'Oh, I see.... '
'I do understand, yes.... '
'Look, let me try to put him on.... '
She found him sitting on the side of the bed, pulling on his socks.
'Thames Valley Police, Ted. They want to come and talk to you.'
'Christ!' he hissed. 'Don't they know I've only just got out of 'ospital?'
Brenda's upper lip was trembling slightly, but her voice sounded strangely calm. 'Would you like to speak to him yourself?. Or tell me what to say? I don't care--but don't let's keep him waiting.'
'What's 'is name, this feller?'
'Lewis. Detective Sergeant Lewis.'
Lewis put down the phone.
Like Brooks a few minutes earlier, he was sitting on the side of the bed--Morse's bed.
'That's fixed that up, then, sir. I still feel you'd be better off staying in bed, though.'
'Nonsense!'
Lewis looked with some concern across at his chief, lying back against three pillows, in pyjamas striped in ma- roon, pale blue, and white, with an array of bottles and medicaments on the bedside table: aspirin, Alka Seltzer, indigestion tablets, penicillin, paracetamol--and a bottle of The Macallan, almost empty. He looked blotchy. He looked ghastly.
'No rush, is there, sir?' he asked in a kindly manner. 'Not much danger of me rushing today.' He put down the book he'd been reading, and Lewis saw its rifle: The Anatomy of Melancholy.
'Trying to cheer yourseff up, sir?'
'Oddly enough, I am. Listen to this: 'There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness; no better cure than busyness'--that's what old Burton says. So tell me all about Bedford.'
So Lewis told him, trying so very hard to miss nothing out; and conscious, as always, that Morse would probably consider of vital importance those things he himself had as sumed to be obviously trivial.
And vice versa, of course.
Morse listened, with only the occasional interruption.
'So you can see, sir, he's not got much of an alibi, has he?'
'Lew-is! We won't want another suspect. We know who killed Mc Clure: the fellow we're off to see this afternoon.
All we're looking for is a bit more background, a slightly different angle on things. We can't take Brooks in yet--well, we can; but he's not going to run away. We ought to wait for a bit more evidence to accumulate.'
'We certainly haven't got much, to be truthful, have we.9'
'You've still got people looking for the knife?'
Lewis nodded. 'Eight men on that, sir. Doing the houses Phillotson's lads didn't--along most of the road, both sides.'
Morse grunted. 'I don't like this fellow Brooks.'
'You've not even seen him yet.'
'I just don't like this drugs business.'
'I doubt if Davies had any part in that. Didn't seem the type at all.'
'Just in on the sex.'
'He fell for that woman in a pretty big way, no doubt about that.'
'Mm. And you say there may have been somebody in the house while you were there?'
'As I say, I heard the loo flushing.'
'Well, a trained detective like you would, wouldn't he?' '%Vhen the cat's away...'
'Looks like it.'
'I think he's the sort of fellow who just welcomes all the floozies with open arms--'
'And open flies.'
'You don't think...' The thought struck Lewis for the first time. 'You don't think...?'
'Whe loo-flusher was one and the same as our staircase Lulu? No. Not a chance. Forget it! The really interesting thing is what Davies told you about her--about Ellie Smith, or whatever her name is.'
Morse broke off wearily, wiping the glistering perspiration from his forehead with a grabby white handkerchief taken from his pyjama top--top number three, in fact, for he had already sweated his way through two pairs of paja mas since taking to his bed the previous afternoon.
'Did you take your dose this morning, sir?'
Morse nodded. 'Double dose, Lewis. That's always been the secret for me.'
