The Daughters of Cain

'Bizarre and bewildering - that's what so many murder investigations in the past had proved to be ... In this respect, at least, Lewis was correct in his thinking. What he could not have known - what in fact he never really came to know - was what unprecedented anguish the present case would cause to Morse's soul.'
It was Chief Superintendent Strange's opinion that too little progress had been made by the Thames Valley Police since the discovery of a corpse in a North Oxford flat. The victim had been killed by a single stab wound to the stomach. Yet the police had no weapon, no suspect, no motive.
But within days of taking over the investigation Chief Inspector Morse and Detective Sergeant Lewis uncover startling new information about the life and death of Dr Felix McClure, late of Wolsey College, Oxford.
The trail leads directly to a staircase in Wolsey College, and in particular to a former 'scout' there, one Edward Brooks - who himself disappears following the theft of a knife from the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Then another body is discovered and suddenly Morse finds himself with rather too many suspects, including Brooks's long-suffering wife, his attractive stepdaughter, and an enigmatic schoolmistress. Although each, it seems, has an unimpeachable and unbreakable - alibi...
For once, Morse can see no solution, and even finds himself thinking of retirement. Then he receives a letter - a letter containing a declaration of love ...