the Jewel That Was Ours

by Colin Dexter

  So that was that, really. That set the 'parameters' (the buzz-word at HQ recently) for the crime. No other portraits in the gallery.

  Not really.

  No!

  Or were there?

  What about the husband? Morse had always entertained a healthy suspicion of anyone found first on the scene of a crime; and Eddie Stratton had been a double-first: the first to report both the death of his wife, and the theft of the jewel. But any man who finds his wife dead - dead! - surely he's not going to . . . Nobody could suspect that.

  Except Morse.

  And what about - what about the most unlikely, improbable, unthinkable . . . Unthinkable? Well, think about it, Morse! What about the wife herself: Mrs Laura Stratton? Could she have been responsible for the disappearance of the jewel? But why? Was it insured? Surely so! And doubdess for a hefty sum. All right, the thing was unsellable, unbuyable; the thing was useless - except, that is, as a link in a cultural continuum in a University Museum. Or else - yes! - or else as an insurance item which in terms of cash was worth far more lost than found; and if the Strattons were getting a bit hard up it might not have been so much if it were lost as when. And what - it was always going to hit Morse's brain sooner or later - what if the thing had never been there to get lost in the first place? Yes, the possibility had to be faced: what if the Wolvercote Tongue had never been inside the handbag at all? (Keep going, Morse!) Never even left America?

  Morse already found himself in the Summertown shopping centre; and it was some five minutes later, as he came to his bachelor flat just south of the A40 Ring Road, that the oddest possibility finally struck him: what if the Wolvercote Tongue didn't exist at all? But surely there would have been all sorts of descriptive and photographic pieces of evidence, and so on? Surely such an authority as Dr Theodore Kemp could never have been so duped in such a matter? No! And he'd almost certainly flown over to see it, anyway. No! Forget it! So Morse almost forgot it, and let himself into his flat, where he played the first two movements of the Bruckner No. 7 before going to bed.

  He woke up at 2.50 a.m., his mouth very dry. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom, where he drank a glass of water; and another glass of water. In truth, water -a liquid which figured little during Morse's waking life - was his constant companion during the early hours of almost every morning.

  14

  It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

  (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

  The bachelor Morse had only the wraith-like, gin-ridden spectre of a lush divorcee to share his pillow that night, unlike the male speakers scheduled for the following day's Historic Cities of England programme, both of whom, when Morse had made his first visit to the bathroom, were dutifully asleep beside their respective spouses and in their own homes - homes in North Oxford, separated by only about a quarter of a mile.

  The traveller who heads north from the centre of Oxford may take, at St Giles' Church, either the fork which leads up the Woodstock Road, or the right-hand fork, the Banbury Road, which leads after a mile or so to Summertown. Here, just past the shopping area, he will come to the new, yellow-bricked premises of Radio Oxford on his left; and then, almost immediately on his right, the first of the four roads - Lonsdale, Portland, Hamilton, Victoria - which stretch between the main Banbury Road and the River Cherwell (pronounced by most of the locals 'Charwell'). At all hours, each of these roads is suitable only for one-way traffic because of the continuous lines of parked cars on either side. The majority of houses here, built in the 1920s and 30s, are without integral garages; and many an amateurishly painted sign, alongside the edges of the pavement or on boards beside front gates, urges with courtesy, warns with threats of trespass, or simply begs with a pathetic

  'Please', those motorists who commute to Summertown not to park their wretched vehicles there. In vain! For the life-blood along these roads ever flows, as it were, through arteries clogged with atherosclerosis.

  But Dr Kemp no longer drives a car . . .

  Any person meeting for the first time those two distinguished academics, Theodore Kemp and Cedric Downes, would be fairly sure to come to the following judgements. Kemp would perhaps appear to merit such epithets as artistic, flamboyant, high-brow, selfish, aloof, rakish - the list could go on and on, in much the same direction; and this impression would be formed largely from a certain arrogance in the pale features, an affected upper-class diction, the almost invariable silk shirt and bow-tie, the casual elegance of the light-beige lightweight suits which he favoured in both summer and winter to bedeck his slim and small-boned figure. And what of Downes? Certainly not by any means such a clear-cut impression: rather languid in movement, somewhat overweight, a not-quite-top-echelon-public-school-man, a slightly bored expression round the mouth, the promise of a humorous twinkle in the eyes, a semi-florid colouring, a heavyish suit with trousers sorely in need of a press, longish and lank brown hair, and a careless, unpretentious drawl in a voice which still bore the flat traces of his Midlands origins. Everything about him qualified; everything 'rather', 'quite', 'somewhat'. And finally - most importantly, maybe - the obvious impression that he was going a bit, more than a bit, deaf. For increasingly noticeable was his habit of shepherding any interlocutor to his right-hand side; his frequent cupping of the hand behind his right ear; and occasionally his use of an NHS hearing-aid, recently provided for his rapidly developing otosclerosis.

  Which things being so, it might be assumed that Kemp was probably having all the fun that was going in life in general, and in Oxford in particular; whilst the seedier, world-weary Downes was slowly running out of steam, and like as not

  running out of luck, too. Yet such an assumption would not be wholly correct: in fact it would be some considerable way distant from the truth.

