The Jewel That Was Ours

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

'BAIRTH? THIS IS BAIRTH?'

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 Bath.'

With less than conspicuous enthusiasm, he leaned forward for his microphone, turned it on, and began. Not quite so confidently as in Stratford; or in Oxford, of course, where he had memorised whole sentences from the Jan Morris guide.

'Bath, ladies and gentlemen, is the site of a Roman spa, Aquae Sulis, probably built in the first and second centuries AD. A good deal of the extensive baths has been excavated and the city presents the tourist of today with perhaps the most splendidly restored of all Roman remains in Europe.'

On either side of the central aisle, heads nodded at the buildings and streets around them as a now livelier Ashenden continued, himself (like the site, it appeared) splendidly restored from whatever malaise had affected him over the previous two days, a malaise which had been noted and commented upon by several others of the group besides Mrs. Shirley Brown — the latter sitting comfortably now in her usual seat, the effects of the sting having cleared up fairly quickly under the twin application of Mrs. Roscoe's unguents.

'Looks a swell place, Shirl,' ventured Howard Brown.

'Yeah. Just wish Laura was with us — and Eddie. It all seems so sad.'

'Too right! Bus seems sorta empty somehow.'

As scheduled, the tourists had lunched at Cirencester, after leaving Stratford earlier that Sunday morning. The weather was still holding, if only just: another golden day in late autumn. And perhaps in the minds of many, the memories of their tragic stay in Oxford were slowly softening at the edges.

One of the slightly younger widows, Mrs. Nancy Wiseman, a librarian from Oklahoma City, was seated at the back of the coach beside Phil Aldrich. She had observed with a quiet pleasure how the strident Roscoe woman had markedly cooled towards her former partner after his refusal (and that of most of the others) to sign her petulant letter of complaint concerning Sheila Williams. Although Phil had been slightly reserved in his manner towards her (Nancy), she knew that that was his way and she was enjoying the company of that wiry, small-boned, gently spoken citizen from Sacramento who almost invariably found himself at the back of every queue that ever formed itself. Yes, the tour was definitely looking up a little, and only the previous evening she had written a card to her daughter to say that in spite of a death and a theft and a murder she was 'beginning to make one or two very nice friends on the trip'.

In truth, however, Phil himself was finding Nancy Wiseman a little too effusive for his liking and — perversely, as it seemed — would have preferred sitting next to Janet Roscoe, up there at the front of the coach, as he listened to (and indeed almost wholly managed to hear) the end of Ashenden's introduction to Bath:

'In the eighteenth century the city was transformed into a resort for English high society — being particularly associated, of course, with the name of Beau Nash, the great dandy and gamester who lived here during the 1740s and 50s. Among its many literary connections, Bath can number such great figures as Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens — and most famous of all, perhaps, Geoffrey Chaucer and The Wife of Bath's Tale.'

It was a good note on which to end.

Opposite him, he noticed that Janet Roscoe had delved once more into the deep handbag, this time producing a very slim volume, whose title it was impossible for him not to see, and which he could have guessed in any case: CHAUCER, Tale of the Wyf of Bathe.

He smiled across at her, and as she opened her book at the Prologue, she smiled quite sweetly back at him.

It seemed a good omen for the stay in Bath.

Only seemed.

CHAPTER FIFTY

ACCORDING TO THE hospital bulletin on the Monday afternoon, the condidon of Lucy Downes was now officially listed as 'comfortable', one notch above the 'satisfactory' of the Sunday, and two above the earlier 'stable'. Three visits from her husband had helped, perhaps (the first in the small hours of the Sunday morning, two hours after his release from custody), but some slight complications had arisen with continued internal bleeding, and she had become deeply and embarrassingly conscious of how she must appear to everyone whenever she smiled. So she forbore to do so altogether, even to Cedric, and as she lay in her bed that day, her arm now beginning to give her some considerable pain, she would will-ingly (she knew) have cracked two of her ribs rather than chipped, a couple of her teeth.

Vanity, all is vanity, saith the preacher. And 'satisfactory' was arguably too favourable a judgement on her circumstances. But that was the word Morse repeated to the first question Lewis put to him about Lucy's progress at 8.30 a.m. on the Tuesday. It may have been that Morse had smiled a little at the question. But it may not.

Activity in the two days following Cedric Downes's release had hardly afforded a model of investigative collaboration, with Morse sleeping through until the late afternoon of the Sunday, then idling away most of the Monday in his office, moodily perusing the documents in the case; and with Lewis doing the converse, making what he felt had been a fairly significant contribution to the case on the Sunday afternoon, and then spending the whole of the Monday abed, where he had lain dead to the wideawake world, and where, even when Mrs. Lewis had gently rocked his shoulder at 6.30 p.m. and quietly breathed the prospect of egg and chips into his ear, he had turned his head over into the pillow and blissfully resumed his slumbers. But now he felt fully refreshed.

By the look of him, however, his chief had not perhaps shared a similarly successful period of recuperation, for he sounded tetchy as he picked up the brief note Lewis had left him.

'You say Stratton was quite definitely out at Didcot when Kemp was being killed?'

'No doubt about it, sir. I went over there yesterday—'

'You were in bed yesterday.'

'Sunday, I mean. They remembered him.'

'Who's "they"?'

'One of 'em took a photo of him on the footplate of "The Cornishman". He'd already got it developed and was going to post it to America. Stratton gave him a fiver. He's going to get a copy and send it here.'

'And it was Stratton?'

'It was Stratton.'

'Oh!'

'Where does all this leave us, sir? I just don't know where we are.'

'And you think I do?' mumbled the ill-shaven Morse. 'Here! Read this — came this morning.'

Lewis took the envelope handed him, postmarked Stratford-upon-Avon, and withdrew the two hand-written sheets.

Swan Hotel,

Stratford,

Saturday, 3rd Nov

Dear Inspector,

My conscience has troubled me since I left Oxford. When you asked about the phone call I tried to remember everything and I don't know what else I could have told you. I want to repeat that the line was faint but it was definately Dr. Kemp on the phone and that what I wrote was as near as anyone could get to what he said. But I lied about the afternoon and I was worried when you wanted to keep the betting slips because you probably know that one of the horses won and I would have won quite alot of money if I'd stayed in the betting shop. I wanted people to think I'd gone to Summertown and I could prove it if necessary. So I went to Ladbrokes and picked two rank outsiders and put some money on them and left. The only reason I did this was because I didn't want anyone to know where I really went which was to a flat in Park Town where I am ashamed to say I watched some sex videos with three other people. I think one of them would be willing to back up my story and if its nesessary I will give you a name if you can promise it can all be done with no charges broght. I am worried as well about the way you asked me where I went after we'd arrived in Oxford because I didn't tell you the truth then either, I went to Holywell cemetery and went to the grave of a friend of mine. he wrote to me befor he died and I didn't write back and I just wanted to make up for it in some way if I could. His name was James Bowden.

I am sorry to have caused trouble.

John Ashenden

P.S. I forgot to say that I left a small memento at his grave.

P.P.S. I shall be glad if you can pick up my winnings and give the money to Oxfam.

'Well?'

'I suppose you want me to tell you how many spelling mistakes he's made.'

'That would be something.'

'Looks all right to me. There's an apostrophe missing, though.'

Morse's face brightened. 'Well done! Excellent! There is the one spelling mistake, but you're definitely improving. That's a clue, by the way. No? Never mind!'

'At least we're getting some of the loose ends tied up.'

'You mean we cross Ashenden off the suspect-list?'

'Don't know, sir. But we can cross Stratton off, I reckon. He was in Didcot most of the afternoon. That's for sure.'

'So he couldn't have killed Kemp?'

'I don't see how.'

'Nor do I,' said Morse.

'Back to square one!'

'You know where we went wrong, don't you? It was that phone call that sent me up the cul-de-sac. You see, we can't get away from the fact that if Kemp was in London, he could easily have caught an earlier train. That still puzzles me! He rang at twelve-thirty-five and there was a train at twelve-forty-five. Ten minutes to walk across from the phone to the platform!'

'You know, we haven't really checked that, have we? I mean the train could have been cancelled. or something.'

Morse said, 'I've checked. It's almost the only profitable thing I did yesterday.' He lit a cigarette and sat staring gloomily out of the window.

