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Colin Dexter

The Daughters of Cain

For the staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, with my gratitude to them for their patient help.

Prolegomena

Wednesday, May 25, 1994

Natales grate numeras?

(Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?)

(Hog^cl, Epistles I1)

On Mondays to Fridays it was fifty-fifty whether the post-man called before Julia Stevens left for school.

So, at 8:15 A. M. on May 25 she lingered awhile at the dark blue front door of her two-bedroomed terraced house in East Oxford. No sign of her postman yet; but he'd be bringing something a bit later.

Occasionally she wondered whether she still felt just a little love for the ex-husband she'd sued for divorce eight years previously for reasons of manifold infidelity. Espe-cially had she so wondered when, exactly a year ago now, he'd sent her that card a large, tasteless, red-rosed affair--which in a sad sort of way had pleased her more than she'd wanted to admit. Particularly those few words he'd written inside: "Don't forget we had some good times too!"

If anyone, perhaps, shouldn't she tell him?

Then there was Brenda: dear, precious, indispensable Brenda. So there would certainly be one envelope lying on the "Welcome" doormat when she returned from school that afternoon.

Aged forty-six (today) the Titian-haired Julia Stevens would have been happier with life (though only a little) had she been able to tell herself that after nearly twenty-three years she was still enjoying her chosen profession. But she wasn't; and she knew that she would soon have packed it all in anyway, even if...

Even if...

But she put that thought to the back of her mind.

It wasn't so much the pupilsmher thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds though some of them would surely have ruffled the calm of a Mother Teresa.

She'd made her own views clear, quite bravely so, at one of the staff meetings earlier that year. But the Head had paid little attention. Why should he? After all, he'd been appointed precisely because of his cocky conversance with curriculum development, alms and objectives and the rest... . A young, shining ideas-man, who during his brief spell of teaching (as rumour had it) would have experienced considerable difficulty in maintaining discipline even amongst the glorious company of the angels.

There was a sad little smile on Julia's pale face as she fished her Freedom Ticket from her handbag and stepped on to the red Oxford City double-decker.

Still, there was one good thing. No one at school knew of her birthday. Certainly, she trusted, none of the pupils did, although she sensed a slight reddening under her high cheekbones as just for a few seconds she contemplated her embarrassment if one of her classes broke out into "Happy Birthday, Mrs. Stevens!" She no longer had much confi-dence in the powers of the Almighty; but she almost felt herself praying.