'Tm sorry.'
'Listen! I'm the teacher, remember? Just let me do ti: talking.'
'That were the worst thing I ever done in my life.'
'Don't talk about it now! You weren't driving.'
He turned his face towards her, revealing the left cheel so terribly bloodied and stitched and tom.
'It's not that, Mrs. Stevens. It's when I asked you for t money.' His eyes pleaded with her. 'I should never a' dor that. You're the only person that was ever good to m, really--and then I go and...'
His words were faltering further, and there was a film c tears across his eyes.
'Don't worry about that, Kevin!'
'Will you promise me something? Please?'
'If I can, of course I will.'
'You won't worry if I don't worry.'
'I promise.'
'There's no need, you see. I won't ever tell anybod I what I done for you--honest to God, I won't.'
A few minutes later, Julia was aware of movement behinc her, and she turned to see the nurse standing there with: uniformed policeman, the latter clutching his flat hat rathe awkwardly to his fib-cage.
It was time to go; and laying her hand for a few second, on Kevin's fight ann, an arm swathed in bandages ant fibbed with tubes, she took her leave.
As she waited for the lift down to the ground floor, sh smiled sadly to herself as she recalled the nurse's words 'But we're a little bit worried about his brain'.., just lik almost all the staff at the Proctor Memorial School had been, for five years... for fifteen terms.
And then, as she tried to remember exactly where she'd parked the Volvo, she found herself, for some reason, think-mg of Chief Inspector Morse.
Chapter Forty-nine
I sometimes wonder which would be nicer--an opera with-out an interval, or an interval without an opera (ENEST NWM^N, Berlioz, Romantic and Classic)
Of the four separate operas which comprise Der Ring der Nibelungen (an achievement which in his view ranked as one of the seven great wonders of the modem world), Sieg-fried had always been Morse's least favourite. And on the evening of Saturday, September 17, he decided he would seek again to discover whether the fault lay with himself or with Wagner. But the evening was destined not to pass without its interruptions.
At 7:35 P.M. Lewis had rang through with the dramatic news that the handle-bars and the saddle on the bicycle re-covered from the railings outside the parish church of St.
Mary Magdalene still bore traces of blood, and that prelim-inary tests pointed strongly to its being Mc Clure's blood.
Such findings, if confirmed, would provide the police with their first physical link between Felix Mc Clure and Edward Brooks, since the latter's wife, Brenda, had now identified the bike as her husband's; as had one of the assistants at Halford Cycles on the Cowley Road, where Brooks had purchased the bike four months previously. A warrant, therefore, should be made out asap for the arrest of Mr.
Edward Brooks--with Morse's say-so.
And Morse now said so.
The fact that the person against whom the warrant would be issued was nowhere to be found had clearly taken some of the cream from Lewis's 6clair. But Morse seemed oddly content: he maintained that Lewis was doing a wonderful job, but forbade him to disturb him again that evening, bar-fing some quite prodigious event--such as the birth of an-other Richard Wagner.
So Morse sat back again, poured himself another Scotch, lit another cigarette, and turned Siegfried back on.
Paradise enow.
Very few people knew Morse's personal (ex-directory) tele-phone number, and in fact he had changed it yet again a few months earlier. When, therefore, forty minutes further into Siegfried, the telephone rang once more, Morse knew that it must be Lewis again; and thumping down his libretto with an ill grace, he answered tetchily.
'What do you want this time?'
'Hullo? Chief Inspector Morse?' It was a woman's voice, and Morse knew whose. Why had he been such a numbskull as to give his private number to the pink-haired punk-wonder?
'Yes?'
'Hi! You told me if ever I wanted any help, all I'd got to do was pick up the phone, remember?'
'How can I help?' asked Morse wearily, a hint of exas-peration in his voice.
'You don't sound overjoyed to hear from me.'
'Just a bit tired, that's all.'
'1'oo tired for me to treat you to a pint?'
Morse wasn't quite sure at that moment whether his spir-its were rising or falling. 'Sometime next week, perhaps?' he suggested.
