The Wench Is Dead

Chapter Twenty-one

In the late 1980s the premises of the City Police HQ in St Aldate's were being extensively renovated and extended – and the work was still in progress when Sergeant Lewis walked in through the main door that Saturday morning. The Force had always retained its obstinately hierarchical structure, and friendships between the higher and the lower ranks would perhaps always be slightly distanced. Yet Lewis knew Chief Superintendent Bell fairly well from the old days up at Kidlington and was glad to find him in the station.

Yes, of course Bell would help if he could: in fact, the timing of Lewis's visit might be very opportune, because many corners and crannies had only just been cleared out, and the contents of scores of cupboards and dust-covered cases and crates had recently seen the light of day for the first time within living memory. Bell's orders on this had been clear: if any documents seemed even marginally worth the keeping, let them be kept; if not, let them be destroyed. But strangely, up to now, almost everything so newly rediscovered had appeared potentially valuable to someone; and the upshot was that a whole room had been set aside in which the preserved relics and mementos from the earliest days – certainly from the 1850s onwards – had been unsystematically stacked, awaiting appropriate evaluation by academic historians, sociologists, criminologists, local-history societies – and authors. In fact a WPC was in the room now, as Bell thought – doing a bit of elementary cataloguing; and if Lewis wanted to look around…

Explaining that this was her lunch-break, WPC Wright, a pleasant enough brunette in her mid-twenties, continued eating her sandwiches and writing her Christmas cards, waving Lewis to any quarter of the room he wished after he had briefly stated his mission.

'It's all yours, Sergeant. Or, at least, I wish it was!'

Lewis could see what she meant. Morse had given him a copy of the Colonel's work (several spares had been left on the ward); but for the moment Lewis could see little or no chance of linking anything that had occurred in 1860 with the chaotic heaps of boxes, files, bags, crates, and piles of discoloured, dog-eared documents that lay around. To be fair, it was clear that a start had been made on sorting things out, for fifty-odd buff-coloured labels, with dates written on them, were attached to the rather neater agglomeration of material that had been separated from the rest, and set out in some semblance of chronological order. But amongst these labels Lewis looked in vain for 1859 or 1860. Was it worth having a quick look through the rest?

It was at 1.45 p.m., after what had proved to be a long look, that Lewis whistled softly.

'You found something?'

'Do you know anything about this?' asked Lewis. He had lifted from one of the tea-chests a chipped and splintered box, about two feet long, by one foot wide, and about 9-10 inches deep; a small box, by any reckoning, and one which could be carried by a person with little difficulty, since a brass plate, some 4 inches by half an inch, set in the middle of the box's top, held a beautifully moulded semi-circular handle, also of brass. But what had struck Lewis instantly – and with wondrous excitement – were the initials engraved upon the narrow plate: 'J.D.'! Lewis had not read the slim volume with any great care (or any great interest, for that matter); but he remembered clearly the two 'trunks' which Joanna had taken on to the boat and which presumably had been found in the cabin after the crew's arrest. Up to that point, Lewis had just had a vague mental picture of the sort of 'trunks' seen outside Oxford colleges when the undergraduates were arriving. But surely it had said that Joanna was carrying them, hadn't it? And by the well-worn look of the handle it looked as if this box had been carried – and carried often. And the name of Joanna's first husband had begun with a 'DM

The policewoman came over and knelt beside the box. The two smallish hooks, one on each side of the lid, moved easily; and the lock on the front was open, for the lid lifted back to reveal, inside the green-plush lining, a small canvas bag, on which, picked out in faded yellow wool, were the same initials as on the box.

Lewis whistled once more. Louder.

'Can you – can we -?' He could scarcely keep the excitement from his voice, and the policewoman looked at him curiously for a few seconds, before gently shaking out the bag's contents on to the floor: a small, rusted key, a pocket comb, a metal spoon, five dress-buttons, a crochet-hook, a packet of needles, two flat-heeled, flimsy-looking shoes, and a pair of calico knickers.

Lewis shook his head his dumbfounded disbelief. He picked up the shoes in somewhat gingerly fashion as if he suspected they might disintegrate; then, between thumb and forefinger, the calico knickers.

‘Think I could borrow these shoes and the er…?' he asked.

WPC Wright eyed him once again with amused curiosity.

'It's all right,' added Lewis. 'They're not for me.'

'No?'

'Morse – I work for Morse.'

'I suppose you're going to tell me he's become a knicker-fetishist in his old age.'

'You know him?'

'Wish I did!'

'He's in hospital, I'm afraid-'

'Everybody says he drinks far too much.'

'A bit, perhaps.'

'Do you know him well, would you say?'

'Nobody knows him all that well.'

'You'll have to sign for them-'

'Fetch me the book!'

'-and bring them back.'

Lewis grinned. 'They'd be a bit small for me, anyway, wouldn't they? The shoes, I mean.'