Lewis found himself looking at the back page of The Oxford Times which lay on the desk. Morse had not started the crossword yet ('Ichabod' this week), but just to the right of it Lewis noticed a brief item on a fatal accident at the Marston Ferry Road traffic lights: a young student who had been taking a crash course in EFL. Crash course! Huh!

'Don't tell me you've done one across, Lewis?'

'No. Just reading about this accident at the Marston Ferry lights. Bad junction, you know, that is. I think there ought to be a "filter right" as you go into the Banbury Road.'

'Fair point!'

Lewis read on aloud. ' "Georgette le. something. daughter of M. Georges le. something of Bordeaux. " ' But now his eyes had spotted the date. ' 'Sfunny! This accident was a week last Saturday, sir, at half-past five. That's exactly one week earlier than Mrs. Downes.'

'Life's full of coincidences, I keep telling you that.'

'It's just that when you get two things happening like that, people say there's going to be three, don't they? That's what the wife always says.'

'Look, if a third accident'll please you, volunteer for the ambulance crew this morning. It's a fiver to a cracked piss-pot that some irresponsible sod—' Suddenly Morse stopped, the old tingle of high excitement thrilling strangely across his shoulders.

'Christ! What a fool you've been!' he murmured softly to himself.

'Sir?'

Morse rattled out his words: 'What's the name of Kemp's publisher? The one you rang to make sure he'd been there.'

' "Babington's". The fellow there said it was named after Macaulay' (Lewis smiled with distant memories) 'Thomas Babington Macaulay, sir — you know, the one who wrote the Lays of Ancient Rome. That's the one poem I—'

'Get on to the American Consulate! Quick, for Christ's sake! Find out where Stratton is — they'll know, I should think. We've got to stop him leaving the country.'

Morse's blue eyes gleamed triumphantly. 'I think I know, Lewis! I think I know.'

But Eddie Stratton had left the country the previous evening on a Pan Am jumbo bound for New York — together with his late wife Laura, the latter lying cold and stiff in a coffin in a special compartment just above the undercarriage.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

LEWIS WAS ENJOYING that Tuesday, the day on which Morse had suddenly spurted into a frenetic flurry of activity. Six extra personnel: Sergeant Dixon, three detective PCs, and two WPCs for the telephones. The administrative arrangement and supervision required for such teamwork was exactly the sort of skill in which Lewis excelled, and the hours passed quickly with the progressive gleaning of intelligence, the gradual build up of hard fact to bolster tentative theory — and always that almost insolent gratification that shone in Morse's eyes, for the latter appeared to have known (or so it seemed to Lewis) most of the details before the calls and corroboration had been made.

It was just after a quick, non-alcoholic lunch that Morse had sought to explain to Lewis the nature of his earlier error.

'I once did a crossword in which all of the clues were susceptible of two quite different solutions. A sort of double-entendre crossword, it was. Get on the wrong wavelength with one across, and everything fits except one single interlocking letter. Brilliant puzzle! — set by Ximenes in The Observer. That's what I did — got off on the wrong foot. And I did it again in this case, with Downes. You know what one across was? That bloody phone call! I'd assumed it was important, Lewis, and I was right. But right for the wrong reasons. When I first learned that the line was bad, I thought it possible — likely, even — that the caller wasn't Kemp at all. Then, because he said he'd missed the train — although there was still ten minutes to go — I thought he wasn't at Paddington at all: I thought Kemp was probably in Oxford. And it all fitted, didn't it? Except for that one single letter.

'But all the time, that poor line we kept hearing about was of crucial significance, but for a totally different reason! It was Kemp all right who made the call. But he wasn't at Paddington: he was still at his publisher's in London — Babington Press, Fine Arts Publications, South Kensington — and doubdess he referred to it, like anyone would, as Babington's. Oh, yes! That's where he was, and he did exactly what he said he'd do. He caught the next train and arrived in Oxford, dead on schedule.'

In the circumstances 'dead on schedule' hardly seemed to Lewis the happiest of phrases, but he knew that Morse was right about the call from Babington's. It had been he himself, Lewis, who had finally got on to the man there who was in the process of completing the proofs for the forthcoming seminal opus entided Pre-Conquest Craftsmanship in Southern Britain, by Theodore S. Kemp, MA, DPhil; the man who had been closeted with Kemp that fateful morning, and who had confirmed that Kemp had not left the offices until about 12.30 p.m.

Sergeant Dixon (stripes newly stitched) was also enjoying himself, although initially he had serious doubts about whether he — or anyone else, for that matter — could successfully handle his assignment in the ridiculously short period of the three or four hours which Morse had asserted as 'ample'.

But he had done it.

He had not realised quite how many customers were attracted by the Car Hire firms of Oxford, especially American customers; and checking the lists had taken longer than he'd imagined. In this particular respect Morse (suggesting the likelihood of the Botley Road area) had got things quite wrong, for it was at the Hertz Rent-a-Car offices at the top of the Woodstock Road where Dixon had finally spotted the name he was looking for with all the excitement of a young angler just hooking a heavyweight pike.

Tom Pritchard, the manager, went through the key points of the car-hire catechism to be faced by every client:

— Full name and home address?

— How many days' hire?

— Make of car preferred?

— Which dates?

— One driver only?

— Method of payment? (credit card preferred)

— Valid driving licence? (US licence OK)

— Telephone number of one referee?

After that, the manager went through the procedure adopted: a telephone call to the reference number cited; verification of credit card; verification of driving licence; verification of home address (the last three usually completed within ten minutes or so on the International Information Computer); preparation, presentation, and signing of the contract (including appropriate insurance clauses); then, paperwork now completed, the car brought round to the outer forecourt, with an assistant to give the client a quick run-over of the controls, and to hand over the keys. Bon voyage, cheerio, and Bob's your uncle.

By good fortune it had been the manager himself who had effected this particular transaction, and who remembered the occasion reasonably clearly. Well, it was only five days ago, wasn't it? The reference call to the hotel, The Randolph — that's what he'd remembered clearest of all, really: he'd looked up the telephone number and then been put through, on the extension given to him by his client, to the Deputy Manageress, who had promptly and effusively vouched for the bona fides of Rent-a-Car's prospective customer. Naturally, the manager had more details to offer: the car hired had been a red Cavalier, Registration H 106 XMT; it had been hired at 1.45 p.m. and returned at some time after the offices had closed at 6.30 p.m., with the keys pushed through the special letter-box, as requested. Mileage on the speedometer had been clocked as only 30.7. Probably, thought the manager, the car hadn't left Oxford at all?

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

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

And was found.

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

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

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

Those names!

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

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

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

And compulsively, happily, thirstily — he drank.

One and a half hours later, as he still sat on a high stool at the bar, he looked down and saw the fingers of a beautifully manicured hand against his left arm, and felt the ghost of a touch of the softest breast against his shoulder.

'Can I buy you a drink, Inspector?' The voice was slightly husky, slightly slurred, and more than slightly disturbing.

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

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

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

His.

'What are you doing here?' he asked.

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

'You with a partner?'

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

'So?'

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

'Veleta? God! That's what I used to dance. '

'We're none of us getting much younger.'

'And you didn't want — you didn't want that?'

'I wanted a drink. That's why I'm here.'

'And you told him. '

'. to bugger off.'

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

'You look happy,' she said.

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

'I'm not happy,' said Morse.

'Why not?'

'G and T, is it?'

'How did you guess?'

'I'm a genius.'

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

'Yes?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

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

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

'You think so?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So be it!

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

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

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

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

'Better than Ottawa!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But didn't Sam here explain? I have a headache.'

'I know. But it's the police, Mrs. Kronquist.'

'It is?'

'And they want everybody to be there.'

'Oh my Gard!'

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

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

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

Several faces looked pained and incredulous, but Janet Roscoe was the only person who did not restrain her disquietude:

'But that could nart be, Inspector! Eddie was out walking—'

Morse held up his right hand, and spoke to her not ungently:

'Please hear me out, Mrs. Roscoe. It was easy to pin-point the period of time within which the theft must have occurred, and not too difficult — was it? — to find out where the great majority of you had been during the crucial forty-five minutes. Not all of you felt willing to be completely honest with me, but I don't wish to labour that point now. As I saw things — still see things — the thief had to be one of you here, one of the touring party, including your courier' (heads swivelling again) 'or one of the staff at The Randolph. But the latter possibility could be, and was, fairly quickly discounted. So you will be able to see where things are heading, ladies and gentlemen.

