Colin Dexter - The Jewel That Was Ours

But very much asleep that night was Sheila Williams, the bedroom window wide open in her dingily stuccoed semi in the lower reaches of Hamilton Road, a house (as it happened) almost exactly equidistant from that of Kemp and that of Downes.

At 4.45 a.m. Morse made his third visit to the bathroom— and suddenly he remembered. He went into his living room, looked along his book-shelves, extracted a volume, consulted its index, turned to the pages given, and read through the entry he had sought. His head nodded a few degrees, and his dry mouth widened into a mildly contented smile.

He was asleep when Lewis rang the doorbell at 8.30 a.m.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The best-laid schemes o' mice and men

Gang aft a-gley,

And lea'e us nought but grief and pain

For promised joy

( Robert Burns, To a Mouse)

FEW ENGLISH FAMILIES living in England have much direct contact with the English Breakfast. It is therefore fortunate that such an endangered institution is perpetuated by the efforts of the kitchen staff in guest houses, B & Bs, transport cafes, and other no-starred and variously starred hotels. This breakfast comprises (at its best): a milkily-opaque fried egg; two rashers of non-brittle, rindless bacon; a tomato grilled to a point where the core is no longer a hard white nodule to be operated upon by the knife; a sturdy sausage, deeply and evenly browned; and a slice of fried bread, golden-brown, and only just crisp, with sufficient fat not excessively to dismay any meddlesome dietitian. That is the definitive English Breakfast. And that is what the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, the Russians, the Turks. and the English, also, with their diurnal diet of Corn Flakes and a toasted slice of Mother's Pride — that is what they all enjoy as much as almost anything about a holiday.

The Americans, too, though there are always exceptions.

Janet Roscoe leaned across the table, lowered the volume switch on her abnormally loud voice, and spoke to Sam and Vera Rronquist, the third of the married couples originally registered on the tour.

'I just don't know how he'—her sharp eyes singled out Phil Aldrich, seated at the next table—'how he can even think of eating— that.'

The vehement emphasis accorded to this last word might perhaps have suggested that Janet's co-worshipper in Sacramento's Temperance Hall of Christian Scientists was devouring a plateful of raw maggots or the roasted flesh of sacrificial infants, instead of his slim rasher of streaky bacon. But Sam Kronquist, though content with his croissant, was happily tolerant about the tastes of others:

'We're only on vaycation once a year, you know, Janet. So perhaps we can forgive him?'

Or perhaps not; for Janet made no reply, and in silence completed her own modest breakfast of naturally juiced grapefruit segments, and one slice of unbuttered toast smeared over with diabetic marmalade. She was just finishing her cup of black de-caffeinated coffee when John Ashenden, after his peripatetic trip around the other tables, came to tell the three of them that there would be a short meeting in the St. John's Suite at 9.15 a.m. in order to fit the coming day's events into a schedule that would have to be slightly revised.

'If you refer,' began Ashenden, 'to your original sheets' (he held up a copy of the yellow sheets distributed the previous day) 'you will see that quite a few amendments, sadly, will have to be made to it. But the tour will quite definitely be going ahead as normal — or as normal as it can do in the circumstances. Eddie — Eddie Stratton — wants this, wants it to go ahead, and he believes that Laura would have wished that, too. So. First of all then: our visit to The Oxford Story, scheduled for ten-thirty. This has been put back to ten a.m. Make a note, please: ten a.m. instead of—'

'Don't you mean brought forward, Mr. Ashenden?'

Yes, probably Ashenden did mean exactly what Mrs. Roscoe said. And he beamed a smile towards her, in fact welcoming rather than resenting the interruption: '—has been brought forward to ten a.m. There's been a cancellation of a Spanish block-booking and it will help the people there if we take the earlier spot. Yes? No problems?'

Thereupon Ashenden duly distributed an extra sheet to each of his rather subdued audience:

The Oxford Story

It was here in Oxford that Lewis Carroll created the immortal 'Alice'; here that King Charles I held his Civil War Parliament; here where Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake; here where Penicillin was developed. So take a seat aboard a flying desk — Ride the Spiral! — and travel backwards through time to the earliest days of Oxford University when Friar Roger Bacon (1214–1294) sat in his rooms overlooking Folly Bridge and. But let Oxford tell its own story, as you sit comfortably in your car and witness whole centuries of fascinating men and glorious events. (Wheel-chair access and toilet facilities for the disabled.)

There being no murmurs of demurral, even from the customary quarter, Ashenden proceeded to extol the virtues of such a visit: to whisk oneself back to the origins of the University in the twelfth century, and thence be spiralled to the present day — seated, foot-happily — with the wonderful bonus, betweenwhiles, of listening to a commentary on the passing pageants by no less a personage than Sir Alec Guinness himself. The visit had in fact figured as an 'extra' in the published brochure, but in view of the, er, the sad, sad events. Well, the company had agreed that the £2 supplement should now be waived.

'That's a very kindly gesture, sir,' volunteered Phil Aldrich, and several of his fellow tourists audibly concurred.

Sam Kronquist, suffering from incipient prostate trouble, found himself wondering whether that final parenthesis signified a lack of toilet facilities for those persons as yet unwilling to label themselves 'disabled'; but he held his peace.

That meant, Ashenden continued, that there would be something of an uncomfortable gap between about 11.15 and 12.30; and he was very glad to be able to announce that Mrs. Williams and Mr. Downes and Dr. Kemp had agreed to hold an impromptu question-and-answer session on Oxford: Town and Gown. This would be in the Ball Room, beginning at 11.30 a.m.

To the afternoon, then.

Ashenden exhorted his audience once again to consult the original sheet, confirming that, apart from the 6.30 p.m. presentation, the scheduled programme would go ahead as stated. Perhaps it would be sensible, though, to start the afternoon groups at 2.45 p.m., please, at which time Dr. Kemp would meet his group immediately outside the main entrance to the Ashmolean; Mr. Downes his group at the Martyrs' Memorial; Mrs. Williams her group in the foyer of the hotel. Was that all clear? And would they all please try if possible to keep to the group they had first opted for? There was a nice little balance at the moment; not that he would want to stop anyone changing, of course.

Again the touring party appeared to find the arrangements wholly unexceptionable, and Ashenden came to his last point. Would everyone please change the time given on their sheets for dinner: this was now brought forward ('Right, Mrs. Roscoe?') from 8 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Three of the Trustees of the Ashmolean would be joining them, and he would assume unless he was informed to the contrary that everyone would be coming to this final dinner. It had been optional, he knew that; but in view of.

In the crowded hotel foyer, ten minutes later, Mrs. Roscoe failed to decrease her decibel level as she called across to the Bacon Man from Sacramento: 'They tell me we sit in those cars two at a time, side by side, Phil. '