The Jewel That Was Ours

CHAPTER ONE

THE RED-SEAL Brut Imperial Moët & Chandon stood empty on the top of the bedside table to her left; empty like the champagne glass next to it, and like the champagne glass on the table at the other side of the bed. Everything seemed empty. Beside her, supine and still, hands behind his head, lay a lean, light-boned man in his early forties, a few years older than herself. His eyes were closed, and remained closed as she folded back her own side of the floral-patterned duvet, rose quickly, put her feet into fur-lined slippers, drew a pink silk dressing gown around a figure in which breasts, stomach, thighs, were all a little over-ripe perhaps — and stepped over to peer through the closed curtains.

Had she consulted her Oxford University Pocket Diary, she would have noticed that the sun was due to set at 16.50 that early Wednesday evening in late October. The hour had gone back the previous week-end, and the nights, as they said, were pulling in fast. She had always found difficulty with the goings back and forth of the clock — until she had heard that simple little jingle on Radio Oxford: Spring Forward/Fall Back. That had pleased her. But already darkness had fallen outside, well before its time; and the rain still battered and rattled against the window-panes. The tarmac below was a glistening black, with a pool of orange light reflected from the street lamp opposite.

When she was in her junior school, the class had been asked one afternoon to paint a scene on the Thames, and all the boys and girls had painted the river blue. Except her. And that was when the teacher had stopped the lesson (in midstream, as it were) and asserted that young Sheila was the only one of them who had the natural eye of an artist. Why? Because the Thames might well be grey or white or brown or green or yellow — anything, in fact, except those little rectangles of Oxford blue and Cambridge blue and cobalt and ultramarine into which all the wetted brushes were dipping. So, would all of them please start again, and try to paint the colours they saw, and forget the postcards, forget the atlases? All of them, that is, except Sheila; for Sheila had painted the water black.

And below her now the street was glistening black.

Yes.

Everything seemed black.

Sheila hugged the thin dressing gown around her and knew that he was awake; watching her; thinking of his wife, probably — or of some other woman. Why didn't she just tell him to get out of her bed and out of her life? Was the truth that she needed him more than he needed her? It had not always been so.

It was so very hard to say, but she said it: 'We were happy together till recently, weren't we?'

'What?' The tongue tapped the teeth sharply at the final 't'

She turned now to look at him lying there, the moustache linking with the neatly trimmed Vandyke beard in a darkling circle around his mouth — a mouth she sometimes saw as too small, and too prim, and, yes, too bloody conceited!

'I must go!' Abruptly he sat up, swung his legs to the floor, and reached for his shirt.

'We can see each other tomorrow?' she asked softly.

'Difficult not to, won't it?' He spoke with the clipped precision of an antique pedagogue, each of the five 't's articulated with pedantic completion. With an occasional lisp, too.

'I meant — afterwards.'

'Afterwards? Impossible! Impothible! Tomorrow evening we must give our full attention to our American clients, must we not? Motht important occasion, as you know. Lucky if we all get away before ten, wouldn't you say? And then—'

'And then you must go home, of course.'

'Of course! And you know perfectly well why I must go home. Whatever your faults, you're not a fool!'

Sheila nodded bleakly. 'You could come here before we start.'

'No!'

'Wouldn't do much harm to have a drink, would it? Fortify ourselves for—'

'No!'

'I see.'

'And it's healthy for the liver and kindred organs to leave the stuff alone for a while, uh? Couple of days a week? Could you manage that, Sheila?'

He had dressed quickly, his slim fingers now fixing the maroon bow-tie into its usual decadent droop. For her part, she had nothing further to say; nothing she could say. She turned once again towards the window, soon to feel his hand on the back of her shoulders as he planted a perfunctory kiss at the nape of her neck. Then the door downstairs slammed. Miserably she watched the top of the black umbrella as it moved along the road. Then she turned off the bedside lamp, picked up the champagne bottle, and made her way down the stairs.

She needed a drink.

Dr. Theodore Kemp strode along swiftly through the heavy rain towards his own house, only a few minutes' walk away. He had already decided that there would be little, if any, furtherance of his affair with the readily devourable divorcee he had just left. She was becoming a liability. He realised it might well have been his fault that she now seemed to require a double gin before starting her daily duties; that she took him so very seriously; that she was demanding more and more of his time; that she was prepared to take ever greater risks about their meetings. Well, he wasn't. He would miss the voluptuous lady, naturally; but she was getting a little too well-padded in some of the wrong places.

Double chin. double gin.

He'd been looking for some semblance of love — with none of the problems of commitment; and with Sheila Williams he had thought for a few months that he had found it. But it was not to be: he, Theodore Kemp, had decided that! And there were other women — and one especially, her tail flicking sinuously in the goldfish bowl.

Passing through the communal door to the flats on Water Eaton Road, whither (following the accident) he and Marion had moved two years earlier, he shook the drenched umbrella out behind him, then wiped his sodden shoes meticulously on the doormat. Had he ruined them, he wondered?

CHAPTER TWO

MUCH LATER THAT same evening, with the iron grids now being slotted in from bar-top to ceiling, John Ashenden sat alone in the University Arms Hotel at Cambridge and considered the morrow. The weather forecast was decidedly brighter, with no repetition of the deluge which earlier that day had set the whole of southern and eastern England awash (including, as we have seen, the city of Oxford).

'Anything else before we close, sir?'

Ashenden usually drank cask-conditioned beer. But he knew that the quickest way to view the world in a rosier light was to drink whisky; and he now ordered another large Glenfiddich, asking that this further Touch of the Malt be added to the account of the Historic Cities of England Tour.

It would help all round if the weather were set fairer; certainly help in mitigating the moans amongst his present group of Americans:

— too little sunshine

— too much food

— too much litter

— too early reveilles

— too much walking around (especially that!)

Not that they were a particularly complaining lot (except for that one woman, of course). In fact, by Ashenden's reckoning, they rated a degree or two above average. Twenty-seven of them. Almost all from the West Coast, predominantly from California; mosdy in the 65–75 age-bracket; rich, virtually without exception; and fairly typical of the abcde brigade — alcohol, bridge, cigarettes, detective-fiction, ecology. In the first days of the tour he had hoped that 'culture' might compete for the 'c' spot, since after joining the ranks of the non-smokers he was becoming sickened at seeing some of them lighting up between courses at mealtimes. But it was not to be.

The downpour over Cambridge that day had forced the cancellation of trips to Grantchester and the American War Cemetery at Madingley; and the change of programme had proved deeply unpopular — especially with the ladies. Yes, and with Ashenden himself, too. He had duly elected himself their temporary cicerone, pointing neck-achingly to the glories of the late-Gothic fan-vaulting in King's; and then, already weary-footed, shuffling round the Fitzwilliam Museum to seek out a few of the ever-popular Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

'They have a far better collection in the Ashmolean, Mr. Ashenden. Or so I've read. William Holman Hunt, and and Mill-ais.'

'You'll be able to judge for yourself tomorrow, won't you?' Ashenden had replied lightly, suspecting that the doom-laden lady had forgotten (never known, perhaps) the Christian names of a painter she'd pronounced to rhyme with 'delay'.

It had irked Ashenden that the Cambridge coach company would have to be paid in full for the non-outings that day. It had irked him even more that he had been obliged to forgo the whole of the afternoon in order to enlighten and entertain his ageing charges. He was (he knew it) a reasonably competent courier and guide. Yet in recent years he had found himself unable to cope properly without a few regular breaks from his round-the-clock responsibilities; and it had become his policy to keep his afternoons completely free whenever possible, though he had never fully explained the reasons for this to anyone.

In November 1974 he had gone to Cambridge to take the entrance examination in Modern Languages. His A-level results had engendered not unreasonable optimism in his comprehensive school, and he had stayed on for a seventh term to try his luck. His father, as young John knew, would have been the proudest man in the county had his son succeeded in persuading the examiners of his linguistic competence. But the son had not succeeded, and the letter had dropped on to the doormat on Christmas Eve:

From the Senior Tutor, Christ's College, Cambridge

21.12.74

Dear Mr. Ashenden,

After giving full and sympathetic consideration to your application, we regret that we are unable to offer you a place at this college. We can understand the disappointment you will feel, but you are no doubt aware how fiercely competition for places

There had been a huge plus from that brief time in Cambridge, though. He had stayed for two nights, in the Second Court at Christ's, in the same set of rooms as a fellow examinee from Trowbridge: a lanky, extraordinarily widely-read lad, who apart from seeking a scholarship in Classics was anxious to convert the University (or was it the Universe?) to the self-evident truths of his own brand of neo-Marxism. John had understood very little of it all, really; but he had become aware, suddenly, of a world of scholarship, intelligence, imaginative enthusiasm, sensitivity — above all of sensitivity — that he had never known before in his comprehensive school at Leicester.