'The immediate effects of the theft were considerably lessened both by the death of Laura Stratton and on the very next day by the murder of Dr. Kemp, the man to whom the Tongue was due to be handed over that day at an official little ceremony at the Ashmolean. Now one of the jobs of the police force, and especially the CID, is to try to establish a pattern in crime, if this is possible, and in this instance both Sergeant Lewis and myself found it difficult not to believe there was some link between the two events. They may of course have been quite coincidental; but already there was a link, was there not? Dr. Kemp himself! — the man who had one day been deprived of a jewel which he himself had traced to an American collector, a jewel for which he had been negotiating, a jewel that had been found in the waters below the bridge at Wolvercote in 1873, a jewel which once united with its mate would doubtless be the subject of some considerable historical interest, and bring some short-term celebrity, possibly some long-term preferment, to himself — to Kemp. Indeed a photograph of the re-united Buckle and Tongue was going to be used on the cover of his forthcoming book. And then, on the very next day, Kemp is murdered. Interesting, is it not? Did, I asked myself, did the same person commit both the theft and the murder? It seemed to me more and more likely. So perhaps I needed just the one criminal, not two; but I needed a reason as well. So my thinking went a little further in that direction — the correct direction. If the criminal was the same in each case, was not the motive likely to have been the same? In both crimes, the person who had suffered by far the most had been the same man, Kemp. In the first, he had been robbed of something on which he had set his heart; in the second he was robbed of his life. Why? — that is what I asked myself. Or rather that is not, in the first instance, what I asked myself, because I was driven to the view — incorrectly — that there could be no link between the two crimes.

'So let us come to Kemp himself. It is a commonplace in murder investigations that more may often be learned about the murderer from the victim than from any other source. Now what did we know of the victim, Dr. Kemp? He was a Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean, a man somewhat flamboyant in dress and manner, not only a ladies' man but one of the most dedicated womanisers in the University; a man who patently, almost on first sight, appeared self-centred and self-seeking. Yet life had not gone all his way: far from it. The University had recognised Kemp for what he was: his promotion was slow; a full fellowship was withheld; no family; a very modest two-bedroomed flat in North Oxford; and, above all, a great personal tragedy. Two years ago he was involved in a dreadful crash on the western Ring Road in which his wife, who was sitting beside him in the passenger seat, received such serious injuries to the lower half of the body that for the rest of her life — a life which ended tragically last week — she was confined to a wheel-chair. But that was only the half of it. The driver of the other car was killed instantaneously — a Mrs. Mayo from California who was in England doing some research project on the novels of Anthony Trollope. The settlements of the dead woman's Accidental Death Benefit, and of the policy covering the "passenger-liability" responsibility of the surviving driver a driver by the way almost completely unscathed — were finally settled. But the legal tangle surrounding "culpability" was never really unravelled: no eye-witnesses, contradictory evidence on possible mechanical faults, discrepancies about the time recorded for the breathalyser test — these factors resulted in Kemp getting away comparatively lightly, being banned from driving for three years only, with what must have seemed to many the derisory fine of only four hundred pounds. What had really confused everyone was the fact that Kemp always carried a hip-flask of brandy in the car's glove compartment, and that he had given his wife — trapped by the legs beside him — several sips from this flask before the ambulance arrived; and had even drunk from it himself! Everyone who subsequently learned of this action condemned it as utterly stupid and irresponsible, but perhaps such criticism may be tempered by the fact that the man was in a deep state of shock. At least that was what he said in his own defence.

'But let me revert to the crimes committed last week. The crucial happening, whichever way we look at things, was the telephone call made by Kemp. I formed several theories about that call — all wrong, and I will say nothing about them. Kemp had reported to the group that he would be arriving in Oxford at 3 p.m. — and the simple truth is that he did arrive in Oxford at 3 p.m. And somebody knew about that telephone call, and met Kemp at the railway station, doubtless informing the taxi-driver who had been hired that he was no longer required.'

Janet Roscoe half opened her mouth as if she were contemplating breaking the ensuing silence. But it was Morse who did so, as he continued:

'A taxi, you see, would have been easily traceable, so a different plan was adopted. Someone went to a car-rental firm in North Oxford in the early afternoon and hired a Vauxhall Cavalier. There was only one real difficulty: after vehicle-licence, credit-worthiness, and so on, were formally checked, the firm required some reference to establish the bona fides of the client. But this difficulty was quickly and neatly overcome: the man who hired the car — a man, yes! — gave the telephone number of The Randolph, and as the firm's representative was dialling the number he casually mentioned that the Deputy Manageress of The Randolph could be immediately contacted on a certain extension. The call was put through, confirmation obtained, and the car handed over. You will appreciate of course that an accomplice was essential at this juncture, but not just someone prepared to perform a casual favour. No! Rather someone who was prepared to be an accomplice to murder. Now, I believe it to be true that before this tour — with one exception — none of you had known each other. That exception was Mr. Stratton and Mr. Brown, who had met in the Armed Forces. But at the time the car was being hired, Mr. Stratton was on his way to Didcot Railway Centre — of that fact there can be no doubt whatsoever. And Mr. Howard Brown' (Morse hesitated) 'has given a full and fairly satisfactory account of his own whereabouts that afternoon, an account which has since been substantially corroborated.' Lewis's eyebrows shot up involuntarily, but he trusted that no one had noticed.

'There were one or two other absentees that afternoon, weren't there? Mr. Ashenden for one.' The courier was staring hard at the patch of carpet between his feet. 'But he was up in Summertown for the whole of that afternoon with friends — as we've now checked.' (Lewis managed to keep his eyebrows still.) 'And then, of course, there's Mr. Aldrich.' Heads were swivelling completely round this time — to the back row where sat Phil Aldrich, nodding his head in gentle agreement, a wry smile on his long, lugubrious face. 'But Mr. Aldrich can't possibly have been our guilty party either, can he? He went up to London that day, and in fact was travelling on the same train as Stratton when the two of them arrived back in Oxford. Mr. Aldrich himself claims, and I am fully prepared to believe him, that he did not see Mr. Stratton on the train. But Mr. Stratton saw Mr. Aldrich; and so in an odd sort of way, even if we had no proof of Stratton being in Didcot, the pair of them quite unwittingly perhaps had given each other an utterly unshakeable alibi. And in addition we now know that Stratton was in Didcot most of that afternoon. You see, ladies and gentlemen, whatever happens in life, no person can ever be in two places at the same time, for the laws of the Universe forbid it. And the person perfecting his plans in Oxford, the person who had taken possession of the red Cavalier, that per-son had plenty to do, and precious little time in which to do it — to do it in Oxford. There is, perhaps, a brief additional point to be made. It occurred to me that if Stratton and Brown had known each other, so might their wives, perhaps. But one of these wives was already dead; and it was a man,' said Morse slowly, 'and not a woman, who hired the car that afternoon.

'Are we running out of suspects, then? Almost, I agree. Your tour started with only three married couples, did it not? And already we have eliminated two of these: the Strattons and the Browns.' In the tense silence which followed this remark, all eyes now turned upon the couple who had been fetched from their bedroom; the couple who had decided that any further diet of delightful architecture would have amounted to a sort of cultural force-feeding. But the pivoting glances which now fell full upon Sam and Vera Kronquist almost immediately reverted to Chief Inspector Morse as the latter rounded off his background summary.

'But Mr. Kronquist, as several of you already know, was assisting Mrs. Sheila Williams during most of the afternoon in question with the temperamental kaleidoscope allocated to her for her illustrated talk on "Alice". Now Mr. Kronquist may be a very clever man, but he is not permitted, either, to suspend the physical laws of the Universe. And you do see, don't you, that Mrs. Williams, too, must now be crossed off our list of suspects? And finally we shall cross the name of Cedric Downes off that same list, and for exactly the same reason. If anyone from the group here met Kemp at 3 p.m., it wasn't Downes, because nine or ten of you here will willingly testify to the incontrovertible fact that he was talking to you from that time onwards. Did I say running out of likely suspects? And yet, ladies and gentlemen, someone did meet Kemp at the railway station that afternoon.

'One of you did!'

