When the car finally pulled up in St. Aldate's, the young driver opened the rear door and shook Sergeant Lewis awake, failing to notice that the first action of his passenger was to run the forefinger of his left hand slowly along his upper teeth.
Part Three
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Where water, warm or cool, is
Good for gout — at Aquae Sulis
(Graffito in the Pump Room, Bath, c.1760)
'BAIRTH? THIS IS
Seated on the nearside front seat of the luxury coach, John Ashenden glanced across at the diminutive septuagenarian from California. 'Yes, Mrs. Roscoe, this is Bath.'
With less than conspicuous enthusiasm, he leaned forward for his microphone, turned it on, and began. Not quite so confidently as in Stratford; or in Oxford, of course, where he had memorised whole sentences from the Jan Morris guide.
'Bath, ladies and gentlemen, is the site of a Roman spa,
On either side of the central aisle, heads nodded at the buildings and streets around them as a now livelier Ashenden continued, himself (like the site, it appeared) splendidly restored from whatever malaise had affected him over the previous two days, a malaise which had been noted and commented upon by several others of the group besides Mrs. Shirley Brown — the latter sitting comfortably now in her usual seat, the effects of the sting having cleared up fairly quickly under the twin application of Mrs. Roscoe's unguents.
'Looks a swell place, Shirl,' ventured Howard Brown.
'Yeah. Just wish Laura was with us — and Eddie. It all seems so sad.'
'Too right! Bus seems sorta empty somehow.'
As scheduled, the tourists had lunched at Cirencester, after leaving Stratford earlier that Sunday morning. The weather was still holding, if only just: another golden day in late autumn. And perhaps in the minds of many, the memories of their tragic stay in Oxford were slowly softening at the edges.
One of the slightly younger widows, Mrs. Nancy Wiseman, a librarian from Oklahoma City, was seated at the back of the coach beside Phil Aldrich. She had observed with a quiet pleasure how the strident Roscoe woman had markedly cooled towards her former partner after his refusal (and that of most of the others) to sign her petulant letter of complaint concerning Sheila Williams. Although Phil had been slightly reserved in his manner towards her (Nancy), she knew that that was his way and she was enjoying the company of that wiry, small-boned, gently spoken citizen from Sacramento who almost invariably found himself at the back of every queue that ever formed itself. Yes, the tour was definitely looking up a little, and only the previous evening she had written a card to her daughter to say that in spite of a death and a theft and a murder she was 'beginning to make one or two very nice friends on the trip'.
In truth, however, Phil himself was finding Nancy Wiseman a little too effusive for his liking and — perversely, as it seemed — would have preferred sitting next to Janet Roscoe, up there at the front of the coach, as he listened to (and indeed almost wholly managed to hear) the end of Ashenden's introduction to Bath:
'In the eighteenth century the city was transformed into a resort for English high society — being particularly associated, of course, with the name of Beau Nash, the great dandy and gamester who lived here during the 1740s and 50s. Among its many literary connections, Bath can number such great figures as Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens — and most famous of all, perhaps, Geoffrey Chaucer and
It was a good note on which to end.
Opposite him, he noticed that Janet Roscoe had delved once more into the deep handbag, this time producing a very slim volume, whose title it was impossible for him not to see, and which he could have guessed in any case: CHAUCER,
He smiled across at her, and as she opened her book at the Prologue, she smiled quite sweetly back at him.
It seemed a good omen for the stay in Bath.
Only seemed.
CHAPTER FIFTY
During late visits to Stinsford in old age he would often visit the unmarked grave of Louisa Harding
(
ACCORDING TO THE hospital bulletin on the Monday afternoon, the condidon of Lucy Downes was now officially listed as 'comfortable', one notch above the 'satisfactory' of the Sunday, and two above the earlier 'stable'. Three visits from her husband had helped, perhaps (the first in the small hours of the Sunday morning, two hours after his release from custody), but some slight complications had arisen with continued internal bleeding, and she had become deeply and embarrassingly conscious of how she must appear to everyone whenever she smiled. So she forbore to do so altogether, even to Cedric, and as she lay in her bed that day, her arm now beginning to give her some considerable pain, she would will-ingly (she knew) have cracked two of her ribs rather than chipped, a couple of her teeth.
Vanity, all is vanity, saith the preacher. And 'satisfactory' was arguably too favourable a judgement on her circumstances. But that was the word Morse repeated to the first question Lewis put to him about Lucy's progress at 8.30 a.m. on the Tuesday. It may have been that Morse had smiled a little at the question. But it may not.
Activity in the two days following Cedric Downes's release had hardly afforded a model of investigative collaboration, with Morse sleeping through until the late afternoon of the Sunday, then idling away most of the Monday in his office, moodily perusing the documents in the case; and with Lewis doing the converse, making what