On their last afternoon together, Jimmy Bowden, the Trotskyite from Trowbridge, had taken him to see a double-bill from the golden age of the French cinema, and that afternoon he fell in love with a sultry, husky-voiced whore as she crossed her silk-clad legs and sipped her absinthe in some seedy bistro. It was all something to do with 'the synthesis of style and sexuality', as Jimmy had sought to explain, talking into the early hours. and then rising at six the following morning to stand outside Marks & Spencer to try to sell the Socialist Worker.

A few days after being notified of his own rejection, Ashenden had received a postcard from Jimmy — a black and white photograph of Marx's tomb in Highgate Cemetery:

The idiots have given me a major schol — in spite of that Greek prose of mine! Trust you've had your own good news. I enjoyed meeting you and look forward to our first term together — Jimmy.

He had never replied to Jimmy. And it was only by chance, seven years later, that during one of his Oxford tours he'd met a man who had known Jimmy Bowden.

After gaining his pre-ordained First in both parts of the Classical Tripos, Jimmy had been awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford to study early Etruscan epigraphy; and then, three years later, he had died of Hodgkin's disease. He had been an orphan (as events revealed) and been buried in Oxford's Holywell Cemetery, amongst many dead, but once pre-eminent, dons — only some twenty feet or so, as Ashenden learned, from the grave of Walter Pater. Yet though Jimmy had died, some small part of his legacy lived on — for John Ashenden had for many years subscribed to several specialist film magazines, printed in the UK and on the Continent, for cinema buffs such as he himself had soon become. Exactly where and when the degeneration had set in (if, indeed, 'degeneration' it were) John Ashenden could not be all that sure.

Born in 1956, John had not grown up amidst the sexually repressive mores of his own father's generation. And once he started to work (immediately after school), started to travel, he had experienced little sense of guilt in satisfying his sexual curiosities by occasional visits to sauna clubs, sex cinemas, or explicit stage shows. But gradually such experiences began to nourish rather than to satisfy his needs; and he was becoming an inveterate voyeur. Quite often, at earlier times, he had been informed by his more experienced colleagues in the travel business (themselves totally immune, it appeared, from any corrupting influences) that the trouble with pornography was its being so boring. But was it?

From his first introduction, the squalid nature of his incipient vice had been borne upon him — groping his way like a blind man down a darkened aisle of a sleazy cinema, the Cockney voice still sounding in his ears: 'It's the real fing 'ere, sir, innit? No messin' about — nuffin like that — just straight inta fings!' And it disturbed him that he could find himself so excited by such crude scenes of fornication. But he fortified his self-esteem with the fact that almost all the cinemas he attended were fairly full, probably of people just as well adjusted as himself. Very soon, too, he began to understand something of that 'synthesis' that Jimmy had tried to explain to him — the synthesis of style and sexuality. For there were people who understood such things, with meetings held in private dwellings, the High Priest intoning the glorious Introit: 'Is everybody known?' That Ashenden had been forced to miss such a meeting of initiates that afternoon in Cambridge had been disappointing. Very disappointing, indeed.

But the next stop was Oxford.

CHAPTER THREE

'ARKSFORD? THIS IS ARKSFORD?'

Seated on the nearside front seat of the luxury coach, John Ashenden glanced across at the diminutive septuagenarian from California: 'Yes, Mrs. Roscoe, this is Oxford.' He spoke rather wearily, yet wholly without resentment. Hitherto little on the Historic Cities of England Tour (London — Cambridge — Oxford — Stratford — Bath — Winchester) had appeared unequivocally satisfactory to the well-read, eager, humourless (insufferable!) Mrs. Roscoe; and yet as he looked out of his own side-window Ashenden could sympathise with that lady's disappointment. The eastern stretch of the A40 could hardly afford the most pleasing approach to the old University City; and as the coach slowly moved, one car-length at a time, towards the Headington roundabout, a litter-strewn patch of ill-kempt grass beside a gaudily striped petrol station lent little enchantment to the scene.

The tour party — eighteen women, nine men (three registered husband-and-wife combinations) — sat back in their seats as the coach drove past the sign for 'City Centre' and accelerated for a few miles along the featureless northern section of the Ring Road, heading for the Banbury Road roundabout.

For some reason Mrs. Laura Stratton was ill-at-ease. She re-crossed her legs and now massaged her left foot with her right hand. As agreed, it would be Eddie who would sign the forms and the Visitors' Book, and then identify the luggage and tip the porter — while she would be lying in a hot herbal bath and resting her weary body, her weary feet.

'Gee, I feel so awful, Ed!'

'Relax, honey. Everything's gonna be OK.' But his voice was so quiet that even Laura had difficulty in picking up his words. At sixty-six, four years younger than his wife, Eddie Stratton laid his hand briefly on the nylon-clad left foot, the joints of the toes disfigured by years of cruel arthritis, the toe-nails still painted a brightly defiant crimson.

'I'll be fine, Ed — just once I get in that bairth.' Again Laura switched legs and massaged her other foot again — a foot which like its partner had until recently commanded the careful ministrations of the most expensive chiropodist in Pasadena.

'Yeah!' And perhaps someone else on the coach apart from his wife might have noticed Eddie Stratton's faint smile as he nodded his agreement.

The coach had now turned down into the Banbury Road, and Ashenden was soon into his well-rehearsed commentary: '. and note on each side of the road the cheerful orange-brick houses, built in the last two decades of the nineteenth century when the dons in the University — there, look! — see the date? — 1887. '

Immediately behind Ashenden sat a man in his early seventies, a retired civil engineer from Los Angeles, who now looked out of his window at the string of shops and offices in Summertown: banks, building societies, fruiterers, hairdressers, housing agents, newsagents, wine shops — it could almost have been back home, really. But then it was back home, decided Howard Brown.

Beside him, Shirley Brown was the second wife who had seen a smile upon a husband's lips — a smile this time of wistful satisfaction; and suddenly she felt a sharp regret.

'Howard?' she whispered. 'Howard! I am glad — you know I am — glad we booked the tour. Really I am!' She laid her right arm along his long thigh and squeezed it gently. 'And I'm sorry I was such' (pianissimo) 'such an ungrateful bitch last night.'

'Forget it, Shirl — forget it!'

But Howard Brown found himself wishing that for a little while at least his wife would perpetuate her sullen ill-humour. In such a mood (not infrequent) she presented him with the leeway he needed for the (not infrequent) infidelities of thought and deed which he could never have entertained had she exhibited a quarter of the affection he had known when they'd agreed to marry. But that was in 1947—forty-three years ago — before she'd ever dreamed of checking his automobile mileage, or scrutinising the postmarks on his private mail, or sniffing suspiciously at him after his coming home from the office.

'. and here' (Ashenden was in full and rather splendid spate) 'we see the Ruskin influence on domestic architecture during that period. You see — there! — on the left, look! — the neo-Gothic, mock-Venetian features. And here, on the left again, this is Norham Gardens, with the famous University Parks lying immediately behind. There! You see the iron gates? The Parks are one of the greatest open spaces in Oxford — still, even now, liable to be closed to the public at the whim of the University authorities — unless, of course, you get to know how to sneak in without being noticed by the keepers at the main entrance.'

'And to sneak out again, surely, Mr. Ashenden?'

For once, one of Mrs. Roscoe's inevitable interruptions was both pertinent and good-humoured, and her fellow passengers laughed their light-hearted approval.

Howard Brown, however, had been quite unaware of the exchange. He was craning his neck to look across at the Keeper's Lodge; and as he did so, like Mole, he sensed and smelled his old home territory, and inside him something long dormant woke into sudden life. He felt his eyes welling up with nostalgic tears, before fiercely blowing his nose and looking obliquely at his wife once more, gratified to observe that her lips had once again settled into their accustomed crab-crumpet discontent. She suspected nothing, he was virtually certain of that.