  Kemp's life had not blossomed as once it had promised. After fathering (as was rumoured) almost as many illegitimate offspring as almighty Zeus himself, and after successfully disclaiming most of the responsibility for such excessive multiplication of the species, he had married a rather plain, though neatly figured woman, named Marion (with an 'o'), whose parents were rumoured to be fairly wealthy. Then, now two years since, he had managed to crash his BMW in such a way that his not-wholly fair but fully pregnant wife had lost both her child and the use of her lower limbs, whilst he himself had received only a broken collar-bone, with a few slivers of glass embedded in his back. But at least Marion had survived: the driver of the other car involved, a thirty-five-year-old married woman, had been instantly killed. Definitive responsibility for the accident could not be fully determined, since the coroner found some of the evidence confusing, and far from competently reported. Yet Kemp had been drinking: and the charge he faced, a charge resulting in a fine and a three-year disqualification, had been one of driving whilst under the influence of alcohol, not that of reckless or of dangerous driving. Some of those who knew Kemp well, most of his University colleagues, and all of those who could never abide the man, considered him to have been extremely fortunate. Such disapprobation had probably accounted for the refusal of his college to elevate his status as a post-graduate researcher (or 'graduate researcher', as the pedantic Morse would have preferred) to that of the fellowship which had suddenly fallen vacant. Six weeks after this humiliation, he had been appointed to the post of Keeper of Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval Antiquities at the Ashmolean. He now lived in a ground-floor flat in Cherwell Lodge, a brick-built block along Water Eaton Road - the latter stretching from the bottom of Victoria Road into the Cutteslowe Estate. The enforced move, made to accommodate his wheel-chaired wife, had taken place at exactly the wrong time in the housing market, and his property was presently worth little more than a quarter of the price likely to be fetched by that of his fellow-lecturer, the one who had temporarily forgotten the name of a Danish architect.

  At the age of forty, five years previously, Cedric Downes had married Lucy, an en
gagingly attractive woman, eleven years his junior, fair-skinned and blonde, fully-figured and fully-sexed - though with a tendency towards a nervousness of manner on occasion - and with an IQ which was rated quite high by those meeting her for the first time, but which usually dipped a little upon more intimate acquaintance. Downes, a mediaeval historian, was a Fellow of Brasenose, and lived in a large detached house at the far end of Lonsdale Road, its beautifully tended back garden stretching down to the banks of the River Cherwell. . .

  In the back bedroom of number 6 Cherwell Lodge, Marion Kemp lay supine. Marion Kemp had to lie supine. It would have been beneficial to the two of them, certainly would have guaranteed longer periods of sleep, if after the accident they had abandoned the double bed and settled for twin beds - perhaps even for separate rooms. Surprisingly, however, her husband would hear nothing of such a suggestion, and at first she had felt pleased and, yes!, flattered that he still wished to lie each night beside her fruitless body. And even on that Thursday night some of the hatred which for so long had been slowly coalescing in her soul had perhaps abated minimally . .

  As he had promised, he had been home at 10 p.m., had clearly not been drinking much at all, had brought her a cup of Ovaltine and a digestive biscuit, and quite definitely had not been with that bitchy, boozy, whoreson Williams woman!

  Unlike Lucy Downes, Marion Kemp did not convey any immediate impression of a lively mind. Yet those who knew her well (a diminishing group) were always aware of a shrewd and observant intelligence. Earlier she had watched

  Theo carefully as he had spoken to her about what had occurred that evening, and she had been wholly conscious of his own colossal frustration and disappointment. But in truth she could not find herself caring two milk-tokens about the loss of the Wolvercote Tongue; nor indeed find herself unduly distressed about the death of some bejewelled old biddy from the far side of America. Yet she could find no sleep in the small hours of that Friday morning, her mind considering many things: above all the growing suspicion that the man asleep beside her was looking now beyond that bloody Williams woman . . .

  And Marion thought she knew exactly where.

  Cedric Downes had come home rather later than usual that Thursday evening. He had been one of the last to give the police an account of his movements from 4.30 to 5.15 p.m. ('Is this really necessary, officer?') God! He'd had a tutorial at that time! And now, when finally he went through into the bedroom, all was very quiet, with Lucy lying motionless along her own side of the bed. He nestled gently against the contours of her body, hoping that she might sense his need for her, but realising almost immediately that she was distanced, and would not be conjoined. He turned on to his right-hand side, as now he usually did when seeking sleep. With his left ear becoming so deaf, he would consciously press his right ear deep into the pillow, thereafter hearing virtually nothing of the nightly groans of the central-heating pipes, or the inexplicable creaking of the wood, or the rushing of the wind in the towering pine trees. Briefly his mind dwelt on the evening's events; briefly dwelt on his loathing for Kemp; but within a few minutes he could feel the tug of the warm tide and soon he was floating down to the depths of slumber.

  Not so his wife, still breathing quietly and rhythmically, and not so much as twitching a lumbrical muscle.

  But very much asleep that night was Sheila Williams, the bedroom window wide open in her dingily stuccoed semi in the lower reaches of Hamilton Road, a house (as it happened) almost exactly equidistant from that of Kemp and that of Downes.

