ier part of the examination paper.
'Do you want your wife to be here, sir, while I ask you--I'm sorry--some rather awkward questions?'
'She stays. You stay, don't you, Bren? Nothing she shouldn't know about, Inspector.'
Lewis watched the man carefully, but could see no greater signs of nervousness than was normal among wit- nesses being interviewed by the police. Wasn't she, Mrs.
Brooks, the more obviously nervous of the two?
'Mr. Brooks,' Morse began. 'I know you've been in hospital, but please bear with me. We have evidence that there was some trading in drugs on your old staircase over the last three or four years.'
'Nothin' to do wi' me if there was.'
'You knew nothing of it T'
'No.'
'It's difficult for us, you see, because we have a statement to the effect that you did know something about it.'
'Christ! I'd like to know who it was as told you that. Load o' bloody lies!'
'You'd have no objections to coming along to HQ and going through that statement with us?'
'I can't--not just now, I can't--but I will--I'll be 'appy to--when I'm better. You don't want to give me another bloody 'eart attack, do you?'
Brooks's manner of speaking, which had begun in a gen-tle Oxfordshire burr, had suddenly switched into the coarse articulation with which he was wont to address his wife.
'Would you have known, Mr. Brooks, if there had been drugs?'
'No job o' mine to interfere. Everybody's got their own lives to live.'
'There were parties there, on the staircase?'
'You try an' stop 'em!'
'Did you try?'
'If you talk to people they'll all tell you I were a good scout. That's all that worried me.'
'I'm afraid we shan't be able to talk to Dr. Mc Clure, shall we?'
'There's others.'
'Did you like Dr. Mc Clure?'
'OK, yeah.'
'You both left at the same time, I believe.'
'So wha'?'
'I just wondered if you had a farewell drink together, that's all.'
'Don't know much about Town and Gown, do you?' Morse turned to Lewis. 'Sergeant?'
'We've obviously got to interview anyone, sir, who had a link with Dr. Mc Clure. That's why we're here, as I told you on the phone. So I shall have to ask you where you were last Sunday--Sunday the twenty-eighth of August.'
'Huh! Last Sunday?' He turned to his wife. 'Hear that, Bren? Not bloody difficult, that one, is it? You tell 'em. You remember better 'an I do. Bloody 'ell! If you reckon I 'ad anything to do wi' that last Sunday? Christ!' Brenda Brooks folded her hands nervously in her lap, and for the first time Morse noticed that the right hand, be-neath an elastic support, might be slightly deformed. Per-haps she held them to stop them shaking? But there was nothing she could do about her trembling upper-lip.
'Well... Ted woke me about three o'clock that Sunda,, morning--'
'More like 'alfotwo.'
'--with this awful pain in his chest, and I got up to find the indigestion tablets and I made a cup o' tea and you seemed better, didn't you, Ted? Well, a bit better anyway and I slept a bit and he did, just a bit, but it was a bad night.'
'Terrible!'
'1 got up at six and made some more tea and asked Ted if he wanted any breakfast but he didn't and the pain was still there, and I said we ought to ring the doctor but Ted said not yet, well, yon know, it was Sunday and he'd have to come out special, like. Anyway he got up about ten be-cause I remember we sat in the kitchen listening to The Archers at quarter-past while I got the meat ready--lamb and mint sauce--but Ted couldn't face it. Then about half-past one, quarter-to two, it got so bad, well, it was no good hanging on any longer and I rang the ambulance and they came in about... well, it was only about ten minutes--ever so quick. He was on a machine at half-past two---about then, weren't you, Ted.9'
'Intensive Care,' said the ex-scout, not without a touch of pride. 'The pain 'ad got t'rific--I knew it were summat serious. Told you so at the time, didn't I, Bren?' Brenda nodded dutifully.
It had immediately become clear to Morse that there was now a very considerable obstacle between him and any de-cision to arrest Edward Brooks on suspicion of murder; a considerable objection even to leaving his name on the list of suspects--which indeed would be a dramatic set-back for the whole case, since Brooks's name was the only one appearing on Morse's list.
He looked across now at the faithful little lady sitting there in her skirt and summer blouse next to her husband.
