by Colin Dexter
That meant, Ashenden continued, that there would be something of an uncomfortable gap between about 11.15 and 12.30; and he was very glad to be able to announce that Mrs Williams and Mr Downes and Dr Kemp had agreed to hold an impromptu question-and-answer session on Oxford: Town and Gown. This would be in the Ball Room, beginning at 11.30 a.m. To the afternoon, then.
Ashenden exhorted his audience once again to consult the original sheet, confirming that, apart from the 6.30 p.m. presentation, the scheduled programme would go ahead as stated. Perhaps it would be sensible, though, to start the afternoon groups at 2.45 p.m., please, at which time Dr Kemp would meet his group immediately outside the main entrance to the Ashmolean; Mr Downes his group at the Martyrs' Memorial; Mrs Williams her group in the foyer of the hotel. Was that all clear? And would they all please try if possible to keep to the group they had first opted for? There was a nice little balance at the moment; not that he would want to stop anyone changing, of course . . .
Again the touring party appeared to find the arrangements wholly unexceptionable, and Ashenden came to his last point. Would everyone please change the time given on their sheets for dinner: this was now brought forward ('Right, Mrs Roscoe?') from 8 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Three of the Trustees of the Ashmolean would be joining them, and he would assume unless he was informed to the contrary that everyone would be coming to this final dinner. It had been optional, he knew that; but in view of. . .
In the crowded hotel foyer, ten minutes later, Mrs Roscoe failed to decrease her decibel level as she called across to the Bacon Man from Sacramento: 'They tell me we sit in those cars two at a time, side by side, Phil. . .' 'Yeah! OK, Janet. Yeah, OK.'
16
As you go through, you see the great scientists, scholars, and statesmen; the thinkers, writers, actors, monarchs, and martyrs who are part of Oxford's history. By passing this doorway you have a glimpse of the people whom Oxford has moulded, and many of whom have, in their turn, gone on to help mould the world
(Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, The Oxford Story)
At 9.50 a.m. Cedric Downes led the way as the tourists trooped down the front steps of The Randolph, turned right, and moved across the road. Here, just by the Martyrs' Memorial, Downes stopped.
'Here we have . . .'He pointed to the heavy iron sign on which the letters magdalen street were painted in white, and the group gathered around him. 'Everyone - nearly everyone - knows that this is pronounced "Maudlin" Street, as if it were a sentimental, tearful sort of street. That's what the bus drivers call it. Now out in East Oxford we've got a Magdalen Road, and the same bus drivers call that one "M-a-g-dalen" Road. I only mention this, my friends, to show you that life here in Oxford is never quite so simple as it may appear. Off we go!'
'I didn't know that, Phil,' said Janet Roscoe quietly. 'Very interesting.'
The group progressed to Broad Street, where Downes brought them all to a stop again, this time immediately outside the Master's Lodge at Balliol. 'Here - on your left here - the plaque on the wall - this is where Latimer and Ridley, and later Cranmer, were burned at the stake in 1555 and 1556. Not difficult to remember the date, is it? You can see the actual spot, the cross there - see it? - right in the middle of the road.'
A little silence fell on the group: those with the faculty of a visual imagination watching as the long, grey beards began to sizzle, and then the ankle-length shirts suddenly leap up in a scorching mantle of fire, and others hearing perhaps those agonised shrieks as the faggot-fired flames consumed the living flesh . . . For a few moments it seemed that everyone was strangely affected by Cedric Downes's words. Perhaps it was the way he'd spoken them, with a sad and simple dignity . . .
'Here we are then! No more walking to do at all.' He pointed immediately across the way to the triple-arched entry of the three-storeyed building that housed The Oxford Story.
That same evening Miss Ginger Bonnetti (not 'Ginger', but christened Ginger) wrote a longish letter to her married sister living in Los Angeles, one Mrs Georgie (as christened!) Bonnetti, who had married a man named Angelo Bonnetti. (Morse would have had great joy in learning of this, for he gloried in coincidences; but since Miss Ginger Bonnetti was destined to play no further role in the theft of the Wolvercote Tongue, he never did.)
In the Oxford Story Gift Shop, the group had stayed quite some time, examining aprons, busts, chess-sets, Cheshire cats, cufflinks, games, gargoyles, glassware, jewellery, jigsaws, jugs, maps, pictures, postcards, posters, stationery, table-mats, thimbles, videos - everything a tourist could wish for.
