The Jewel That Was Ours

'You're right,' said Morse quietly. 'Just tell me, please, whether you think he was naked when he was murdered — that's all I ask.'

'I've told you. I don't know.'

'Not many reasons why people are naked, are there?'

'Oh, I dunno. Having a bath; standing on the weighing-scales; sun-bathing in Spain — so they tell me.'

'Having sex,' added Morse slowly. 'Not so much a willow's twig, perhaps, as a woman's talon.'

'Less likely, I'd say.'

'But you're sometimes wrong.'

'Not so often as you, Morse'

'We'll see.'

Max grinned. 'Glad it was you who mentioned sex, though. I was beginning to suspect you'd misplaced your marbles.'

'No, no! No chance of that, Max. Not yet, anyway.'

And as Morse left the pathology block, a quiet little smile of confidence could be seen around the chief inspector's lips.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

There are an awful lot of drunks about these days. It wouldn't really surprise me if you turned out to be one yourself

(Martin Amis, Other People)

APART FROM HIS former wife, Mr. Edward Stratton was the only one of the original group who had not listened to Morse that morning. Although his head was throbbing almost intolerably, he'd felt sober enough to ring for breakfast in his room, and had done his best to contemplate the 'Full English' he'd so foolishly ordered for 7 a.m. His brain drew a veil over the sickening consequences.

Edward Stratton had always been interested in machinery, or 'working parts' as he'd always liked to think of things. As a boy in high school he'd progressed from World-War-I aircraft-kits to model railways, his mind and his hands responding most happily to the assemblage of pistons, valves, wheels, with their appropriate adjustments and lubrications. Not marrying, he had set up a small business in specialised agricultural machinery — which had gone bust in 1975. After a long period of depression, and a short period of training, he had taken on a new career — one which also demanded dexterity with the hands: that of a mortician. Was there ever an odder switch of professions? But Stratton had soon grown proficient in the gruesome, sometimes disgusting, demands of his new job; and in the process of preparing an aged philanthropist for his silk-lined resting-place, he had met the man's disconsolate widow, Laura. And married her a year later. Or, perhaps, it may have been that she had married him. Convenience, that's what it had been for her — little more. Maybe for him, too? He'd assumed that she had money; everyone assumed that she had money. But he'd never known for certain and still didn't know now.

It was the Wolvercote Tongue which monopolised Stratton's thoughts as he sat on his unmade bed, head between his hands, that Saturday mid-morning. The thing was insured, he knew that — well insured. How otherwise? Yet insured in exactly what circumstances, under exactly what provisions, Stratton was wholly ignorant. Why had Shirley Brown had to mention the point on her brief visit to him earlier that morning, and sowed those slowly germinating seeds of doubt? Would it make a difference if it could be maintained that Laura had died before the Tongue was stolen? Would the money then go to the Ashmolean? But there could never be any proof on the matter, and if she had died after it was stolen, then surely the money would have to be credited to her estate, would it not? Stratton shook his aching head. He could get no real grip on the situation, and the more he pondered, the more confused his thinking became. But if he could get the police to believe it was after. because that would mean it was still in her possession when she died. wouldn't it.?

Augh!

Stratton rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. He was dipping his heavy aching head into a basin of cold water when he heard the sharp knock on the door, and was soon admitting Chief Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis into his bedroom.

The former had immediately recognised the symptoms of a Caesar-sized hangover and offered practical aid in the form of two tablets of Alka Seltzer which he appeared to carry regularly on his person.

And almost immediately Stratton had been talking freely.

They must have thought him a bit insensitive — running off like that, the day after. But he'd seen the advert in The Oxford Mail, and the prospect of an Open Day at Didcot had proved irresistible. He'd walked round the engine sheds, he said, where he'd looked long and lovingly at the old locomotives, and where he'd seen schoolboys and middle-aged men carefully recording numbers and wheel-arrangements in their note- books. ('All of them apparently sane, Inspector!') And then he'd had the thrill of actually seeing ('a life-time's ambition') the Flying Scotsman! He'd stayed there ('in Didcart') much longer than he'd intended; and when finally he tore himself away from the Cornish Riviera and the Torbay Express he'd walked back to Didcot Parkway Station at about five o'clock, and caught the next train back to Oxford, where he'd, er, where he'd had a quick drink in the Station Buffet. Then he'd been walking back to The Randolph when he suddenly felt he just couldn't face his excessively sympathetic countrymen, and he'd called in a pub and drunk a couple of pints of lager.

The pubs were open, were they, Mr. Stratton?' asked Lewis.

But it was Morse who answered: 'If you wish, Lewis, I will give you the names and addresses of the three of them there that open all day. Please continue, Mr. Stratton.'

Well, at about half-seven he'd gone into a restaurant in St. Giles', Browns; had a nice steak, with a bottle of red wine; left at about half-nine — and was strolling down to The Randolph when he'd met Mrs. Sheila Williams, just outside the Taylorian, as she was making for the taxi-rank. They had stood talking for quite some time, each of them perhaps slightly the worse for wear, and then she had invited him up to her North Oxford home for a night- cap.