the Jewel That Was Ours

by Colin Dexter

  But the next stop was Oxford . . .

  3

  ‘O come along, Mole, do!' replied the Rat cheerfully, still plodding along.

  'Please stop, Ratty!' pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart. 'You don't understand! It's my home, my old home! I've just come across the smell of it, and it's close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it'

  (Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows)

  'Arksford? This is Arksford?’

  Seated on the nearside front seat of the luxury coach, John Ashenden glanced across at the diminutive septuagenarian from California: 'Yes, Mrs Roscoe, this is Oxford.' He spoke rather wearily, yet wholly without resentment. Hitherto little on the Historic Cities of England Tour (London-Cambridge-Oxford-Stratford-Bath-Winchester) had appeared unequivocally satisfactory to the well-read, eager, humourless (insufferable!) Mrs Roscoe; and yet as he looked out of his own side-window Ashenden could sympathise with that lady's disappointment. The eastern stretch of the A40 could hardly afford the most pleasing approach to the old University City; and as the coach slowly moved, one car-length at a time, towards the Headington roundabout, a litter-strewn patch of ill-kempt grass beside a gaudily striped petrol station lent little enchantment to the scene.

  The tour party - eighteen women, nine men (three registered husband-and-wife combinations) - sat back in their seats as the coach drove past the sign for 'City Centre' and accelerated for a few miles along the featureless northern section of the Ring Road, heading for the Banbury Road roundabout.

  For some reason Mrs Laura Stratton was ill-at-ease. She re-crossed her legs and now massaged her left foot with her right hand. As agreed, it would be Eddie who would sign the forms and the Visitors' Book, and then identify the luggage and tip the porter - while she would be lying in a hot herbal bath and resting her weary body, her weary feet. . .

  'Gee, I feel so awful, Ed!'

  'Relax, honey. Everything's gonna be OK.' But his voice was so quiet that even Laura had difficulty in picking up his words. At sixty-six, four years younger than his wife, Eddie Stratton laid his hand briefly on the nylon-clad left foot, the joints of the toes disfigured by years of cruel arthritis, the toe-nails still painted a brightly defiant crimson.

  'I'll be fine, Ed - just once I get in that bairth.' Again Laura switched legs and massaged her other foot again -a foot which like its partner had until recently commanded the careful ministrations of the most expensive chiropodist in Pasadena.

  'Yeah!' And perhaps someone else on the coach apart from his wife might have noticed Eddie Stratton's faint smile as he nodded his agreement.

  The coach had now turned down into the Banbury Road, and Ashenden was soon into his well-rehearsed commentary: '. . . and note on each side of the road the cheerful orange-brick houses, built in the last two decades of the nineteenth century when the dons in the University - there, look! - see the date? - 1887 . . .'

  Immediately behind Ashenden sat a man in his early seventies, a retired civil engineer from Los Angeles, who now looked out of his window at the string of shops and offices in Summertown: banks, building societies, fruiterers, hairdressers, housing agents, newsagents, wine shops - it could almost have been back home, really. But then it was back home, decided Howard Brown.

  Beside him, Shirley Brown was the second wife who had seen a smile upon a husband's lips - a smile this time of wistful satisfaction; and suddenly she felt a sharp regret.

  'Howard?' she whispered. 'Howard! I am glad - you know I am - glad we booked the tour. Really I am!' She laid her right arm along his long thigh and squeezed it gently. 'And I'm sorry I was such' (pianissimo) 'such an ungrateful bitch last night.'

  'Forget it, Shirl - forget it!'

  But Howard Brown found himself wishing that for a little while at least his wife would perpetuate her sullen ill-humour. In such a mood (not infrequent) she presented him with the leeway he needed for the (not infrequent) infidelities of thought and deed which he could never have entertained had she exhibited a quarter of the affection he had known when they'd agreed to marry. But that was in 1947 -forty-three years ago - before she'd ever dreamed of checking his automobile mileage, or scrutinising the postmarks on his private mail, or sniffing suspiciously at him after his coming home from the office . . .

