it?'
'Why do you have to keep talking in that sort of way? You've got a pleasant voice and you can speak very nicely. But sometimes you deliberately seem to try to sound like 'A trollop?'
'Yes.'
Neither of them spoke for a while. Then it was Ellie: 'I wanted to ask you two things really.'
'I'm all ears.'
'Actually you've got quite nice ears, for a man. Has any one ever told you that?'
'Not recently, no.'
'Look. You think my step-father's dead, don't you?'
'I'm not sure what I think.'
'If he is dead, though, when do you think...?'
'As I say--I just don't know.'
'Can't you guess?'
'Not to you, Miss Smith, no.'
'Can't you call me 'Ellie'?'
'All right.'
'What do I call you T' 'They just call me Morse.'
'Yes--but your Christian name?'
'Begins with 'E,' like yours.'
'No more information?'
'No more information.'
'OK. Let me tell you what's worrying me. You think Mum's had something to do with all this, don't you?'
'As I say--'
'I agree with you. She may well have had, for all I know--and good luck to her if she did. But /f she did, it must have been before that Wednesday. You know why? Because--she doesn't know this--but I've been keeping an eye on her since then, and there's no way--no way---she could have done it after...'
'After what?' asked Morse quietly.
'Look, I've read about the Pitt Rivers business--- everybody has. It's just that... I just wonder if something has occurred to you, Inspector.'
'Occasionally things occur to me,' said Morse. 'Have you got any cigarettes, by the way?'
'No, I've given up.'
'Well, as I was saying, what if the knife was stolen on the Wednesday afternoon to give everybody the impression that the murder--if there is a murder--was committed after that Wednesday afternoon? Do you see what I mean? OK, the knife was stolen then--but what if it wasn't used? What if the murder was committed with a different knife?'
'Go on.'
'hat's it really. Isn't that enough?'
'You realise what you're saying, don't you? If your step-father has been murdered; if he was murdered before the theft of the knife, then your mother is under far more sus-picion, not less. As you say, quite rightly, she's got a con-tinuous alibi from the time she left for Stratford with Mrs.
Stevens on that Wednesday, but she hasn't got much of one for the day before. In fact she probably hasn't got one at all.'
Ellie looked down at the avocado-coloured carpet, and sipped the last of her champagne.
'Would you like me to go and get a packet of cigarettes, Inspector?'
Morse drained his own glass.
'Yes.'
Whilst she was gone (for he made no effort to carry out the errand himself) Morse sat back and wondered exactly what it was that Ellie Smith was trying to tell him... or what it was that she was trying not to tell him. The point she had just made was exactly the one which he himself (rather proudly) had made to Sergeant Lewis, except that she had made it rather better.
'Now, second thing,' she said as each of them sat drinking again and (now) smoking. 'I want to ask you a favour.
I said, didn't I, that me and Ashley--'
'Ashley and I.'
'Ashley and I are getting married, at the Registry Office----'
'Register Office,' corrected the pedantic Inspector.
'--and we wondered I wondered if you'd be willing to come along and be a witness.'
