The Jewel That Was Ours (24 page)

'I'm sure, Lewis, that Mrs Downes will be able to arrange a private consultation with Mrs Lewis at some convenient point. But some other time, perhaps? She does have a train to catch - her taxi driver is waiting impatiently on the threshold . . .'

'Sorry, sir!'

Lucy smiled again, especially at Sergeant Lewis, as he carried her heavy suitcase out to the taxi.

'You know when you're coming back, Mrs Downes?' Lewis asked.

'Seven o'clock. Just before - or is it just after?'

'Would you like me to ask your husband to meet you? We shall be seeing him.'

'Thank you. But he
is
coming to meet me.'

She climbed aboard, and the two policemen stood and watched as the taxi drove off into Lonsdale Road.

'Lovely woman, that!'

For the moment Morse made no reply, staring back at the house with a slightly puzzled air. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, Lewis! Exodus, chapter something.'

'I didn't mean anything like that. You've got a one-track mind, sir!'

'You are perfecdy correct, Lewis: one track only. My mind wants to know what the theft of the Wolvercote Tongue has got to do with the murder of Theodore Kemp. And I would be very surprised if that "lovely woman" of yours doesn't know a little more than she's prepared to admit - even to you!'

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses in order to justify his logic

(Dostoevsky,
Notes from Underground)

Of a sudden, on the way back down the Banbury Road, Morse decided to view Parson's Pleasure by daylight. So Lewis drove down to the bottom of South Parks Road, where he was ushered through into the University Parks by a policeman on duty at the entrance to the single-track road which led down to the bathing area. Here the whole of the site was lightly cordoned off, and one of the Park Attendants was talking to (the newly promoted) Sergeant Dixon as Morse and Lewis moved alongside. The Park had closed at 4.30 p.m. the previous day, the detectives learned, yet it was not unknown for nimble adolescents and desperate adults to gain access to the Parks from half-a-dozen possible places. And the number of expended condoms discovered in and around the bathing-area suggested that not only ingress and egress, but congress too, were not unusual there, with the cover of the night, and the cover of the cubicles, combining to promote this latter activity - even when frost was forecast. But the cubicle in which the yellow sheet had been found could reveal no further secrets, and all hope had early been abandoned of learning anything from the scores of footprints which had criss-crossed the grassy area since the murder. Two divers had gone down into the river during the morning, but had found no item of relevance; and perhaps would not have recognised its relevance had they found it. Certainly no clothes, Sergeant Dixon asserted.

Morse walked over to the water's edge, the river-level high against the banks, and there he dipped his fingers in: not quite so cold as he would have thought. Dixon's mention of clothes had pulled his mind back to the discovery of Kemp's body, and he asked Lewis much the same question he had asked Max, receiving much the same answers.

'But I don't think he'd have been swimming here, sir.'

'Not unknown, Lewis, for people to bathe naked in this stretch.'

'Too chilly for me.'

'What about sex?'

'You don't have to take all your clothes off to do that.'

'No? Well, I'll take your word for it. I'm not an expert in that area myself.' He stood pondering the waters once more. 'Do you ever have any rows with your wife?'

' "Not unknown", as .you would say, sir.'

'Then you patch things up?'

‘Usually.'

‘When you've patched things up, do you feel even closer together than before?'

Lewis was feeling puzzled now, and a little embarrassed at the course of the conversation: 'Probably a good thing now and then - clears the air, sort of.'

Morse nodded. 'We know of two people who had a row recently, don't we?'

'Dr Kemp and Mrs Williams? Yes! But she's got a whacking great alibi, sir.'

'A much better alibi than Stratum, certainly.'

‘I could try to check on Stratton: Didcot - the pub he mentioned - Browns Restaurant.'

Morse looked dubious: 'If only we knew
when
Kemp was murdered!
Nobody's
got an alibi until we know that.'

'You think Mrs Williams might have killed him?'

'She might have
killed
him all right. But I don't think she could have dumped him. I'd guess it was a man who did that.'

