the Jewel That Was Ours

by Colin Dexter

  'There we are, then!' said John Ashenden. ' It was twenty minutes later, and Morse had decided (insisted) that his temporary HQ in the Lancaster Room should be moved to more permanent quarters in the Chapters Bar Annexe. He had questioned Ashenden in detail for several minutes about the crucial phone call with Kemp, and asked him to write down in dialogue-form the exchanges as far as he could recall them. Ashenden himself now sat back in his armchair, crossed his lanky legs, and watched with slightly narrowed eyes as Morse took the sheet from him and proceeded to read the reconstructed conversation:

  'You write fairly well,' said Morse, after reading through the sheet for a second time, and still refraining from pointing out the single grammatical monstrosity. 'You ought to try your hand at some fiction one of these days.'

  'Fact, Inspector - it's not fiction. Just ask that nosy Roscoe woman if you don't believe me! She was sitting near the phone and she misses nothing.’

  Morse smiled, if a little wanly, and conceded the trick to his opponent. Yet he sensed that those next few minutes, after

  Ashenden had finished speaking with Kemp, might well have been the crucial ones in that concatenation of events which had finally led to murder; and he questioned Ashenden further.

  'So you called over to Mr Downes?'

  'I went over to Mr Downes.'

  'But he didn't want to talk to Dr Kemp?'

  'I don't know about that. He was having trouble with his hearing-aid. It kept whistling every now and then.'

  'Couldn't he have heard without it?'

  'I don't know. Perhaps not. The line was a bit faint, I remember.'

  Morse looked across at Lewis, whose eyebrows had risen a self-congratulatory millimetre.

  'Perhaps you only thought it was Dr Kemp, sir?' continued Morse.

  But Ashenden shook his head firmly. 'No! I'm ninety-nine per cent certain it was him.'

  'And Sheila - Mrs Williams - she spoke to him then?'

  'Yes. But you put it most accurately, Inspector. She spoke to him. And when she did, he put the phone down. So he didn't actually speak to her - that's what she told me anyway.'

  Oh!

  'We've still only got his word for it,' said Lewis, after Ashenden had gone. 'Like we said, sir, if it wasn’t Kemp, we'd have a different time-scale altogether, wouldn't we? A whole lot of alibis that wouldn't wash at all.'

  Morse nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, I agree. If Kemp was already dead at twelve-thirty . . .'

  'There was somebody else who heard him, sir.'

  'Was there?'

  'The woman on the switchboard who put the call through.' 'She wouldn't have known the voice, Lewis! She gets thousands of calls every day—' 'She'd be a very busy girl if she got a hundred, sir.' Morse conceded another trick. 'Fetch her in!'

  * * *

  Celia Freeman was of far greater help than either Morse or Lewis could have wished. Especially Morse. For just as he had begun to survey the picture from a wholly different angle, just as he thought he espied a gap in the clouds that hitherto had masked the shafts of sunlight -the switchboard-operator dashed any hope of such a breakthrough with the simple statement that she'd known Theodore Kemp very well indeed. For five years she had worked at the Ashmolean before moving across the street to The Randolph; and for the latter part of that time she had actually worked for Dr Kemp, amongst others. In fact, it had been Dr Kemp who had written a reference for her when she'd changed jobs.

  'Oh yes, Inspector! It was Dr Kemp who rang - please believe that! He said, "Celia? That you?" or some such thing.'

  'Mr Ashenden said that the line was a bit faint and crackly.'

  'Did he? You do surprise me. It may be a little faint on one or two of the extensions, but I've never heard anyone say it was crackly. Not since we've had the new system.'

  'He never said it was "crackly",' said Lewis after she had gone.

  'Do you think I don't know that?' snapped Morse.

  'I really think we ought to be following up one or two of those other leads, sir. I mean, for a start there's . . .'

  But Morse was no longer listening. One of the most extraordinary things about the man's mind was that any check, any set-back, to some sweet hypothesis, far from dismaying him, seemed immediately to prompt some second hypothesis that soon appeared even sweeter than the first.

  '. . . this man Brown, isn't there?'

  'Brown?'

  'The continental-seven man.'