As the coach drew into St Giles', the sky was an open blue, and the sunlight gleamed on the cinnamon-coloured stone along the broad tree-lined avenue. 'Here we are, in St Giles'.' (Ashenden slipped into over-drive now.) 'You can see the plane trees on either side of us, ablaze with the beautifully golden tints of autumn — and, on the left here, St. John's College — and Balliol just beyond. And here in front of us, the famous Martyrs' Memorial, modelled on the Eleanor Crosses of Edward the First, and designed by Gilbert Scott to honour the great Protestant martyrs — Cranmer and Latimer and, er. '

'Nicholas Ridley,' supplied Mrs. Roscoe, as the coach turned right at the traffic lights and almost immediately pulled in on the left of Beaumont Street beneath the tall neo-Gothic facade of The Randolph Hotel.

'At last!' cried Laura Stratton, with what might have been the relief of a prisoner learning of a late reprieve.

In retrospect, it would have seemed an odd coincidence (though not an important one) that the middle-aged man housed in a nondescript block of flats at the top of the Banbury Road had been looking out from his second-floor double-glazed windows as the long luxury coach carrying Ashenden's group had passed by that late afternoon. Inside, a recently renewed needle glided through the well-worn grooves of the Furtwängler recording of Götterdämmerung; but the man's mind was more closely concentrated with an almost physical hurt on the greasy wrappings discarded by the previous night's fish-and-chip brigade as they'd walked homeward from the Chicken Barbecue in Summertown.

CHAPTER FOUR

ROY, CONCIERGE OF the five-star Randolph Hotel, a cheerful, florid-faced man of sixty, had been on duty since midday, and had, as always, been fully apprised by the Reception Manager of the scheduled afternoon arrivals — especially, of course, of the biggish bus-load of American tourists at 4.30 p.m. Roy, who had started with the hotel as a page-boy in 1945—forty-five years since — quite liked the Americans. Not that he'd ever wished to fly over there for a holiday or anything drastic like that; but they were a nice lot, usually, the Yanks; friendly, communicative, generous. And although an incorrigibly biased patriot himself, he had recently begun to query the automatic superiority of his own countrymen, particularly that night the previous month when he'd returned on a Euro-Ferry after an abortive 0–0 draw between England and Holland.

It was five minutes before schedule that from his cubby-hole immediately inside the main entrance he saw the patrician coach pull slowly in beside the white canopy, flanked by a pair of elegant lamp-posts, at the front of Oxford's premier hotel. And a few seconds later he was standing at the top of the steps outside, in bis yellow-piped blue uniform, beaming semi-beatifically, and ready to greet the new arrivals with an appropriate degree of that 'warmth' attested to on several separate pages of the hotel's technicolour brochure. As he stood there, the flags — Union Jack, EEC, USA — fluttered lightly above him in the afternoon breeze. He enjoyed his work — always had; in fact seldom referred to it as 'work' at all. Seldom, too, did anything much go wrong in an establishment so happily and so predictably well-ordered as The Randolph. Seldom indeed.

But once in a while?

Yes, once in a while.

Phil Aldrich, a small, mournful-visaged dolichocephalic senior citizen (from California, too) moved from his habitual and lonely seat on the back row of the coach and came to sit next to Mrs. Roscoe; his hearing was not quite what it had been and he wanted to know what was going on. The Deputy Manager had appeared on the coach itself to welcome them all and to announce that tea — or coffee, if preferred — was immediately available in the St. John's Suite on the first floor; that all bedrooms were now ready for occupancy and that every hotel facility from telephone to trouser-press was at his guests' disposal forthwith; that even as he spoke their baggage was being unloaded, counted, checked, and portered to the appropriate rooms. It would save a good deal of time, the Deputy Manager concluded, if everyone would fill in now, on the coach, the Guest Registration Cards.

With appreciative nods observable on each side of the gangway, Ashenden duly distributed the Welcome Trusthouse Forte forms, already completed for the sections dealing with Company, Next Destination, Settlement of Account, Arrival, Departure, and Nationality. Only remaining for the tourists to fill in were the four sections headed Home Address, Telephone, Passport Number, and Signature.

Phil expressed an unqualified approval: 'Gee! That's what I'd say was pretty darned efficient, Janet.'

For once Mrs. Roscoe was unable to identify any obvious flaw in the procedures, and, instead, appeared to concentrate her thoughts upon the perils of the unpredictable future.

'I do hope the people here realise the great difference between Vegetarian and Vegan—'

'Janet! This is one of the finest hotels in the UK—'

But Ashenden's voice now cut across their conversation:

'So! If we can all. St. John's Suite, St. John's—that's on the first floor, just up the main staircase — tea or coffee — right away. I know some of you will just want to settle in and have a wash and. So if you take your forms to Reception — that's straight ahead of you as you go through the main doors here — and just sign the documentation forms there and get your keys. The lift, the guest-lift, is just to your right, in the corridor. '

'Get a move on!' hissed Laura under her breath.

'. I shall be calling round to your rooms later, just to make sure everything's. '

Ashenden knew what he was doing. Experience had taught him that the first hour or so in any new hotel was always the most vital, since some small problem, dealt with promptly, could make the difference between a contented life and an anxious existence. Blessedly, Ashenden was seldom, if ever, confronted with such positive complaints as cockroaches, mice, or the disgusting habits of a room's previous occupants. But a range of minor niggles was not unfamiliar, even in the best regulated of establishments: no soap in the bathroom; only two tubs of cream beside the self-service kettle; no instructions on how to operate the knobless TV; no sign—still no sign — of the luggage.

Eddie Stratton had managed to squeeze into second spot in the queue for keys, and Laura had grabbed their own key, 310, from his hand before he'd finished the documentation.

'I'm straight up, Ed, to draw me a bairth — I can't wait.'

'Yeah, but leave the door, honey — there's only the one key, OK? I'll have a cup of tea in the Saynt Jarn Suite.'

'Sure. I'll leave the door.'

She was gone.

As Laura hobbled away towards the guest-lift, Eddie turned round and looked directly into the eyes of Mrs. Shirley Brown. For a few seconds there seemed to be no communication between the two of them; but then, after glancing briefly towards her husband, Shirley Brown nodded, almost imperceptibly, and her eyes smiled.

CHAPTER FIVE

'AT LAST!' MUTTERED Laura Stratton for the third (and final) time as she inserted her key and turned it clockwise (and correctly) in the lock.

The room itself did not open immediately off the main corridor on level three; but a small plaque fixed beside double swing-doors (a FIRE EXIT sign above them) had pointed the way to Room 310. Once through these doors Laura had found herself in a further corridor, only four or five feet wide, which ran parallel to the main corridor, along which (after she had turned left) she walked the five yards or so to the bedroom door — on her right. Just beyond this door, the corridor turned at right angles and came to an almost immediate stop in the shape of another double-doored FIRE EXIT — doubtless, as Laura guessed (again correctly), leading down some back stairs to the ground floor. It did not occur to her that a person could stand in this narrow square of space, pressed tightly back behind the wall, and remain completely unobserved from the narrow corridor leading to her room.

If anyone wished to remain thus unobserved.

Laura extracted the key and carefully let the door close, or almost close, behind her, with the tongue of the lock holding it slightly ajar. The two large black-leather cases were on the floor immediately inside, and she looked around to find herself in a most pleasantly appointed room. A double bed stood immediately to her right, covered by a pale-green quilt, with a free-standing wardrobe beyond it; facing her were the three lancet windows of the outside wall, with curtains down to the carpeted floor; and in front of these windows, from right to left, a tea-maker, a TV, a low, mirrored dressing table, and a red-plush chair. Her swift glance around missed little, except for the rather fine reproduction of Vermeer's View of Delft above the bed. Laura and her first husband had once seen the original of this in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, when the guide had mentioned that it was Marcel Proust's favourite painting; but strangely enough she had found it disappointing, and in the very few minutes of life remaining to her she was to have no opportunity of revising that rather harsh judgement.

She stepped to the window and looked across at the tetrastyle portico of Ionic columns, with the figure of Apollo, right arm raised and seated (a little precariously, as Laura judged) at the apex of the low-pitched pediment. Between the two central columns, a large Oxford-blue banner was suspended: Musaeum Ashmoleanum apud Oxonienses. Oh yes, Laura knew quite a lot about the Ashmolean Museum, and there appeared the flicker of a smile around her excessively lip-sticked mouth as she let the curtain fall back and turned to the door on her left, half-open, which led to the champagne-tiled bathroom. Without for the moment entering, she pushed the door a little further open: WC to the right; bath immediately facing her, the shower-curtains half drawn across; and to the left a hand-basin with a series of heated rails beside it, fully laden with fluffy white towels.

