the Jewel That Was Ours

by Colin Dexter

  Yet for all his own pleasure at tracing this evidence, Dixon could see little in his report which might have accounted for the look of extraordinary triumph he had seen on Morse's face when he reported in at 2.45 p.m.

  Sergeant (with a 'g') Lewis's own, self-imposed task would, he suspected, be a fairly tricky undertaking. But even here the gods appeared to be smiling broadly on Morse's enterprise. The distinguished personage known as the Coroner's Serjeant (with a 'j') had been willing to sacrifice what he could of his time if the interests of Justice (capital 'J') were really being served. Yet it had still taken the pair of them more than two hours to assemble and photocopy the material that Morse had so confidently predicted would be found. And was found.

  But by far the most difficult and tiresome task had been that of the telephone girls, who had made scores and scores of transatlantic calls that Tuesday morning, afternoon, and early evening: calls made to one address that led to calls to another address; calls to one friend that led to another friend or colleague; from one police department to another; one State to other States; calls for one set of records that referred to another set of records that led . . . ad apparently infinitum.

  'Couldn't it have waited?' Chief Superintendent Strange had asked, calling in briefly in mid-afternoon. 'Waited till tomorrow?'

  But Morse was a man who could never abide the incomplete; could never abide the not-knowing-immediately. One clue unfinished in a Listener puzzle, and he would strain the capacity of every last brain-cell to bursting point until he had solved it. And equally so, as now, in a murder case. Tomorrow was too far distanced for bis mind to wait for the last piece of evidence - a mind so ceaselessly tossing, as it had been ever since Lewis - wonderful Lewis! - had mentioned that seemingly irrelevant item in The Oxford Times. Those names!

  And it was Morse himself who had initiated the arrest of Mr Edward Stratton as he stepped off his plane in New York; Morse himself who had spoken with the aforementioned Stratton for forty-six minutes, seven seconds - as measured by the recently installed meter in the recently constituted Telephone Room at St Aldate's. But not even the penny-pinching Strange could have complained overmuch about the price that had been paid for the extraordinary information Morse had gleaned.

  It was Morse himself, too, who at 8.30 p.m. had called a halt to everything. He had not returned any fulsome gratitude to his staff for all the work they had put in during the day; but he always found it difficult to express his deeper feelings. However, he had returned all but three of the tourists' passports to the safe-keeping of the Manager at The Randolph - the latter just a fraction irked that it now appeared to be his own responsibility to return these passports to whatever location the departed tourists happened to find themselves in.

  At 9 p.m. Morse, hitherto that day most remarkably under-beered, made his way up through Cornmarket to the Chapters Bar of The Randolph. There were many times in Morse's life when he needed a drink in order to think. On occasion though (such as now), he needed a drink because he needed a drink. What's more, having left the Jaguar down in the police car-park, he was going to drink.

  And compulsively, happily, thirstily - he drank.

  One and a half hours later, as he still sat on a high stool at the bar, he looked down and saw the fingers of a beautifully manicured hand against his left arm, and felt the ghost of a touch of the softest breast against his shoulder. 'Can I buy you a drink, Inspector?' The voice was slighdy

  husky, slightly slurred, and more than slightly disturbing.

  Morse had no need to look round. He said, 'Let me buy you one, Sheila/

  'No! I insist.' She took his arm, gently squeezing it against herself, then pressed her lips - so full, so dry! - against a cheek that had been hurriedly ill-shaven some fourteen hours earlier.

  For the moment, Morse said nothing. The day that would soon be drawing to its close had been one of the most wonderful he had experienced: the theft, the murder, the link between the theft and the murder - yes, all now known. Well, almost known. And he'd solved it all himself. He'd needed help -yes! Help in crossing the 't's and barring the 7's and dotting the 'j's. Of course he had. Yet it had been his own vision, his own analysis, his own solution.

  His.

  'What are you doing here?' he asked.

  'Annual Dance. Lit and Phil Society. Bloody booring!'

  'You with a partner?'

  'You don't come to these do's without a partner.' 'So?'