  'Oh yes, we shall have to see Brown, and hear whatever cock-and-bull story he's cooked up for us.' 'Shall I go and get him, sir?'

  'Not for the minute. He's on the walkabout with Mr Downes.'

  'Perhaps he's not,' said Lewis quietly.

  Morse shrugged his shoulders, as if Brown's present whereabouts were a matter of indifference. 'At least Mr Downes is on the walkabout, though? So maybe we should take the opportunity . . . What's Downes's address again, Lewis?'

  31

  There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play

  (Max Beerbohm, Mainly on the Air)

  It was just before mid-day when Lewis braked sedately outside the Downes's residence at the furthest end of Lonsdale Road.

  'Worth a few pennies, sir?' suggested Lewis as they crunched their way to the front door.

  'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, Lewis. Just ring the bell!'

  Lucy Downes was in, and soon stood at the door: an attractive, slim, fair-haired woman in her early thirties, dressed in a summerish cotton suit of pale green, with a light-beige mackintosh over her left arm. Her eyes held Morse's for a few seconds - eyes that seemed rather timid, yet potentially mischievous, too - until her mouth managed a nervous little 'Hullo'.

  'Good morning, madam!' Lewis showed his ID card. 'Is Mr Downes in, please? Mr Cedric Downes?'

  Lucy looked momentarily startled: 'Oh! Good Lord! He's not here, I'm afraid, no! He's been showing some Americans round Oxford this morning - and he's got a lecture this afternoon, so . . . Er, sorry! Can I help? I'm his wife.'

  'Perhaps you can, Mrs Downes,' interposed Morse. 'We spoke earlier on the phone, if you remember? May we, er, come in for a little while?'

  Lucy glanced at her watch. 'Yes! Yes, of course! It's just' - she held the door open for them - 'I'm just off to - whoops!'

  Morse had knocked his shin against a large suitcase standing just inside the door, and for a moment he squeezed his eyes tight, the whiles giving quiet voice to a blasphemous imprecation.

  'Sorry! I should have - that wretched case! It's bitten me twice this morning already. Sorry!'

  She had a pleasing voice, and Morse guessed that her gushy manner was merely a cover for her nervousness.

  Yet nervousness of what?

  'I'm just on my way,' continued Lucy. 'London. Got to change some curtains. A friend recommended a reasonably priced shop near King's Cross. But you really can't trust any of the stores these days, can you? I quite specifically ordered French pleats, and then - oh, sorry! Please sit down!'

  Morse looked around him in the front living room, slightly puzzled to find the carpet, the decoration, the furniture, all that little bit on the shabby side, with only the curtains looking bright and new, and (in Morse's opinion) classy and tasteful. Clearly, in any projected refurbishment of the Downes's household, Lucy was starting with the curtains.

  'I'd offer you both coffee but the taxi'll be here any time now. Cedric usually takes me to the station - ' she giggled slightly, 'I've never learned to drive, I'm afraid.'

  'It's purely routine, madam,' began Morse, sitting down and sinking far too far into an antiquated, unsprung settee. 'We just have to check up everything about yesterday.'

  'Of course! It's awful, isn't it, about Theo? I just couldn't believe it was true for a start—’

  'When exactly was that?' Morse asked his question in a level tone, his eyes, unblinking, never leaving hers.

  She breathed in deeply, stared intently at the intricate pattern o
n the carpet, then looked up again. 'Cedric rang up from The Randolph just before he came home. He said - he said he shouldn't know himself really, but one of the people there, the tour leader, told him and told him not to say anything, and Cedric' - she breathed deeply again - 'told me, and told me not to say anything.'

  'Bloody Ashenden!' muttered Morse silendy.

  'His poor wife! How on earth—?'

  'How many other people did you tell?'

  'Me? I didn't tell anyone. I haven't been out of the house.'

  Morse glanced at the phone on the table beside the settee, but let the matter rest. 'Dr Kemp tried to talk to your husband yesterday lunchtime.'

  'I know. Cedric told me. He came back here.'

  ‘What time was that?'

  'One-ish? Quarter-past one - half-past?'

  'He came back for his spare hearing-aid?'