Laura had always slept on the left-hand side of any double bed, both as a young girl with her sister and then with both her husbands; and now she sat down, rather heavily, on the side of the bed immediately beside the main door, placed her white-leather handbag below the various switches for lights, radio, and TV, on the small table-top next to the bed — and removed her shoes.

Finally removed her shoes.

She fetched the kettle, filled it from the wash-basin in the bathroom, and switched on the current. Then, into the bathroom once more where she put the plug in the bath and turned on the hot tap. Returning to the main room again she picked up a DO NOT DISTURB sign, hung it over the outside door-knob, and returned to the bathroom to pour some pink Foaming Bubbly into the slowly filling bath.

Beryl Reeves had noted the single arrival in Room 310. At 4.40 p.m. she had put in a final burst of corridor hovering and hoovering, and knew even from her very limited experience that before she went off duty at 5.00 there would be several queries from these Americans about the whereabouts of the (non-existent) 'ice-machine' and the (readily available) replenishments of coffee sachets. Beryl was from Manchester; and her honest, if slightly naive attitude to life — even more so, her accent—had already endeared her to many of her charges on Level Three. All in all, she was proving a very good employee: punctual, conscientious, friendly, and (as Morse was later to discover) a most reliable witness.

It had been exactly 4.45 that afternoon (and who could be more accurate than that?) when she had looked in at Room 310; noticed the sign hanging over the door-knob, wondering why the door itself was slightly ajar; peered momentarily into the room itself; but immediately retreated on seeing the steam emanating from the bathroom. Yes, she thought she would have probably noticed a white leather handbag if it had been somewhere just inside. No, she had not passed beyond the door and looked around the corner beside the Fire Exit. She had seen an American guest going into Room 308 shortly after this — a man; a friendly man, who'd said 'Hi!'. Yes, of course she would recognise him. In fact she could tell them who he was straightaway: a Mr. Howard Brown from California.

Just before 6 p.m. the phone rang in the office of Chief Superintendent Strange at the Thames Valley Police HQ at Kidlington. The great man listened fairly patiently, if with less than obvious enthusiasm, to his colleague, Superintendent Bell from St. Aldate's in Oxford.

'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.'

CHAPTER SIX

'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–I 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 Stratton 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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

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 fact 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 duties, 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 Stratton) 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

6.45 p.m. Cocktail Reception (St. John's Suite) introduced by Sheila Williams, MA, BLitt (Cantab), with Cedric Downes, MA (Oxon)

8.00 p.m. Dinner (main dining room)

9.30–10.15 p.m. Talk by Dr Theodore Kemp, MA, DPhil (Oxon) on Treasures of the Ashmolean'.

Friday 2nd November

7.30-9.15 a.m. Breakfast (main dining room)

10.30–11.30 a.m. Visit to The Oxford Story, Broad Street (100 yards only from the hotel)

12.45 p.m. Lunch (St. John's Suite) — followed by an informal get-together with our lecturers in the coffee-lounge

3.00 p.m. We divide into groups (details to be announced later)

4.30-5.00 p.m. English tea (Lancaster Room)

6.30 p.m. 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. Breakfast (Please be punctual!)

9.30 a.m. 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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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 surrounding 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. Stratton'—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!

'Sit down! Sit down! You look as if you could do with a drink, Mrs. Williams.'

'Well, I — it is all a bit of a shock, isn't it?'

'Anything suitable in there, Lewis?' Morse pointed to the drinks-cabinet, not without a degree of self-interest.

'Looks like he's just about got the lot, sir.'

'Mrs. Williams?'

'G and T — that would be fine.'

'Gin and tonic for the lady, Lewis. Ice?'

'Why dilute the stuff, Inspector?'

'There's no ice anyway,' muttered Lewis.

'Look,' began Sheila Williams, 'I'm not myself in charge of this group. I do liaise with the group and arrange speakers and so on — but it's John Ashenden who's the tour leader.'

Morse, however, appeared wholly uninterested in the activities of Mr. Ashenden: 'Mrs. Williams, I'm going to have to ask everyone in the group what they were doing between about four-thirty and five-fifteen this afternoon — that's between the time Mr. Stratton last saw his wife and when he got back from his walk with, er, with Mrs. Brown. '

As Sheila tossed back the last of her G and T, Lewis thought he saw the hint of a smile about her full lips; but Morse had turned to the wall on his left where he was minutely studying a late nineteenth-century Henry Taunt photograph of some brewery drays, and his last few words may well have been spoken without the slightest hint of implication or innuendo.

'I'm sure they'll all co-operate, Inspector, but they don't know yet about. '

'No. Perhaps we should wait a while? After dinner? No later than that. I wouldn't want Sergeant Lewis here to be too late in bed — Ah! Another, Mrs. Williams?'

'I'm sorry. I seem to be—'

'Nothing to be sorry about, is there?'

'Same again then, please, Sergeant. Little less tonic, perhaps?'

Lewis's eyebrows rose a centimetre. 'Anything for you, sir?'

'No thank you, Lewis. Not on duty.'

Lewis's eyebrows rose a further centimetre as he collected Mrs. Williams's glass.

The tour was, as Morse and Lewis learned, a pretty expensive, pretty exclusive business really. Most of them had been to England before (not all, though) and most of them were well enough off to be coming back again before too long, whatever the strength of the pound sterling. One of them wouldn't be, though. Yes, Sheila Williams knew quite a bit about the Wolvercote Tongue, although Dr. Kemp was the real authority, of course. It seemed that Laura Stratton's first husband, a real-estate man operating in California and, in later life, quite a collector, had come to find himself in possession of a jewelled artefact which, after learning of its provenance, he had bequeathed — he had died two years since — to the Curators of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Oh yes, she had seen it dozens of times, though only in a series of technicolour slides, from which she had been able to sketch out a diagram of the whole jewel, buckle and tongue; and in fact she herself had executed the final coloured illustration which was at that moment on show at the Ashmolean. Come to think of it, she was glad she had done the drawings; whatever happened now, people could know exactly how the Wolvercote Jewel in its entirety would have appeared. Doubtless the police would find the Tongue, but.

'We shall certainly do our best, madam,' Lewis had interposed, the tone of his voice suggesting something less than brimming optimism.

The Tongue itself? Well, again, Kemp was really the one to ask. But she could certainly tell them all about the look of it: of triangular shape, some 3 inches long, and 2 inches wide at the base; of a dull dirtyish brown colour (gold!), with (originally) three ruby-stones, one on each corner of the triangle — but now reduced to just the one, and that at the narrower end of things. The great, the unique, value of the tongue was the fact that it fitted (perfectly!) into the gold buckle which had been discovered during an archaeological dig at the village of Wolvercote in the early 1930s; and which, since 1947, had been proudly exhibited in the Ashmolean as evidence (hitherto unsuspected) of the exquisite craftsmanship of the goldsmith's art in the late eighth-century AD. Laura Stratton (so Sheila had learned from John Ashenden) had carried the jewel with her, in a black velvet-lined case, and kept it in her handbag — refusing to entrust the precious artefact either to transatlantic postal services, international tour operators, or burglar-and-fire-proof safe-deposit boxes. In the same handbag, it appeared, Laura had also carried a beautiful-looking string of wholly phoney pearls, which she had worn on most evenings with her dinner-dresses. Of any other valuables which might have been stolen with the handbag, Sheila had no idea whatsoever, although she volunteered the information that from her own recent experiences — and in spite of the equally recent strength of the pound sterling — some of the Americans seemed less than fully aware of the denominational value of the English currency they carried on their persons. With almost all of the party (she suspected) several £10, £20, even £50, notes would hardly be strangers in the purses and wallets of some of California's wealthier citizens. So a casual thief might have been pleasantly surprised by the sum of the monies often carried? But Mr. Stratton — Eddie Stratton—he'd be the man to ask about such things, wouldn't he? Really?

She turned her large, melancholy eyes upon Morse; and for a few seconds Lewis found himself wondering if his chief wasn't temporarily mesmerised. So much so that he decided not to withhold his own contribution:

'You say, Mrs. Williams, that the group won't perhaps mind me asking them all where they were between four-thirty and five-fifteen? Would you mind if you told us where you were?'

