Tears coursed down cheeks that were themselves wholly devoid of make-up; washing down with them, though, some of the heavy eye-shadow from around her dull-green eyes. 'I lost it,' she said, finally.
For a moment or two Morse considered placing his hand very gently, very lightly on hers, but he feared that his action would be misconstrued.
'I'm sorry,' he said simply, not speaking again until he reached Princess Street.
She got out of the car and picked up her hold-all from the back. 'Thank you.'
'I wasn't much help, I'm afraid. But if I can ever be of any help, you've only got to give me a ting.' He wrote down his ex-directory telephone number.
'Well, you could help now, actually. It's a lousy lime place I live in--but I'd be quite glad if you'd come in and have a drink with me.'
'Not this morning.'
'Why the 'ell not, for Christ's sake? You just said to give you a ring if I needed any hell>--and I bloody do, OK? Now.'
'All right. I'll come in and have one quick drink. On one condition, though.'
'What's that?'
'You don't slam the car-door. Agreed?'
'Doesn't seem too lousy a little place?' suggested Morse as, whiskey in hand, he leaned back in the only armchair in the only room--the fairly large room, though--which was Eleanor Smith's bedsitter-cum-bathroom.
'I can assure you it is. Crawling with all those micro-scopic creatures--you've seen photographs of them?'
Morse looked at her. Was he imagining things? Hadn't she just spoken to him with a degree of verbal and gram-matical fluency that was puzzlingly at odds with her habit-ual mode of speech? 'Crawlin' wiv all them little bugs an' things' wasn't that how she'd normally have expressed herself?.
'I think I know why you're lookin' at me like that,' she said.
'Pardon?'
In answer, she placed an index finger on each nostril. On each ringless nostril.
And Morse nodded. 'Yes, I prefer you as you are now.'
'So you said.'
'You know that your step-father's still missing?'
'So what? You want me to break out into goose-pimples or something?'
'Why do you hate him so much?'
'Next question.'
'All right. You said you were going to get married. Does all this--the loss of your baby--does it make any differ-ence?'
'Gettin' deep, ain't we? Cigarette?'
,!
'i Ellie held out the packet; and stupidly, inevitably, M-rse capitulated.
'You're still going ahead with getting married?'
'Why not? It's about time I settled down, don't you think?'
'I suppose so.'
'What else can I tell you?'
Well, if she was inviting questions (Morse decided) it was a good opportunity to.probe a little more deeply into the heart of the mystery, since he was convinced that the key to the case--the key to both cases lay somewhere in those late afternoon hours of Wednesday, September 7, when someone had stolen the knife from the Pitt Rivers Museum.
'After your trip to Birmingham, you could have caught an earlier train back?'
She shrugged. 'Dunno. I didn't, though.'
'Do you remember exactly what time you asked your friend up herewhen you got back that afternoon?'
'Exactly? Course, I can't. She might. Doubt it, though.
We were both tight as ticks later that night.' Was she lying? And if so, why? 'On that Wednesday--'
But she let him get no further. 'Christ! Give it a rest about Wednesday, will you? What's wrong with Tuesday? Or Monday? I 'aren't a bleedin' clue what I was doin' them days. So why Wednesday? Like I say, I know where I was all the bloody time that day.'
'It's just that there may be a connection between Dr. Mc Clure's murder and the theft of the knife.'
She seemed unimpressed, but mollified again. 'Drop more T'
'No, I must be off.'
'Please yourself.' She poured herself another Scotch, and lit another cigarette. 'Beginnin' to taste better. I hadn't smoked a fag for three days--three days!--before that one in your car. Tasted terrible, that first one.'