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

THROUGHOUT THE MORNING on which Morse was addressing his audience in Bath, and stripping away the deceptions and the half-truths which hitherto had veiled the naked truth of the case, there was much activity at the Trout Inn, a fine riverside hostelry set between the weir and the Godstow Lock in the village of Wolvercote, only a couple of miles out on the western side of North Oxford. During the summer months hordes of visitors regularly congregate there to eat and drink at their leisure on the paved terrace between the mellow sandstone walls of the inn itself and the river's edge, where many sit on the low stone parapet and look below them through the clear, greenish water at the mottled dark-brown and silvery backs of the carp that rise to the surface to snap up the crisps and the crusts thrown down to them.

But that Wednesday morning, the few customers who had called for an early drink were much more interested in other underwater creatures: four of them, with sleek black skins and disproportionately large webbed feet, circling up and down, and round and round, and sweeping the depths diligently below the weir, streams of bubbles intermittently rising to the surface from the cylinders strapped to their backs. Each of the four was an experienced police frogman, and each of them knew exactly what he was looking for — knew indeed the exact dimensions of the object and the positioning of the three great ruby eyes once set into it. Thus far they had found nothing, and above the bed of the river their searchings were stirring up a cloudy precipitate of mud as the white waters gushed across the weir. Yet hopes were reasonably high. The frogmen had been briefed — and with such a degree of certitude! — as to the exact point on the hump-backed bridge whence the Tongue had been thrown. So they were able to plot their operation with some precision as first they swam slowly abreast across the river, then turning and recrossing the current, ever feeling, ever searching, as they worked their way slowly downstream into the more placid reaches of the water.

But nothing.

After its discovery in 1873, the Tongue had found its way into the hands of a treasure-hunter, who had kept quiet about it and sold it to a London dealer, who in turn had sold it to an American collector, who had lent it to an exhibition in Philadelphia in 1922—which latter appearance had provided the clues, sixty-five years later, for a detective-story-like investigation on the part of Theodore Kemp of the Ashmolean Museum — a man who now lay dead in the mortuary at the Radcliffe Infirmary. But the man who had agreed to tell Chief Inspector Morse precisely where he had stood, and with what impetus thrown the Tongue back into the river at Wolvercote — this man was seated, very much alive, in the vastly confusing complex of Kennedy Airport. Beside him sat a man of such immense proportions that Eddie Stratton wondered how he could ever fit into the seat that had been booked for him on the flight to Heathrow, scheduled to leave in forty minutes' time. He wondered, too, whether the man would be willing to unlock the handcuff that chafed away at his right wrist. For he, Stratton, was contemplating no high-jinks or high-jacks in mid-Atlantic flight.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

IT WAS WAY PAST coffee-break time in the Chesterton Hotel, but no one seemed to notice.

'Kemp was met at the railway station,' continued Morse. 'He was there told something — I'm guessing — which persuaded him to accompany the driver to his own flat in Water Eaton Road. Perhaps he was told that his wife was suddenly taken very ill; was dead, even. Perhaps some less dramatic disclosure sufficed. There, at Kemp's home — again I'm guessing — a quarrel took place in which Kemp was struck over the head and sent stumbling in his own living room, where his right temple crashed against the kerb of the fire-place — and where he died. I'm amazed how difficult it is occasionally for a murderer to despatch his victim: in the Thames Valley we once had a case where no fewer than twenty-three vicious stab-wounds were insufficient to complete the sorry business. But at the same time it is occasionally so terribly easy to rob a fellow human being of his life: a slight nudge, let us say, from a car-bumper, and a cyclist is knocked down and hits his head against the road — and in a second or two a life has gone. In this case, Kemp had a thin skull, and his murder was no problem. But the body? Oh yes, the body was a problem all right!

'Now, if the murder took place at about three forty-five p.m., as I believe it did, why do we find Kemp's wife, Marion, doing nothing about it? For we can be absolutely sure she was there, the whole time. Maybe the reason for this was that she was vindictively happy not to do anything, and it is the opinion of my sergeant here that she probably hated her husband almost as intensely as the murderer himself did. But Marion Kemp could not, in my view, have killed her husband, and quite certainly she could hardly have moved the body a single centimetre from where it lay. On the other hand, Kemp was a slimly built, light-boned man, and it would have been possible for most people here, let us say — anyone reasonably mobile, reasonably fit — to have moved that body at least some small distance. Even for a woman, if she were sturdily or athletically built.'

The innuendo in this remark proved too much for the petite figure in the front row, who during the last few words was showing signs of unmistakable distress.

'Inspector! Chief Inspector, rather! For you even to suggest that I, for one, could have shifted a bardy, why, that is utterly absurd! And if you think that I am going to sit here—'

Morse smiled wanly at the lady as she sat in the front row, a lady turning the scales at not much more, surely, than around five stone.

'I should never accuse you of that, Mrs. Roscoe. Please believe me!'

Mollified, it seemed, Janet sat back primly and slimly in her seat, as John Ashenden, seated immediately opposite (beside Dr. Moule), looked across at her with a troublous, darkling gaze. And Morse continued:

'In the concreted yard at the back of the flats at Water Eaton Road stood a light-weight, rubber-wheeled, aluminium wheelbarrow which one of the maintenance men had been using earlier that day. It was into this barrow, under cover of the night, at about seven p.m., that the body was put, covered with plastic sacks, themselves in turn covered with a fair sprinkling of autumn leaves, before being wheeled across the low wooden bridge there, across a well-worn path through the field, and across to the swiftly flowing current of the River Cherwell, where unceremoniously the body was tipped into the water. And as I say' (Morse looked slowly around his audience) 'it was one of your own group who performed this grisly task — a man—a man who would have felt little squeamishness about first stripping the dead man of his clothes — for there had been much blood, much messy, sticky blood which almost inevitably would have transferred itself to the clothes of the man disposing of the body; a man who for the last ten years of his working life had been inured to such gruesome matters, as a moderately competent "mortician" in America.'

There was a sudden communal intake of breath from the audience, and clearly no need for Morse to spell things out further. But he did:

'Yes! Mr. Eddie Stratton:

'No, sir!'

The voice from the back of the room caused every head to crane round, although the mild tones of Phil Aldrich were known so well by now to everyone.

'You have my testimony, sir, and you have Eddie's too that we—'

'Mr. Aldrich! I do accept your point, and I shall explain. Let us return to Stratton briefly. He had become a small-time mortician, specialising in the beautification — please allow the word! — of corpses that had died an ugly or disfiguring death. And a bachelor. Until two and a bit years ago, that is, when he met and married the widow of a middle-bracket philanthropist. The marriage was mostly an accommodation of interests; a convenience. Eddie did the shopping, tended the garden, mended the taps and the fuses, and serviced the family car. Laura — Laura Stratton as she now was — was reasonably content with the new arrangements: she was less anxious about burglars, she was chauffeured to her twice-weekly consultations with the latest chiropodist, she forgot most of her worries about the upkeep of the household, and she still found herself able to indulge the twin passions of her life, smoking cigarettes and playing contract bridge — simultaneously, wherever possible.

'But there had been disappointed expectations, on both sides, when the estate of the late philanthropist had finally, well almost finally, been settled, with the lawyers still growing fat on the pickings. Objets d'art there were aplenty, but most of them were held in trust for some collection or gallery. And so the prospects of a happily-monied marriage of convenience were ever diminishing, until an idea occurred to the pair of them — certainly to Laura Stratton. The Wolvercote Tongue was insured for half a million dollars, and one of the safest ways of transferring it over to England had got to be on the person of the traveller: few people would entrust such an item to letter-post or parcel-post or courier-service; and even if they did, the insurance-risk premium would be prohibitive. So the Strattons took it themselves—and then made sure it was stolen. That was their plan. The reason the plan went so sadly askew was the not-wholly-unexpected but extremely untimely death of Laura Stratton herself, though whether this was occasioned by her own complicity, excitement, remorse — whatever! — we shall never really know. The plan — a simple one — was for the Tongue to be stolen immediately after Laura had installed herself in her room at The Randolph. She would be sure to make such a song and dance about her aching feet that she would get right to the head of the queue for the room-key — well, apart from Mrs. Roscoe, naturally!'

For the first time during Morse's analysis, his audience was seen reluctantly to smile as it acknowledged the primacy of the perpetually belly-aching little lady from California.