The effect of such an innocent question was quite unexpectedly melodramatic. Sheila Williams placed her empty glass on the table in front of her, and immediately burst into tears, during which time Morse glowered at his subordinate as if he had simultaneously broken all the rules of diplomacy, etiquette, and freemasonry.

But Morse himself, as he thought, was equal to the task: he nodded peremptorily to the empty glass, and immediately Lewis found himself pouring yet another generous measure of Gordon's gin, tempered again with but a little slim-line tonic.

Suddenly, and with a defiant glare at the two policemen, Sheila sat up in her chair, sought to regain a precarious state of equipoise, and drank down the proffered mixture in a single draught — much to Morse's secret admiration. She spoke just five words: 'Ask Dr. Kemp — he'll explain!'

After she was gone, guided in gentlemanly fashion along the corridor by Sergeant Lewis, Morse quickly opened the drinks-cabinet, poured himself half a tumbler of Glenfiddich, savoured a large and satisfying swallow, thereafter placing the tumbler strategically on a convenient shelf, just below the line of vision of anyone entering. Including Sergeant Lewis.

Strangely, neither Sergeant Lewis nor Inspector Morse himself seemed particularly conscious of the fact that Mrs. Sheila Williams had signally failed to answer the only significant question that had been put to her.

Such is the wonderful effect of any woman's tears.

CHAPTER NINE

JOHN ASHENDEN WOULD later remember exactly what he had done during the vital forty-five minutes that Morse had specified.

It was a quarter to five when he had walked out of The Randolph, and crossed over by the Martyrs' Memorial into Broad Street. The sun no longer slanted across the pale-yellow stone, the early evening was becoming much cooler, and he was wearing a lightweight rain-coat. He strode fairly quickly past the front of Balliol, the great gates of Trinity, Blackwell's Book Shop; and was waiting by the New Bodleian building to cross at the traffic lights into Holywell Street when he saw them standing there outside the Sheldonian, sub imperatoribus, her arm through his, neither of them (as it seemed) taking too much notice of anything except their mutual selves. Even more briskly now, Ashenden walked past the King's Arms, the Holywell Music Room, the back of New College — until he came to Longwall Street. Here he turned left; and after two hundred yards or so went through the wooden gate that led into Holywell Cemetery, where under the stones and crosses — so many Celtic crosses! — were laid to rest the last remains of eminent Oxford men, in these slightly unkempt, but never neglected, acres of the dead. A curving path through the grass led him to a wooden seat above which, wired to a yew tree, was a rectangular board showing the plot of the cemetery, with the memorials of the particularly eminent marked by numbers:

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932)

Maurice Bowra (1898–1971)

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980)

H.V.D. Dyson (1896–1975)

James Blish (1921–1975)

Theodore and Sibley, Drowned (1893)

Sir John Stainer (1840–1901)

Walter Pater.

That was him!

It took Ashenden some twenty minutes or so, treading through overgrown grasses, and parting ivy from many semi-decipherable inscriptions, to find the strong, squat cross:

In te, Domine, speravi

WALTER PATER

Died July 30 1894

Then, almost immediately, he saw that other stone, the one he was looking for — an even simpler memorial:

JAMES ALFRED BOWDEN

1956–1981

Requiescat

For several minutes Ashenden stood there silently under the darkening shadows: it seemed a wonderfully unforbidding piece of ground in which to find a final resting-place. Yet no one wanted to die — certainly not John Ashenden, as he remained standing by the grave, wondering whether Jimmy Bowden, during the pain of his terminal illness, had ever recanted the dogmatic and confident atheism he had once propounded in the early hours of one most memorable day. But Ashenden doubted it. He recalled, too, that final postcard to which he had never replied.

There was no one else in the cemetery; no one there to observe the strange little incident when Ashenden, after looking round about him for a last reassurance, parted the thickly twined rootage of ivy at the rear of Bowden's small cross, took something from the right-hand pocket of his raincoat, and laid it carefully at the foot of the stone before replacing the ivy and patting it, almost effeminately, back into its pristine state.

He was in no hurry, and on his leisurely way back to the cemetery gate he stopped and read several of the gravestones, including 'Kenneth Grahame, who passed the river on the 6th July 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time'. Ashenden loved the wording. He looked vaguely for 'Theodore and Sibley, Drowned (1893)'; but it was too dark now, and he could find no clue as to who they were and where they had perished.

He regained the main street, and on his way back to The Randolph called in the back bar of The King's Arms to order a pint of cask-conditioned Flowers. For which choice, Inspector Morse would have been quietly proud of him.

Shirley Brown had disengaged her arm as she and Eddie Stratton crossed into Beaumont Street at ten-past five.

'Whatever you say, Ed, I'd still like to know where he was going.'

'Like I say, forget it, Shirl!'

'He was trying to get out of sight — quick. You know he was.'

'You still reckon he saw us?'

'I still reckon he saw us,' said Shirley Brown, in her Californian drawl. They were the only two in the guest-lift; and Eddie bade his temporary leave as they reached the third floor.

'See you in a little while, Shirl.'

'Yeah. And tell Laura I hope her feet are rested.'

Eddie Stratton had made no reply as he walked towards Room 310.

CHAPTER TEN

TOO LONG HAD Morse been in the police business for him to believe that a death and a theft, or (as he was now beginning to think) a theft and a death, were likely to be a pair of fortuitously contingent events. Not that he was even remotely hopeful about the theft. He would never mind pitting his brains against a murderer; but he'd always discounted his chances against a reasonably competent burglar — even, come to think of it, against a reasonably incompetent burglar. And if, as seemed the consensus of opinion now, Laura Stratton had left her door ajar for her husband to let himself in; if she had carelessly left her handbag on the bedside table immediately inside her partially opened door; if someone had known of these things — even if someone had not known of these things. well, certainly, the odds were pretty strong on the prompt disappearance of the handbag. Give it fifteen minutes? At the outside, thought Morse. We all might pray (some of us might pray) 'Lead us not into temptation', yet most people seemed perfectly happy to stick their cameras, binoculars, radios, squash rackets, handbags. mm. yes, stick any of 'em on the back seats of their cars, and then complain to the police when they found their rear windows smashed into splinters and—

Come off it!

The truth was, of course, that Morse had virtually lost all interest in the case already, his only enduring memory being the admiration he'd felt for the alcoholic capacity of a lady named Mrs. Sheila Williams.

He just managed to hide the tumbler when without even a sociable knock Max put his head round the door and, seeing Morse in the Manager's chair, promptly entered and seated himself.

'They told me I'd find you here. Not that I needed much direction. Any pathologist worth his meagre remuneration tends to develop a fairly keen sense of smell.'

'Well?'

'Heart attack. Massive coronary.' (Swain's words.)

Morse nodded slowly.

'God knows why you ask me along here to confirm the obvious..Where's the booze, by the way?'

Reluctantly, Morse pointed to the drinks-cabinet.

'You're not paying for it, are you?'

'What do you fancy?'

'Nothing for me, Morse. I'm on duty.'

'All right.'

'Is, er, is it drinkable — the Scotch?'

Morse got to his feet, poured a miniature into a plastic cup, and handed it over. For a few minutes the two old enemies sat sipping in friendly silence.

'You quite sure, Max.?'

'Not so bad, is it, this stuff?'

'. about the time of death?'

'Between four-thirty and five-fifteen.'

'Really?' Never before had Morse heard anything remotely approaching such a definitive statement from the lips of the hump-backed police-surgeon. 'How on earth—?'

'Girl at Reception, Morse. Said the poor old dear had gone up to her room at four-thirty, on her own two tootsies, too. Then your people told me she was found by her ever-loving husband at five-fifteen.' Max took a large swallow of the Glenfiddich. 'We professionals in the Force, Morse, we have to interpret all the available clues, you know.' He drained his cup with deep appreciation.

'Another?'

'Certainly not! I'm on duty. And anyway I'm just off to a very nice little dinner.'

A distant temple-bell was tinkling in Morse's mind: 'Not the same nosh-up as whatshisname?'

'The very same, Morse.'

'He's the house-doctor here.'

'Try telling me something I don't know.'

'It's just that he looked at Mrs. Stratton, that's all.'

'And you didn't have much faith in him.'

'Not much.'

'He's considered quite a competent quack, they tell me.'

