by Colin Dexter
'Well, it doesn't sound particularly like Morse's cup of tea, Bell, but if you're really short. . . No, he's trying to get a few days off, he tells me, says he never gets his full ration of furlough. Huh! If you take off the hours he spends in the pubs . . . what? Well, as I say, if you are short. . . Yes, all right. You know his home number? . . . Fine! Just tell him you've had a word with me. He's usually happier if Lewis is with him, though .. . What? Lewis is already there? Good. Good! And as I say, just tell him that you've had a word with me. There'll be no problems.'
6
There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse
(Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey)
‘You here already, Lewis?'
'Half an hour ago, sir. The Super called me. They're short-staffed at St Aldate's—'
'Must be!'
'I've already been upstairs.' 'No problems?' 'I'm - I'm not quite sure, sir.' 'Well - "Lead on, Macduff!" '
'That should be "Lay on Macduff!", sir. So our English teacher—' 'Thank you, Lewis.' 'The lift's just along here—'
'Lift? We're not climbing the Empire State Building!'
'Quite a few stairs, sir,' said Lewis quietly, suspecting (rightly) that his chief was going through one of his temporary get-a-little-fitter phases.
'Look! Don't you worry too much about me, Lewis. If by any chance things become a bit too strenuous in the ascent, I shall stop periodically and pant, all right?'
Lewis nodded, happy as always (almost always) to be working with the curmudgeonly Morse once more.
For a few seconds Morse stood outside Room 310, breathing heavily and looking down at the door-knob. He raised his eyebrows to Lewis.
‘No, sir - waste of time worrying. Four or five people been in.'
‘Who's in there now?' asked Morse quietly.
'Only the quack - Doc Swain - he's been the house-doctor here for a few years.' 'Presumably the corpse as well, Lewis?' 'The corpse as well, sir.' 'Who else has been in?'
'The Manager, Mr Gascoigne, and Mr Stratton - that's the husband, sir. He was the one who found her - very shaken up, I'm afraid, he is. I asked Mr Gascoigne to take him to his office.' Lewis pointed vaguely to one of the lower floors,
‘No one else?'
'Me, of course.'
Morse nodded, and almost smiled.
Mrs Laura Stratton lay neatly supine on the nearer side of the double bed. She wore a full-length peach-coloured dressing robe, and (so far as Morse could see) little else. And she was dead. Morse glanced briefly at the face, swallowed once, and turned away.
Dr Swain, a fresh-faced, youngish-looking man (early thirties?) was seated at the low dressing table, writing. He turned his head and almost immediately answered Morse's unspoken question.
'Heart attack. Massive coronary.'
'Thank you, Dr - Swain, I think?'
'And you are?'
'I am Morse. Chief Inspector Morse.’
Swain got to his feet and handed Morse a sheet of paper, headed 'Oxfordshire Health Authority', with an impressively qualified column of medical men printed top right, in which (second from bottom) Morse read 'M. C. Swain, MA, MB, BCh, MRCP, MRCGP'.
'Congratulations!' said Morse.
'Pardon?'
'Sixteen, isn't it? Sixteen letters after your name, and I haven't got a single one after mine.'
‘Well, er - that's how things go, isn't it? I'll be off now, if you don't mind. You've got my report. BMA dinner we've got this evening.'
Seldom was it that Morse took such an irrationally instant dislike to one of his fellow men; but there are always exceptions, and one of these was Dr M. C. Swain, MA, MB, BCh, MRCP, MRCGP.
'I'm afraid no one leaves for the moment, Doctor. You know, I think, that we've got slightly more than a death here?'
'I'm told something valuable's been stolen. Yes, I know that. All I'm telling you is that the cause of death was a massive coronary. You can read it in that? Swain flung his forefinger Morse's way, towards the sheet just handed over.
'Do you think that was before - or after - this valuable something went missing?'
'I -1 don't know.'
'She died there - where she is now - on the bed?' 'On the floor, actually.'
Morse forced his features to the limits of credulity: 'You mean you moved her, Dr Swain?' 'Yes!'
'Have you ever heard of murder in the furtherance of theft?' 'Of course! But this wasn't murder. It was a massive—' 'Do you really think it necessary to tell me things three times, sir?'