'He wasn't very heavy, Kemp, though. Not much fat on him.'

'Too heavy for a woman.' 'Even a jealous woman, sir?'

'Yes, I know what you mean. I keep wondering if Kemp
had found some other floozie - and Sheila Williams found out about it.'

' "Hell hath no fury
..."
'

'If you must quote, quote accurately, Lewis! "Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned." '

'Sorry! I never did know much about Shakespeare.'

'Congreve, Lewis.'

'He seems to have been a bit of a ladies' man—'

'And if he couldn't make love to his wife because she was paralysed from the waist down . . .'

'I got the feeling she wasn't too worried about that, perhaps. It was Mrs Williams she had it in for.'

'She might have forgiven him if it had been anyone else, you mean?'

'I think - I think you ought to go to see her, sir.'

'All
right,
¹
snapped Morse. 'Give me a chance! We've got these Americans to see, remember? Aldrich and Brown - find out where
they
were yesterday afternoon. Where they
say
they were.'

Morse turned to look at the waters once more before he left, then sat silently in the passenger-seat of the police car as Lewis had a final word with Sergeant Dixon. In the side panel of the door he found a street map of Oxford, together with a copy of
Railway Magazine;
and opening out the map he traced the line of the River Cherwell, moving his right index-finger slowly northwards from the site marked Bathing Pool, up along the edge of the University Parks, then past Norham Gardens and Park Town, out under the Marston Ferry Road; and then, veering north-westerly, up past the bottom of Lonsdale Road . . . Portland Road . . . Hamilton Road . . . Yes. A lot of flood water had come down from the upper reaches of the Cherwell, and a body placed in the river, say, at Lonsdale Road . . .

And suddenly Morse knew where the body had been launched into the river and into eternity; knew, too, that if Lucy Downes could so quickly arouse the rather sluggish libido of a Lewis, then it was hardly difficult to guess her effect upon the lively carnality of a Kemp.

Lewis had climbed into the driving seat, and seen Morse's finger seemingly stuck on the map, at the bottom of Lonsdale Road.

'He couldn't have done it, sir - not Downes. He was with the Americans all the time - certainly till after we found the body. If anybody's got an alibi, he has.'

'Perhaps it was your friend Lucy Downes.'

'You can't think that, surely?'

'I'm not thinking at all - not for the minute,' replied Morse loftily. 'I am deducing - deducing the possibilities. When I've done that, I shall begin to
think.''

'Oh!'

'And get a move on. We can't keep the Americans here all day. We're going to have to let 'em get on their way. Most of 'em!'

So Lewis drove back from Parson's Pleasure, back on to the Banbury Road, down St Giles', and then right at the lights into Beaumont Street. And all the time Chief Inspector Morse sat, less tetchy now, staring at the street map of Oxford.

No doubt, as Lewis saw things, 'deducing'.

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry

(Chekhov)

Sheila Williams was feeling miserable. When Morse, himself looking far from serene, had come into The Randolph and demanded to see Messrs Aldrich and Brown immediately, he had resolutely avoided her eyes, appearing to have no wish to rekindle the brief moments of intimacy which had occurred in the morning's early hours. And the tourists, most of them, were getting restless - understandably so. Only Phil Aldrich had seemed as placid as ever, even after being interrupted in the middle of his lunch, and thereafter being seated in the Lancaster Room, writing busily on the hotel notepaper; and being interrupted just the once, and then only briefly, by Janet Roscoe - the latter intent, it appeared, on fomenting further dissatisfaction whenever possible. Like now, for instance.

^‘
I really do
think,
Sheila—'

'I do
envy
you so, Mrs Roscoe. I haven't had a genuine thought in
years,
Oh, Cedric! Cedric?'

He had been trying to steal silently away from the post-lunch chatter, but was stopped in his tracks at the foot of the great staircase as Sheila, glass in her left hand, laid the crimson-nailed fingers of her right hand along his lapel.