The Jewel That Was Ours

Morse jumped up from the table, his face radiant: 'You've done it, Lewis! You've done it again!'

Lewis too rose from his seat, a tired, bewildered expression across his honest features.

What had he just said?

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood

(Shakespeare, Macbeth)

IT WAS A QUARTER-PAST six when Sheila Williams saw the police car draw up outside, and she answered the front door immediately.

'Come in, Inspector!' The colourless liquid in the glass she carried might just have been water, perhaps; but whatever it was she seemed unwontedly sober.

'No. I — we've got a lot to do. Look. I'm very sorry to have to tell you this — but Mrs. Kemp tried to kill herself this afternoon.'

Sheila's right hand jumped to her mouth with a convulsive jerk: 'Oh, no!' she whispered.

'She took enough pills to kill a healthy elephant, Sheila, but fortunately a nurse found her — in time, we think. If only just.'

'Where—?'

'She's in the JR2. She's having the best care she could get anywhere.'

Sheila took a deep breath. 'Oh dear!' she managed to say in a broken voice as the tears began to trickle. Then, somewhat to Morse's embarrassment, she suddenly buried her head on his shoulder and clung tightly to him.

'Did she love him?' asked Morse gently.

'She possessed him!'

'But did she love him?'

Sheila Williams straightened herself and pulled away from him, searching her pockets for a handkerchief. Her voice was almost fierce as she answered: 'No! I was the only one who really loved him.'

'Do you know anyone else who loved him? Was there someone else? A third woman in his life?'

Sheila shook her head in deep anguish.

'You quite sure about it, Sheila? It's so very important that you're honest with me,' urged Morse.

'He said not. He swore it!'

'And you believed him?'

She nodded, and wiped her eyes. And Morse nodded, too, and looked very sad.

'All right. Thank you.' He turned to go, but she called him back, the tears springing once more.

'Inspector — please!'

Morse turned, and laid his right hand lightly on her shoulder.

'No need to tell me, really. I know there was another woman in his life.'

Her 'yes' was barely audible.

'And I think you knew who it was.'

She nodded again.

'It was only recently though, wasn't it, Sheila? Only recently that he'd started seeing Mrs. Downes?'

Lewis, standing at the front gate, had managed to catch most of the exchanges; had watched Mrs. Williams as she'd finally turned away from Morse in tearful distress. And now, as they got back into the car, both men sat in silence as they watched the light switched on in the front bedroom — and then the curtains being drawn across.

'Curtains!' said Morse, his voice sounding tired yet triumphant. 'As you said, Lewis — curtains.'

The Downes's house was in darkness, and the sound of the front-door bell seemed somehow to re-echo along empty passageways, around empty rooms. Morse looked at his watch: just after half-past six — and Downes would be meeting his wife at seven o'clock.

A wooden gate at the side of the house led to a neatly tended garden at the back, the lawn sloping down to the river, with a path of paving stones laid along the middle, ending on the edge of the waters at what looked like a small landing-stage, perhaps once used to moor a small boat or punt, but apparently (as Lewis shone his torch across it) not in recent use.

'You think.?' Lewis pointed down to the fast-flowing Cherwell.

'Launched from here? Yes, I do. Launched from here into eternity.'

'But when, sir? He wasn't back in Oxford—'

'All in good time, Lewis! For the moment, be a good boy-scout and shine your little torch over those back windows?'

As in the front, the windows here were fully curtained, all of them looking decidedly posh and new; and all of them with some approximation to those French pleats whose acquaintance Lewis had so recently made — and, if