'I knew nothing about the theft. In fact I only learned about it five minutes ago - from the Manager.'
That's true, sir,' chipped in Lewis, greatly to Morse's annoyance.
'Yes, well, if the Doctor has a dinner to attend, Lewis -a BMA dinner! - who are we to detain him? It's a pity about the evidence, of course. But I suppose we shall just have to try our best to find the man - or the woman - responsible for this, er, this massive coronary, brought on doubtless by the shock of finding some thief nicking her valuables. Good evening, Doctor. Make sure you enjoy your dinner!' Morse turned to Lewis: 'Tell Max to get over here straightaway, will you? Tell him it's as urgent as they get.'
'Look, Inspector—' began Swain.
But Morse was doing a reasonably convincing impression of a deaf man who has just turned off his hearing-aid, and now silently held the door of Room 310 open as the disconcerted doctor was ushered out.
It was in the Manager's office, on the first floor of The Randolph, that for the first time Morse himself was acquainted with the broad outlines of the story. Laura Stratum had taken her key up to her room soon after 4.30 p.m.; she had earlier been complaining of feeling awfully weary; had taken a bath - presumably after hanging a do not disturb notice outside her door; had been discovered at 5.20 p.m. when her husband, Mr Eddie Stratton, had returned from a stroll around Broad Street with a fellow tourist, Mrs Shirley Brown. He had found the door to 310 shut, and after being unable to get any response from within had hurried down to Reception in some incipient panic before returning upstairs to find . . . That was all really; the rest was elaboration and emotional overlay. Except of course for the handbag. But who is the man, with his wife lying dead on the carpet, who thinks of looking around to see if her handbag has disappeared?
Well, Mr Eddie Stratton, it seemed.
And that for a most important reason.
7
Almost all modern architecture is farce
(Diogenes Small (1797-1812), Reflections)
The Randolph boasted many fine rooms for dinners, dances, conferences, and exhibitions: rooms with such splendid names as Lancaster, Worcester, and the like - and the St John's Suite, a high-ceilinged room on the first floor where the reception had been arranged. In the daylight hours the view from the east window took in the Martyrs' Memorial, just across the street, with Balliol and St John's Colleges behind. And even now, at 6.45 p.m., with the floral, carpet-length curtains drawn across, the room still seemed so light and airy, the twin candelabra throwing a soft light over the maroon and pink and brilliant-white decor. Even Janet Roscoe could find little to criticise in such a grandly appointed room.
Sheila Williams, a large gin and tonic in her left hand, was trying to be pleasantly hospitable: 'Now are we all here? Not quite I think? Have we all got drinks?'
News of Laura Stratton's death had been withheld from the rest of the group, with only Sheila herself being officially notified of that sad event. It was a burden for her, certainly; but also a wonderful excuse for fortifying the inner woman, and Sheila seldom needed any such excuse.
'Mrs Roscoe! You haven't got a drink. What can I—?'
'I don't drink, Mrs Williams!' Janet turned her head to a sheepish-looking Phil Aldrich, standing stoically beside her: 'I've already told her once, Phil!'
'Janet here is a deacon in our church back home, Mrs Williams—’
But Sheila had already jerked into a tetchy rejoinder: 'Well I do drink, Mrs Roscoe! In f
act I'm addicted to the stuff. And my reasons for such addiction may be just as valid as your own reasons for abstinence. All right?'
With which well-turned sentence she walked back to the table just beside the main door whereon a dozen or so botdes of gin (Booth's and Gordon's), Martini (French and Italian), sherry (dry, medium, sweet) stood in competition with two large jugs of orange juice. She handed over her half-empty glass to the young girl dispensing the various riches. 'Gin - large one, please! - no ice - and no more tonic' Thus, fully re-equipped for her dudes, Sheila looked down once more at the yellow sheet of A4 which John Ashenden had earlier prepared, typed up, photocopied, and distributed. It was high time to get things moving. Of the tourists, only Howard and Shirley Brown (apart from Eddie Stratum) seemed now to be missing - no, that was wrong: apart from Eddie and Laura Stratton. Of the two distinguished speakers (three, if she herself were included), Theodore Kemp had not as yet put in an appearance. But the third of the trio, Cedric Downes, seemed to Sheila to be doing a splendid job as he stood behind a thinly fluted glass of dry sherry and asked, with (as she saw it) a cleverly concealed indifference, whence the tourists hailed and what their pre-retirement professions had been.