  Lucy was nodding. 'Not only that, though. He picked up some notes as well. I forget what they were for. Well, I don't really forget. I never knew in the first place!' She smiled nervously, and (for Lewis) bewitchingly, and (for Morse) hearteatingly. 'Anyway he just grabbed some papers - and he was off again.'

  'With his spare hearing-aid, too?'

  She looked up at Morse with her elfin grin. 'Presumably.'

  'I thought the NHS only issued one aid at a time.'

  'That's right. But Cedric's got a spare - two spares in fact. Private ones. But he always votes Labour. Well, he says he does.'

  'He's not all that deaf, is he, Mrs Downes?'

  'He pretends he's not. But no, you're right, he's not that bad. It's just that when he talks to people he gets a bit frightened. Not frightened about not knowing the answers but frightened about not hearing the questions in the first place.'

  'That's very nicely put, Mrs Downes.' 'Thank you! But mat's what he says. I'm only copying him.'

  'What time did he get home last night?' 'Elevenish? Just after? But he'll be able to tell you better than me.'

  The door bell rang; and in any case the three of them had already heard the steps on the gravel.

  'Shall I tell him to wait a few minutes, Inspector? He's a bit early.'

  Morse rose to his feet. 'No. I think that's all. I -unless Sergeant Lewis here has any questions?' ‘What are French pleats?'

  She laughed, her teeth showing white and regular. 'Like that!' She pointed up to the curtains on the front window. 'It's the way they're gathered in at the top, Sergeant.'

  'Oh! Only the missus keeps on to me about getting some new curtains—'

  'I'm sure, Lewis, that Mrs Downes will be able to arrange a private consultation with Mrs Lewis at some convenient point. But some other time, perhaps? She does have a train to catch - her taxi driver is waiting impatiently on the threshold . . .'

  'Sorry, sir!'

  Lucy smiled again, especially at Sergeant Lewis, as he carried her heavy suitcase out to the taxi.

  'You know when you're coming back, Mrs Downes?' Lewis asked.

  'Seven o'clock. Just before - or is it just after?'

  'Would you like me to ask your husband to meet you? We shall be seeing him.'

  'Thank you. But he is coming to meet me.'

  She climbed aboard, and the two policemen stood and watched as the taxi drove off into Lonsdale Road.

  'Lovely woman, that!'

  For the moment Morse made no reply, staring back at the house with a slightly puzzled air. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, Lewis! Exodus, chapter something.'

  'I didn't mean anything like that. You've got a one-track mind, sir!'

  'You are perfecdy correct, Lewis: one track only. My mind wants to know what the theft of the Wolvercote Tongue has got to do with the murder of Theodore Kemp. And I would be very surprised if that "lovely woman" of yours doesn't know a little more than she's prepared to admit - even to you!'

  32

  Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses in order to justify his logic

  (Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground)

  Of a sudden, on the way back down the Banbury Road, Morse decided to view Parson's Pleasure by daylight. So Lewis drove down to the bottom of South Parks Road, where he was ushered through into the University Parks by a policeman on duty at the entrance to the single-track road which led down to the bathing area. Here the whole of the site was lightly cordoned off, and one of the Park Attendants was talking to (the newly promoted) Sergeant Dixon as Morse and Lewis moved alongside. The Park had closed at 4.30 p.m. the previous day, the detectives learned, yet it was not unknown for nimble adolescents and desperate adults to gain access to the Parks from half-a-dozen possible places. And the number of expended condoms discovered in and around the bathing-area suggested that not only ingress and egress, but congress too, were not unusual there, with the cover of the night, and the cover of the cubicles, combining to promote this latter activity - even when frost was forecast. But the cubicle in which the yellow sheet had been found could reveal no further secrets, and all hope had early been abandoned of learning anything from the scores of footprints which had criss-crossed the grassy area since the murder. Two divers had gone down into the river during the morning, but had found no item of relevance; and perhaps would not have recognised its relevance had they found it. Certainly no clothes, Sergeant Dixon asserted.

  Morse walked over to the water's edge, the river-level high against the banks, and there he dipped his fingers in: not quite so cold as he would have thought. Dixon's mention of clothes had pulled his mind back to the discovery of Kemp's body, and he asked Lewis much the same question he had asked Max, receiving much the same answers.

