clue; and soon he knew it was of no use trying any more.
It had gone.
Chapter Sixty-three
Fingerprints do get left at crime scenes. Even the craftiest of perpetrators sometimes forget to wipe up everywhere (Murder Ink, Incriminating Evidence)
Her first sentence, spoken with an attractive Welsh lilt, was a perfect anapaestic pentameter: 'We shall have to eat here in the kitchen, Inspector, all right?'
'Wherever, Mrs. Lewis. Have no fears.'
'We've got the decorators in, see? But just go and sit down in the lounge---where I've put out some beer and a glass.' (Anapaestic hexameter.)
As he passed the dining-room, Morse stopped to look in-side.
The decorators had finished for the day; almost fin-ished altogether, it seemed, for only around the main window were some paint-stained white sheets still lying across the salmon-pink carpet, with all of the fumiture now pushed back into place except for a bookcase, which stood awkwardly in mid-room, a wooden stepladder propped up against it. Clearly, though, there would be no problem about its own relocation, either, for the site of its former habitation was marked by an oblong of strawberry-red carpet to the left of the window.
Mrs. Lewis was suddenly behind him.
'You like the colour?'
'Very professionally painted,' said Morse, a man with no knowledge whatsoever of professionalism in painting and decorating.
'You were looking at the carpet, though, weren't you now?' she said shrewdly. 'Only had it five years--and they told us the colours in all of their carpets would last till emity.' (Anapaests everywhere.)
'I suppose everything fades,' said Morse. It hardly seemed a profound observation--not at the time.
'It's the sun really, see. That's why you get most of your discolouration. In the cupboards--on the lining for the cupboards--you hardly get fading at all.'
Morse moved on into the lounge where he opened a can of Cask Flow Beamish, sat contentedly back in an arm-chair, and was watching the Six O'clock News when Lewis came in.
'You look pleased with yourself,' said Morse.
'Well, that's two more of the keys accounted for: that second Yale opens the staff entrance door at the back of the Piu Rivers, just off South Parks Road; and that little 'X 10' key--remember?--that's a Pitt Rivers key, too: it's a key to a wail-safe there that's got rows and rows of little hooks in it, with a key on each of 'em--keys to all the display-cabinets.'
Morse granted a perfunctory 'Well done!' as he reverted his attention to the news.
Mrs. Lewis produced a slightly unladylike whistle a few minutes later: 'On the table, boys!'
Morse himself had acquired one culinary skill only--that of boiling an egg; and he was not infrequently heard to boast that such a skill was not nearly so common as was generally assumed. But granted that Morse (in his own es-timation) was an exemplary boiler of eggs, Mrs. Lewis (omnium consensu) was a first-class frier; and the milkily opaque eggs, two on each plate, set beside their mountains of thick golden chips, were a wonderful sight to behold.
As Morse jotted out some tomato sauc, Lewis picked up his knife and fork. 'You know, sir, if they ever find a body with an empty plate of eggs and chips beside it '
'I think you mean a plate empty of eggs and chips, Lewis.'
'Well, I reckon if the fingerprints on the knife don't match any of those in our criminal library, the odds are they'll probably be mine.'
Morse nodded, picked up his own knife and fork, found (blessedly!) that the plate itself was hot--and then he froze, as if a frame on the family video had suddenly been switched to 'Pause.'
'Everything all right, sir?'
Morse made no reply.
'You--you're feeling all right, sir?' persisted a slightly anxious Lewis.
'Bloody 'ell!' whispered Morse tremulously to himself in a voice just below audible range. Then, louder: 'Bloody 'ell! You've done it again, Lewis. You've done it again!'
Unprecedentedly Lewis was moved to lay down both knife and forlc 'You know we had a little bet 'Morse's voice was vibrant now.
'When we both lost.'
'No.
When to be more accurate neither of us won. Well, I'd like to bet you something else, Lewis. I'd like to bet you that I know whose fingerprints are on that knife in Brooks's back!'
'That's more than the fingerprint-boys do.' Morse snorted. 'Tm very tempted to report them for pro-fessional incompetence.' Then his voice softened. 'But I can forgive them. Yes, I can understand them.'
'I'm lost, sir, I'm afraid.'
'Shall I tell you,' asked Morse, 'whose pounds gerprints we found on that knife?'
His blue eyes looked so fiercely across the kitchen table that for a few moments Lewis wondered whether he was suffering from some slight stroke or seizure.