It was 7.25 p.m. before Dr Kemp finally entered, in the company of a subdued-looking Ashenden; and it was almost immediately apparent to Sheila that both of them had now been informed of the disturbing events that had been enacted in the late afternoon. As her eyes had met Kemp's there was, albeit for a moment, a flash of mutual understanding and (almost?) of comradeship.
'Ladies and Gentlemen . . .' Sheila knocked a table noisily and repeatedly with the bottom of an ash-tray, and the chatter subsided. 'Mr Ashenden has asked me to take you through our Oxford itinerary - briefly! -so if you will all just look at your yellow sheets for a minute . . .' She waved her own sheet; and then, without
any significant addition (although with a significant omission) to the printed word, read vaguely through the dates and times of the itemised programme:
THE HISTORIC CITIES OF ENGLAND TOUR 27TH OCT-10TH NOV (Oxford Stage)
Thursday 1st November
4.30 p.m. (approx.) Arr. The Randolph 4.30-5.30 p.m.
English teas available
6.4S p.m. Cocktail Reception (St John's Suite) introduced
8.00 p.m. 9.30-10.15 p.m.
by Sheila Williams, MA, BLitt (Cantab), with Cedric Downes, MA (Oxon) Dinner (main dining room) Talk by Dr Theodore Kemp, MA, DPhil (Oxon) on Treasures of the Ashmolean'.
Friday 2nd November
7.30-9.15 a.m. 10.30-11.30 a.m.
12.45 p.m.
3.00 p.m.
4.30-5.00 p.m. 6.30 p.m.
Breakfast (main dining room)
Visit to The Oxford Story, Broad Street (100 yards only from the hotel) Lunch (St John's Suite) - followed by an informal get-together with our lecturers in the coffee-lounge
We divide into groups (details to be announced later)
English tea (Lancaster Room)
The Tour Highlight! The presentation, by Mrs Laura Stratton, of the Wolvercote Tongue (Ashmolean Museum)
8.00 p.m.
Dinner (N.B. extra charge) in The Randolph. Otherwise group members are offered a last opportunity to dine out, wine out, and find out - wherever they wish - on our final night in this wonderful University City.
Saturday 3rd November
7.30-8.30 a.m. 9.30 a.m.
Breakfast (Please be punctual!) Departure from The Randolph for Broughton Castle (Banbury), and thence to Stratford.
The only thing that needs much expansion here' (Sheila was talking more confidently now) 'is the three p.m. spot tomorrow afternoon. So let me just fill in a bit there. Dr Kemp, Keeper of Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval Antiquities at the Ashmolean - the museum just opposite us here! will be taking his group around there tomorrow - as well as talking to us after dinner tonight, as you can see. Then, Mr Cedric Downes' (Sheila duly signified that distinguished gentleman) 'will be taking his own group around several colleges - including the most interesting of the dining halls - and addressing himself particularly to' (Sheila looked at her brief notes) ' "Architectural Design and Technique in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries". That, again, is at three p.m. . . . Well, you've heard almost enough from me now . . .' (Janet Roscoe was nodding) '. . . but I'd just like to mention that there is a third group tomorrow.' ('Hear, hear!' said Phil Aldrich happily.) 'You see, / shall be taking a group of you - perhaps only two or three of you, I don't mind - on an "Alice Tour". As most of you will know, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - "Lewis Carroll" -was in real life a "Student" -I shall explain that tomorrow -at Christ Church in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and we shall be looking at many mementoes of him, in the Deanery Garden, the Cathedral, and the Dining Hall; and also looking at a unique collection of old photographs, drawings and cartoons in the Bodleian Library. Well, that's what's on the menu. I'm sorry we're running just a bit late but. . . Anyway, it's my great pleasure now to introduce you to Cedric here - Mr Cedric Downes - who is going to set the scene for his talk tomorrow, in a rather light-hearted way, he tells me, by giving us a few thoughts on modern architecture. Ladies and Gentlemen - Cedric Downes.'
