'We could have a look in Brooks's place, yes. Where do you reckon he'd keep them?
'Garden shed?'
'We'd need a search warrant... unless, Lewis--'
'Oh no! I'm not forcing any more locks, sir. Look what a mess I made of the box in his bedroom.'
'Perhaps you won't need to.' Morse opened a drawer of his desk and took out the bunch of keys. 'I'd like to bet one of thee fits the garden shed; but I doubt we're going to fred any bags there. They'll have been too careful fo,,' tha L'
'What are you thinking of exactly T'
'Well, you'd have expected a few prints on the plastic bags, don't you think? But there aren't any, it seems. Thc water wouldn't have washed them off completely, I'm told. So they wore gloves all the time. And then they took good care to make sure the body wouldn't float, agreed? There' a gash in the bags, through all three layers---I don't think that was caused accidentally in the river. I think it was made deliberately, to let the air out, and get the body tt, sink... at least, temporarily. That's what the Warde thought, too.'
Yes, Lewis remembered. Holmes had claimed that unless any body was weighted down it would almost certainly have come up towards the surface sooner or later because of the body's natural gases.
'Why do you think they--somebody--went to all that trouble with the bags, sir? It's almost as if...'
'Go on, Lewis!'
'As if somebody wanted the body to be found.'
'Yees.' Morse was gazing across the yard once more. 'You know what's buggering us up the whole time, don't you? It's simply that we're going to have one helluva job making out a case against anybody. If somebody like Hel- ena Kennedy, QC, was hired for the defence, she'd make mincemeat of us: we've got all the motive in the word; and THE I)AUGI-ERS OF CAIN 259 all the means--but we just can't find any bloody opportu-nity... except at about teatime on that Wednesday after-noon. They've been too clever for us. But it's not just cleverness: it's ruthlessness, too. Not a blatant ruthlessness, but certainly a latent ruthlessness--latent in all three of them. Something that suddenly hardened into a cold-blooded resolve to get rid of Brooks--not just because they knew, must have known, that he was a murderer himself, but for an even better reason. Hatred.'
There was a knock at the door, and a WPC announced that Ms. Smith was now seated in Reception.
'Bring her up, please,' said Morse, quickly opening a small, square black box, lined with white satin, and passing it across to Lewis.
'What d'you think?'
Lewis, like Dr. Hobson the previous day, looked across at Morse most curiously.
'But if what you say's fight, sir, she's going to have to postpone the happy day indefinitely--for quite a few years, perhaps.'
'She can still sit in a cell and twiddle it in her fingers. No law against that, is there7'
But before Lewis could remind Morse of the very strict and very sensible prison resulations regarding necklaces and the like, there was another knock at the door, and Morse swiftly took back the 19endant of St. Anthony--plus his golden chain.
Chapter Sixty-one
The total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution (BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals)
After rolling the little finger of her left hand across the pad, after pressing it firmly on to the fingerprint-form, Eleanor Smith had finished; and Lewis now asked her to add her signature to the form.
'That didn't take very long, did it?' said Morse patronisingly.
'Does all this mean you've found some fingerprints on the knife? she asked.
Morse was slightly hesitant. 'We think so, yes. Uniden-tiffed prints--unidentified as yet. As I explained, though, it's just a matter of elimination.'
She looked rather weary; gone was the sparkle that had characterised the latter part of that champagne evening at the Old Parsonage.
'You think they could be mine T'
Rather weary, too, was Morse's smile.
'We've got to have some suspects, haven't we? In fact my sergeant hem's got a long list of 'em.'
She turned to Lewis. 'Whereabouts am I on the list?'
'We always try to put the most attractive at the top, don't we, sir?'
Morse nodded his agreement, wishing only that he'd thought of such a splendid rejoinder himself.
'And when exactly am I supposed to have murdered that shithouse?'
She looked from one to the other, and Morse in mm looked to Lewis the Interlocutor.
'Perhaps,' said the latter slowly, 'when you got back from Birmingham that Wednesday?'
'I see.... And did I pinch the knife as well?'
'I we don't think you could have done that because, as you told us, you didn't get back into Oxford until after the museum had closed. We checked up on the train time: it got into Oxford Station at 16:35--just three minutes late.'
'You still don't sound as if you believe me.'
