'I meant the medicine, not the Malt.'
Morse grinned weakly, his forehead immediately prickling with moisture once more, like a windscreen in persistent drizzle.
He lit a cigarette; and coughed revoltingly, his chest feeling like a chunk of excoriated flesh. Then spoke: 'She said she couldn't see him on a weekday, right? Sat-urday OK, though, and perhaps Sunday. Why? Pretty clearly because she knew somebody there on the staircase; and you thought--be honest, now!--you thought it must be somebody who buggered off to his cottage in the Cotswolds somewhere every weekend, and left the coast clear. You thought it was one of the two Students, didn't you? You thought it was Mc Clure.'
'To be honest with you, I didn't, no. I thought it was somebody who didn't work after Saturday lunchtime until starting up again on Monday morning. I thought it was the scout. I thought it was Brooks.'
'Oh!'
'Wasn't I supposed to think that?'
Morse wiped his brow yet again. 'I'm not really up to things at the minute, am I?'
'No, I don't think you are.'
'Oh!'
'I think Brooks wasn't just a pusher; I think he was a pimp as well. And it was probably too risky for him to let any of his girls get into the college--into the House, sir. So, if this particular girl was going to get in, it was going to be at weekends, when he wasn't there, when she could make her own arrangements, take her own risks, and set her own fee without cutting him in at all.'
Morse was coughing again. 'Why don't I put you in charge of this case, Lewis?'
'Because I couldn't handle it.'
'Don't you think you can handle Brooks?'
'No.'
'You think we ought to wait a couple of days, don't you--before we see him?'
'Yes.'
'And you think I'll agree to that?
'No.'
Morse closed Burton's immortal work, and folded the duvet aside.
'Will you do me a quick favour, Lewis, while I get dressed?'
'Course.'
'Just nip out and get me the News of the World, will you?'
Chapter Thirty
Randolph, you're not going to like this, but I was in bed with your wife (Murder Ink.' Alibis we never want to hear again)
At 1:15 P.M., on the way to the Brookses' residence in East Oxford, they had called briefly at Daventry Avenue. Still no sign of any murder weapon.
'Give 'em a chance,' Lewis had said.
Morse had insisted on taking the Jaguar, with Lewis driving: he thought the finale of Die Walkiire might well refresh his drooping spirits, and the tape (he said) was already in position there. But strangely enough he hadn't turned it on; even more strangely he appeared ready to engage in con versation in a car.
Most unusual.
'You ought to invest in a bit of Wagner, Lewis. Do you far more good than all that rubbish you play.'
'Not when you're there, I don't.'
'Thank god!'
'I don't get on to you, for what you like.'
'What do you like best?'
Lewis came up to the roundabout at the Plain, and took the second exit, the one after St. Clements, into the Cowley Road.
'Tll tell you what I can't stand, sir the bagpipes.' Morse smiled. 'Somebody once said that was his favourite music--the sound of bagpipes slowly fading away into the distance.'
It was a quarter-to two when Ted and Brenda Brooks, side by side on the living-room settee, sat facing the two detec-tives: Morse in the only armchair there, Lewis on an up-right chair imported for the occasion from the kitchen.
Brooks himself, in his late forties, dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt and well-pressed grey slacks, looked pale and strained. But soon he appeared to relax a little, and was confirming, with an occasional nod of his greying head, the background details which Morse now briefly re-hearsed: his years as a scout at Wolsey, where he had got to know Matthew Rodway ('Yup'); and Dr. Mc Clure ('Yup'); his present employment at the Pitt Rivers Museum ('Yup').
The skirmishing had been very civilised, and Mrs. Brooks asked them all if they'd like a cup of tea.
But Morse declined, speaking, as it appeared, for all three of them, and turning back to Brooks and to the trick-
