The Jewel That Was Ours

short period of the three or four hours which Morse had asserted as 'ample'.

But he had done it.

He had not realised quite how many customers were attracted by the Car Hire firms of Oxford, especially American customers; and checking the lists had taken longer than he'd imagined. In this particular respect Morse (suggesting the likelihood of the Botley Road area) had got things quite wrong, for it was at the Hertz Rent-a-Car offices at the top of the Woodstock Road where Dixon had finally spotted the name he was looking for with all the excitement of a young angler just hooking a heavyweight pike.

Tom Pritchard, the manager, went through the key points of the car-hire catechism to be faced by every client:

— Full name and home address?

— How many days' hire?

— Make of car preferred?

— Which dates?

— One driver only?

— Method of payment? (credit card preferred)

— Valid driving licence? (US licence OK)

— Telephone number of one referee?

After that, the manager went through the procedure adopted: a telephone call to the reference number cited; verification of credit card; verification of driving licence; verification of home address (the last three usually completed within ten minutes or so on the International Information Computer); preparation, presentation, and signing of the contract (including appropriate insurance clauses); then, paperwork now completed, the car brought round to the outer forecourt, with an assistant to give the client a quick run-over of the controls, and to hand over the keys. Bon voyage, cheerio, and Bob's your uncle.

By good fortune it had been the manager himself who had effected this particular transaction, and who remembered the occasion reasonably clearly. Well, it was only five days ago, wasn't it? The reference call to the hotel, The Randolph — that's what he'd remembered clearest of all, really: he'd looked up the telephone number and then been put through, on the extension given to him by his client, to the Deputy Manageress, who had promptly and effusively vouched for the bona fides of Rent-a-Car's prospective customer. Naturally, the manager had more details to offer: the car hired had been a red Cavalier, Registration H 106 XMT; it had been hired at 1.45 p.m. and returned at some time after the offices had closed at 6.30 p.m., with the keys pushed through the special letter-box, as requested. Mileage on the speedometer had been clocked as only 30.7. Probably, thought the manager, the car hadn't left Oxford at all?

Yet for all his own pleasure at tracing this evidence, Dixon could see little in his report which might have accounted for the look of extraordinary triumph he had seen on Morse's face when he reported in at 2.45 p.m.

Sergeant (with a 'g') Lewis's own, self-imposed task would, he suspected, be a fairly tricky undertaking. But even here the gods appeared to be smiling broadly on Morse's enterprise. The distinguished personage known as the Coroner's Serjeant (with a 'j') had been willing to sacrifice what he could of his time if the interests of Justice (capital 'J') were really being served. Yet it had still taken the pair of them more than two hours to assemble and photocopy the material that Morse had so confidently predicted would be found.

And was found.

But by far the most difficult and tiresome task had been that of the telephone girls, who had made scores and scores of transatlantic calls that Tuesday morning, afternoon, and early evening: calls made to one address that led to calls to another address; calls to one friend that led to another friend or colleague; from one police department to another; one State to other States; calls for one set of records that referred to another set of records that led. ad apparently infinitum.

'Couldn't it have waited?' Chief Superintendent Strange had asked, calling in briefly in mid-afternoon. 'Waited till tomorrow?'

But Morse was a man who could never abide the incomplete; could never abide the not-knowing-immediately. One clue unfinished in a Listener puzzle, and he would strain the capacity of every last brain-cell to bursting point until he had solved it. And equally so, as now, in a murder case. Tomorrow was too far distanced for bis mind to wait for the last piece of evidence — a mind so ceaselessly tossing, as it had been ever since Lewis — wonderful Lewis! — had mentioned that seemingly irrelevant item in The Oxford Times.

Those names!

And it was Morse himself who had initiated the arrest of Mr. Edward Stratton as he stepped off his plane in New York; Morse himself who had spoken with the aforementioned Stratton for forty-six minutes, seven seconds — as measured by the recently installed meter in the recently constituted Telephone Room at St. Aldate's. But not even the penny-pinching Strange could have complained overmuch about the price that had been paid for the extraordinary information Morse had gleaned.

It was Morse himself, too, who at 8.30 p.m. had called a halt to everything. He had not returned any fulsome gratitude to his staff for all the work they had put in during the day; but he always found it difficult to express his deeper feelings. However, he had returned all but three of the tourists' passports to the safe-keeping of the Manager at The Randolph — the latter just a fraction irked that it now appeared to be his own responsibility to return these passports to whatever location the departed tourists happened to find themselves in.

At 9 p.m. Morse, hitherto that day most remarkably under-beered, made his way up through Cornmarket to the Chapters Bar of The Randolph. There were many times in Morse's life when he needed a drink in order to think. On occasion though (such as now), he needed a drink because he needed a drink. What's more, having left the Jaguar down in the police car-park, he was going to drink.

And compulsively, happily, thirstily — he drank.

One and a half hours later, as he still sat on a high stool at the bar, he looked down and saw the fingers of a beautifully manicured hand against his left arm, and felt the ghost of a touch of the softest breast against his shoulder.