  'So he kept trying to get a bit too intimate during the Veleta.'

  'Veleta? God! That's what I used to dance . . .' 'We're none of us getting much younger.' 'And you didn't want - you didn't want that?’ 'I wanted a drink. That's why I'm here.' 'And you told him . . .' '. . . to bugger off.'

  Morse looked at her now - perhaps properly for the first time. She wore a black dress reaching to just above her knees, suspended from her shoulders by straps no thicker than shoelaces; black stockings, encasing surprisingly slim legs, and very high-heeled red shoes that elevated her an inch or so above Morse as he stood up and offered her his stool. He smiled at her, with what seemed warmth and understanding in his eyes.

  'You look nappy,' she said.

  But Morse knew, deep down, that he wasn't really happy at all. For the last hour his progressively alcoholised brain had reminded him of the consequences of justice (small 'j'): of bringing a criminal before the courts, ensuring that he was convicted for his sins (or was it his crimes?), and then getting him locked up for the rest of his life, perhaps, in a prison where he would never again go to the WC without someone observing such an embarrassingly private function, someone smelling him, someone humiliating him. (And, yes, it was a him.) Humiliating him in that little paddock of privacy just outside the back of the house where he would try so hard to keep all that remained of his dignity and self-esteem.

  'I'm not happy,' said Morse.

  ‘Why not?'

  'G and T, is it?'

  'How did you guess?’

  'I'm a genius.’

  'I'm quite good at some things myself.' 'Yes?'

  'Do you want me to make you happy for tonight?' Her voice was suddenly more sober, more sharply etched - and yet more gentle, too.

  Morse looked at her: looked at the piled-up hair above her wistful face; looked down at the full and observably bra-less bosom; looked down at the taut stretch of black stocking between the knee and the thigh of her crossed right leg. He was ready for her, and she seemed to sense it.

  'I've got a wonderfully comfortable bed,' she whispered into his left ear.

  'So have I!' said Morse, oddly defensive.

  'But we wouldn't argue too much about that sort of thing, would we?' Sheila smiled and reached for her drink. 'Aren't you having another one?'

  Morse shook his head: ' "It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance." '

  'Do you know, I've never met anyone before who's quoted that thing correctly.'

  Perhaps she shouldn't have said it, for suddenly its implications stirred Morse to an irrational jealousy. But soon, as she linked her arm possessively through his, collected her coat from Cloaks, then steered him across towards the taxi-rank in St Giles', he knew that his lust for her had returned; and would remain.

  'I ought to make it quite clear to you, ma'am,' he murmured in the taxi, 'that any knickers you may be wearing may well be taken down and used in evidence.'

  For the first time in many days, Sheila Williams felt inordinately happy. And was to remain so - if truth is to be told - until the early dawn of the following day when Morse left her to walk slowly to his bachelor flat - only a short distance away up the Banbury Road - bareheaded in the beating rain which an hour since had obliquely streaked the windows of Sheila Williams's front bedroom.

  52

  Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame

  (Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway)

  Morse and Lewis arrived at the Chesterton Hotel in Bath at 10.35 a.m. the following morning. Morse had insisted on
travelling by what he called the 'scenic' route - via Cirencester -but, alas, the countryside was not appearing at its best: the golden days were gone, and the close-cropped fields where the sheep ever nibbled looked dank and uninviting under a sky-cover of grey cloud. Little conversation had passed between the two detectives until, an hour out of Oxford, Morse (looking, as Lewis saw him, still rather tired) had crossed those final 't's.

  'All a bit unusual, though, isn't it, sir?'

  'You think so?'

  'I do. About as unusual as a . . .' But Lewis found himself unable to dredge up the appropriate simile.

  ' "Unusual as a fat postman",' supplied Morse.

  'Really? Our postman looks as if he tips the scales at about twenty stone.'

  Morse inhaled deeply upon yet another cigarette, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and relapsed into the silence that was customary for him on any journey.

  Behind, in a marked police car, Sergeant Dixon sat beside his driver, a moderately excited PC Watson.

  'Drives pretty quick, don't he?' ventured the latter.