'Thank you, Sheila! I sometimes feel that some of our tourists must think that here in Oxford we're all mediaeval, Early English, Gothic, Tudor, Jacobean, Georgian, and so on. But we do have - though I'm no expert in this field - we do have a few fine examples of contemporary design. I don't want to get too serious about things - not tonight! But take St Catherine's, for example - the work of that most famous Danish architect, Arne er Johansen—'
'Jacobsen!' Sotto voce from Kemp.)
'Pardon?'
'You said "Johansen",' murmured Kemp.
'Surely not! I said "Jacobsen", didn't I?'
A chorus of assorted tourists assured Downes that he had most certainly not said 'Jacobsen'; and for a second or two Downes turned upon his fellow lecturer a look of what might have been interpreted as naked detestation, were it not for the slightly weary resignation in his eyes. To his audience he essayed a charming smile, and resumed:
'I'm sorry! It's all these Danes, you know! You never actually meet one called "Hamlet", do you? And talking of Hamlet, I see you'll all be at Stratford-on-Avon—'
'I thought it was Stratford-upon-Avon,' chirruped a shrill, thin voice.
But by now Downes was getting into his stride: 'How good it is for us all in Oxford, Mrs, er—'
'Mrs Roscoe, sir. Mrs Janet Roscoe.'
'How good it is for Dr Kemp and Mrs Williams and myself to meet a scholar like you, Mrs Roscoe! I was just going to mention - only in passing, of course - that the Swan Theatre there, in my view . . .'
But everyone had seen the door open, and now looked with some puzzlement at the newcomer, a man none of them had seen before.
'Mrs Williams? Is there a Mrs Williams here?'
The said lady, still standing beside the drinks-table, no more than a couple of yards from the door, raised the index-finger of her non-drinking hand to signify her identity.
'Could I have a quiet word with you, madam?' asked Sergeant Lewis.
8
Madame, appearing to imbibe gin and It in roughly equal measures, yet manages to exude rather more of the gin than of the 'it'
(Hugh Sykes-Davies, Obiter Dicta)
Inside the Manager's office, situated at the head of the first flight of stairs, Morse found his attention almost immediately drifting towards the large drinks-cabinet which stood to the left of the high-ceilinged suite of rooms wherein Mr Douglas Gascoigne, a bespectacled, intelligent-looking man in his early forties, sought, and sought successfully, to sustain the high standards of service expected from his multi-starred establishment. Early photographs, cartoons, diplomas, framed letters, and a series of pleasing watercolours, lined the walls of the main office, above the several tables on which VDU screens, print-out machines, telephones, in- and out-trays, fax machines, and file-cases abstracted from surrou
nding shelves, vied with each other for a few square feet of executively justifiable space. As in the St John's Suite, the curtains were drawn, this time across the window behind Gascoigne as he sat at his desk, concealing the view of the Ashmolean facade upon which, though from a higher elevation, Mrs Laura Stratton had gazed so very briefly some three hours earlier.
'It's just' (Gascoigne was talking) 'that we've never had - well, not in my time - anyone actually dying in the hotel.'
'Some thefts, though, I suppose?'
'Yes, a few, Inspector. Cameras left around - that sort of thing. But never anything so valuable . . .'
'Wonder why she didn't leave it in your safe, sir?'
Gascoigne shook his head: 'We always offer to lock away anything like that but—'
'Insured, was it?'
'Mr Stratum' - the Manager lowered his voice and gestured to the closed door on his right - 'thinks probably yes, but he's still in a bit of a daze, I'm afraid. Dr Swain gave him some pills and he's still in there with one of his friends, a Mr Howard Brown.' And indeed Morse thought he could just about hear an occasional murmur of subdued conversation.
Lewis put his head round the door and signified his success in securing the appearance of Mrs Sheila Williams. Gascoigne got to his feet and prepared to leave the two detectives to it.
'As I say, just make use of any of our facilities here for the time being. We may have to keep coming in occasionally, of course, but—'
'Thank you, sir.'
So Gascoigne left his own office, and left the scene to Morse. And to Sheila Williams.
She was - little question of it - a most attractive woman, certainly as Morse saw her: mid-thirties (perhaps older?), with glistening dark-brown eyes that somehow managed to give the simultaneous impression of vulnerability, sensuality, and mild inebriation.
A heady mixture!
