The Jewel That Was Ours

Morse rose to his feet. 'No. I think that's all. I — unless Sergeant Lewis here has any questions?'

'What are French pleats?'

She laughed, her teeth showing white and regular. 'Like that!' She pointed up to the curtains on the front window. 'It's the way they're gathered in at the top, Sergeant.'

'Oh! Only the missus keeps on to me about getting some new curtains—'

'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!'

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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 Stratton, 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.'