  ' 'Bout the only thing he does do quick, I reckon,' said Dixon.

  It seemed to Watson a cruel, unfair remark. And Dixon himself knew it was unfair, for a little while regretting having said it.

  * * *

  It had been forty-five minutes earlier when Dr Barbara Moule had parked her Fiesta at the Chesterton Hotel, finding John Ashenden waiting for her a little anxiously. The first part of her illustrated lecture was scheduled for 10-11 a.m., followed by a coffee break, and then further slides and questions from 11.30 to noon. Ashenden himself had carried the heavy projector to the Beau Nash Room at the rear of the hotel, where most of the tourists were now foregathering. The room was of a narrow, oblong shape, with the plastic chairs set out two on each side of the central gap in which, at the front, the projector was placed. Looking around, Ashenden noted yet again the readily observable fact that (doubtless like animals) tourists from very early on staked out their territories: find them sitting at one particular table for dinner and almost invariably, for breakfast next morning, you would find them sitting at the very same table; allocate them to particular seats in a coach on the first part of a journey, and as if by some proprietorial right the passengers would thereafter usually veer towards those selfsame seats. And the Beau Nash Room might just as well have been their luxury coach: twenty-three of them only for the minute, with Eddie Stratum now being held in custody by the New York Police, distanced by only a few yards, as it happened, from the mortal remains of his former wife; and with Sam and Vera Kronquist, one of the three married couples originally listed on the tour, still in their room on the second floor of the hotel -Sam watching a mid-morning cartoon on ITV, and Vera, fully dressed, lying back lazily against the pillows of their double bed, reading the previous February's issue of Country Life.

  'You won't forget, Birdy' (Birdy?) 'that you're supposed to be having a headache, will you?'

  His wife, not deigning to look up from the page, smiled to herself slightly. 'Nobody ain't coming in here, Sam - not if we leave that notice there on the door-narb.'

  On the front row of the Beau Nash Room, only one of the chairs was occupied - Number 1, if the chairs had been numbered, from left to right, 1,2,3,4 - the seat Janet Roscoe had invariably occupied on every single leg of the coach trip. Behind her the two seats were empty, a troublous reminder of where Eddie and Laura had sat side by side when the coach had first set off from Heathrow Airport. . . had first arrived at the eastern outskirts of Oxford.

  At the back of the room, solitary now, and perfectly prepared to be wholly bored for the next hour (or was it two?) sat Mr Aldrich. His interest in Roman remains was minimal, and in any case his ears (incipient otosclerosis, his personal physician had diagnosed) seemed to be filling up with thicker and thicker wads of cotton-wool each day. He would have liked to exchange a few words with Cedric Downes at Oxford - surely a man suffering from the same kind of trouble? But the opportunity had not arisen, and Aldrich had taken no initiative in effecting any introduction.

  Odd, really: Aldrich, with his increasing hearing problems, sitting right at the back of the class; and Mrs Roscoe, whose hearing was so extraordinarily acute, ever seated at the front. . .

  So be it!

  Three rows in front of Aldrich, on his left-hand side as he looked at the backs of their heads, sat Howard and Shirley Brown.

  'Hope these slides are better than your sister's lot on Ottawa.'

  'Hardly be wurse,' agreed Shirley, as Ashenden launched into a well-rehearsed eulogy of Dr Moule's incomparable pre-eminence in the field of Romano-British archaeology in Somerset - before walking to the entrance door at the rear, and turning off the lights.

  At 10.50 a.m., Aldrich looked across at the two men who had entered quiedy by the same door. Surprisingly, he was hearing Dr Moule quite loud and clear, for she had a firm and resonant voice. What's more, he thought, she was good; he wanted to hear what she was saying. And everybody thought she was good. Indeed, only three or four minutes into her talk, Shirley Brown had leaned across and whispered into Howard's ear: 'Better than Ottawa!'