  At 4.45 a.m. Morse made his third visit to the bathroom - and suddenly he remembered. He went into his living room, looked along his book-shelves, extracted a volume, consulted its index, turned to the pages given, and read through the entry he had sought. His head nodded a few degrees, and his dry mouth widened into a mildly contented smile.

  He was asleep when Lewis rang the doorbell at 8.30 a.m.

  15

  The best-laid schemes o' mice and men

  Gang aft a-gley,

  And lea'e us nought but grief and pain

  For promised joy

  (Robert Burns, To a Mouse)

  Few English families living in England have much direct contact with the English Breakfast. It is therefore fortunate that such an endangered institution is perpetuated by the efforts of the kitchen staff in guest houses, B & Bs, transport cafes, and other no-starred and variously starred hotels. This breakfast comprises (at its best): a milkily-opaque fried egg; two rashers of non-brittle, rindless bacon; a tomato grilled to a point where the core is no longer a hard white nodule to be operated upon by the knife; a sturdy sausage, deeply and evenly browned; and a slice of fried bread, golden-brown, and only just crisp, with sufficient fat not excessively to dismay any meddlesome dietitian. That is the definitive English Breakfast. And that is what the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, the Russians, the Turks . . . and the English, also, with their diurnal diet of Corn Flakes and a toasted slice of Mother's Pride - that is what they all enjoy as much as almost anything about a holiday.

  The Americans, too, though there are always exceptions.

  Janet Roscoe leaned across the table, lowered the volume switch on her abnormally loud voice, and spoke to Sam and Vera Bronquist, the third of the married couples originally registered on the tour.

  'I just don't know how he' - her sharp eyes singled out Phil Aldrich, seated at the next table - 'how he can even think of eating - that.’

  The vehement emphasis accorded to this last word might perhaps have suggested that Janet's co-worshipper in Sacramento's Temperance Hall of Christian Scientists was devouring a plateful of raw maggots or the roasted flesh of sacrificial infants, instead of his slim rasher of streaky bacon. But Sam Kronquist, though content with his croissant, was happily tolerant about the tastes of others:

  ‘We're only on vaycation once a year, you know, Janet. So perhaps we can forgive him?'

  Or perhaps not; for Janet made no reply, and in silence completed her own modest breakfast of naturally juiced grapefruit segments, and one slice of unbuttered toast smeared over with diabetic marmalade. She was just finishing her cup of black de-caffeinated coffee when John Ashenden, after his peripatetic trip around the other tables, came to tell the three of them that there would be a short meeting in the St John's Suite at 9.15 a.m. in order to fit the coming day's events into a schedule that would have to be slightly revised . . .

  'If you refer,' began Ashenden, 'to your original sheets' (he held up a copy of the yellow sheets distributed the previous day) 'you will see that quite a few amendments, sadly, will have to be made to it. But the tour will quite definitely be going ahead as normal - or as normal as it can do in the circumstances. Eddie - Eddie Stratton - wants this, wants it to go ahead, and he believes that Laura would have wished that, too. So . . . First of all then: our visit to The Oxford Story, scheduled for ten-thirty. This has been put back to ten a.m. Make a note, please: ten a.m. instead of—'

  'Don't you mean brought forward, Mr Ashenden?'

  Yes, probably Ashenden did mean exactly what Mrs Roscoe said. And he beamed a smile towards her, in fact welcoming rather than resenting the interruption: '—has been brought forward to ten a.m. There's been a cancellation of a Spanish block-booking and it will help the people there if we take the earlier spot. Yes? No problems?'

  Thereupon Ashenden duly distributed an extra sheet to each of his rather subdued audience:

  The Oxford Story

  It was here in Oxford that Lewis Carroll created the immortal 'Alice'; here that King Charles I held his Civil War Parliament; here where Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake; here where Penicillin was developed. So take a seat aboard a flying desk - Ride the Spiral! - and travel backwards through time to the earliest days of Oxford University when Friar Roger Bacon (1214-1294) sat in his rooms overlooking Folly Bridge and . . . But let Oxford tell its own story, as you sit comfortably in your car and witness whole centuries of fascinating men and glorious events. (W
heel-chair access and toilet facilities for the disabled.)

  There being no murmurs of demurral, even from the customary quarter, Ashenden proceeded to extol the virtues of such a visit: to whisk oneself back to the origins of the University in the twelfth century, and thence be spiralled to the present day - seated, foot-happily - with the wonderful bonus, betweenwhiles, of listening to a commentary on the passing pageants by no less a personage than Sir Alec Guinness himself. The visit had in fact figured as an 'extra' in the published brochure, but in view of the, er, the sad, sad events . . . Well, the company had agreed that the £2 supplement should now be waived.

  That's a very kindly gesture, sir,' volunteered Phil Aldrich, and several of his fellow tourists audibly concurred.

  Sam Kronquist, suffering from incipient prostate trouble, found himself wondering whether that final parenthesis signified a lack of toilet facilities for those persons as yet unwilling to label themselves 'disabled'; but he held his peace.