'Once she had the key, and whilst her husband signed the formalities, she was to go up to her room, put the handbag containing the Tongue — and money, pearls, and so on — on a ledge as near as possible to a door which was going to be left deliberately ajar. Meanwhile Eddie Stratton was to enthuse about a quick stroll around the centre of Oxford before it got too dark, and an invitation to accompany him was accepted by Mrs. Brown, a woman with whom he'd become friendly on the tour, and who probably felt a little flattered to be asked. All he had to do then was to make it known that he had promised to leave Laura alone so that she could have a rest in peace, to make an excuse about paying a brief visit to the Gents, to go up to bis room — probably via the guest-lift — to stick his hand inside the room and grab the handbag, to take out the jewel before dumping the handbag, and then. '

Morse stopped, but only briefly. 'Not a terribly convincing hypothesis, are you thinking? I tend to agree with you. Everyone would be trying to use the lift at that point — probably queuing for it. And it would be impossible to use the main staircase, because as you'll recall it is immediately next to Reception there. And where does he ditch the emptied handbag? For it was never found. However quickly he may have acted, the actual taking of the handbag must have taken more time than seems to have been available — since Eddie Stratton and Shirley Brown were seen walking out of The Randolph almost immediately, if the evidence of at least two of you here is to be believed, the evidence of Mr. Brown and Mrs. Roscoe. So! So I suggest that something a little more sophisticated may have taken place. Let me tell you what I think. The plan, whatever it was, must have been discussed well in advance of the tour's arrival in Oxford, but a few last-minute recapitulations and reassurances would have been almost inevitable. Perhaps you've noticed that it's often difficult, on a bus or a train, to assess how loudly you are talking? Yes? Too loudly? And where were the Strattons sitting?' Morse pointed dramatically (as he hoped) to the two empty seats just behind Janet Roscoe. 'If they did discuss things on the coach, who were the likeliest people to eavesdrop? I'm told, for example, that you, Mrs. Roscoe, have quite exceptionally acute hearing for a woman of—'

This time the little lady stood up, if thereby adding only some seven or eight inches in stature to her seated posture. 'Such innuendo, Chief Inspector, is wholly without foundation, and I wish you to know that one of my friends back home is the fiercest libel lawyer—'

But, again, and with the same patient smile, Morse bade the excitable lady to hold her peace, and bide her time.

'You were not the only one in earshot, Mrs. Roscoe. In the seats immediately across the gangway from the Strattons sat Mr. and Mrs. Brown. and in front of them, in the courier's seat. ' Eyes, including Morse's, now turned as if by some magnetic attraction towards John Ashenden, who sat, his eyes unblinking, in the front row of the seats.

'You see,' resumed Morse, 'Stratton never went up at all to his room in The Randolph — not at that point. But someone did, someone here did — someone who had overheard enough of the original plan; someone who had sensed a wonderfully providential opportunity for himself, or for herself, and who had capitalised upon that opportunity. How? By volunteering to steal the Wolvercote Tongue, in order that the Strattons could immediately claim — claim without any suspicion attaching to them — the tempting prize of the insurance money!

'Let me put the situation to you simply. The person who had eavesdropped on the proposed intrigue performed Stratton's job for him; stole the jewel; slid thereafter into the background; and disposed at leisure of the superfluous pearls and the petty cash. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is no wild hypothesis on my part; it is the truth. Stratton was presented with an offer he could hardly refuse. At the time, though, he was not aware — could never have been aware — of the extraordinary service he would have to render as the quid pro quo of the agreement. But he was to learn about it soon enough. In fact, he was to learn of it the very next day, and he duly performed his own half of the bargain with a strangely honourable integrity. As it happens'—Morse consulted his watch ostentatiously—'he is very shortly due to take off from Kennedy Airport to fly back to Heathrow, and he has already made a substantial confession about his part in the strange circumstances surrounding the Wolvercote Tongue and Dr. Theodore Kemp. But — please believe me! — it was not he who actually stole the one. or murdered the other. Yet I am looking forward to meeting Mr. Stratton again, because thus far he has refused point-blank to tell me who the murderer was. '

At the Trout Inn, the frogmen were now seated before a blazing log-fire in the bar. The landlady, an attractive, buxom woman in her mid-forties, had brought them each a hugely piled plate of chilli-con-carne, with a pint of appropriately chilly lager to wash it all down. None of the four had met Morse yet, and didn't know how strongly he would have disapproved of their beverage. But they knew they were working for him, and each of them was hoping that if the jewel were found it would be he who would have found it. Some acknowledgement, some gratitude from the man — that was an end devoutly to be wished.

But still nothing. Nothing, that is, except a child's tricycle, an antique dart-board, and what looked like part of a fixture from a household vacuum-cleaner.

Frequently, when Eddie Stratton had flown in the past, his heart had missed a beat or two whenever he heard the 'ding-dong' tones on the aircraft intercom. Indeed, he had sometimes felt that the use of such a system, except in times of dire emergency, should be prohibited by international law. No one Eddie had ever met wished to be acquainted with the pilot and his potential problems. So why not keep an eye on the steering, and forgo any announcement to interested passengers that there was now, say, a splendid view of the Atlantic Ocean down below? No announcements, no news — that's what passengers wanted. But now, ten minutes before takeoff, Stratton felt most curiously relaxed about the possibility of an aerial disaster. Would such an eventuality be a welcome release? No, not really. He would speak to Morse again, yes. But Morse would never learn — at least not from him—the name of the person who had murdered Theodore Kemp.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

SERGEANT LEWIS HAD been gratified by the brief mention of himself in despatches, and he was in any case revising (upwards) his earlier judgement on Morse's rhetorical skills. All right, he (Lewis) now knew the whole picture, but it was good to have the details rehearsed again in front of a different audience. He had never been near the top of the class in any of the subjects he had been taught at school, yet he'd often thought he wouldn't have been all that far below the high-fliers if only some of the teachers had been willing to go over a point a second time; or even a third time. For once Lewis did get hold of a thing firmly — suggestion, idea, hypothesis, theory — he could frequently see its significance, its implications, almost as well as anyone; even Morse. It was just that the initial stages were always a bit of a problem; whereas for Morse — well, he seemed to jump to a few answers here and there before he'd even read the question-paper. That was one of the big things he admired most about the man, that ability to leap ahead of the field almost from the starting-stalls — albeit occasionally finding himself on completely the wrong race-course. But it wasn't the biggest thing. The biggest thing was that Morse appeared to believe that Lewis was not only usually up with him in the race, galloping happily abreast, but that Lewis could sometimes spot something in the stretches ahead that Morse himself had missed, as the pair of them raced on towards the winning-post. It was ridiculous, of course. But Lewis ever found himself trusting that such a false impression might long be perpetuated.

The man's diction is slightly pedantic, thought Dr. Moule, but he actually speaks in sentences—unusual even for a preacher, let alone a policeman. And — heaven be praised! — he doesn't stand there with his hands jingling the coins in his pockets. He reminded her of her Latin master, on whom she'd had an extra-special crush, and she wondered whether she wouldn't have had the same for this man. He looked overweight around the midriff, though nowhere else, and she thought perhaps that he drank too much. He looked weary, as if he had been up most of the night conducting his investigations. He looked the sort of man she would like to be going with, and she wondered whether he'd ever been unfaithful to his wife. But surely no wife would allow her husband abroad in such an off-white apology for a laundered shirt? Dr. Moule smiled quietly, and trusted she was looking her attractive best; and tried to stop herself hoping he had holes in his socks.

As the TWA Tristar turned slowly at the head of the runway, Lieutenant Al Morrow tried to pull out a final inch or two from the safety-belt that clamped his enormous girth to the seat. At the same time he unfastened the handcuffs which united him to his fellow-passenger. Morrow had a good deal of experience of the criminal classes, but this particular villain was hardly one of the potentially-dangerous-on-no-account-to-be-accosted variety. OK. He'd accompany him to the loo. But for the rest, the fellow would be fine, imprisoned in his window-seat between the fuselage on the one side and the mighty mountain of flesh that was Morrow on the other. The lieutenant opened his reading matter, The Finer Arts of Fly-Fishing, and, as the great jet raced and roared its engines, glanced quickly once again at the man who sat beside him: the features immobile, yet in no way relaxed; the eyes staring, yet perhaps not seeing at all; the forehead unfurrowed, yet tense, it seemed, as though his mind was dwelling on unhappy memories.