  Dr Moule had been momentarily conscious, albeit with her back turned, of some silent addition to the audience, though giving this no further thought. But after she had finished the first part of her lecture; after slightly nodding her head to the generous applause; after the lights had gone up again; after Ashenden had said (as every chairman since Creation had said) how much everyone had enjoyed the talk and how grateful everyone was that not only had the distinguished speaker fascinated each and every one of them but also had agreed to answer any questions which he was absolutely sure everyone in the room was aching to put to such a distinguished expert in the field ... it was only then that Dr Moule was able to survey the two intruders. Sitting together on the back row: the one nearer the exit a burly-looking fellow, with a rather heavy, though kindly mien; and beside him a slimmer, clearly more authoritative man, with thinning hair and pale complexion. It was this second man who now asked the first, the last, question. And it was to this man that almost everyone now turned as the rather quiet, rather cultured, rather interesting, wholly English voice began to speak:

  'I was a Classic in my youth, madam, and although I have always been deeply interested in the works of the Roman poets and the Roman historians I have never been able to summon up much enthusiasm for Roman architecture. In fact the contemplation of a Roman brick seems to leave me cold - quite cold. So I would dearly like to know why it is that you find yourself so enthusiastic . . .'

  The question was balm and benison to Barbara's ears. But then the questioner had risen to his feet.

  '. . . yes, it would be extremely interesting for all of us to learn your answer. But not - not for the moment, please!'

  The man now walked down the central aisle and halted beside the projector, where he turned and spoke. Was it to her? Was it to her audience?

  'I'm sorry to interrupt. But the people here know who I am - who we are. And I shall have to ask you, I'm afraid, to leave the next half hour to Lewis and to me.'

  Dr Barbara Moule almost smiled. She'd picked up the literary allusion immediately, and enjoyed those few seconds during which the man's intensely blue eyes had held her own.

  It was Ashenden who went upstairs to knock on the door of Room 46.

  'But didn't Sam here explain? I have a headache.' 'I know. But it's the police, Mrs Kronquist.' 'It is?'

  'And they want everybody to be there.' 'Oh my Gard!'

  53

  And summed up so well that it came to far more than the Witnesses ever had said

  (Lewis Carroll, The Barrister's Dream)

  The beautiful if bemused Dr Moule, invited to stay if she so wished, took a seat in the front row. The man spoke, she thought, more like a don than a detective.

  'Let me outline the case, or rather the two cases, to you all. First, a jewel was stolen from Mrs Laura Stratton's room in The Randolph. At the same t
ime - whether just before or just after the theft - Mrs Stratton died. What is medically certain is that she died of coronary thrombosis: there is no question of any foul play, except of course if the heart attack was brought on by the shock of finding someone in her room stealing the jewel she had come all the way from America to hand over to the Ashmolean Museum, or more specifically to Dr Theodore Kemp on behalf of the Museum. I tried to find out -1 may be forgiven - who would benefit from the theft of the jewel, and I learned from Mr Brown here' (heads swivelling) 'that Mrs Stratton was always slightly mysterious - ambivalent, even -about her own financial affairs. So I naturally had to bear in mind the possibility that the jewel had not been stolen at all by any outside party, but "caused to disappear", let us say, by the Strattons themselves. It had been the property of Mrs Stratton's first husband, and it was he who had expressed the wish, as stated in his will, that it be returned to England to find a permanent place in the Ashmolean Museum with its counterpart, the Wolvercote Buckle. As a piece of treasure of considerable historical importance, the Wolvercote Tongue was of course beyond price. In itself, however, as an artefact set with precious stones, it was, let us say, "priceable", and it was insured by Mrs Stratton for half a million dollars. I am not yet wholly sure about the specific terms of the policy taken out, but it appears that in the eventuality of the jewel being stolen, either before or after her death, the insurance money is payable to her husband - and is not to be syphoned off into some trust fund or other. At any rate, that is what Eddie Stratton believed - believes, rather - for I learned most of these facts yesterday from Stratton himself, who is now back in America.' Morse paused a moment and looked slowly around his audience. 'I don't need, perhaps, to underline to you the temptation that faced Mr Stratton, himself a virtually penniless man, and a man who knew -for such seems to be the case - that his wife had run through almost all of the considerable money she had inherited from her first husband.'