'To be honest, I thought he was a bit of a. '

'Bit of a membrum virile? You're not always wrong, you know. Er, small top-up, perhaps, Morse?'

'You know him?'

'Oh yes. And you're quite wrong, in this case. He's not just a — No, let's put it the other way: he's the biggest one in Oxford.'

'She still died of a heart attack, though?'

'Oh yes! So don't go looking for any silly bloody nonsense here. And it's not Swain who's telling you, Morse — it's me.'

When, some ten minutes later, Max had departed for his BMA dinner, Morse had already performed what in political parlance would be termed a compromising U-turn. And when Lewis came in, with Dr. Theodore Kemp immediately in tow, Morse knew that he had erred in his earlier thinking. The coincidence of a theft and a death (in whichever order) might often be shown to be causally connected.

But not in this case.

Lewis would have to interview them all, of course; or most of them. But that would be up to Lewis. For himself, Morse wished for nothing more fervently than to get back to his bachelor flat in North Oxford, and to listen once again to the Second Movement of the Bruckner No. 7.

But he'd better see one or two of them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ALMOST IMMEDIATELY Kemp slotted into Morse's preconceptions of the we-are-an-Oxford-man, although he was aware that he could well be guilty of yet another instant inaccuracy. The bearded, clever-looking, ugly-attractive man (late thirties — Sheila's age?) who sat down only after lightly dusting the seat with a hyper-handkerchief, had clearly either been told (by Sheila?) or heard (gossip inevitable) something of what had occurred. Other persons might have been irritated only temporarily by the man's affected lisp. Not so Morse.

'Abtholutely pritheless, Inthpector!'

'Perhaps you could tell us a little more about the Wolvercote Tongue, sir.'

Kemp was well prepared. He opened his black brief-case, took out a pile of pale-blue leaflets, and handed one across the desk to Morse, one to Lewis.

The Wolvercote Jewel

During the last century or so archaeologists and historians have become increasingly conscious of the splendid workmanship of the late Saxon period, and the discovery in 1931 of a gold 'buckle' at Wolvercote had been extremely exciting. Particularly so since this buckle linked up with a corresponding 'tongue', fully documented and authenticated, known to be in the collection of one Cyrus C. Palmer Jnr, a citizen of Pasadena, California. The cloisonné enamel of the pear-shaped tongue, set in a solid gold frame, decorated in a distinctive type of delicate filigree, and set (originally) with three large ruby-stones, appeared to match the Ashmolean buckle with exact precision. And if further proof were sought, the tongue's lettering — [AE]LFRED¹ MEC HE[HT GEWYR] CAN — was identical in figuration and engravure to that of the gold buckle — into which (as all experts now concur) the tongue had once fitted.

¹ Alfred the Great, AD 871–901. For a full discussion, see Pre-Conquest Craftsmanship in Southern Britain, Theodore S. Kemp, Babbington Press, June 1991.

That the tongue will shortly fit into its buckle once more is due to the philanthropy of Mr. Palmer and to the gracious co-operation and interest of his wife, (now) Mrs. Laura M. Stratton. The only major problem remaining to be resolved (according to Dr. Theodore Kemp of the Ashmolean Museum) is the exact purpose of this most beautifully wrought artefact, henceforth to be known, in its entirety, as 'The Wolvercote Jewel'. Whether it was the clasp of some royal garment, or whether it served some symbolic or ceremonial purpose, is a matter of fascinating speculation. What is certain is that The Wolvercote Jewel — tongue and buckle at last most happily conjoined will now be numbered amongst the finest treasures of the Ashmolean Museum.

'You write this, sir?' asked Morse.

Kemp nodded bitterly: the whole bloody thing now cancelled (Morse learned) — the ceremony that was all fixed up — the presentation — the press — TV. God!

'We learnt the dates of the kings and queens of England at school,' said Morse. Trouble is we started at William the First.'

'You ought to have gone back earlier, Inspector — much earlier.'

'Oh, I'm always doing that, sir.' Morse fixed his eyes on the pallid face across the table. 'What were you doing earlier this evening between four-thirty and five-fifteen, Dr. Kemp?'

'What? What wath I doing?' He shook his head like a man most grievously distraught. 'You don't — you can't understand, can you! I wath probably buggering around in. ' he pointed vaguely over Morse's head in the direction of the Ashmolean. 'I don't know. And I don't care!' He picked up the pile of leaflets and, with a viciousness of which Morse would not have thought the effeminate fingers capable, tore them across the middle, and threw them down on the desk.

Morse let him go.

Kemp was the second witness that evening who had been less than forthcoming in answering the only pertinent question that had been put to him.

'You didn't like him much, did you, sir?'

'What's that got to do with anything?'

'Well, somebody must have stolen this Wolvercote thing.'

'Nobody pinched it, Lewis! They pinched the handbag.'

'I don't see it. The handbag's worth virtually nothing — but the, you know, it's priceless, he says.'

'Abtholutely pritheless!' mimicked Morse.

Lewis grinned. 'You don't think he stole it?'

'I'd rather not think at all about that inflated bladder of wind and piss. What I know is that he'd be the last person in Oxford to steal it. He's got everything lined up — he's got this literature all ready — he'll get his name in the papers and his face on the telly — he'll write a monograph for some learned journal — the University will give him a D.Litt or something. No, he didn't pinch it. You see you can't sell something like that, Lewis. It's only "priceless" in the sense of its being unique, irreplaceable, crucial for historical and archaeological interpretation. You couldn't sell the Mona Lisa, could you?'

'You knew all about it, did you, sir? This Wolvercote thing?'

'Didn't you? People come from far and wide to view the Wolvercote Tongue—'

' "Buckle", isn't it, sir? Isn't it just the buckle that's there?'

'I've never heard of the bloody thing,' growled Morse.

'I've never even been inside the Ashmolean, sir.'

'Really?'

'The only thing we learned about King Alfred was about him burning the cakes.'

'That's something though, isn't it? It's a fact—perhaps it's a fact. But they don't go in for facts in History these days. They go in for empathy, Lewis. Whatever that is.'

'What's the drill then, sir?'

So Morse told him. Get the body moved quietly via the luggage-lift while the tourists were still at dinner; get a couple of DCs over from Kidlington to help with statements from the group, including the speakers, re their whereabouts from 4.30 to 5.15 p.m.; and from the occupants of bedrooms adjacent or reasonably proximate to Room 310. Maids? Yes, better see if any of them were turning down counterpanes or restocking tea-bags or just walking around or. Morse suddenly felt himself utterly bored with the whole business. 'Find out the system, Lewis! Use a bit of initiative! And call round in the morning. I'll be at home—trying to get a few days' furlough.'

'We're not going to search the rooms then, sir?'

'Search the rooms? Christ, man! Do you know how many rooms there are in The Randolph?'

Morse performed one final task in what, by any criterion, had hitherto been a most perfunctory police enquiry. Briefly he spoke with Mr. Eddie Stratton, who earlier had been sympathetically escorted up to the Browns' quarters in Room 308. Here, Morse found himself immediately liking the tall, bronzed Californian, in whose lived-in sort of face it seemed the sun might soon break through from behind the cloud of present adversity. Never particularly competent at expressing his personal feelings, Morse could do little more than mumble a few cliches of condolence, dredged up from some half-remembered funerals. But perhaps it was enough. For Stratton's face revealed little sign of grief; certainly no sign of tears.

The Manager was standing by Reception on the ground floor; and Morse thanked him for his co-operation, explaining that (as invited) he had made some, er, little use of the, er, the facilities available in the Manager's office. And if Sergeant Lewis and his men could continue to have the use of the office until.?

The Manager nodded his agreement: 'You know it's really most unfortunate. As I told you, Inspector, we always advise our guests that it's in their own best interests never to leave any unattended valuables in their rooms—'

'But she didn't leave them, did she?' suggested Morse mildly.

'She didn't even leave the room. As a matter of fact, sir, she still hasn't left it. '

In this last assertion Morse was somewhat behind the times, for Lewis now came down the main staircase to inform both of them that at that very moment the body of the late Laura M.

Stratton was being transferred from Room 310, via the luggage-lift, en route for the Chapel of Rest in the Radcliffe Infirmary, just up the Woodstock Road.

'Fancy a drink, Lewis?'

'Not for me, sir. I'm on duty.'

