elaborately wrapped in plastic, then wrapped up again in brown carpet, before being dumped into the Isis, just stream from Donnington Bridge, almost certainly drive; there in the boot of a car. Mrs. Stevens's car? Most probably, since she was the only one of them to own such means of transport.
Well (as Morse saw it) the reason was fairly obvious: ii' and when (and when rather than if) the body was foum such wrapping would ensure one vital thing: that the knil would still be found with the body--still be found in body, it could be hoped. There would be no danger of being lost; and thereby no danger that the alibis so cm ningly, so painstakingly, devised would be discounted destroyed.
'So you see,' finished Detective Chief Inspector Mors. 'the two women we assumed could never have murdered Brooks have overnight moved up to the top of the list.' I looked up with a fairly self-satisfied smile to Chief Supe intendent Strange. 'And with your permission, sir, we sh go ahead immediately, apply for a couple of sear, warrants--'
'Why only two warrants?' asked Detective Chief Inspe tor Phillotson.
Chapter Sixty-six
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven (JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book I)
The following day, a call was put through to Morse ('Mu be Morse') from Mr. Basil Shepstone, Senior Neurologi at Oxford's Churchill Hospital; and twenty minutes later t two men were seated together in Shepstone's consultin room.
Mrs. Julia Stevens (Morse learned) had been admitted midday, having earlier been discovered unconscious at I side of her bed by her cleaning-lady. Some speedy deteri ration in her mental condition had been expected; but ld dramatic (the literal) collapse in her physical condition hi come as some surprise. A recent biopsy (Morse leame, had confirmed glioblastoma multiforrna, a fast-growing t mour of the neuroglia in the brain: wholly malignant, sad inoperable, rapidly fatal.
When Julia had been admitted, it was immediately app ent that, somewhere on the brain, pressure had become i tolerably severe: she had been painfully sick again in t ambulance; clearly she was experiencing some considerable difficulty with both sight and speech; showing signs, too, of spatial disorientation. Yet somehow she had managed to make it clear that she wished to speak to the policeman Morse.
Twice during the early afternoon (Shepstone reported), her behaviour had grown disturbingly aggressive, especially towards one of the young nurses trying to administer med-ication.
But that sort of behaviour--often involving some fairly fundamental personality change--was almost inevita-ble with such a tumour.
'Had you noticed any 'personality change' before?' asked Morse.
Shepstone hesitated. 'Yes, perhaps so. I think... let's put it this way. The commonest symptom would be general loss of inhibition, if you know what I mean.'
'I don't think I do.'
'Well, I mean one obvious thing is she probab[: wouldn't be over-worried about the reactions and opinion, s of other people--other professional colleagues, in her case. Let's say she'd be more willing than usual to speak her mind in a staff-meeting, perhaps. I don't think she was ever too shy a person; but like most of us she'd probably always felt a bit diffident--a bit insecure--about life and... ad things.'
'She's an attractive woman, isn't she?'
Shepstone looked across at Morse keenly.
'I know what you're thinking. And the answer's prob: bly 'yes.' I rather think that if over these past few mont! s someone had asked... to go to bed with her...'
'When you say 'someone'--you mean some man?'
'I think I do, yes.'
'And you say she's been a bit violent today.'
'Aggressive, certainly.' Morse nodded.
'It's really,' continued Shepstone, 'the unexpectedt,.-rather than the nature of behaviour that always sticks out these cases. I remember at the Radcliffe Infirmary, for ample, a very strait-laced old dear with a similar turnover geeing out of her bed one night and dancing naked in fountain out the front there.'
'But she isn't a strait-laced old dear,' said Morse slo 'Oh, no,' replied the sad-eyed Consultant. 'Oh, no.
For a while, when Julia had regained some measure of senses in the hospital, she knew that she was still at h in her own bed, really. It was just that someone was to confuse her, because the walls of her bedroom wer longer that soothing shade of green, but this harsher, cr ler white.
Everything was white.
Everyone was wearing white....
But Julia felt more relaxed now.
The worry at the beginning had been her complete orientation: about the time of day, the day, the mon--year, even. And then, just as the white-coated girl was lng to talk to her, she'd felt a terrible sense of panic as realised that she was unaware of who she was.
Things were better now, though; one by one, things clicking into place; and some knowledge of herself, of life, was slowly surfacing, with the wonderful bonus the dull, debilitating headache she'd lived with for so months was gone. Completely gone.
She knew the words she wanted to say--about Morse; or at least her mind knew. Yet she was aware those words had homodyned little, if at all, with the she'd actually used: 'One thousand and one, one thousand and two...'
But she could write.