  'But I don't think he'd have been swimming here, sir.'

  'Not unknown, Lewis, for people to bathe naked in this stretch.'

  'Too chilly for me.'

  'What about sex?'

  'You don't have to take all your clothes off to do that.'

  'No? Well, I'll take your word for it. I'm not an expert in that area myself.' He stood pondering the waters once more. 'Do you ever have any rows with your wife?'

  ' "Not unknown", as .you would say, sir.'

  'Then you patch things up?'

  ‘Usually.'

  ‘When you've patched things up, do you feel even closer together than before?'

  Lewis was feeling puzzled now, and a little embarrassed at the course of the conversation: 'Probably a good thing now and then - clears the air, sort of.'

  Morse nodded. 'We know of two people who had a row recently, don't we?'

  'Dr Kemp and Mrs Williams? Yes! But she's got a whacking great alibi, sir.'

  'A much better alibi than Stratum, certainly.'

  ‘I could try to check on Stratton: Didcot - the pub he mentioned - Browns Restaurant.'

  Morse looked dubious: 'If only we knew when Kemp was murdered! Nobody's got an alibi until we know that.'

  'You think Mrs Williams might have killed him?'

  'She might have killed him all right. But I don't think she could have dumped him. I'd guess it was a man who did that.'

  'He wasn't very heavy, Kemp, though. Not much fat on him.'

  'Too heavy for a woman.' 'Even a jealous woman, sir?'

  'Yes, I know what you mean. I keep wondering if Kemp had found some other floozie - and Sheila Williams found out about it.'

  ' "Hell hath no fury ..." '

  'If you must quote, quote accurately, Lewis! "Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned." '

  'Sorry! I never did know much about Shakespeare.'

  'Congreve, Lewis.'

  'He seems to have been a bit of a ladies' man—'

  'And if he couldn't make love to his wife because she was paralysed from the waist down . . .'

  'I got the feeling she wasn't too worried about that, perhaps. It was Mrs Williams she had it in for.'

  'She might have forgiven him if it had
been anyone else, you mean?'

  'I think - I think you ought to go to see her, sir.'

  'All right,1 snapped Morse. 'Give me a chance! We've got these Americans to see, remember? Aldrich and Brown - find out where they were yesterday afternoon. Where they say they were.'

  Morse turned to look at the waters once more before he left, then sat silently in the passenger-seat of the police car as Lewis had a final word with Sergeant Dixon. In the side panel of the door he found a street map of Oxford, together with a copy of Railway Magazine; and opening out the map he traced the line of the River Cherwell, moving his right index-finger slowly northwards from the site marked Bathing Pool, up along the edge of the University Parks, then past Norham Gardens and Park Town, out under the Marston Ferry Road; and then, veering north-westerly, up past the bottom of Lonsdale Road . . . Portland Road . . . Hamilton Road . . . Yes. A lot of flood water had come down from the upper reaches of the Cherwell, and a body placed in the river, say, at Lonsdale Road . . .

  And suddenly Morse knew where the body had been launched into the river and into eternity; knew, too, that if Lucy Downes could so quickly arouse the rather sluggish libido of a Lewis, then it was hardly difficult to guess her effect upon the lively carnality of a Kemp.

  Lewis had climbed into the driving seat, and seen Morse's finger seemingly stuck on the map, at the bottom of Lonsdale Road.

  'He couldn't have done it, sir - not Downes. He was with the Americans all the time - certainly till after we found the body. If anybody's got an alibi, he has.'

  'Perhaps it was your friend Lucy Downes.'

  'You can't think that, surely?'

  'I'm not thinking at all - not for the minute,' replied Morse loftily. 'I am deducing - deducing the possibilities. When I've done that, I shall begin to think.''

  'Oh!'

  'And get a move on. We can't keep the Americans here all day. We're going to have to let 'em get on their way. Most of 'em!'

  So Lewis drove back from Parson's Pleasure, back on to the Banbury Road, down St Giles', and then right at the lights into Beaumont Street. And all the time Chief Inspector Morse sat, less tetchy now, staring at the street map of Oxford.