'Gee! With her feet, how Laura would have loved that ride!' remarked Vera Kronquist. But her husband made no answer. If he were honest he was not wholly displeased that Laura's feet were no longer going to be a major factor in the determination of the tour's itineraries. She was always talking about lying down; and now she was lying down. Permanently.
'Very good,' said Phil Aldrich as he and Mrs Roscoe and the Browns emerged through the exit into Ship Street.
'But the figures there - they weren't nearly as good as the ones in Madame Tussaud's, now were they?'
‘No, you're quite right, Janet,' said Howard Brown, as he gently guided her towards Cornmarket and back towards The Randolph.
When, five days later, Mrs Georgie Bonnetti received her sister's interesting letter, she was a little disappointed (herself a zealous Nonconformist) that with neither cartridge from the double-barrelled rifle had her sister succeeded in hitting the saintly founder of Methodism. (The unbeliever Morse would have been rather more concerned about the other four mis-spellings.)
17
Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them
(Frank Moore Colby)
After his in situ briefing outside Balliol, Downes left the scene of the barbarous burnings and strolled thoughtfully along to Blackwells. An hour and a quarter (Ashenden had suggested) for The Oxford Story; then back to The Randolph where he and Sheila Williams and Kemp (the man would always remain a surname to Downes) had agreed to hold the question-and-answer session with the Americans. Downes sometimes felt a bit dubious about 'Americans'; yet like almost all his colleagues in Oxford, he often found himself enjoying actual Americans, without those quotation marks. That morning he knew that as always some of their questions would be disturbingly naive, some penetrating, all of them honest. And he approved of such questions, doubtless because he himself could usually score a pretty point or two with answers that were honest: quite different from the top-of-the-head comments of some of the spurious academics he knew. People like Kemp.
After spending fifty minutes browsing through the secondhand books in Blackwell's, Downes returned to The Randolph, and was stepping up the canopied entrance when he heard the voice a few yards behind him.
'Cedric!'
He turned round.
'You must be deaf! I called along the road there three or four times.'
'I am deaf - you know that.'
'Now don't start looking for any sympathy from me, Cedric! What the hell! There are far worse things than being deaf.'
Downes smiled agreement and looked (and not without interest) at the attractively dressed divorcee he'd known on and off for the past four years. Her voice (this morning, again) was sometimes a trifle shrill, her manner almost always rather tense; but there were far worse things than . . .
'Time for a drink?' asked Sheila - with hope. It was just after eleven.
They walked together into the foyer and both looked at the noticeboard in front of them:
HISTORIC CITIES TOUR ST JOHN'S SUITE 11.30 a.m.
'Did you hear me?' continued Sheila. 'Pardon?'
'I said we've got almost half an hour before—'
'Just a minute!' Downes was fixing an NHS hearing-aid to his right ear, switching it on, adjusting the volume - and suddenly, so clearly, so wonderfully, the whole of the hotel burst into happily chattering life. 'Ba
ck in the land of the living! Well? I know it's a bit early, Sheila, but what would you say about a quick snifter? Plenty of time.'
Sheila smiled radiantly, put her arm through his, and propelled him through to the Chapters Bar: 'I would say "yes", Cedric. In fact I think I would say "yes" to almost anything this morning; and especially to a Scotch.'
For a few delightful seconds Downes felt the softness of her breast against his arm, and perhaps for the first time in their acquaintanceship he realised that he could want this woman. And as he reached for his wallet, he was almost glad to read the notice to the left of the bar: 'All spirits will be served as double measures unless otherwise requested.'
They were sitting on a beige-coloured wall-settee, opposite the bar, dipping occasionally into a glass dish quartered with
green olives, black olives, cocktail onions, and gherkins - when Ashenden looked in, looked around, and saw them.
'Ah - thought I might find you here.'
'How is Mr Stratton?' asked Sheila.
'I saw him at breakfast - he seems to be taking things remarkably well, really.'
'No news of... of what was stolen?'
Ashenden shook his head. 'Nobody seems to hold out much hope.'
'Poor Theo!' pouted Sheila. 'I must remember to be nice to him this morning.'
'I, er,' Ashenden was looking decidedly uncomfortable: 'Dr Kemp won't be joining us this morning, I'm afraid.'