'You want sump'n to read, pal?'

Stratton shook his head.

It was as the lieutenant had suspected.

. It had been extraordinary how the two things had synchronised so perfectly at Oxford: a bit like the iceberg growing as the SS Titanic drew ever closer.

It was Laura's fault, of course! The woman could never keep her voice down — a voice that was usually double the decibels needed in normal conversation; and in whispered, conspiratorial communication, just about as loud as normal speech. And particularly on any form of public transport the dotty but endearing old biddy could never seem to gauge the further limits of her penetrating tones. Constantly, had she been fitted with a volume-control attachment somewhere about her person, Stratton would have turned it down. Frequently, as it was, he had inquired of his fairly recently acquired bride whether she was anxious for the whole world to know her business! Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. Yet someone had overheard their plan; or heard enough of their plan to make a firm four out of two and two. And the glory of the thing had been that this someone had been just as anxious — more anxious! — to spirit away the Wolvercote Tongue as Laura was. As he was.

It had been the night at the University Arms in Cambridge that Plan B had been agreed. Such a simple plan, that 'plan' seemed far too grand an appellation: audibly (not a difficult task!) Laura would complain about her feet on the journey to Oxford; quite naturally (for her regular seat was on the row second to the front) she would be first in the queue at Reception in The Randolph — even Mrs. Roscoe probably conceding her customary prerogative; she would leave her handbag immediately inside the allocated, unlocked bedroom; she would take a bath; she would leave the thief the childishly simple assignment of putting a hand inside the door. His own role? Principally to keep as far away from his room as possible. The police (no way in which they could not be involved) would be primarily interested in who was going to profit from any insurance, and he, Stratton himself, would have to vie with Caesar's wife in immunity from any suspicion. As it happened, he'd already prepared the ground for that by making something of a fuss of Shirley Brown; not at all difficult, because he wanted to make a fuss of Shirley Brown; and that lady had been flattered to follow his suggestion for a twilit stroll round Radcliffe Square — a stroll on which they'd seen their courier, Ashenden, and in turn been seen by the all-seeing Roscoe, a woman whom no one could abide, yet one whom everyone believed. Clever little touch, that! The problem that had worried Stratton about the earlier (now discarded) Plan A was where on earth he was going to dispose of the handbag. But need he have worried? Would it really have mattered if the bag had been found fairly soon in the nearest litter-bin? No, it wouldn't! The only thing that had to be disposed of was the jewel itself — not only because the insurance money must not be put in jeopardy, but also because someone else desired Kemp to be deprived of it. Desired it desperately.

Then Laura had to put her foot in it! Put her goddamned, aching, corny, foot right in it.

She'd gone and died.

Not that he (Stratton) had been involved in any way in that first death. No! But as far as the second death was concerned? Ah! That was a different matter. And whatever happened he would never tell the whole truth about that to anyone — not voluntarily — not even to that smart-alec copper, Chief Inspector Morse himself.

Yet he respected the man; couldn't help it, remembering the initial broadside on the transatlantic telephone, when Morse had immediately breached the outer fortifications.

'No, Inspector. There's nothing I can tell you about Kemp's death. Nothing.'

'I was more interested in the jewel, sir.'

'Ah! "The jewel that was ours", as Laura used to think of it.'

'Come off it!'

'Pardon, Inspector?'

'I said "Bullshit!" '

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

ALTHOUGH IT HAD been a rather chilly morning, several of the people seated in the Beau Nash Room wished that the central heating could be turned down a few degrees. Howard Brown wiped his high forehead with a large handkerchief, and John Ashenden brushed the sleeve of his sports jacket across his upper lip where he felt the sweat-prickles forming. Morse himself drew a forefinger half a circuit round the neck of his slightly over-tight collar, and continued:

'I know who stole the Wolvercote Tongue. I know where it is, and I am quite sure that it will soon be recovered. I also know which one of you — which one of you here — killed Dr. Kemp.' The hush was now so intense that Lewis found himself wondering whether his involuntary swallow had been audible, as for thirty seconds or so Morse stood silent and still, only his eyes moving left and right, and left and right again across the central aisle. No one in the audience moved either. No one dared even to cough.

'I'd hoped that the guilty person would have come forward by now. I say that because you may have read of several cases in England recently where the police have been criticised — in some cases rightly so — for depending for a prosecution on the uncorroborated confessions of accused persons, confessions which, certainly in one or two cases, might have been extorted in less than safe and satisfactory circumstances. How much better it would have been, then, if Kemp's murderer came forward—comes forward — in the presence of his friends and fellow tourists. ' Morse again looked around the room; but if there were any one person upon whom those blue eyes focused, it was not apparent to the others seated there.

'No?'

'No?' queried Morse again.

'So be it! There is little more to tell you. The biggest single clue in this case I passed over almost without reading it, until my sergeant jogged my memory. It was contained in a police report of the road accident in which Kemp crippled his wife — and also killed the driver of the other car, a Mrs. P. J. Mayo, a thirty-five-year-old woman from California: Mrs. Philippa J. Mayo, whose husband had earlier been killed in a gunnery accident on the USS South Dakota. That would have been bad enough for Philippa Mayo's parents-in-law, would it not? But at least the man had been serving his country; at least he'd died for some cause—whether that cause was justified or not. What of Philippa's own parents, though, when she is killed? Their daughter. Their only daughter. Their only child. A child killed needlessly, pointlessly, tragically, and wholly reprehensibly—by a man who must have appeared to those parents, from the reports they received, as a drunken, selfish, wicked swine who deserved to be as dead as their daughter. Above all, I suspect, the parents were appalled by what seemed to them the quite extraordinary leniency of the magistrates at the criminal hearing, and they came over to England, father and mother, to lay the ghost that had haunted them night and day for the past two years. But why only then, you may ask? I learn that the wife had been suffering from cervical cancer for the previous three years; had just endured her second massive session of chemotherapy; had decided that she could never face a third; had only at the outside six more months to live. So the pair came over to view the killer of their daughter, and if they deemed him worthy of death, they vowed that he would die. They met him the once only, on the night before he died: a cocky philanderer, as they saw him; a cruel, conceited specimen; and now a man who, like Philippa Mayo's mother, had so very little time to live. The link between the two crimes, and the motivation for them, was clear to me at last, and the link and the motivation merged into a single whole: the implacable hatred of a man and his wife for the person who had killed their daughter.

'For Theodore Kemp.

'I keep mentioning "man and wife" because I finally persuaded myself that no one single person on his own could have carried through the murder of Kemp. It could have been any two people, though, and we had to try to find out as much about all of you as we could. When you signed in at The Randolph, you all filled in a form which asked overseas visitors to complete full details of nationality, passport number, place passport issued, permanent home address, and so on. But, as you know, I also had to ask Mr. Ashenden to collect your passports, and from these, my sergeant here' (the blood rose slowly in Lewis's cheeks) 'checked all the details you had given and found that two of you lived in the same block of retirement flats. But these two were not registered as man and wife; rather they had decided to play the waiting game, to take advantage of anything that might crop up, to "optimise the opportunity", as I believe you say in America. And that opportunity materialised — in the person of Eddie Stratton.

'Stratton had been out at Didcot on the afternoon Kemp died, and what is more he could prove his presence there conclusively — with photographic evidence. And I — we — were led to believe that his quite innocent statements about his train journey back to Oxford were equally true. But they weren't. Cleverly, unwittingly, as it seemed, he gave a wholly unimpeachable alibi to a man he saw in the carriage ahead of him — a man to whom he owed a very great deal. But he did not see that man, ladies and gendemen! Because that man was not on the Didcot-Oxford train that afternoon. He was in Oxford. murdering Dr. Kemp.'

The last few words sank into the noiselessness of the stifling room. And then Morse suddenly smiled a little, and spoke quietly:

'Can you hear me all right at the back, Mr. Aldrich?'

'Pardon, sir?'

'Don't you think it would be far better if you. ' Morse held out the palm of his right hand and seemed to usher some invisible spirit towards the front row of the seats.

Aldrich, looking much perplexed, rose from his seat and walked forward hesitantly down the central aisle; and, turning towards him, Janet Roscoe smiled expectantly and pointed her hand to the empty seat beside her. But Aldrich ignored the gesture, and slipped instead into one of the empty seats immediately behind her.