The faithful sergeant allowed himself a wry grin, and even Morse was vaguely smiling. Anyway, it would save him, Lewis, a quid or two — that was for sure. Morse never seemed to think it was his round; and Lewis had occasionally calculated that on about three-fifths of his chief's salary he usually bought about three-quarters of the considerable quantities of alcohol consumed (though little by himself) on any given case.

Morse nodded a curt understanding, and walked towards the Chapters Bar.

CHAPTER TWELVE

POURING A MODICUM of slim-line tonic into the large gin that her present drinking companion had just purchased for her, Sheila Williams asked the key question: 'Might you have to cancel the rest of the tour, John?'

'Oh, I don't think it need come to that. I mean, they've all paid for it, haven't they? Obviously we could refund if, well, if Mr. Stratton or—'

'He's fine. I've spoken to him. You haven't.'

'I can't do everything, you know.'

'Please don't misunderstand me, John, but wasn't it perhaps a little unfortunate that you were nowhere within hailing distance when one of your charges busts her arteries and gets burgled into the bargain?'

Ashenden took a sip from his half-pint glass of bitter, appearing to acknowledge the truth of what Sheila had just said, though without volunteering any further comment. He'd once read (or heard) — Disraeli, was it? (or Jimmy Bowden?) — that a man ought never to apologise; never to explain.

He did neither now.

'We go ahead with everything, Sheila — except for the presentation bit, of course.'

'Unless they find it.'

'Which they won't.'

'Which they won't,' agreed Sheila.

'In spite of this fellow—'

'That's him!' whispered Sheila, laying a beautifully manicured hand across Ashenden's fore-arm. 'That's Morse!'

Ashenden looked across at the greying man, of middle height and middle age, who beamed briefly at the brunette behind the bar as he ordered a pint of best bitter.

'Drinks too much—beer,' volunteered Ashenden, sticking in the last word rapidly as he found Sheila's eyes switch to his with a glare of displeasure. 'Bit overweight — round the middle — that's all I meant.'

'Yes! I know.' Her eyes softened, and Ashenden was aware — had often been aware — that he found her attractive, especially (what a cussed world it all was!) as she was now, when all that seemed required was a pair of strong arms to cart her up to the nearest bed.

But she suddenly ruined every bloody thing!

She had moved closer to him, and spoke close to his ear — softly and sensuously: 'I shouldn't really tell you this, John, but I find him awfully attractive. Sort of, you know, dishy, and. sexy. '

Ashenden removed the hand that had found his sleeve once more. 'For Christ's sake, Sheila!'

'Clever, too, John! Very clever — so they say.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?' Ashenden's voice sounded needlessly tense.

'I'll tell you,' replied Sheila, the clarity of her articulation beginning to disintegrate: 'He's going to wanna know wha'—wha' you were up to between — between — about — four-thirty and five-fifteen.'

'What's that got to do with him?'

'It's not me wants to know, darling. All I say is, that's. that's wha' he's goin' to ashk — ask you. That's wha' he's goin' to ask everybody'

Ashenden looked down silently at his drink.

'Where were you, John?' (Was the lovely Sheila sober once again already?)

'There's no law against anyone having a look round the colleges, is there?'

'Quite a few people were wondering where you'd got to—'

'I've just told you, for heaven's sake!'

'But where exactly was it you went, John? Tell me! Come on! Tell mummy all about it!'

Ashenden decided to humour her: 'If you must know I went and had a look round Magdalen—'

But he got no further. A few yards away Morse was walking towards the Bar-Annexe as Sheila greeted him:

'Inspector! Inspector Morse! Come and join us!'

Morse's half-smile, grudging and potentially aloof, suggested he might have preferred his own company. But Sheila was patting the settee beside her, and Morse found himself looking down into the same dark-brown, pleading eyes that had earlier held such a curious fascination for him on the floor above.

'I, er—'

'Meet John Ashenden, Inspector — our leader!'

Morse nodded across, hesitated, then surrendered, now positioning himself and his pint with exaggerated care.

'John was just saying he'd been round Magdalen this afternoon. That's right, isn't it, John?'

'Yep. It's, er, not a college I've ever got to know really. Wonderful though, isn't it? I'd known about the deer-park, but I'd never realised what a beautiful walk it was along the Cherwell there — those hundreds of acres of fields and gardens. As well as the tower, of course. Surely one of the finest towers in Europe, wouldn't you agree, Inspector?'

Morse nodded, seeming that evening to have a particular predisposition to nodding. But his brain was suddenly engaged, as it had never been engaged at any other point since arriving on the scene.

He had always claimed that when he had to think he had to drink — a dictum indulgently interpreted by his colleagues as an excellent excuse for the disproportionate amount of time the chief inspector seemed to spend at various bars. Yet Morse himself was quite convinced of its providential truth; and what is more, he knew that the obverse of this statement was similarly true; that when he was drinking he was invariably thinking! And as Ashenden had just spoken, Morse's blue eyes had narrowed slightly and he focused on the leader's face with a sudden hint of interest, and just the slightest tingle of excitement.

It was twenty minutes later, after a dinner during which they had spoken little, that Howard and Shirley Brown sat brooding over their iced tomato-juices at a table just inside the main bar.

'Well,' maintained Howard, 'you've gotten yourself an alibi OK, Shirl. I mean, you and Eddie. No prarblem! What about me, though?' He grinned wryly, good-humouredly: 'I'm lying there next door to Laura, right? If I'd wanted to, well—'

'What you thinking of, honey? Murder? Theft? Rape?'

'You don't think I'm capable of rape, Shirl!'

'No, I don't!' she replied, cruelly.

'And you saw Ashenden, you say. That gives him an alibi, too.'

'Half an alibi.'

'He saw you—you're sure?'

'Sure. But I don't reckon he thought we saw him.'

'Down Holywell Street, you say?'

'Uh-huh! I noticed the sign.'

'What's down there?'

'Eddie looked it up on the street map. New College, then Magdalen College — that's without the "e".'

DCs Hodges and Watson were now going systematically through their lists; and, almost simultaneously, Hodges was re-questing both Mrs. Williams and Mr. Ashenden to accompany him to the Manager's office, with Watson asking Howard and Shirley Brown if they would please mind answering a few questions in the deserted ballroom.

On the departure of his two drinking companions — the lady reluctantly, the gentleman with fairly obvious relief — Morse looked again at the Osbert Lancaster paintings on the walls around him and wondered if he really liked these illustrations for Zuleika Dobson. Perhaps, though, he ought at last to read Beerbohm's book; even discover whether she was called 'Zuleeka' or 'Zuleyeka'.

His glass was empty and he returned to the bar, where Michelle, the decidedly bouncy brunette, declined to accept his proffered payment.

'The lady, sir. The one that was with you. She paid.'

'Uh?'

'She just said to get a pint for you when you came up for a refill.'

'She said "when", did she?'

'She probably knows your habits, sir,' said Michelle, with an understanding smile.

Morse went to sit in the virtually deserted Annexe now, and thought for more than a few minutes of Sheila Williams. He'd had a girl-friend called Sheila when he'd been an undergraduate just across St. Giles' at St. John's — the very college from which A. E. Housman, the greatest Latinist of the twentieth century, had also been kicked out minus a degree. A hundred years ago in Housman's case, and a thousand years in his own. Sheila. the source, in Milton's words, of all our woe.

After his fourth pint of beer, Morse walked out to Reception and spoke to the senior concierge.

'I've got a car in the garage.'

'I'll see it's brought round, sir. What's the number?'

'Er. ' For the moment Morse could not recall the number. 'No! I'll pick it up in the morning if that's all right.'

'You a resident here, sir?'

'No! It's just that I don't want the police to pick me up on the way home.'

'Very sensible, sir. I'll see what I can do. Name? Can I have your name?'

'Morse. Chief Inspector Morse.'

'They wouldn't pick you up, would they?'

'No? Funny lot the police, you know.'

'Shall I call a taxi?'

'Taxi? I'm walking. I only live at the top of the Banbury Road, and a taxi'd cost me three quid at this time of night. That's three pints of beer.'

'Only two here, sir!' corrected Roy Halford as he watched the chief inspector step carefully — a little too carefully? — down the shallow steps and out to Beaumont Street.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AS HE WALKED UP the Banbury Road that Thursday night, Morse was aware that by this time Lewis would know considerably more than he did about the probable contents of Laura Stratton's handbag, the possible disposition of the loot, and the likely circle of suspects. Yet he was aware, too, that his mind seemed — was! — considerably more lucid than he deserved it to be, and there were a few facts to be considered — certainly more facts than Lewis had gleaned in his school-days about Alfred the Great.