'And why the hell not?’ This from a suddenly bristling Sheila.
'Mrs Kemp rang earlier. He's gone to London. Just for the morning, though. His publisher had been trying to see him, and with the presentation off and everything—'
'That was this evening’ protested Downes.
'Bloody nerve!' spluttered Sheila. 'You were here, John, when he promised. Typical! Leave Cedric and me to do all the bloody donkey-work!'
'He's getting back as soon as he can: should be here by lunchtime. So if - well, I'm sorry. It's been a bit of a disappointment for the group already and if you . . .'
'One condition, John!' Sheila, now smiling, seemed to relax. And Ashenden understood, and walked to the bar with her empty glass.
The tour leader was pleased with the way the session had gone. Lots of good questions, with both Sheila Williams and Cedric Downes acquitting themselves magna cum laude, especially Downes, who had found exactly the right combination of scholarship and scepticism.
* * *
It was over lunch that Sheila, having availed herself freely of the pre-luncheon sherry (including the rations of a still-absent Kemp), became quite needlessly cruel.
‘Were you an undergraduate here - at Arksford, Mr Downes?'
'I was here, yes. At Jesus - one of the less fashionable colleges, Mrs Roscoe. Welsh, you know. Founded in 1571.'
'I thought Jesus was at Cambridge.'
Sheila found the opening irresistible: 'No, no, Mrs Roscoe! Jesus went to Bethlehem Tech.'
It was a harmless enough joke, and certainly Phil Aldrich laughed openly. But not Janet Roscoe.
'Is that what they mean by the English sense of humour, Mrs Williams?’
'Where else would he go to do carpentry?' continued Sheila, finding her further pleasantry even funnier than her first, and laughing stridently.
Downes himself appeared amused no longer by the exchange, and his right hand went up to his ear to adjust an aid which for the past few minutes had been emitting an intermittent whistle. Perhaps he hadn't heard . . .
But Janet was not prepared to let things rest. She had (she knew) been made to look silly; and she now proceeded to make herself look even sillier. 'I don't myself see anything funny in blasphemy, and besides they didn't have colleges in Palestine in those days.'
Phil Aldrich laid a gently restraining hand on Janet's arm as Sheila's shrill amusement scaled new heights: 'Please don't make too much fun of us, Mrs Williams. I know we're not as clever, some of us, as many of you are. That's why we came, you know, to try to learn a little more about your country here and about your ways.'
It was a dignified little speech, and Sheila now felt desperately ashamed. For a few seconds, a look of mild regret gleamed in her slightly bloodshot eyes, and she had begun to apologise when immediately next to them, on a table below the window overlooking the Taylor Institution, the phone rang.
It was 12.35 p.m. when Mrs Celia Freeman, a pleasantry spoken and most competent woman, took the call on the telephone exchange at the rear of the main Reception area. Only approximately 12.35 p.m., though. When later questioned (and questioned most earnestly) on this matter, she had found on her note-pad that both the name of the caller ('Dr Kemp') and the name of the person called ('Mr Ashenden') had been jotted down soon after a timed call at 12.31 p.m. And it was at 12.48 p.m., exactly, that John Ashenden phoned back from the St John's Suite to Reception to order a taxi to meet the train from Paddington arriving 15.00, and to pick up a Dr Theodore Kemp at Oxford Station.
18
In the police-procedural, a fair degree of realism is possible, but it cannot be pushed too far for fear that the book might be as dull as the actual days of a policeman
(Julian Symons, Bloody Murder)
It was not until 10 a.m. that same morning that Morse had recovered the Jaguar; 10.15 a.m. when he finally put in an appearance at Kidlington HQ.
'Hope you had a profitable evening, Lewis?'
'Not particularly.'
'Not arrested the thief yet?'
Lewis shook his head. He'd already put in three hours' work, trying to sort out and collate various statements, and he was in no mood to appreciate the sarcasm of a man who had seemingly lost most of the little enthusiasm he'd started with.
'Well?' asked Morse.
'Nothing, really. These Americans - well, they seem a nice lot of people. Some of 'em not all that sure about exactly where they were - but you'd expect that, wouldn't you? Settling in, drinking tea, unpacking, having a wash, trying to get the telly going—'
'Studying the Fire Instructions, I hope.'
'Doubt it. But as far as I could see, they all seemed to be telling the truth.'
