The Jewel That Was Ours

'You think Mrs. Williams might have killed him?'

'She might have killed him all right. But I don't think she could have dumped him. I'd guess it was a man who did that.'

'He wasn't very heavy, Kemp, though. Not much fat on him.'

'Too heavy for a woman.'

'Even a jealous woman, sir?'

'Yes, I know what you mean. I keep wondering if Kemp had found some other floozie — and Sheila Williams found out about it.'

' 'Hell hath no fury. ' '

'If you must quote, quote accurately, Lewis! 'Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.' '

'Sorry! I never did know much about Shakespeare.'

'Congreve, Lewis.'

'He seems to have been a bit of a ladies' man—'

'And if he couldn't make love to his wife because she was paralysed from the waist down. '

'I got the feeling she wasn't too worried about that, perhaps. It was Mrs. Williams she had it in for.'

'She might have forgiven him if it had been anyone else, you mean?'

'I think — I think you ought to go to see her, sir.'

'All right,' snapped Morse. 'Give me a chance! We've got these Americans to see, remember? Aldrich and Brown — find out where they were yesterday afternoon. Where they say they were.'

Morse turned to look at the waters once more before he left, then sat silently in the passenger-seat of the police car as Lewis had a final word with Sergeant Dixon. In the side panel of the door he found a street map of Oxford, together with a copy of Railway Magazine; and opening out the map he traced the line of the River Cherwell, moving his right index-finger slowly northwards from the site marked Bathing Pool, up along the edge of the University Parks, then past Norham Gardens and Park Town, out under the Marston Ferry Road; and then, veering north-westerly, up past the bottom of Lonsdale Road. Portland Road. Hamilton Road. Yes. A lot of flood water had come down from the upper reaches of the Cherwell, and a body placed in the river, say, at Lonsdale Road.

And suddenly Morse knew where the body had been launched into the river and into eternity; knew, too, that if Lucy Downes could so quickly arouse the rather sluggish libido of a Lewis, then it was hardly difficult to guess her effect upon the lively carnality of a Kemp.

Lewis had climbed into the driving seat, and seen Morse's finger seemingly stuck on the map, at the bottom of Lonsdale Road.

'He couldn't have done it, sir — not Downes. He was with the Americans all the time — certainly till after we found the body. If anybody's got an alibi, he has.'

'Perhaps it was your friend Lucy Downes.'

'You can't think that, surely?'

'I'm not thinking at all — not for the minute,' replied Morse loftily. 'I am deducing — deducing the possibilities. When I've done that, I shall begin to think.'

'Oh!'

'And get a move on. We can't keep the Americans here all day. We're going to have to let 'em get on their way. Most of 'em!'

So Lewis drove back from Parson's Pleasure, back on to the Banbury Road, down St. Giles', and then right at the lights into Beaumont Street. And all the time Chief Inspector Morse sat, less tetchy now, staring at the street map of Oxford.

No doubt, as Lewis saw things, 'deducing'.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry

(Chekhov)

SHEILA WILLIAMS WAS feeling miserable. When Morse, himself looking far from serene, had come into The Randolph and demanded to see Messrs Aldrich and Brown immediately, he had resolutely avoided her eyes, appearing to have no wish to rekindle the brief moments of intimacy which had occurred in the morning's early hours. And the tourists, most of them, were getting restless — understandably so. Only Phil Aldrich had seemed as placid as ever, even after being interrupted in the middle of his lunch, and thereafter being seated in the Lancaster Room, writing busily on the hotel notepaper; and being interrupted just the once, and then only briefly, by Janet Roscoe — the latter intent, it appeared, on fomenting further dissatisfaction whenever possible.

Like now, for instance.

'I really do think, Sheila—'

'I do envy you so, Mrs. Roscoe. I haven't had a genuine thought in years! Oh, Cedric! Cedric?'

He had been trying to steal silently away from the post-lunch chatter, but was stopped in his tracks at the foot of the great staircase as Sheila, glass in her left hand, laid the crimson-nailed fingers of her right hand along his lapel.