'I have, Lewis. It's just that I need to make a sort of gesture--some sort of sacrifice. That's it! A sacrifice. All right? You see, I'm only going to smoke this one cigarette. Only one. And the rest of them?'
Morse appeared to have reached a fateful decision. He picked up the packet and flicked it, with surprising accu racy, into the metal waste-bin.
'Satisfied?'
Lewis reached for the phone and rang the JR2 Outpa-tients department: no news. Then he rang Brenda Brooks: no news.
Edward Brooks was still missing.
'You don't think somebody's murdered him, sir?'
But Morse, as he studied yet again the details of the sto-len knife, appeared not to hear. 'Would you rather be a bishop--or a paramount chief?.'
'I don't want to be either, really.'
'Mm. I wouldn't have minded if they'd made me a par-amount chief.'
'I thought they had, sir.'
'Where would a paramount chief go from here, Lewis?'
'I just asked you, sir, whether '
'I heard you. The answer's 'no.' Brooks is alive and well. No. He may not be well, of course--but he's alive.
You can bet your Granny Bonds on that.'
'Where do we go from here, then?'
'Well, I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed. I want to feel fresh for this evening. I've got a date with a beau6ful lady.'
'Who's she?'
'Mrs. Stevens--Julia Stevens.'
'When did you fix that up?'
'While you were getting the coffee.'
'You want me to come along?'
'Lew-is! I just told you. It's a date.'
'Didn't you believe Mrs. Brooks? About where she spent last night?'
'I believed that all fight. It's just that I reckon she knows where her husband ks, that's all. And it's on the cards that if she does know, she probably told her friend, Mrs. Stew el'IS.'
%Vhat would you like me to do, sir T'
'Td like you to go and see Mrs. Brooks's daughter--Ellie Smith, or whatever she calls herself. She's a key character in this case, don't you reckon? Mc Clure's mistress--and Brooks's step-daughter.'
'Shouldn't you he seeing her then?'
'All in good time. I'm only just out of hospital, remem-ber T'
'You mean she's not so attractive as Mrs. Stevens.'
'Purely incidental, that is.'
'Anything else?'
'Yes. You'd better get back to the museum for a while.
I don't think we're going to get very far on the fingerprint front--but you never know.'
Lewis was frowning. 'I just don't see the link myself--between the Mc Clure murder, and now this Pitt Rivers business.'
'She saw a link, though, didn't she? Jane Cotterell? Clever lass, that one.'
'But she said whoever else it was, it couldn't have been Brooks who took the knife.'
'Exactly.'
'So?'
'So what?'
'So where's the link?'
Morse's eyes remained unblinking for several seconds, staring at nothing it seemed, and yet perhaps staring at every-thing. 'I'm not at all sure now that there is a link,' he said quietly. 'Fo find some connection between one event and an other ensuing event is often difficult; and especially difficult perhaps when they appear to have a connection.... '
Morse was aware of feeling worded at the prospect--the actuality, really--of his return to work. For, in truth, he had little real idea of the correct answers to the questions Lewis had just asked. He needed some assistance from some-where; and as he drove down to North Oxford he patted his jacket-pocket where he felt the reassurance of the square packet he had retrieved from the waste-bin immediately af-ter Lewis had left for the Pitt Rivers
