Inspector Morse 11 The Daughters of Cain

"And"---Strange lifted his large frame laboriously from the chair--"I've got this gut-feeling that Phillotson wouldn't have got very far with it anyway."

"Gut-feeling?"

"What's wrong with that?" snapped Strange. "Don't you ever get a gut-feeling T' "Occasionally..."

"After too much booze!"

"Or mixing things, sir. You know what I mean: few pints of beer and a bottle of wine."

"Yes..." Strange nodded. "We'll probably both have a gut-feeling soon, eh? After a few pints of beer and a bottle of aspirin."

He opened the door and looked at the name-plate again. "Perhaps we shan't need to change them after ail, Morse."

Chapter Two

Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, A-top on the topmost twig--which the pluckers forgot somehow-- Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now (D. G. ROSSETTI, Translations from Sappho)

It was to be only the second time that Morse had ever taken over a murder enquiry after the preliminary--invariably dramatic trappings were done with: the discovery of the deed, the importunate attention of the media, the immediate scene-of-crime investigation, and the final removal of the body.

Lewis, perceptively, had commented that it was all a bit like getting into a football match twenty-five minutes late, and asking a fellow spectator what the score was. But Morse had been unimpressed by the simile, since his life would not have been significantly impoverished had the game of football never been invented.

Indeed, there was a sense in which Morse was happier to have avoided any in situ inspection of the corpse, since the liquid contents of his stomach almost inevitably curdled at the sight of violent death. And he knew that the death there had been violent--very violent indeed. Much blood had been spilt, albeit now caked and dirty-brown--blood that would still (he supposed) be much in evidence around the chalk-lined contours of the spot on the saturated beige car-pet where a man had been found with an horrific knife-wound in his lower belly.

"What's wrong with Phillotson?" Lewis had asked as they'd driven down to North Oxford.

"Nothing wrong with him--except incompetence. It's his wife. She's had something go wrong with an operation, so they say. Some, you know, some internal trouble.., wom-an's trouble."

"The womb, you mean, sir?"

"I don't know, do I, Lewis? I didn't ask. I'm not even quite sure exactly where the womb is. And, come to think of it, I don't even like the word."

"I only asked."

"And I only answered! His wife'll be fine, you'll see. It's him. He's just chickening out."

"And the Super... didn't think he could cope with the case?"

"Well, he couldn't, could he? He's not exactly perched on the topmost twig of the Thames Valley intelligentsia, now is he?"

Lewis had glanced across at the man seated beside him in the passenger seat, noting the supercilious, almost arro-gant, cast of the harsh blue eyes, and the complacent-looking smile about the lips. It was the sort of conceit which Lewis found the least endearing quality of his chief: worse even than his meanness with money and his almost total lack of gratitude. And suddenly he felt a shudder of distaste.

Yet only briefly. For Morse's face had become serious again as he'd pointed to the right; pointed to Daventry Av-enue; and amplified his answer as the car braked to a halt outside a block of fiats: "You see, we take a bit of beating, don't we, Lewis? Don't you reckon? Me and you? Morse and Lewis? Not too many twigs up there above us, are there?"

But as Morse unfastened his safety-belt, there now ap peared a hint of diffidence upon his face.

"Nous vieillissons, ri'est-ce pas?"

"Pardon, sir?"

"We're all getting older--that's what I said. And that's the only thing that's worrying me about this case, old friend."

But then the smile again.

And Lewis saw the smile, and smiled himself; for at that moment he felt quite preternaturally content with life.

The constable designated to oversee the murder-premises volunteered to lead the way upstairs; but Morse shook his head, his response needlessly brusque: "Just give me the key, lad."

Only two short flights, of eight steps each, led up to the first floor; yet Morse was a little out of breath as Lewis opened the main door of the maisonette.

"Yes"--Morse's mind was still on Phillotson--"I reckon he'd'ye been about as competent in this case as a dyslexic proof-reader."

"I like that, sir. That's good. Original, is it?"

Morse granted. In fact it had been Strange's own ap-praisal of Phillotson's potential; but, as ever, Morse was perfectly happy to take full credit for the bons mots of oth-ers.

Anyway, Strange himself had probably read it some-where, hadn't he? Shrewd enough, was Strange: but hardly perched up there on the roof of Canary Wharf.

Smoothly the door swung open The door swung open on another case.

And as Lewis stepped through the small entrance-hall, and thence into the murder room, he found himself wonde ing how things would turn out here.