Colin Dexter - The Jewel That Was Ours

'We shall certainly do our best, madam,' Lewis had interposed, the tone of his voice suggesting something less than brimming optimism.

The Tongue itself? Well, again, Kemp was really the one to ask. But she could certainly tell them all about the look of it: of triangular shape, some 3 inches long, and 2 inches wide at the base; of a dull dirtyish brown colour (gold!), with (originally) three ruby-stones, one on each corner of the triangle — but now reduced to just the one, and that at the narrower end of things. The great, the unique, value of the tongue was the fact that it fitted (perfectly!) into the gold buckle which had been discovered during an archaeological dig at the village of Wolvercote in the early 1930s; and which, since 1947, had been proudly exhibited in the Ashmolean as evidence (hitherto unsuspected) of the exquisite craftsmanship of the goldsmith's art in the late eighth-century AD. Laura Stratton (so Sheila had learned from John Ashenden) had carried the jewel with her, in a black velvet-lined case, and kept it in her handbag — refusing to entrust the precious artefact either to transatlantic postal services, international tour operators, or burglar-and-fire-proof safe-deposit boxes. In the same handbag, it appeared, Laura had also carried a beautiful-looking string of wholly phoney pearls, which she had worn on most evenings with her dinner-dresses. Of any other valuables which might have been stolen with the handbag, Sheila had no idea whatsoever, although she volunteered the information that from her own recent experiences — and in spite of the equally recent strength of the pound sterling — some of the Americans seemed less than fully aware of the denominational value of the English currency they carried on their persons. With almost all of the party (she suspected) several £10, £20, even £50, notes would hardly be strangers in the purses and wallets of some of California's wealthier citizens. So a casual thief might have been pleasantly surprised by the sum of the monies often carried? But Mr. Stratton — Eddie Stratton— he'd be the man to ask about such things, wouldn't he? Really?

She turned her large, melancholy eyes upon Morse; and for a few seconds Lewis found himself wondering if his chief wasn't temporarily mesmerised. So much so that he decided not to withhold his own contribution:

'You say, Mrs. Williams, that the group won't perhaps mind me asking them all where they were between four-thirty and five-fifteen? Would you mind if you told us where you were?'

The effect of such an innocent question was quite unexpectedly melodramatic. Sheila Williams placed her empty glass on the table in front of her, and immediately burst into tears, during which time Morse glowered at his subordinate as if he had simultaneously broken all the rules of diplomacy, etiquette, and freemasonry.

But Morse himself, as he thought, was equal to the task: he nodded peremptorily to the empty glass, and immediately Lewis found himself pouring yet another generous measure of Gordon's gin, tempered again with but a little slim-line tonic.

Suddenly, and with a defiant glare at the two policemen, Sheila sat up in her chair, sought to regain a precarious state of equipoise, and drank down the proffered mixture in a single draught — much to Morse's secret admiration. She spoke just five words: 'Ask Dr. Kemp — he'll explain!'

After she was gone, guided in gentlemanly fashion along the corridor by Sergeant Lewis, Morse quickly opened the drinks-cabinet, poured himself half a tumbler of Glenfiddich, savoured a large and satisfying swallow, thereafter placing the tumbler strategically on a convenient shelf, just below the line of vision of anyone entering. Including Sergeant Lewis.

Strangely, neither Sergeant Lewis nor Inspector Morse himself seemed particularly conscious of the fact that Mrs. Sheila Williams had signally failed to answer the only significant question that had been put to her.

Such is the wonderful effect of any woman's tears.

CHAPTER NINE

Often I have wished myself dead, but well under my blanket, so that neither death nor man could hear me

( George Lichtenberg )

JOHN ASHENDEN WOULD later remember exactly what he had done during the vital forty-five minutes that Morse had specified.

It was a quarter to five when he had walked out of The Randolph, and crossed over by the Martyrs' Memorial into Broad Street. The sun no longer slanted across the pale-yellow stone, the early evening was becoming much cooler, and he was wearing a lightweight rain-coat. He strode fairly quickly past the front of Balliol, the great gates of Trinity, Blackwell's Book Shop; and was waiting by the New Bodleian building to cross at the traffic lights into Holywell Street when he saw them standing there outside the Sheldonian, sub imperatoribus, her arm through his, neither of them (as it seemed) taking too much notice of anything except their mutual selves. Even more briskly now, Ashenden walked past the King's Arms, the Holywell Music Room, the back of New College — until he came to Longwall Street. Here he turned left; and after two hundred yards or so went through the wooden gate that led into Holywell Cemetery, where under the stones and crosses — so many Celtic crosses! — were laid to rest the last remains of eminent Oxford men, in these slightly unkempt, but never neglected, acres of the dead. A curving path through the grass led him to a wooden seat above which, wired to a yew tree, was a rectangular board showing the plot of the cemetery, with the memorials of the particularly eminent marked by numbers:

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932)

Maurice Bowra (1898–1971)

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980)

H.V.D. Dyson (1896–1975)

James Blish (1921–1975)

Theodore and Sibley, Drowned (1893)

Sir John Stainer (1840–1901)

Walter Pater.

That was him!

It took Ashenden some twenty minutes or so, treading through overgrown grasses, and parting ivy from many semi-decipherable inscriptions, to find the strong, squat cross:

In te, Domine, speravi

WALTER PATER

Died July 30 1894

Then, almost immediately, he saw that other stone, the one he was looking for — an even simpler memorial:

JAMES ALFRED BOWDEN

1956–1981

Requiescat

For several minutes Ashenden stood there silently under the darkening shadows: it seemed a wonderfully unforbidding piece of ground in which to find a final resting-place. Yet no one wanted to die — certainly not John Ashenden, as he remained standing by the grave, wondering whether Jimmy Bowden, during the pain of his terminal illness, had ever recanted the dogmatic and confident atheism he had once propounded in the early hours of one most memorable day. But Ashenden doubted it. He recalled, too, that final postcard to which he had never replied.

There was no one else in the cemetery; no one there to observe the strange little incident when Ashenden, after looking round about him for a last reassurance, parted the thickly twined rootage of ivy at the rear of Bowden's small cross, took something from the right-hand pocket of his raincoat, and laid it carefully at the foot of the stone before replacing the ivy and patting it, almost effeminately, back into its pristine state.

He was in no hurry, and on his leisurely way back to the cemetery gate he stopped and read several of the gravestones, including 'Kenneth Grahame, who passed the river on the 6th July 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time'. Ashenden loved the wording. He looked vaguely for 'Theodore and Sibley, Drowned (1893)'; but it was too dark now, and he could find no clue as to who they were and where they had perished.

He regained the main street, and on his way back to The Randolph called in the back bar of The King's Arms to order a pint of cask-conditioned Flowers. For which choice, Inspector Morse would have been quietly proud of him.