  '. . . and here' (Ashenden was in full and rather splendid spate) ‘we see the Ruskin influence on domestic architecture during that period. You see - there! - on the left, look! -the neo-Gothic, mock-Venetian features . . . And here, on the left again, this is Norham Gardens, with the famous University Parks lying immediately behind. There! You see the iron gates? The Parks are one of the greatest open spaces in Oxford - still, even now, liable to be closed to the public at the whim of the University authorities - unless, of course, you get to know how to sneak in without being noticed by the keepers at the main entrance.'

  'And to sneak out again, surely, Mr Ashenden?'

  For once, one of Mrs Roscoe's inevitable interruptions was both pertinent and good-humoured, and her fellow passengers laughed their light-hearted approval.

  Howard Brown, however, had been quite unaware of the exchange. He was craning his neck to look across at the Keeper's Lodge; and as he did so, like Mole, he sensed and smelled his old home territory, and inside him something long dormant woke into sudden life. He felt his eyes welling up with nostalgic tears, before fiercely blowing his nose and looking obliquely at his wife once more, gratified to observe that her lips had once again settled into their accustomed crab-crumpet discontent. She suspected nothing, he was virtually certain of that.

  As the coach drew into St Giles', the sky was an open blue, and the sunlight gleamed on the cinnamon-coloured stone along the broad tree-lined avenue. 'Here we are, in St Giles'.' (Ashenden slipped into over-drive now.) 'You can see the plane trees on either side of us, ablaze with the beautifully golden tints of autumn - and, on the left here, St John's College - and Balliol just beyond. And here in front of us, the famous Martyrs' Memorial, modelled on the Eleanor Crosses of Edward the First, and designed by Gilbert Scott to honour the great Protestant martyrs - Cranmer and Latimer and, er . . .'

  'Nicholas Ridley,' supplied Mrs Roscoe, as the coach turned right at the traffic lights and almost immediately pulled in on the left of Beaumont Street beneath the tall neo-Gothic facade of The Randolph Hotel.

  'At last!' cried Laura Stratum, with what might have been the relief of a prisoner learning of a late reprieve.

  In retrospect, it would have seemed an odd coincidence (though not an important one) that the middle-aged man housed in a nondescript block of flats at the top of the Banbury Road had been looking out from his second-floor double-glazed windows as the long luxury coach carrying Ashenden's group had passed by that late afternoon. Inside, a recently renewed needle glided through the well-worn grooves of the Furtwangler recording of Gotterdammerungi but the man's mind was more closely concentrated with an almost physical hurt on the greasy wrappings discarded by the previous night's fish-and-chip brigade as they'd walked homeward from the Chicken Barbecue in Summertown.

  4

  The cockroach Blattella germanica,' it was observed darkly in 1926, 'was at one time recorded as present in the Randolph Hotel kitchen'

  {Jan Morris, Oxford)

  Roy, concierge of the five-star Randolph Hotel, a cheerful, florid-faced man of sixty, had been on duty since midday, and had, as always, been fully apprised by the Reception Manager of the scheduled afternoon arrivals - especially, of course, of the biggish bus-load of American tourists at 4.30 p.m. Roy, who had started with the hotel as a page-boy in 1945 - forty-five years since - quite liked the Americans. Not that he'd ever wished to fly over there for a holiday or anything drastic like that; but they were a nice lot, usually, the Yanks; friendly, communicative, generous. And although an incorrigibly biased patriot himself, he had recently begun to query the automatic superiority of his own countrymen, particularly that night the previous month when he'd returned on a Euro-Ferry after an a
bortive 0-0 draw between England and Holland.

  It was five minutes before schedule that from his cubby-hole immediately inside the main entrance he saw the patrician coach pull slowly in beside the white canopy, flanked by a pair of elegant lamp-posts, at the front of Oxford's premier hotel. And a few seconds later he was standing at the top of the steps outside, in bis yellow-piped blue uniform, beaming semi-beatifically, and ready to greet the new arrivals with an appropriate degree of that 'warmth' attested to on several separate pages of the hotel's technicolour brochure. As he stood there, the flags - Union Jack, EEC, USA - fluttered lightly above him in the afternoon breeze. He enjoyed his work - always had; in fact seldom referred to it as 'work' at all. Seldom, too, did anything much go wrong in an establishment so happily and so predictably well-ordered as The Randolph. Seldom indeed.