'Except one.'
'Pardon, sir?'
'Ashenden was lying.'
Lewis looked puzzled: 'How can you say that?' 'He said he had a look round Magdalen.'
‘So?'
'He told me all about it - he was virtually reciting phrases from the guide-book’ 'He is a guide.'
'Pages 130 - something of Jan Morris's Oxford. Word for word - nearly.'
'He'd probably swotted it up for when he was going round with the group.'
'Magdalen's not on the programme.'
'But you can't just say he's lying because—'
'Ashenden's a liar!'
Lewis shook his head: it was hardly worth arguing with Morse in such a mood, but he persisted a little longer. 'It doesn't matter though, does it? If Ashenden decided to go and look round Magdalen—'
'He didn't,' said Morse quietly.
'No?'
'I rang the Porters' Lodge there this morning. The College was closed to visitors all day: they're doing some restoration in the cloisters and the scaffolders were there from early morning. No one, Lewis - no one - was allowed in Magdalen yesterday except the Fellows, by order of the Bursar, an order the Head Porter assured me was complied with without a single exception - well only a fellow without a capital "f" who brought a stock of superfine toilet paper for the President.'
'Oh!' Lewis looked down and surveyed the sheets on his desk, neatly arranged, carefully considered - and probably wasted. They might just as well be toilet paper, too. Here was Morse making a mockery of all his efforts with just a single phone call. 'So he was telling us lies,' he said, without enthusiasm.
'Some of us spend most of our lives telling lies, Lewis.'
'Do you want me to bring him in?'
'You can't arrest a man for telling lies. Not those lies, anyway. He's probably got a fancy bit of skirt along Holywell Street somewhere. Just as well h
e was there, perhaps.'
'Sir?'
'Well, it means he wasn't in The Randolph pinching handbags, doesn't it?'
'He could have pinched it before he went out. Mrs Stratton was one of the first up to her room, and Ashenden was there for a good ten minutes or so—'
'What did he do with it?’
'We ought to have searched the rooms, sir.'
Morse nodded vaguely, then shrugged his shoulders.
'We wasting our time?' asked Lewis.
'What? About the handbag? Oh yes! We shall never find that - you can safely put your bank balance on that.'
'I wouldn't lose all that much if I did,' mumbled the dispirited Lewis.
'Has Max rung?'
'No. Promised to, though, didn't he?'
'Idle sod!' Morse picked up the phone and dialled the lab. 'If he still says it was just a heart attack, I think I'll just leave this little business in your capable hands, Lewis, and get back home.'
'I reckon you'd be as happy as a sandboy if he tells you she was murdered.'
But Morse was through: 'Max? Morse. Done your homework?'
'Massive coronary.'
'Positive?'
Morse heard the exasperated expiration of breath at the other end of the line; but received no answer.
'Could it have been brought on, Max - you know, by her finding a fellow fiddling with her powder-compact?'
‘Couldn't say.'
'Someone she didn't expect - coming into her room?' 'Couldn't say.'
'No sign of any injury anywhere?' ‘No.'
'You looked everywhere?' 'I always look everywhere.'
'Not much help, are you.'
'On the contrary, Morse. I've told you exactly what she died of. Just like the good Dr Swain.'
But Morse had already put down the phone; and five minutes later he was driving down to North Oxford.
Lewis himself remained in the office and spent the rest of the morning rounding off the dull routine of his paper work. At 12.50 p.m., deciding he couldn't emulate the peremptory tone that Morse usually adopted with commissionaires, he took a number 21 bus down to St Giles’, where he alighted at the Martyrs' Memorial and began to walk across to The Randolph. Sheila Williams was stepping out briskly, without glancing behind her, up the left-hand side of St Giles', past the columns of the Taylorian and the front of Pusey House, before being lost to the mildly interested gaze of Sergeant Lewis. And as the latter turned into Beaumont Street, with the canopy of The Randolph immediately in front of him, he stopped again. A man walked down the steps of the hotel, looking quickly back over his shoulder before turning left and scurrying along the street towards Worcester College, where he turned left once more at the traffic lights, and passed beneath the traffic sign there announcing 'British Rail'. In normal circumstances, such an innocent-seeming occurrence would hardly have deserved a place in the memory. But these were not normal circumstances, and the man who had just left The Randolph in such haste was Eddie Stratton.
