Clure, would not report the matter to the Dean, and would even provide a job-testimonial, provided that Brooks foreswore his dealings in drugs.
Feelings between the two men were bitter.
Things settled down, though.
Then it came to Mc Clure's notice that Brooks had not finished with his drag-dealing after all; that some of the junkies were still in touch with him. A furious Mc Clure threatened disclosure to Brooks's new employers and to the police, and a meeting between the two was arranged (or not awanged--how could one know?). Certain it was, however, that Brooks went to visit Mc Clure. And murdered him.
On the way home, on his bicycle, Brooks suddenly be-came aware that he was seriously ill. He managed to get as far as St. Giles's, but could get no further. He left his bicy-cle outside St. Mary Mags, without even bothering to lock it, perhaps, and covering himself as best he could, got a taxi from the rank there up to East Oxford-and very soon got an ambulance up to the JR2, minus the bloodstained clothing which his wife disposed of.
One thing above all must have haunted Brooks's mind once he knew he would recover from his heart attack: he was still in possession of the knife he'd used to murder Mc Clure, because whatever happened he couldn't throw it away. He ordered his wife to lock it up somewhere, prob-ably in the box in his bedroom, and she did as he asked, surely having enough common sense to handle the knife both then and later--with the greatest delicacy, pretty cer- tainly wearing the glove she'd taken to using to protect her injured right hand. She was terrified---certainly at that point--of incurring the anger of a fearsomely cruel man who had physically maltreated her on several occasions, and who in earlier years had probably abused his step-daughter the latter now putting in an appearance after many moons away from home, no doubt after somehow learning of Brooks's illness.
Brenda Brooks had an ally.
Two allies, in fact: because we now become increasingly aware of the unusually strong bond of friendship and affection between her and the woman for whom she cleaned, Mrs. Julia Stevens, a schoolma'am who, although this fact has only recently become known to us, was suffering from an inoperable brain-tumor.
A plot was hatched, an extraordinarily clever plot, de-signed to throw the police on to the wrong track; a plot which succeeded in so doing.
'Let me explain.'
'At last,' mumbled Strange.
Brenda Brooks took Mrs. Stevens wholly into her confi-dence, with both now knowing perfectly well not only wh had murdered Mc Clure but also exactly where the knife hm come from--and why Brooks was unable to get rid of it On the Saturday before Mc Clure's murder, the very las thing in the afternoon, Brooks had taken the knife from Cabinet 52 in the Pitt Rivers Museum, fully intending to re place it the very first thing on the following Monday morn ing, when he planned to turn up for work half an hour o so early and to restore it to its position amongst the fifty- odd other knives there. Nobody would have missed it; no-body could have missed it, since the museum was closed on Sundays.
'Why--?' Strange had begun. But Morse had antici-pated the question.
Why Brooks should have acted in such a devious way, or whether he had taken the knife with the deliberate intention of committing murder, it was now only possible to guess. The only slight clue (thus far) was that one of the few books found in the Brookses' virtually illiterate household was a library copy of The Innocence of Father Brown, in which Chesterton suggested a battlefield as the safest place to conceal a corpse... with the possible implication that a cabinet of weapons might be the safest place to conceal a knife.
But Brooks couldn't restore the knife. Not yet.
His great hope was that no one would notice its absence. And no one did. Apart from the attendant circumstance of so many other knives, one further factor was greatly in his favour: the cabinet had been recently re-lined, and there was no outwardly physical sign that any object could be missing. The normal routine, when anything was taken out, was for a printed white card'q'emporarily Removed'--to be inserted over the space left vacant. But there was no space left vacant, since Brooks had only to move two or three other knives along a little to effect a balanced row of exhibits. And as day followed day, no one in fact noticed that anything at all was missing.
But, apart from Brooks, two other persons now knew of all this.
One of whom was Julia Stevens.
And the beautifully clever idea was bom: if... if Brooks were to be murdered with the very same knife which he himself had stolen...
Ah, yes!
Two things only were required.
First, a knife, a different but wholly similar knife, would have to be planted---somewhere in, or near, Daventry Ave-nue. For when it was found as surely sooner or later it would be--the police, with a little luck, would discover that it had been taken from one of the Brookses' kitchen draw-ers.
Second, the cabinet from which the actual murder weapon had been taken ('Cabinet 52' was clearly marked on the tag) wou M have to be broken into so that its contents would inevitably be checked. For then, and then only, would the pedigree of the missing knife become known.
Someone was therefore delegated to break open that cab-inet, to ruffle around a few of the knives there-- exactly the opposite of what Brooks had done earlier--and the deception was launched. The 'theft' was duly spotted, and re-ported; the missing knife was fairly quickly identified; and, above all, the crucial alibis were established.
How so?
Because of the wholly incontestable fact that any person found murdered by means of that stolen knife must have been murdered after that knife was stolen.
But the troth was that Brooks was murdered before the knife was stolen--probably murdered the day before, since the two women lied about seeing him alive on the after-noon when they set off with the school-party for Stratford.
The only thing now calling for some sort of explanatio was the curious circumstance of Brooks's body being s