  But once in a while?

  Yes, once in a while.

  Phil Aldrich, a small, mournful-visaged dolichocephalic senior citizen (from California, too) moved from his habitual and lonely seat on the back row of the coach and came to sit next to Mrs Roscoe; his hearing was not quite what it had been and he wanted to know what was going on. The Deputy Manager had appeared on the coach itself to welcome them all and to announce that tea - or coffee, if preferred - was immediately available in the St John's Suite on the first floor; that all bedrooms were now ready for occupancy and that every hotel facility from telephone to trouser-press was at his guests' disposal forthwith; that even as he spoke their baggage was being unloaded, counted, checked, and portered to the appropriate rooms. It would save a good deal of time, the Deputy Manager concluded, if everyone would fill in now, on the coach, the Guest Registration Cards.

  With appreciative nods observable on each side of the gangway, Ashenden duly distributed the Welcome Trusthouse Forte forms, already completed for the sections dealing with Company, Next Destination, Settlement of Account, Arrival, Departure, and Nationality. Only remaining for the tourists to fill in were the four sections headed Home Address, Telephone, Passport Number, and Signature.

  Phil expressed an unqualified approval: 'Gee! That's what I'd say was pretty darned efficient, Janet.'

  For once Mrs Roscoe was unable to identify any obvious flaw in the procedures, and, instead, appeared to concentrate her thoughts upon the perils of the unpredictable future.

  'I do hope the people here realise the great difference between Vegetarian and Vegan—'

  'Janet! This is one of the finest hotels in the UK—'

  But Ashenden's voice now cut across their conversation:

  'So! If we can all... St John's Suite, St John's - that's on the first floor, just up the main staircase - tea or coffee - right away. I know some of you will just want to settle in and have a wash and ... So if you take your forms to Reception - that's straight ahead of you as you go through the main doors here - and just sign the documentation forms there and get your keys . . . The lift, the guest-lift, is just to your right, in the corridor . . .'

  'Get a move on!' hissed Laura under her breath.

  '. . . I shall be calling round to your rooms later, just to make sure everything's . . .'

  Ashenden knew what he was doing. Experience had taught him that the first hour or so in any new hotel was always the most vital, since some small problem, dealt with promptly, could make the difference between a contented life and an anxious existence. Blessedly, Ashenden was seldom, if ever, confronted with such positive complaints as cockroaches, mice, or the disgusting habits of a room's previous occupants. But a range of minor niggles was not unfamiliar, even in the best regulated of establishments: no soap in the bathroom; only two tubs of cream beside the self-service kettle; no instructions on how to operate the knobless TV; no sign - still no sign - of the luggage . . .

  Eddie Stratton had managed to squeeze into second spot in the queue for keys, and Laura had grabbed their own key, 310, from his hand before he'd finished the documentation.

  'I'm straight up, Ed, to draw me a bairth - I can't wait.'

  'Yeah, but leave the door, honey - there's only the one key, OK? I'll have a cup of tea in the Saynt Jam Suite.'

  'Sure. I'll leave the door.' She was gone.

  As Laura hobbled away towards the guest-lift, Eddie turned round and looked directly into the eyes of Mrs Shirley Brown. For a few seconds there seemed to be no communication between the two of them; but then, after glancing briefly towards her husband, Shirley Brown nodded, almost imperceptibly, and her eyes smiled.

  5

  All saints can do miracles, but few can keep a hotel

  (Mark Twain, Notebook)

  'At last!' muttered Laura Stratum for the third (and final) time as she inserted her key and turned it clockwise (and correctly) in the lock.

  The room itself did not open immediately off the main corridor on level three; but a small plaque fixed beside double swing-doors (a FIRE EXIT sign above them) had pointed the way to Room 310. Once through these doors Laura had found herself in a further corridor, only four or five feet wide, which ran parallel to the main corridor, along which (after she had turned left) she walked the five yards or so to the bedroom door - on her right. Just beyond this door, the corridor turned at right angles and came to an almost immediate stop in the shape of another double-doored FIRE EXIT - doubtless, as Laura guessed (again correctly), leading down some back stairs to the ground floor. It did not occur to her that a person could stand in this narrow square of space, pressed tightly back behind the wall, and remain completely unobserved from the narrow corridor leading to her room.

