The Jewel That Was Ours (15 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Yaaaaahhhhh!'

The moon jellyfish like a parachute in air sways under the waves

(Basil Swift,
Collected Haiku)

It was halfway through the slow movement of Dvorak's American Quartet - with Morse mentally debating whether that wonderful work might just edge out the 'In Paradisum' from the Faure’
Requiem
for the number eight spot in his Desert Island cassettes - when the phone rang. For the second time that evening. Some while earlier, a weary-sounding Lewis had informed Morse that Mr Eddie Stratton had gone off somewhere just after lunchtime - from the railway station

and had still not returned to The Randolph. Naturally such a prolonged absence was a little worrying, especially in view of, well, the circumstances; and in fact an anxious Ashenden had rung Kidlington a few minutes previously, just in case the police knew anything. So Lewis thought he perhaps ought to mention it before going off duty
...
To that earlier call Morse had listened with a grudging, half-engaged attention; but he was listening far more carefully now.

Both Lewis and Max were already on the scene when Morse arrived, the surgeon (incongruously suited in evening-dress) immediately putting the chief inspector into the picture - in a somewhat flushed and florid manner:

'The dead man lay there, Morse' - pointing to the moonlit water by the weir - ' "something pale and long and white", as the young lady said. Rather good, eh? Somebody'd poked him along here with a punt-pole; and when I arrived his body -

his naked, semi-waterlogged body - was nudging against the side of the bank - just here - just in front of the changing cubicles, face down, his head washed clean of blood - much blood, methinks, Morse! - his hair rising and falling—'

'Have you been rehearsing all this stuff, Max?'

'Just drinking, dear boy . . . hair rising and falling in the water like some half-knackered jelly-fish.'

'Very fine!'

'I
read that bit about the jelly-fish somewhere. Too good to let it go, eh?' 'He needed a hair-cut, you mean?' 'You've no poetry in your soul.' ‘What party was it
tonight?

'Oxfordshire Health Authority. Guest Speaker - no less!' Max flicked his bow-tie with the index-finger of his right hand, before pointing the same finger at the figure of a man lying covered with a plastic sheet on the splashed grass beside the water's edge.

'Who is it?' asked Morse quietly.

'Ah, I was hoping you could tell
me
that. You're the detective, Morse. Have a guess!'

'A seventy-year-old Californian whose wife died yesterday - died, according to the best informed medical opinion, of purely natural causes.'

'And what did
he
die of?'

'Suicide - suicide by drowning - about three or four hours ago, just as it was getting dark. Crashed his head against a jagged branch as he was floating by. Anything else you want to know?'

'Back to school, Morse! I'm not sure he's an American or whether he was recently severed from his spouse. But he's certainly not in his seventies! Forties more like - you could put your pension on the forties.'

'I propose keeping my pension, thank you.'

'See for yourself!'

Max drew back the covering from the corpse, and even Lewis gave his second involuntary shudder of the night. As for Morse, he looked for a second or two only, breathed very

deeply, lurched a fraction forward for a moment as if he might vomit, then turned away. It was immediately clear, as Max had said, that there had earlier been much blood; soon clear, too, that the body was that of a comparatively young man; the body of the man whom Morse had interviewed (with such distaste) the previous evening; the man who had been cheated of the Wolvercote Jewel - and the man who now had been cheated of life.
Dr Theodore Kemp.

Max was putting his bag into the boot of his BMW as Morse walked slowly up to him. 'You got here early, Max?'

'Just round the corner, dear boy. William Dunn School of Pathology. Know it?' 'How did he die?'

'Blood probably coagulated
before
he entered the water.' 'Really? I've never heard you say anything so definite before!'

'I know, Morse. I'm sorry. It's the drink.'

'But you'll know for certain tomorrow?'

' "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."'

'It wasn't suicide, then?'

'Oh no, Morse. That was
your
verdict.'

'No chance?'

'I'm only a pathologist.'

'How long in the water?'

'Couldn't possibly say.'

'Roughly?'

'Eight, seven, six, five, four hours . . . "Roughly", you said?'

'Thank you very much.'

Max walked round to the front of his car: 'By the way, I was talking to Dr Swain again this evening. He's reporting you to the Chief Constable.'

' 'Night, Max.'

' 'Night, Morse.'

* * *

When the surgeon had departed, Morse turned with unwarranted ferocity upon his ill-used sergeant: 'You told
me,
Lewis, that Mr Eddie bloody Stratton had been missing in quite extraordinarily suspicious circumstances since early afternoon, and that a frenetically distraught Ashenden had rung you up—'

‘I didn't! I didn't say that!'

'What
did
you tell me, then?'

'Well, I did mention that Stratton had gone AWOL. And I
also
said that Dr Kemp hadn't turned up at the railway station when they'd arranged for a taxi to pick him up and take him—'

'What time was that?'

'Three o'clock, sir.'

'Mm. So if there's some evidence of a whacking great crack on his head . . . and if this had been deliberately inflicted rather than accidentally incurred . . . about seven hours ago, say . . . Three o'clock, you say, Lewis, when Kemp turned up again in Oxford?'

'When he
didn't
turn up in Oxford, sir.'

So many lights; the yellow lights of the arc-lamps that shone down on the river-bank; the white lights from the flashes of the police photographers; the blue lights of the police cars that lingered still around the scene. But little light in Morse's mind. He could hang around, of course, for the following hour or two, pretending to know what it was that he or anybody else should seek to discover. Or go back to HQ, and try to think up a few lines of enquiry for the staff there to pursue - men and women looking progressively more unwashed and unkempt and incompetent as the small hours of the morning gradually wore on.

But there
was
another option. He could drive down to The Randolph, and sort out that lying sod Ashenden! The bar would still be open, wouldn't it? At least for residents. Surely the bar
never
closed in a five-star hotel? Isn't that what you paid for? Yes! And occasionally, as now, it so happened that duty and pleasure would fall together in a sweet coincidence; and from Parson's Pleasure, after dutifully forbidding Lewis to linger more than a couple of hours or so, Morse himself departed.

It was twenty-five minutes after Morse had left the scene that Lewis discovered the first, fat clue: a sheet of yellow A4 paper on which the details of the Historic Cities of England Tour had been originally itemised; and on which the time of the final item that day had been crossed through boldly in blue Biro, with the entry now reading:

7.30
        
8.00
pm
       
Dinner

You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb

(Thomas Hardy,
A Broken Appointment)

The parking plots on either side of St Giles' were now virtually empty and Morse drew the Jaguar in outside St John's. It was two minutes past midnight when he walked through into the Chapters Bar, where a dozen or so late-night (early-morning) drinkers were still happily signing bills. Including Ashenden.