The Jewel That Was Ours

'He was murdered, then?'

'What? Ah! Slipped up a bit there, didn't I?'

'But he was, wasn't he?'

'Your job, that side of things.'

'Which blow killed him?'

'Paper-thin skull like that? Either! Little knock on the right place. '

'Probably the blow on the back of the head, Max.'

'Oh yes — certainly could have been that.'

'Or.?'

'Yes—could have been the crack on the temple.'

'Someone could have hit him and then he fell over and hit himself on the fender or the door-jamb or the bedpost—'

'Or the kerb, if he was out in the street.'

'But you don't believe he was, do you?'

'Not my province, belief.'

'Could he have suffered either of the injuries in the water?'

' 'Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy doom.' '

' 'Death', Max — not 'doom'. And he hadn't got any garments, had he?'

'Good point, Morse. And I've got something else to show you.' Max now exposed Kemp's torso and heaved the corpse a few inches off the table. Along the back of the right shoulder was a scratch, some five or six inches long: a light, fairly superficial scratch, it appeared, yet one made quite recently, perhaps.

'What caused that, Max?'

'Dunno, dear boy.'

'Try!'

'An instrument of some sort.'

'Not a blunt instrument, though.'

'I would suggest a sharp instrument, Morse.'

'Amazing!'

'Fairly sharp, I should have said.'

'Caused as he was floating along like Ophelia?'

'Oh, I couldn't possibly say.'

'Could it have been done before he was murdered — when he was wearing a shirt, say?'

'Ah! A not unintelligent question!'

Together the two men looked again at the light wound, stretching down diagonally from the back of the neck towards the armpit.

'Could it have been, Max?'

'I think not.'

'Then he was possibly naked when he was murdered?'

'Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Anyway he might have hit a willow twig in the river.'

'What other possibilities are there?'

'The evidence extends only as far as the lower scapula, does it not? He could have been wearing an off-the- shoulder toga.'

Morse now closed his eyes and turned away from the body: 'A toga pinned together with the Wolvercote Tongue, no doubt.'

'Oh no! I can assure you of one thing: that was not upon his person.'

'You don't mean — you didn't.?'

Max nodded. 'And he didn't swallow it, either.'

'And he didn't drown.'

'No. None of the usual muck one finds in the lungs when a man's fighting for his breath. Could he swim, by the way?'

'Don't know. I haven't seen his wife yet.'

The pathologist suddenly dropped his habitual banter, and looked Morse in the eye. 'I know you've got a lot on your plate, old boy. But I'd see her soon, if I were you.'