  If anyone wished to remain thus unobserved . . .

  Laura extracted the key and carefully let the door close, or almost close, behind her, with the tongue of the lock holding it slightly ajar. The two large black-leather cases were on the floor immediately inside, and she looked around to find herself in a most pleasantly appointed room. A double bed stood immediately to her right, covered by a pale-green quilt, with a free-standing wardrobe beyond it; facing her were the three lancet windows of the outside wall, with curtains down to the carpeted floor; and in front of these windows, from right to left, a tea-maker, a TV, a low, mirrored dressing table, and a red-plush chair. Her swift glance around missed little, except for the rather fine reproduction of Vermeer's View of Delft above the bed. Laura and her first husband had once seen the original of this in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, when the guide had mentioned that it was Marcel Proust's favourite painting; but strangely enough she had found it disappointing, and in the very few minutes of life remaining to her she was to have no opportunity of revising that rather harsh judgement.

  She stepped to the window and looked across at the tetrastyle portico of Ionic columns, with the figure of Apollo, right arm raised and seated (a little precariously, as Laura judged) at the apex of the low-pitched pediment. Between the two central columns, a large Oxford-blue banner was suspended: Musaeum Ashmoleanum apud Oxonienses. Oh yes, Laura knew quite a lot about the Ashmolean Museum, and there appeared the flicker of a smile around her excessively lip-sticked mouth as she let the curtain fall back and turned to the door on her left, half-open, which led to the champagne-tiled bathroom. Without for the moment entering, she pushed the door a little further open: WC to the right; bath immediately facing her, the shower-curtains half drawn across; and to the left a hand-basin with a series of heated rails beside it, fully laden with fluffy white towels.

  Laura had always slept on the left-hand side of any double bed, both as a young girl with her sister and then with both her husbands; and now she sat down, rather heavily, on the side of the bed immediately beside the main door, placed her white-leather handbag below the various switches for lights, radio, and TV, on the small table-top next to the bed - and removed her shoes.

  Finally removed her shoes.

  She fetched the kettle, filled it from the wash-basin in the bathroom, and switched on the current. Then, into the bathroom once more where she put the plug in the bath and

  turned on the
hot tap. Returning to the main room again she picked up a do not disturb sign, hung it over the outside door-knob, and returned to the bathroom to pour some pink Foaming Bubbly into the slowly filling bath.

  Beryl Reeves had noted the single arrival in Room 310. At 4.40 p.m. she had put in a final burst of corridor hovering and hoovering, and knew even from her very limited experience that before she went off duty at 5.00 there would be several queries from these Americans about the whereabouts of the (non-existent) 'ice-machine' and the (readily available) replenishments of coffee sachets. Beryl was from Manchester; and her honest, if slightly naive attitude to life - even more so, her accent - had already endeared her to many of her charges on Level Three. All in all, she was proving a very good employee: punctual, conscientious, friendly, and (as Morse was later to discover) a most reliable witness.

  It had been exactly 4.45 that afternoon (and who could be more accurate than that?) when she had looked in at Room 310; noticed the sign hanging over the door-knob, wondering why the door itself was slightly ajar; peered momentarily into the room itself; but immediately retreated on seeing the steam emanating from the bathroom. Yes, she thought she would have probably noticed a white leather handbag if it had been somewhere just inside. No, she had not passed beyond the door and looked around the corner beside the Fire Exit. She had seen an American guest going into Room 308 shortly after this - a man; a friendly man, who'd said 'Hi!'. Yes, of course she would recognise him. In fact she could tell them who he was straightaway: a Mr Howard Brown from California.

  Just before 6 p.m. the phone rang in the office of Chief Superintendent Strange at the Thames Valley Police HQ at Kidlington. The great man listened fairly patiently, if with less than obvious enthusiasm, to his colleague, Superintendent Bell from St Aldate's in Oxford.