The Jewel That Was Ours (16 page)

'Inspector! Can I get you a drink?'

After 'a touch of the malt' had been reasonably accurately translated by Michelle, the white-bloused, blue-skirted barmaid, as a large Glenlivet, Morse joined Ashenden's table: 'Howard and Shirley Brown, Inspector - and Phil here, Phil Aldrich.' Morse shook hands with the three of them; and noted with approval the firm, cool handshake of Howard Brown, whose eyes seemed to Morse equally firm and cool as he smiled a cautious greeting. The reason for such a late session, Ashenden explained, was simple: Eddie Stratton. He had not been seen again since he was observed to leave the hotel just after lunch; observed by Mrs Roscoe (who else?) - and also, as Morse knew, by Lewis himself. No one knew where he'd gone; everyone was worried sick; and by the look of her, Shirley Brown was worried the sickest: what could a man be doing at
this
time of night, for heaven's sake? Well, perhaps supping Glenlivet, thought Morse, or lying with some lovely girl under newly laundered sheets; and indeed he would have suggested to them that it was surely just a litde early to get
too
worried - when the night porter came through and asked Chief Inspector Morse if he was Chief Inspector Morse.

* *
 
*

'How the hell did you know I was here, Lewis?' 'You said you were off home.' ‘So why—?'

'No answer when I rang.' 'But how—?' 'I'm a detective, sir.' 'What do you want?'

A phone call made just before midnight to St Aldate's Police Station had been relayed to the murder scene at Parson's Pleasure: Mrs Marion Kemp, of 6 Cherwell Lodge, had reported that her husband, who had left for London early that morning, had still not arrived back home; that such an occurrence was quite unprecedented, and that she was beginning (had long begun!) to feel a little (a whole lot!) worried about him. She was herself a cripple, constantly in need of the sort of attention her husband had regularly given her in the evenings. She knew something, though not all, of his day's programme: she'd rung The Randolph at 10.45 p.m. and learned from the tour leader that her husband had not turned up at any point during the day to fulfil his commitments - and that in itself was quite out of character. After an evening of agonising and, now, almost unbearable waiting, she'd decided to ring the police.

Such was the message Lewis passed on, himself saying nothing for the moment of his own extraordinarily exciting find, but agreeing to pick up Morse in about ten minutes' time, after briefly reporting in to St Aldate's.

'News? About Eddie?' asked an anxious Phil Aldrich, when the frowning Morse walked back into the bar.

Morse shook his head. 'We get all sorts of news, sir, in the Force: good news, sometimes - but mostly bad, of course. No news of Mr Stratton, though. But I wouldn't worry too much, not about him, anyway . . .' (the last words mumbled to himself). He wondered whether to tell the four of them seated there about the death of Dr Kemp, for they'd have to know very soon anyway. But he decided they probably had enough on their minds for the moment; and swiftly tossing back the Glenlivet, he left them, making his way thoughtfully to the front entrance, and wondering something else: wondering whether any announcement of Kemp's death - Kemp's murder - would have come as too much of a surprise to
one
of the four people who still sat round their table in the Chapters Bar.

There was no time, however, for him to develop such a fascinating, and probably futile thought; for as he stood waiting on the pavement outside the hotel entrance, a taxi drew up, and with the help of the driver a very drunken man staggered stupidly into the foyer. Morse was usually reasonably tolerant about fellow-tipplers, and indeed occasionally rather enjoyed the company of slightly tipsy sirens; but the sight of this fellow pathetically fighting to extricate a wallet from an inner pocket, and then forking out and handing over three £10 notes - such a sight filled even Morse with mild disgust. Yet at least it was all a bit of a relief, wasn't it?

For the man was Eddie Stratton!

Clearly there could be little point in interviewing Stratton then and there; and already a solicitous (if censorious) Shirley Brown on one side, and a business-like (if unsmiling) Howard Brown on the other, were guiding the prodigal son to the guest-lift. No! Stratton could wait. With any luck he'd still be there the following morning.

Unlike the taxi driver.

Morse caught the man's arm, and held him back as he was walking down the steps. 'You must have brought him quite a way?' ‘You wha'?'

'Thirty quid? Must have been - Banbury, was it?' ‘Yeah - could a' bin. Nothin' to do with you, mate.' 'I'm not your mate,' said Morse, fishing for his warranty. 'So? Wha's the trouble?' 'Where did you pick him up?' 'North Oxford.'

'Expensive ride!' 'I didn't ask for—' 'You
took
it.'

'Not short of a quid or two though, these Yanks—' 'I quite like the Yanks.' 'Me too, officer.'

'There's a bottle there' (Morse pointed back to Reception). 'Leukaemia Fund. Doesn't look as if it's quite full yet.' 'How much?' 'Twenty?'

Shrugging, the taxi-man handed Morse two of the £10 notes.

'Where was it in North Oxford? What was the address?' 'I forget.'

'Shall we make it twenty-five?'

'Down the bottom of Hamilton Road, somewhere - ninety-seven, I think it was.' ‘Name?’