'As I say,' resumed Morse, 'the person Stratton claimed to have seen was never on the train at all. That person told me he'd been to London to see his daughter; but he'd only ever had the one daughter. and she was dead.'

Morse's audience was hanging on his every word, yet few seemed able to grasp the extraordinary implications of what he was saying.

'Names, you know' (Morse's tone was suddenly lighter) 'are very important things. Some people don't like their own names. but others are extremely anxious to perpetuate them — both Christian names and surnames. Let's say, for example, that Mr. and Mrs. Brown here — Howard and Shirley, isn't it — wanted to christen their house, they might think of sucking half of their two names together. What about "W-a-r-d" from his name and "l-e-y" from hers? Make a reasonable house-name, wouldn't it? "Wardley"?'

'Gee, that's exactiy—' began Shirley; but Howard laid a hand on her arm, and the embarrassed lady held her peace.

'Not much good trying to perpetuate a surname, though — not if your daughter gets married. She can keep her maiden name, of course. Can't she? Can't she.? But it's easier with Christian names, especially sometimes. A father whose name is "George", say, can call his daughter "Georgie", "Georgina", "Georgette".' (Lewis glanced up at Morse.) 'And the woman who was killed in the road accident was called Mrs. Philippa J. Mayo, remember? Her father couldn't give her his own name exactly, but he could give her the female equivalent of "Philip". And Philippa Mayo was the daughter of the only man here who has that name.

'Wasn't she, Mr. Aldrich?' asked Morse in a terrifying whisper.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

'YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT all this, sir?' Phil Aldrich cocked his head to one side and his sad features seemed incredulous, and pained.

'Oh, yes,' said Morse, with a quiet simplicity — perhaps also with some pain. 'You've no daughter in London — or anywhere else now, I'm afraid. You've lost your' alibi, too — the very clever alibi provided by Eddie Stratton as the first of his services for you. before he performed his second service, later that same day, by disposing of Kemp's body in the River Cherwell.'

Momentarily, it seemed, Aldrich was on the point of protesting, but Morse shook his head wearily:

'No point — no point at all in your saying anything to the contrary, Mr. Aldrich. We've been in touch with the police department in Sacramento, with your neighbours, with the local institution there, including the High School your daughter attended. We've got your passport, and we've checked your home address, and it's perfectly correct. You carried through all your details accurately on to the t.h.f. Guest Registration Card at The Randolph, and doubtless here too, in Bath. But your wife? She was a little "economical with the truth", wasn't she? Your wife—your accomplice, Mr. Aldrich — she made just a few little changes here and there to her details, didn't she? It was all right for it to be seen that you both lived in the same district, the same street, even—but not in the same apartment. Yet you do, don't you, live in the same apartment as your wife? You've been married together, happily married together, for almost forty-two years, if my information is correct. And apart from your daughter, there has only ever been one woman in life you have loved with passion and tenderness — the woman you married. She was a gifted actress, I learned. She was well known on the West Coast of America in many productions in the fifties and sixties — mostly in musicals in the earlier years, and then in a series of Arthur Miller plays. And being an actress, a successful actress, it was sensible for her to keep her stage name — which was in fact her maiden name. But she gave her Christian name to her daughter, just as you did. Philippa J. Aldrich — Philippa Janet Aldrich — that was her name.' Morse nodded sadly to himself, and to the two people who sat so near to one another now.

Then a most poignant and exceedingly moving thing occurred. Only a few minutes since, Phil Aldrich had rejected (as it seemed) the blandishments of a diminutive, loud-mouthed, insufferable termagant. But now he accepted her invitation. He rose, and moved forward, just the one row, to sit beside the woman in the front, and to take her small hand gently into his — the tears now spilling down his cheeks. And as he did so, the woman turned towards him with eyes that were pale and desolate, yet eyes which still lit up with the glow of deep and happy love as she looked unashamedly, unrepentantly, into her husband's face; the eyes of a mother who had grieved so long and so desperately for her only daughter, a mother whose grief could never be comforted, and who had journeyed to England to avenge what she saw as an insufferable wrong — the loss of the jewel that was hers.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

AFTER THE ARRESTS, after the statements from the two Aldriches and from a repentant Stratton, after a second search of the Kemps' residence, the case — at least from Morse's point of view — was finished.

The major statement (the statement to which Morse awarded the literary prize) was made by Mrs. Janet Roscoe, who properly insisted on vetting the transcription of her lengthy evidence typed out by WPC Wright. Except at one point, this agreed with the parallel statement made by Mr. Phil Aldrich, with each, in turn, substantially corroborated by Mr. Edward Stratton's testimony about his own collusion with the Aldriches. The one colossal discrepancy arose from the two wholly contradictory accounts of Kemp's death. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Aldrich was willing to give any detail whatsoever about what, as Morse imagined, must have been a savagely bitter altercation between Kemp and themselves before the fateful (though maybe not immediately fatal?) blow struck with the stick that originally had rested across Marion Kemp's knees as she sat in her wheel-chair, her eyes (in Janet's splendid phrase) 'glowing with a sort of glorious revenge'. So much was agreed. Kemp had stumbled blindly against a chair and then fallen heavily, the back of his head striking the corner of the fireplace with 'a noise reminiscent of a large egg trodden under foot — deliberately'. So much was agreed. Then there was all that blood. Such a surprising amount of it! And the carpet where most of it had dripped; and his clothes 'sticky and messy with the stuff'. So much was agreed. But which of the two it was who had lashed out ferociously at Kemp with that stick ('Please return to the Radcliffe Infirmary' branded upon it) — ah! that was proving so difficult to decide. It had been Phil, of course — Janet confessed: 'He must have gone quite berserk, Inspector!' But no! It had been Janet all the time, as Phil had so sadly admitted to Morse: a frenetic Janet who had been the happy instrument of eternal Justice. But when Morse had told Janet of the wild discrepancy, she'd merely smiled. And when Morse had told Phil of the same ridiculous discrepancy, he too had merely smiled — and lovingly.

There had been one or two minor surprises in the statements, but for the most part things had happened almost exactly as Morse had supposed. What finally, it appeared, had transmuted an intolerable grief into an implacable hatred, and a lust for some sort of retribution, was the fact that in all the reports the parents had received of the coroner's proceedings and the magistrate's hearing, Philippa's name had never once occurred. A curious catalyst, perhaps, and yet what a devastating one! But the name of Dr. Theodore Kemp had been mentioned many, many times; and when they had read of the Historic Cities of England Tour, they had seen that name again. Their plans were made (for what they were) and they duly took their places on the tour — almost enjoying the distanced yet sometimes friendly roles they had assumed. And it was on the coach that Janet had learned of the deceit that the Strattons were plotting. And after Janet had taken Laura Stratton's handbag, and put it immediately into her own, far more capacious one, she had gone to her own room, on the same floor, and happily discovered that the Wolvercote Tongue fitted almost perfectly into the small case she'd brought with her containing her portable iron.

Then it was the telephone call.

Janet had heard everything, clearly, And a plan was immediately formulated. Eddie Stratton was despatched somewhere — anywhere! — so long as he could establish a firm alibi for himself; and Phil sent off to a nearby car-hire firm, whilst she, Janet, remained seated by the extension-phone in her bedroom to deal with the necessary reference for the car firm. The confusion caused by Kemp's delay that day was a godsend; and Phil, after picking up Janet from Gloucester Green, had met Kemp at the railway station (his train two minutes early) informing him that his wife had been taken ill, that his duties were fully taken care of, and that he (Aldrich) was there to drive him directly up to his North Oxford home.

After the deed was done, Janet had found herself waiting anxiously for the return of Eddie Stratton; and as soon as she — and no one else! — had spotted him, she steered him away from The Randolph, handed him the Wolvercote Tongue and acquainted him with the second of his duties in the criminal conspiracy in which he was now a wholly committed accessory: the disposal of the body.

Marion Kemp (this from Stratton's evidence now) had admitted him at Water Eaton Road, where he had divested the corpse of its clothes — how else shift the body without staining his own? And. well, the rest was now known. It had not been an unduly gruesome task to a man for whom such post-mortem grotesqueries had been little more than a perfunctory performance. He had wrapped the carpet round the clothes of the murdered man, depositing the bundle behind the boiler in the airing-cupboard. And what of Marion Kemp? Throughout she had sat, Stratton claimed, in the hallway. In silence.