Facts: carrying her handbag, a woman had gone up to Room 310 at about 4.35 p.m.; this woman had not been seen alive again — or at least no one so far would admit to seeing her alive again; inside 310 a bath had been run and almost certainly taken; a coffee-sachet and a miniature tub of cream had been used; a DO NOT DISTURB sign had been displayed on the outside door-knob at some point, with the door itself probably left open; the woman's husband had returned at about 5.15 p.m., and without reporting to Reception had gone up to the third floor, in the guest-lift, with a fellow tourist (female); thence a hurried scuttle down to Reception via the main staircase where a duplicate key was acquired. On finally gaining access to his room, the husband had discovered his wife's body on the floor, presumably already dead; the hotel's house-doctor had arrived some ten or fifteen minutes later, and the body duly transferred from floor to bed — all this by about 5.40 p.m. At some point before, during, or after these latter events, the husband himself had noticed the disappearance of his wife's handbag; and at about 6 p.m. a call had been received by St. Aldate's CID with a request for help in what was now looking a matter of considerably more moment than any petty theft.

Yes, those were the facts.

So move on, Morse, to a few non-factual inferences in the problem of the Wolvercote Tongue. Move on, my son — and hypothesize! Come on, now! Who could have stolen it?

Well, in the first place, with the door to 310 locked, only those who had a key: the Manager, the housekeeper, the room-maids — namely, anyone with, or with access to, a duplicate key to the aforementioned room. Not the husband. In the second place, with the door to 310 open, a much more interesting thieves' gallery was open to view: most obviously, anyone at all who would happen to be passing and who had glimpsed, through the open door, a handbag that had proved too tempting an opportunity. Open to such temptation (if not necessarily susceptible to it) would have been the room-maids, the occupants of nearby rooms, any casual passer-by. But just a moment! Room 310 was off the main corridor, and anyone in its immediate vicinity would be there for a reason: a friend, perhaps, with a solicitous enquiry about the lady's feet; a fellow tourist wanting to borrow something; or learn something. Then there was Ashenden. He'd said he would be going around at some point to all the rooms to check up on the sachets, shampoos, soaps, switches. Opportunity? Yes! But hardly much of a motive, surely? What about the three guest speakers? Out of the question, wasn't it? They hadn't been called to the colours at that point — weren't even in The Randolph. Forget them! Well, no — not altogether, perhaps; not until Lewis had checked their statements.

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.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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 engagingly 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.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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 Rronquist, 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. (Wheel-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.

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.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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.)

Hi, sis! We had a great morning in Oxford. There's a kind of tourist attraction here called The Oxford Story and we got into these sort of cars, but they're more like those old-fashioned desks from schooldays really — sitting side by side remember? Made of some dark sort of wood with slightly sloping tops as if you'd just got to listen to the class teacher or write out the alphabet again if you didn't. Then we went up a sort of special gradiant at.000001 mph — no kidding! I wish I could remember all those great names we saw, and I do mean great! And you sit. You sit in these double desks and listen to a commentary from you guess who! Sir Alec Guiness. I mean, the voice. So the pen was working away as we went around and I've kept a brochure for you somewhere of all these people, Roger Bacon, Thomas Bodley, Charles First (what a little guy he was), Hobbes and Locke, Wilkens C? — I can't read my own handwriting). Sir Christopher Wren, Boyle (you remember our Physical teacher?), John Wesely (or is it Wessley?), Alice (yeah, the same!). William Ewart Gladstone and no end of those other PM's. And of course Cranmer and the Protestant Martyrs, and I'm starting to remember I've forgotten so many of the others. Does that last bit make sense, Georgie? Anyway it was marvellous, the only trouble was that the poor fellow in front of me had to put up with all this incessant chatter from a really dreadful little woman who's clearly tring to trap another victim. But I've left the big news till now. You remember I told you about the jewel one of the group was going to bring to the Oxford museum here? Well yesterday this poor woman had a coronary and died and someone stole her handbag with this jewel inside it! Where is safe these days? You tell me that. She'd been a little poorly and her husband said she always knew it was going to be sooner or later but it's a bad time just now, fot the tour I mean. Eddie, he's the husband, doesn't want us to be too upset and the tour goes on as scheduled, and well he was her second! He's a pretty nice guy really. But I reckon she was the one with the money and I just hope she was pretty well insured all round. So as you can see we're having plenty happening here!

Love to Angelo,

Ginger

P.S. I forgot to tell you it was just a bit spooky for a start in that Oxford Story.

P.P.S. My room looks right out on the Ashmolean — see that X on the enclosed card?

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.)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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 second-hand 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. 'Back 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 tele-phone 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.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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 he 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.

Diffidently, Lewis followed.

It was during this hour, between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., as Morse and Lewis were later to learn, that the scene was irreversibly set for murder.

At 3.20 p.m., to an audience slightly smaller than anticipated, Cedric Downes was pointing to the merits of the stained-glass windows in University College chapel, and especially to the scene in the Garden of Eden, where the apples on the tree of knowledge glowed like giant golden Jaffas. At 3.30 p.m., in the Archive Room of the New Bodleian, Sheila Williams was doing her best to enthuse over a series of Henry Taunt photographs taken in the 1880s — also to an audience slightly smaller than anticipated. But the slides selected by Dr. Theodore Kemp, to illustrate the development of jewelled artefacts in pre-Conquest Britain, were destined to remain in their box in the Elias Ashmole Memorial Room that sunny afternoon.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

AT 9.30 P.M. THE University Parks had long been closed — since before sundown in fact. Yet such a circumstance has seldom deterred determined lovers, and others slightly crazed, from finding passage-ways through or over fences and hedges into this famous precinct — the setting for countless copulations since the Royalist artillery was quartered on its acres during the Civil War.

Two of these latter-day lovers, Michael Woods (aged seventeen) and Karen Jones (two years older), and both from the village of Old Marston to the east of the Parks, had sauntered over the high-arched Rainbow Bridge across the Cherwell, and come to 'Mesopotamia', a pathway between two branches of the river, when young Michael, encouraged by the fact that he was now resting the palm of his right hand upon the right buttock of the slightly forbidding Karen — and without any perceptible opposition on her part — steered the nymphet into the enclosure known as Parson's Pleasure. This famous and infamous bathing place is to be found at a point where the Cherwell adapts itself to a pleasingly circumscribed swimming area at a bend of the river, with a terrace of unsophisticated, though adequate, cubicles enabling would-be bathers to shed their clothing and to don, or not to don, their swimming costumes there. Green-painted, corrugated-iron fencing surrounds Parson's Pleasure, with the access gate fairly jealously guarded during the summer months, and firmly locked after the waters are deemed too cold for even the doughtiest of its homoerotic habitués. But whether from an unseasonable gale, or whether from recent vandalism, one section of the perimeter fencing lay forlornly on the ground that evening; and very soon the young pair found themselves seated side by side in one of the cubicles. In spite of her seniority in years, Karen was considerably the more cautious of the two in the progress of this current courtship. And justifiably so, for Michael, as vouched for by several of the village girls, was a paid-up member of the Wandering Hands Brigade. After several exploratory fingerings along the left femur, a sudden switch of tactics to the front of her blouse had heralded a whole new manual offensive — when at that point she decided to withdraw to previously prepared positions.

'Mike! Let's get out of here, please! I'm getting a bit chilly—'

'I'll soon see to that, love!'

'And it's a bit spooky. I don't like it here, Mike.'

He'd known, really, ever since they'd slipped through the hedge at half-past eight; known when he'd kissed her briefly on the Rainbow Bridge above the swollen and fast-flowing waters, testing the temperature and finding it not warm enough for any further penetration into the underclothing of a girl who seemed dressed that balmy evening as if for some Antarctic expedition. He stood up now, and (as she thought) with a surprisingly gallant, almost endearing gesture, refastened the only button on her blouse he'd thus far managed to disengage.

'Yeah! Gettin' a bi' chilly, innit?' he lied.

The moon as they walked from the cubicle was bright upon the waters, and Karen was wondering whether she might slighdy have misjudged this lively, fun-loving youth when her eyes caught sight of something lying lengthways across the top of the weir in front of them.

'Yaaaaahhhhh!'