The Jewel That Was Ours (17 page)

'Nice day, sir?'

'Very nice.'

It had seemed to Morse, at that moment, that the dull eyes of Hodges had betrayed not the slightest suspicion of Morse's susceptibility. But even Morse - especially Morse! - was sometimes wholly wrong.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news

Hath but a losing office

{Shakespeare,
King Henry IV, Part 2)

Lewis watched the silhouette gradually form behind the opaque glass in the upper half of the front door.

'Hullo? Who is it?' The voice sounded sharp, and well educated.

'Police, Mrs Kemp. You rang—'

'All right! All right! You took your time. Let me take mine!'

With much clicking of locks and a final scrabbling of a chain, the door was opened, and Lewis looked down with ill-disguised surprise.

'For Heaven's sake! Didn't they
tell
you I was a cripple?' And before Lewis could reply: "Where's the policewoman?'

'Er,
what
policewoman, Mrs Kemp?'

‘Well, I'm not going to be put to bed by
you
- let's get that straight for a start!'

Lewis might almost have been amused by the exchanges thus far, were it not for the heavy burden of the news he was bearing.

'If I could just come in a minute—'

Marion Kemp turned her chair through one hundred and eighty degrees with a couple of flicks of her sinewy wrists, then wheeled herself swiftly and expertly into the front room. 'Close the door behind you, will you? Who
are
you by the way?'

Lewis identified himself, though Marion Kemp appeared but little interested in the proffered warranty.

'Have you found him yet?' The voice which Lewis had earlier thought well under control now wavered slightly, and with her handkerchief she quickly wiped away the light film of sweat that had formed on her upper lip. 'I'm afraid—' began Lewis.

But for the moment Marion simulated a degree of hospitality. 'Do sit down, Sergeant! The settee is quite comfortable - though I have little first-hand experience of it myself, of course. Now, the only reason I rang - the chief reason - was that I need a little help, as you can see.'

'Yes, I do see. I'm, er, sorry . . .'

'No need! My husband managed to crash into another car on the Ring Road down near Botley.'

'Er, I'll just, er . . .' Lewis had seen the phone in the entrance-hall and with Mrs Kemp's permission he now quickly left the room and rang HQ for a WPC. He felt profoundly uneasy, for he'd known the same sort of thing on several previous occasions: surviving relatives rabbiting on, as if so fearful of hearing the dreaded information.

'She'll be along soon, madam,' reported Lewis, seating himself again. 'Very dangerous that stretch by the Botley turn . . .’

'Not for the driver, Sergeant! Not on this occasion. One broken collar-bone, and a cut on the back of his shoulder - and even
that
refused to bleed for more than a couple of minutes.' The bitterness in her voice had become 'so intense that Lewis couldn't think of anything, even anything inadequate, to say. 'It would have been better if he'd killed me, and had done with the whole thing! I'm sure
he
thinks that. You see, he can't get rid of me - not the way he could get rid of any
normal
wife. He has to keep coming back all the time to look after my needs when . . . when he'd much rather be out having
his
needs looked after. You
do
know what I'm talking about, don't you, Sergeant?'

Lewis knew, yes; but he waited a little, nodding his sympathy to a woman who, for the moment, had said her immediate say.

'What time did your husband leave this morning?' he

asked quietly, noting a pair of nervous eyes suddenly flash across at him.

'Seven-twenty. A taxi called. My husband was banned for three years after he'd killed me.'

Lewis shook his head helplessly: 'He
didn't
kill you, madam—'

'Yes he did! He killed the woman in the other car - and he killed
me,
too!'

Lewis it was who broke the long silence between them, and took out his note-book: 'You knew
where
he was going?'

'His publishers. He's just finished a book and now he's doing some chapters for the new
Cambridge History of Early Britain.'

'And he actually -
went,
did he?'

'Don't be silly! Of course he went. He rang me up from London. The post hadn't come when he left, and he wanted to know if some proofs had arrived.'

'What time did you expect him back?'

'I wasn't sure. There'd been some trouble at The Randolph. You know all about that?'

Lewis nodded - ever dreading that inexorable moment when she, too, would have to know all about something else.

'They'd changed the programme - I forget exactly what he said. But he'd have been home by half-past ten. He's never later than that. . .'

The slim, dark-haired, rather plain woman in the wheelchair was beginning to betray the symptoms of panic. Talk on, Lewis! Write something in that little book of yours. Do anything!

'You've no idea where he might have gone to when he came back from London?'

'No, no, no, Sergeant! How could I? He'd hardly even have the time to see his precious Sheila bloody Williams, would he? That over-sexed, pathetic, alcoholic . . .'

Talk on, Lewis!

'He must have been pretty upset about the Wolvercote Jewel.'

'He'd been waiting long enough to see it.' 'Why didn't he go over to America to see it?' 'I wouldn't let him.’

Lewis looked down at the uncarpeted floor-boards and put his note-book away.

'Oh no! I wasn't going to be left here on my own. Not after what he did to me!'

'Mrs Kemp, I'm afraid I've got—'

But Marion was staring down into some bleak abyss. Her voice, so savagely vindictive just a moment since, was suddenly tremulous and fearful - almost as if she already knew. 'I wasn't very nice to him about if, was I?'

Blessedly the front-door bell rang, and Lewis rose to his feet. 'That'll be the policewoman, Mrs Kemp. I'll - if it's OK - I'll go and . . . Look, there's something we've got to tell you. I'll just go and let her in.'

'He's dead. He's dead, Sergeant, isn't he?'

'Yes, Mrs Kemp. He's dead.'

She made no sound but the tips of her taut and bloodless fingers dug into her temples as if seeking to sever the nerves that carried the message from ears to brain.

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice

(Mark Twain,
Following the Equator)

'Sit down, Inspector! Can I get you a drink?'

Sheila Williams, fairly sober and fully respectable, was drinking a cup of black coffee.

'What - coffee?'

Sheila shrugged: 'Whatever you like. I've got most things - if you know what I mean.' 'I drink too much as it is.' 'So do I.'

'Look, I know it's late—'

'I'm never in bed before about one - not on my own!' She laughed cruelly at herself. 'You've had a long day.'

'A long boozy day, yeah.' She took a few sips of the hot coffee. 'There's something in one of Kipling's stories about a fellow who says he knows his soul's gone rotten because he can't get drunk any more. You know it?'

Morse nodded. ' "Love o' Women".'

'Yeah! One of the greatest stories of the twentieth century.'

'Nineteenth, I think you'll find.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake! Not a literary copper!' She looked down miserably at the table-top; then looked up again as Morse elaborated:

'It was Mulvaney, wasn't it? "When the liquor does not take hold, the soul of a man is rotten in him." Been part of my mental baggage for many a year.'

'Jesus!' whispered Sheila.

The room in which they sat was pleasantly furnished, with

some good quality pieces, and several interesting and unusual reproductions of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings. A few touches of good taste all round, thought Morse; of femininity, too - with a beribboned teddy-bear seated upright on the settee beside his mistress. And it was in this room, quietly and simply, that Morse told her of the death of Theodore Kemp, considering, in his own strange fashion, that it was perhaps not an inappropriate time for her to know.

For a while Sheila Williams sat quite motionless, her large, brown eyes gradually moistening like pavements in a sudden shower.