'And greatly disturbed,' opined Morse.

'Oh no, Inspector!' Stratton had replied.

After leaving Water Eaton Road, Stratton had walked via First Turn and Goose Green to the Trout Inn at Wolvercote where he had thrown the Tongue into the river — and then caught a Nipper Bus back to St. Giles', where he'd met Mrs. Williams.

Sheila's evidence tallied with Stratton's account. She had invited Stratton back to her house in North Oxford, and he had accepted. Anxious as he was to drink himself silly, and with a co-operative partner to boot, Stratton had consumed considerable quantities of Glenfiddich — and had finally staggered into a summoned taxi at around midnight.

Such was the picture of the case that had finally emerged; such the picture that Morse painted on the Friday morning of that same week when Chief Superintendent Strange had come into his office, seating himself gruntingly into the nearest chair.

'None of your bullshit, Morse! Just the broad brush, my boy! I'm off to lunch with the C.C. in half an hour.'

'Give him my very best wishes, sir.'

'Get on with it!'

Strange sat back (and looked at his watch) when Morse had finished. 'She must have been an amazing woman.'

'She was, sir. I think Janet Roscoe is possibly the—'

'I'm not talking about her, I'm talking about the Kemp woman — Marion, wasn't it? Didn't the Aldrich pair take a huge gamble though? You know, assuming she would play along with 'em, and so on?'

'Oh, yes. But they were gambling all along — with the very highest stakes, sir.'

'And you just think, Morse! Staying in that house — with that bloody corpse — in her bedroom — in the hall — wherever — I don't know. I couldn't do it. Could you? It'd send me crackers.'

'She could never forgive him—'

'It'd still send me crackers.'

'She did commit suicide, sir,' said Morse slowly, beginning only now, perhaps, to see into the abyss of Marion's despair.

'So she did, Morse! So she did!'

Strange looked at his watch again and tilted his heavily jowled head: 'What put you on to 'em? The Aldriches?'

'I should have got there earlier, I suppose. Especially after that first statement Aldrich made, about his fictional trip to London. He wrote it straight out — only three crossings-out in three pages. And if only I'd looked at what he'd crossed out instead of what he'd left in! He was writing under pressure and, if my memory serves me, he crossed out things like "we could have done something" and "our telephone number". He was worried about giving himself away, because he was writing like a married man. He was a married man. And there was another clue, too. He even mentioned his daughter's name in that statement: "Pippa" — which as you know, sir, is a diminutive of "Philippa".'

Strange rose to his feet and pulled on his heavy winter coat. 'Some nice bits of thinking, Morse!'

'Thank you, sir!'

'I'm not talking about you! It's this Roscoe woman. Very able little lady! Did you know that a lot of 'em have been little—these big people: Alexander, Augustus, Attila, Nelson, Napoleon. '

'They tell me Bruckner was a very small man, sir.'

'Who?'

The two men smiled briefly at each other as Strange reached the door.

'Just a couple of points, Morse. How did Janet Roscoe get rid of that handbag?'

'She says she walked round the corner into Cornmarket, and went into Salisbury's, and stuck it in the middle of the leather handbags on sale there.'

'What about the murder weapon? You say you've not recovered that?'

'Not yet. You see, she walked along to the Radcliffe Infirmary, so she says, and saw a notice there about an Amnesty — for anything you'd had from the place which you should have returned: "Amnesty — No Questions Asked", it said. She just handed it in.'

'Why haven't you got it, then?'

'Sergeant Lewis went along, sir. But there were seventy-one walking sticks in the Physio department there.'

'Oh!'

'Do you want any forensic tests on them?'

'Waste of money.'

'That's what Sergeant Lewis said.'

'Good man, Lewis!'

'Excellent man!'

'Not so clever as this Roscoe woman, though.'

'Few cleverer.'

'She'd be useful in the Force.'

'No chance, sir. She had a thorough medical yesterday. They don't even give her a fortnight.'

'Any doctor who tells you when you're going to die is a bloody fool!'

'Not this one,' said Morse quietly — and sadly.

'Think you'll get that jewel back?'

'Hope so, sir. But they won't, will they?'

'Say that again?'

'The jewel that was theirs, sir. They won't ever get her back, will they?'

Was Morse imagining things? For a second or two he thought that Strange's eyes might well have glistened with a film of tears. But there was no way of telling this for certain, for Strange had suddenly looked down fixedly at the threadbare carpet beside the door, before departing for his lunch with the Chief Constable.

CHAPTER SIXTY

A WEEK AFTER HIS meeting with Strange, Morse took the bus down from North Oxford to Cornmarket. He had managed two complete days' furlough, had re-read Bleak House, listened again (twice) to Parsifal, and (though he would never have admitted it) begun to feel slightly bored.

Not today, though!

When he had said farewell to Sheila Williams the previous week, he had suggested a second rendezvous. He was (he assured her) a reasonably civilised sort of fellow, and it would be pleasant for both of them to meet again fairly soon, and perhaps have lunch together: the Greek Taverna, perhaps, up in Summertown? So a time and a place were carefully agreed: 12 a.m. (twelve noon) in the foyer (the foyer) of The Randolph.

Where else?

As usual (for appointments), he was ten minutes early, and stood for a while in the foyer talking to Roy, the bespectacled Head Concierge, and congratulating this splendid man on his recent award of the BEM. A quarter of an hour later, he walked down the hotel steps and for several minutes stood immobile on the pavement there, some of his thoughts centred on the Ashmolean Museum opposite and on its former Keeper of Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval Antiquities; but most of his thoughts, if truth be told, on Mrs. Sheila Williams. At 12.20 p.m., when he found himself looking at his wristwatch about three times per minute, he returned to the foyer, and stood there rather fecklessly for a further few minutes. At 12.25 p.m., he asked the concierge if there'd been any messages. No! At 12.30 p.m., he abandoned all hope and decided to drown his disappointment in the Chapters Bar.

As he came to the door, he looked inside — and stopped. There, seated at the bar, a large empty glass held high in her left hand, her right arm resting on the shoulder of a youngish (bearded!) man, sat Sheila Williams, her black-stockinged legs crossed provocatively, her body disturbingly close to her companion's.

'If you insist!' Morse heard her say, as she pushed her glass across the bar. 'Gin — large one, please! — no ice — just half a glass of tonic — slim-line.'

Morse held back, feeling a great surge of irrational and impotent jealousy. About which he could do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like a stricken deer he walked back to the foyer, where he wrote a brief note ('Unavoidable, urgent police business'), and asked the concierge to take it through to the bar in about five minutes or so, and hand it to a Mrs. Williams — a Mrs. Sheila Williams.

Roy had nodded. He'd been there in the hotel for forty-five years, now. That's why he'd been honoured by the Queen. He understood most things. He thought he understood this.

Morse walked quickly along the Broad, past the King's Arms, the Holywell Music Room, the back of New College, turned left at Longwall Street, and after two hundred yards or so went through the wooden gate that led into Holywell Cemetery. He found the grave far more quickly than Ashenden had done; and behind the squat cross the envelope that Ashenden had left there, with the four lines written out neatly on a white card therein. After replacing the envelope, Morse left the cemetery and walked slowly back along Holywell Street to the King's Arms, ordering there (as Ashenden had done before him) a pint of Flowers Bitter. He found himself ever thinking of Sheila, and at one point had been on the verge of rushing up to The Randolph to see if she were still there in the Chapters Bar.

But he hadn't.

And gradually thoughts of Mrs. Williams were receding; and instead, he found his mind lingering on the sad quatrain he'd found beside the small stone cross in the Holywell cemetery:

Life divided us from each other,

Depriving friend of friend,

Accept this leave-taking — with my tears—

For it is all I have to bring.

At the Trout Inn, the frogmen had given it four days, then called off the search for the Wolvercote Tongue. Sensibly so, as Eddie Stratton (now facing charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice) could have told them from the beginning. It had been a sort of back-up insurance, really — prising out that single remaining ruby, and hiding it privily beneath the white-silk lining of Laura's coffin. In New York his plans had been thwarted, but the jewel would still be there, would it not? Whenever, wherever they finally buried her. Was anyone ever likely to suspect such duplicity, such ghoulish duplicity? Surely not. Surely not, reflected Stratton. Yet he found himself remembering the man who had been in charge of things.

Yes, just the one man, perhaps.