'Same name as mine. Huh! Coincidence, eh?' 'I've always liked coincidences.'

'She rang up an' said, you know, take this fellah down to The Randolph.' 'Good! Thanks! Good night then, Mr, er . ..' 'Williams. Jack Williams.'

Lewis had pulled in behind the taxi, and was in time to find Morse slowly - reluctantly? - pushing two £10 notes into the slot of a Charity Bottle. He smiled happily. Morse had a
bit
of money - he knew that, but the chief's generosity, certainly in pubs, was seldom in evidence; and it was most reassuring to find that there was an unexpectedly munificent side to the chief inspector's soul. So Lewis watched, and said nothing.

Duty is what one expects from others; it is not what one does one's self

(Oscar Wilde,
A Woman of No Importance)

It was not difficult for Lewis to find his way to the Kemps' home in Cherwell Lodge, the ground-floor flat on the extreme right of the three-storey building, since it was the only window in the whole street, let alone the block of flats, wherein electric light still blazed at a quarter to one that morning. By this time, Lewis had shown Morse the yellow A4 sheet; and Morse had seemed so delighted with it that he'd turned on the car's internal light in transit. He folded the sheet along its original creases, and was putting it inside his breast-pocket as Lewis quietly pulled the car alongside the pavement outside number 6.

'We can ring from
there
- be easier really,' suggested Morse, pointing to the Kemps' property. We'll need a WPC - there should be one at HQ, don't you think?'

Lewis nodded.

'And a doc,' continued Morse.
'Her
doc, if he's not too far sunk in slumber or wine.'

Again Lewis nodded. 'You're right, sir. The more the merrier, isn't it, with this sort of thing? It's about the only time I really hate the job, you know - with accidents and so on . . . having to tell the relatives, and all that.'

It was Morse's turn to nod. 'Always hard, isn't it, Lewis? I hate it too, you know that.' 'Well, at least there are the two of us tonight, sir.' 'Pardon?'

'I said, at least with the two of us—'

'No! Only
you,
Lewis. We can't waste precious resources at this unearthly hour.' 'You mean you're not—'

'Me? I'm just going to walk round to, er, talk to our other witness.' 'Who's that?'

'That, Lewis, is Mrs Sheila Williams. She could very well have something vital to tell us. It was Mrs Williams, remember, who ordered the taxi—'

‘But she'll be in
bed’

By not the merest flicker of an eyebrow did Morse betray the slightest interest in the prospect of interviewing an attractively proportioned and (most probably) scantily clad woman at such an ungodly hour.

'Well, I shall have to wake her up then, Lewis. Our job, as you rightly say, is full of difficult and sometimes distasteful duties.'

Lewis smiled in spite of himself. Why he ever enjoyed working with this strange, often unsympathetic, superficially quite humourless man, well, he never quite knew. He didn't even know if he
did
enjoy it. But his wife did. For whenever her husband was working with Morse, Mrs Lewis could recognise a curious contentment in his eyes that was not only good for him, but good for her, too. Very good. And in a strange sort of way, she was almost as big an admirer of Morse as that faithful husband of hers - a husband whose happiness had always been her own.

'Perhaps, I'd better run you round there, sir.'

'No, no, Lewis! The walk may do me good.'

'As you say.'

'Er . . . just one more thing, Lewis. About the Jaguar. I left it just outside St John's, I think. If, er . . .' He held up his car-keys between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as if saving his nostrils the distress of some malodorous handkerchief. Then he got out of the car.

As Lewis watched him walk away up to Hamilton Road, he wondered, as he'd so often wondered, what exactly Morse

was
thinking;
wondered about what was going on in Morse's mind at that very moment; the reading of the clues, those clues to which no one else could see the answers; those glimpses of motive that no one else could ever have suspected; those answers to the sort of questions that no one else had even begun to ask . . .

When Morse opened the ramshackle gate to number 97, his mind was anticipating a potentially most interesting encounter. If a diabetic patient was in need of so-called 'balance' -namely, the appropriate injection of human insulin for the control of blood-sugar levels - equally so did Morse require the occasional balance of some mildly erotic fancy in order to meet the demands of what until recently he had diagnosed as a reasonably healthy libido. Earlier that very week, in fact, as he'd filled up the Jaguar with Gulf-inflated gasoline, he'd found himself surveying the display of the semi-pornographic magazines arranged along the highest shelf above the dailies; and re-acquainted himself with such reasonably familiar titles as
Men Only, Escort, Knave, Video
XXXX,
and so many others, each of them enticing the susceptible motorist with its cover of some provocatively posed woman, vast-breasted and voluptuous. And it was just after he'd flicked through one of them that Detective Constable Hodges (blast his eyes!) had come in, walked over to the newspaper stall, and picked up the top copy but one from the
Daily Mirror
pile. Morse had immediately picked up a copy of
The Times,
and proceeded to hold this newspaper like a crusader flaunting his emblazoned shield as he'd stood beside Hodges at the check-out.