation cut immediately.., as if some maestro had tapped his baton on the podium.

And there was a great calm.

(iii)

As I heard the tread of pupils coming up my ancient creaking stairs, I felt like a tired tart awaiting her cli-ents (A. L. Rows E, On Life as an Oxford Don)

"It's only me," he'd spoken into the rusted, serrated Entryphone beside the front door.

He'd heard a brief, distant whirring; then a click; then her voice: "It's open."

He walked up the three flights of shabbily carpeted stairs, his mind wholly on the young woman who lived on the top floor. The bone structure of her face looked gaunt below the pallid cheeks; her eyes (for all Mc Clure knew) might once have sparkled like those of gtaucopis Athene, but now were dull--a sludgy shade of green, like the wa-ters of the Oxford canal; her nose--tip-tilted in slightly concave fashion, like the contour of a nursery ski-slope--was disfigured (as he saw things) by two cheap-looking sil-ver rings, one drilled through either nostril; her lips, marginally on the thin side of the Aristotelian mean, were ever thickly daubed with a shade of bright orange--a shade that would have been permanently banned from her mouth by any mildly competent beautician, a shade which clashed horribly with the amateurishly applied deep-scarlet dye that streaked her longish, dark-brown hair.

But why such details of her face? Her hair? The mind of this young woman's second client that day, Wednesday, May 25, was fu'rnly fixed on other things as a little breath-lessly he ascended the last few narrow, squeaking stairs that led to the top of the Victorian property.

The young woman turned back the grabby top-sheet on the narrow bed, kicked a pair of knickers out of sight be-hind the shabby settee, poured out two glasses of red wine (2 pounds 99 pencefrom Oddbins), and was sitting on the bed, swallowing the last mouthful of a Mars bar, when the first knock sounded softly on the door.

She was wearing a creased lime-green blouse, buttoned up completely down the front, black nylon stockings--whose tops came only to mid-thigh, held by a white suspender-belt--and red high-heeled shoes. Nothing more. That's how he wanted her; that's how she was. Beggars were proverbially precluded from overmuch choice and (perforce) "beggar" she had become, with a triple burden of liabilities: negative equity on her "studio fiat," bought five years earlier at the height of the property boom; redundancy (involuntary) from the sales office of a local engineering firm; and a steadily increasing consumption of alcohol. So she had soon taken on a... well, a new "job" really.

To say that in the course of her new employment she was experiencing any degree of what her previous em-ployer called "job satisfaction" would be an exaggeration.

On the other hand, it was certainly the easiest work she'd ever undertaken, as well as being by far the best paid--and (as she knew) she was quite good at it. As soon as she'd settled her bigger debts, though, she'd pack it all in. She was quite definite about that. The sooner the quicker.

The only thing that sometimes worded her was the pos-sibility of her mother finding out that she was earning her living as a cheap tart. Well, no, that wasn't mae. An expen-sive tart, as her current client would soon be discovering yet again. Yes, fairly expensive; but that didn't stop her feeling very cheap.

At the second knock, she rose from the bed, straightened her left stocking, and was now opening the door. Within only a couple of minutes opening her legs, too, as she lay back on the constricted width of the bed, her mascara'ed eyes focusing on a discoloured patch of damp almost imme-diately above her head.

Almost immediately above his head, too.

It was all pretty simple, really. The trouble was it had never been satisfying, for she had rarely felt more than a minimal physical attraction towards any of her clients. In a curious way she wished she cou M sd feel. But no. Not so far. There was occasionally a son of wayward fondness, yes. And in fact she was fonder of this particular fellow than any of the others. Indeed, she had once surprised her-self by wondering if when he died well, he was nearly sixty-seven--she might manage to squeeze out a dutiful tear.

It had not occurred to her at the time that there are other ways of departing this earthly life; had not occurred to her, for example, that her present client, Dr. Felix Mc Clure, for-mer Ancient History don of Wolsey College, Oxford, might fairly soon be murdered.

A highly geological home-made cake (CHARLES DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit)